The Knockabouts

by DK Williamson

  The tightened voice of the flight lead followed immediately with a curt, “Swift flight, go hull shields.”

  “Minimal damage,” Four said. “I’m still in the game with Three.”

  Teller threw ARC Lance into another hard left turn, coming out as the fighters reacted and reached the point where they began to turn inside the old strike sloop. The grunts and straining of all four fighter pilots was audible over the communications channel.

  “What in Hades have we latched on with?” Three said. “That thing’s not a freighter.”

  “We have a ridge that edges a valley coming up,” Teller said. “We’ll break their sensor coverage and line of sight and turn on them. I’ll need you with me on the controls, Ord.”

  “Lasers?” the giant said.

  “Set them for automatic fire. Ho’s working with the system, which ought to help.”

  “I can interface with the automated targeting system and operate the system, Captain,” Ho said. “I have some experience with heavy weapons systems utilized in ground combat.”

  “You ever shoot at aerial targets?”

  “Affirmative. Combat floaters and attack craft.”

  “That plug they stuck you with keep you from shooting at the wings on a fighter?”

  “I cannot say for certain, but phrased that way, I feel no inhibition.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this… activate the weapons station, Ord. Ho, target the wings.”

  “Why the wings?” Ursula said in a nervous voice. She had little to monitor in the fight thus far, and the lack of something to occupy her created agitation.

  “Fighters lose all lift if they use shields over the wings,” Jessop said, “so they must use repulsors to stay aloft if they do that. The power to maintain lift and shields comes from the engines, and that reduces thrust, the shields create drag, and that makes them slow and easy targets. A common practice is to shield the hull and let the wings provide lift. The narrow cross section of a wing head-on is a small target. Teller’s making them turn. Make them turn, see more wing, bigger target for our point defense system.”

  “Fighters closing again,” Ord said.

  “I’m jinking right and going hard left, Ho.”

  “Weapons station standing by, Captain.”

  Teller’s maneuver forced the fighters to react once, then again. Four fighters started right, then had to roll left and follow the Lance, both actions placing them behind the time curve initiated by their prey. The fighters found themselves pulling hard to make up for this lag, and in doing so, created broader targets just as Ned Jessop explained.

  Ho fired.

  “They scored Bates! They scored Bates!” came a panicked call from Four as Three’s aerospace fighter lost a wing and came apart in the air.

  The flight lead’s calm voice came over the commo band. “Affirmative, Four. Stay calm and come—”

  “I’m hit! I’m hit! Four is ahhhhh—!”

  “Damnatio! Full shields, Two,” the flight leader said as they passed over the disintegrating remains of Four’s aerospace fighter. “Repulsors. Full thrusters.”

  “Affirmative, One.”

  Teller leveled out and headed for the ridgeline.

  “That was some sharp work, Ho,” Teller said.

  Ho canted his head. “You provided a considerable target area, Captain. I am maintaining multi-beam fire across all spectrums in hopes they will keep their shields in place.”

  ARC Lance began to pull away.

  “She’s pulling outta here, Boss.”

  “Affirmative, Two. I go, then you.”

  “Affirmative, One. Ready when you are.”

  Alarms sounded from all stations on ARC Lance’s command deck.

  “Six… no eight missiles,” Ursula said, worry discernible in her voice.

  Teller grimaced. “Eight? They fired the lot. Must admit, that’s a shrewd move. I get the impression they want us dead.”

  “They’re anti-shield missiles. Why would they fire them when we’re not utilizing our shields?”

  “They carry enough kinetic potential to do a lot of damage, that’s why. The fighter jocks are hoping we won’t risk taking a hit from the missiles and will sacrifice our shields to fend them off. In the meantime, the fighters will drop shields and close on us. They want to reel us into blaster range.”

  Ord growled from his copilot’s seat. “Defensive systems predict three will hit, minimum.”

  Teller grimaced again. “Ho, can you do something about that?”

  “Affirmative, Captain,” the Mech said. “My efforts will not be sufficient however, even if all goes as intended.”

