Unwary (Unbound Mercs Book 2), page 1
Unwary
By Timothy Ellis
Unbound Mercs, Book Two.
Copyright © 2024 by Timothy Ellis
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events are fictional and have no relationship to any real person, place or event. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely co-incidental.
The author is Australian and the main characters in this universe are of Australian origin. In Australia, we colour things slightly differently, so you may notice some of the spelling is different. Please don't be alarmed.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Thirty Six
Thirty Seven
Thirty Eight
Thirty Nine
Forty
Forty One
Forty Two
Forty Three
Forty Four
Forty Five
Forty Six
Forty Seven
Forty Eight
Acknowledgements
A Message to my Readers
Also by Timothy Ellis
Read the universe in this order
The Hunter Imperium Timeline
The Hunter Imperium Universe Series in the order written:
One
There’s no difference when an old woman shoots you to anyone else doing it.
You know you’ve been shot, no matter who the shooter is, and I knew that from hard experience. I still had the bruises to prove it.
So why was an old woman shooting me? It was the only way to test something. But let me back up a bit.
Day one of the Unbound Mercenary Company started for me in the Karn Shipyard. Unbound was our new Q-ship, purchased from the Thorn’s World Shipyard, and jumped to Karn so the rest of my pilots could surprise me. That had been a success. I’d slept there last night, but only because they’d had a butler move all my stuff when I wasn’t looking. Not that it mattered.
I was in the shipyard office first thing in the morning to arrange Camel’s repair and upgrade, and my stuff needed to come off anyway, because the internals of the ship were being radically altered, and sleeping there tonight was out of the question. The move out had just been an evening earlier, is all. Not that I really noticed where I was. The new suite was almost the same as the old one. The ship it was in was not though. It was huge in comparison to what I had been flying.
The others were having a day off. Their wrecked Excalibur Fours had been collected last night by shipyard jump salvage droids, and were already being fixed and upgraded. They’d all bought new birds with this new ship though, so they were ready to fly, even if I wasn’t. Brook was heading to Wonderland for the day, while Nyle was going skiing at Rockmonster’s resort. The rest had been non-committal.
My day was pretty full though. After breakfast I’d followed an arrow to the rift to the shipyard, and then to Uchawi’s office. There we’d spent an hour playing with a hollo model of Camel, and finalizing the repair and upgrade. It was actually more upgrade than repair, since the entire engine and power system was being ripped out, along with the ship computer and all of the lower accommodation area. The existing engines were buggered, courtesy of several missiles which had made it through the point defences, and it was easier to replace than fix.
We’d already discussed most of this the day before, but what we hadn’t was additions I wanted to the weapons in the front, and if at all possible, mosquito launchers. I wanted additional torpedo and missile launchers at the front, but to get them meant rearranging what was behind there to fit in the magazines and repair droid access to change them. To do that meant moving other things.
But Uchawi knew her stuff, and by mid-morning we’d agreed on both a design, and the cost of it. It changed the corvette into a super-fighter, and reduced it to only two levels of living, mostly now for passengers, while retaining its small freighter designation. When it came out of the shipyard, Camel would be faster, much better shielded, better protected, better armed, and much more versatile in terms of tasks it was suited for.
Which was more than could be said for me. I was still wincing from the most recent occasion of being shot, but the bruising was slowly changing into all shades of yellow, and I only winced when I turned at the waist.
With the modifications locked in, I’d gone back to Camel, done the normal undock procedure, reversed out a few meters, a jump salvage droid had landed on the top of the hull, and deposited me inside a closed shipyard bay. A soft walkway had connected to one of the deck one airlocks, and I walked away from my first ship, wondering if I was doing the right thing.
That wasn’t just about the upgrade. It was the decision to buy in with the others to form an actual mercenary company as well. It was both right and wrong for me. The upgrade to Camel was a big step, but a necessary one, but I worried I was going too far with it. And a part of me still wanted to go off on my own. But I’d committed myself, to both now, and I’d just have to see where they led.
Me being protected was my next stop. All the guns and droids on Camel had been taken to Unbound using a rented station shuttle. So I went back to Unbound, took the travel car to the new armoury, and started putting weapons in a duffle. That had proved too heavy for me to carry, so I’d chosen more wisely, and that was still too heavy to carry very far.
Back on the dock, I called for a station trolley. Of course, the driver was Uchawi, and she smiled at me when I saw her drive up. I put the duffle in the storage area, and climbed up beside her. She’d been surprised when I told her where I wanted to go, but we set off straight away.
