Rookie Privateer

by McFarlane, Jamie

"Sorry Nick, I am going to need you to grab it. Xie, I will not hesitate to shoot you if you make a move."

  "You are making a big mistake, boys." Xie said and pulled out the marble-sized device. She handed it up to Nick.

  "You keep saying that. Just toss it away from you. Then lie down."

  "On this floor? It's disgusting."

  "Last warning." It really was. I was prepared to shoot her right there and then, because I still believed she could jump up and kill us both. I later found out she was holding on by a thread and was a much better bluffer than I realized. I turned my attention to the approach to Baru Manush.

  The space station was a large, man-made rectangular structure in geo-synchronous orbit above Ceres. It was home to twenty-two hundred colonists who were mostly involved in gas and ice mining ventures on Ceres. A space station isn't much to look at when you come upon it. There are lots of flashing lights and various bays and landing pads connected to each side.

  The computer-controlled flight brought us to an upper level and we sailed neatly into an open bay. The docking bay door closed behind us and atmosphere was pumped into the bay.

  Incoming hail from Baru Manush Defense, Lieutenant M. Bertrand.

  Accept.

  "Captain Hoffen, I hope you understand, but for our safety, we must be armed when we board your ship. Will you comply?"

  "Yes. We are on the bridge and I have a wounded prisoner under guard. I will not be able to lower my weapon until you take control of the prisoner."

  "Okay, Captain. I guess we are going to have to trust each other here. Will you release your airlock?"

  Release airlock.

  "Careful of those bags, they contain waste," I warned.

  I heard a loud rapping on the door of the bridge and walked over, keeping my gun on Xie's prone body. I pulled the door open to see the muzzle of a laser rifle. A large woman in armor stood behind the rifle.

  "Please stow the weapon, Captain." I recognized the voice of Lieutenant Bertrand. In my mind I had seen her as a slight-framed spacer type. This woman was my height, just shy of two meters, and had the build of someone who had grown up in full gravity and then some. Put an armored vac-suit on her and she was absolutely intimidating.

  I stammered slightly. "Yes ma'am." I placed the laser pistol onto the bulkhead of the port side back wall of the bridge.

  Bertrand didn't lower her weapon, but pushed her way onto the bridge and swung her weapon first to Nick and then down to Xie. Bertrand was followed by a smaller man, also dressed in armor and carrying a laser rifle. He pointed the gun directly at me.

  "Secure the prisoner, Feitz." Lieutenant Bertrand said.

  The smaller man pushed his rifle at me and said gruffly, "Hands on the wall dumb ass. Spread 'em."

  I started to turn away when Bertrand interrupted. "Not the Captain. The woman on the floor."

  "Sorry boss." Feitz pulled Xie’s arms behind her back and cuffed them at her wrists.

  "Come on in, Doc," Bertrand said into her communicator.

  An older man with a small spacer build, entered the bridge a couple of moments later. He was graying and wore a harried look. He carried a bag I had come to associate with doctors. The doctor made his way directly to Xie and pulled an instrument out of his bag and held it on her chest. He was wearing glasses that were obviously connected to the instrument and providing him information.

  "She'll make it, but she's in pretty bad shape," he said after a couple of minutes.

  "Lieutenant, she is very dangerous."

  "I think we can handle it, Captain," Lieutenant Bertrand replied.

  "Doc, can you take a look at Nick's shoulder?" I asked.

  The doctor looked at me and I nodded to where my friend was sitting. He made his way over to Nick and put the same device on him. After a few moments he said, "He will need a few hours in the medical bay, but the first aid he received was sufficient to keep from ruining his shoulder. Lucky hit, really."

  "Fietz, get this woman over to the infirmary. I want you personally to keep guard on her until I relieve you. Copy?"

  "Copy that boss," Fietz said.

  "Is it okay if my First Officer, Nick, follows them to the infirmary to get patched up? I am at your disposal until this is resolved," I said.

  "No problem that, Captain. Doc can you take care of Mister …" She looked at Nick expectantly.