  “Do the best you can. Maximize the odds for us and we’ll roll the dice.”

  “Ridgeline, fifteen seconds,” Ord said.

  Teller nodded without taking his eyes off the control panel displays in front of him. “We stay with the plan. We make the ridge and we can break the missile lock, at least long enough for us to gain some airspace.”

  “Two down,” Ho said. “The missiles will reach us before we get to the ridge, Captain.”

  “Not if you blast them into junk,” Teller said.

  “Four missiles left,” Ursula said.

  “Eight seconds to the ridgeline.”

  “Three missiles left!”

  “Five seconds to impact.”

  “Two—one left!”

  ARC Lance shuddered as a loud bang came from the port side.

  “Hit! We’re hit!” Ursula yelled as the Lance dropped over the ridgeline.

  “I don’t wish to say I told you so, Captain,” Ho said, “but….”

  “We have damage, but nothing that hurts us now, Skipper,” Jessop said flatly.

  Teller cracked a brief smile knowing it was Ned’s combat instincts at work: the now and the near future were all that mattered. If the damage was irrelevant to the fight, they could worry about it later.

  The Lance disappeared from the fighters’ sight as soon as it cleared the ridge.

  “She’s off scope, One. We score?”

  “We’ll see, Two. You scored a hit. Saw debris. Keep the shields up.”

  Teller snarled. “Things are going to get a little rough. Hang on. Like we practiced, pal.”

  Teller pulled up and applied reverse thrusters, using gravity and engines to slow ARC Lance to a near stall in a high-G, but manageable move. Ord brought up the repulsors and aft starboard maneuver thrusters, spinning the Lance 180 degrees. Teller advanced the thrusters and ARC Lance shook as if in a rage as her acceleration shoved her crew toward the stern.

  “Ord, coil gun, flight lead! Ho, target hull shields on Swift-Two!”

  Ord grunted an acknowledgement simultaneously with Ho’s, “Affirmative, Captain.”

  From the fighter pilots’ point of view, it appeared as if the strike sloop had turned on a coin during the brief time she’d been out of sight and now bore down on them head-on, hurling slugs and spitting laser beams.

  A pair of anti-shield slugs stripped the flight lead’s shields away. He managed a “What in Hades ha—” before a shard round tore the APF-77B into shreds. His wingman said not a word before his aerospace fighter met the same fate as Lance’s fully focused lasers overwhelmed both shields and structure.

  Teller pushed the nose down, an instinctual move to fly the ship under the debris of the two fighters, but soon realized they could not avoid impacting at least some of the falling pieces. Ned and Ord realized this as well and both reached for the shield controls, but Ho beat them to it, bringing up the shields just before the pieces of destroyed fighters broke and burned as they struck and slid along the energy barrier. Teller leveled out just above the rugged and littered landscape below.

  “Close one,” Ord grumbled.

  “Stay on the deck, Tell,” Jessop said. “Swift likely saw five energy releases on their sensors and scanners.”

  “We’ll make a break for it then,” Tell said as he pulled ARC Lance into a right turn. “Push to put
the planet between us and that cruiser, then run for slipspace.”

  “Negative, Skipper,” Ned replied. “That last missile hit makes slipspace impossible.”

  Teller grumbled. “The here and the now….”

  “We hide then,” Ord said.

  Teller glanced quickly at his friend. “Nice idea. Where? That cruiser will come sniffing. It’ll come in close once they realize their fighters aren’t coming back. If they see no evidence of us in space, they’ll look for wreckage or a grounded ship dirtside”

  “This planet heavily mined. Much equipment left behind. Heavy mining bores large tunnels. Put together—”

  “We can hide,” Teller said with a grin. “Ned, we stay off the scopes that way?”

  “If we’re out of direct sight and have enough natural matter between us and them. If there’s considerable ferrous metal or radiation present. Yes, it’s possible. Keep our electronic output to a minimum and I’d say we have an excellent chance of evading scans, sensors, and optic sweeps.”

  “Ord, find us a place to hide then. You’re the mining expert.”

