Aces

by Alanson, Craig

  Kaylee asked “What is a decaying orbit?”

  “Oh, that’s just, uh,” Jen averted her eyes, “it’s a navigation term. It means their section of the ship is in a different orbit now than we are. So, uh, the two pieces of the ship are moving further apart.”

  Manny blinked away his own tears, and shot her a look. He knew she was lying. “What are we going to do?”

  Jen gave up trying to make her ribs comfortable. If she didn’t breathe too deeply, it was manageable. She coughed again, spitting up blood. One of her lungs must be punctured. “We do what the captain said. When the pirates come aboard, we get out of their way. They take what they want, go away, and we wait for the Navy.”

  “No.” Kaylee looked up, her mouth set in a hard line. “Don’t talk to us like we’re children, Jen. When the pirates have what they want, they’re going to kill everybody. They can’t leave witnesses.”

  “I, um-” Jen was taken aback.

  “You know it’s true,” Kaylee said, standing up and placing her hands on her hips, “they tried to kill our Dad.”

  Manny nodded. “We need to slow them down, give the Navy time to get here, right?”

  “Kids, I-” Jen realized the ‘kids’ wasn’t the best thing to say at that time. Still, what did it matter what she said? Kaylee was absolutely right. She was responsible for the children’s live now, and the best way to keep them safe was to make sure the pirates never got aboard. “Kaylee, Manny, I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know what will happen. I do know that if the two of you try to fight the pirates, they will hurt you. Besides, I can’t stop them, I don’t have any weapons.” Jen said regretfully.

  “Jen, what if-" an idea was forming in Manny's head, "what if we did have a weapon? A big one?”

  “Then I’d blast them, Manny.” Jen answered weakly.

  He put his arms across his chest and stared her straight in the eye. “I’m serious.” It would have been comical, the twelve year old boy lecturing the veteran starship crewman, if the situation had not been so serious. “Why can’t we ram them? With this part of the ship? We have the engines.”

  Jen was taken aback. “Because, Manny, that would be very dangerous. Even if I had the codes to control the engines, they’re shut down. The nav computer is in the command section, and secondary systems like-“ She stopped, her jaw dropped open, and she stared off into space for a moment. Her brain wasn’t working very well. “Manny, you may have a good idea," she said very slowly, thinking it through. "I can’t fire the main engines, but I can control the thrusters from here. We could push ourselves sideways, and knock their little ship around like a ping pong ball. Before we do that, we would need to be somewhere deep inside the ship, someplace safe.”

  Kaylee sniffed, and dabbed tears off her cheeks. “What place is safer than here? You told us before, the sickbay has its own power and air.”

  Jen looked around. “I guess you’re right.” She bit her lip. “This is going to be dangerous, and I don’t have any authority to put passengers into danger.” The bad guys will likely kill us all anyway, once they’re aboard, she said to herself. “So I’m going to have to deputize you both as starship crew.” Jen had intended the gesture as a way to make sure they did exactly what she told them to, but the two children both got such serious looks on their faces that Jen almost laughed. Her eyes unfocused briefly, and she experienced a fit of dizziness. It would not be long, she knew, before she would not be able to keep her eyes open. “Hold up your right hands. Do you swear to follow my orders to the letter, no fooling, and to perform your duties to the best of your abilities, as crew members of the Universal Transport starship Atlas Challenger?” She used the ship’s full name to lend weight to her words.

  “I do.” Kaylee said.

  “Me too.” Manny whispered. Starship crewman. He was twelve years old. Wait until the boneheads at school back on Earth heard about this. For a moment, he forgot about their predicament and the danger his parents were in. “What do we do?”

  “You know how adults talk down to you sometimes, because you’re children?” Jen saw Kaylee knowingly roll her eyes. “I’m not going to do that, I’m going to tell you the truth, straight out. I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake. Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it fast. Here’s the plan.”

