by Joe Zieja
There was no response. Rogers brought up a command console and started doing research as fast as he could. Maybe if he could find out the ship’s name, he could contact someone he knew on board directly.
“The Rancor?” he said incredulously when the name popped up. “What’s the Rancor doing here?”
“Who’s that?” Dorsey called from under the seat. “Can they help us?”
“Probably not,” Rogers said. “They’re all supposed to be dead. They flew into an asteroid when I was on duty.”
“Oh god,” Dorsey said, “now we have pirates and ghosts!”
Rogers wasn’t entirely sure he disagreed with Dorsey’s assessment. If he hadn’t been covered in a panicked sweat, he might have gotten a chill up his spine.
“Rancor,” he called, not knowing what else to do. “Abandon your course and jump back to the fleet! You’re blocking my exit!” Rogers paused. “Please?”
The Rancor didn’t do anything at all. He expected at least for it to call for more ships, but nothing else came out of Un-Space. It simply floated in the middle of a torrent of gunfire, its shields flaring to life every time it took a glancing blow from one of the pirates’ cannons, like a brain-dead animal that didn’t know where its dinner was. The crew on board the Rancor should have recognized his name at least—Rogers had beaten the Rancor’s captain at several rounds of underhanded card games. But the captain was also supposed to be dead, so maybe that put a damper on conversation.
It was all falling apart in front of him, the space quickly filling with the debris of destroyed ships as the battle raged on. Behind the Rancor, ships started flying out of Un-Space as the two groups called for reinforcements. Even though the Meridan ship was blocking the exit, that didn’t mean that a horde of pirates couldn’t jump in, take a quick evasive maneuver, and then move to engage the other pirates. And that’s exactly what they were doing.
Where were they all coming from? It seemed as if both pirate groups were summoning every ship in their respective fleets to come to their aid. This wasn’t a cargo transfer anymore; it was a space battle. And Rogers needed to get out of here fast.
“Aren’t you going to pilot this ship?” Rogers screamed at Dorsey.
Dorsey shook his head and mumbled.
“Ugh! You’re fired!” Rogers shouted, and grabbed the controls.
Equipment crashed around behind him as his frantic yanking of the controls put a couple gee’s worth of force into the ship. Dorsey tumbled sideways out of the chair from the force, and Rogers lost sight of him as he focused on getting the Awesome out of harm’s way. In the background, the comm chatter from the pirates grew even more frantic as each issued orders to its fighters.
“Punch those cannons out of the frigate! They’re tearing our fighters apart!”
“Grab that damn cargo and get back to the fleet so we can get out of here!”
But the tugboat, still dutifully dragging the crate of medical supplies, fell to pieces as it was hit by a barrage of blue cannon fire. The space battle seemed to halt for a moment as Rogers stared at the cracking hull of the tugboat and started counting the seconds until both pirate groups turned on him. He also learned what several hundred pounds of baking flour looked like expanding into open space. In a weird way, he found it kind of pretty.
“Protect the Awesome! All fighters cover his exit!”
“Get Rogers out of here! He’s our best man!”
Rogers sucked in a breath as every fighter in both fleets started charging toward him. To protect him. From each other.
“They’re going after Rogers!” both pirates said simultaneously.
The battle became a massive furball as the two groups of fighters made a valiant effort to simultaneously defend the same target from absolutely no one attempting to attack it.
“Um, guys?” he said over the comms, only to realize that he was still talking to the unresponsive Rancor, who still had done nothing at all. It wasn’t moving to intercept. It wasn’t even issuing any warnings to the two pirates to cease and desist and prepare for boarding, which was standard for all interdictions.
Warnings flared to life on his display as the plasma wash coming from the pirates’ fighters’ engines and cannons slammed into the Awesome. Rogers fell out of his chair as his scheme of evasive maneuvers was roughly interrupted by a stray shot. Luckily, since nobody was actually aiming at him, his shields were absorbing most of the impacts. His brain, on the other hand, didn’t have shields, and he was quickly learning the value of seatbelts.
