Junker's Moon: Agent Vanessa Robin

By Peter Salisbury

Marshall Brion, owner of Junker's Moon Scrap, Salvage and Servicing Company thought he had seen a ghost when FBIS agent Vanessa Robin came to make an arrest. Months ago, he had seen pirate Vanessa Longtail killed before his eyes, yet now her name was different and she was in the uniform of a law enforcement officer, who not only failed to recognise him, but had no apparent desire to end his life. It was a puzzle Brion felt compelled to solve but he had no idea that the circumstances were at least as troubling to Vanessa herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Salisbury
• Release date: Feb 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310417115

Peter Salisbury

I am a life-long fan of science fiction, and so when I had an idea for my first story, I wasn't surprised that it was in that genre. The first book took me ten years to complete, but I've got a little quicker since. I am pleased to say that I now have over thirty books published in my name. What next? So far I haven't run short of ideas for new stories, so there are several projects in various stages of completion, and I hope to be publishing the next story before too long, so please subscribe to my alerts. My profile picture is a portrait of the author as a young man, painted by my daughter Charlotte Salisbury who has also contributed to several of my book covers. Professional background In the 1970s I studied Chemistry at university and then spent over thirty years in classrooms across England teaching almost anything but Chemistry, including Photography, Communications Skills, General Science, Computing, and Information and Communications Technology. In the 1990s I spent ten years writing abstracts of chemical patents. This was a most exacting process but very rewarding to be reading about the very latest inventions in the field, and the abstracts were distributed world-wide to research scientists by subscription. Articles of mine have been published in magazines and I have written assignments used for assessing Communications Skills for a major international Examination Board. After retiring early this century I began writing in earnest.

Book preview

Prologue

Marshall sat down on the edge of his bed. He had showered and tried to cleanse himself of the weirdness of the day Vanessa Longtail had come back to haunt him. Although he felt refreshed, his mind was still a whirl of conflicting emotions and memories. The confusion of images included the moments he had spent with the point of Vanessa Longtail's sword cutting into his chin, the instant FBIS agents broke onto the Medallion's control room, and seeing Vanessa's inert body on the hard metal of the deck. Had FBIS already got plans in place to fake her death? What had they done to her? And more importantly, why?

Apart from many months earlier, when the roles had been reversed and it had been Marshall who was left for dead by the pirate Vanessa, meeting FBIS agent Vanessa was the next most terrifying experience. Deep in thought, Marshall wondered for the umpteenth time, could it be a coincidence, her turning up as the agent in charge of the Pastor Gripthorne affair? But if it was not a coincidence, who was behind it and what was their purpose? Was Vanessa's appearance a sinister plan of hers, or one devised by FBIS? What of her apparently blanked memory? She had given every appearance of having not recognised him and having no response to their common past and the vengeance she had sworn against him. Yet she had kept glancing at him.

Marshall stood up, paced back and forth a few times, then he walked out into the lounge. It was dimly lit, and he sat down on the leather sofa. Apprehension caused him to sit on the edge again, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His mind jumped to the journey back with Debbi. Lucy had become distanced from him after that, and then Theodore Roman had arrived with his Barouche and his grand ideas. And all that had almost ended in another fatal encounter.

Amongst all the questions, one conclusion Marshall could reach was that although he would always be fond of Lucy, he was glad that she had found more happiness with Theodore Roman than she could ever have had with him.

It looked to Marshall as though it was likely to be a sleepless night. He stood up, retied his dressing gown cord and walked to the cupboard in which he kept strong drink. He took out a tumbler and a whiskey bottle. After pouring himself half a glass, he replaced the bottle, closed the cupboard and was half-way back to where he had been sitting, when there was a light tap at his door. He put down the glass on the coffee table in front of the sofa and went to see who was calling at that hour.

'Who is it?'

'It's Debbi.'

She didn't have to ask to be let in. The sound of her voice was more welcome than any other Marshall could have heard. He simply opened the door, saying, 'I'm not properly dressed.'

'Then that makes two of us,' Debbi said, stepping over the threshold in a black velvet dressing gown.

