Privateer Tales 3: Parley

by Jamie McFarlane

  “Try not to get in the middle of this,” Tali said. Those words were obviously for me.

  I’d sparred with the woman. She had never fought me with any of the ruthlessness I’d seen the first time she and Marny had faced off. She didn’t need to, as she’d been able to handle me as easily as a cat handles a mouse.

  I wasn’t, however, about to let her face this mountain on her own. I understood that it was possible I would get in her way, but I also understood that I was just as likely to get in Ivan’s. What I needed to avoid was the one punch knock-out I presumed he had in him. I pulled my vac-suit helmet up - it should be able to absorb something.

  I wished I’d left my AGBs (Arc-jet Gloves and Boots) on, although they probably would have been confiscated along with our comms, when we’d been put in the brig. I ran at Ivan, mimicking the rush my dark-haired assailant had used on me. I mentally braced myself for the blow, but was still rocked by its ferocity. Ivan smashed his clasped fists into my back. I crumpled to the floor, gasping like a fish out of water, unable to find enough oxygen in what I was sucking in (which wasn’t much).

  I could barely hear the slaps, grunts and strikes through the pain, but after half a minute my mind started to clear. I sat up and scooted backwards, away from the ballet of two excellent martial artists. It struck me that the fight wasn’t a lot different than what I’d witnessed between Marny and Tali. An impossibly fast assailant against an impenetrable rock.

  It wasn’t as if Ivan were slow, either. He just didn’t have the same sort of speed as Tali. He was very smart in using the cell and bunk to restrict her movements and deliver several of his massive blows. I’d received just one of these and found it difficult to move. I couldn’t imagine how she was able to continue to dance around him after receiving even one.

  My head finally cleared enough for me to realize that Tali had completely occupied Ivan’s attention. It was as if I didn’t exist. More importantly, there was nothing between me and the open door. There were two possible approaches; slink away slowly or scamper quickly. I chose scamper. If Ivan was going to see me, there wasn’t much I could do about it. If Tali failed, I could guarantee we were lost. At a minimum, he would have to turn his back on her to come after me.

  I rolled over to my knees and crawled, despite the pain in my body. I got to my feet and stumbled through the door, moving as quickly as I could. I made it out of the room and into the next. It wasn’t a large room and was split down the center by an armored glass partition with a door on one side and a counter that separated the public from the station security personnel on duty.

  The armored glass door was ajar, the body of Red propping it open. He lay face down with his hands on his neck. Under other circumstances, I would have run over to try and provide some assistance, but I could hear the fight continuing in the room behind me.

  I looked around and couldn’t find any weapons, so I started pulling on cabinet doors. They were all locked. An idea I hated floated through my mind. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in a position to be picky. I ran over to Red and felt his neck to see if he might be alive. He didn’t seem to be, but that didn’t make the next task any less gruesome.

  I dragged his body over to the cabinets and laid his palm on the first security panel I came to. It’s an awful business, moving a body. First, Red was heavier than he looked and second, I felt like a ghoul. Thing is, it worked. The panel turned green and I unceremoniously dumped the body back onto the floor. I pulled the door open and found several heavy blaster rifles on the shelf. I also saw our confiscated earwigs and weapons.

  I dropped my face shield, which I’d completely forgotten I had on, grabbed my earwig and stuffed it into my ear. The thing about combat that most people might not know is that, under pressure, lots of things seem like a good idea. Adrenaline does a fabulous job of helping you forget what parts of your body are in pain or broken.

  Somewhere along the line, my ear had come into contact with something sharp, causing major damage. I realized this because it felt like I’d just jammed a knife into my ear. The pain escalated as the earwig automatically reattached itself to my cheek, where Red had ripped a good amount of skin off. In the long list of regrets for that day, this had jumped to the top, at least momentarily.

  Wincing through the pain, I grabbed a heavy blaster rifle and saw with satisfaction that it interfaced with my HUD immediately. I swung around and re-entered the room where Tali and Ivan had been battling. The room was deathly quiet and I hoped I wasn’t too late.

