Running Black

by J. M. Anjewierden

  “If we fire first, before knowing for sure if they are armed, I could be facing charges once we get back. You have to recognize that. All the ‘theatrics’ were to be sure no one else gets hauled in with me.”

  “Are they necessary, though? I would think our options are straightforward, sir,” Morgan began. “They’ll demand we surrender, which we won’t do, so it comes to blows. Our blow, specifically, first.”

  Rain snorted in amusement.

  “That is a fairly succinct way of summing things up. However, the devil, as they say, is in the details.”

  Rain sat back up, running both hands over his bald hair.

  “They threaten us, we shoot them. Straightforward.”

  “You know better than that,” the captain admonished. “Interstellar law applies, with whatever differences there are between Zion and Albion coming out for Zion, since that is where we’re flagged.”

  “Zion’s laws about self-defense are pretty clear,” Morgan pointed out.

  “Yes, they are. Look at it this way. If you found yourself on a darkened alley with a scary looking man approaching, or even one you knew to be involved in some way with crimes, would you be justified shooting him the moment you can? Even if he is carrying a weapon in a holster?”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t. That isn’t what we’re talking about, though. I wouldn’t need to wait until he’s already firing at me to do something. Using your example, if he has his gun pointed at me, and says he will use it unless I do what he says, well, hopefully there is an ambulance nearby, but it won’t be for me.”

  Rain snorted again and shook his head.

  “I wish I had your confidence whichever court ends up dealing with this will agree.”

  Morgan shrugged.

  “Maybe they won’t, but acting like we think we’re wrong now won’t help any in that case, will it?”

  “No, no, it won’t,” the captain said, stroking his chin. “I’ve talked it over a bit with Marigold, but let me get your input. I’m not a military officer, never have been. When it comes down to it, where should I aim for?”

  “Is the ship laid out military style or civilian?”

  “Military. Big ship, probably meant to carry several frigates around when they’re not off fighting.”

  “Bridge, then,” Morgan answered without any hesitation.

  “Interesting. Why?”

  “It is the hardest target to reach, but it offers the best result. We take out the bridge, whoever is left will be more likely to surrender. Even if they have a backup crew in the CIC, they’ll be thinking we can do to them the same thing we just did to the bridge. If we target the engines, we might disable them but leave them able to fight, at least for a limited time. Targeting the weapons will take a lot more hits, and we can’t even hit them all at the same time anyway.

  “Besides,” Morgan said with a rather vicious grin, “They think they’re going to steal our ship today. Seems to me that we should steal theirs instead.”

  Rain laughed, with actual mirth.

  “That’s a rather mercenary way of looking at it. I suppose hanging around that sergeant has done some good for you. Turnabout is fair play, though.”

  “Yes, it is. And there is one other consideration. If we can actually manage to target the bridge, we’ll be able to disable them with the least damage to the rest of the ship. They might still have other prisoners on board.”

  “About that. Will we? Trying to hit STEVE’s bridge would be extremely hard to do, especially if we’re maneuvering freely.”

  Morgan frowned, after a moment answering with a shrug.

  “Depends on the design, but I doubt it will be easy. It will depend on how many ships, if any, they have docked, how their cargo space is laid out, etc. You mentioned scans, can we match that against schematics to figure things out?”

  “We might, Rain said, standing up and heading over to his desk and the dedicated computer terminal on its surface. “We’ll have to hurry, but let’s see what we can do. If nothing else I have a couple ideas on how to get a better shot at this, literally…”

  ***

  Morgan sat in the captain’s chair, trying to project a sense of panic and unease, a bit of theatrics for the pirates that honestly wasn’t too far from the truth.

  “Put him through,” Morgan ordered the comms tech once she was ready.

  The face that appeared on the holo was not what Morgan would have conjured when she thought of ‘pirate leader.’ He was balding, at least somewhat overweight, a pleasant smile plastered on his face… and the eyes of a killer. That, at least, matched her expectations.

  “Well, I suppose we can dispense with the normal back and forth, can’t we, STEVE?” he said, his cold voice dispelling any remaining notion that he wasn’t exactly what they feared. “I’d congratulate you on becoming captain so young, and ask for your name, but frankly I don’t care. Nor do I care to ask how you overpowered my men on the station, or what you did with them. They failed, and they can pay the consequences for that failure. I hear jail time builds character. You, on the other hand, can surrender your ship. Do that, and we won’t hurt you. We’ll probably just leave you on the station, since it is nice and handy. Oh, and don’t bother asking for my name, either.”

  “And if we refuse?” Morgan asked, knowing the answer, but needing to hear it anyway. It was hard, trying to get enough fear in her voice that he’d pick up on it, but not so much that he got suspicious.

  The pirate captain gestured to something out of range of the holo pickup. A moment later one of STEVE’s crew called out.

  “They’ve stopped decelerating toward us and are now turning to present their broadside. Probable weapons hatches opening.”

  “Then we cheerfully blow holes into your ship until you do,” the pirate said, smiling very broadly, a smile that didn’t touch the rest of his face.

  Morgan gave a curt little nod, waving her right hand down where he wouldn’t see it on his holo.