  The giant looked over the valley for a few seconds, then pointed out the view panel to a spot near the opposite ridge. “There.”

  Teller opened his mouth but said nothing for a few seconds. Finally he shook his head and said, “That’s it? Just like that… there’s the place?”

  Ord nodded. “Yes. Large hulk of ore processor. Placed near mine entrance to keep distance short. Big metal. Big hole. Can hide Lance in adit.”

  “Adit?”

  “Level or near level entrance into mine. Teller learned new word.”

  “That he did,” Tell said with a smile. “To the adit then. Over a ridgeline on Sessler-Four, across the Valley of the Shadow, fly, boldly fly.”

  . . . . .

  . . . . .

  11

  Holed Up and Digging Up Bones

  . . . . .

  Excerpt from, Cap’n Cosmos’ Guide to it All, the Interstellar Guide for Endeavoring Spacers.

  Cap’n, I hear people use the word Haydees(sic) a lot. What does it mean? Is it a place? A curse word?

  -Flash G.

  As fine a group of questions as the Cap’n has seen in a while, Flash. Hades is a place and sometimes a curse word, plus more. The Cap’n will explain.

  Hades is an old, old, word. It goes back farther than anyone really knows with its roots in some mythology of days past. It’s this mythology that links to our present day use of the word, the planet Hades.

  Hades is the prison planet established by the Protectorate Emperor thousands of Standard Years ago. A horrid place with a highly lethal environment that kills most of those sentenced to incarceration there within the first Standard Year. Most sentences are for life, one way or another.

  There are three ways off Hades.

  First, escape. In the thousands of years of operation, only two successful escapes are known: a Human named Brimley who somehow built a functional starship from local junk and flew away; and the hijacking of a prison transport that resulted in the escape of more than two-hundred prisoners, the majority of whom founded the Thagany Bay piracy ring that still plagues the border region between Protectorate and Syndic space, named after the prison transport that carried them to freedom.

  Second, survive until the end of sentence or receive a pardon.

  Third, survive ten Standard Years on Hades, volunteer to serve in the Ganawae Corps, and survive training. Of those that do, one in ten will live to retire from the corps a free being.

  Based on all of this, it’s easy to see how a curse word could originate from it. All in all, it’s a fairly mild one used by most Humans, and really only considered harsh by the most squeamish of delicate flowers. As you grow older, you’ll learn far more colorful and offensive words, and that’s when the fun begins. Remember Endeavoring Spacers, a knockabout who doesn’t curse sure as Hades better know how to fight, because nothing offends a rig more than a clean and bland vocabulary. The Cap’n firmly believes it’s better for a spacer to learn how to curse than shame every one of us.

  . . .

  Ned leaned far out of the open starboard airlock hatch in a practiced stance, one hand latched onto the edge of the opening. “Ten meters, Tell. No hazards,” he shouted.

  “Twelve point five meters,” Ho said from the port airlock hatch. “No hazards.”

  Ord stood on the open cargo ramp watching the surface of the mining tunnel within which Teller had ARC Lance easing slowing aft. “Fifteen meters more,” he said, speaking into a headset plugged into the ship’s internal commo system. “Surface is rough, but within gear’s compensation range.”

  Several seconds later, Ord spoke again. “She’s there. Put her down.”

  Teller stopped Lance’s slow backwards movement. “We clear port and starboard?”

  Mech and engineer each responded affirmatively.

  “Setting down.”

  The maneuvers needed to place ARC Lance in her hiding place required skill and a little ingenuity, the area around the old mine shaft entrance and rotting ore processing station outside was fraught with hazards. Easing the ship in stern first was the final act.

  Ned and Ho returned to the command deck once Lance was down, while Ord lowered the cargo ramp to the ground surface and hurriedly stepped outside to survey the damage the anti-shield missile had caused.

  “Nice call on the observation points, old man,” Teller said as Ned sat at the engineering station. “The sensors aboard weren’t made for flying underground. Not the first time you’ve done that I’d bet.”

