by Jason LaPier
“What the hell makes you think I do?”
“You’re a goddamn operator!” Runstom yelled. “They’re coming back around – do something, and do it fast!”
Jax looked at his screen in disbelief. He closed his eyes for a second, took a breath, and imagined himself caught in an unexpected rainstorm. He opened his eyes.
SYSTEM READY.
CONTACT COMPUTER MAINTENANCE MODE ACTIVATED. PLEASE ENTER COMMAND.
> HELP
AVAILABLE FUNCTIONS: LIST-CONTACTS, INSPECT-CONTACT, CONFIG-CONTACT, CONFIG-AUTO-TURRET, CONFIG-ZOOM
> LIST-CONTACTS
CURRENT CONTACTS:
1 -> COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4
2 -> COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4
> INSPECT-CONTACT(1)
COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4
BEARING: 195, -15
CONTACT-TYPE: FRIENDLY
CONDITION: NO DAMAGE
APPROXIMATE SIZE: 18 TONS
CREW: 4
WEAPONS: 4 FRONT-MOUNTED HEAVY LASERS, 2 SIDE-MOUNTED SPACE TORPEDO LAUNCHERS
DRIVE: SHORT-RANGE, WARP-CAPABLE
> CONFIG-CONTACT(1)
CHOOSE FROM MUTABLE PROPERTIES:
1 -> CONTACT-TYPE
> 1
ENTER NEW VALUE FOR PROPERTY “CONTACT-TYPE” [FRIENDLY]:
> HOSTILE
VERIFY ON CONTACT “COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4” CHANGE PROPERTY “CONTACT-TYPE” FROM “FRIENDLY” TO “HOSTILE” [Y/N]:
> Y
Jax looked up from the screen and at the contact map. One of the arrows turned from green to red.
Runstom laughed heartily. “Yes! Do the other one!”
Jax tapped away at the keys, and a few seconds later both arrows were red.
“Arming the auto-turret,” Runstom said. He paused, looking at the contact map.
“What’s wrong?”
“One of them is coming back in close. The other one is hanging back, just slowly circling us. I think the one coming in close means to board us.”
“Really?” Jax’s brain seemed to experience some sort of traffic jam as it tried to imagine the possibilities of what might happen if gangbangers boarded the transport.
“Yeah,” Runstom said. He seemed to be thinking out loud. “The Space Wasters probably want to find out who it was that stole one of their stolen ships. Plus, it’s pretty valuable property to them – they probably want it back in one piece. That’s why the first shots were a very carefully placed barrage intended to take out the thrusters, so we couldn’t get away.”
Jax thought about this for a moment while they both watched the arrows on the contact map. “And they probably knew the contact computer wouldn’t fight back, since it’s one of their own ships.”
“Yeah, probably,” Runstom said. “Time to play a little rope-a-dope,” he added, quietly.
“What-a-what?”
“Rope-a-dope. We lie here helpless and let them get close. We gotta make sure we hit ’em hard. If they slow down to get close to us, the auto-turret will have a much easier time blasting those bastards to bits.”
Jax nodded, not so sure of the plan, but not willing to question the officer right at the moment. They both sat in silence, holding their breath for the next several seconds. One of the red arrows slowly ticked toward the center of the contact map.
“Okay,” Runstom said to himself. “Right … about … NOW!” He slapped a button on his panel. Nothing happened, as far as Jax could tell. Runstom slapped it again. “What the fuck!” He slapped it again. The red arrow ticked closer, but no weapons fire was incoming.
On Jax’s terminal, a message appeared repeatedly, in sync with Runstom’s frantic button-slapping.
UNABLE TO ACTIVATE AUTO-TURRET. AUTO-TURRET PROPERTY “POWER LEVEL” CURRENT VALUE: 0. REQUIRED VALUE FOR ACTIVATION [1..9].
UNABLE TO ACTIVATE AUTO-TURRET. AUTO-TURRET PROPERTY “POWER LEVEL” CURRENT VALUE: 0. REQUIRED VALUE FOR ACTIVATION [1..9].
UNABLE TO ACTIVATE AUTO-TURRET. AUTO-TURRET PROPERTY “POWER LEVEL” CURRENT VALUE: 0. REQUIRED VALUE FOR ACTIVATION [1..9].
