"Honey, we're hooome," Tabby called as we set down next to Nick's workshop.
"Check this out," Nick said as Tabby and I approached.
"What do you have?" I asked.
Instead of responding, Nick typed at a virtual panel projected onto his left wrist. From the shadows of his shop, a bot arose and sailed over our heads on its way to Tuuq. It easily slid two sheets of steel onto extended forks and backed away from the tall stack, returning to the shop behind us.
"That's your prototype?" I asked.
He nodded and grinned at me. "Yup. It's a little rough, but you should take it with you. Maybe you could build interest."
"Are you sure you can give it up?" I asked.
"First one is always the hardest. I'm only missing the steel you brought for the next one. I'll have two more by the time you return. Make sure to capture all operational logs, though. I'm sure it'll need some tweaks."
"Easy enough."
"Did Hog talk to you about an order of supplies for York in Nadira?"
"I haven't had a chance to check comms today."
"I checked your manifest, looks like you have enough room," Nick said.
"No problem."
"You need anything to eat, Cap? We were just getting ready for lunch," Marny asked, walking up from the bungalow where we bunked while planet side.
"I think we'd like to get moving."
"Copy that." Marny handed a heavy bag to Tabby. "Mission supplies," she explained when I gave her a questioning look.
It was a quick flight over to Manetra from York even though it was twenty-two hundred kilometers away.
For most on Zuri, Manetra was on the western edge of civilization. The city nestled against a great mountain range, through which ground vehicles had to pass in order to get to places like Kuende Run, York and Azima. At two million, mostly Felio, the town bustled with activity and I was reminded of the town of Coolidge on Mars.
I'd already transmitted our flight plan to Manetra Air Control. I learned my lesson long ago about giving cities a heads-up before just dropping in. Manetra replied by sending a flight corridor and instructions on what we needed to do if we were to vary from those corridors. The construction company Merrie had located to sell her steel sheet to was located within the industrial section of the city.
"Hail Gasepi," I requested.
"Greetings, Loose Nuts." A male Felio showed on the vid screen. "We've been expecting you. Please proceed to Aisle Twelve."
"Copy that," I replied and followed the geo data provided to the location.
When we arrived next to the warehouse, it became clear it was going to be a tight fit. The receiving yard was clearly set up for narrow land-based vehicles. Even though Tuuq was small by my standards, it was still three times as wide as over-ground haulers.
"Gasepi, it looks like we're going to have issues with your instructions. We're three meters wider than the approach to your loading bay." I attached a diagram of the exterior of our ship.
"Wait one," the Felio replied.
I pulled back on the stick and slowly circled the shipping yard. There was plenty of room for us if we took one of the open spots at the end.
"Loose Nuts, we're going to have you set down on Aisle One," he finally said. "It doesn't look like your vessel is equipped with good mating for our receiving dock. We might have a small delay while we round up labor to unload."
"Copy, Gasepi," I said. "We might have a solution for that, though."
"Negative, Loose Nuts," the Felio said. "Closest you'll get to that gate is forty meters. Our policy forbids manual labor from moving material massing greater than fifty kilograms. Safety inspector would pluck my fur if I allowed that."
"Any chance you could have the inspector meet us at the dock?" I asked.
"Wait one."
I lined Tuuq up on the end of the receiving dock and set her down with the aft end of the ship pointed toward the building.
"Hoffen Captain, Mership Inspector will join you in twelve short spans."
"Copy that."
I grabbed my reading tablet and walked out after opening the rear hatch. Tabby would stay behind and man the ship's controls while I oversaw the unloading process.
After a few minutes of standing on the warm pavement, a small knot of shabby Felio slunk out from within the warehouse. They neither made eye contact with us nor did they make any attempt at communication, but simply sat on the edge of the dock, obviously waiting.
