Deep Space Dragnet (Rich Weed Book 2)

by Berg,Alex P.

  Ducic wrinkled his muzzle. “Precise, possibly, but it is, as a matter of physical principles, highly energetic. Should such an exit be attempted, despite level of warp drive tech, it would leave significant energy signatures.”

  “Precisely,” said Tarja. “See? Ducic knows what I’m talking about. The belt would be a perfect place to drop out because external sensors wouldn’t notice them amid the asteroids. And this plan of action gives us something else to go on. Should we somehow fail to find the pirates at their known haunts, we can roam the asteroid belt looking for warp signatures.”

  “I don’t know,” said Carl. “If you’re right about any of this, it would seem a huge risk on the part of the pirates. It goes beyond leaving traceable energy signatures. I wouldn’t be surprised if the warp exits vaporized asteroids in the path of their particle shock wave. All the asteroids are tracked by planetary surveys, such as those performed here on Varuna to prepare for settlement impacts. If asteroids are missing, we’d know about it.”

  “Who said anything about pirates being smart?” said Tarja.

  That point, at least, matched my own observations from the vids, and her argument about the warp exits at least seemed physically plausible—none of which meant I thought Tarja was barking up the right tree. But I needed more time to put together my theory, and bouncing around a few asteroids would give me time to think while keeping us near the Agapetes.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “You lead, we’ll follow.”

  Not like we have any choice, said Paige.

  Ducic let out a low moan. “Very well. Should anyone need me, I will be in my quarters, partaking in sedatives and wishing for swift release from the agonies of weightlessness.”

  I glanced at him, then Tarja. “Does he know something I don’t?”

  The bounty hunter smiled. “Asteroid hopping means no constant linear acceleration. And I like to push the pace. Hope you like roller-coasters.”

  14

  I lay on my bed, strapped into place and in the midst of rewatching one of the holovids from the attack on the Kalanchoe, when Paige informed me I had a visitor.

  I flicked off the vid, had Paige release the straps, and sat. The ship’s acceleration held me in place with a slighter force than I was used to, perhaps half a g, but at least it was constant. My stomach had hardened under the trial by fire of our asteroid avoidance maneuvers, but I hadn’t yet reached Vijay’s level of gastrointestinal Zen.

  Tarja stood in the doorway to my quarters, a drawstring mesh bag hanging from her right hand. “Oh, thank God. You’re clothed.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I narrowed an eye. “Did you walk in on Ducic unannounced and witness something you’d rather not have?”

  Tarja squinted at me. “Huh? No. I… Never mind.”

  It dawned on me. “A joke! Sorry, you caught me of guard. If anything, I would’ve been less surprised if you’d kicked the door down and barreled in, ready to tear my head off with your bare hands.”

  “This is my ship,” said Tarja. “It responds to my wishes. Why would I kick the door down?”

  “That was also—” I waved my hand dismissively. “On second thought, don’t worry about it. What’s on your mind?”

  “We’re closing in on our first target. An asteroid known as TCA one three three six four nine.”

  “It’s that special, huh?”

  “The pirate bases aren’t on any of the big ones,” said Tarja. “That would make them easy to find.”

  “I’m sure it’s a lifeless, uninspiring hunk of hollowed out space rock.” I gave her a nod. “What’s in the bag?”

  She lifted the article in question. “That’s why I’m here. Based upon our first meeting, I think I know the answer to this, but what’s your experience in a spacesuit in zero g?”

  “Let’s say I’m a little rusty.”

  “You’re not doing either of us any favors by spouting bullshit. I need to know what I’m working with.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve done it before. The spacesuit part doesn’t bother me. It’s the zero g I struggle with, but it’s coming back, slowly but surely.”

  “I’d be more confident if you’d used the words swiftly and instead of slowly but.” She crossed to the built in desk, placed the sack atop it, drew open the top, and dug her hand inside. When she pulled it out, it was with a heavy pulse pistol gripped in her fist. “You ever use one of these before?”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You want me to come with you into a pirate den, armed, in a spacesuit, in zero g?”

