A Fiery Sunset

by Chris Kennedy

  Before the Tortantula carrying the camera could reach the walls, a 100-foot-tall Raknar came through the city’s gates and screamed, “Let’s do this. Leeeerooooy……Jenkins!” Missiles rippled out from its shoulder-mounted racks, and the Tortantula in front of the camera holder was blasted to pieces in a spray of black body parts.

  The Raknar then began playing something she’d have loosely called “music,” although she didn’t recognize the song, while it went about single-handedly wrecking the Tortantula assault. It fired its weapons and stomped through the giant spider-analogues like a five-year-old might squash conventional spiders on a driveway. The song reached its chorus right as the Raknar stepped on a Tortantula close to the camera holder. “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” was screamed over and over as, in slow motion, a giant boot came down like an inexorable force of nature to crush the alien, and bodily fluids erupted from under the foot of the Raknar as the Tortantula’s body exploded under the forces applied to it.

  Even though it was a Tortantula, she was forced to look away, nauseated, and saw several of the tribunal members looking away as well. The Goka rep seemed fascinated at the Tortantula’s demise, and Leeto appeared to be smiling as she watched the other members’ reactions to the video. She finally stopped the video and looked at Sansar. “I think we’ve all probably seen enough of what Humans are capable of today. I suggest we break here for the day; I, for one, am going to need quite some time before I’ll be able to eat dinner.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  EMS Bucephalus, Ja-ku-Tapa System

  Bucephalus transitioned into normal space and immediately took up a combat footing. The crew launched a series of drones to extend the ship’s sensor range and started burning the ion drive toward the system stargate more than five million kilometers distant. The ion drive was slow, especially on a warship the size of Bucephalus. It did have its advantages, though. One was that the drive system was lean and used little power in exchange for the specific impulse it provided. Another benefit was that it was extremely difficult to detect unless you happened to be within 12 degrees of the drive plume. A fusion torch, on the other hand, provided neutron flux which was visible all over a star system. Lighting one off was like sounding a gong after arriving. Hello, look at me! I’m here!

  Bucephalus started life as an Akaga-class cruiser, manufactured by the Izlian race, and sold in bulk on the open market. Thaddeus Cartwright had purchased it “naked,” with just standard shields, power plants, and core weapon systems, then had it shipped to a Jeha shipyard. There, the brand-new ship was taken apart and rebuilt. After four of her six particle cannons were removed and sold (leaving one forward and one aft), her shield generators were upgraded and 10 amidships missile launchers added. Cruisers seldom mounted missiles, but the launchers were surplus and inexpensive.

  When configured as such, the engineers found themselves with considerably more space. The supporting structures for the massive particle cannons took up a considerable amount of space. Stripped down, six more vehicle bays were added, as well as support shops and hangars for small craft, cargo space, and bunk space to accommodate an entire battalion of CASPer-equipped troops. A trio of retractable gravity ringlets were added for crew comfort.

  The final benefit of removing the particle cannons was that her power plants were now greatly overpowered, no longer needing to generate the more than 60 gigawatts required to power them. Thaddeus and the engineers routed that surplus into an improved fusion torch, capable of pushing the lightened cruiser at more than nine Gs, a solid two Gs better than most cruisers her size. When Bucephalus arrived at Earth a year after leaving the Izlian shipyards, she’d been reborn as a lean, mean, mercenary cruiser, the likes of which were difficult to match.

  While Captain Su was shepherding Bucephalus across the system, Jim was in the depths of the ship’s cavernous bays, hard at work. Normally crowded with troopers, gear, support staff, and drop ships, it was now nearly empty.

  “Hope this works,” Hargrave commented as he helped a tech go through the startup sequence on a nearly-new Mk 8 CASPer. “One company of CASPers is pretty thin, if shit goes sideways.”

  “It is,” Jim agreed, “so hope it doesn’t go sideways.” Hargrave shot him a sidelong glance and scowled. There’d been an unspoken tension between the two ever since Jim had ditched him at Karma Upsilon 4 six months ago to head off in search of Raknar, and the secrets to operating them. Jim had his reasons, but he’d lied to Hargrave to do it. Sometimes, Jim feared he’d damaged their relationship in ways he couldn’t easily repair. “I know I say this a lot lately, but trust me. I’ve been here before; I know the situation.”

