Pirates of the Outrigger Rift

by Gary Jonas

  “Yeah, he sounded real reasonable,” Chandler said. “Let’s get out of here quick.”

  Hank angled around and pushed his thrusters to the limit as they entered the outskirts of the Rift itself. The ship bucked and rocked as it encountered pockets of space-time distortion. Glenn and his men followed, splitting up into two groups, the smaller following directly behind Hank’s ship while the other veered to one side to try to maneuver into a pincer formation.

  The blaster fire stopped, so apparently his talk with Glenn had at least served to cut down on those itchy trigger fingers.

  What he really feared was that Glenn’s flagship would get close enough to use its tractor beam. If that happened it would be all over.

  Hank dodged rocks and debris, left and right, searching the viewscreen for a landmark in order to get his bearings. He checked the coordinates and knew where he needed to go. Glenn’s ship gained ground slowly but steadily.

  A few of the other Marauders were entering weapons range, so Hank activated the computer-controlled rear guns. He took one of the vessels by surprise and clipped it across the bow. Most of the other shots missed, but it was the psychological effect that counted. He could shoot them, but they couldn’t shoot back. At least not without risking the wrath of their leader. It wasn’t fair, but life was rough.

  Up ahead, Hank saw what he had been looking for: the chance to ditch some of his pursuers.

  Suddenly, the ship was struck hard by something in the debris field. Hank read the severity of the damage in the now-sluggish controls and the warning lights that turned his lime-green status board into a blazing red inferno.

  “Shit.”

  “Is everything all right?” Helen asked.

  “No, everything is not all right. The rear guns have overloaded and it looks like we’re down to fifty percent power on the drive. Our only weapons are forward and we wouldn’t have a chance if we turned to face them head-on.”

  Hank brought up a tactical display on the viewscreen. It plotted the positions of their ship and the pirate fleet, superimposed against a backdrop of the sensor scan and star map of the area. “The good news is that I know where I am.”

  “I’ll take all the good news I can get,” Chandler said.

  “Do you see that large derelict?” Hank asked, pointing to the display of a wrecked starcruiser, ten times the size of their ship, that lay drifting nearby.

  Chandler nodded. “Yes, it’s hard to miss. What about it?”

  “In my younger days, I used to prospect for salvage in the Rift. I think I can guide us through a breach in its hull. We can sit in its belly and attach ourselves there with a magnetic anchor.”

  “Okay,” Chandler said. “Now explain why?”

  “That’s where a little prior knowledge comes in,” Hank said with a smile. “Do you see that debris directly ahead? I know for a fact that there is an old-style nuclear drive pod in it, and some unexpended fuel. We used to stay clear of it. There’s enough radiation to curb your reproductive ability permanently. No salvage value, but I think I can make some use of it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Trust me,” Hank said. “I’m gonna tear them a new one.”

  Chandler moved in close to Hank and looked him in the eye. “Are you sure it will work?”

  Hank looked back. “Truthfully? I have no idea,” he said.

  There was a pause, then Chandler shrugged. “What the hell, let’s go for it. I got nothing better.”

  “Fair enough. Hold on, y’all.” Hank activated the braking thrusters and swerved to port, yelling “Yahoo!” as the ship followed his command. The sudden maneuver overwhelmed the ship’s G-force dampers, throwing the passengers around the cockpit.

  Helen screamed. “You people are crazy! I think I was safer as a hostage.”

  Hank imagined he could hear Glenn cursing him as the larger ship passed over Hank’s position. He managed to take a fair lead by the time Glenn could turn and follow. Building up every bit of speed he could muster on a straight vector, he prepared for the second turn that would take him to the derelict cruiser.

  “Three … two … one … now!”

  Hank kicked in the braking thrusters again and took a nosedive toward the derelict. He cut so close to a large piece of space junk that he clenched his teeth, expecting to hear the screech of metal on metal. Quickly, he reversed thrust and made last-second corrections as the derelict loomed huge on a collision course.