Rogers crawled back up to the seat and hit something on the communications panel.
“Everyone just relax!” he shouted to nobody.
“Rogers!” one of the Garliali called in a mess of static. “We’re sorry we couldn’t protect you! You were our best—”
“Run, Rogers!” a Purveyor screamed as his ship disintegrated. “Those bastards’ll kill you! Wait, is that flour? What the—”
As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. While the fighters had been distracted killing each other to get to Rogers, the two command ships had brought their giant guns to bear, turning each other into balls of scrap with just a few well-placed shots. The space that had been host to a simple cargo exchange was now a graveyard of gray specks and space dust. The radio went utterly and completely silent.
“Oh,” Rogers said stupidly.
Rogers turned his ship and fired his engines to full. With enough time, he might make it to another Un-Space point or lead the Rancor away, pull a few maneuvers, and double back to the one the Rancor was still blocking.
A beep sounded from his instrument panel.
“What now?” he shouted, looking down, then froze.
This particular warning was one he actually recognized. Two guided shots had been fired from the Rancor at the Awesome. The computer blared a warning: impact in thirty seconds.
“Oh shit,” Rogers said. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
The Awesome had a single escape pod that was set to launch at a moment’s notice, rigged with all the equipment needed for a short trip in space. Rogers got up, grabbing his bottle of Jasker 120, and shouted at his copilot.
“Dorsey, we need to get to the—”
The computer notified him that the escape pod had been safely jettisoned just as he saw the trail of blue light cross the viewscreen.
Dorsey was no longer in the cockpit.
“You worthless, cowardly, backbiting—”
A thunderous impact shuddered through the entire ship, interrupting what would have been a brilliant stream of insults. Rogers closed his eyes and wished he had never left the military. At least then he wouldn’t have had such a good chance of being killed.
After what seemed like an eternity, warning sirens blared from the instrument panel, and Rogers came to the unbelievable realization that he was still alive. Opening his eyes, he saw that the Rancor had fired two disabling shots right into his engines with a precision he had never seen in all his days in the fleet.
The damage assessment popped up almost immediately: the engines had been ruined. But why would the Rancor sit there for the entirety of the fight, then just shoot out Rogers’ engines? And why wouldn’t they say anything?
Then Rogers knew. The Meridan fleet had discovered the missing ship—the Awesome, which Rogers thought he had so carefully erased from the fleet’s inventory before leaving with it—pinpointed Rogers as its new owner, revived the Rancor and its crew from the dead using voodoo and a lot of Scotch tape, and sent them after him. Any moment now, they’d come across the radio, tell him to prepare to be boarded, and he’d be on his way back to the closest Meridan magistrate for sentencing. What an end to a relatively short, relatively successful post-military career.
Instead, the Rancor promptly turned around and jumped back into Un-Space.
This was it. Rogers was going to become a rotting corpse on a perfectly good ship with no engines in the middle of nowhere. Nobody had come to pick him up. No ships had transited
to which he could send a message. Maybe a spot this remote hadn’t been such a great idea, after all. His life support systems were on their last reserves, and it was only a matter of time now before the oxygen tanks gave out and he started to feel that uneasy, sleepy feeling that foretold a slow and hypoxic death.
He’d been in hypobaric chambers before in training; he knew the signs. First he’d start to taste funny things, then he’d be unable to perform basic mathematical equations. He’d start mumbling incoherently. The last traces of his intellect would vanish as his body no longer put oxygen into his brain. Then he’d be promoted to colonel and run the personnel squadron. It was an inevitable chain of events.
Rogers was an engineer, damn it, and a good one! He should have been able to fix those engines. But the compartment that held his Vacuum Mobility Unit and tools had been sealed when the Rancor blew a hole in it. Maybe if he held his breath long enough when he went outside . . . he’d been a pretty strong swimmer in his younger days . . .
Rogers shook his head. What was he thinking? Was he getting cabin fever, or . . . He checked his life support systems. He had less than half a standard day’s worth of oxygen left.
