by Troy Osgood
I realized what she planned and reacted too late.
Valeri lunged to the side, pushing aside the nearest Dyer. She grabbed at his weapon as the man fell, pulling it free. Crouching down she fired off one shot, hitting another Dyer, before the rest unloaded on her.
Multiple bolts struck her. Chest, shoulder, leg. Smoke rose from the wounds, the weapon falling from lifeless hands as she fell backwards and lay unmoving on the ground.
Dammit.
“Hopefully the Kern has some answers,” Yurn said motioning to the guards.
Two bent down and picked up her body, started to drag it away. The other went to help the one that she had shot, now starting to stand up, smoke rising from his shoulder. They all disappeared into the Yortusk base just leaving me and Yurn outside.
I looked down at the small scorch marks where Valeri’s body had been. Plasma bolts at this range would burn through a body. Painfully. I had to give her some respect, she had chosen how she was to die. The Yortusk would have gotten what they wanted from her but this way she didn’t break and give up any secrets and went out fighting.
“Here,” I said and took the transmitter from my pocket, handing it to Yurn. “This was what they were going to activate.”
He studied it and put it in his pocket.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked.
It wouldn’t take long for Romer to find out his little enterprise had failed and once I popped back up in any system, he’d probably come looking for answers. Just one more thing to add to the list.
I looked away from the scorch marks and up at my ship. Not the prettiest but it was home.
“Got any cargo you need delivered?” I asked Yurn.
KINN’S PIRATES
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“Pirates,” I cursed looking out the Nomad Wind’s view window. Alarms blared throughout the ship’s small bridge even though I was the only person on board to hear them. “Out here?”
The sensor screen showed a large ship, larger than the Wind anyways, approaching from the right, which was planetside, coming around the dark side of that moon where it had been blocked from my scans. Standing up at the pilot’s station and leaning, I could just see the bulk of the approaching ship in the corner of the window. It looked like a massive barrel. Round, with two wings coming off the side with engines attached, the front was rounded like a dull cone. I didn’t recognize the make and model but it definitely had seen better days. Battered was a good word to describe the ship.
Piracy wasn’t that rare out here in the fringes but it wasn’t that common either.
The way space travel worked, hopping from system to system, made it difficult to track specific ships. There were some traveled routes, but each ship had different speeds and differences in travel paths from one place to another were common. A ship didn’t go directly from one system to another. No, it hopped from that first system into the next closest and so on until getting to the destination. Jumping into wildspace, that somewhat unknown space between systems, and back out again.
Which meant that most pirates had to sit and wait for prey to come to them. Long waits in the depths of space, just hopping a trader would wander by and not the other side of the system.
I’d never heard of pirates operating out in this area. They normally worked closer to the Inner Worlds, where there was more trade and travel. Out here in Deep Space, on the fringes of the known galaxy, there wasn’t enough travel to make sitting and waiting profitable.
Lucky me to run into the one ship of pirates out here.
I looked over the scanners, studying the approaching ship. I could see multiple gun ports on the hull. It was slow but heavily armed. I could try to out run it, there’s no way I could outshoot it and just a couple shots would destroy the Wind’s shielding. The Nomad’s Wind, a Castellan Light Cruiser Model F-497, was a hauler not a fighter. I had limited weaponry.
This was not good.
It was odd that they were bothering with the Wind. A small freighter like this didn’t have enough cargo to really warrant an attack by a ship that size. So were they after me directly? I didn’t believe in coincidence so I had to assume they were.
Now what part of my cargo were they after?
I watched through the scanners as the barrel ship rotated around my smaller one. It was about one and a half times the size of the Wind, but the shape made the difference seem greater. It created the impression of dwarfing the Wind, looming over it.
Or maybe that was just my imagination as I could almost feel the presence of the pirate ship.
I shut off critical systems, leaving life support and just enough power to keep the Wind hovering in place, thrusters adjusting to keep it relatively motionless. I sure as hell didn’t want them firing on me but I also wasn’t going to make it easy on them. I keyed in a distress signal but knew it was useless. The planet of Rewe, my destination, was still an hour away and it would take at least that long for help to arrive. This would be over in minutes.
Stepping out of the bridge and into the bunk corridor, the door slid shut behind me and I code locked it to keep anyone that wasn’t me off the bridge and away from the controls. It wouldn’t keep a good codebreaker out for long but it would be a block in their way. The corridor stretched out, the door to engineering at the far end and three doors on each side leading to the ship’s bunks. The Wind, all Castellan Light Cruisers of this make, could carry a crew of six and be operated by as many as two or three. I had rigged up the systems so my ship could be crewed by one. Just me.
I had no need for additional crew.
Didn’t want any. I’d spent enough time in the Earth Expeditionary Forces to get my full of working with others. I’d been out four years or so now and been on my own that whole time. Just the way I liked it. No one to bark orders, no commands to follow. Just me doing what I wanted when I wanted. I could take any cargo I wanted for anywhere at anytime. I wandered, one system to another. The Wind was my home.
Which is how I found myself here.
