by George Ellis
“On some level, that would be fine with me,” Jiang said. “I always liked the idea of being completely independent. But with life comes change. Now I’ll get the chance to be part of something bigger.”
My uncle nodded. He understood the sentiment.
Then Jiang cleared his throat and prepared to say something. He just couldn’t quite spit it out.
“You okay, buddy?” Uncle E asked.
“Uh, yes. I just had a question about your ship. Well, first, I should say it’s probably the coolest looking spacecraft I’ve ever seen. But…”
I knew what was coming. “You’re wondering how the hell our little ship is going to be able to tow yours?” I asked.
Jiang nodded, relieved I had asked the question for him. My uncle told him the Mustang had once towed a federation battle cruiser from Titan Station to Earth. I’d heard about the tow when I was on The Sheffield. It was the buzz of the wrecker world and cemented the Stang as the top independent wrecker in the verse. My dad was depressed for weeks. Avery had confided in me that our dad had always been jealous of my uncle and his noteworthy ship. I often wondered what my dad and brother would think of me working on the Stang. We hadn’t spoken since I left the Sheffield.
“Oh. I guess we’re good then,” Jiang said, embarrassed.
“Yep,” Uncle E answered. Then he looked at me with a wry smile. “We’re gonna do this one a little differently. I want to see if my young apprentice here can figure it out, or if I have to tell him.”
I pulled up the schematic of The Yunan on my handheld. I could see what my uncle was talking about. There wasn’t a good anchor point on the “front” of the ship, because there was no real front. It was circular. Which meant there was no back, either. The propulsion system was mounted on the sides and the ship could go in any direction. Slowly, most likely.
I studied the schematic looking for an answer. We couldn’t pull it. We certainly couldn’t push it. For a moment, I considered that we might just fix the damn thing, but then I remembered the core had fried. We weren’t equipped to fix that.
Oh. It suddenly dawned on me.
“Don’t tell me we’re going in there?”
Uncle E nodded proudly. “That’s exactly what we’re gonna do. We are going to be the donut hole.”
* * *
I always got nervous floating in space. There’s just something about being a couple thin layers of fabric away from the never-ending vacuum of death that makes me think “Hmmm, maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”
I used my propulsion pack to navigate toward The Yunan. Uncle E had positioned the Stang in the middle of the empty area inside the circular ship. We had a few hundred yards to spare on all sides. The idea was to create a series of cable tethers from the Stang to The Yunan to keep us roughly in place as the donut hole. We would then use the jib at full tension to tow the larger ship from the interior support bar that was located on the inner ring.
Basically, we’d tow it from the inside. Which was a new one.
My job was to attach each of the 16 cable tethers to The Yunan. It was a laborious task that was going to take multiple days. I’d been in the suit for a few hours already and had only attached the first four tethers. The goal was to do four more before calling it a day. I had enough oxygen to last another six hours if needed, but being in the suit is hard work. And sweaty. I was already getting a ton of condensation on the visor, which made the work even more difficult due to the partially obscured vision.
“Code Black!” my uncle barked in my ear, giving me a jolt. I nearly dropped the power clamps I’d been using to fasten the cable tethers to The Yunan. “Get back to the Stang, now!”
I whirled and checked in all directions. Through the fog of my visor, I couldn’t see anything out there besides the Stang and The Yunan. Code Black meant that we were under attack from another ship, and my uncle didn’t throw that around lightly. I dropped the cable from my hands and began heading back to the Stang.
It was like an action move in slow motion. My heart was racing and my eyes darted back and forth, scanning for the enemy ship. But I was actually moving very slowly. The propulsion system on my suit used short bursts of compressed air to push me along in space. It was meant for precise movements and short walks. In other words, the top speed was around 10 miles per hour. Under normal circumstances, that felt pretty quick, considering a few wrong turns and I’d be headed off course for the next, oh, forever.
At the moment, I felt very exposed.
“What’s going on?” I asked my uncle.
