Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) Read online

  Praise for Blackjack Villain

  “Starts off with a good story, then slowly slips into stupidity.” - Jason Morrison

  “Not that poorly written, but the plot / concept was quite derivative” - Dr. Awkward

  “Huh? I haven’t read that piece of shit either.” - R. A. Salvatore

  “My mom likes it.” - Ben Bequer

  “I’ve never heard of this guy.” - George Takei

  “...by the time I quit the characters were doing things for no reason other than it added tension and presumably helped the author tick off the plot points he wanted to hit. And that drives me nuts.” - Ian Beck’s Book Log

  “Isn’t Blackjack the cousin of Spongebob Squarepants?” - Author’s daughter

  Blackjack Wayward

  Ben Bequer

  Contents

  Praise for Blackjack Villain

  Blackjack Wayward

  For Jules

  Blackjack Wayward, Copyright © 2013 by Ben Bequer

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Cast of Characters

  Selected Excerpts

  Selected Artwork for Blackjack Wayward

  For Jules

  Blackjack Wayward, Copyright © 2013 by Ben Bequer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to us using the contact information below.

  Blackjack Press

  blackjackslair.blogspot.com

  [email protected]

  Cover and interior art by Erik Von Lehman

  http://erikvonlehmann.deviantart.com/

  email: [email protected]

  Editing Services

  Ashley Daoust

  http://www.adeditorial.com

  [email protected]

  Ordering Information:

  Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, use the contact information above.

  Revision 1.1, 4/26/13

  Printed in the United States of America

  The most common form of dispair is not being who you are

  Søren Kierkegaard

  -0-

  When a man does not know what harbor he is making for

  no wind is the right wind

  Seneca

  Prologue

  Back to Shard World

  An egg-salad sandwich.

  That’s how long it took the jury to find me guilty on all charges.

  After both closing arguments, the judges gave the jury a series of instructions, and with that, the case was over. A dozen armored guards with shock staves escorted my attorney and me into a holding cell, where I ordered an egg-salad sandwich and an iced tea for lunch. As soon as I had taken the final bite of my meal, a bailiff entered the room and informed us that the jury returned a verdict. My lawyer’s reply was classic:

  “Fuck them,” he said, knowing that such a fast verdict, based on over 1,300 charges, could only mean one thing: Guilty on all counts.

  The jury found me guilty for everything I had done, and for a few of the crimes my former companions Cool Hand Luke and Influx had committed in the weeks leading up to our ordeal, days and weeks before we had met. The jury found me complicit to conspiracy charges for crimes I hadn’t even known were occurring. They were thorough like that.

  I was also found guilty of murdering Influx, Cool Hand Luke, Dr. Retcon and his daughter, Dr. Evelyn Walsh; and of killing the real bad guy of the whole affair, Dr. Zundergrub – who I knew was still alive. The jury even convicted me of killing Mr. Haha, who was a robot and not alive to begin with. They also got me for first degree murder charges for two dozen heroes that died on Hashima, including those that Baron Blitzkrieg and his bunch killed; for hundreds of oil rig workers – even though their blood fell squarely on Zundergrub’s hands; a dozen German anti-villain commando; and even Gentleman Shivvers, who was a cold-blooded bastard in his own right.

  It didn’t matter to them that I was the actual hero of Hashima, that I had saved the world from Dr. Retcon’s insanity. No one cared. They had me sit for their circus trial and take the blame for everything.

  The whole thing was stacked against me. When they read the charges at the start of the trial, the judge insisted the court reporter read them all. It took three days, despite my attorney’s protestations and willingness to stipulate to them all. When it came time to read the verdicts, once they were finished humiliating me, the judge allowed the charges to be divided into six categories, to speed up the proceedings. They read the guilty verdicts, set a date for sentencing six months in the future, and sent me on my way.

  I wanted to rip out of my manacles, to throw a few bodies around, and say my goodbyes by redecorating the courtroom with entrails, but they had anticipated such a move and had almost fifty armored guards in court that day. I was surrounded by a forest of gunmen, in case I got any funny ideas.

  But I did say one thing.

  My attorney didn’t want me to take the stand and I took his advice. In his words, there was nothing to be gained; this was a done deal. I just had to assume the position and take it. I wasn’t allowed a final statement, written nor verbal, so I figured I’d do my own. I spent all night thinking up of some nasty villain shit to say.