> CONFIG-AUTO-TURRET
CHOOSE FROM MUTABLE PROPERTIES:
1 -> POWER LEVEL
2 -> TARGET PREFERENCE
> 1
ENTER NEW VALUE FOR PROPERTY “POWER LEVEL” [0/0..9]:
> 9
VERIFY ON AUTO-TURRET CHANGE PROPERTY “POWER LEVEL” FROM “0” TO “9” [Y/N]:
> Y
“Try—” Jax started to say, but the ship’s sharp, electronic voice interrupted him.
“Auto-turret activated at power level nine.”
Runstom slapped the button again.
“Target acquired.”
High-pitched screaming erupted from somewhere above the cockpit and the viewport lit up with blinding white light. A series of thundering explosions quickly followed and their personnel vessel shuddered and began to spin in a sickening manner, sending the stars spiraling in no particularly identifiable pattern. Jax was still strapped in, but he grabbed onto his station and held on for dear life.
“That was too close!” Runstom said, finally getting the ship to stabilize by wrenching on the throttle. He leaned over to look at the contact map. Only one arrow remained, still fairly distant from the center. “What the – I think we vaporized him!”
“Warning,” the electronic voice said soothingly. “Battery level is now critical. Auto-turret deactivated.”
“Oops,” Jax said.
“What? What do you mean, ‘oops’?”
“Well,” Jax said timidly. “I may have jacked up the power on the auto-turret a little too high.” He looked down at his screen.
UNABLE TO ACTIVATE AUTO-TURRET. AUTO-TURRET PROPERTY “POWER LEVEL” CURRENT VALUE: 9. REQUIRED VALUE FOR ACTIVATION [0..2].
He reconfigured the turret for power level two, the most it could handle at the moment. “We’ll be—”
“Auto-turret activated at power level two.”
“I don’t like the sounds of that,” Runstom said. He turned their ship around until the arrow was in the forward section of the contact map. They could see the Space Waste fighter ship in the distance through their viewport. Jax wasn’t really sure if it was getting closer, but he had to assume it was. “I wish this stupid auto-turret could target a specific part of that fighter,” the officer continued. “Like his thrusters. Then we’d be on a little more even ground.”
“I saw a target preference setting somewhere,” Jax said, tapping at the keyboard. “Okay, it’s set to target ‘engines/thrusters’.”
“Target acquired. Error. Unable to identify adequate line of sight to targeting preference. Resuming default firing mode.”
The high-pitched screech emitted from above them again, but this time it sounded small and distant. A streak of white light appeared, originating from the top of the viewport and fading into the distance ahead of them. A few seconds later, streaks of light came from the other direction, sporadically, all around their view. Popping sounds could be heard here and there and the cockpit shuddered and jiggled.
“So much for taking out their thrusters,” Runstom muttered.
“What are our chances?”
“Well.” Runstom’s mouth twisted around as if he were chewing on his thoughts. “This personnel ship has a lot of armor, especially front-side. It can take a beating head-on. Once this guy gets close though, he’ll probably bullet right past us, make a quick maneuver and hit us before we can get turned around to face him. Probably dive under us and hit us from down there where the auto-turret can’t get to him.”
“Communications are off-line,” the ship said as pulses of laser fire pounded away at it.
“So,” Jax said. “Not so good.”
“Nope.” Runstom waggled the throttle in frustration. “If we could just get close enough to Terro’s gravity, we could land.” The view bobbed and slid side to side, slowly. “These damn stabilizers are only giving us rotational movement. I need thru
st!”
“Warning. Proximity alert.”
They looked at the contact map. Two more red arrows came in from the right side. Jax leaned over to look out the viewport off to the starboard. “There’s two more ships coming in. Looks like they’re going to meet up with this guy. Maybe come at us with full force? Triple team?”
Runstom was quiet. Jax saw a look of hopelessness cross the other man’s face.
The small barrage that had been peppering the personnel vessel stopped. They could see the fighter now it was so close. It turned off to face the other two ships, and they could see streaks of light flying between them from left to right and back.
“What the hell?” they both said in unison.
After a few dozen seconds, the fighter peeled off and began to head in their general direction again, its movement erratic.
“I think he’s trying to out-maneuver torpedoes,” Runstom said as they watched. “Wait a sec – the red arrows – they’re hostile to this ship, because this is a Space Waste ship! Those must be ModPol patrol ships! The ones that were trying to catch up with us back at the superliner!”