I’d taken a quick job in the Touy system. Deliver two systems over, from Touy to Rewe and the planet of the same name. Simple enough. One hop, the system in between, and only four hours in wildspace between each hop. Good pay day for not much work.
The perfect job.
Or it would have been except for the pirates.
To my left was a small corridor that ended in a spiral staircase. I ran down that, my boots clanging on the metal. This emptied out into the galley. A pantry was along one wall, shelves along the other with a table and chairs in the middle. A door on the far side wall led to the next room and on the near wall was another door. I paused at this one, thinking.
The thought didn’t last long. No way was I taking the escape pod and leaving my ship behind.
From the galley and into the lounge, which sounded better than it was. A couch, a couple chairs and a vidscreen mounted to the wall. Through the lounge and into the cargo hold. Polyplas crates lined the walls, not that many and not filling up the space, only half a dozen or so. The Wind’s hold was never as full as it could be. The latest cargo, the one that I thought got me into this mess, was on the left side. Four small and gray polyplas containers maglocked to the floor.
The ship shook as the pirate’s engaged their transfer tube. I crouched behind a crate and drew my trusty Sig Sauer T1700, an earth made plasma blaster. I’d been using this model since my old soldiering days. I switched it to lethal. There was more shaking as the Wind rocked under the weight of the other ship’s intersecting gravity field.
Transfer tubes were segmented pieces of polycarbonite or some other material that would extend out from a ship’s airlock and magconnect to another ship. Inside the tube, the pirate’s airlock would open and they would make their way to my ship. There would be gravity inside the tube. They had to link up with the Wind and bring both ships
into the same rotation so the two gravity fields would interact. Once that was done, they could walk through the tube easily.
The Tubes had controls that would interface with the connected ship so that air pressure and breathable air could be synced up between the two vessels. Both doors on either side could even by interlocked so only one could open at a time and the air between be cycled out.
Not all ships came equipped with tubes, but the majority of them had the necessary connectors on their hulls. Even the Wind. Though mine was codelocked.
I heard thumps against the metal hull. Small and localized. The pirates coder accessing the Wind’s tube connector controls. It may have been coded, but it wasn’t that deep of one. Wouldn’t take long for their coder to get access.
It took less than a minute.
The Wind’s hold has a ramp that folds down and in that ramp is a smaller sliding door. I watched as that door slid open and two figures darted through.
First was a Guykik. Large, reptilian and scaly. It looked like a bulky giant humanoid lizard, shades of green with a brown chest visible around the clothes it wore. The thing was twice as wide as me and I’m not small. I stand 6’-0”, 200 pounds, broad shouldered and muscled after years in the military. The Guykik made me look puny. It had three clawed fingers on hands that were big enough to squeeze my head. A long ridged tail swung in the air, the ridges continuing up it’s back. The face was wide, the snout was short and filled with sharp teeth. The eyes were bright yellow with black slits that scanned the hold. It held a bulky weapon in one hand.
The second was a Yurig. About my height, but green skinned with large round and yellow eyes. No hair, the head was oblong with a lot of forehead, slits for a nose and a small mouth. The fingers were long and held a blaster pistol.
I didn’t want for them to get far before firing two shots from my weapon. The first hit the Yurig, dropping him to the ground, smoke rising from his chest. The second hit the Guykik in the middle of it’s barrel chest and did nothing, the energy fizzled around the alien’s body and faded. The thing made a noise that was probably a laugh.
I’d heard that a Guykik’s leathery hide was resistant to plasma blasts, now I had proof of it. I could have done without ever learning that first hand. I didn’t waste time with surprise, instead I fired two more shots at its head. One hit the cheek and the other an eye. The Guykik dropped, falling on top of the Yurig.
Bolts came out of the opened door and I had to duck. This allowed more of the pirates to enter the hold. Four of them. Two humans and two Yurigs. All four kept firing, all aiming at the crate I hid behind. Polyplas was strong stuff, but nothing could hold up to this barrage for long. Already pieces of the crate were melting and breaking off. It wouldn’t be cover for much longer and once it was gone, I was done.
But really, I was done no matter what.
They weren’t going to kill me unless I gave them more cause to. Pirates didn’t waste anything. They’d take the ship and sell it or use it. They’d take the cargo and sell it or use it. And they’d take me and sell me.
Slavery was illegal in most systems but there were a few that took slaves and asteroid miners were always looking for new meat for the mines. Those weren’t technically slaves but the mine owners would buy your ransom from the pirates and you’d have to work off the debt, in the mines or the areas that supported them, at very low wages. Which meant you never worked it off.
It was time to get control of the situation.
“Enough,” I yelled out and threw my blaster into the hold away from me.
The firing stopped and I stepped out from behind the crate, hands behind my head. The humans moved behind me, the Yurigs stayed in front. I was in the middle of four weapons.