  Kaylee and Manny watched the pirate ship approach through the viewport. With the ship's proximity radar buring only intermittently through the jamming, the children’s eyes were the only accurate way Jen could tell where, and how close, the pirate ship was. Unable to leave sickbay herself, she had sent them to one of the two observation decks, which aboard the transport ship was nothing more than a small compartment with several portholes which provided views in multiple directions. Kaylee reported back that they couldn’t see anything, so Jen had sent them running to the other observation deck. From there, they could see the bottom of the pirate ship, it was approaching slowly, intending to latch onto on cargo pod 4, and Manny saw what he recognized as magnetic grapples. The fact that he recognized the grapples from watching video programs didn’t make his opinion any less valid to Jen. Kaylee pointed the portable laser rangefinder through the porthole at the pirate ship. Jen had shown her how to use it, it was easy. “Jen, it says the range is 178 meters, closing at two meters per second.”

  The other ship was already quite close, almost too close. “Good work! Kaylee, Manny, there is going to be a hard bump when we ram the pirates. I want you to go back out into the corridor, run quickly.”

  “OK,” Kaylee reported, slightly out of breath, “we’re there. What do we do?”

  “Just to your left there are three closets, tall, thin doors that are numbered. Closet number 1 has bins of clothing in it. I need you to drag the bins out to make room, take the clothing out of the bins, then the two of you get into the closet and pack as many clothes around you as you can before you shut the door. You need the clothing as cushions, to protect you when we hit.” Jen’s head was spinning as she spoke. “Can you do that, and hurry?”

  “Affirmative!” Manny replied.

  They moved as quickly as they could. The bins were heavy, and wedged in tight, it was a struggle to get them out. Kaylee climbed up and grasped the topmost bin, yanking on it. She fell backward, and the bin fell on top of her, bursting open. It was filled with crew uniform work clothes, shirts and pants. She moved to yank on the second bin, when Manny held her arm. “We can get on top there, Kaylee.”

  Kaylee studied the closet. With the top bin out, there was just enough room for the two of them. Less room meant less space for them to get banged around. And tracks kept the bins from moving up and down, so they wouldn’t be crushed. “Good idea, up you go.”

  Manny climbed up and backed in, then reached down as Kaylee handed a pile of shirts to him. “Hurry, Kaylee!”

  She climbed up next to him, wriggling backwards, and bunching up the shirts next to her. Then she reached down and slid the door- “Jen, won’t we be locked in here if I close the door?”

  Good thinking, girl, Jen thought to herself. “No, there is an emergency release on the inside, a big orange handle, at the top and bottom, do you see it?”

  “Yes, I see it!”

  “Good. It will be dark once you close the door, OK?”

  “We’ll be OK. The door is closed.”

  Jen checked her wristwatch. The pirate ship would have slowed down its approach as it got closer, so that it would be barely moving once it made contact. She wanted to make sure the pirates were close enough so they didn’t have a chance to get out of the way, but far enough so the Ace could build up speed before the collision. She verified that the portable console had positive control of the thrusters, and that the thruster units were still operational. A few more seconds.

  The pirate Rene Valjean, AKA ‘Ted Miller’, a criminal wanted by law enforcement authorities on all human-occupied planets, had considered a plan to get aboard the transport by posing as doctors, then take over the ship. He had di
scarded that idea early on, because he couldn’t be sure the crew wouldn’t be able to regain control remotely, and because he figured the ‘doctors’ would be scanned for weapons in the shuttle bay. His current plan was perfect. Knock out the command section with a low-yield warhead, and then easily deal with one or two remaining crewmen in the cargo section. Just to be sure, destroy the transport’s shuttle, so they couldn’t interfere. Then, dock with the crippled ship, get aboard, find the object, and get away before the Navy figured out something was wrong. Finally, restart freighter’s fusion reactor and set explosive charges there, to make sure there were no witnesses left behind. and not way for anyone to know what the pirates had taken. Easy. So far, the only glitch in the plan was the shuttle crew was alive, which irritated Valjean, but three people stranded on a barren planet in suits that were running out of air was not actually any sort of problem. When their oxygen bottles began running low, the three men might wish they'd died aboard the shuttle. Quickly and painlessly.

  Valjean pulled off the collar that had projected the holographic image of ‘Ted Miller’ over his face and altered his voice. Without the holoprojector, Valjean was not at all bland and friendly looking. His longish dark hair matched his dark eyes, although it wasn't his hair that made people frightened of him. There was something feral, predatory, about his eyes, that made even his fellow partners in crime wary of crossing him.