  The hull breach was where he remembered it. The craft slowed to a crawl, and gently he guided it inside. Hovering in place, he spun the ship around to face the outside.

  Hank brought the ship down against the hull with a dull thud. He switched the mags on, anchoring the ship. He fiddled with the forward targeting controls for a moment, then cinched his G-harness tightly about him and crossed his fingers. “You guys really ought to double-check those harnesses. Just a suggestion. Oh, and if there are any cushions back there, I would put them around your head.”

  Helen and Chandler scrambled to comply.

  “Okay, this is going to be bad, isn’t it?” Helen said.

  “Oh yeah, this is going to suck,” Chandler answered.

  As the wave of Marauders passed by in front of them, Hank daintily pressed the fire control button. “Bye-bye.”

  The small ship lurched from the recoil as the forward gun fired. A rolling ball of burning plasma hurtled outward toward the leaking nuclear drive pod.

  Glenn changed course, hoping that his wave of fighters would flush Jensen out. He saw the flash of the gun shoot from the derelict and laughed. It was like a bee stinging a bear’s ass. Merely an annoyance.

  The plasma round raced ahead with perfect precision, hitting the drive unit of the old vagabond ship dead-on. A chain reaction followed as the unexpended fuel around the drive erupted into nuclear fire. Glenn had only enough time to mutter a surprised curse before half his fleet was engulfed.

  The shock waves from the blast buffeted his ship but did no serious damage. “Damn it, Jensen!” Glenn screamed. “That was brilliant! Are you kidding me?”

  Everyone looked at him.

  He looked around at his bridge crew. “What? Didn’t you guys see that? One man in a damned Marauder. Why can’t I get people like that?”

  He decided right then and there that the informant could go to hell. Daughter of a lord onboard or not, Glenn was going to blast Jensen’s ship out of the sky. The so-called informant was not as invulnerable as he seemed, and Glenn was not Thorne; he thought for himself.

  Glenn watched and waited. As soon as the blast debris cleared, he was rewarded with the sight of the stolen Marauder sneaking back out of the derelict that Jensen had used as a protective shield.

  “Target all weapons on that ship,” Glenn ordered.

  “Sir?” Hayes, his second-in-command said. “Are you serious? The informant wants the Randol girl alive. Do you know what will happen if you destroy that ship? He’ll have your head. There’ll be a new pirate lord.”

  Glenn narrowed his eyes at Hayes. “Yes,” he said. “I know exactly what will happen. So”—in a smooth, quick motion Glenn drew his pistol and shot Hayes—“technically, that was self-defense.”

  The fire control officer watched Hayes fall. He snapped to attention and saluted. “The target is locked on, sir.”

  Glenn smiled. “Fire at will.”

  He watched as lances of plasma shot forward and engulfed Jensen’s ship. The stolen Marauder exploded, sending bits of debris to scatter and swirl in the eddies of the Outrigger Rift.

  He turned back to the crew. “That was a waste of potential.” Glenn pointed to Hayes’s body. “Someone dump that out the airlock.”

  Then he pointed to the fire control officer. “You, what’s your name?”

  “Ken, sir.”

  Glenn sighed. “Wow, that’s actually a worse pirate name than mine. Anyway, good shooting. Consider yourself promoted to number two.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


  Maxwell had ordered the interrogation equipment placed in an unused storage warehouse near the docks on Port Royal. He would handle everything relating to the datalifter himself. He didn’t want to take any chances with his entire financial future on the line.

  Stacked crates were scattered across the large room. Tools and other equipment and supplies lay on a worktable, and the girl reclined in the memory probe chair, bound around the ankles, wrists, midsection, and throat. The probe sensors were poised several centimeters above her skull, looking like a crystal crown. She was conscious, but she hadn’t spoken a word to Maxwell since she’d been brought in.

  “Let me tell you what I’m going to do,” Maxwell said. “First, I’m going to perform a complete deconstructive memory probe of your little brain. This will record your every thought, including the account numbers and access codes where you hid my money.”