I’d have taken a trolley anyway, I think. It was too far for me to walk, injured as I was, but the duffle made it essential. We zipped across a number of League stations, before she stopped us by a customs station for the planet Vincent. I thanked her, paid the fee, and retrieved the duffle.
At the customs station I clunked it down on the table, and told the man there I was seeing Georgina the Tailor down on the planet, and the duffle was full of guns she’d asked me to bring. He looked at me strangely, looked up who she was, sent her a message, and received a reply back, since she was expecting me sometime this morning. He waved me through, so I picked the duffle up again, and hefted it along to a yellow square on the deck.
“Where to?” said a voice.
“Georgina the Tailor.”
“Step into the square, please.”
I did so. A moment later I was standing outside a door down on the planet. She must have been looking out for me, because the door opened immediately, and a large, and very old looking, woman greeted me.
“Lyla, dear, come in.”
I went in, and dropped the duffle on the floor in the living room. I knew she was a mage, but I hadn’t realized she was in her seventies, although I should have. Most of the mages on this planet hadn’t received activated magic until they turned seventy. But until I saw her, I didn’t make the connection.
“What have you brought me?” she asked, smiling widely.
“You said bring what I needed protection against.”
“So I did. That looks kind of heavy though.”
“It is. It’s full of guns.”
“Guns?”
“Yes. I was hoping you could create me some clothes which acted like military armour did, and stop me getting bruised when someone shoots me.”
“Do people shoot you very often?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I’m using the civilian version of what the League military use, but it’s not good enough. I was hoping, since you said you could make clothes for any purpose, that you could do something which acts as a second level of protection.”
“Against getting shot?”
“Yes.”
She grinned at me.
“And I thought today was going to be boring!”
Two
The morning went past quickly.
She had no idea about anything military, so it took some explaining and showing her what the belt suit did before she grasped what I wanted from her.
She started with creating, seemingly out of thin air, a suit on a clothes dummy out in her backyard. She’d then used a standard light sidearm to shoot it with, and observed what it did to the fabric. Except that first time she missed it completely, and put a hole in a tree.
That brought a visit from the planet’s leader, who turned up as I was trying to teach her how to actually hit the dummy. She introduced herself as
I had to help Georgina fire the first few times, but she picked it up quickly, and between each shot, she recreated the dummy and the clothing. Different fabrics took damage different ways, and finally when she’d been through all of them, she created something new, and this time, the shot just vanished into it.
When I touched the spot though, I jerked my hand away from the heat, and we found the dummy underneath was partially melted. That just made her more determined. We kept testing things, and by lunch time we thought we had something which would nullify, her words, a sidearm kill shot.
She insisted I stay for lunch, as the job wasn’t finished yet, and brought out food she’d mainly grown herself. It was a nice change to eat fresh food to be sure, and while we ate, we discussed the other weapons I’d brought.
The pulse rifle was too heavy for her, so we set it up on a table, and all she had to do was pull the trigger. That blew a hole through what we’d developed up until then, but the next one merely got hot. The one after, didn’t even get warm. I could find no damage to the spot the pulse hit at all. But three shots in rapid succession made it fail, looking exactly like clothing pieced by a pulse did look like. So she changed it again, and this time we put ten shots into it before it failed.
The meson pulser only took three though, but the next version also lasted for ten. After that we tested all the other guns I’d brought, being the ones I was most likely to be shot at with. But the clothes sat there on the dummy, and resisted all of them.
That was no guarantee that something else would prove to be something the fabric, for want of a better word, couldn’t handle, but this was exactly what I’d been hoping for.
The next test was making me something I would actually wear. I chose a ship suit to start with, and she expressed distain at such a choice, but a well fitted coverall was suited to ship wear, I found. The thing was, would the new fabric still wear properly.
She made me one fitted exactly to me, and I went inside to change into it. When I came out, looking great from what I could see in a mirror, we started with the basic sidearm, and she fired it at my arm, aiming to only just touch the arm if the fabric failed. But even though I knew she’d fired, I didn’t feel a thing, and there was nothing showing on either the sleeve, or my arm.
Just to make sure, I did some walking around and movement to make sure the suit wouldn’t just fall apart after, but it was just like wearing a well-tailored one piece coverall. Not that I’d ever had one, that is. The ones off the shelf were just adequate in the looks department.