Dorsey. Horror vids couldn’t describe the litany of physical violence Rogers would hire someone else to inflict on him.
The instrument panel gave him another warning about the life support systems, and he almost threw the long-since-empty bottle of Jasker 120 at it. He would have, actually, had he not already done so two days before and missed completely, putting a dent in the storage locker that held the rest of his bottles of Jasker 120 and rendering it unopenable. He’d never had very good aim.
When the panel beeped again, he thought he was going to pry it open with his fingers and start ripping out wires. But the sound was different. It was the sound he’d heard right before the Rancor had come out of Un-Space and started this whole idiotic escapade.
Moments later, a hole opened at the Un-Space point, and two ships popped out like the pus from a black pimple. Two MPF ships.
“Attention, Awesome—wait, is that really the name of this ship?”
Rogers flicked the comms switch and responded in a hoarse, tired whisper.
“Yes.”
The name on the registry was sort of a happy accident; Rogers had been messing around with ideas and had typed “I am awesome” into the terminal. He’d accidentally hit return, and the name stuck. Right now, though, he didn’t feel very awesome.
He heard muffled laughter over the radio. “Attention, Awesome. You, your crew, and your ship are subject to seizure under Code 9 of the Meridan Laws of Free Space. You will power down your engines and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be treated as authorization for the use of deadly force.”
“My engines are disabled,” Rogers replied. “I can’t power them down.”
“Well, at least flip the switch,” the Meridan ship responded. “We have protocol.”
Rogers reached forward and flipped the switch, then flipped the bird. He hated protocol. But not nearly as much as he hated dying from asphyxiation.
Second Chances
The brig of the Meridan Patrol Ship Lumos wasn’t exactly a palace, but it could have been much worse. A relatively comfortable bed, a fresh change of clothes—something that Rogers greatly appreciated after spending all that time floating around in the Awesome—and three meals every standard day. Even if those meals were actually Standard Edible Wartime Relief (STEW) meals, which were really more like protein cardboard than anything else, they were still food.
Rogers couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a STEW ration—or SEWR rats, as anyone who ever actually ate them called them. When he’d asked the guard for a martini and filet mignon, however, Rogers had been laughed at, which didn’t make any sense. Rogers never joked about filet mignon.
But now that he was standing at the docking hatch, ready to be transferred, Rogers wasn’t thinking very much about any kind of food.
A young officer, by the look of him and the rank on his epaulet, chatted affably with him as they waited for the docking technician to finish checking the systems.
“Mr. Rogers,” he said smugly. “It seems you’ve reached the end of your tenure on our ship. I won’t say we’ll be sad to see you go.”
“Oh, really?” Rogers asked, giving an exaggerated frown. “I was expecting a lot of tears and hugs.”
“Still waiting for clearance, sir,” said the docking tech. “Shouldn’t be more than a minute or two.”
The officer—an ensign—nodded and put his hands behind his back in what Rogers thought was a very arrogant pose. His uniform was just as crisp as everyone else’s Rogers had seen, and he even wore a small disruptor pistol at his side. What use he’d ever have for it, Rogers had no idea. The last thing anyone in the modern military ever expected to do was shoot a gun.
“You mind telling me what’s happening?” Rogers asked.
“I think you know.”
“Yeah, I spend all of my breath asking questions I already know the answers to. I hope to one day metamorphosize into medical paperwork.”
The ensign scoffed. “You’re being taken to Magistrate Tuckalle for your trial and sentencing. After that, you’ll probably spend the rest of your life in the salt mines on Parivan if you’re lucky.”
Rogers shifted uneasily, eyeing the hatch like a poison viper. The name of the magistrate sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it before.
“That doesn’t sound very fun,” Rogers said.
The ensign looked mildly offended. “What do you mean? Have you never been to Parivan? It’s a great place. I was born there. That’s why I said if you’re lucky.”
“I guess you’re a real salty sailor, then, aren’t you?”