  "James. Nicholas James." He followed the doctor off the bridge.

  When they loaded Xie onto the floating gurney, I objected. "Not my job to tell you your business but you should cuff her. If she comes to, she is very dangerous."

  Bertrand looked me over and made a decision. "Okay. I suppose you would know. Fietz, keep her cuffed, even if she sweet talks you. Got it?"

  The bridge finally cleared of all but Lieutenant Bertrand and myself. She filled the room. It wasn't that she was that big, it was just she was packed with energy, or more accurately, power. The armored vac-suit added to that impression, but where most spacers are lithe, Bertrand looked like she had been chiseled from a granite block. Her armored legs were bigger around than my waist. It was hard for me to take my eyes off of her.

  "Done?" Bertrand asked catching my stare.

  I was embarrassed at being caught, "I… I haven't seen that many Earthers."

  For the first time since she'd entered the bridge, she smiled. "Don't worry about it, Captain. I get that a lot. When you grow up a big girl, you either get comfortable with yourself or you cry."

  I didn't know how to respond. It felt like there were too many traps in this social conversation. I decided to keep it all business.

  "Mind if I grab a med patch for my arm?" I'd had a chance to look at it and it was just a burn.

  "Sure, pull down your suit and I will put it on."

  I handed her the patch and unsealed my vac-suit. "How do you want to do this?" I paused for a moment then caught myself. "Your investigation that is." My face flushed.

  "Haha, you are a sweet one aren't you," she said, causing my face to flush even more. "Would you be okay with me watching your bridge recordings?"

  Bertrand's hands had long fingers, but they didn't lack a delicate touch. I pulled my suit-liner over the med patch and then the vac-suit back over the top of that. The suit-liner was ruined, I should probably invest in a few more and right now an armored suit felt like it would be a good investment, too.

  "How far back do you want to go?"

  "How about the first six hours out of Colony 40 and the last twenty-four hours?"

  "Do you have to keep them?"

  "Yes. Anything you give us will be kept forever."

  "We might have a problem."

  "Oh?" The atmosphere turned menacing.

  "You trusted me when you came on board, Lieutenant. I’m going to trust you with something. Can I show you a sequence? I will let you be the judge. We had problems with Red Houzi infiltrating the Sheriff’s office at Perth. I think you will see why it is important that this not go any further than it has to."

  Bertrand relaxed again. "Fair enough. I need to establish that you have a right to detain the prisoner."

  On port vid-screen, show bridge log starting from when I tossed a small spherical object to Xie Mie-su.

  Backup three minutes.

  The screen showed the scene where I was offering to hand over the marble sized device to Xie. I let it play up until the point where I launched myself at her.

  Stop video.

  "Loose Nuts?" Bertrand laughed, though not unkindly, then she said, "What do you think that sphere contains?"

  "Not sure, but I know the Red Houzi were willing to kill us for it. I believe they also offered us a couple hundred thousand m-creds for it, in a roundabout way."

  "Okay. I will watch the logs here on your bridge and make a determination. Give me access?"

  Grant Lieutenant M. Bertrand view access to bridge logs. No time restrictions. I hoped that she would see we were aboveboard.

  "Coffee? I'm starving too. Trust me enough
to get coffee and some bars?"

  "Nope, not yet, but I will accompany you. I haven't had coffee in months."

  Bertrand drank nearly a liter of coffee and ate no less than four meal bars over the next two hours. She rolled the video back and forth and finally finished.

  Ship Sterra's Gift is released from impound and crew probation is lifted. "You guys are in the clear. Thanks for the coffee. Sorry about your ship."

  "Any chance we could buy you a drink? I'm pretty sure if you hadn't let us fly in, they would have hunted us down."

  "Sure. I'm off duty at 2200 tonight. You can buy the first round. How ‘bout Wuzzies?"

  As I watched her walk off the bridge, I couldn't wrap my brain around how big she was. She was nearly as big as Gregor Belcose. Over the last couple of hours, I had also come to appreciate how she had worked with me instead of making trouble. She could easily have demanded the storage device.

