First things first. I completed the after landing checks, and the ship was fine, despite the hard usage of the ultra low level, slow speed, adjustment. I opened the comms channels and listened to a variety of local radio programs and whatever this backwater planet thought might pass as entertainment. I found the military channels, and there was no loud screaming about an unauthorised spaceship landing away from any base.
Actually, that should have been suspicious; if I had been a little more paranoid I might have saved myself a lot of trouble.
A light flashed from the farmhouse. I had some mission notes that I had scrawled on some scrap paper: I hastily flicked through there and was relieved to see that this was the signal I was to expect. Mind you, the light was flashing away in Morse Code, and I have never been very good at recalling the sequences – except for the emergency signals, obviously. The light flashed a few more times, and then stopped. I flashed the landing lights on and off a time or two, and waited.
The light in the farmhouse flashed again, somehow conveying that it was annoyed at my response. Well I couldn’t help that. I turned the landing lights on and off again. After all, how many unmarked Speedbird interstellar scout ships were they expecting to land in their backyard?
I increased the resolution and focus on the vidscreen pointing towards the farmhouse. In the darkness, I could just tell that the back door had opened, and that a figure was striding across the field towards me. As I watched, it fell over, and after getting up jumped about a bit in an annoyed way. I turned the resolution back to normal, and went to meet my passenger in the entry hatch.
Considering that I was risking life, limb and my only decent asset (the Speedbird) to save his life, his greeting could have been a bit less hostile.
“Steady on,” I objected. “It’s not my fault that you fell over in the mud!”
“Well at least you could help me inside!”
I reached out and grabbed his outstretched hand, and pulled. His hand was so greasy that he promptly fell backwards into the wet grass, and started shouting obscenities. Perhaps it is very stressful being a political dissident, but somehow you expect a little more decorum from them!
“Well look at it this way, the wet grass has washed some of the mud off,” I told him.
“Give me a hand.”
I did so, and this time he pulled me. I fell out of the Speedbird’s hatch and sprawled beside him on the wet grass. Amazingly, this seemed to cheer up the fugitive enormously, for he started laughing as we sat side by side on the waterlogged field.
“I’ll bet you didn’t expect this sort of life as an interstellar aviator!” he chortled.
“Mister, you wouldn’t believe what happens to us Scoutship pilots.”
I was soaked. My flightsuit was fire retardent, sweat resistant and had a number of other highly desireable qualities (including the ability to shed coffee stains) but it was not waterproof.
“We’d better go. They will have been watching, even if you didn’t see anything.”
This was a paranoia I could empathise with.
“Come on.” I helped the fugitive stand up, and – with a short struggle for he was not exactly lean and fit – climb aboard the Speedbird. As ever, I felt safer once the hatch was firmly closed.
“Is this it?” The fugitive stared around the entry port with its storage lockers and functional appearance.
“It gets better.”
“Good. I’ve seen more welcoming warehouses.”
I led the way up the spiral staircase to the living quarters.
“And I’ve been in better prisons!” sulked my passenger.
“Look, do you want to escape or not?”
“Actually, not particularly. I’d rather stay here and struggle against the expansion of the Imperium. But Colonel Starker has made that a bit difficult for me.”
“Starker! He’s not here, is he?” I was horrified.
“Why do you know him?”
“I know him all right. And he knows me. He authorised a Galactic arrest warrant for me. If he’s here, we’re so not stopping longer than we have to!”
I ran onto the flight deck and started the pre-launch checks.
“Then we are both Wanted Men. Pursued across the Galaxy by the Forces of Iniquity and Hatred!” Somehow, he managed to actually pronounce the capital letters. Maybe he really was a politician. I finished the checks and ran up the engines. The Speedbird shook, but did not move. I cursed.
“Perhaps we should take off now?” My passenger was leaning on the flight deck doorway.
“What a good idea!”
I ran up the engines again, and this time directed more of the power into an oblique trajectory. The Speedbird tilted to one side, throwing the dissident to the floor and so giving me some small satisfaction.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Mud. We’ve sunk into some mud.”
“Do we need to dig the wheels out?”
“One: the ship doesn’t have wheels. Two: the designers of Interstellar Spacecraft do not normally fit shovels or spades as an essential stores item!”
I adjusted the directional thrusters and the Speedbird tipped the other way, throwing the dissident across the floor.
“Get us up!” he yelled.
“The last time this happened, I tore the landing gear from the hull,” I snarled. “I can’t afford the cost of that sort of repair!”
“I’ll pay! Just go!”
“Why such a hurry?” I reversed the thrusters again, the Speedbird tilted alarmingly, and the scream of metal as one of the pads on the landing gear parted company with the undercarriage was deafening. I winced at the damage, but now the Speedbird was shaking as the last pad forced itself free of the clinging mud.
“Starker’s here!”
I looked up from the instruments at the forward vidscreen. There were three of the Black Ops helicopters that I had met on previous escapades, coming into range. I knew that they were all very heavily armed. In a reflex movement, I activated the defence screens. But they drew power away from the directional thrusters, and the shaking movement calmed.