  “You haven’t seen the last of me,” I said, firing off the most menacing glare I could manage, but the judge chuckled and stole the last word from me.

  “I most certainly think so,” he said, strolling off with a sa
tisfied grin stapled on his face.

  After that, things went faster.

  They took me to a small room, crowded by a dozen guards, where I was told to strip out of my pinstripe Brooks Brothers – I had wanted to look my most “Al Capone” for the final day – and then forced to don an orange prison jumpsuit.

  Once I was in criminal garb, a young woman came into the room and walked right up to me. My hands were still free, so she was taking a huge risk, but there wasn’t an ounce of trepidation on her face. She was rather plain-looking, despite the sharp suit and the killer pumps, but her eyes were the oddest shade of violet I had ever seen. She smiled, trying to put me at ease, and I realized I was cringing, pressing away from her against the heavy armor of the guard behind me. There was something about her face, perhaps the lack of emotion, that made me feel like I was about to be assaulted by a force more powerful than mine.

  “No need to be afraid, Mr. McKeown,” she said, the first person to use my actual name in the whole proceeding.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m just here to calm you,” the woman said, not realizing that her odd appearance was doing the complete opposite. “It’s a long trip to where you’re going, and this will make it much easier.”

  She pulled a small, non-descript case out of her jacket pocket and opened it to reveal an inhaler, like an asthmatic might use.

  “Ready?” she said.

  I looked around, “For what?”

  “No need to be afraid,” she said, raising an eyebrow as if she found my squeamishness comical.

  “What the hell is in that?”

  She shrugged, “It’s a muscle relaxant.”

  “Fuck you,” I said. “You take it.”

  “Mr. McKeown,” she said, “You’ve been remanded to the custody of the Utopia Prison staff. I am the deputy administrator, Carla Dressler. This is all part of the protocol.”

  Ms. Dressler looked at the guards and sighed.

  “I do this five times a month,” she said, cocking her head aside to get a good look up at me. “Now please, we’re wasting time here.”

  I shot a glance at one of the guards behind me, but the plexi-steel canopy over their armored helmets didn’t allow me a look to his face.

  “I have a feeling I’m going to regret this,” I said, opening my mouth and leaning down.

  Dressler stuck the inhaler into my mouth and pressed the release valve, filling my lungs with a cold mist that tickled and made me cough.

  “Just a relaxant, huh?” I said, but already the chemicals were coursing through my veins, pounding through my body, and I was hit by a sudden wave of euphoria and dizziness that made me fall to my knees.

  “Fucking bitch,” I said, slipping into a deep sleep.

  I woke aboard a prop-driven plane with a rear-boarding ramp, most likely a C-130 or C-141, surrounded by guards sitting along the walls of the craft. I was lying prone on a cold metal trolley, hog-tied by power-dampening manacles. I needed to go to the bathroom, but none of the guards responded, until my pleas became louder, and one of the guards laughed.

  “Why don’t you just shit yourself?” he said, drawing a few tired chuckles from his companions.

  I ripped the manacles from my hands and feet and stood, listening to their distressed gasps beneath their masks after witnessing a feat they couldn’t believe.

  “What if I ran right through the cockpit, and knocked this bird out of the sky?” I said. “Any of you guys have parachutes?”

  One guard stood, his knees were literally shaking.

  “I need to use the head,” I said, flexing my shoulders and cracking my neck. “Or this plane is going down.”

  “Sure,” he said, leading me to the back of the plane.

  After I was done, they threw a hood over my head and put the manacles back on, this time treating me with a little more care and respect. Between the dark and the motion of the plane, I felt tired again and drifted off to sleep.

  I could have fought them, torn the guards out of their cute power suits and made the pilot fly me wherever I wanted. But then what? I had come to realize that I wasn’t a villain. It wasn’t in my nature. Apogee had captured my essence in one sentence, “you haven’t had to grow up yet.” Well, Hashima snapped me out of a thirty-odd-year funk.

  The plane’s rough touchdown woke me, and after a short taxi, they rolled my trolly down the back ramp. It stopped at the base to get me to my feet, letting me walk the rest of the way. We had arrived somewhere hotter and far more humid than where we’d left. My undershirt was sticky with sweat and the jumper was clinging to my skin before I had taken the last step off the rear ramp. Someone ripped the hood off my head, then they led me across the steaming tarmac into a large warehouse or hangar. I was standing in front of a massive metal device that reminded me of the interior of an oil rig, with coiled wires jutting from everywhere, leading to a control center manned by a trio of men wearing lab coats. The machine was like a mini refinery, abuzz with electrical power and readout meters, with heavy wiring leading to a series of thrumming generators. The device had more in common with something you would find dominating a mad scientist’s lab from a low-budget 1940s movie, loud and sparking with excess power.