  “You know it as well as I do, I see,” the pirate continued.

  “And how do we know you won’t just kill us all after we surrender?” Morgan asked, letting the fear creep in just a bit more.

  The pirate seemed confused for a moment, shaking it off with a literal shake of his head as his false smile reappeared.

  “The crew of the station are your answer. Why delay what you know you’ll have to do in the end anyway? We’d rescue any survivors after, of course, though I don’t think you’d enjoy the experience…” the pirate trailed off as someone started yelling in the background behind him. “Helm! Hard to…”

  For all that space was massively, incomprehensibly big, ship combat only really took place at short distances, relatively speaking. This was in part because most ships stayed close to planetary orbit, where ranges couldn’t be massively long, and because of the speed of the projectiles themselves. Even at one percent of light speed, it took time to travel thousands of kilometers, and every additional second in flight was a second the targeted ship could make tiny course changes to completely throw off incoming fire.

  In this case, the pirates would not have that time. As the captain had hoped, Morgan’s scared performance had kept not only the pirate captain, but the others on the bridge, fixated on her. They were pirates, of course they enjoyed watching their targets squirm. Or so the captain’s thoughts had gone.

  Whatever ultimately the cause, it had taken precious seconds for the crew on the other ship to notice when STEVE launched a single slug toward them, seconds they didn’t have. That single shot had been carefully aimed for the highest possible impact, possible now that their target wasn’t changing velocity and had turned to face their own weapons – and not their armor – toward their intended prey.

  The moment the pirate’s transmission cut off Rain stepped up to the back of the captain’s chair, already barking out orders.

  “Put us bow on to the pirates, get our armor in play.”

  The seconds ticked on, and there was no repl
y, not in metal nor in messages.

  Morgan slid out of the captain’s chair, moving over to the railing around the main holo as the captain resumed his rightful place.

  “Time of intercept?” the captain asked.

  The astrogator punched some commands into his console, responding a few moments later.

  “They’re still traveling at the same speed as before. We’re barely moving five kilometers per second, so approximately five minutes, if nothing changes.”

  “Wide broadcast to the enemy ship, I want everything and everyone to hear this,” Rain ordered, straightening up in his chair and futilely attempting to straighten his skinsuit.

  “Ready, sir,” the comms tech said.

  “Pirate vessel. You will cease your jamming efforts at once. Make no aggressive moves. If you attempt to flee, we will open fire. If you attempt to fire on us, we will open fire. When we board, you make no aggressive moves, or we will treat you as common pirates.”

  The captain chopped his hand to the side.

  “Transmission ended,” the tech said a moment later.

  A minute passed by in terse silence, then another.

  “Are we not going to match speed?” someone asked. Morgan couldn’t tell who.

  “We are… once we get past them. We’ll swing around and keep the armored forward to them, then catch up.”

  “You think they’d fire on us if we turned?” someone else asked.

  “If we presented them our engines? They just might. They haven’t officially surrendered, don’t forget. There might not be anyone over there who can surrender, but they also could be trying to win this. If they could take out our engines, we’d be helpless, whatever else happens.” Rain stroked his chin, regarding the image of the two ships’ positions that had replaced the image of the other ship’s captain.

  “What’s to stop them from firing when we come alongside?” the astrogator asked.

  “We’re sending shuttles over; STEVE will…”

  “Weapons launch!” the tactical officer bellowed out suddenly.

  “Port thrusters!” Rain ordered, his hands gripping onto his chair as the astrogator complied.

  Morgan barely had time to tighten her grip on the railing before the projectile struck, the entire ship shuddering under the impact.

  “Talk to me,” the captain said, somehow still appearing outwardly calm.

  “Caught the edge of the armor,” the technician at the damage control station said. “A few moments more and it would have missed entirely. Armor held, though looks like there is a minor water leak.”

  “Astrogator, tie into the tactical console. Set us to randomly fire thrusters at half power, and then crank it up to full if they fire again.”

  “They fighting after all?” Morgan asked. “Should we just destroy them?” I’d hate to think we’re killing other prisoners, but we don’t even know if they exist, and we can’t help them if we end up dead ourselves anyway.

  “I don’t think so,” the captain said. “We fired a single shot because we wanted to disable them. Why’d they fire just one? Do we have a better count for how many weapons it has? How powerful?”

  “Almost done calculating…” the tactical officer said. “There. Assuming symmetry, there should be five railguns on each broadside, and there are some indications of similar numbers dorsal and ventral. Based on travel time and impact, looks like five-kilogram railshot launched at two percent light speed.”

  “So less powerful than our big ones?” Morgan asked.

  Tactical shook his head.

  “Things moving that fast, it isn’t so straightforward. In rough terms, it was as powerful as what we sent them, a little more, actually. If STEVE’s slugs were that fast they’d hit four times as hard.”

  “Relativity, always such fun…” the captain muttered. Morgan didn’t think he’d meant for anyone to hear that, but she was still standing close.

  “Another launch!” Tactical warned, but STEVE was already moving, down relative to the plane of the system from the feel of it.

  “A clean miss that time,” the DCC station reported.

