Mutiny on Mercury (Stark Raven Voyages Book 5)

by Jake Elwood

A buzzer sounded, Liz's hands moved, and the stars whipped past in a blur of white streaks. A moment later, the familiar hum of the engines went silent.

  "We're nose-on again," Liz said, her voice hushed as if the cutter could hear them through the void of space. "But we're a couple of thousand klicks over from where we were before. Without the engine to look for…"

  "They found us before," Joss pointed out. "And we're still closing."

  Chan nodded. "Get ready to restart the engine," he said. "When they spot us we'll try to dash past."

  The seconds crawled past, each with the weight of a mountain, and Chan, in a monumental feat of willpower, made his fingers remain still. He flexed his toes one at a time, an invisible form of fidgeting, and leaned back in his chair. Calm. I am perfectly calm. No stress here.

  Liz glanced up and shot him a sardonic grin that told him he wasn't fooling anyone. Her gaze returned to her console as the tension ratcheted higher and higher.

  "They're shooting," Joss barked, even as Liz's fingers curled over her console. Liz didn't touch the screen, though. "A miss," Joss reported. "By almost a kilometer, I think." She peered at her console. "It's hard to be sure."

  "They know roughly where we are, then," Chan said, pleased with how calm his voice sounded. "Only roughly."

  "Fifty K," said Joss. "This can't last."

  Chan gave her a terse nod. "We'll enjoy it as long as we can."

  The words were barely out of his mouth when the buzzer growled and the tips of Liz's fingers hit the console in front of her with an audible click. A laser impact would tell the cutter exactly where the Raven was. With no further hope of hiding, Liz slammed the engines up to full power and tapped the maneuvering controls. The Raven surged ahead and slewed sideways, the buzzer going silent as they jinked out of the laser's path.

  "She's coming about," Joss said, her voice uncharacteristically shrill. "I guess they want to use the rail guns."

  Chan glanced at his controls. They were no longer nose-on. The Raven was going to pass the cutter at an oblique angle. She'd still be a tough target, and she was going to whip past the other ship at high speed. The Myrmidon would have to point her tail at the Raven if she wanted to stay in range. The captain was making a different choice, betting everything on a close-range barrage.

  "This will be rough," said Chan, "but it will be over soon."

  The buzzer began to give intermittent squawks as the laser brushed them for a fraction of a second at a time. The Raven twisted and dipped, making it impossible for the laser to stay on target.

  "I'm detecting rail fire," Joss said. "It's all around us." A dull thud punctuated the statement, and she glanced down. "A graze," she said. "Probably no damage."

  The two ships hurtled toward each other, growls from the buzzer coming faster now. Half a dozen rounds bounced from the hull in less than a second, and Chan fancied that he felt a vibration through the arm of his chair.

  "One of those exploded," Joss announced, and Chan swore under his breath. Ballistic damage was bad enough. A direct hit from an explosive round could be devastating.

  A crash echoed through the ship, a different buzzer sounded, and Joss leaped from her seat. She bolted from the bridge, and Chan stared after her, then brought up a diagnostic report on his console. A cold prickle washed over his skin. The Raven had a hull breach, a small one by the look of it, but enough to asphyxiate all of them if it was left unrepaired. He glanced aft, wondering if he should follow Joss.

  She's competent enough. My place is here. Not that I'm doing anything. "Rhett," he said. "Go assist Joss. She'll be in the galley, patching a hole."

  "Very good, sir." The robot left, and Chan turned his attention back to his console.

  "Next time let's shoot back," Liz muttered. They were coming up on their closest approach to the Myrmidon. They were almost broadside to the other ship, and Liz killed the engines and swung the ship sideways. She pointed the nose of the Raven at the Myrmidon and the laser alarm went silent.

  Chan rotated his shoulders, trying to release some of the unbearable tension. The lack of speed came with a price, precious extra seconds spent in range of the Myrmidon's guns, but if they could dodge a few shots …

  The buzzer sounded, the window flashed crimson, and Chan flinched sideways. The smell of burned plastic filled his nostrils, and smoke made his eyes burn. He wiped tears from his eyes and looked around.