Laughter came from the transfer tube, a weird kind of squawking laugh. Out stepped a creature almost the size of the Guykik, but instead of muscle and bulk it was fat. It was covered in tan feathers, some lighter and some darker. It’s face was angular, a large beak with two large eyes. Behind the eyes were two horns of bone, short and close to the skull. Growing from between the eyes was another horn, this one a lighter color and coming from a ridge. Where the other two lay flat, this one was raised a bit. It held no weapon in it’s two fingers and thumb. Dressed in blues and oranges, a weird mix. The whole creature was odd but the little thing perched on its shoulder was odder. It looked like an earth monkey, only about nine inches tall with dull brown fur. Long arms and legs with a tail that was as long as it’s body. The face was very humanoid, almost like a person. It held onto one of the bones for support.
The being was a Curon. I’d never encountered one before, it was rare to see one off their homeplanet of Cur. The planet was home to a Tiat colony, the largest empire in the galaxy and even they had not completely conquered the place. Beside the Curon, it was home to another bird-like species, the Curdo. Neither species belonged to the races that had their own startravel, this meant they had no development of their own ships. Each had to rely on others to get them offplanet. Both were said to be scary fighters so I knew not to let this Curon’s bulk fool me.
It glanced down at the two dead pirates and laughed again. Just such a weird sound. The creature on it’s shoulder copied it, making its own weird laughter.
“Where is the rest of the crew,” it asked in heavily accent Galactic, words punctuated with squawks and chirps. It walked towards me and stopped between the two Yurigs. As tall as the Guykik, the Curon had to outweigh me by a hundred pounds.
“There isn’t any, just me.”
The Curon tilted it’s head, studying me. The thing on it’s shoulder hopped up and down.
“Lies,” the weird monkey thing said.
“Squeeg thinks you’re lying,” the Curon added.
I shrugged.
“Just me.”
Looking past the Curon, I saw another figure step out of the tube. Small, only about four feet tall, the newcomer was a Xertin. Basically a small human but purple with black hair and darker purple eyes. This Xertin, she held a tablet in hand and seemed a little skittish. Another human and Yurig followed.
“Captain Kinn,” the Xertin said in a high pitched voice. “I can’t override the ship’s systems. I need to be on the bridge.”
The Curon, Kinn, nodded.
“You two,” Kinn said pointing at the two humans behind me. “Take him to the brig. You’ll make a good miner,” he said poking at me with one of his thick gloved fingers. “The rest of you search the ship. Let’s see where our booty is.” His large eyes started looking around the cargo hold, focusing on the crates picked up on Touy.
“Booty,” the monkey thing yelled.
One of the humans pushed me and I stumbled. Kinn laughed and followed the rest of the pirates into my ship. The Xertin trailed behind, eyes looking everywhere, clutching the tablet tight. She must be the pirate’s coder.
The way Kinn had said ‘our booty’, confirmed what I had guessed. He knew what I was carrying. Someone in the Touy system must have given him the heads up.
A short hop from Touy to Rewe, that wouldn’t take a lot of guesswork on when the hop would have come into the system. Star hopping is about going from point to point, so in each system there needs to be a somewhat fixed point for navcomputers to set coordinates to. This was usually the last planetary object in that system. A planet, a moon, a large asteroid belt. Something that maintained it’s relative location as the entire system rotated around the sun. Depending on where the fixed point was in the rotation, the hop time would change.
All Kinn had to do was set up somewhere between the hop point and the planet and wait. This short of hop, the wait wouldn’t have been long. Even accounting for transmission lag from system to system, he would have had plenty of time to wait for me to arrive.
Wonder why he wanted my cargo so bad. I had no idea what was in it. I’d learned long ago to not ask. It was none of my business. I was hired to pick up and drop off, not question.
At the prodding of the pirate, I picked
up my pace and stepped into the transfer tube. Made of shining metal segments, black seal between the pieces, the tube was just that. A segmented metal grated walkway was held up from the bottom of the tube, a flat place to walk. Ahead I could see the entrance to the pirate’s ship.
“What’s the name of the ship,” I asked and motioned towards the approaching hull.
The two humans, one in front and one in back, glanced at each other. They were surprised I was as calm as I was. I should have been panicking. I was their prisoner, losing my ship and would soon be an unwilling miner or worse. This is not how I should have been reacting.
I never did what I should. Even when I was a soldier in the Earth Expeditionary Forces Special Operations where you had to follow orders. I never really did and somehow I had gotten the rank of Captain. I could never figure out how that happened.
“The Uinh Geriyu,” the one behind me said. “In Terran it means..”
“Iron Raptor,” I finished for him, recognizing the language. Tiat.
*****
The galaxy is huge and there’s only like a tenth of it explored and in that tenth there are hundreds of solar systems and each system has one or two inhabited planets and most of those systems have discovered some form of space travel. And all those traveling races wanted to explore the galaxy.
We know what explore really means though. It means to take. So there’s a whole galaxy full of people that want to take the other planets. Some were successful and some not. Us earthlings, or Terrans as we are called by the other races, were one of the newest starfaring races. Forty years. That’s it. And we’re only here thanks to another race, the Thesa.
Humans being humans, when we reached for the stars, we decided we wanted to take a couple of them. So we did. The rest of the galaxy aren’t big fans of us. That’s probably because along with our Thesan allies, we started the Third Galactic War against the Tiat.