  WUZZIES

  I wanted to take advantage of our docked status to refill our bank account. I pulled open the contract from Ordena and sent a message to the customer. I received a reply indicating they would have the local stevedores unload the following morning. Then I pulled up the open contract for the slug-thrower ammo. The contact listed was one Marny Bertrand. M. Bertrand. It couldn't be a coincidence.

  I sent a message to the listed address and asked to fulfill the contract. I had decided to keep 30% of our share of the ammo and wondered if I would come to regret selling the rest out here in the Wild West.

  "I'm on my way back." Nick's voice came out of my suit collar.

  I left a message for one of the two station refuse companies to pick up the bags I had pulled out of the airlock and dropped next to the wall in the docking bay. They would come by sometime after 2100 and requested pictures of the trash, no doubt for their robot to recognize what to pick up. I replied with pictures of the bags.

  Nick crawled around the inside of the ship while I arranged for the manufacture of the septic and main head parts. The replicating came to under fifteen hundred m-creds, including delivery. Then I leased a top-of-the-line surface cleaning bot. We didn't need to own one, but we desperately needed to clean up the floors. It was an inexpensive order.

  Nick found me sitting on the couch with the table raised, using my reading pad.

  "How bad is it?" I asked. I was prepared for bad news.

  "Pretty good gashes, took out a piece of one of the sensor strips. We got lucky though. If we replicate three armor panels we can be as good as new, which is saying something."

  "How much do they cost to manufacture?"

  "In this case, material is a factor. They have an industrial replicator that is free to use, but we need help installing it."

  "Bottom line?"

  "Fifteen thousand m-creds, give or take."

  "We will get our thirty thousand from Ordena tomorrow and the ammo sale will happen at roughly the same time. We should be sitting flush at 182 or so. This ship saved our lives. Let's treat it right."

  "Agreed, but there's more."

  I wondered if I had spoken too soon. "Okay, give it to me."

  "We burned through some of the couplings in the engines. They weren't in great shape to begin with and you were running at 122% for a while."

  "How much?"

  "We need to hire a mechanic. It's beyond what I can do."

  I was starting to worry we wouldn't have enough.

  "Seriously, how much?"

  "Forty-seven thousand."

  My heart sank. Our fund for bonded loads was diminishing quickly.

  "All that from one short period of overload?" I asked.

  "No, the engines are old. You just pushed them over the top. We were going to have to replace them at some point."

  I felt a bit better. "It doesn't change anything. If I hadn't overloaded, we wouldn't be wondering about money to fix 'em."

  "Roger that, Captain."

  "I'm glad you're okay Nick. I would never forgive myself."

  "Back at ya. Sorry I shot you."

  "You feel like taking a break? We're meeting Lieutenant Bertrand at Wuzzies tonight."

  "What's a Wuzzies?"

  "Not sure but they have drinks and I gotta say, I sure could use one."

  I grabbed a fresh suit liner and took a quick shower in the main head. It was amazing how much better I felt. I wasn't messing around anymore, however, and loaded Xie's laser pistol into my shoulder harness. I was meeting with the police and if she had a problem with it she could tell me to my face. I also put my AGBs back on.

  Nick had his AGBs on, too and was packing one of our flechettes in a hip holster. We had learned some hard lessons and neither of us wanted to deal with a new one tonight. We fired up the ship's security protocol and I ran Big Pete's security program.

  The hallways of Baru Manush were considerably narrower than that of P-Zero. It had to do with the fact that they were constructed out of steel instead of bored out of huge iron rock. The entire station was considerably smaller, although the regular shape of the rooms and hallways allowed for a much denser population.

  We didn't need to go very far to find the entertainment district. When we reached it, our hallway turned into a four meter wide balcony that was twenty meters above the ground. It was the second of five different levels overlooking the courtyard below. We had been hearing music for quite a while, but here it was much louder.

  Nick and I leaned over the railing like a couple of tourists. Above us, people were running along an exercise track in a clockwise direction. The levels other than the first appeared to be non-commercial. At ground level, there were live trees growing, reaching up several levels and a meandering stream that ran from one end of the level to the other. Shops of all different types with well-lit signs were advertising their presence.

