by M. D. Cooper
“You know I don’t believe in that ‘Fate’s Eye’ shit,” she scoffed.
He shook his head. “I think you will.”
“Why?” the pilot asked.
“Because they just sparked up an AP drive.”
My eyes widened, and I tapped into the public feeds containing data on all nearby ships. Sure enough, the Restaff was flagged as being in violation of local emissions ordinances for running AP within twenty light seconds of Barras.
Alerts lit up across the public bands, announcing the no-fly zone in space behind the Restaff.
AP drives operated on antimatter, directing the pions that resulted from the annihilation process through a tuned nozzle where they degenerated into gamma rays. Essentially, it made the ship’s engine a coherent directed energy weapon—which was why the voices on the NSTC bands sounded rather unhappy.
“Wow, they are tearing the Restaff a new one,” I said. “I’ve never heard them get so upset, they usually just drop some fines and carry on.”
“Things are different now, with more Delphian money flowing into Chal,” Finn said. “I bet they want to look a bit less like the wild frontier for investors.”
“The ship’s not slowing.” Kallie shook her head in disbelief. “They’re going to have warrants out for their arrest in no time.”
“Constabulary is sending two patrol boats,” Tammy pointed at the feed scroll and then switched the main holo to show a view of Barras’s nearspace. “They’re leaving from the third moon, though, so it’s going to take them a bit to catch the Restaff.”
“If they ever do.” Finn flicked his hand, and plotting data appeared on the screen.
My jaw tightened, and I resisted letting a few choice curses fly. The Restaff would reach us well before the constabulary’s boats were within intercept range.
I checked our fuel reserves, even though I already knew the answer. “Someone tell me our antimatter inventory is wrong and that we have more than a microgram.”
“Sure.” Kallie shrugged. “Inventory is wrong. We can burn the AP drive for weeks on end. Feel better?”
“Shockingly, no. Ideas?”
Tammy expanded the view on the forward holo. “We could shift course and come back around toward Barras in a wide arc. The Restaff would have trouble intercepting us without getting hit by planetary defenses or the constabulary’s ships.”
“Maybe.” I stroked my chin, wishing there were an obvious answer. “But if we get too close to the planet, they’ll probably tell us to heave to for questioning—especially if Skip’s brother tells them we’re smuggling contraband. He could make things rather unpleasant for us.”
“Is there a reason we don’t just blow those asshats out of the black?” Finn asked. “I mean. Technically we’re pirates, right? Isn’t that what pirates do?”
“Smugglers,” Kallie corrected. “We smuggle things, we don’t attack other ships and take their shit. We’ve got morals.”
The breacher snorted and shook his head. “That’s going to be a great defense when those raiders are cutting their way through our airlock.”
I gave Finn a sympathetic look. “It’s a tricky thing to defend yourself when the authorities are watching—though a lot less so when you’re in a system like Chal. We also don’t know what sort of loadout the Restaff has. Other than our main rail, all our offensive weapons are point defense beams.”
“Don’t play coy with me,” the breach specialist said. “I know you have limpet mines.”
“Which don’t work for shit in a pursuit like this,” Kallie countered. “They would have to drive right over the things.”
“Not to mention that we don’t have any of the paperwork necessary to even possess limpets,” I added. “Even in Chal, we’d be in some serious hot water if we got caught dumping them. Plus, with my luck, some captain would see it on scan and blab it as soon as they jumped into Delphi.”
Finn’s lips twisted. “Let me see what I can do about that. I might have to call in a favor.”
I was about to ask what he had in mind when Kallie muttered a curse.
“Restaff is hailing us.”
“Was bound to happen. They don’t want trouble from both us and the constabulary.” I flipped my console to comms mode and saw that the hail was a standard ‘Open channel and respond’ command. I shrugged. “Sure, let’s see what they want. Maybe I can charm our way out of this.”
“Let me count the times that’s worked.” Kallie held up a fist and stared at it for a moment. “Yup, zero.”