  “Can we track it, is the mining station at risk?” Morgan asked, probably a bit more loudly than was strictly necessary.

  “Not really and… no,” the reply came quickly. “Geometry is all wrong. It will either head out-system, or impact with an asteroid before it clears the belt.”

  “Can we tell if that was the same weapon as last time?” Morgan asked.

  “It was,” Tactical replied almost instantly.

  “Good thinking, Black,” the captain said. “I want a targeting lock on that weapon. As soon as we have a shot, take it out with a one kilo slug.”

  “Understood,” Tactical said. “Astrogator, can you give me a five-degree pivot to starboard with your next thruster burst?”

  “Got it.”

  “We should be close enough for a good visual look. Pull their ship up on the holo,” the captain ordered.

  A few seconds later it appeared. Morgan had seen the schematics of its type of ship earlier, but it looked larger somehow on the holo, more menacing. It had the same mushroom cap design STEVE did, rather than the double-ended mushroom most common. Its engines were smaller, however, and the ship lacked the latticework of cargo pods of STEVE. Instead, it had docking points for ships in three rings, fore, aft, and central, each ring having eight ports evenly spaced around the ship’s cylindrical central body. Right now, half of those were occupied, no two ships sharing a size or configuration. Captured mining vessels, almost certainly.

  I wonder if one of those belongs to Linda’s family?

  The holo showed clearly the damage STEVE’s one shot had done. Halfway between the armored head of the ship and amidships, there was a section of hull simply missing, the edges looking more shattered than pierced-through, though the holo didn’t show how deep the damage went.

  The seconds ticked by, no one spoke, no one fired anything on either ship.

  “Thrusters, now,” the astrogator announced, shattering the silence.

  “Firing once the angle is good… and now,” the tactical officer said.

  They’d closed the distance in the intervening minutes, and less than two seconds later, the railshot struck, blasting a much smaller but still visible hole into the ship.

  “Did they attempt to maneuver?” Morgan asked, still thinking on the ‘why’ only a single weapon was firing.

  “Their vector is unchanged from the moment they turned to present their broadside,” a crewman said.

  “Hopefully nobody else wants to die,” Rain said. He punched a few buttons on the control panel on his chair. “Lt. Marigold, it looks like it’s time for your men to earn their keep yet again. We’ll be passing the pirate vessel in a few moments, then turning back around to match speeds. I don’t want to risk the whole ship, so you’ll be docking shuttles to take over the ship. The good news is, it’s a jumpship, so you have plenty of airlocks to choose from.”

  “Are we sending anyone over with them…” Morgan started to ask, turning away from the holo of the damaged ship to look at the captain, but he was already shaking his head.

  “Absolutely not. No one but the mercenaries will be going over until everything is settled.”

  “But…”

  “Morgan,” Rain said, leaning forward and pitching his voice low so only she could hear him, “You don’t even have your skinsuit. Really, I ought to send you down to your quarters; if the bridge were to take any sort of hit, you’d be doomed.”

  “I want to help, see this through,” Morgan said, but she knew he was right.

  “You’ve done more than most, certainly more than should have been asked of you. We’ll secure the ship, get it back to the station, and go from there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Morgan said, feeling an odd combination of relief and regret.

  “Captain, we have an incoming message, text only. It would seem the pirates wish to surrender, and assure us the weapon we just destroyed
was being controlled entirely locally, and with it went those who still wished to fight.” As he reported this, the comms tech’s voice was wavering between relief and exultation.

  A cheer went up around the bridge, and Morgan watched as the captain let it go until it had started to die on its own before speaking.

  “Excellent news… that we aren’t going to trust. We stick to the plan. If they’re serious, we waste a bit of time. If not, well, we’ll be in a far better position to show them the error of their ways.”

  A chorus of ‘yes, sir’ followed, though not nearly as enthusiastically as the cheer had.

  “Trust, but verify?” Morgan said, quoting something that had come up in her officer’s training.

  “Something like that,” Rain said. He turned to the comms tech. “Are we still being jammed?”

  “As far as I can tell, no.”

  “Excellent.” Rain turned back to Morgan. “I need to try and get some messages out, see if the damned Navy is anywhere to be found, now that the fighting is likely over. Take the conn, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir,” Morgan said, and this time she felt nothing but relief.

  Chapter 34

  Nothing wrong with the whole ‘the journey is more important than the destination’ canard, honestly there isn’t. Lot of truth in it, even. Still, speaking as a spacer, I could do with a lot less journey and a lot more destination in my life.

  - Harold Takiyama, freighter captain, Takiyama Merchant House.

  IT WAS an agonizingly slow process to get everything sorted out. Just getting the mercs over to the pirate ship was a process of a couple of hours, verifying they had surrendered took many more, and meanwhile getting both ships back to the mining station took most of a day, thanks to the damage the pirate vessel had sustained.

  Still, Morgan was grateful it was only taking time, even if it meant the temperature on STEVE was starting to inch up again, especially after all the, uh, energetic maneuvers they’d been doing.

  At present, Morgan was sitting in the docking area of the station, on the very crate behind which Linda and Max had taken cover, as best she could tell.