  “That was more than a month ago,” Hargrave reminded him. “A lot could’ve changed.”

  “From what Captain Su is picking up from radio traffic, I don’t think it has. I’m hoping I can take advantage of that.”

  “You’d better not be lying to me this time,” Hargrave said.

  Jim flinched. “I said I was sorry about that.” Hargrave grunted. “The situation on Earth and Karma is bad. We need an edge, and I believe I can deliver that edge.”

  “I still say the solution would have been to bring the entire unit here and flatten the place.”

  “And that would play right into Peepo’s hand,” Jim pointed out. “We don’t have any beef with the bugs. This stuff doesn’t even belong to them. They’re squatters. Galactic Union law is clear on that matter. Finders, keepers. It’s more legal to steal than to kill the previous owners.”

  “It’s like the Old West meets Pirates of the Caribbean,” Hargrave said, making Jim smile. Jim had shown that movie in Bucephalus’ mess hall three days ago. Unlike some of Jim’s more esoteric 20th century movies, the crew seemed to genuinely enjoy the movie. Even Hargrave had smiled and laughed at the eccentric pirate’s antics.

  “The Union is pretty loose in the morals department,” Jim agreed, “until you cross a line.”

  “Yeah,” Hargrave agreed, “then they slaughter you for it, or call in the iridium badges.”

  “Commander Cartwright?” a voice asked over his pinplants.

  “Go ahead, Captain,” he replied silently.

  “We’ve established coasting velocity. You can depart anytime in the next 10 minutes to meet your window.”

  “Understood, Captain Su. Thanks.” Jim turned to Hargrave. “I gotta go.”

  His XO gave Jim the once over. He was wearing light combat armor, complete with a visored helmet, a backpack stuffed with gear, and his favorite GP-90 Ctech pistol. In the combat environments Human mercs often found themselves, he might as well be naked. “I never noticed, but you’re still losing weight, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Jim said and smiled. “Maybe a pound a week, more or less.” Hargrave nodded and returned the smile.

  “Your dad couldn’t resist the urge to take off by himself every god-damned chance he got, either. You are your father’s son.” He stuck out his hand. “Be careful, Boss.” Jim took it.

  “You as well,” he said. “You guys will be a lot bigger target than I will if things fall apart.” Hargrave added a salute, which Jim returned. The young Cartwright was a lot more comfortable doing that now, after a couple years of being the company’s commanding officer.

  With the gravity gone from the ship now that it was coasting, he released the foot magnets and floated toward the nearby ship. The vessel looked nothing like the Human-manufactured Phoenix dropships that would normally be occupying the bay. It looked alien. It was also many times larger and, frankly, beat to shit. Splunk had a panel open just behind the small ship’s bridge, and a dozen cables floated loose like someone’s unbound hair in the lack of gravity. Seeing that, Jim almost panicked.

  “Splunk, do we have a problem?” The little Fae’s head popped out, and her ears perked up. She cocked her head, confused. Jim pointed at all the frayed and severed cables. “Can we go?”

  “Sure Jim, ” She unceremoniously gathere
d the cables, rammed them into the panel, wrapped her prehensile tale around a protruding sensor antenna for leverage, and muscled the hatch closed. Jim’s eyes went wider when a spark snapped from the panel. Splunk gave it a startled look, but when there was no more sparking, she flashed him a thumbs-up and headed for the hatch behind the bridge.

  “Good luck, Commander,” Jim heard from a maintenance crewman working on suits nearby. Jim waved, then noticed several of them exchanging credit chits. Were they gambling on whether the alien ship would fly or not? He wondered if he should get in on that action, because if they were betting against Splunk making something work, they were about to lose some credits.

  Jim sailed into the main hatch and reached for the close button. A note was taped on it. “No.” Splunk didn’t write much in English, so he recognized her writing. A crank made from welded together cast-off parts protruded from a panel with another note taped to it. “Yes.” Oh, joy, Jim thought, and hooked one arm through a brace to keep from flying around as he started cranking. Sure enough, the door began to cycle closed. At least it closed quickly, so he didn’t have to listen to the crew’s laughter for too long.