Tammy giggled and turned her seat to face me. “It’s your resting asshole face, boss. You should try smiling sometimes. You know, that thing where you make the corners of your mouth not point at the ground.”
“Shut up, you two.”
I responded to the hail, noting that it was a full audio and visual. The standard comm setup on the bridge would filter out everyone else so the person on the other end wouldn’t get an idea about our crew complement.
An image of a man standing on another bridge appeared before me. He too had filtered out his crew—or he was alone, which I strongly doubted.
“Captain Bremen of the Kerrigan at your service. How can I help you?” I let the words hang, waiting the six seconds it took for the message to reach him and to receive a reply to return.
“I’m Captain Reeve,” he said through clenched teeth. “How about we skip the bullshit. I heard what you did to my brother on Barras.”
I didn’t have it in me to pretend at remorse. “Oh, you’re related to Skip? Then I assume you’re familiar with how big an ass he is. He had it coming. Are you really shocked that he finally bit it in a deal gone wrong?”
“You think he died?” Reeve barked a laugh. “You know the first rule. You want to be sure someone’s dead, put two in the head. Skip made it through, and he’s pissed. You’ve got our retirement fund on your ship, and we’re sure as fuck not going to let you get away with it.”
“Well, that sucks,” Kallie muttered. “And seriously, Cap. What is this, amateur hour? Everyone knows you double-tap the head.”
I shot a glare in her direction, silencing the engineer before I replied, “Where are you going to go? Everyone on Barras is probably watching this shit up here unfold. The authorities can’t just ignore it. You’ll be banned from the entire system at best.”
“What do I care?” Reeve held up his hands. “We’ll have enough to buy a nice little slice of property somewhere in Paragon. Never have to come back to this shithole again.”
“Not a bad plan,” Tammy whispered. “Can we do that too?”
I paused the feed on my end and directed a glare at the pilot. “Korinth has his fingers just as deep in Paragon as he does Delphi. We’d be dead in a month. Do you mind?”
Tammy gave me a sheepish look. “Sorry.”
Resuming the feed, I let a toothy grin settle on my lips. “I’m really excited for you, Reeve. But we had a contract, and we’re fulfilling our end.”
“What about the money?” Reeve demanded. “You didn’t leave it with Skip, so that doesn’t strike me as much of a fulfilled contract.”
An unexpected laugh burst past my lips. “Well, you can’t blame me for not leaving a fortune with a dead man. That’s just nuts!”
“He’s not dead.”
“I have only your word for that.” I was grinning ear to ear at this point.
“Stop being such a dumbfuck,” Reeve muttered. “If you have a half-decent nav comp on that tub of yours, you know we’re going to intercept you well before those patrol ships get anywhere close—not that they stand a chance, anyway. If I can’t have that cargo, no one can. Got it?”
I let the smile fall off my face. “OK, umm…let me talk with my crew for a minute.”
“I’ll give you three,” Reeve said in a magnanimous tone.
I cut the feed, and Kallie let out a groan. “That line is in every frickin’ vid. I wish criminals would be more original.”
“Really?” I cocked an
eyebrow at her. “That’s your feedback?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but don’t worry. Finn and I worked something up, we’ll be alright.”
I turned to the networking specialist, and he gave me a look not unlike a cat with a mouse in its jaws. “Oh yeah. I’ve had this one waiting in the wings for some time, just looking for the right time to use it. It’s really quite amazing.”
I could feel my lips involuntarily press into a thin line.
“Right, yeah,” he nodded quickly. “In a nutshell, I got us a writ of marque and reprisal.”
I’d had a mental list of things Finn might have come up with, but status as a privateer was not even close to what I’d envisioned. I’m sure the surprise showed on my face.
“It’s not real,” he said quickly, his smile sliding to one side. “But it’ll take a few days for the locals to realize that.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Check the closest relay buoy,” he replied. “You’ll see the marker for a registered writ next to our ship’s entry—don’t worry, it won’t show to civilian craft.”