  I had to yell to get Nick's attention.

  "This is nice and cheery," I said, more loudly that I wanted.

  "Do you know where we are headed?" he asked.

  "I think we're down there." I pointed at a large green sign with outlined letters that spelled out Wuzzies.

  Nick nodded.

  We stepped up to the elevator. When the doors opened, several people rushed off and hurried down the hallway. I looked after them questioningly, but we took their place inside and pushed the button for the lower level. When we exited the elevator, it became clear our presence was causing something of a stir. People hurried out of the way and refused to make eye contact. I felt bad, but didn't know how to stop it. Maybe it was our weapons, but even on Perth you wouldn't get this much attention for a holstered pistol.

  Wuzzies was pretty active and we got the same sort of looks we'd received in the courtyard. Apparently, the patrons of Wuzzies were made of slightly sterner stuff than the average citizens of Baru Manush, though, because few patrons ran out the door. The bar was a single room with a U shaped counter made of some wood product. There was a brass-colored foot rail along the bottom of the bar and a huge collection of bottled liquor on the far wall.

  A balding, dark-skinned man with a white apron tied around his waist approached the end of the bar next to the door as we walked in.

  "Help you boys?" he asked in a friendly but pointed manner.

  "Just going to grab a table. That okay?"

  "Sure thing. Just so you know, this is a trouble free zone."

  "That'll be refreshing," I said, probably too quickly.

  He gave me a long look and made a decision. "What are you drinking?"

  "Nothing too strong. Do you have anything to eat?"

  "We have a pretty good burger and real potato fries. Add my home brew ale to that and you are in for fifteen m-creds a piece. How does that strike you?"

  We found an empty table next to the wall at the back of the room. It was made for four people, but we sat down anyway. Lieutenant Bertrand would be here within half an hour.

  The brew arrived in frosty glass mugs. It was a light yellow color and tasted bitter on the way down. I can't say
it was delicious, but I had never been much for beer. It did have the nice effect of relaxing my nerves.

  Halfway through our mugs, we were still waiting for our food. Nick and I hadn't said more than three words to each other as we watched the activity in the bar. I saw Lieutenant Bertrand making her way to our table, so I stood and motioned to the open chairs. She'd changed out of her armored vac-suit and was wearing blue jeans and a loose, nicely cut shirt.

  "Greetings, Lieutenant," I said.

  "Good evening, Captain. I'm off duty, so that's Marny." The loose shirt and jeans showed her thick Earth body off in a more flattering way than the armored vac-suit had. She was still a big woman, but it was nice to see her features softened up. No question about it, she was all woman.

  "Sounds good. Call me Liam, then. You didn't get a chance to meet my partner. This is Nicholas James, or Nick as we call him."

  Marny reached her hand across the table and I enjoyed the expression on his face as he took her in. The last time he had seen her he'd been suffering from the shock of being shot. Now he was spending time in her presence, I knew what he was feeling or at least I thought I did. Marny wasn't just big, it was more that she radiated power. Her brown hair was closely cut on her neck and longer bangs were swept to the side.

  I elbowed Nick since he was staring. It caused him to jump and he looked away, embarrassed.

  "Might give a girl a bit of a complex," Marny responded to the awkward situation.

  "Sorry, its ... well ..." Nick stuttered.

  "I know. For you spacers, I'm a big girl."

  Nick shook his head, "Not that." He was having trouble getting it out.

  "Okay, out with it." Marny was amused. I suspected she had this conversation once in a while.

  "You're just so beautiful." Nick's face flamed red as he said it.

  "Oh man. I'm gonna keep this one." Marny rubbed her hand in Nick's hair. He smiled back at her. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, they hardly knew each other.

  The bartender saved us all. "You know these boys, Marny?"

  "Yup. Just in from Colony 40. Got jumped by Houzi pirates on the way in."

  "Hmm, rumor is they shot one of their own crew."