  Ned cracked a smile. “First time flying in a mine shaft, but eye-guiding a ship? Done it a few times. During the Prausian affair we hid an entire strike sloop squadron under triple canopy tree cover once. Green so thick no scanner or sensor in the galaxy could get through. Never figured I’d be doing this again.”

  “Captain, do you have a ground-mount sensor-scanner array aboard?” Ho said from the command deck entrance.

  “In the workshop. A coil of opticable for it in there too.”

  “I would like to place it outside the mine entrance so we can monitor any transmissions our pursuers might send. Passive sensors of course.”

  Teller smiled. “Of course. The array isn’t light. The cable and its stand isn’t either. I’ll give you a hand as soon as I finish shutdown procedures.”

  “I will begin,” Ho said.

  “Do you need me to do anything?” Ursula said.

  “Not unless you want to learn how to cool off a starship.”

  Ursula smiled. “Not right now.” She held up a data pad. “Mister Feng’s. I’ll look through this and see if there is anything useful.”

  “You’re not locked out?”

  “He didn’t have a chance to do that, did he?”

  “I guess not. I’ll let you snoop then.”

  A few minutes later Tell caught movement in the corner of his eye as he sat in the pilot’s position. It was Ho carrying the GMSS array and coil of cable toward the mining shaft entrance, seemingly with little effort. The spacer chuckled and shook his head before he went back to his work.

  Ord entered the command deck. “We have much work ahead.”

  “What’s the damage look like?”

  “Dent in the hull. Armor plate bent and large piece of hull sheathing gone, but is near the Raker Effect gens. Ned is pulling the panels now.”

  “Terrific. Looks like Ho has the commo job under control. I’ll join you as soon as I’m done.”

  Ord grunted and went aft.

  . . .

  Ho walked up the cargo ramp carrying the coil of cable, most of it unwound and trailing behind him. He found Ned, Ord, and Teller looking into the space occupied by the RE generators.

  “—field emitters and generators appear fine, but I don’t see a way to repair such a component,” Ned insisted with a poke toward the generators. “A disseminator is a precisely made unit. Piecing it back together is not possible and
machining a new one is beyond our capabilities here.”

  “We can’t risk going back to Factus Station,” Teller said.

  “That may be our only recourse.”

  “Ord has idea. Will work.”

  Teller looked at his friend. “How long?”

  “Don’t know. Hours.”

  “Until that Boddan cruiser departs, we have time.”

  “Swift is closing and scanning,” Ho said. “They ceased calling for a response from their fighters as I was adjusting the array.”

  “They’ll send a launch or a gig to look things over I would imagine,” Jessop said.

  “In the meantime Ord can try his fix.”

  Jessop shook his head. “I don’t see how we’ll manage this, but I’ll help however I can.”

  “I as well,” Ho said. “I will connect the cable to ARC Lance’s coms. We can adjust the array from here once that is accomplished.”

  “I was going to help you get that thing deployed,” Teller said.

  “I am quite sturdy, Captain, and capable of more than carrying a rack of data cases.”

  “That much is obvious. You know, you’re a fairly useful being… for a Mech.”

  Ho canted his head. “And you are an adequate pilot… for a Human.”

  . . .

  Ned watched Ord and Ho pull a length of opticable across the worktable and clamp it into place when taut. “You’ll have to be precise with the measurements on the opticable, the junctions will have to be constructed just as precise. There’s no brute force solution to this.”

  Ord nodded. “You know data flow rates for our generators?”

  Jessop nodded. “I do, but running a pair is beyond—”

  Ord held up a single finger. “We run just one.”

  Jessop smiled. “I should have seen that. Most prudent. Yes, I know the flow rate.”

  “Can you figure rates using this opticable? Is slower than disseminator. Needs shorter loops. Maybe lighter cable for core.”

  Jessop’s eyes lit up as his smile grew. “I see where you’re going with this. I still don’t think it will work,” his smile grew even more, “but it just might.” He laughed and clapped his hands once. “It just might. Let me steal Ho from you. We can do some calculations.”