Three Square Meals Read online

  The John Blake Chronicles

  Three Square Meals

  By

  M Tefler

  (c) 2017 M Tefler

  Dedicated to:

  My loyal fans, whose boundless enthusiasm kept me motivated and for their encouragement to turn what started as a hobby into a professional career.

  My team of editors, who’ve generously dedicated so much of their time to this mammoth story and helped me learn so much.

  And to my wife, for all her love and support. Maybe one day, I’ll write a story you can tell your parents about!

  Contents

  The Chronicles of John Blake

  Three Square Meals Ch. 01 – A Fool’s Errand

  Three Square Meals Ch. 02 – The long journey home

  Three Square Meals Ch. 03 – Pivotal moments

  Three Square Meals Ch. 04 – The Change

  Three Square Meals Ch. 05 – Avenging angels

  Three Square Meals Ch. 06 – The real adventure begins

  Three Square Meals Ch. 07 – Breaking in the new ride

  Three Square Meals Ch. 08 – A rescue left unfinished

  Three Square Meals Ch. 09 – Living the dream

  Three Square Meals Ch. 10 – Completing the circle

  Author’s Note

  Three Square Meals Ch. 01 – A Fool’s Errand

  John suppressed a triumphant smile as the mine owner plugged an auth device into his ship's logging manifest and pressed a couple of buttons to confirm the transaction. Signing over ownership of the ore could be done in the blink of an eye, but John wanted this transaction logged with the Merchant’s Guild. There could be absolutely no doubt as to the legitimacy of this deal.

  He knew it would take some time before confirmation was routed through the long chain of comm beacons, so he relaxed back in his chair and gazed out the window. The view outside was gloomy and depressing, overlooking the Mortimer Mine compound. John was in a mining colony known as Karron on the edge of the outer rim. It was a vast asteroid that could be better described as a tiny planet, its core slowly being hollowed out by the independent miners extracting the mineral wealth contained within.

  Karron’s dirty tunnels and squalid hab-zones received no sunlight from the bright red sun it orbited. The only illumination came from faded lighting-strips that were hammered into the rough-hewn walls, casting long forbidding shadows around the mining compound. Huge, six-wheeled trucks rumbled past the manager’s office, the blocky vehicles on their way to collect the priceless cargo John had just purchased. They slowly disappeared from sight as they drove around huge piles of waste rock that nearly touched the cavern ceiling. The sombre greys of those granite mounds reminded him of a Trankaran’s rocky hide and he cast his mind back to the last time he’d seen one of those aliens, on that eventful day over a month ago.

  He’d been back in the Core Worlds having a drink at a local bar, which was well known for its tolerant attitude to the odd and eccentric. Popular amongst alien traders for just that reason, there were a broad selection of exotic creatures in the bar that night. A hulking slab-faced Trankaran propped up the bar, chatting with the stocky three-armed, three-legged Ornalith it was towering over, the booming sound of its laughter echoing around the establishment. The two silicon-based lifeforms were a rarity that deep in human territory, but both were benign species and welcomed within the Terran Federation.

  Returning his attention to his companion that evening, John focused on the drunk deep-spacer he had befriended years before. The gnarled old spacer was called Jonah, or 'Mad Jonah' to the other regulars in the bar, most of whom strongly suspected the poor unfortunate had gone space crazy years ago. John liked the old timer though and would spend hours listening to his wild stories of incredible sights beyond the outer rim. On this particular night, Jonah had recently returned from his latest jaunt into deep space and had been recounting a lurid time spent in a brothel on Karron...

  "I tell you John, those worm girls have magic hands! I ain't never felt anything like what these pale-skinned jezebels could do to a fella!" he said, eyes widening as he recalled his misadventures.

  "Worms" was slang for the residents of mining colonies, who often received no sunlight for years. Living underground in homes with no direct access to the Sun, meant that its inhabitants were pale-skinned to the point of albinism.

  "You should head over there, youngster, and see for yourself. Tell Madame Trixie I say hi!" Jonah said, coupled with a theatrical wink and a guffaw.

  John nodded obligingly, having no intention of heading that far out on the rim just to visit a brothel. He had initially objected to being called “youngster”, having just hit forty last month, but he supposed everyone must seem young to the octogenarian and let Jonah continue.

  "Ah, if only I were a younger man, I would have stayed there longer, but I figured I best skedaddle before those strumpets were the death of me. The ticker isn't quite up to as much exertion as it used to be," Jonah added with a snicker, before taking a long swig of booze.

  Suddenly Jonah's alcohol induced stupor seemed to temporarily clear and he leaned into John conspiratorially. The old man's breath was toxic enough to be classified as a bio-hazard.

  "It might be worth your while heading there besides those worm gals, youngster," he whispered in a hushed voice, casting a suspicious glance at a passing Yelneg merchant. He waited until the short fungoid creature had drummed past their table on its six stumpy legs before continuing. "One night I was hangin' out in Madame Trixie's parlour and a couple o' them miners came rollin' in havin' drunk up a storm. They were out celebratin' and lookin' to round out the night with some pleasures of the flesh. I got to chattin' with those fellas and seems like they had stumbled on a whole heap of Tyrenium."