  I was thrilled to see Ivan lying on the floor, not moving. Tali had taken a knee, apparently to catch her breath.

  “Let’s move,” She said. “We should be able to catch Qiu.”

  “Your comm is in the cabinet,” I said. I’d seen hers sitting on the same shelf where mine had been.

  “Don’t forget your flechette,” she reminded me. “I doubt Marny wants to replace those all the time.”

  She made a good point, although, I suspected she was messing with me. I grabbed the flechette and holstered it. I wasn’t going to give up the heavy blaster rifle at this point and if Tali thought that I should, she kept it to herself.

  Hail Sterra's Gift. Stream visual.

  “Liam, status,” Marny said.

  “We’re both up. Flark’s got Qiu and is trying to get off the station. We’re going after them.”

  Tali had re-established the nanite trace program and we had an easy green line that gave us the path to follow.

  “Be careful. A big old frigate just rolled into the system,” Nick warned.

  “They’re taking the co-op,” I said.

  “What? Why would they attack the co-op? It’s just ore,” Marny asked.

  “No. According to Flark, they’ve got a giant hauler and are taking the entire asteroid.”

  “Holy shite,” Marny said.

  “Chat later. Let’s go,” Tali prompted. “Stay on my six.”

  I knew from training with Marny at the warehouse on Coolidge that my job was to make sure we weren’t overtaken from behind. I followed her down the hallway to the catwalk that joined us back to Tower A. Fortunately, an elevator was waiting. Unfortunately, we could see this was the car that had carried Qui. They were quite a ways ahead of us.

  “Move,” Tali urged, as the door opened on the main concourse. The green trail of nanites led to the airlock of the docking bay concourse. We moved through as quickly as possible - the nanite trackers indicating we were now less than four minutes behind.

  We sprinted down the concourse past the turn to Sterra's Gift. At the end was another airlock. The nanite trackers were all over it. Qiu had been breathing hard and spewing them vociferously.

  I peered through the glass and saw the catwalk automatically being reeled back in. The frigate was pulling away and Harry Flark’s face was in the airlock on the other side. For the second time that day I realized, too late, that people’s instinct when being stared at was to look back.

  Flark looked right at me and started shouting. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Tali must have figured out what was happening because she spun with me and we both raced back down the fifty meters to the airlock that led us to Sterra's Gift.

  “Nick. We’ve got incoming!”

  The airlock seemed to take its sweet time cycling. The first salvo from the frigate hit the end of the concourse at the same time we entered the airlock that was now a vacuum, equalized with space. We pulled the door closed just in time to see all of the debris of the concourse rush down the hallway and get sucked out into space.

  We weren’t in the clear yet, though. The bay-side door opened easily and we ran for the ramp. Fortunately, Marny had been thoughtful enough to have the space side of Sterra's Gift’s airlock already open and we piled in, pulling the door closed behind us.

  I mashed my palm onto the panel that would cause the lock to cycle and waited with frustration w
hile it filled with atmo.

  “Liam! We’ve got trouble!” Nick’s voice was as excited as I’d ever heard it. I rushed down the hallway to the bridge and saw through the armored glass that the frigate, fully five hundred tonnes of muscle, sat broadside to the docking bay.

  OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

  I jumped into my empty pilot’s chair, pulled the combat harness over my body and clipped it in, then pulled the flight control stick back from the forward bulkhead.

  “I'll be in engineering,” Nick said, heading for the door of the bridge.

  “Not yet. Just hold on to something. Marny, do you have weapons online?”

  “Roger that, Cap.”

  “Fire both missile tubes now. Everybody hold on.”

  Engage combat thrust controls.