  As he was finishing the door, the hull began to vibrate. Either they were about to explode, or the fusion reactor was starting. The door closed with a thump, there was a hiss, and his ears popped. The hull was pressurizing. That was good; he didn’t like breathing vacuum. He made his way quickly to the cockpit and found his partner there. She’d jury-rigged a dozen slates into an ad hoc computer system to operate the ship. Most of the original systems had melted down the last time he’d flown the ship.

  “All good?” he asked skeptically and got another thumbs-up. On the slates, a dizzying array of status indicators were fluctuating, flashing, and buzzing. The only remaining control systems native to the ship all showed either no function or malfunction. He’d learned to read them quite well while trying to survive 170 hours in hyperspace on that bridge. By the end of it, he’d been forced to live in a spacesuit when the life support failed completely. Thankfully, this time all it needed to do was fly a few hundred thousand kilometers and land. Once.

  Outside, through the streaked and pitted bridge windows, all work had ceased as the maintainers in spacesuits watched to see what happened. The rest had retired to the operations blister, a big, round collection of windows which allowed the control staff to view the bay from the comfort of a pressurized space. Great, I’m a distraction, Jim thought glumly.

  “Juliet Charlie One, this is Bucephalus Launch Control. We’re preparing to depressurize the bay.” Jim picked up one of the Human-designed headsets and settled it in place.

  “Bucephalus Launch Control, this is Juliet Charlie One. We are airtight and ready for departure.” He glanced at Splunk, who was snugging a strap across her middle and fiddling with the plethora of slates. At least, he hoped they were ready.

  “Venting,” came the controller again. One of the slates began an insistent beeping, to which Splunk tapped a display, and it silenced. Jim listened carefully. There were a few groans as the overstressed hull expanded in the decreasing atmospheric pressure, but that was all. In a minute, they were in vacuum, and the huge bay door was sliding aside.

  “Release clamps,” Jim said over the radio. The hull echoed as the magnetic restraining clamps released the ship, and they floated up off the deck. He settled his hands into the gloves, which interacted with the alien-designed RCS system, one of the few original systems still functioning. After accessing the file in his pinplants that stored the configuration, he gave the starboard cluster a couple taps. The pops of the thrusters firing banged through the interior of the ship, and they moved to the left. “Excellent,” he said and smiled at Splunk, who was still playing with the slates.

  “Juliet Charlie One, you are clear of the bay and free to maneuver,” Launch Control said. “Best of luck, Commander, and see you soon.”

  “Roger that. Juliet Charlie One out.” Jim released the RCS gloves and took hold of the dual joystick flight controls. With a foot he nudged the power lever forward, and the fusion torch came alive. It wasn’t a smooth acceleration, but it was acceleration. He glanced over at Splunk’s array of slates and caught “Containment Nominal” on one of them. Knowing that must pertain to the alien ship’s finicky fusion core, he let out his breath. That was the part that’d almost gotten them killed the last time.

  “Setting course for the planet,” Jim told Splunk.

  “All good, ”

  I hope so, Jim thought as he checked their range from Bucephalus. Confirming the torch wasn’t pointed at his ship, he gave the dilapidated fusion torch more power, and they accelerated away.

  * * *

  His mission counted on a combination of several factors. The first was that the ship’s presence would carry with it an air of normality. The second was that, even if it wasn’t considered entirely normal, nobody would go out of their way to question it. The third, and this was the trickiest, was that nobody in charge had the registry information. He’d recorded the ship as a war prize from the merc contract he was on when it was taken.

  The star system, Ja-ku-Tapa, may have possessed native life in the distant past, or not. When Humans first encountered it, the traders who made landfall were natives of the northern plains of the old United States. They took one look at the barely-inhabitable planet with its low, rolling, bone-dry hills, occasional plateaus, and scrub plant growth, and named it Badlands.