  At this, John's ears pricked up! John already had pointy ears due to his unusual parentage, but this comment caused them to prick up even further.

  Tyrenium was a key component of plasma cores, used to power top-of-the-line military grade ship weaponry. It was sufficiently rare and in such huge demand, that the price for a ton of the element was astronomical to the right buyers. With John’s military connections, he knew someone who would be very interested indeed...

  John had stayed with Jonah for as long as could be considered polite before bidding him farewell. He sprinted back to the dock where his freighter was parked with his heart hammering in his chest, knowing that he had to move fast on this one. John dashed across the boarding gantry, before quickly tapping the airlock's security access code to gain entry to his ship, the 'Fool's Gold'. Rushing up to the cockpit, his hands shook with excitement as he searched the Sector Maps for Karron. The moment he found it, he forced himself to take a deep breath to steady himself before he entered the navigation coordinates. There could be no mistakes when plotting his course. The route he was taking would take over a month and travelling this far to the outer rim held many hazards for the unwary...

  The mine owner, Seb Mortimer, cleared his throat pointedly. “John?”

  Snapped out of his reverie, John gave the man a smile of apology. “Sorry, I was light years away there. Everything okay?”

  Seb nodded, a broad grin on his face. “Just got confirmation from the Merchant’s Guild. The ore’s all yours!”

  The deal was now struck and the grinning men shook hands, both of them overjoyed at the completion of the trade. John had ransacked every rainy-day account he had, scraping together every last credit of his life's savings and sinking them into this deal. He was purchasing ten tons of Tyrenium at a ludicrously cheap rate, but it was still expensive enough to bring a huge grin to Seb's face. Two-point-five-million credits was an awful lot of money in a place like Karron.

  John realised that being this far out on the bor
ders of known space, Seb was unaware of just how valuable this element could be. Then again, he undoubtedly didn't have the exotic military connections that John did. The Terran Federation military strictly regulated trade in Tyrenium, only allowing its purchase by certain authorised traders... and the military of course. The two men shared an amiable drink of whisky to seal the deal, before John left the mine owner's office to oversee the loading of his cargo.

  He strolled over to the waiting trucks that had been loaded with his haul of Tyrenium and nodded to the driver as he climbed up into the cabin of the lead vehicle. The huge truck roared into life and John felt the thrumming of the powerful engine as they pulled away.

  Karron was a bleak, ugly, and inhospitable colony, far from the centre of human galactic civilisation. The brief journey from the mine to the starport provided a grim tour of the dark, grubby, and dilapidated slums that had built up in the hollowed out asteroid. They passed a middle-aged woman in a grey, ill-fitting jacket and trousers, tugging a child along behind her. Their faces both had a hard, sullen look to them, which he might have expected in the mother, but to see this beaten expression on such a young boy was sobering.

  John felt a surge of relief that he’d be leaving this depressing place in a couple of hours. In fact, he was in such a hurry to leave, he decided to forego a visit to Madame Trixie's brothel. John had a moment of hesitation, as he wondered if the establishment really would live up to his old friend's claims, but then again, Mad Jonah did have more than a few peculiar tastes. In any case, John wasn’t in the mood to deal with any potential mishaps that might arise, especially after just making the deal of his life and decided to give the place a pass.

  The trucks eventually arrived at the starport and after a quick dialogue with the guards and the deck officer, the industrious miners loaded the cargo of Tyrenium aboard the Fool's Gold. John waved the miners goodbye and sealed the cargo bay doors. After setting the controls in the Cargo Bay for auto-decontamination, he then strode purposefully to the cockpit.

  John slumped in the pilot's chair and pressed a button on the comm interface to call Karron Flight Control. After waiting for thirty seconds his call went through.

  “Yeah, what?” a bored voice muttered.

  John rolled his eyes, knowing this far out on the rim he couldn’t expect much in the way of professionalism. “This is John Blake aboard the Fool’s Gold. Requesting permission to depart.”

  “Sure,” the man replied, closing the comm channel a second later.

  John punched in the course for home, before activating the auto pilot to disembark from the asteroid. The ship's engines roared into life and the old freighter seemed to groan in protest as it took off. It slowly cleared the rough-hewn entrance to the docking bay, cruising out into the blackness of space. John let out a big sigh and was finally able to relax now that the deal was done and the cargo of Tyrenium was safely secured in the ship's hold.

  He stared out of the cockpit as the ship turned towards the Nav Beacon. Karron was by far the biggest asteroid in a broad belt of rock, which orbited the giant star in the centre of the Omicron Ceti system. The star cast a blood-red glow over the freighter as it slowly pulled away from the asteroid belt, having to clear the local gravity wells before it was safe to jump out of the system. When he reached the beacon, John hit the button to activate his FTL drive and after a few seconds, the freighter groaned and lurched into hyper-warp.