A moment later, explosions appeared across the fighter and the two men cheered.
“Target disabled.”
“Shit,” Runstom said. “Looks like they’re going to bring us in after all.” He looked over at the operator, frowning. “Sorry, Jax.”
“I suppose I should be happy we’re still alive,” he said grimly, but he couldn’t convince himself of that argument.
“Target acquired,” the computer said.
“What?” Runstom’s eyes widened. “Those are friendlies! Tell that goddamn thing those are friendlies!”
Jax hammered away at the keyboard. He tried to ignore the screeching of their auto-turret and the sudden alarming sound of incoming laser fire. Rather than trying to configure the contact settings, he managed to set the auto-turret back to power level zero.
“Auto-turret disabled.”
“This is unbelievable,” Runstom said. “I can’t get the fucking com on-line. We’re sitting ducks and we have no way of hailing them.” He looked up. “At least we stopped shooting at them. Once they realize we’re disabled, they should just try to—”
“Warning. Proximity alert.”
“It’s a torpedo!” Jax yelled, looking at the contact-map holo.
Runstom grabbed the stick and started turning the ship. “Our thrusters are already blown. If we can get the torpedo to hit back there, it will do the least amount of damage. We might be able to keep Life Support.”
“Warning,” the computer said. “Collision imminent. Impact in twenty seconds.”
A few minutes later, they were streaking through the atmosphere of Terroneous. It was all the time Runstom had put in with the flight simulator back at the precinct that gave him some tricks to try with the stabilizer thrusters. By combining that with a whole bag of blind luck, they were actually headed in the right direction. The torpedo blast at the rear of the vessel had sent them hurling through space at an angle, like a colored billiard ball getting whacked by the cue ball. Runstom managed to steer them enough toward the moon to catch its gravity. Had they missed it, they would have gone straight on to being caught in Barnard-5’s gravity, where they would have been crushed under their own weight as they approached the unstable surface of the gas giant.
Instead they had to contend with a very stable surface rising up to meet them much faster than was necessary. Thankfully, Jax was completely silent for the time being. No screaming about how they were sure to die, no yelling at Runstom to do something. He just sat there and let the officer do his job. He either had complete faith in Runstom or just realized there was nothing he could do to help the situation except shut up and stay out of the way.
Runstom didn’t exactly have a lot of faith in his own piloting abilities. He actually rarely flew spaceships these days. He’d spent a lot of time with the one- and two-man patrol ships, of course, but his experience with anything larger than that was mostly via simulation. Docking with other ships in space was pretty easy, no matter what the ship – the computer could handle most of the maneuvering in that case. Landing on the surface of a planet was generally not recommended. Your typical planet had all kinds of waystations and orbiting docks and the like that spaceships could come to. Transportation to and from the surface of the planet was handled by sub-orbital shuttles and strato-elevators and whatnot. It was much more efficient to build Warp/Xarp-capable vessels without landing gear, tons of retro thrusters, huge take-off thrusters, or even wings (in the traditional sense, made for lifting and supporting a craft in an atmosphere).
They had only one advantage: the personnel transport was designed to be flexible enough to have the ability to make a surface-based attack. It didn’t have any of the taking-off components, of course; the idea being that a cluster of these ships could land hard and fast, blitzkrieg-style. If the soldiers on board were able to dominate their objective, then another shuttle could come down and retrieve them later. If they failed in their mission, there was no going back.
Runstom fussed with the controls, trying to find the switch that would extend the shock-system at the bottom of the ship. Finally he found what he was looking for.
“Surface-landing sequence initiated.” The computer’s voice was barely audible over the sudden rush of wind. Some lights came on, turning the whole cockpit yellow. A steadily increasing beeping sound began to pierce through all the white noise. Runstom guessed that was an indicator for the distance to the ground.
They felt the vessel shudder as it attempted to right itself, keeping level so the shocks on the bottom would hit the surface squarely. Runstom let go of the controls. There wasn’t much he could do from here, except let the ship do its thing. He looked at Jax, who just nodded and checked his seat restraints for the umpteenth time. The beeping got faster and faster. It was the only warning they had before they hit.
