One side of the large building was free of other structures. I decided to think of that as the front. There weren't any ships on the surface and the larger structure didn't seem big enough to hold a ship of any real size. I had hoped the freighter used in the Colony 40 theft would be sitting there waiting for us to take it back and return my family's wealth.
"Any thoughts on how many people we might run into?" I wanted to get Marny’s thoughts.
"Hard to tell," she answered. "I count room for a couple dozen in the habitats. I doubt they are full. All of the ships are out, staff would be minimal. If I were in charge, I would have at least six. That way I could run four-hour shifts with three-man teams. Two would patrol and one would be stationary at whatever command center they might have. Not sure how pirates do it."
"Let's hope they take shortcuts," I said. Two on six were terrible odds. "What's our entry point?" I had given tactical control of our incursion to Marny since I had absolutely no combat training and she was a decorated veteran.
"Need to take the control room. It’s probably in that main building."
"So you want to take the big building first?" I thought I was following.
"No. That's the main target, but it's also likely to have the highest concentration of bogies. We’ll have to see what we run into. Put these zip ties into a pocket." She pulled a roll out of the bag she was carrying.
We had been reducing our speed the entire approach to the asteroid, but we were still going too fast for a safe landing. I removed the cable that joined us and stowed it. It was no longer safe for us to be tethered together.
I displayed my relative fall speed into the asteroid and used my arc-jets to slow down as much as I could. If I got out of here alive, I would definitely be sending this video off to Tabby.
"We will set charges on the left side." A blinking circle outlined the building in my HUD. "If someone is on that side without a suit, they will get locked down or worse. We enter from the right. If it's locked, we reverse and set charges at the door too and enter backside. Explosives need to be a last resort. We don't know what we might run into. There could be civvies. That said, I'll punch the charges in a second if I think we need the tactical advantage."
"Civvies?" I didn't understand what she meant.
"Civilians. Noncombatants. You know girlfriends, boy-toys, whores, slaves. You never know out here."
I gently landed two hundred meters away from the complex. I was used to approaching the zero gravity of most asteroids. The asteroid was small enough that there was no gravity and this was old hat for me. Marny landed a little roughly, another twenty meters away from where I was. I heard an involuntary gasp of pain from her and suspected her med pain-patch wasn't 100%. I jetted toward her using my arc-jets sparingly, concerned that the blue flashes could attract unwanted attention.
Marny was all business. "We settle in for five minutes and see if we have any visitors. Unclip your pistol. You won't have time if you need it." I had my Ruger laser pistol in a holster, strapped across my chest. I unsnapped the strap that kept it from falling out. Friction would easily hold it in place. All I had to do was bring up my hand and it would fall right on the butt of the pistol.
I pulled the blaster rifle off my back and nudged a small toggle, causing my heads up display to superimpose what I would shoot if I were to pull the trigger. I released my grip on the stock and the heads-up display disappeared.
"Ninety minutes before Nick returns. Are you sure we have five to spare?" I asked with concern.
"Aye Cap. We get caught outside, it'll go bad for us."
I nodded and looked Marny over. She had any number of items in different pockets all over her armor and I wondered how many of those items would be used in the next twenty minutes. She bobbed around on the surface of the asteroid, obviously not very comfortable in zero gravity. I placed my hand on her arm and steadied her.
After a minute or two of staring at the complex, Marny appeared to be satisfied that we had no unwanted attention. She didn't look at me when she spoke next.
"When we get in there you need to listen to me. If I say get down, you get down. If I say get back in a room, then do it. No heroics. I know the score, and we both have to get out of here. If I have to worry about you, then I will be less effective. I am uploading a program to your suit. It will work with these flash bang discs." Marny placed a small disc on the chest of my suit right next to my hand blaster's holster.
"Flash bang discs?" I asked.
"FBDs," she answered. "Not real effective against military, but if the pirates aren't pros, these little babies will disable them."
"How's that?"
"They project incredibly bright flashes of light and an extremely loud sound. The genius of it is that our suits will black out in sequence with the flashes and create a canceling sound wave in your helmet. You will barely know it's happening. Your AI will project the last image you saw while in blackout. It will feel like people are doing everything in a jerky manner. The discs are both slaved to my tactical command so you don't need to do anything."
"Uh, okay." I was starting to get a little overwhelmed.
"Walk in the park, Cap. Just listen to my commands and pay attention to your HUD. I will upload route information as we go. When we get into a firefight, take a knee or crouch and I will fire high. Put your blaster rifle on three shot. Okay. Let's move out. Stay on my six and to my right. If we get into a firefight, get up tight on me. I want to feel your left hand on my right shoulder. Ready?"
I put my left hand on her right shoulder. It was a lot to take in. "Ready."
We swung wide of the far left habitation pods. Once we got closer, we ran into a significant amount of debris floating in the low gravity. It created a nice visual block. I pushed a small box out of the way, causing Marny to turn and give me a dirty look.
"Stay clear of the junk. They leave it out here as a poor man's warning system. The junk needs to stay put. There are three heavy turrets that can pick us off like fleas from a dog." She sounded irritated. I suspected she was.