  I pushed the thrust control hard and we rocketed forward, just as the frigate started firing a broadside salvo at the station’s docking bay, at which we were dead center. I doubted that initially they knew exactly which bay we were coming out, but I also knew they out-gunned us by an outrageous margin. We were the proverbial duck in a barrel once they figured out which bay we were in. The rounds weren't specifically aimed at us yet, but we were taking hits, nonetheless.

  The frigate was so close to the station that the missiles couldn't be dodged. Unfortunately, the ship also had a countermeasures package that deployed flawlessly. Both our missiles hit scraps and exploded fifty meters before making contact with the ship.

  It was devastating that the missiles hadn’t done any damage, but at least the explosions had temporarily disrupted the bombardment lane between the frigate and the station. We desperately needed the extra few seconds. Sterra's Gift’s inertial system was absorbing and redistributing as much g-force as possible. I couldn’t push her any harder. We had to get clear. We wouldn’t last ten seconds once the frigate locked on our position.

  “Marny, put as much fire on that frigate as you can.” My voice strained with exertion.

  “Aye Cap, blasters are firing full and three seconds to missile ready.”

  “I’m rabbiting.”

  The design of a frigate is much different than that of a cutter like Sterra's Gift or even a much larger corvette like the Kuznetsov. Cutter and corvette tactics are primarily hit and run, but a frigate is designed to stand and deliver. The worst possible place to be is at a frigate's broadside. If I wanted us to survive this round, I had to change the geometry.

  The disruption from our missiles and the frigate’s general lack of knowledge of our location were working in our favor. The problem was, that only bought us enough time to launch Sterra's Gift out of the docking bay. The frigate would resolve both issues well before I could get out of its deadly reach.

  I pulled hard left on the flight stick and twisted the handle, turning us broadside to the frigate. By itself that was a suicidal maneuver, but the twist on the handle was just enough to roll the belly of the ship up toward the frigate. I sure hoped the new armor we’d added at Coolidge was worth the hefty price we’d paid. I only needed a couple of seconds of grace. We were pointed in the opposite direction of our foe and the engines were running at near peak.

  “Cap, I can’t get any weapons on ‘em upside down,” Marny reminded me.

  “Roger that.” I didn't have time to explain what I was doing. I just hoped she'd figure it out.

  Sterra's Gift was being buffeted by the increasingly focused fire of the frigate, but we were alive and surviving so far.

  “Nick, armor status?”

  “Can’t take much more, but it's holding.”

  My HUD displayed the orientation of the frigate and I watched it rotate slowly to try to keep its guns tracking on us. We were quickly accelerating away from its effective range.

  “Marny, do they have any missiles?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  Our ship lurched to the left. With its inertial system, it would take a considerable contact to rock us like that. That hit hadn't come from the frigate.

  “Station defensive guns are firing on us,” Nick said.

  “Frak! Roger that.” I recognized Flark’s signature from his attack on Colony 40. Take over the station’s defenses, then roll in the pirates.

  “Get close to the station. The guns are made to repel invaders, not shoot close in at the station,” Nick said.

  I really didn’t want to do that, since that could endanger the population, but then again they had a frigate broadsiding them at the moment.

  We’d already cleared the station so I pulled back on the stick to angle back toward it. I twisted again to reorient our armored belly to the frigate. I hadn’t let up on the thrust since I’d jumped into the seat. The shift in direction caught the frigate off guard and interrupted their salvos, which we’d almost escaped. I felt sick having to head back toward the heavily gunned and armored ship.

  The ship lurched again and a loud explosion rocked us. My vac-suit’s helmet automatically deployed which meant we’d lost pressure somewhere on the ship. As soon as we’d taken off, the bridge door had closed, so my best guess, based on the sound, was one of the cargo bays. Frak, we had a full load.

  “Can’t take another one of those,” Nick said. “Station gun penetrated the hull and we just lost the septic system and a portion of BR-2.”

  “Shite! Did we reseal?”

  “Yup.”

  I’d aligned us to sail up close to the station. It was a desperate gambit. I decelerated hard once we came up next to it. I’d positioned the station between us and the frigate and I’d also snuggled in as closely as I could. I waited for impact from the station’s guns. It never came.