It took them a few minutes to recover from the impact. They’d both probably experienced multiple mini-heart attacks during the descent and had to work hard to control their breathing. Jax dry-heaved a couple of times; since they hadn’t eaten much of anything during the Xarp trip, there was little matter to vomit.
Finally Runstom unstrapped himself. “Take your time, catch your breath,” he said to Jax, his own voice coming out haggard and weak. “I’m going to look around.”
He opened the cockpit door and stepped into the main bay of the vessel, closing the cockpit behind him. Guns, armor, ammo, packages of food and water, everything was all over the place, like it’d been hit by a tornado. The whole ship sat at a funny angle, not exactly level. He carefully stepped through the mess and approached the outer hatchway. He reached for the switch, then instinctively bent down and picked up a nearby rifle instead. He checked to see that it was loaded, turned off the safety, and opened the hatch.
They were in the middle of a field of blue-green ground vegetation. It was mostly quiet, the only sound being the crackle of something underneath the ship, the hiss of air as the retro-thrusters vented something, and the flap of something that sounded like plastic above him. There was a distinct smell of burning plant matter mixed with the unnatural smell of melted metal and plastic. There was no sign of life in the immediate area, so he stepped out. Holding his rifle, he stalked all around the landing area and scanned the horizons. Other than some taller, tree-like vegetation in one direction and hills in another, he didn’t see much of anything. A few small, avian-type creatures flew about the blue-gray sky in the distance.
He turned back inward, toward the ship. The grass-like stuff on the ground was all scorched and blackened in a rough circle around the vessel. The shock system was exposed and he could see the pneumatic columns, asymmetric in their lengths, accounting for the lopsidedness of the transport. A couple of white parachutes hung from small hatches somewhere out of the top of the ship and flapped about in the light breeze.
Runstom slung the rifle over his shoul
der and came around to the back of ship just as Jax was coming out of the rear hatchway.
“Hey,” Jax said, his voice rough. He had a couple of boxes in his hands. “You hungry? I’m starving.”
“Yeah,” Runstom said, smiling. “We’re alive. This is going to be the best-tasting meal you’ve ever eaten.”
A few hours later they were trekking through the wilderness. Most of the electronic equipment on board was damaged in the rough landing, but there were a few packs of low-tech survival gear. Compasses, maps, ocular-zoom-scopes, flares, fireboxes, hatchets, blankets, and even a couple of tents.
Jax knew everything there was to know about Terroneous because Runstom knew it and recited it as they prepared to set out. As part of his ModPol training, he was required to learn the minimal stats of every inhabitable rock in the Barnard system. Jax wasn’t sure why he was getting the whole spiel, but he thought the officer might have intended to make him feel safe in the emptiness and relative silence of the wilderness.
So Jax learned that Terroneous was pretty hospitable to life as far as celestial bodies go. That it had an atmosphere made up of a lot of nitrogen and a fair amount of oxygen. Not as much O2 as you get in most domes, which tend to overdo it a little, but enough to sustain humans, especially if they stick around long enough to get used to it. Gravity around 8.2 meters per second squared. Most importantly, a magnetic field and magnetic poles at either end of its rotational axis. It was large for a moon, but quite a bit smaller than the average non-gaseous planet.
According to Runstom, the roughest part about life on Terroneous was the lack of sunlight. He explained that while the moon rotates on a nice steady basis, resulting in the same effect of night and day that you’d get on a regular planet, it also revolves in its orbit around the gas giant Barnard-5, causing it to get blocked from the sun altogether for several days at a time. Fortunately, Barnard-5 radiated enough heat to keep Terroneous from becoming inhospitably cold, despite the extended lack of sun exposure. But even with the comfort of heat, the prolonged darkness could be taxing for some people.
They had a map of Terroneous. They’d pulled it out of an aging military-issue paper atlas, so it wasn’t exactly up-to-the-minute accurate, but it showed them the handful of locations with any civilization. They managed to get a vague geo-location out of the ship-board computer before the power died completely. The solar panels were damaged beyond repair, along with just about every other feature of the personnel transport. It was just as well, because the sun was disappearing behind the edge of B-5 and they had no idea when it would be back. They took survival supplies and a rifle for each of them. Runstom said it’d be wise to have some weapons in case they had to hunt for food or fight off indigenous predators. Also there was some mumble about Terroneous being a fairly lawless planet. Jax hadn’t quite caught the words exactly, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.