“Tracers,” he hissed. “I know you can’t hurry…but hurry, Denver.”
If there was a Tracer ship in the area, the Stang was a sitting duck. Between me floating around like a wayward puppy and the ship being tethered to The Yunan, my uncle had limited options to defend us.
“Stay clear of the nose,” my uncle said, just before a flurry of rail gun fire blasted from the Stang. I followed the trajectory of the blue streaks and saw a green ship evade the salvo just in time. It was about the same size as the Stang, just a bit thinner and longer. It veered to the side and seemed to be coming around to find a better offensive angle. It wouldn’t be hard for them. With the Stang in visual range, they’d be able to see that it was tethered to The Yunan.
I was still a hundred yards away from the Stang and desperately wishing I could speed up when I felt something latch onto my arm. I turned to see Jiang’s smiling face behind his visor. He pulled me toward the back of the transport pad he was riding. It was a flatbed style transporter used to ferry small lots of cargo around the ship. I swung myself onto the bed and we zipped toward the Stang’s open cargo bay door.
Once we landed inside, the bay doors closed and the room pressurized.
“We’re in!” I yelled into the helmet’s comm system just before tearing it off and breathing some fresh (recycled) oxygen. I turned to Jiang as he removed his helmet.
“Thanks for the lift.”
“No problem,” he said. “Tracers?”
“That’s what Uncle E says,” I replied. “You got any weapons on The Yunan?”
He pulled out his handheld. “Limited, but yeah.”
We arrived in the cabin just as Uncle Erwin was launching countermeasures against a pair of missiles headed right for us. “Ah, nice of you to give my nephew a ride. Strap in.”
I lowered into my co-pilot chair and checked the Tracer ship’s specs. It was not the most heavily armed or armored, but it had enough firepower at its disposal to take us out, especially in our vulnerable position. Jiang buckled into the seat near the weapons station and watched the monitor.
“Got anything good on that ship?” my uncle asked, echoing my question.
Jiang explained that he had a few missiles that may or may not fire properly. He had never had the need to use them, plus he’d have to remotely control the weapons system from his handheld. It was possible, he said, but there was just as much chance the missiles might choose the Stang as their target as they would the Tracer ship.
“Scratch that plan,” I said.
“I do have an EMP device that might work,” Jiang added.
My uncle nodded at that, then told us to brace for impact. One of the missiles had been taken out by the countermeasures, but the other had slipped through. It would reach us in a few seconds. My uncle dialed up the manual guns and dropped down the eyeglasses that usually rested atop his head. Then he grabbed the video game style joystick (it even had an Atari sticker on it that made my uncle chuckle every time he referenced it).
“Here goes nothing,” he said as he fired at the missile, trying to detonate it before it reached us. The Stang had armor plating and could handle smaller weapons fire and even missile explosions in the proximity, but a direct hit would likely tear a hole in the ship’s shell. And that would be that.
The blast rattled every part of my body, from my bones to my teeth. I had the sudden sensation of being hurled sideways and pummeled in the stomach at the same t
ime. A few seconds later, I looked over and saw my uncle rubbing his bloody forehead. Jiang was woozy as well.
But we were all alive. “Guess I got it just in time,” Uncle E said.
“Minimal damage, none of it structural,” Gary said. “But that was cutting it pretty, pretty, pretty close, my friend.”
“We need to get out of this position,” Uncle E decided. “Sorry to undo all your work, Denver.”
“Undo the shit out of it!” I replied as he flipped a few switches. I watched on the monitor as the cables I’d just spent four hours fastening to The Yunan released in quick succession, lashing out into the black.
The Stang instantly sprang to life, my uncle flooring it (so to speak). We rose out of the donut hole and zoomed off in a direct line to intercept the Tracer ship. My uncle looked at me. “What are you waiting for?”
Oh. Right!