  For a moment he thought the ship was on fire. The sun filled the window before him, a glorious ball of flame. Liz had whipped the ship around and was flying directly away from the cutter. He turned his head, looking for the source of the smoke, and winced. The hatch leading to the rest of the ship was a burned, melted mess. Part of the back wall of the bridge was gone as well. He could see into Joss's cabin. It looked as if her bunk was partially destroyed.

  He tapped an icon for the ship's intercom, though with the bulkheads gone his voice might have carried on its own. "Joss? Are you all right?"

  "I'm all right." She coughed. "Rhett is okay too."

  I forgot about him. But I'm glad he's okay. "How's the patch coming?"

  "We're airtight again. I'm just finishing up."

  The buzzer sounded, and an instant later the chair seemed to twist under Chan. He was barely aware of the echoing boom that accompanied the impact. Liz swore, and the engines went silent.

  "Liz? Did we lose engines?" If so, they were in desperate trouble.

  "I shut them down," Liz replied. The sun vanished from the window. "I'm going nose-on again. Maybe the sun will interfere with their instruments."

  Chan nodded, then turned his attention to the diagnostic display. "Joss?" he said. "I have another hole for you to patch. Engine room this time."

  "Roger that." Exhaustion seemed to have drained the fear from her. "I'm on it."

  Chan killed the intercom connection. "Hey," he said, "why's it so quiet?"

  Liz glanced up long enough to flash a tight grin. "They seem to be having trouble hitting us." She looked down. "It's about bloody time."

  The tactical display showed the details. The Orbital Guard ship was in pursuit, laser and rail guns still firing. The Raven's passive radar showed rail gun rounds flashing past at a range of almost ten kilometers.

  "She has a lot of sideways momentum," Liz said. "She's losing ground at the moment. I'll wait until she's at her farthest point and then I'll bring us around and we'll run away."

  Chan nodded and heaved a sigh. They were through the worst of it. He stood, feeling as limp as if he'd just sprinted all those thousands of kilometers. "Good work. I'll go take a look at the damage."

  Chapter 2

  The four of them held a brief council on the bridge an hour later. It felt odd to include Rhett in the meeting. The robot tended to blend into the background of the bridge, like another piece of ship's equipment. However, experience had shown that the mechanical man was resourceful and even creative when the situation called for it. He's a member of the crew, Chan decided. He's earned the right to be here.

  "All right," said Chan, "where are we at? Liz?"

  Taking the question literally, she jerked a thumb at the window behind her, where the planet Mercury was a point of light significantly bigger than any star. "Coming up on the planet, Captain. We'll be in transponder range within an hour, if we turn our transponder on. Planetfall an hour after that."

  Chan nodded. "We'll keep it off for now. I'm still hoping to sneak in unnoticed." He turned to Joss. "What's the condition of the ship?"

  "We got off lucky." She still looked a bit drawn, but she was mostly recovered from the day's stress. "Two holes, one portside, one aft. We lost several pots and pans from the galley, and we took some damage to the circuits in the back. Nothing immediately critical, though." She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "The fuel gauge stopped working."

  Chan chuckled. "We can live with that. What else?"

  She shrugged. "We had something like four dozen minor burns from lasers, and maybe a dozen hits fr
om projectiles. We'll need to give the hull a careful inspection." She nodded toward the aft bulkhead. "The bridge will need some tidying up, as well. The steelglass seems fine, but we should get it checked out, just in case."

  "All right." Chan glanced at Rhett. "Anything to add, Rhett?"

  "Yes, Captain." The robot's voice was smooth and cheerful. "Air reserves are down more than fifty percent. I strongly recommend replenishing them. Although I can function perfectly well in any atmosphere or in vacuum, I don't care for the idea of running the ship alone after the rest of you have asphyxiated."

  Chan blinked. "Was that a joke, Rhett?"

  The robot inclined his golden head.

  "It wasn't a very good one."

  "I shall try to do better, Captain."

  Chan shook his head, bemused. "See that you do." He twisted his chair around so he was facing aft. "Has anyone checked on our cargo?"

  "I took a quick peek," Joss reported. "It seems fine."

  Chan glanced at the chronometer in the corner of his console. "We have a little less than nine hours before it spoils," he said.