  She said nothing, so he shrugged and continued.

  “The beautiful thing is that once this process is over, your mind will be essentially gone, and you will be a drooling idiot. I won’t let your body go to waste, though. I’ll ship it down to the corporate flesh stables where someone with unusual tastes will share his demented fantasies with your shell.”

  Still, she didn’t respond.

  “You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble. But in the end you’re insignificant. None of this has been more than a minor setback. I will have my money and my lordship. I will have my organization. And I will have my revenge. You, on the other hand, will have nothing.”

  “You aren’t going to win,” Sai said. “You’re too greedy, too power-hungry to survive. The lords will find some way to eliminate you. You can’t fight them all.”

  “They are decadent fools. They’ve lost the vital spark that allowed their ancestors to become lords, carving out empires no matter the cost. I’m claiming what is mine by right of conquest.”

  He moved to the console and activated the unit. A low hum sounded from within the device, and the probe sensors began to glow in a rhythmic pattern.

  Slowly, they descended and touched her skull. She tried to twist her head, but the restraint on her throat tightened, causing her to gag. She had to remain still or the machine would cause her to pass out.

  Maxwell stared, licking his lips. It was a lovely sight. The young woman who had caused such trouble for him was powerless, vulnerable, and completely in his control.

  The probe started its automated process, and Sai’s body writhed under it. Maxwell knew that it was slowly processing her every thought and memory, tearing them from her in chunks, leaving nothing but dull, empty gray matter.

  A sound from his wrist com interrupted his enjoyment of the spectacle. Maxwell frowned and looked at the display. It was a notification alert. Glenn had initiated an emergency request for contact by sending a certain coded message to a public forum.

  Maxwell walked to the worktable where a full com unit had been installed. He activated the stealthcloak and keyed in Glenn’s com code to call him.

  An image of Glenn sitting in his command chair sprang to life above the workbench. “Hello.”

  “This had better be good,” Maxwell said.

  “I don’t know about good, but you certainly need to hear it.”

  “Yes? What is it?” Maxwell snapped. “You’re interrupting me.” He cast a glance over to where Sai lay strapped into the mind probe.

  “You should know that Chandler, Jensen, and a traitor by the name of Brock made an escape attempt today. They stole a Marauder and we were forced to destroy them and their ship.”

  “So? I couldn’t care less about your petty difficulties.”

  “I’m afraid that they had the Randol girl with them as well,” Glenn said, matter-of-factly.

  “Randol’s daughter? Dead?” Maxwell said.

  “I’m afraid so. There was no other choice. They destroyed more than thirty Marauders in the battle—my men. Moronic as those men were, there was no way that I could let Jensen and the others live after that.”

  “You ordered their deaths?” Maxwell asked.

  “Yes, that’s right, and I’d do the same thing over again.”

  “Who said you could make decisions like that?” Maxwell asked. “You had no right—”

  “I had every right,” Glenn said. “Those were my men.”

  “No! You and every man on that base belong to me.”

  “Really? It seems to me that you need me more than I need you.”

  “You’re playing an even more dangerous game, Glenn,” Maxwell said.

  “You say that, but you see, unlike Thorne, I’m not afraid of you. Together we can have a profitable partnership. You give me information, I make the raids, and we both get rich. Alone I’m just a petty pirate, having to exist on a lucky catch now and then, but you will be nothing more than a powerless man hiding his face, full of dire threats, but unable to carry them out.”

  “This isn’t over, Glenn. You’ll live to know how wrong you are. I have other agents. Some much stronger than you. I’ll send them against you if I must.”

  “Bring them on,” Glenn said. “You know where to find me. Oh, I’m sorry, that might actually be a bit difficult. I didn’t mention this before, but we’re relocating. I don’t trust you anymore. I know a sinking ship when I see it.”

  “So that makes you the rat?”

  “Rats are survivors. I’m not sure about how you’re going to end up,” Glenn said, breaking the connection.