“Switch!” I yelled to Jiang as I unstrapped my safety belts. He did the same and we swapped positions. Once I was buckled into the chair at the weapons station, I plotted a few solutions and sent the Tracer ship a barrage of missiles, followed by rail gun fire.
“That’s good, but don’t spend it all at once,” my uncle reminded me.
“I know, I know.”
Truth be told, I was acting purely on muscle memory. It was the first time I’d ever had to actually use the weapons, as it was the first time the Stang had been in a scrape since I came aboard. Luckily, we’d practiced three times a week with a simulation. Each time, my uncle ratcheted up the complexity with a different number of ships or types of attacks. The point is, I had already fought this battle before, in theory.
Of course, theory wasn’t reality. My missiles were easily detonated by the Tracer ship. I did manage to strafe one of the wings with some rail gun fire, but it was impossible to tell how bad the damage was. Given the fact the Tracer ship continued to weave and accelerate, it was likely superficial.
My uncle was pissed. He wasn’t usually the type to get angry. But I guess trying to kill a man and his nephew was enough to make anyone a little upset. As he gave chase, trying to establish a more advantageous position for the Stang, Jiang was verbalizing his disgust with the Tracers and everything they stood for. They were a bunch of thugs, he said, running around the verse and terrorizing people with impunity. He didn’t understand what they wanted with The Yunan anyway. There were no people left on board (so nobody to kidnap), there were no goods (so no booty), and the ship itself was fairly old and outdated, meaning there was nothing to salvage.
“Maybe they wanted to stop The Yunan from becoming part of the station,” I offered, speaking over my shoulder as I plotted new attack sequences to launch once the time came.
“I’ve been trying to hail them to ask, but they don’t seem interested in talking,” Uncle E said. He tried to get a better angle on the Tracer ship, but it was too elusive. “She doesn’t look like much, but she’s got some moves.”
My uncle tried to bank and the Stang stammered a bit and lost speed.
“What the hell was that?” Uncle E asked Gary.
“Hmmmm…seems that maybe there was more structural damage than I thought. We have a slight issue with the navigational bearings that may give you trouble when you try to–”
“May?!?” Uncle E shouted. He muttered something under his breath about Gary, then turned to me. “Don’t even think about it.”
I stopped unbuckling my belt and leaned back in the seat. He knew I was going to try and get below decks to fix it.
“There’s no time for that,” he said. “Jiang, let’s hear more about that EMP.”
I’ve heard my uncle say that the outcome of most ship-to-ship combat scenarios often rests on one move. Maybe it’s a decision you make. Or a mistake the other ship commits. But with so much lethal technology available to both sides, all it takes is one second to be either victorious or reduced to atoms.
My uncle was gambling our lives on The Yunan’s ability to take out the enemy ship for us. After drawing the Tracer vessel away from The Yunan with a pair of missiles (both of which they neutralized with countermeasures), my uncle killed the engines. I was waiting in the cargo bay in my space suit. The door opened and I pushed an improvised explosive device into the vacuum. Once it was about 100 yards from the ship, we detonated it. The blast left a trail of debris and smoke in our wake.
Combined with our turbines emitting zero drive signature, the smoke was meant to fool the Tracers into thinking we’d been disabled. The other ship came around and paused. They were in visual range, so they could see the debris and the Stang just floating in place.
“Did it work?” Jiang asked, his finger poised over his handheld device.
“Not sure yet,” my uncle replied. He watched the distance on the scanner closely. The Tracer ship was closing, but had not increased speed. Their weapons were still hot, of course. If they wanted to destroy us, we were giving them a good chance.
But they were Tracers. If they thought we were disabled, they might just be arrogant and ruthless enough to decide to board and see if we had anything good in the cargo bays. Or, try to subdue us and capture a semi-famous ship in the process.
“Got ‘em,” my uncle said. The Tracers picked up speed and were headed right for us.
“Just tell me when,” Jiang said.
“Wait until I tell you, Jiang. You too, Gary.”
“I still think this is a bad idea,” Gary said.
