Mitchell's Revenge

The IGM mercenary ship, the Zond, was travelling away from EQ2 as fast as it could without alerting the system police to its presence. When they reached the outer boundary for FTL travel they planned to jump towards the Laika system and their home base of Tarasov.

Maxim Volkov stared in amazement at the blond headed child standing in front of him. In all his years as Captain of the Zond he had never seen anyone behave with such fearlessness. Anja Stern’s pretty face was marred by a nasty purple bruise on her temple, which was now starting to turn black. She stood up straight with her arms crossed in front of her and stared straight back at Maxim.

“Where are you taking me?” she wanted to know.

“You know full well I’m not going to tell you that,” he said. “You know who we are. That’s enough for now.”

“And when are we going to get there?” she asked. Maxim shook his head.

“Can’t tell you that either,” he replied. Anja huffed impatiently.

“Can I watch how you pilot this ship?” Maxim shook his head and glared at the child.

“Come on Maxim,” said Pavel Azanov, the Zond’s pilot, “What harm can it do? She’s only a little girl.”

“No,” said Maxim. “Definitely not.”

Elena Zeitsev, the mercenary who had snatched Anja from the street in Covington as she was on her way home from school, joined the discussion.

“She’s just a kid Maxim,” she said. “It can’t do any harm. She’s been very cooperative after the initial grab when she got that bruise.” Anja glared at Elena.

“I’m right here you know,” she said. “I can hear every word.”

“Feisty, aren’t you?” Elena said. She looked back at Maxim. “How about I keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t sabotage anything. We can let her stay on the bridge with us.”

“I know enough not to try to sabotage anything!” Anja announced. “I realise we are in space and I don’t want to die just yet.” Elena smiled broadly at Maxim.

“See what I mean?” she said.

“Alright,” Maxim reluctantly agreed. “As long as you keep your word Elena, she can stay. But you’re going to have to babysit, whether she likes it or not. Stick to her like glue. I won’t have her running around freely on my ship.”

“Fair enough,” said Elena. “It’s probably better if we keep her right where we can see her anyway. Anja, you can sit here.”

She gestured to the chair she had been sitting on adjacent to the captain and away from the pilot. Anja sat where she was told, her keen eyes taking in everything around her.

After the initial shock of being grabbed from the street Anja quickly realised it was useless trying to fight the people who had abducted her. The first thing they did was remove all her coms devices and smash them to pieces in front of her. She was no match for their physical strength and once aboard the Zond, there was nowhere to run. If she continued to fight them she would end up locked in a cabin and that would not be useful at all. So she decided to stay calm and focus on remembering as much about what was happening to her as possible.

When she was very little and Jake first returned from his travels, they played memory games around the apartment in Covington. He allowed her to study the room they were in for a few minutes, then he blindfolded her and asked her to remember what was in the room and where it was located. Anja thought it was a great game and they used to play for hours, moving from one room to another.

When she was older they went to the nearby park, or the closest shopping centre. They walked through it quickly and then tried to recall as much as possible of what they saw on their first walk through. Then they walked back again, checking just how accurate they were. In a fun way Jake taught his little sister to be very observant, a skill a pilot needed.

Anja settled into her seat to watch, listen and learn. She knew in her heart that she would be rescued eventually. She just had to be patient and wait for an opportunity to send a message home.

The Zond was a small, fast and manoeuvrable ship fitted with a state of the art FTL drive. Her weapons were carefully concealed within her reinforced skin. Because she was so fast they rarely needed to use the weapons. Captain Volkov usually chose to vanish rather than get into a fire fight with a bigger ship.

The crew consisted of five members, all of whom were on the bridge as they made their way from EQ2. The ship’s engineer Nadezhda Sosedov worked alongside the pilot Pavel. She was a statuesque and physically powerful woman who could read data streams and comprehend their meaning almost instantly. Her unruly curly hair escaped from whatever method she tried to tame it with, making her look slightly demented most of the time. She knew the ship inside out and was not afraid to voice her opinion, regardless of the consequences.

Elena Zeitsev’s long standing mercenary partner was Sergey Kuznetsov. He was not a man to be crossed. He had a nasty temper, which sometimes flared with deadly results. His face, neck and upper arms were crisscrossed with faded scars from old battles. He clashed badly with Natasha Orlov whilst she was aboard the Zond, but in the end he had managed not to physically attack her. It was a great relief to him when she jumped ship.

The crew had worked together for many years, carrying out some of Yuri Orlov’s more outrageous plans, often successfully. Losing track of Natasha at Topernicus was not one of their more positive outcomes, but here was little they could do about it now. They all knew that Anja’s presence aboard the Zond was retaliation for what had happened to Tatiana. Their instructions were simply to get Anja safely to Tarasov and the Orlov homestead at Noo alive and as quickly as possible.

It was unfortunate that they were all impressed by the feistiness of the child and her refusal to be cowed by her abductors. Elena and Nadezhda were sure they would not have acted so calmly and with such maturity at the same age. They liked her, and hoped that Yuri’s intention was not to harm her.