  “Aaah.” Valjean made a choking sound as he rubbed his throat. The collar always irritated him. “I hate wearing that damned thing, What are you looking at?”

  Taney, the group’s muscular weapons and explosives expert, grinned wide, his white teeth gleaming against his dark skin. “Glad to have you back, Boss. That Ted Miller guy looks like a chump.”

  “He’s supposed to be a chump, he makes the other chumps,” Valjean gestured toward the freighter’s cargo section on the Nightengale’s view screen, “feel all warm and fuzzy, puts them off their guard.” Not that it had mattered much, since Nightengale was armed and the freighter was not.

  “Dooley, that rust bucket of yours goes first,” Valjean pointed to Dooley’s combat robot, which was resting in a corner, “in case there are any surprises when we force the airlock.” Dooley had bought the combat unit third-hand on the black market, and Valjean didn’t trust it. Combat bots were twitchy, and Dooley wasn’t the best programmer in the Orion Arm. The thing had come close to freezing up in simulations, and it still had a nagging personality disorder left over from whoever the previous owner was. Some idiot had programmed it with a rudimentary, and unhelpful, sense of humor that bordered on disobedience. Dooley couldn’t fix that problem, despite wiping the memory twice.

  “Rocko will get the job done, Boss,” Dooley assured Valjean, “I’ll see to it.”

  Valjean’s eyes narrowed. Without the robot, he didn’t need Dooley for much. Dooley irritated Valjean, Dooley had been hired for his expertise with computers, but beyond that, Valjean considered him sort of a dim bulb in the brain department, and Dooley looked it, with his boyish, curly red hair, and easy smile. Valjean didn’t trust him. In fact, Valjean figured Dooley would not be alive long, just long enough to be useful. One less to share the money. For right now, Valjean might need ‘Rocko’, which was the idiotic name Dooley called his toy. “You do that. If that thing freezes up, I’ll shoot you both.”

  “Thirty meters, Boss.” Becker called out from the pilot’s station. “Slowing to one meter per second.”

  Valjean nodded silently. Becker was ex-Navy, a skilled pilot, and good in a fight. He still kept his blonde hair short, in a military style crew cut. Otherwise, he was vain, greedy, untrustworthy. Just the sort Valjean needed. A man with simple motivations is a predictable man. Valjean liked predictable people, they could be manipulated and controlled. Until he didn’t need them any more.

  Rocko, who had been motionless but alert, turned toward Dooley, as the pirate mechanic activated it with the remote control. “Rocko, you’re going in first. You see anyone, you blast them, you got that?”

  “I go in first, in case someone is shooting at us.”

  “That’s right, you’re our combat ready, killing machine, Rocko.” Dooley said, pleased.

  “Twenty meters, Boss.” Becker said.

  “One question,” Rocko asked, looking Dooley right in the eye. “What’s in it for me?”

  “What?! Why, you piece of junk, I should-“ Dooley never finished his thought, because he was drowned out by a shout from Becker.

  In Ace’s sickbay, Jen blinked to make her eyes focus again. She was feeling nauseous and having trouble concentrating. The pain in her ribs was so sharp at times that tears flooded her eyes. It was time, now or never. She took extra pleasure in holding up her middle finger, and pressing the Activate key with it.

  Ace’s portside thrusters fired, all of them, full on. Such maneuvers were reserved for dire emergencies, to avoid a collision. If the ship’s AI had been online, Jen would not have been able to order the thrusters into such a long full power burn. Thank goodness for small favors, she told herself, as the giant, bulky freighter lurched to starboard. She held onto the remote console with one hand and the bed with her other hand, and braced for impact.

  Becker saw the enormous transport ship suddenly looming closer. For a split second, he froze. A collision seemed inevitable. Now THIS, he thought, was the type of thing that damned simulator training really should cover! He shouted for people to hang on, or something like that, and kicked his ship to starboard. No time for whimpy thrusters, he knew, their only chance was to get the ship pointed away and fire the main engines, get out of Dodge pronto. The ship slewed around violently, and he just got the main engine fuel pumps up to full pressure, when everything went black.