  I had no idea what it was at first, but one thing drew my attention: a sealed cockpit at the epicenter of the metal contraption.

  I was so amazed by the device, possibilities running rampant through my head, that I let them lead me to the enclosed chair without argument. Besides, I was on a ship that had sailed, its course set, and I was the lone passenger. With little ceremony, they threw me inside what was, in essence, a cockpit. The guards strapped me to the chair and slammed the cowling closed as they fired up the machine.

  A dozen technicians huddled around the control center fiddling with the dials, and one of them came to a large knob, spinning it clock-wise as the power surged. One of the armored guards, I think the one that had laughed at me, waved, and in a flash, I was gone. The memory was familiar, and only at that moment did I realize what they had done to me.

  When the blinding lights faded, I found myself atop a small strip of rock, maybe a quarter mile long and half again as wide, floating in that inky burnt orange sky, surrounded by other mini-islands. Torn from their host planets, these shards of earth were satellites to a central foundering planet, a cataclysmic orb that had failed upon itself and now was a dripping mass of lava and rock. Hovering above the ruined world was the citadel of crystal and silver, home of the Lightbringers.

  The bastards had sent me back to Shard World.

  Part One

  “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.”

  Chapter One

  I was reminded of Cool Hand Luke’s first words from the first time we’d ended up in Shard World: “Why does it always have to be an alien world?”

  This floating island was new to me, and guiding by where the Lightbringers citadel lay, I was far from the small alien village we’d encountered, where we had defeated the Mist Army. My new home was a barren patch of rock, devoid of plant or animal life, but more importantly, lacking water. Instead of killing me outright, they had banished me to a slow and painful death by dehydration.

  I wasn’t going to let them win. I wasn’t going to die on a small sliver of rock in the middle of nowhere. That wasn’t going to be my end. I had to find a way back, find a way to stop Dr. Zundergrub and keep Apogee safe. Being marooned on a Bok globule lightyears from Earth wasn’t as big a deal as one might think. Mr. Haha and I had built a machine to return us to Earth, and while I lacked his near-limitless abilities now, I still had everything I needed to build another. Maybe the first one I had built was still there, waiting for me to find it floating on some distant shard. Either way, I was getting out of this shithole. I was getting it out and making it back.

  The firs
t thing I had to do, though, was find my way off this rock.

  I had little in the way of materials, just what I wore: an orange prison jumpsuit, white cotton shirt and briefs, and the metal manacles and chains that bound me. Freed from the power dampening-field generators, I could at last exert my full strength and remove the handcuffs. I tore the top of my jumpsuit, crumpled it into a ball, and used the twisted metal braces as flint and steel, lighting a small fire. I searched the rocky ground for minerals and found enough carbonized ores to make a respectable bonfire.

  I had the crazy idea of trying to attract one of those whale-manta ray things that had almost eaten me whole on my first trip here, to somehow subdue it. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I was desperate, and nothing was going to deter me. One of the bigger whale beasties flew near but rolled off, uninterested. I made a huge ruckus, hooting and hollering, hoping to lure the creature, but it turned fast away, scared by something that approached behind me.

  I turned to see what it could be, and my gut clenched. It was an open-decked ship, teeming with armed warriors, soaring with the winds that billowed into its many sails.

  The Mist Army had found me.

  The sleek ship circled twice before coming to a stop alongside the rocky island. Lined along the gunwales were dozens of warriors, bristling with weapons and eyeing me like hungry pirates staring down a fat merchantman in the Age of Sail. The ship was actually similar to a sailing vessel from Earth, with a wooden hull some one hundred feet in length, painted jet-black and adorned from bow to stern with brass and copper. She was rigged like a brig with two masts and a spanker trailing from the main. What was odd were outrigger masts jutting from the hull to each side. She had another full set of masts, extruding at low angles beneath what would have been the waterline to port and starboard, raked back to give the ship even greater speed. She was a fine lady, elegant and fast, and from her open deck, she boasted half a dozen cannon on each side, and a pair of long guns protruded from the top of the foredeck.