Rookie Privateer

by McFarlane, Jamie

  I reached up into the rendering and pulled the ships toward me. Apparently, the Kuznetsov had received high-def scans of the ships. I expected them to be low quality models, but these ships were extremely detailed.

  Belcose didn't provide any narrative, but I appreciated the information nonetheless.

  The two ships varied minimally in design. Both were narrow and long with engines all on the back, just like Sterra's Gift. They weren't made for dogfight style attacks like you see next to the large battleships in entertainment vids. These ships were built for chase and flee.

  I started working on exit simulations to get us past the pursuing ships. Using my best guess as to their capabilities, the best case scenarios weren't looking good. We might be able to get out thirty hours before they caught up with us. Once they caught us in open space, they would shred us. We had less than even odds of survival.

  It would have to be Plan B.

  "Door will be opening in twenty seconds." Nick's voice broke my concentration.

  "Roger that," I replied.

  The normally well-lit docking bay had turned dark and red alarm lights were flashing everywhere.

  Fire has been detected in Docking Bay. Recommend vacating. A yellow alarm pulsed in the bridge. The ship was fairly impervious to most fire, unless the temps got really hot and started to fry our systems. Fire was one of the most dangerous events in a space station, as it quickly consumed breathable atmosphere. I grinned. No system had a higher priority than fire suppression - not even security systems.

  Inform me when all crew are aboard and the airlock is secure.

  I grabbed the flight stick and thrust controls and watched with satisfaction as the docking bay door opened.

  Crew is aboard and airlock secure, the AI informed me.

  Assist flight controls. Quickest exit from station. Keep free of floor and ceiling. I couldn't afford to spend so much time getting out this time. A twist of my wrist caused the ship to spin and move quickly toward the opening doors.

  Incoming communication from Baru Manush Defense.

  Inform them that we are exiting station to protect our ship from a station emergency.

  I pushed forward on the stick and we cleared the exit.

  Prepare ship for acceleration. Cease telemetry link with Baru Manush.

  A familiar lurch in my stomach let me know the inertia and gravity systems were once again communicating.

  "Sterra's Gift. Return to Quarantine Bay 2 immediately and report to Station 1."

  At full thrust we were less than thirty seconds to the defense perimeter.

  Ship address. "Battle stations. Max acceleration in five seconds. Acknowledge!"

  Nick and Marny both ran onto the bridge and threw themselves into their chairs.

  "Go, go, go," Nick yelled excitedly.

  I pushed the virtual thrust bar forward and twisted the flight stick to avoid an approaching ship. I hoped it was just a miner.

  "Sterra's Gift. Return to Quarantine Bay 2 or you will be fired upon."

  "Cap, he could do it." Marny warned.

  I didn't reduce the thrust.

  Hail Baru Manush Defense. "Baru Manush Defense, you are interfering in a legal prisoner transfer. We are under contract with Mars Protectorate Navy. We are transmitting this conversation. Please repeat last."

  If he wanted to stop us, he should know what he was risking.

  "Captain Hoffen, stand down. You have ten seconds before I instruct our defense perimeter to disable your ship."

  Close communications. Show perimeter gun effective range and Sterra's Gift in one tenth scale.

  The HUD showed an uneven sphere around Baru Manush.

  Audible count down for Sterra's Gift exiting perimeter gun effective range.

  Ten. Nine. Eight. Urgent communication from Baru Manush Defense. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

  We were beyond the effective range of the perimeter guns.

  "Remind me not to play cards with you," Marny said.

  I nodded. I didn’t see it as a gamble. They could have disabled our ship, it wouldn’t have been different than us landing back on the station.

  I continued, "Do we have turret control back now that we are out of the perimeter?" We had given that up to the station when we entered their space. It was a program that we would have a difficult time overriding in a reasonable amount of time. It would take a system wipe, boot, and restore process. While docked, this could be done very quickly but undocked, it was more complicated. I reduced our acceleration to 25%.