  "What the hell kind of cargo goes bad in a week?" Liz groused. "What are we smuggling, fresh milk?" She scowled. "I still say there's someone inside that crate."

  "It's not a person," Chan said. "The handling instructions were pretty specific. We can expose it to things that would kill someone. Heat and cold, hard vacuum and hard radiation. We just can't open the box, and we have to deliver it in eight days."

  "It's like they don't understand human nature," Liz muttered. "Don’t they know it just makes us want to open it even more?" Her fingers twitched as if she were imagining undoing the latches.

  "It's fifty thousand bucks," Chan reminded her. "I'm not messing with a payday like that. We don't open the crate."

  Liz nodded grumpily.

  "This little brush with the Orbital Guard won't help things," Chan added. "They'll be watching for a ship like this now. Our only hope is if they've got their whole fleet out scouring the spacelanes. If they're watching the pole, we're sunk."

  Liz shrugged. "There's only one way to find out."

  Joss nodded. She looked frightened, but determined. "She's right. We just have to fly in and see what happens."

  "I concur," Rhett said.

  Chan sighed. "I guess that's decided, then." He swiveled his seat around. "Take us in, Liz."

  An hour later he knew he'd made a mistake. Two Orbital Guard ships floated in low polar orbits around Mercury, and Joss picked up another ship orbiting with its transponder turned off. Under the circumstances it had to be Orbital Guard too.

  Not that it mattered. Two was already too many.

  "What do we do?" Liz said. "We can't slip past all that."

  "They won't know for sure it was us playing tag with the Myrmidon," Joss said. "We had our transponder off, and they never got a really good look at us."

  "It's a hell of a coincidence," Liz retorted, "and we've been shot up. They'll board us for sure."

  "We could survive being boarded," Chan said thoughtfully, "if we didn't have the cargo."

  Liz and Joss looked at him. "Ditch the cargo?" Liz said. "After all we've been through?"

  Chan scratched his chin, considering the angles. "We could jettison it. Leave it out here in a high orbit. Fly in, let the Orbital Guard search us. Deny all knowledge of the Atlas and the Myrmidon. Then, when they're not paying as much attention to us, we come back up and grab the cargo."

  "I don't know," said Joss. "I'm not too keen on flying right up to a lot of suspicious cops."

  "It's either that or give up," Liz said. "We could really use the fifty grand." She glanced at the aft bulkhead. "We'll need half of it for repairs."

  "Let's give it a shot," Chan said, and stood. "Liz, you man the bridge."

  "Hold on," said Liz. "How will we find it again? That box is going to be a real pain to spot."

  Chan pondered the question. "We could put another squawk box on it." The little radio beacons were used by everyone from surveyors to prospectors to mark the locations of supplies, hazards, or boundaries. The Raven had a dozen or so in stock.

  "That'll draw in the Orbital Guard," Liz objected. She frowned. "Okay, you won't like this."

  Chan matched her frown. "Won't like what?"

  "We could put Rhett out there too. With the cargo and a squawk box. He could wait a couple of hours, and then turn the box on. Or wait until he gets a broadcast from us."

  Chan scowled. "You're right. I don't like it."

  "You can't do that to him," Joss protested. "It's inhumane!"

  "Rhett is an 'it,' not a 'him,'" Liz said, ignoring the pronoun she'd used a moment before. "It'll work. And he'll be fine." She colored slightly. "Rhett will be fine."

  "He'll be fine if we get to him quickly," Chan said. "If the Mercs detain us for a few days, though, we'll never find him." He imagined Rhett, still functional, still aware, drifting endlessly around the planet. How long would he last? Months? Years?

  "He can turn on the squawk box," Liz said. "The Orbital Guard will find him. But they won't have to. It'll be fine. We'll pick him up."

  "We won't do that to Rhett," Joss said, crossing her arms and glaring at Liz. She turned the glare on Chan. "Right, Captain?"

  He hesitated, and her glare deepened. He was tempted. Sorely tempted. Liz is right. This will work. And Rhett will be fine. He looked at Joss, opened his mouth to tell her his decision, and hesitated again. Would I send Joss out in a vac suit to turn on the squawk box, assuming we'd make it back to save her? It's not a fair analogy. Rhett doesn't need air.