We were using very small blasts of our arc-jets. The habitation domes had small windows built into them and we didn't want to be seen. We floated up over the domes and moved toward the end of the line of habitation pods next to the larger building.
Marny removed two rectangular devices the size of her hand and placed one at each side of the small hallway joining the left group of domes to the large central building. We jetted up and around the back of the large building, ending up on the other side. We kept moving, floating over the four right side domes. Marny placed two more rectangular devices over the airlock. The devices pulsed green twice and then nothing more.
We figured out where the command center was when we saw a big bundle of cables. If we just wanted to cause problems we could blow those cables, but that wasn't the plan.
We were almost to the back set of habitation domes when Marny exclaimed, "Take cover behind the complex. We have contact."
I let go of her shoulder and lit up my jets. Adrenaline hit so hard that everything became clear in an instant. I remembered the feeling from fighting the pirates on top of P-Zero. Laser blasts erupted just above the left-side domes and tracked my movement. I was thrilled I had avoided getting hit.
Marny was sprawled on top of one of the nearby domes. I popped up, only to be warned by my HUD that I was being targeted, so I ducked back down. They weren't firing at Marny and she wasn't moving.
"Cover the right side. We stay put a minute. They have you dialed in. Don't show your face. Also, watch any airlock back there."
Geez, anything else?
I swiveled between watching the airlock and the right side of the complex. Nothing was moving. To be honest, I hadn't seen anything when Marny started yelling commands. I had rabbited before I understood what she was saying. I felt shame that my first instinct was to run.
"Well, they know we're here," she said. "Remember when I said use explosives in an emergency?"
&n
bsp; I saw a puff of atmosphere erupt from the left side of the main building.
"Did you blow that?" I asked.
"Aye, and don't shoot me. Incoming!" A large form jetted toward me and I raised my gun. I finally parsed what she had said and pulled my finger away from the trigger of my blaster rifle.
"What about civilians?" I worried.
"Not now. Cover me. I'm going to blow this airlock. If those turrets lock on us, we're smoke." Marny pulled out two more small bricks and placed them on the airlock. "Get tight on me, but keep your rifle out."
I closed in on her right side as she moved behind the corner of the habitation pod. She scanned the horizon for pirates and ignited the charges.
"Stay tight and remember, stay low."
We made it through the ruined airlock and entered an empty bunk room. I was relieved that we didn't find any dying people in the mess.
"I'm running out of charges so we cycle the next lock." Marny kept to the side of the room and threw a small puck into the next open room. "Clear." She quickly moved around the doorway to the side of the room and I stuck to her like glue.
She touched the airlock and it showed familiar green bars draining to orange. "This is gonna get crazy if they lock this down with us in it."
I could have gone all day without thinking about that possibility. Before I could object, she entered the lock and I followed. She already had the lock recycling. I was pleased that the orange bars were filling up with green.
"Get as low as you can and dive right when we exit." We were in .4 gravity in this room. I could lift with my AGBs if necessary.
"Roger that," I replied.
The door opened and blaster fire hit the back of the airlock. Marny dove left and I dove right. She knew what she was doing. If we'd remained standing, we would have taken considerable fire. We each landed behind tall shelving units loaded with crates. An aisle separated us.
Marny reached an arm around and threw a puck down the aisle. Immediately, the tactical display in my HUD showed four glowing figures in the larger room. Two were at the far right, up five meters, and one was standing in the aisle that ran the length of what was obviously a warehouse. The fourth was working his way down the left side.
Before I could process it, Marny dove across the aisle and fired her blaster rifle on full auto down its length. The figure standing there crumpled in my HUD.
"We gotta move," she said calmly.
"On your six." I tried to emulate her calm, but failed.
"Left side is going to try to flush us into a kill box for the two above. We take him."
I lost the ability to see the glowing figures in my HUD.
"Took 'em long enough." Marny said, mostly to herself.
Instead of heading to the right like I had expected, Marny crouched and moved across the aisle. I scurried behind her. We approached the end of the shelving unit in the corner. I imagined we would reach it at the same time the pirate did.
Through some instinct or just plain dumb luck, I turned around in time to catch a pirate burst through the shelving unit behind me. My rifle was knocked out of my hands and he was holding a blaster pistol. Purely on instinct, I grappled with him and fired off my arc-jet so we would fly upward. The figure was my same mass and I must have surprised him with my move. Just before we hit the ceiling I twisted, using one glove's jet, and slammed the pirate into a girder. Using the available gravity, I blasted my jets against the ceiling and back to the floor, twisting him under me. It knocked the air out of me, but I certainly knocked the fight out of ... oh, her.
I looked through her face shield and saw a young woman's face. She had a gaunt, poorly-fed look to her. She was definitely a spacer and I could imagine she had lived hard.
"Use your ties and bind her knees, ankles, and wrists behind her back. Make it tight. Stay focused." Marny sounded almost angry.
While I bound the pirate, Marny scanned back and forth. Once I was finished, Marny inspected my work and pulled the ties a little tighter. I winced, knowing it had to be painful. Then she did something unexpected and pulled a small black knife out of a previously unseen sheath. She grabbed the back of the pirates suit where the primary power pack was installed and tore it free, cutting it away in the process.