After twenty-five minutes, a neatly dressed female Felio drove up in a white, electric vehicle that couldn't hold more than four if you squeezed them in. Felio dress varied significantly based on position. With fur covered bodies, they tended not to have the same conventions as humans and their clothing was often focused on only covering chest and hips. The variety in which they did this was significant. This Felio wore loose tan shorts and a sleeveless tan top.
"Liam Hoffen." I extended my right hand, upside down, which was the custom when greeting Felio.
"Mership Inspector." She brushed her upside-down paw across the palm of my hand. "I understand my presence was requested. As you see, we have sufficient labor to unload our cargo. Gasepi will find it necessary to adjust payment in future due to increased labor requirements for receiving."
"I requested your presence because of this," I said. "As you know, we are not originally born of Zuri."
"I did not know this. I believe human species has village well to the west of Manetra."
"York," I agreed. "My crew is not originally from York. Where we come from, cargo is unloaded with machinery."
"As it would be if your ship were capable of connection to our dock."
"I would demonstrate our stevedore technology. I asked for your presence so you could observe the safety of our equipment," I said.
"I will not allow my employees to operate next to uncertified equipment."
"Their presence is not required," I said. "Loose Nuts will take responsibility for delivering our product to whatever location within your warehouse you specify."
"This cannot be done. We have procedure," she said.
"What if we delivered it to your automated docking? Wouldn't that be done manually from any vessel?"
The suggestion stopped her and she pulled out a reading pad and started scrolling through it. "I can find no requirement prohibiting this."
"Can you show me where the material is to be delivered?"
"I will need you to sign that you are taking responsibility to deliver your sheet goods to the dock so that I might release the labor that was errantly requested."
I signed on her pad and wasn't surprised that the assembled slouching group didn't immediately disperse.
"That's a lot of mass for a human." I didn't catch which of the gang tossed the comment out, nor did I care.
"The sheet must be loaded onto the blue platform, no more than four hundred kilograms on each stack. The clerk in that booth sees to it that the material is properly bussed upon receipt."
"Begin unloading in stacks not exceeding four hundred kilograms," I instructed my AI.
Nick's stevedore bot glided effortlessly from atop the stack of sheet metal and extended long, nano-steel forks. After peeling off the first stack, it slowly backed away from Tuuq, turned and made its way down the narrowing lane to receiving. The inspector took in a sharp breath as the bot allowed the sheet to settle onto the platform, sped back to our ship and started the process over.
"Where did you discover this equipment?" Mership asked.
"It's a product line manufactured by Loose Nuts Corporation," I said, stretching the truth just a little. "I'd be happy to have our sales rep establish a comm with you if you’re interested."
The stevedore bot had arrived with a new load and dropped it onto the next platform, the first having already glided into the warehouse.
"What will happen when your machine arrives and there is no bus available?" Mership asked as the bot zipped away and the second platform — apparently c
alled a bus — trundled into the building's dark confines.
"It will wait," I said as the bot returned with its third load. We watched as it pulled up, waiting for one of the busses to return.
"A most impressive display," Mership replied. "I will inform my superior of what I have witnessed."
"Much appreciated," I said as a bus returned and Nick's bot loaded it up again.
Tuuq was only capable of carrying a small load, so twenty minutes later, we'd finished. In that time, we’d drawn a small crowd of warehouse employees who were looking on with interest.
"That went well," I said, sliding into the chair next to Tabby.
"What?"
"Might have gotten Nick a referral for his stevedore bots. Gasepi workers seemed pretty impressed by it."
"Nobody wants to be carrying steel sheets by hand."
"Next stop is only two kilometers," I said, slowly lifting Tuuq.
"What kind of load doesn't require bond?" Tabby asked.
"The kind that barely covers the cost of fuel," I said. "I only took the job because I didn't want to dead-head all the way to Abasi Prime."
"What is it, Hoffen?" She sounded suspicious.
"Enriched bio mass."
"What kind of enriched bio mass?"
"Fertilizer."