  “Are you dense?” she asked. “Seriously, try to keep up, will you?”

  “Why not take Carl?” I asked. “He’s way better in low gravity than I am. You’ve seen him.”

  Both of Tarja’s eyebrows shot up. “You want me to take a man-loving droid into a pirate den to back me up in case of a fight?”

  “Point taken. But do you really think I’d be a better companion than nobody at all?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to determine,” said Tarja. “As a general rule, I don’t like to go after savage, bloodthirsty pirates alone.”

  “Because bringing a pal makes the odds so much better,” I said.

  “I’m telling you, the hideouts are small. I’m not expecting a crowd.” Tarja approached with the pistol. “Now could you please quit screwing around and answer the question? Do you have experience firing a weapon?”

  “To be honest, I have a lot more experience with hand to hand combat,” I said. “I was a kick boxer once upon a time. Not that the skill translates particularly well in space.”

  “Seriously?” said Tarja. “You kick boxed?”

  “Yeah. I was pretty good, believe it or not. But to answer your question, I have fired a pulse pistol before. Small arms training was required to obtain my private investigator’s license. I even have a permit for my own weapon. Never bought one, though. I haven’t had a need for it on Cetie.”

  “I’m assuming you trained at three, ten, and twenty-five meters. What was your contact percentage at twenty-five?”

  I had to wrack my brain a bit. “About forty percent, I think?”

  “Well, that’s a start.” Tarja held the pistol forward. “This is a standard Porter & Cunningham V5 pulse pistol. You probably used something similar, but you used it under Cetie gravity and in atmosphere. Things work different when you’re in outer space. The pulse setting fires energy bursts, but it’s only useful on bare skin. The pulse gets dissipated by space suits, even on the highest settings. That’s by design. If we get into a jam, you’ll have to operate it in projectile mode. It uses zero point five millimeter electrically charged self-expanding harpoon barbs, with a hundred barbs to a clip. Non-lethal, of course. They’ll puncture a suit and deliver their charge to incapacitate the target while backfilling the entrance hole with resin. But you have to be aware of recoil. At two grams apiece, it might not seem like a lot, but they fire at high velocity. So don’t flip out and empty your clip like some action star in a B-grade holoflick, otherwise you’re liable to find yourself flying across the asteroid belt at twenty meters per second. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  She handed the pistol over. “Good. Hold it. Study it. Get used to it. You’ve seen that circular piece of wall art in the main cabin that looks like a dart board? You can use it for target practice. We don’t have a ton of time, but any preparation is better than none, and practice in a variable g environment like we’re dealing with now is useful. Just be sure Ducic is in his cabin before you start. He’s miserable enough as is without getting tasered.”

  I pressed my palm against the grip and hefted it. Because of the momentary low gravity, it felt like a feather. I’d have to get used to that. “Thanks.”

  “And since we’re talking about low gravity space combat, there’s something else I want to introduce you to.” Tarja traversed back to the bag and pulled out a metal contraption, thirty centimeter
s long and oval-shaped. Ringed around the sides were a series of spring-loaded barbs. They looked sharp.

  “These are self-driving asteroid crampons,” said Tarja. “They hook into the boots of your spacesuit. They’re pressure driven, with smart sensors to distinguish between artificial flooring and rock, which means they won’t go off indoors. These suckers will help keep you attached to hunks of space rock like the one we’re heading to, even if they only pull ten-thousandths of a g. Help is the operative word, though. You can’t move too fast, or jump, or celebrate too hard, or pull any other dumbass shenanigans. Understand?”

  I accepted the contraption. “I think I’ve got the general idea.”

  “I’d tell you to practice using the crampons,” said Tarja, ”but they won’t work in my ship unless I took the safeties off, and if I were to do that, you’d still fail to find traction on the hard metal. And I’d have to kill you for scratching the floors up something fierce.”

  “Neither one of us wants that,” I said. “Although now that you mention your hatred of scuffs and scratches, I’m rethinking whether or not to follow your advice about training with the pulse pistol.”