  Luckily for those traders, the present occupants of the world hadn’t been there yet. Back then, a small mining consortium was running a largely unprofitable uranium extraction facility. The traders sold the miners some goods and left. Several years later, the consortium abandoned their efforts on Badlands and left the world to the dust devils.

  Sometime after that, the KzSha moved in. A massive insectoid merc race the size of a Bengal tiger, the first Humans to see them reflected on how disturbingly close to cicada killer wasps the KzSha appeared. But while their Earth analogy was largely unaggressive if left alone, KzSha were the exact opposite. Their success as mercs had been hit-or-miss because they tended to overuse force, pillage during contracts, and execute captives. They could fly in a gravity three-quarters of Earth-standard or less, which was part of what had drawn them to Badlands. That, and they needed an out-of-the-way place for their newest business endeavor—slavery.

  The KzSha dabbled in that trade until they came across a race called the Aku. The turtle-like race proved extremely resistant to radiation, which was a marketable trait. The Aku were also pacifists, who just wanted to be left alone and refused to join the Union, which made them an easy target for the KzSha. There were no Union laws against slavery for non-Union races. There were however, rules against decimating native populations for fun and profit, which is where the KzSha ran afoul of the Peacemaker Guild. Months ago, Jim had worked a contract for the Peacemakers, to stop the KzSha from committing genocide on the native population of Soo-Aku. He’d earned a bonus by leading the Peacemakers to this world and unmasking the operation.

  Jim checked their approach and found it nominal. He’d been braking toward a direct reentry trajectory for 10 minutes while he read files via his pinplant. When he’d been to this planet with the Peacemakers to indict the KzSha, Splunk had found a warehouse full of Raknar. Not just any Raknar, but good ones; not the junk he’d been finding all over the galaxy. When he’d returned to Earth a few weeks ago, he’d also discovered that the KzSha had no rightful ownership of Badlands. No claim had been filed with the Cartography Guild. If you wanted to run an illegal slavery operation, of course you kept it quiet. But that meant the Raknar were fair game. Sort of.

  The radio signaled they were being hailed by a directional beam. Jim double-checked his translator was set to active feed before answering the call.

  “Approaching ship, identify.” His challenge in communicating was the language. KzSha didn’t speak with sounds, they used pulsating lights on the tips of their antenna.
His reply was entirely a fraud, a visual computer replica of a KzSha, flashing antenna and all.

  “This is Gatherer G-12 returning to base.”

  “Gatherer G-12,” the reply came immediately, “there is no flight plan for your arrival.” Jim crossed his fingers that he wasn’t talking to a KzSha.

  “We do not have to explain our coming and going to you.”

  “That is correct, but under the Articles of Tribunal, you must submit to a scan of your ship.” Jim heaved a sigh. He was talking to a Peacemaker or a functionary of the Peacemaker Guild. After he’d thrown the KzSha under the galactic bus, no more information had been available about what had happened on Badlands. The galaxy wasn’t like Earth, with every interesting legal proceeding being available on Tri-V or the AetherNet. “How many of your kind are on your ship?”

  “Two,” Jim replied.

  “Parking orbit assignment is being transmitted. You will assume that orbit and stand by for inspection. Failure to follow protocol will result in your being shot down. Is that clear, Gatherer G-12?”

  “Fine,” he said, trying to sound as disgusted as possible, unsure if disgust would transmit via light pulses. Splunk chirped, and he saw one of her slates displaying an orbital calculation. She showed him the data, and he nodded.

  Flying the ship was mostly seat-of-the-pants, with its electronics largely wasted. Jim shot the approach by eye; now grateful he’d spent the weeks alone flying Pale Rider around the galaxy. Before his mission time alone, he’d only controlled ships a few times. How often does the commander of a heavy-assault, CASPer-equipped merc company get to fly spaceships? Never, that’s how often.

  He hadn’t been in the assigned orbit more than five minutes when their sensors picked up a drone approaching. It was steadily broadcasting an identification code proclaiming, “This drone is the property of the Galactic Peacemaker Guild. Caution—Any attempt to tamper with this drone could have serious repercussions. You have been warned.” Jim used his pinplants to trigger the next step of his illusion.