As soon as Marshall had shut the door, she reached up and put her arms around his neck. 'Don't think I'm going to make a habit of this,' she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

'I've heard something along those lines before,' he said, placing his hands gently on her hips and breathing in the smell of her hair. It reminded him instantly of the languid voyage home after they had both thought Vanessa had been killed. 'I imagine you're having the same problems as me. '

Debbi turned up her face to his. 'Wild thoughts chasing away sleep?'

Not wishing to break the spell but not sure of what to do or say next, and with thoughts of FBIS and Vanessa still circling like crows, pecking at his mind, he said, 'I was about to have a whiskey…'

'That's a good idea.' Debbi released him and walked towards the coffee table and the sofa.

'Same as that one?' Marshall pointed to the glass.

'Please.'

Debbi sat down on the sofa to the side of where the glass was placed. Marshall poured another, passed it to her and sat down next to her. The leather creaked as he leaned back and extended his arm along the sofa behind her. Debbi relaxed into the soft upholstery and they clinked glasses.

Chapter 1: Nightmares

Debbi and Marshall talked deep into the night. Their sole topic of conversation was the reappearance of Vanessa and the cascades of questions that event prompted.

'FBIS have done something to her, and my most urgent question is,' Marshall said, 'is she as dangerous as she was?'

'We must assume that she is, or that she could revert to being at least as dangerous.'

'I think 'at least' is right because no-one trusts Febis anyway, and a Febis Vanessa sounds even more of a threat.'

'Then we must prepare accordingly, Marshall.'

'I'll get a tablet.' Marshall picked up his drink, took another large gulp, then retrieved his tablet from the desk he kept at the side of the lounge. It was a duplicate of the one in his office and gave him access to all the same facilities of scanners and coms, should he need to use them.

'OK,' Marshall said as he sat back down, 'we have the Medallion, equipped as it is with a couple of missile launchers, the full range scanner and Dirk Knight's stealth system.'

'There's the freighter with stealth, and the tug.'

'Ah, yes, the tug. Now where did that get to?'

'Did we bring it back out of The Garden before Vanessa took off with it?'

'Everything has been happening so fast and there's been so much to do with all those followers of Gripthorne's, I really can't remember. It's a pity Lucy isn't here.'

'Oh, really?' Debbi said turning on Marshall. 'Why's that?'

'Because she would be useful to fit any ship we wanted with the stealth technology, and I'm assuming that you only know the software side of the system, that's all.'

'Oh. Yes, of course. I know the theory of it but I don't know the exact type of transducers Lucy used or how they were configured.'

'There's the Medallion, the freighter and the tug if we remembered to get it back off Gripthorne's ship.'

'Marshall, we've still got the ballistic weapon on that old wreck of a Febis ship left from your grandfather's days.'

'The one on the moon. It's well hidden up there.'

'The problem we had with it was there's no power.'

'OK, we need to do some work on getting that properly operational again.'

'Well, we've now got all our own girls back from Gripthorne's ship, plus the six of his followers who wanted to stay here.'

'So we should have some slack for organising this work. There's bound to be some who want to get certified for hard vacuum.'

Marshall made notes on his tablet and they each took another drink.

Debbi put down her glass thoughtfully and said, 'Why didn't she recognise any of us, especially you, Marshall?'

'I'm ashamed of it now but you saw me on my knees when I grasped who it was coming out of the FBIS cruiser. The first thing I looked for was the sword.'

'I can tell you I nearly fainted on the spot myself. I looked for the sword, too.'

'She's got the same arrogant persona but it's like she's had her memory wiped.'

'Perhaps she has.'

'I thought the only way to do that was to actually take out a part of your brain. Once the synapses have connected in a certain way, that's it.'

'You can make small changes, like when you miss-remember something but there's no other way to wipe practically everything out.'

'Do you really think Vanessa will return to Junker's Moon?'

'As we don't know why she came back, the only thing we can safely do is assume that she will.'

'She'll be gone some time on FBIS business taking the followers back to where they belong, months probably.'

'That gives us some breathing space at least.' 'How do you want to play things between us?'

'Early days, yet,' Debbi said. 'I have no wish to become the latest item of gossip, not before I'm good and ready.'

'Suits me too, I've decided to become Mr Mysterious from now on.'

Finally talked out, they settled into Marshall's bed and slept soundly next to each other.

In the morning Debbi and Marshall woke knowing that they still had nothing but questions and a lot of work ahead.