We moved up to heavier guns, and the only drawback started appearing as she shot me in the middle with more and more confidence. I had my belt suit to back this up, but it was set to only activate if the pulse made it to the skin. The pulse rifle was what brought out the flaw, only it wasn’t really a flaw. The pulse knocked me off my feet, and I went down against the berm behind me.
The meson did the same thing, only more violently, but like the previous pulse, there was no damage to me. Even the impact with the ground hadn’t been felt by me.
“I think we have a winner,” I told her, as I picked myself up. “Being knocked off your feet is a problem with the more powerful guns anyway, as most of the time when you get hit, you’re simply not braced enough to take it.”
“There must be a way around that.”
“Maybe so, but this is brilliant. Can you make me several more of these, and then some duplicates of my suit and casual wear?”
Within minutes, I had travel luggage with four coveralls, two business suits, and three casual outfits, all with my captain’s badge on them. I was wearing the fourth casual outfit, and the clothes I’d arrived in were also in there with the rest.
At that point Joan appeared again, this time with someone else.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” said Admiral Jane. “Georgina, we need to talk. I think the two of you are going to be very rich in the near future.”
“Why is that?”
I was too stunned to say anything.
“This,” said Jane, “is the holy grail of civilian mercenaries and business men. Armour that isn’t armour, but will protect them from anything short of extended hits, and capital ship weapons.”
“Why will that make me rich?” I asked her.
“Because it was your idea, and you were part of developing and testing the idea. And that gives you fifty percent of the royalty.”
“What royalty?” asked Georgina. “I make clothes to order. These ones cost the same as anything else I make using magic. It’s more than a tailor would normally charge because it’s custom fitted, and a perfect fit. But it’s not going to make anyone rich.”
“You underestimate the demand. And also the price we’ll be putting on them. Are you aware of what the belt suit costs?”
“No.”
“I do,” I added. “What are you saying?”
“This clothing is the perfect companion to the civilian belt suit, and it will sell at the same sort of price.”
I told Georgina what I’d paid for my suit. She looked at the three of us in shock. I didn’t tell her I’d bought three of them.
“It needs a lot of rigorous testing though before we let you market this, but Lyla, it seems that what you have there makes a really good test set. Be cautious, but if you come under fire again, we’ll want a full report on what happens.”
She turned back to Georgina.
“You, my new friend, are invited into a development group I’m running. It won’t take much of your time, but your magic might be just what we need to overcome a few things.”
“Like the belt suit leaving a bruise after a big hit?” I asked.
“That exactly. The current version military belt was developed using magic, and there seems to be something wrong with them. Maybe new eyes will see what we’re missing.”
“There’s nothing new about my eyes,” said Georgina, deadpan, but she burst into laughter straight after, spoiling the effect.
“All eyes are new when they look at new things,” said Joan.
“Deep,” said Jane, and then laughed herself. She looked at Georgina again. “Please don’t make anything like that again without me being there. I’m serious about needing to test this further. And the three of you keeping this secret. This is the sort of thing which people would abduct you for.”
“Really?” asked Georgina.
“Really,” I told her. “And I’m sorry, but I never considered that before I came here.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” said Jane. “But if no-one knows, nothing will happen. When we get this to retail stage though, it will only be available to those who need it, or can afford it. There’s the custom nature of it to consider, although maybe we do a limited range of styles like normal clothes are. This is a game changer in a lot of ways, and it needs to be well thought out and controlled. But if we do it right, it should be financially rewarding for you both.”
She looked at me.
“You should tell anyone who asks where you’ve been today that you visited a good tailor. You certainly look like you have, so they’ll believe that. I’ll keep you in the loop as things develop. At some stage we’ll outfit your whole company as the next phase of beta testing.”
“That’s just six of us.”
“For now. The way I hear it, you’re about to start interviewing ship crew and marines. And you seem to be a shit magnet, so you’ll likely get into enough trouble that the new clothes will be well tested in the field.”
“I hope not!”
Joan and Georgina laughed. Jane was being serious though. I looked at Georgina.
“I need an invoice so I can pay you. Whatever your normal rate is, and triple it.”
“I’m doing no such thing. My normal rate is just fine.”
She pulled out a pad, and tapped away on it for a bit, making Jane look struck dumb, and amusing Joan. The invoice pinged in, and I paid triple.
“Thank you,” I told Georgina. “When I need a new set of clothes, ordinary ones, I’ll be back.”
“You’re welcome any time, dear.”