“That joke,” the ensign said, “was in very poor taste.” He raised his eyebrows up and down rapidly, grinning like a fool.
“Please stop talking.”
“Anyway, I was only saying that you’d spend the rest of your life there because it’s got great real estate prospects. Once you’re done with your community service, you’ll probably want to stay.”
Rogers frowned. That didn’t make any sense. Were they charging him with the theft of a Meridan ship or weren’t they?
“Community service?” Rogers asked. “Not jail time? What kind of war crime are you charging me with?”
“War crime?” The ensign looked genuinely confused. “What are you talking about? We’re not at war. Yet, anyway. We picked you up for littering.”
“Wait . . . Littering? You mean you didn’t arrest me for . . .” Rogers swallowed what would have been an astronomically stupid confession. “You mean that’s it?
“Well, sure,” the ensign said. “You dropped a cargo crate in the middle of open space, then blew it up. We try to keep a clean system around here, you know. You can’t just go dropping your garbage wherever you feel like it, even if it was in the middle of that refuse heap.”
He must have been talking about the debris from the space battle. It certainly had looked like a garbage dump by the time the MPS Lumos had shown up.
“But if it was a refuse heap,” Rogers said carefully, “what’s the problem?”
The ensign grabbed a datapad from the docking tech’s workstation and tapped on what was presumably the report about Rogers’ arrest.
“No permit,” he said. “Can’t dump without a permit.”
Rogers’ heart settled down a little bit. This would be a piece of cake, if a little inconvenient. For him, getting out of a littering fine was as easy as pulling the “got your nose” trick on a marine private first class.
“We’re all set, sir,” the technician said. “Opening the hatch.”
The hatch to the bridgeway opened, revealing a short corridor with no windows to give Rogers any idea of where exactly he was being transferred. Three days of traveling could have put them almost anywhere in the system, but that was assuming that the Lumos had made a str
aight line. They could have finished a patrol route before bringing him to this outpost, or, more likely, they had spent three days doing beer runs and making sure the ship was fully stocked with their favorite snack foods. That was what Rogers would have done, anyway.
Regardless, they were clearly still in free space; Rogers hadn’t heard anything about making a landing planetside, nor had he felt the jolting atmospheric impacts that always used to make him clutch the nearest piece of furniture.
A pair of mean-faced Meridan Marines stood on the other end of the hatch. marines didn’t bother him so much—they were some of the best drinking buddies in the galaxy—but he couldn’t say the same for the loaded disruptor rifles they had at the ready. One of them held a datapad, which he showed to the ensign, who pressed a few buttons on his own. The pad emitted a pleasant ding followed by a pleasant feminine voice that said:
“Congratulations! Your prisoner has been transferred, and the system is now a safer place because of your actions. You are entitled to one free round of nachos at the Lumos Lanes, courtesy of Snaggadir’s Sundries. Happy bowling!”
“Sweet!” The ensign pumped a fist in the air. “He’s all yours, boys. I have a date with the lanes.” He turned to Rogers with a surprisingly genuine smile. “Enjoy Parivan! If you go to the Birddog Restaurant in the capital, don’t get the fish. It’s very . . .”
“Salty?” Rogers offered.
“Exactly! How did you know?”
“Just a guess.”
The sergeant with the datapad motioned for Rogers to move ahead of them, staring daggers at him the whole time. Rogers felt very uncomfortable with these two grunts at his back, their disruptor rifles humming with their signature low-pitched rumble.
As they emerged out of the bridgeway and through a second hatch, Rogers immediately recognized where he was. It wasn’t another ship—it was an administration station, an organ (most similar to the intestines, for various reasons) of the Meridan government, located on the fringe of the system. He’d passed through here once during a station transfer, though he hadn’t stayed long enough for him to remember the name of it. He had stayed here long enough, however, to make off with a couple extra hundred credits, thanks to a little card game he had organized with the personnel in the armory. Those credits had bought him his first bottle of Jasker 120.