'Debbi,' Marshall said, 'stay and have some breakfast. I've got toast and marmalade and fresh coffee.'

'Do you have any eggs? I'm starving after talking half the night away.'

Marshall rifled through the cold cupboard. 'There's some smoked salmon. Some of that with scrambled egg?'

'Oh, now you're talking.'

When they'd finished eating, Debbi sat back with a cup of black coffee. There were toast crumbs on her dressing gown but she really didn't care. 'Marshall, I've been thinking.'

'Oh, yes?'

'When Dirk Knight turned up we had some warning of his arrival.'

'Which meant there was time to get you into position with the ballistic weaponry and the coms laser.'

'Quite, but another time we might not be so lucky.'

'What are you proposing, Debbi.'

'I've talked about remote controlled ships before but we never actually got around to it.'

'The freighter we took from Vanessa, perhaps?'

'I was thinking smaller. If a tug was parked up by the holding station where ships have to wait for tag verification once they exit the hyperspace pipe, it would look relatively innocuous.'

'Continue.'

'So, it could be permanently parked there but in the event of anyone trying to run off without paying, or if anyone we don't like the look of drops out of the pipe, the tug is there ready with my coms laser to scramble their flight systems. And, if I'm controlling it from down here, I don't even need to be on board, no-one does.'

'And we still get to keep the Medallion, the freighter and the ballistic weapon in reserve.'

'Precisely, what's a tug worth in comparison to the other two ships?'

'Brilliant. In fact, we should start today. And if we give it a paint job with the words 'Tug-Assist' on the side in large letters, it'll just look like it's there to be helpful. No-one will know it's our main line of defence.'

Debbi finished her coffee and put down her cup amongst the used breakfast things.

'I'm going back to my suite. The sooner I get started, the sooner it'll be done. All this is on a 'need to know' basis?'

'Oh, yes.'

Chapter 2: Voyage Of Recovery

Many months previously, on a planet very far from Cymbeline, Vanessa had first awoken from her anaesthetic feeling impossibly fuzzy. Try as she might, she couldn't focus, nor could she move. It was if she was wrapped in wool balls. Lights came and went, people shapes came and took blood, scanned, and assessed her. After what could have been either days or weeks, her sight cleared and physical sensations returned as she came out of the 'fog'. She was weak and uncoordinated but the people in white coats fed her well and gave her physiotherapy. Embracing both with enthusiasm, Vanessa soon regained her strength. Finally, everything seemed to work in a way which felt right, except for one thing. And that one thing gave her the strangest of sensations. There were parts of her past that she could not remember at all. When Vanessa started trying to join up what she could recall, she realised there were very large gaps indeed.

She was told that she had been extremely ill with a virus but that the FBIS medics had been able to save her. She met someone who called himself Ravenheart and said that he was her supervising officer. He told her that she would have to spend several weeks retraining because the virus she had contracted had destroyed parts of her brain and she would have to relearn her role as a FBIS agent. It all seemed completely logical and she set about learning what she was told she had forgotten.

Vanessa was a fast learner and she absorbed sufficient FBIS regulations and flight training in a few weeks to be sent on her first assignment. It was to a place she felt had a curiously familiar name, though she couldn't recall why. Ravenheart had said it wasn't important that she remembered what she had done before in the Cymbeline system, simply to build on the present. The assignment was to take command of a ship registered as The Garden, which had belonged to a corrupt cult leader called Gripthorne.

Ravenheart dispatched Vanessa in a cruiser with a pilot and half a dozen armed agents in support. When she arrived at the Cymbeline landing field, she met the owner, Marshall Brion. With crisp efficiency, Vanessa assessed the situation, seeing at once that she had authority under FBIS law to immediately put in place several measures. First, it was necessary to arrest Gripthorne and his male employees. Secondly, she confiscated Gripthorne's ship. The hundred or so cult followers were easily of sufficient number to require her to requisition the ship. Under evacuation protocols, FBIS was permitted to do so in order that the cult followers could be safely recovered to their home planets.

In all these matters, Vanessa dealt directly with Marshall Brion. She received Brion's report that he had apparently captured the ship and restrained the guards. Vanessa's assessment of Brion, however, was that he appeared never to have seen a FBIS agent before. He had given every appearance of being