  I watched the course of the frigate. Unless it was willing to shoot the station apart, there was no chance for it to line up on us again.

  “Marny, can you scan for other ships? I’ve got the frigate.”

  “Aye, Cap. I’ll also keep an eye out for station inhabitants with attitude problems.”

  We were in the unenviable position of being the rodent in a high stakes game of cat and mouse. For the moment, the conflict had reached equilibrium, but I knew from experience that wouldn’t last long. With the station perimeter defense guns online and tracking us as an enemy, we could neither run nor could we engage the frigate.

  “We’ve got to get those guns offline,” I said.

  “Agreed,” Tali answered.

  “Nick, can you find where they’re controlling those guns from?”

  “Working on it. It’s not on their public info.”

  “Tali, do you think your friend Bit Coffman could help?”

  “Good chance.”

  “Nick, take over the helm.”

  “No need, I’ve bridged the Navy’s equipment. I suspect Belcose won’t like it, but the secure Navy comm is now available on bridge.”

  He didn’t need to tell me twice.

  Establish comm with Bit Coffman.

  “Heya, Bitches. What’s shaking?” Bit’s voice came over the comm.

  “Bit, thanks for answering. We’re in a pinch here.”

  “Give it to me,” she said.

  “We’re pinned down by Jeratorn’s perimeter guns and we need to shut 'em down. Can you help us locate the control room?”

  “That’s hard. I’d probably have to eliminate all the residential spaces, cross that with all the power and sewer, take away the businesses, find the new construction and add-ons …”

  “How long?” Tali cut her off in mid-sentence.

  “Look, if I just do it, then you all think it’s easy.”

  “Bit,” Tali’s voice was firm.

  “Already working on it, probably take five minutes.”

  “Nick, can you take the helm?”

  “Yup.”

  “What are you thinking, Cap?” Marny asked.

  “I need my armored vac-suit and AGBs.”

  “Aye. That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  I jumped up and pushed my way through the bridge door, thankful to discover that the
hallway was still holding atmo. The bridge door closed behind me and sealed shut. Apparently the ship’s AI wasn’t taking any chances. I took this to heart and pulled the door to my quarters closed, I’d be in trouble if we depressurized while I was between suits.

  Once changed, I pushed the large flechette pistol into the chest holster that I preferred for combat situations. Marny had shown me the value of being able to un-holster my weapon by reaching across my chest instead of trying to pull it off my leg or from my waist.

  “Cap, Bit’s got it, info’s loading into our tactical displays.” Marny’s voice came through my earwig.

  “Which tower? We need an entrance. What’s the frigate doing?”

  “Bit, any chance you can hack those guns?”

  “Not in the amount of time you have available. I can, however, tell you they’re trying to override the safety protocols on them so they can shoot you.”

  “Think they’ll be successful?”

  “Not sure, but I wouldn’t bet against it.”

  “Look here,” Nick said.

  The rear holo projector displayed the three towers with the frigate and Sterra's Gift shown in their relative positions. Toward the top of one of the three towers a red box highlighted the position of the control station.

  “Frak!” I said. Now I understood why the frigate was sitting in the location that it was. It wasn’t just holding us in place, it was also guarding the control station.

  “Buckle up kids, this is going to get bumpy,” I said and pulled the combat harness back over my shoulders.

  As if in direct response to my statement, we felt the whump of contact on the rear quarter of the ship.

  “Damage to starboard engine,” Nick warned.

  I jammed the accelerator forward. The ship lurched with the sudden change in acceleration. I was relieved we hadn’t lost much power. I ran directly between the three towers. There were random wires and cables that I couldn’t dodge and the ship jostled as we ripped through. The noise on the bridge was horrendous. I was probably peeling off sensor strips and other less armored, but no less expensive, components. If we weren’t running for our lives I might have been concerned about what I was doing to the ship.