  "I released it three days ago just before I took the job. Give me a minute to see if anyone figured that out." Marny turned her chair to face the new vid-screens that had been installed where she would be sitting.

  "Nick, can you take the controls? I need to talk to our prisoner." I jumped up and headed back to the brig. The door opened to my touch. Xie was seated on the floor against the armor-glass. I suspected the acceleration had tossed her out of her bunk. At max thrust, the gravity system cannot absorb all of the inertia. On the bridge we were all slammed back into chairs that were designed to absorb the additional g-forces. The brig had no such chair. The safest thing for Xie would have been to lay against the armor-glass and allow her vac-suit to support her spine.

  She turned her head to look at me with a scowl. "What do you want, Hoffen."

  "Do you want to live?" I asked. There would be no bluffing Xie.

  She sneered. "Are you going to kill me, Liam?"

  "Let me lay it out for you. We aren't going to stop for any of the four ships coming after us. There are two fast attack craft that will overtake us eventually. I will stand and fight," I explained.

  "Why are you telling me this? I said you wouldn’t be alive for long." She shook her head at me like I was a child.

  "Our fates are now the same. I am willing to bet your friends won't hesitate to kill you to get whatever is on this little device." I pulled the marble sized storage device out of my pocket.

  "I don't see how that helps you. We will both be dead," she said without expression.

  "Tell me the location of the Red Houzi base and give me the layout of the station. That is the bargain I give you. In six hours the two fast attack craft will be on us. I suspect they will join up with the other cutter and it will be three on one. We can't survive that. I am willing to bet you want to live past today."

  Her reply was venomous. "You would bet wrong."

  "You have thirty minutes before we have to make a run for it. If you hand over those coordinates before that, I believe we have better than even odds." I turned to leave.

  "You have another choice, Liam," she said.

  "What's that?" I was skeptical.

  "Join Red Houzi. We could use a young aggressive bull like you."

  "So I can attack hard working colonists and steal their life's work? Never going to happen."

  "You don't have to be so sanctimonious. It's not that bad."

  "Thirty minutes, Xie. Choose whether or not you want to live." I walked out of the door and back up to the bridge.

  "Marny, how bad are you injured?" I turned toward her and looked intently.

  "I'll be fine," she responded.

  "What if we need to make an incursion?" I asked.

  "Board a ship?"

  "Bigger. How’s that leg?"

  "How soon?"

  "One hour."

  "Help me get a patch on it. I have a combat patch that will give me a few hours of pain free operation. I will pay for it in six hours and won't be able to walk for a day or two. Will that work?"

  "Roger that. Can we be battle ready in forty-five minutes?"

  "Aye." Marny replied.

  "Nick?"

  "Yup. What do you have planned?"

  Replay bridge log from combat action on 498.08.16. Create navigational vector from last heading of enemy cutter. Create a navigational plan to achieve same vector.

  I explained the outline of my plan. We used every bit of the half hour I had given
Xie. I was disappointed when she didn't contact me at the end of the deadline.

  I pushed the door to the brig open again. Xie was sitting back on her bunk and watched me enter. "Have you made your choice?"

  "It won't matter. You have killed us all," she answered.

  "If it doesn't matter, then give me the coordinates and let's be done with this."

  "Okay. If you are successful you have to let me go."

  "Your choice is to live or not, freedom will be a decision for Mars Protectorate. We're wasting time."

  "Fine, have it your way. I will provide them once I am on the bridge." She negotiated again.

  "Not happening. Just give me the coordinates."

  Xie conceded.

  INCURSION

  I followed Marny back to the galley. She had to remove her armored vac-suit so I could wrap a combat medical patch around her thigh. If I hadn't been so distracted I would have paid attention to the well-defined, shapely, heavily muscled, tanned ...

  Okay, so I paid attention.

  "You have two flechette darts in your back armor," she informed me.

  "I'm making a statement. Let's get ready."

  Marny loaded a sack with the supplies we needed. I grabbed a five meter length of cable and clipped it to my belt. We met back up on the bridge.