  But that wasn't the point. The answer was an unequivocal "no." Nothing would make him dump Joss out the airlock into the cold vacuum of space with no semblance of a guarantee that she could be retrieved. Not for mere money. It was unthinkable.

  "Joss is right," he said. When Liz opened her mouth he said, "Unless you want to volunteer. We could give you extra air. Come back and pick you up in no time. Probably. If nothing goes wrong."

  Liz closed her mouth. "Fine."

  "If I might interject," said Rhett, his voice as unruffled as ever. "We still have the radio-operated beacon that was with the crate when we picked it up. We can turn it on remotely, as we did before." His blank face remained expressionless as he added, "No one would have to be put out into space."

  "You could have mentioned that earlier," Liz grumbled. Then, reluctantly, "Good thinking, Rhett."

  The crate massed a good two hundred kilos, so they killed the ship's gravity while Chan and Rhett moved it back into the aft airlock. Momentum made it a thorough pain to move even without weight. Chan grimaced, thinking about how they would have to bring it back in, then unload yet again down on the surface. Payment would be on delivery at a set of coordinates a hundred kilometers from Mercury's north pole.

  "I hope he's space-sick," Liz said as he returned to the bridge.

  "There's no one in the crate, Liz."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  When the crate was far enough away that they could no longer see it on radar, Liz took a deep breath and turned on the ship's transponder. The response from the Orbital Guard was immediate. "Stark Raven. You are within Telemachus Inter Global space. State your destination and company of ownership."

  "Company of ownership?" Chan looked at the others and shook his head, then touched an icon on his console. "The Stark Raven is an independent cargo hauler. We're bound for Dawn City."

  "We'll escort you in." The voice on the radio was that of an uptight older man. "If you deviate from a straight approach to the pole you will be fired upon."

  Chan cut the connection. "Friendly place," he said. "I knew there was a reason I stayed in the outer planets."

  "Do you think the Myrmidon might have complained about us?" Liz said drily. "I hope that's it. I hope they don't treat every passing ship this way."

  A pair of ships broke orbit and moved up to match velocity with the Raven. There was a cutter not much bigger than the Ra
ven, and a large warship, her hull a hundred meters long and bristling with gun turrets.

  "I think we made the right choice," Joss said in a small voice. "I don't think sneaking past would have worked out."

  Dawn City stood at Mercury's north pole. The planet had a minimal axial tilt, so in Dawn City the merciless oven that was the sun sat perpetually on the horizon. From above, the city was a circle lined by curving streets, each row of buildings providing shade for the next. There were no streets radiating from the center of the city. It was a city engineered to create shadows. The only building to catch a lot of sun was a tower just off-center, with gleaming panes of steelglass extending down on all sides at a 45-degree angle to create an enormous pyramid.

  The spaceport was on the outskirts of the city. As the Raven neared ground level all Chan could see of the city was a line of gleaming white walls and the glittering bulk of the glass pyramid. The sun blazed in from the side, making the city walls glow.

  The spaceport wasn't walled, but it was surrounded by tall posts that painted the landing pads in stripes of light and shadow. Several large buildings lined one side of a broad open area covered with painted circles to designate landing pads. A dozen ships perched on the pads. A dozen more pads stood empty, and Liz set the ship down on a pad surrounded by blinking lights.

  Their escort ships didn't land. Instead, a pair of armored personnel carriers trundled out to surround the Raven. The blunt snout of a huge laser protruded from the top of one APC, covering the ship.

  "They really aren't happy to see us," Liz remarked. "Do we suit up and go out there?"

  Chan shook his head. "God only knows what will provoke them. We'll wait for instructions."

  "Incoming call," Joss said, and touched an icon on her console. A woman's voice came over the bridge speakers. She sounded just as personable and friendly as the other Mercurians they had encountered.

  "Stark Raven. Do not attempt to take off or you will be fired upon. All personnel will disembark now. Bring no weapons. Acknowledge, or we will assume hostile intent."

  Joss glanced at Chan. He nodded, and she touched an icon. "Acknowledged," she said curtly, and cut the connection before adding, "bitch."