“How does he know?” I asked, returning my attention to the instruments. But the needles on the dials were shaking too much to give me accurate readings on the hull and engine performance.
“How do I know? Probably he tracked your flight path down.”
“Not a chance. Those helicopters have limited range and speed. They were coming here while I was still well off-world.”
“Incoming! Incoming!” yelled the dissident. I risked a glance in his direction. He was sweating in fear, and his eyes were wide in terror.
The missile lock alert sounded, increasing the tension on the flight deck. Fortunately, just then, the mud finally released its hold on the last landing pad. The Speedbird, unexpectedly released, shot upwards at a wild angle. I fought with the controls, trying to establish a steady vector and trajectory. The missiles missed. I wasn’t surprised. However good their guidance system, the Speedbird’s path had just been too uncontrolled.
As soon as the Speedbird steadied, I withdrew what was left of the landing gear into the relevant pods and hit the throttles. The engines howled their disapproval but responded, and we began our ascent. Almost as an afterthought I dropped two mines from my less than limitless supply in the defence pods before settling the Speedbird into a controlled, if hasty, departure.
“Good shot!” shouted the dissident.
I risked a glance at the rear vidscreen: the front screen had our ascent path shown across it in a series of green windows. My task was to keep pour flight path within those at all times for a safe launch and departure, and the Speedbird was still rather skittish after our enforced exodus. The screen seemed a bit foggy, which was surprising until I realised that it was the result of the explosion when one of my mines connected with one of the Black Ops helicopters. The other two helicopters had veered away and were now effectively out of range.
I dropped the defence scr
eens, allowing the power to feed into the main engines and increase our speed. The trajectory was bang on line, and I relaxed enough to open the navcomm and input the coordinates for our next destination.
“When can we transition to hyperspace?” asked my passenger.
“Once free of the gravity well of this planet, with a flight path clear of immediate obstructions and all risks,” I told him. “Coffee would be good. You’ll find the coffee machine in the kitchen.”
“I thought that spacecraft used the term ‘galley’?”
“There’s no proof of that. I always call it a kitchen, so do most of the pilots I know. Coffee!”
“That’s more your task than mine, isn’t it?”
“I’m flying. Coffee! Go!”
He slouched away, clearly resenting being given an order, rather than issuing them. Everything looked fine. The damage report on the computer showed no major problems. As we had taken off successfully, the hull itself was obviously in good shape despite the stresses of escaping the glutinous mud, and the hatches over the landing gear had secured properly despite the damage. However, there was one small red flag showing on one of the landing gear pods. I would have to visually inspect the problem before transitioning, as entering hyperspace with any issues with the hull could seriously impact on us. At best the course might be affected and we could emerge anywhere in the galaxy, at worst the stress of hyperspace might rip the hull open and kill us both. I needed to check the exact nature of the damage. I was not too worried, as the instruments showed the hull integrity had been maintained and we were not losing oxygen.
I watched the screens and instruments until we had left the atmosphere and achieved orbit. Then I activated the navcomm, twisted the Speedbird out of the orbital path and set course for the outer planets and then out of the star system.
“How do you work this?”
In the kitchen, my passenger was struggling with the coffee machine. With a heavy sigh I showed him how to load the machine with coffee.
“What is that stuff?”
“It’s coffee. You add hot water, it makes coffee.”
“Ahhh, dehydrated drink, then.”
I looked at him strangely. Surely he understood coffee?”
“At home we prefer dehydrated mineral water.”
I gave him a very peculiar look. “Dehydrated water? How does that work?”
“Simple!” crowed the dissident. “You add water.”
Shaking my head over this fresh evidence of political stupidity, I left him to it and headed for the Engine Bay.
“Where are you going?” he shouted at me.
“Visual damage inspection. Wait here, I’ll not be long.”
“Right.”
I opened the door to the engine bay, and carefully shut it behind me. I did not want any unpleasant surprises. The part of the Speedbird that housed the engines, the hyperdrive unit and access to the defence and landing gear pods was remarkably clean. Partly because a clean engine bay was likely to improve the performance of the maintenance engineers I occasionally had to hire, partly because I liked it that way, but mostly because (apart from the occasional maintenance engineer) no one ever went in the place.
I wasn’t qualified to maintain the engines, and frankly was capable of confusing one end of a spanner with the other end. Or a screwdriver, or in fact anything mechanical. I fly the things, and have had to pass all the theoretical exams in how they worked. But I knew my limitations and was entirely convinced that the Speedbird’s engines would work better if I kept my hands away from them, unless in dire emergency.
So I passed the ungainly lump of the hyperdrive unit without a care, ran one hand over the casing of the main drive without any desire to investigate its innards and concentrated on my real purpose. Almost at the tail of the ship lay some doors. These had no locks, for they needed none. They gave internal access to the pods holding the structure of the landing gear and to the limited storage space and the defence equipment. Space mines mainly, and of course the rear facing weapons systems and the defence screening equipment.