  As soon as we had received the coordinates for the Red Houzi base, Nick set us on a direct path. It was imperative that we arrive well in advance of the approaching pirate ships. I was fairly confident there was only a single Red Houzi ship nearby and we knew Sterra’s Gift was more than a match for it, especially after receiving the much needed maintenance. But Nick had just flipped us around to slow us down to the same velocity as the asteroid base. It had to be obvious to the pirates that we were on our way.

  "Nick, how much time before we reach our launch point?" I asked.

  Give us a count down at ten, five, two and the last thirty seconds, Nick instructed and then said, "About fifteen minutes. We have been synchronizing speed with the asteroid cluster for the last ten minutes. That will be done in six."

  "Let's go over the plan one more time," I interjected. "If you don't hear from us in ninety minutes, then haul your ass back over to Baru Manush. Better for you to be locked up for a few months than dead, Nick."

  "Not gonna talk about it," Nick replied.

  Hostile ship detected on intercept course. I could have sworn the soft female voice sounded stressed.

  When will they be in firing range? Nick queried.

  One minute, twenty-three seconds. The ship had come upon us much faster than expected.

  "Hold on!" Nick shoved the virtual throttle all the way forward and caused Marny and me to tumble back into the bulkhead at the back of the bridge. My ribs hit first and the air was knocked out of me. Fortunately, the armor vac-suit stiffened up and absorbed enough of the impact to prevent cracked ribs, but it still caused me to slump to the floor. Marny made it to her feet before I did and helped me up.

  "Get in the airlock now! I will give you as much time as I can," Nick said over the noise of the engines.

  Nick had taken the only action available to him. If we didn't slow down sufficiently, Marny and I would be unable to lose enough of our momentum as we propelled over to the pirate's enclave. I closed my face shield and instructed my suit's AI, Give me a thirty second countdown to enemy ship firing range.

  Marny and I stumbled out of the bridge into the hallway. The downward or vertical force was at least 2gs, and that kept our feet on the floor. The backward horizontal g-force, however, was so strong that we had to bend our knees and dig in one foot to try and slow our slide down the hallway toward the back of the ship. I was worried we wouldn't be able to make the corner into the airlock. Luckily, Marny had thought ahead and left the two blast rifles we would need clipped to a shelf inside the airlock. Making a side trip to the armory was not possible.

  Thirty. Twenty-nine.

  Stepping up the timing on this little mission was going to make our jump a significantly more dangerous maneuver. Keeping Marny and me safe meant Nick would have to continue decelerating into the path of the oncoming enemy cutter, exposing Sterra's Gift to more time in the pirate’s weapon’s range. We were hoping Nick could have dropped us off and been able to escape from the pirate base before the local Red Houzi cutter got close. I hated the thought of Nick being fired on, but there was no getting around it.

  With Marny and me inside the airlock, I slung one of the rifles over my shoulder, grabbed the loops of cable and started the pump to cycle the air out. One end of the cable was already attached to me, so I clipped the other end to Marny.

  Once we were outside the ship, I wouldn't be able to talk to Nick without advertising that we were on EVA (external vehicle activity). "Nick, when we are off, you need to accelerate on max toward that ship. They will get a strafing run on you, so give 'em your belly. You won't be able to fire back but there will be fewer critical systems for them to hit. Remember, once they are on you, keep curving up so if they get close enough you can get a shot at them from your turret. Keep firing at them up to that point, we can buy more ammo."

  Five. Four. I opened the external door of the airlock.

  "Engines are off for seven seconds. Go!" Nick shouted.

  Acceleration shut down abruptly. I hoped Nick would be able to keep his lunch down. Marny and I held hands and jumped free of the ship. Two. One.

  Establish closed communication channel with Bertrand.

  Sterra's Gift gently swiveled around and I saw flashes as her turret started firing at the quickly approaching cutter. I hoped we weren't in its path because they wouldn't be able to see us until we were a smear on their armor-glass. The odds were infinitesimally small that they would hit us, but once planted, the idea stuck.