  Surprisingly John still felt twitchy, which he assumed was due to the adrenaline wearing off after the excitement of brokering such a life changing deal. He rose from his pilot’s chair and after a good stretch, headed to his cabin to take a much-needed nap.

  John unbuckled the harness to his heavy pistol and carefully unholstered it, then removed the magazine and checked the safety before placing it on the weaponry rack in his cabin. When he pressed his thumb to the door-lock, the locker closed with a swish. Deep space could be a dangerous place, with marauding pirates and the occasional misunderstandings with aliens, so it was sensible to be prepared in the case of a hostile boarding action.

  The cabin was meticulously clean, courtesy of one of John's personality quirks. He liked to keep his ship obsessively tidy and couldn't abide leaving mess anywhere. The rooms and corridors of the ship were kept spotless, which was handy with avoiding contamination, but took plenty of hours to maintain. After a soothing shower to clean away the dust and stink of the colony, John collapsed onto the crisp, pristine sheets on his wide bed and fell asleep.

  Several hours later, after a nice relaxing sleep, John awoke feeling horny. He was hard as steel and ready for action. This came as quite a surprise, as John had spent years meditating to avoid getting into this kind of state. With his parentage being what it was, he couldn't be too careful. He sat up and assumed a meditative pose, clearing his mind and focusing on being calm and at peace. When the horniness and his erection abated, he got up, got dressed and went about his normal routine.

  ***

  A couple of days passed, with John awakening each morning to a rock-hard surprise. Each day it was getting more difficult to maintain his self-control, but he went through his meditation rituals and gradually calmed himself. He had been travelling for four days now, having left Karron far behind and he decided to check on his precious cargo.

  The door to the cargo bay opened with a satisfying clank. Even though everything in the cargo hold seemed to be as expected, John still felt on edge. Standing on the gantry overlooking the ship's hold, he felt alert, focused, pensive, wary; he had great instincts and they were all telling him that something was wrong. Backing out of the cargo bay, he hurried to his cabin to collect some weaponry. John grabbed his broad-muzzled auto shotgun, perfect for up close work in the confined quarters of a spacecraft, and slammed in a clip. The autoshot hummed to itself happily for a few seconds as he flipped the power button on the grip and a holographic targeting grid appeared above the weapon. John turned back into the corridor and jogged briskly back to the hold.

  Inside the cargo bay, John flicked on infrared on the scope and did a quick sweep of the hold with his shotgun. Looking for any telltale signs of red that signified heat, he saw nothing untoward in the targeting grid but cool shades of blue. He turned to the adjacent wall-mounted panel and cranked the illumination to maximum. He avoided looking at the blinding overhead lights as he searched the room thoroughly. It was not until he returned to the door-panel that he noticed a faint dusty scuff mark outside the door. Having meticulously scrubbed that section of floor in an OCD fury before landing, he knew that someone or something had come aboard with the cargo at Karron.

  John resealed the cargo bay and began to sweep the ship. The Fool's Gold was not huge, having only the cockpit, his cabin, the hold, a secondary cabin, his recreation room and the ship’s storage. The engine room and equipment room were kept sealed and a quick check confirmed that their locks hadn’t been tampered with. He found no signs of life in the cabins or cockpit, and there wasn't anywhere to hide in the recreation room, consisting only of a dining table, a comfy sofa and a small but functional kitchen. That meant his interloper had to be in the storage room.

  John took a deep breath and readied himself for action before stepping into the doorway. Raising his weapon, he looked through the scope. Nothing! The targeting grid depicted the room in expected blues, with the occasional red glow from the overhead lights. Turning slowly, he carefully checked any potential hiding places through the scope, until he finally faced a storage compartment near the back of the room. A faint but revealing red glow edged the door to this particular compartment, signifying a warm presence inside.

  "I know you're in there, come on out!" John barked at the storage compartment, keeping a wary distance.

  He waited pensively to the count of ten, but there was no movement from the mysterious interloper.

  "Either you come out in five seconds, or I unload this shotgun and space your corpse!" John shouted at the compartment door.

  He heard
some kind of squeak from inside the compartment and the storage door swung open slowly. A dirty unkempt figure stepped timidly out of the compartment and into the bright lights of the storage room. It was obviously a miner's kid; some mid-teen boy he guessed by the look of him. He was scrawny and malnourished, wearing shabby grey overalls, a bulky tattered jacket and a cap pulled down low. Frightened eyes in a dirt-smeared face peered warily at John from beneath that dog-eared cap, watching and waiting for his next move.

  John sighed and lowered the shotgun. "Oh, for fuck's sake!" he groaned. Thoroughly pissed off, he muttered, "Now I'm going to have to turn right around to drop your ass back at Karron! We're days away from there already!"

  This dumbass kid's desire for adventure was going to cost him over a week on a pointless detour.

  "Please don't take me back to Karron!" the boy pleaded in an oddly high-pitched voice. Perhaps this kid was younger than he initially thought, John mused.

  "Why not?" John demanded. "There's no chance in hell I'm going to risk being done on a 'kidnapping a minor' charge and I don't for a minute think you have any money to pay me for the trouble. What's your name anyway, boy?"