  Sai lay with her eyes closed as the probe worked its hell on her mind. She had originally thought she was being taken to her death when they removed her from her cell on the pirate base. As soon as they put her on the spaceship, she understood. Maxwell had discovered that his bank account was a few billion credits short.

  Now he thought that the knowledge in her head could get it back for him. Luckily, she knew it meant he wouldn’t kill her, at least not for a while. But now, strapped into the mind probe, lost in the world of the probe as it ate into her psyche, her time was running out. Her only hope had been that Hank would find some way to save her.

  The probe was programmed to stab into her mind, searching, devouring everything in its path. Normally, it would erase a person’s thoughts, synapse by synapse.

  Her cyber-psi talent enabled her to control the probe and modify its programming. From all outward appearances it was reporting progress, but the actual probe was not scanning her at all.

  It was a painstaking process, requiring concentration, but she managed to keep it under control until she heard Glenn say that Hank was dead.

  She froze. The probe bit into her, rending her thoughts. She was on the brink of losing the fight, and a part of her wasn’t sure it was worth the effort to win. What would she have left? She would still be Maxwell’s prisoner, and Hank wouldn’t be there. Oblivion was a tempting destination.

  But there was something else to live for. She would fight on, not for victory, not for survival, but for revenge.

  “You little bitch! I don’t know how you did this, but you’re going to wish that you’d let the mind probe do its work.”

  The probe had completed its cycle, but when Maxwell called up the results, there was no information from the scan at all. The datalifter had managed to beat the machine. Maxwell had a new respect for the level of her cyber-psi talent. It was no wonder that she had been able to enter the Galactic Bank and wreak havoc with his accounts. The mind probe was useless, but Maxwell had other tools at his disposal.

  “All right, young woman. The only reason I use this machine is that for normal people it does a very thorough job and provides much more detailed data than is possible by cruder means. Your talent is obviously very strong, but it won’t help you against the blade and the hot fuser. I’ve actually missed using a more hands-on approach. I’m going to enjoy this immensely.”

  Sai spoke. “Torture? You would actually resort to getting your hands dirty? I thought that was beneath you.”

  “I dabble in t
orture, mostly for pleasure. I am quite good at it, as you will soon see.”

  “Is this about money? Or sadism?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, if you would settle for your money, I can access it for you. But you have to agree to release me.”

  Maxwell smiled. “Of course. I’m not a barbarian, Ms. Collins. I’m a businessman. Just tell me what account you diverted the funds to and give me the proper passwords and I’ll send you on your way.”

  Sai smiled. “No, it’s not that easy. I didn’t just switch around a few deposits; I created a shadow account that’s locked in the system, where only I can get to it, and I transferred all the money there. No one else has access; it’s as if it doesn’t exist. The Galactic Bank is a stickler about security so you’ll never get the authority to poke around and try to find it yourself. I have to enter the system to get it for you.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Maxwell said.

  “The feeling’s mutual,” Sai said. “I’m the one taking the risk. If I get your money for you, then I’m expendable despite your pretty words. If I’m lying about the money, you still have me, and I’ll have to pay the price. You’re the one in control.”

  Maxwell smiled. He liked a woman who knew her place. “Splendid.”

  It didn’t take long to set up the comlink. Maxwell placed the equipment next to Sai and moved to attach a neural lead to Sai’s forehead.

  “I have limited the device to communications only with the Galactic Bank, Ms. Collins. I will be monitoring your activity. If you try to break my security settings and use this to send a message to anyone, I will send a feedback pulse through the neural lead causing immediate, agonizing pain. I’m no fool.” He chuckled. “But then, who would you contact? Jensen is dead.”

  Sai’s eyes turned cold as she glared at Maxwell. “You may get the money, and you may be able to get the stock, but sooner or later you’re going to get what you really deserve. It’s a solid fact, Maxwell.”

  “I do hope so. I think I deserve so much more than just Nebulaco. You may proceed, Ms. Collins.”