  Nick applied thrust, gently at first, angling away from Marny and me. A couple of seconds later we were treated to a much-too-close view of the back end of three insanely powerful engines firing at max power. My face shield automatically dimmed due to the extreme brightness. Nick would have to survive at least ten seconds within gun range of the other cutter. I hoped they didn't have missiles.

  I knew the enemy ship had raced by us, but it happened so fast that it was more of an impression than something I could actually see. I sure hoped Nick would be okay. I rationalized that Sterra's Gift should surely be able to take a few hits. As bright lights flashed in the dark, I knew guns were firing. It made me sick to realize those bullets were being fired at my lifelong friend.

  "Snap out of it, Captain." Marny pulled me around so that we were face to face. "You gotta stay in the moment."

  I stared back at her, frozen in indecision.

  "Trust him. He is trusting us to get our job done. Trust him to do his."

  "Okay." I was having difficulty pulling it together.

  Marny and I fell toward the asteroid. It was twenty-five minutes away as long as we executed our planned burns at the right times and for the right durations. If Nick hadn't been able to slow down sufficiently, our vac-suit's arc-jets wouldn't have had been able to generate enough thrust to reduce our relative speed to the oncoming asteroid. The suits had a limited amount of thrust available and we were cutting it close as it was.

  We would remain connected via the cable until the last possible moment. The danger of us becoming separated while moving through space was very real. Marny and I were two very small people in the deep dark right now. We couldn’t reasonably expect a rescue if we messed up.

  Back on our family claim, I would stare up into the vastness of space and imagine floating off. Occasionally, I even jetted off for short distances. Floating through the vast emptiness had always brought me a profound sense of serenity. I had never feared the isolation. I had heard talk of people freaking out in similar situations. Maybe it's because I grew up as a miner that I had a different perspective about floating, unattached, in zero-g. Attacking a pirate base, on the other hand, now that was crazy.

  Thirty second bur
n in Five. Four. Our AIs helped us align our jets with the asteroid and we burned for nearly a minute. The line between us grew taut due to the significant difference in our masses and the differences between our thrust directions.

  "Marny, you are pulling us off in the wrong direction," I said.

  "Trying to adjust," she responded, obviously starting to become stressed. I had to remind myself that she was not space born and hadn't been doing this since before she could walk.

  "That's fine. Stop making adjustments. We're connected and you are falling faster than I am. I can steer." Marny was almost double my weight. As soon as she stopped adjusting her direction constantly, I was able to keep us oriented on the navigational plan the AI was constantly updating.

  "Good job," I praised.

  "Crap, this is terrifying," Marny answered. She was still flustered, but the panic in her voice was gone.

  We had decided to periodically slow down instead of doing it all at the end. It would allow us to make adjustments over the entire twenty-five minute fall instead of having to make decisions quickly at the end. "Are you able to see any perimeter guns?" I asked.

  "Yes. Uploading to tactical plan now."

  Three new red dots were superimposed on my heads-up display. A moment later, a fourth centered between the first three. I used my hand to zoom in on the center object. The resolution was good enough to be precise, but I was looking at a building, or maybe even a group of buildings.

  Approaching estimated sensor range. Arc-jet systems should not be used for the next three minutes. If the pirate base had a sensor net running, our AI would calculate the maximum effective range. Our arc-jets could be picked up by a particularly sensitive detector. If that occurred, we would be easy picking for even the most rudimentary defensive system.

  Marny and I floated quietly for the next three minutes. I zoomed in and was able to make out the surface of the asteroid we were approaching. There was a large central structure with clustered habitation domes on the right, left, and back sides. I counted twelve domes in all. The habitation domes were easy to recognize since I had been living in one for most of my life. Full of just sleeping bunks, they could house fifty people altogether. That would leave the occupants no real living space. I estimated that fifteen was a more realistic number.