Tabby flung her hands in the air. "This! This is why we make fun of you, Hoffen. You have us hauling shite again?"
"It's dried and in bales. This won't be messy."
Tabby joined me as we exited the empty cargo bay. A familiar rumble in the sky warned of imminent rain as we walked across the dusty lot to a large open building. Upon entering, I received a comm instructing us to pick up the pre-arranged volume of neatly packed bales.
"See, it's a piece of cake." I instructed the stevedore bot to start loading just as rain burst from the sky.
"Okay," Tabby agreed. We glided back to the ship, leaving the bot to work through the heavy rain.
Twenty minutes later Tuuq broke free of Zuri’s atmosphere and we set our destination for the wormhole that would drop us into the Tamu system.
"Do you smell something bad?" Tabby asked about twenty minutes into hard burn.
"I probably got dirt on my boots," I said.
"The smell is coming through the ventilation system.”
I punched up a view of the cargo hold. To my chagrin, the once neatly packed bales of fertilizer were starting to open. The dried material, having been rained on, was swelling and filling the empty spaces of the cargo hold.
Tabby looked at my screen and raised her eyebrows. "You're never living this down."
Chapter 13
Standoff
“I’m reading two cutter-class vessels at forty thousand kilometers and in close proximity to the Tamu system wormhole,” Tabby said.
“I’m not seeing it,” I said, looking at my vid screen. My frustration with Tuuq’s pathetic sensor package was growing.
“They’re sailing with low power,” she replied. “AI, show Captain Hoffen the visual spectrum disturbance and project outlines.”
On my vid-screen, the pulsing energies of the wormhole entrance, called the Tamu gate, blinked on and off in a pattern I couldn’t discern. However, when the AI outlined two ships, the blinking made more sense.
“How did you do that?”
“Nick’s idea,” Tabby said. “We kept sensor logs of the light patterns of the energies surrounding the anomaly. While the energies are unpredictable in intensity, hue and many other features, they’re consistent in position. We weren’t sure it would be useful analysis, but it appears we were wrong.”
I adjusted our burn so instead of arriving a hundred kilometers from the wormhole, we fell above the wormhole at two thousand kilometers. We’d been on hard-burn for the better part of seventy-two hours and there was virtually no chance those ships hadn’t seen us coming.
“I feel like we’ve played this game before,” I said. What we were looking at by the wormhole was identical to the trap we’d run into with Fleet Afoot. I had no doubt if we were allowed to jump through the wormhole, we’d find a welcoming committee on the other side.
“What’s the plan, Liam?” Tabby asked, turning to look at me.
“Let’s get a feel for their offensive capacities.”
“Tuuq is out-massed by both ships. A frontal assault is a bad idea.” Tabby flattened her lips and rolled her eyes at me. “We could throw big bales of shite at them.”
I laughed. “Right, hate to dismiss any idea right out of the box.”
We continued to decelerate on our approach to the gate. I’d sure love to have been sailing Intrepid; I’d teach these clowns a lesson, but Tuuq was outclassed and I was sure we’d find a worse fight on the other side of the wormhole.
“They’re powering up and moving to intercept,” Tabby said.
“Got it,” The two cutters materialized fully on my vid-screen. They weren’t much to look at, but neither were we. We had the advantage of speed. Their only move was to anticipate where we’d arrive, given our current deceleration. “Hate to disappoint you boys,” I muttered out loud as I brought us out of hard-burn and flipped us over so we faced the incoming ships.
“Hail ships on intercept course with Tuuq.” My AI picked up the command and a chime indicated an open channel although there was no response. It was an altogether familiar scenario. “This is Captain Liam Hoffen of Loose Nuts. Desist on your intercept path or we’ll consider your actions hostile and reply in kind.”
After waiting a minute, I transmitted the electronic version of the Letter of Marque we’d received from House Mshindi.
That brought a response. “Captain Hoffen, our supreme leader Belvakuski sends her regards. You will not trick us this time. You will adjust to our vector, heave-to and prepare to be boarded.”