I glanced down at my console and sent a ping out to the closest three buoys, not wanting to trust that Finn hadn’t just breached the closest one.
“Damn,” I whispered when they all came back indicating that the Kerrigan was a Class-One Privateer in Chal, cleared to engage legal targets anywhere in the system so long as the vessel was ten light seconds from any inhabited planets.
It was a license to kill. The only problem was that we were currently five light seconds from Barras.
I looked at the plot on the main holodisplay, and saw that if we maintained our current burn profile, the Restaff would intercept us a hair beyond the no-combat line.
“OK, he’s going to be up our ass before we can legally shoot at him. How do we keep him from firing until we’re in the clear?”
Kallie laughed. “Easy. We surrender. He won’t tell us to slow, because he doesn’t want to let the constabulary boats catch up. He’ll push for a zero delta-v hookup. Everyone drops shields, then we kick limpets at him, and boom. Problem solved.”
I winked at my second in command. “I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
Seconds later, a request hit the boards from Reeve.
“Impatient,” Finn said. “That was only two minutes.”
Schooling my expression to one of angry resignation—which wasn’t too far off how I felt—I accepted the connection and once again stared into the brooding visage of the Restaff’s captain.
“What’s your decision?” he demanded.
“Well, I want to tell you to go fuck yourself with a stick wrapped in barbed wire, but that’s not really going to get us anywhere.”
I could see Reeve’s jaw tighten, but he didn’t respond.
Several seconds of uncomfortable silence stretched out before I let my shoulders slump. “OK, we surrender. We’ll cut our burn and let you come alongside to transfer the cargo.”
“No,” Reeve quickly shook his head. “Maintain your current vector. Well catch up and then match thrust for the transfer.”
“Ummmm,” I cocked my head to the side as though a fresh realization had just dawned on me. “What’s to stop you from blowing our ship out of the black once you have what you want?”
Reeve let out a loud laugh, shoulders heaving. “Oh…perhaps the thought of you returning to Korinth empty-handed and without the money. He’s going to do worse to you than I ever could.”
“Oh hell no.” I shook my head. “We’re keeping the money.”
“No.” the Restaff’s captain sliced a hand through the air. “I’m going to have to pay off a dozen tight-assed NSTC dicks just to get back to Barras and pick up my brother. I need the money for that.”
Keeping a grin from forming on my lips over how easy it was to play the man, I instead shook my head, brow lowered. “What if…we kick the money out right before we dump into FTL?”
“What’s to say you will?” Reeve asked.
“Same thing that’s going to keep you from firing on us after we give you all the shit.”
The other man put a finger to his lips and turned to the side, clearly talking with someone filtered out of the feed. Next to me, Kallie pantomimed an exaggerated yawn.
A minute later, he turned back to the optics and nodded. “OK, we’ll do that. But you fuck with us any further, and we’ll find you. Trust me, we’ll have the money to put out a hit on you no matter where you are in the L.”
I swallowed dramatically and nodded.
“We’ll be in touch.”
The connection went dead, and Kallie laughed.
“What a drama queen.”
“You’re pretty blasé about this,” Finn said to her.
We’ve been in tighter situations.” She glanced at me, and I nodded.
“More than a few times. I guess we should wake Oln up.”
Finn snorted. “I can’t believe he always falls asleep after take-off. That seems…ill-advised.”
“He wakes up fast,” Kallie replied. “C’mon, let’s go get the mines ready.”
“Just use two,” I called over my shoulder. “Those things aren’t cheap. Plus, we don’t want a boom so big that the authorities start asking questions.”
“Things don’t really ‘boom’ in space,” Tammy chimed in.
I fixed her with a glare as I reconfigured my board for weapons control. “Just fly the ship.”
4
BLOWOUT
Five minutes later, I stood next to Kallie as we stared at the EV suit closet in the main cargo bay.