"If we hit vacuum, she’s done," I said automatically.
"Give her something other than us to think about," she grumbled back. "Okay. Two down, we know of at least two more and we need to move. On my six."
Marny turned around again and made her way back to the aisle that went down the center of the warehouse. "Frakking cluster back here."
"Use your flash bang?" I offered.
"No good. If they have military suits they only need two minutes to sync. Don't want to use them unless we are right on top of them." She took a deep breath. "Okay. I want you to fly up to that top shelf and push a crate off. I'll make my way around the end, but you get right back on me after you push it off. Got it?"
I didn't answer, but jetted up and gave a medium sized crate a good push. It fell and landed noisily on the ground. Marny had made it around the corner by this time, so I jetted to where she had been. I turned the corner and to my horror, two figures were standing there. One was holding a pistol aimed at Marny's head and the other was ten paces off with a blast rifle pointed at her.
I heard the pirate with the rifle aimed at Marny say, "Toss the rifles over here and give me those pistols, too."
Marny pulled her pistol out carefully with a thumb and forefinger on the butt. She tossed it on the floor in front of the pirate who had spoken.
"Crap. I can't believe we got taken out by the last two guys in the building," she said.
"Don't feel bad princess. I think we can make it up to you. I always wanted to ride me an Earther. You're a big one too." His intent was clear and his tone mocking.
I threw my rifle to the side and Marny started to pull off her rifle strap. The pirate who had his pistol aimed at her head momentarily broke contact with her so she could pull the strap over her head and toss the gun to his partner.
In mid-throw he seemed to freeze in place and the gun also froze in midair only to jump forward half a second later like everything was happening in stop motion.
"Take cover and shoot 'em." Marny demanded and she crashed into the nearest pirate. In her hands a long black tube a meter and a half long appeared. I finally caught up. The jerky motion was caused by the flash bang discs. It was weird. I couldn't hear any sound nor see any flashing lights, but the effect on the pirates was immediate. Laser blasts fired wildly.
I felt like Marny's orders were contradictory. I couldn't both take cover and shoot someone so I did what I felt made the most sense. I dropped to a knee and tried to take aim at the closest pirate. Of course I couldn't do that because Marny was jumping around on him like a crazy broken vid with half of its frames missing. I swung to the other pirate and started shooting. It was impossible to hit someone who was moving like this but I got my point across and rifle fire started coming my way. His aim was almost as ridiculous as my own. The FBDs must have been devastating.
Marny put an end to it, dropping her tube down on her adversary’s neck and then back up under his chin causing him to flip over backward. I hadn't even seen her move and was shocked at how easily I could have shot her. I looked back to where the first pirate had been holding a gun on her and discovered he was lying on the ground.
Reasonable motion returned to the universe and I couldn't have been happier. My stomach had threatened to revolt and I wasn't at all interested in losing anything in my suit.
"Tie these guys up and make it tight this time. I'll cover you." Marny picked up her rifle and crouched down behind a tall shelf full of crates.
I tied up both of the pirates and pulled a lot harder on the ties. By the time I finished, one was already coming around. Marny checked, but didn't see fit to pull the ties any tighter. I left them to lie on their stomachs.
"Easier to tie 'em down once they've shot at you 'eh?"
she asked and for the first time in a while she sounded more like the Marny we had met in Wuzzies.
She continued. "We need to clear the rest of the structure. Only thirty-five minutes before we have to be ready for Mr. James."
Thirty-five? Where had the time gone? It felt like it had only been ten minutes since we touched down on this asteroid. It took us twenty minutes to clear the warehouse and the remaining functional living spaces. Marny's explosives opened up an entire section of the habitation domes to space. Fortunately, we didn't find any bodies in there.
A metal staircase led to a small, windowed room on the second level of the warehouse. Inside the room was a control center. The room was sparse, boasting only a few metal chairs and a bank of vid screens. I sat down at the screens while Marny took a guard position at the door. She'd retrieved one of the room scanning pucks she had been tossing out to warn us of movement and placed it strategically in the warehouse below.
We had fifteen minutes before Nick would try to land. He would, hopefully, have put some distance between himself and the pursuing enemy ship. This was our gambit. We would use their defensive systems against them. Nothing else in this entire sector of space could provide us with enough protection against the pirates that were converging on us. I sat down at the console to reprogram the defensive systems to not fire at Sterra's Gift. I wanted to draw the other cutter in before opening fire on it. I panicked as I discovered that I was locked out of the system.
"Marny! We have a problem."
"What? Frak!! Hang on."
Marny returned in a minute with one of the pirates. She sat him down hard on the floor, legs outstretched in front of him. She ripped his helmet off and if I hadn't been sitting down I would have likely fallen over. There sat Sheriff Blaen Xid, the bastard who coordinated the attack on Colony 40 and stole my Dad's biggest payday ever. I rose up with murder in mind.
"Not yet." Marny commanded. Her fierceness was startling and stopped me. She looked over to Sheriff Xid, "Command override now or Hoffen here cycles you through the airlock."
Rookie Privateer Page 25