I closed comm. It was unlikely we’d be able to take them on, but we were moving fast enough they’d have difficulty chasing us down. I throttled up and accelerated away at a perpendicular vector.
“Do you suppose they’re always sitting here or is someone telling them we’re coming?” Tabby asked.
“I’m not sure they knew who we were until I hailed them,” I said. “It’s not a long shot to wait at the wormhole. According to House Mshindi, several ships pass through daily.”
“With these pirates sitting here? How?”
“Intrepid wouldn’t have any trouble with these jokers.”
The cutters had slowed and weren’t pursuing us on our new vector. They knew where we needed to go and were counting on us coming to them in the end.
“What kind of long range sensors do we have?”
“Poor,” Tabby said.
“Take the helm and keep us away from these clowns, but bring us around so we’re not more than five thousand kilometers from the wormhole.”
“Copy.”
I swiped at the virtual displays and started searching. When we first arrived in the Santaloo system, we’d found it to be too small and undeveloped to be a destination hub. Instead, planets like Zuri enjoyed considerable ‘fly-through’ traffic, mostly from vessels coming from and going to the Abasi home world — Abasi Prime. Since then, I’d learned there was exactly one other wormhole in this system and it led to the Brea Fortul system. I set our limited long-range sensors to search for ships coming from Zuri, Fan Zuri or from the Brea Fortul wormhole, assuming at least some of them would be headed toward the Tamu gate.
After setting the search, I connected to the ship’s data stores on shipping. I’d been so focused on setting up trade that I’d ignored what was sitting right in front of my face. We were weeks from having a first-class, frigate-sized warship. With a pirate threat surrounding the gates, Intrepid could provide considerable value. Soon my screen was filled with details of a thriving market for armed trading escorts. In some cases, captains wanted to gang-up with another lightly armed trading ship, and in others, they were looking to simply hire protection. I was galled to discover many of the respondents were Genter
esk, who I believed to be the pirate group mostly responsible for the problem.
“How long are we going to do this?” Tabby asked after an hour of circling the Tamu wormhole.
“Right now, our only other choice is to go home.”
“I hate this.”
I chuckled under my breath. Tabby’s lack of patience was epic.
“Get the cards out,” I said. “We might be a while.”
And so it went. We played cards for several hours as we waited for something to change. I wondered if Mshindi’s assessment of the traffic through the gates was reasonable when finally, a chime from my earwig grabbed my attention.
At first, the only hint of change was the two pirate cutters spooling up. My immediate concern was that they were going to make a run on us. They’d certainly had enough time to communicate with Belvakuski and she might have ordered them to chase us down. I dismissed this notion as a frigate-sized ship blinked into existence. A moment after arriving, its large engines fired brightly and started accelerating away from the Tamu wormhole.
“We’re receiving a mayday,” Tabby said. “Shetak Blossom has lost one of its engines and their weapons systems are off-line.”
“Frak.” I contemplated just how we might be able to help them. “I’m taking the helm.”
I nosed over and accelerated toward Shetak Blossom.
“What are you doing, Liam?” Tabby asked.
I ignored her as we streaked toward the wounded frigate. “What kind of armor does she have?”
“Moderately armored,” she replied. “She’ll have a hard time outrunning those cutters, though.”
“Shetak Blossom, this is Liam Hoffen on Tuuq. Do you have any weapons? We’re inbound with intent of providing aid.”
A male Pogona appeared on my vid screen. “Captain Hoffen, I am Captain Fateh. Your assistance, while appreciated, is unwise. Our assessment of your ship’s capacity is that it is insufficient. We left a Genteresk ship disabled in Tamu system. The wormhole is open and you should make your way through.”
“Understood, Fateh,” I said. “All the same, you’ll not make it if we do. Just don’t shoot at us.”
Corsair Menace (Privateer Tales Book 12) Page 16