  Tarja smiled, but the expression faded as she realized her slip. “You’ve got my blessing to practice. But don’t miss the target more than a half-dozen times. Otherwise I’ll be forced to come up with a punishment befitting the crime. I’m thinking a non-lethal pulse round to your squishy bits.”

  I wanted to argue I was hard as a rock, but then I caught her meaning.

  She headed for the door and paused in mid-stride. “Oh. One more thing. The suits I have are equipped with a dozen swiveling micro thrust nozzles. I highly encourage you to leave their operation up to your Brain. And don’t screw around with them thinking you can go all Buck Rogers on people’s asses, because the propellant they use comes from the same air supply keeping you alive. My suggestion is you only engage them if you get pushed off the asteroid into space, and even then I’d head for the ship. Think you can handle that?”

  I nodded. “As snarky as she can be, my Brain has my best interests at heart. After all, if I stop breathing, things get dicey for her.”

  Under most circumstances, I’d be fine, said Paige. But since I’m not actively hooked up to the Cetie servenets, you’re right. Try not to die.

  I notified her I’d do my best. “So does this mean I’m coming with you?”

  Tarja paused at the door. “Don’t be presumptuous. We’ll talk after your shooting session.”

  15

  TINK.

  The barb made a weak, tinny sound as it impacted the center of the target, a polymer-coated metallic shield with purple and while concentric circles drawn on its face. I’d seen it upon entering the ship and dismissed it as another piece of the décor, but upon taking it down from the wall to remove my spent barbs, I’d found the thing had a locking forearm attachment on the other side. I’d yet to see her in action, and I’d already started to theorize Tarja was more superhero than bounty hunter. It all depended on what alloy she claimed the shield was made of.

  “Nice shot,” said Carl. “Ready for the next?”

  I bumped my head into the floor at the back of the main cabin. At first, I’d started with the basics: torso facing the target, arms squared, shots fired under constant accelerations of at least half a g. As I’d gotten more confident, I’d waited for the bumps and jostles and microgravity sessions caused by Tarja’s maneuvers around asteroids. Soon, even that wasn’t enough. Because of the confines of the ship, I couldn’t get more than about five meters from the target, which wouldn’t help refresh the precision portions of my muscle memory, but I could challenge myself in other ways. I’d made Carl apply external stimuli in the forms of pushes and pulls and rotations to get me disoriented before shooting. Even with his unpredictable antics, I’d managed to land my last ten barbs on the target, two of them dead center. I figured that was a win.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Carl bounced off the floor and floated over to me, taking advantage of the current gravitational climate. He turned me to face the back wall, still keeping me upside down.

  “Ready?”

  “Count me down.”

  “Three…two…one…”

  Carl spun me. The room blurred. I flicked out my arm.

  Rich? Tarja.

  I fired. The barb plunked into the side of the bench seats, a good meter from the target’s edge.

  I frowned as I responded to the Brain missive. Yes?

  Come up to the cockpit. We’re almost there.

  I holstered the pistol in a shoulder carrier I’d found among the spacesuits—it was meant to go over a suit, but I’d cinched it to make it work—and headed up the hatch.

  I found Tarja strapped into her chair, staring at the panoramic display—at what, I wasn’t exactly sure. It looked like any other portion of the asteroid belt. Dark and empty, with the occasional far off glimmers and flashes.

  “See it?” asked Tarja.

  I tried to follow her gaze. There, in the center of the display, I spotted what must’ve caught her eye. A rock, little more than a speck at this distance, but larger and brighter than the others around us.

  “Is that TCA…whatever it was?”

  Tarja nodded.

  I squinted. “Am I looking through the Pseudaglas directly or is this superimposed?”

  “It’s a display, but it’s live,” said Tarja. “We’ve got our butt facing the asteroid for the deceleration.”

  I floated idly toward the image. “Is there any reason you stopped us?”

  “We’re still closing, but at a slow constant speed. I didn’t want whoever’s home getting suspicious until we were on top of them.”