“I have no idea how I missed this,” she muttered, tracing a finger around the hole in the closet door. “A round from the fight must have hit it in just the right place.”
“And then hit our one stealth-capable EVA suit.” I examined the neck seal, which had a sizable dent right where the latch was supposed to clip into place. “You sure we can’t swap it with our standard suits?”
“No can do,” Kallie said with a shake of her head. “The stealth suit uses different heat-transfer systems. If I had an hour, I could jury-rig something.”
“A real hour, or your version of an hour?”
The engineer sighed. “It doesn’t matter, we don’t have either.” She gave a half-hearted wave of her hand at the other suits. “And these ones will stand out like friggin’ beacons on the hull. The Restaff is already sweeping us with active scan to make sure we’re keeping our weapons powered down like they ordered. They’ll see us on the hull no problem.”
“Same with the repair bots,” I added. “Nothing for it, then. We have to pop those crates.”
Kallie turned and looked at the three long crates strapped down to stays in the center of the bay. “I’m going to have to take apart the limpets to fit their innards in the crates…though I guess if we get it into their ship, we only need to do one.”
I nodded. “Let’s get moving, then.”
Working together, we had the straps off the crates in a minute, and Kallie ran a check with a handscanner before nodding that it was safe—as much as we could tell—to open them.
Sucking in a deep breath, and whispering, “Here goes nothing,” I cracked open the first case, turning my face away—not that it would have helped if there was a trap.
Luckily, there wasn’t, and I looked inside.
“NSAI cores,” Kallie said, shaking her head. “Could be anything.”
“Cores bearing Delphian Space Alliance logos.” I gestured at the markings on the side. “This is some serious shit, Kallie.”
“Friggin’ frig fark!” She rattled off a few more impromptu curses before turning away and walking toward the bay’s exit. “Get them out. I’ll have Oln come grab the cases.”
“Where should I put them?” I asked, hoping she had a brilliant idea.
“How about out the airlock?” she shouted.
I sat back on my heels, wishing that were an option. There was no way that Korinth didn’t know exac
tly what he was buying.
“This isn’t just some random military hardware,” I said quietly to myself as I opened the other crates, confirming that they all contained NSAI cores.
It was clearly something that would give Paragon a serious edge over Delphi if the two systems went to war. That’s why the Paragonian Military was willing to offer Skip enough money to make it worth double-crossing Korinth.
The thought crossed my mind to take the cores to Paragon myself, but I hadn’t been joking when I told Reeve that Korinth’s reach was long enough to find a person anywhere in the L. If I sold the cores to Paragon directly, I’d live the high life for a week or two. Then I’d meet a spectacularly grisly end. Far better to get the goods to the man who’d hired me, and just not tell him about the money Skip never got.
“Little bit of hazard pay,” I said as I began lifting out the cores and setting them on the deck.
Each one was roughly fifteen centimeters cubed and rather hefty. There were five in each case, and once I pulled them out, I walked to one of the storage racks, looking for a suitable crate to put them in.
“Shit…all this for NSAI cores?” Oln asked as I searched through spare containers.
“Yeah, dunno what’s on them. Just get those cases to Kallie so she can put boom stuff inside.”
Oln barked a laugh. “Boom stuff. You’re a riot, captain.”
“A regular comedy show.”
The big man closed the cases, tucked two under one arm, and picked up the third by the handle. “Really looking forward to watching Restaff blow. Not often we get to legally take out another ship.”
I laughed and waved him out of the bay. Despite the fear gnawing in my stomach that something was going to go terribly wrong, I had to admit that he was right.
Granted, if we didn’t time things just right, both our ships would meet their end.
If the job were easy, anyone could do it.
There was still a good risk that officials in Chal would want to talk with us about…whatever was going to happen in the next half an hour. It was unlikely that we’d be boarded, but the cores were making me more than a little nervous.