I went into the defence pod and counted the space mines I had left. It didn’t take long: there were not as many as I would have liked to see. That meant that I would need to pay a visit to one of the shady weapons dealers before too long. I would need to have earned plenty of cash in time for that visit, more than just this dodgy mission would produce for me. With a heavy heart, I closed that door.
The portside landing gear seemed fine on inspection. Just very muddy. I would have to clean that off myself at the first chance I got. Looking round inside the cramped area, I decided that I could probably manage that while in space, meaning that I could save on docking fees or landing fees, which would be a great help to my impoverished finances. The starboard gear was another matter though. Pulling free from the glutinous mud had not just torn one of the Pods away from the structure, but bent some of the supports. I had serious doubts about the ability of the gear to support the weight of the Speedbird on touchdown. This was serious, as I would have to find someone who could manage the repair in space or accept that I could not land at a spaceport or planet based facility. With furrowed brow and worries in my heart, I closed up the pod and wandered back through the engine bay.
The proximity alert warning went off. In the living area and the flight deck, this alarm is meant to be an urgent warning, and is loud enough to awaken a sleeping pilot to danger. Here in the engine bay, which lacked any form of proofing to deaden or absorb sound, it was loud enough to waken the dead and have them forming a disorderly queue to complain about the interruption to their well-earned rest. It was so loud I had to clamp my hands over my ears to avoid being deafened.
I staggered towards the door, bumping into anything that I passed. The door had a small inspection window let into it, and I could see the face of my passenger pressed against it. He had an anguished look, which I could understand. My expression mirrored his as I tried the handle, only to discover that the door wouldn’t open!
“What have you done?” I yelled at him.
The door was soundproofed of course. He mouthed at me incomprehensively.
“What did you do?” I yelled.
He couldn’t hear me, but the question was obvious. He looked rather hangdog and pointed at something that I could not see.
“What???”
He jabbed at whatever it was with his finger. I tried to turn the handle again, but it didn’t move. The dissident stood back from the door, and spread his hands wide. He mimed something incomprehensible at me. Then we both fell over as the Speedbird rocked wildly. The passenger rocked one hand about. Surely he could not be asking me for a hot drink at a time like this?
“What did you do?” I screamed. Then comprehension followed. The idiot had tried to open the door to the engine bay. But as he didn’t know the code on the fingerplate, he had managed to lock the blasted thing, with me inside. There was an emergency override code. Now, if only the blasted alarms would shut up, I could try and remember them.
The Speedbird shook again and this time the fire alarm started and added to the cacophony. Clearly the transportation of political dissidents out of the Imperium was more fraught than I had expected in my worst nightmare. I would have to demand a contract bonus.
The engineer’s override code was handwritten in the flight manual. However, as that was in its holder on the flight deck, that was not much use. Fortunately I was no longer a member of The Free Union’s Space Corps, and that meant that against regulations I had carefully painted the code on the side of the hull not too far away from the door. I scrambled over to that corner, read the override code and punched it into the keypad. The door opened, and I staggered into the living quarters, slamming the door behind me.
“Oh thanks be to Zog!” gasped the dissident, who was now kneeling on the floor in an attitude of prayer. I could only assume that he had given up.
The Speedbird had added a regular, but inconvenient, rolling component to its tra
jectory. It might have been easier to crawl to the Flight deck, but that would have deprived me of the chance to accidentally kick the dissident on the back on his head as I staggered passed him. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the moment.
“Sorry,” I smirked insincerely as he fell over, complaining.
Back in the pilot’ seat, I started to try and get some control of the situation. The ship was still under heavy attack, and the defence screens were absorbing an enormous amount of energy. The small fire that had started in the kitchen, setting off the fire alarm, was actually a result of the passenger’s incompetent attempt to make some toast, according to the damage control assessment, so I shut down the fire alarm and the cacophony of sound scaled down to something manageable, or at least not actively painful to the ears.
“What’s happening?” asked the dissident, now at the doorway to the flight deck.
“That is!” I pointed at one of the vidscreens. Two Imperial StarDestroyers were taking it in turns to line up and fire at us.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded. I suppose that it was not an unreasonable question in the circumstances, but that did not mean it wasn’t annoying.
“Watch.”
I pushed the throttle all the way forward, and the Speedbird responded. The barrage of fire slackened, as we moved unexpectedly. This would only give us a momentary respite, of course. I triggered the manoevering jets, and the Speedbird twisted into a spiral course. The StarDestroyers responded by dropping into line astern and following me. I tightened the curve, slowing down slightly.
“What are you doing?” demanded the passenger.
The StarDestroyers started firing again. I tightened the flight curve further.
“It isn’t easy for them to follow this move. Their mass adds inertia and subtracts this degree of turn.”
“So we out turn them and then run?”
“No. Can’t outrun them. A lot of the mass comes from the engines on board a StarDestroyer. Let them get settled into this curve, then we will see.”
I held the curve and opened the defence computer controls. The leading StarDestroyer opened fire again, but the blasts were just wide. The bigger vessel closed in.
Rogue Pilot Page 3