  “So there’s actually pirates there?” Despite Tarja’s precautionary measures, I’d expected her rhetoric to be overblown and for the place to be barren. Either that or for it to be a humming hive of scum and villainy, full of tattooed, scar-covered toughs and aliens of a dozen different races all drinking and smoking and injecting hallucinogens like in the holothriller epics.

  The display zoomed in on the rock, undoubtedly in response to Tarja’s Brain command, until it filled the screen. As far as asteroids went, it probably fell somewhere in the small to medium range, oblong, rocky and misshapen with a rough diameter of a few kilometers—a guess which I based on the size of the object tethered to its surface.

  “Is that a…?”

  “Pirate ship. Yes.” Tarja held out a finger. “See that?”

  For a moment, I couldn’t tell what she was referring to, but as the asteroid rotated, Tau Ceti’s rays caught something and sent forth a brilliant glimmer. A metal hatch, perhaps five meters across, set into the asteroid’s surface.

  “So they’ve hollowed the place out?” I asked. “To store illicit goods?”

  Tarja ignored me as she unbuckled herself. “We’ll be in range within a few minutes. Here’s what’ll happen. Once we’re close I’ll use the resonant cavity thrusters to ease us down, but I’ll send out a harpoon to tether us to the surface. If they haven’t figured out we’re there at that point, they’ll catch on pretty quick once they sense the harpoon. We’ll drop down and maneuver toward the door using the crampons. You remember what I told you about those, right? Don’t be stupid. From there we’ll pry open the hatch and see what we find.”

  She dropped down the hatch to the main corridor, and I followed her. “So you’re serious? You really think we’ll find pirates?”

  “Do I even need to dignify that with a response?” said Tarja. “You think someone just forgot a ship there?”

  We picked up Carl in our wake as we made for the airlocks. “Okay, I’ll admit that was dumb. What I meant was, what exactly do you think we’re getting into? How many pirates do you think we’ll find? And packing what kind of heat?”

  “How the heck would I know?” said Tarja. “Do you think I’m psychic?”

  I didn’t, but I
also didn’t think the woman was being totally honest with me. After all, as Carl had pointed out, the probability of finding anyone at any of Tarja’s super secret pirate hideouts seemed astonishingly low, yet we’d happened upon a ship at the very first asteroid we’d visited. What were the chances?

  Tarja pointed me toward the suits as she hooked air bottles into the back of her own and strapped on a few kilos of firepower. “I monitored your shooting while I navigated us in. As you might’ve surmised, I think you’re good enough that you won’t endanger me just by being around—although I’m still not sure how you’ll do in zero g on the face of an asteroid, so go slow with the crampons at first. Use exaggerated motions, and always stay behind me. If things go south in a hurry, I don’t want to have to try to shoot around you. Understand?”

  I shrugged into the suit, feeling it self-adjust to my thick legs and meaty neck. I still couldn’t totally believe what I was about to get myself into.

  Carl gave me a confident nod. “You’ve got this, Rich. Slow and steady.” He helped me with the holster. “Remember. Use both hands for stability when firing.”

  Paige must’ve kept him abreast of my mental state, because as I snapped my helmet into place, he followed that up with, And be careful, will you? I don’t believe Tarja means us any harm, but still… I don’t totally trust her.

  It was just the thing I wanted to hear before having the airlock doors snap shut behind me.

  16

  Silence once again enveloped me as the airlock doors opened. I stood in the mouth of the Samus Aran, gripping a handhold for purchase, and stared at the cold, barren expanse of rock and ice below us.

  While I’d found Varuna’s landscape hauntingly beautiful, the surface of the pirate’s den instilled in me a chill fear. The horizon curved away perilously fast, a constant reminder of the asteroid’s infinitesimal stature and negligible gravitational field. Its pockmarked grey surface had never tasted an atmosphere’s breath, nor had it felt the touch of a foot or the pull of a root. It floated there, lifeless, cold, and defenseless—an insignificant speck of dust in the vast wasteland of space. And it still dwarfed me.