  Ace smacked the little pirate ship hard, like a bus hitting a bicycle. The impact made both ships shudder, and stove in a hundred meters of cargo pod 4, venting air and cargo into space. Nightengale’s stern was crushed, her main engines destroyed, fuel tanks punctured. The fuel exploded in a brief fireball which enveloped and scorched the rear of the ship, then the fuel ran out of oxygen in the vacuum of space, and the fire went out. The two damaged combatants drifted apart, with Ace’s thrusters popping wildly to steady the ship, and Nightengale spinning, lifeless, looking dead and out of the fight.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Whoo-hoo!” Schroeder whooped, and punched his fist in the air. He had been watching the pirate ship approach his ship, watching with binoculars through the viewport, feeling helpless. “Ja!”

  Gina and Seth exchanged a glance, surprised. ‘Whoo-hoo’? They had never heard Schroeder even come close to a whoop before. “Captain, what’s going on?”

  Schroeder kept the binos pressed to the viewport and held up one hand for silence, until the rotation of the command section caused the two ships to fall out of view. He turned to Joy and his crew. “We have an answer; Jen is alive. And I believe that means your children are being taken care of, Ms. San-, Joy. Ace just rammed the Nightengale, stove in her whole aft propulsion section!”

  Schroeder thought Joy would recognize his announcement as good news, but she had the opposite reaction. “Jen rammed the pirate ship? With my children aboard?

  Schroeder moved quickly to reassure her. “Joy, I am certain that Jen made sure they were somewhere safe first. The Ace is so much larger than the pirate ship that it wasn’t a dangerous maneuver for our ship. Keep in mind that Jen is making the best of a bad situation, she realizes that your children are in much greater danger if the pirates get aboard.”

  Gina added “Captain’s right, Joy. Jen’s doing the best she can over there.”

  The best Jen could was not very good at all, right then. Jen was unconscious. The collision was not very violent, she hadn’t been flung across the room again, or knocked out. The strain of keeping awake and alert, the loss of blood, her difficulty breathing, being on duty rather than resting, had caught up to her. She slumped in the bed, her arms went slack, and the remote console fell to th
e deck.

  What saved Valjean and his crew was their being securely strapped into seats for the docking maneuver. The initial shock had been violent, more than the inertial dampening system could compensate for. Power then snapped briefly off, and they lost artificial gravity and all control over the ship, which was spinning wildly. The power came back on after three terrifying seconds. Becker fought to get the ship stabilized, in addition to the spin induced by the collision, they were venting air, fuel and other substances, all of which knocked the ship about.

  Once the ship was no longer spinning like a top, a queasy Valjean ordered his crew to assess the damage, quickly, with priority given to making sure the hypercomm jammer was still working. The last thing he needed was for someone aboard the transport to have the opportunity to signal the Navy for help. Valjean checked on that system himself, it had been offline only briefly, while the power was out. Not enough time for a distress call to have been sent out.

  “We ain’t going nowhere, least, not in normal space. The main jets are gone, crushed or torn clean off. We lost almost all the fuel, too.” Becker said disgustedly as he wiped his hands on a rag and sat down heavily in the pilot seat. He and Dooley had just returned from checking on the reactor. “Fusion reactor’s still putting out power, and the Jump engines will hold a charge, so we can get out of here.”

  “We’re not going anywhere!” Valjean snarled. “Not till we get what we came for.”

  “Hey, Boss, in case it slipped your attention, this ship is beat up and out of this fight.” Becker protested.

  “So we use our shuttle!” Valjean shouted.

  “Uh, bad news on that, boss,” Dooley said reluctantly. It was never a good idea to bring bad news to Valjean. Especially not when the boss was angry. There was, however, no way around it. Nightengale/Isaac Newton was not big enough for an internal shuttle bay, instead, the shuttle attached to the side of the ship. Being outside, it had been vulnerable to flying debris, and it got hit. “The shuttle’s main fuel tank was punctured, it’s out of fuel. And there’s some engine damage.” Seeing the outraged expression on Valjean’s face, Dooley stammered to add “No-no-nothing we can’t fix, b-boss. It’ll take time. And f-fuel.”