Once the ship got within a couple miles, my uncle calmly told Gary to cut all power. The ship went as still as I’d ever heard it. No auxiliary. No latent cooldowns. Just…off at the flip of a virtual switch.
“Now,” Uncle E whispered.
Jiang pressed a button on his handheld.
And nothing happened.
The ship kept coming toward us.
“What’s going on?” I asked, freaking out.
“Oh, duh. I forgot to enter the password,” Jiang said. He tapped a few keys. A second later, the Tracer ship’s lights flickered and went to black. It had worked! The Yunan had sent an electromagnetic pulse in all directions. It would fry any working electronics in 10-20 square miles. The Stang was unaffected, as we had shut down. The Tracer ship? Not so much.
Uncle E spun the drive back up and the Stang slowly beeped and hummed to life. It took about 30 seconds, but there was no hurry with the other ship completely disabled.
“Good morning. What did I miss?” Gary asked. “Oh good, we’re still alive.”
I looked at my uncle. “Should I fire?”
“No,” Jiang answered. He shook his head. “We can’t. It would be like shooting an unarmed person.”
“They just tried to kill us,” I argued.
“Doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t be fair,” Jiang said.
“He’s right, Denver,” my uncle said. “Just because we can destroy someone doesn’t mean we should. Never forget that.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with my uncle and Jiang. What if the Tracer ship was able to power back up? Or the cavalry was on its way? Even though they were disabled, it was an extension of the fight, in my mind. Perhaps reading my thoughts, my uncle softened his eyes and smiled.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” he said with a laugh. He knew I hated when he said that. “I’ll have Gary keep a missile solution on them while we attach The Yunan to the Stang and get out of here. First things first, you need to get down there to fix the navigational bearings.”
For the next two days, we worked to safely secure The Yunan to our ship. We became the donut hole again. The entire time, the Tracer ship simply floated there, dead in the vacuum. If they got lucky, one of their friends would come along and help them. If they didn’t, well, at least it wasn’t on my conscience.
As we towed Jiang’s ship to its new destination, we spent many hours watching TV and enjoying Jiang’s cooking. By the time we reached the construction site where they were putting the finishing touches on the bold new station, I was sad to see Jiang go.
We never heard from that Tracer ship again.
A few months and a few jobs later, Uncle E and I were enjoying the last of the frozen egg rolls Jiang had left us, when he collapsed and fell to the floor. I would learn later that my uncle had a brain aneurysm. One minute we were debating whether the 8th season of Game of Thrones ruined the whole experience (he thought it did, I disagreed), and the next thing I knew he had fallen out of his chair. It was all over in a few seconds. Gary and I tried to save him, but there was nothing we could do. For a long time, I sat next to his body, thinking he might just wake up. Or I would wake up, and it would all just be some kind of bad dream. It wasn’t, of course.
It hadn’t been a battle between ships, but my uncle was right: one second is all it takes to change everything. Suddenly, I was alone in the verse. The 18-year-old captain of the Mustang 1.
Chapter 11
My first solo gig was easy. At least it was supposed to be.
A party barge had stalled a hundred miles off Roman Landing, a tourist destination on Mars. Most of the revelers had been transported back to the planet before I arrived to fix the ship, but there were still a couple dozen crew and straggler tourists bopping about the vessel.
Party barges, as they were informally known, ran the gamut from family-friendly to the raunchiest dens of sex and drugs you could imagine. This happened to be the latter kind. As I pulled into the docking bay, the bright neon of the large “Port Lauderdale” sign reflected off the glass of the Stang’s forward windows. Docked on either side of my ship were transport skiffs to take people to and from Roman Landing. The black and gold ships had the phrase “Party Like It’s 2209” emblazoned on the side panels sparkly paint. They could probably carry about 100 passengers each.
A handsome, teal-haired man was waiting to greet me when I stepped off the Stang. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, but styled himself in a way to appear younger and trendier. His jeans and designer shirt probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
