Set the Terms

by Mia R Kleve

  Ozor spun toward the rear of the warehouse, crates wobbling under her feet. “What’s that noise?”

  Lars listened. A metal thud reverberated on the concrete, as though someone hit the floor with a massive sledgehammer. Thud. Thud. Thud.

  “Entropy!” Ozor cried before the crates exploded under her.

  Shards of plastic filled the air.

  Whoosh! A rocket streaked through the smoke and detonated against a loading dock door. The metal door fell in flaming tatters. The trailer parked on the other side flipped into the parking lot. A CASPer emerged from the smoking ruins of the crates.

  “Shit!” Lars dove behind the forklift as the mech swept its arm in an arc and the chain gun spat fire. Bullets fanned through the air, tracing a line three meters up across the wall and dock doors.

  “Ozor? Where are you?” Qivek yelled.

  As the CASPer strode into the open, another followed it. How many had they produced? The second CASPer mounted a heavy laser where the first had a rocket pod. The shoulder-mounted laser tracked across the warehouse before settling on the forklift.

  Lars fell flat as the laser whined. Snap! The pulse sheared off one of the fork tines, leaving red-hot metal in its wake. The laser whined again as it cycled. Lars popped up and centered his carbine on the clamshell canopy of the war machine. He stroked the other trigger. The rocket streaked across the intervening space and punched through the armored canopy. The CASPer spasmed and pitched face forward. Its limbs clattered on the floor as it flailed, then it fell still.

  The other mech turned toward Lars. Bullets sparked off the forklift and the concrete floor. Something tore through his right calf; he clenched his teeth from the searing pain.

  Thud. Thud. Thud. The CASPer angled for a better shot.

  Crack!

  The CASPer jerked and staggered back. The chain gun traced a line across the concrete floor in Qivek’s direction. Lars poked his head and shoulder around the back of the forklift and fired a three-round burst. The CASPer twisted unsteadily in his direction.

  Crack!

  Lars couldn’t see the machine crash to the floor, but the impact reverberated through the concrete.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  Two more CASPers burst through the wall of crates. Both sprayed their chain guns across the warehouse. Lars peered over the seat of the forklift. One had a rocket launcher, and the other a shoulder-mounted magnetic accelerator cannon. One of the rockets streaked across the warehouse, blowing a hole in the wall.

  CRACK!

  A flash lit up the loading dock. A hypersonic chunk of metal tore through the hip of the lead CASPer. Its remaining rocket launched as it spun and fell, detonating against the ceiling and taking out half the lights.

  The other CASPer lurched toward the forklift. Lars scrambled back as the machine shoved the forklift aside. Three red dots swept across the floor and up the side of the CASPer.

  Snap!

  The machine jerked.

  Crack!

  A spark flew from high on the canopy, leaving a tiny hole. The CASPer crumbled, forcing Lars to roll aside to keep from getting crushed.

  The warehouse fell silent.

  * * *

  Senior officers from three different law enforcement agencies tried to lambast Lars over the battle in their jurisdiction. They all froze as Ozor limped up behind him to loom over them. Qivek leaned forward from her back.

  “Special Investigator Nilsson acted as a deputized agent of the Peacemaker Guild. Any concerns should be directed to myself or the guild,” Ozor stated.

  “You primates give Special Lars flak, you’ll have a Peacemaker show up in your office,” Qivek added. “Meanwhile, you can do your job and investigate who in Binnig cooked up the scheme to defraud Lockerbie Insurance. That’s your problem, not ours.”

  “It falls in your jurisdiction,” Lars remarked to the Human officers. “If you want to read my report, it will be available through Interpol.”

  Lars hobbled toward the rumbler, leaning on Ozor for support. The generic medical nanites had stopped the bleeding, but his leg still burned.

  “That was fun, ja?” Jost called from the cab. “I hoped I’d get to try the ‘surprise!’”

  “You could have mentioned this heap had a pop-up magnetic cannon,” Lars remarked as he slumped into a seat. “Are you good to drive back to the Magdeburg Starport?”

  “A cup of coffee and a bite to eat, and I’ll be good!” Jost set the vehicle in motion.

  Qivek hopped onto the next seat. “Too bad you’re too old to be a Peacemaker.”

  “Yes, too bad. I could get shot up more.” Lars knew he was three decades too old. Only prime specimens qualified for the academy, and Lars was well past his prime.

  “People besides Peacemakers work for the guild,” Ozor stated. “Once the guild rebuilds the consulate, they will need liaisons and investigators.”

  “Think about it, Special Lars,” Qivek said. “The whole planet would be your jurisdiction.”

  * * * * *

  Jon R. Osborne Bio

  Jon R. Osborne is a veteran gamemaster and journalism major turned science fiction and fantasy author. The second book in the Jon’s the Milesian Accords modern fantasy trilogy, A Tempered Warrior, was a 2018 Dragon Awards finalist for Best Fantasy Novel. Jon is also a core author in the military science fiction Four Horseman Universe, where he was first published in 2017.

  Jon resides in Indianapolis, where he plays role-playing games, writes science fiction and fantasy, and lives the nerd life. You can find out more at jonrosborne.com and at https://www.facebook.com/jonrosborne.

  # # # # #

  Stars or Bars by Jamie Ibson

  Antaro System

  “Entropy damn them! Where did that frigate come from?” Captain Grymalkynn of Clan Ihlosi snarled. “We don’t have the guns to fight something like that!”

  From her sensors console, new crewmember Xandra’s hands danced on the screens. “Reverse tracking suggests they lit off in the asteroid belt and cruised in on low or no thrust, Captain. Recommend we jettison the cargo and burn for the gate. We still have a window where we can outrun them.”

  “That might have worked for a clan as large as Hapthon, girl, but it won’t do here. We can’t afford to lose this cargo. Make the run for the gate.”

  “Aye Captain. The additional mass will reduce our window to less than a minute. All hands, brace for hard G acceleration in five, four, three…”

  As her timer hit zero, the Pushtal pirate ship Herald of Blades’ thrusters ignited, and Xandra steadily increased the throttle until her clawed fingers felt like they weighed three times as much as they normally did. She sank back into her cushioned crew seat and gritted her teeth, each breath labored, inhaling and lifting a ribcage that felt like she had an Oogar sitting on it.

  Vanneck, the Herald’s combat systems engineer, grunted with the effort and stabbed a blinking indicator.

  “They’ve launched—drones? No, assault pods,” he corrected. “They’re overtaking us!”

  The Pushtal captain reviewed the plot on the data, with the intercepting tracks, and confirmed the timing of the MinSha assault. Then Grymalkynn activated the shipwide PA.

  “All hands, in two hundred seconds, the gravity will return to standard—make ready to repel boarders!”

  Three minutes later, Xandra dialed the acceleration down to just one G so the packs of corsairs aboard could armor up and make ready. She slammed her own helmet on, sealed it to her shipsuit, and unclipped her carbine from the rack attached to her station. She looped the single-point sling over her shoulders—and saw stars when a thunderous crash bounced her off the ceiling of the bridge.

  Then she was floating.

  She hadn’t activated her magboots because she’d had gravity, or at least the thrust-induced imitation of the same. Her suit grew tight against her black-and-white-striped fur, indicating vacuum, and she wondered how bad the damage was that they’d already lost cabin pressure. Clan Ihlosi spent
a lot of time in space and had adopted a simple expedient to the problem of being trapped in micro-G without enough inertia to reach a bulkhead. She aimed up at the ceiling and launched a short-range magnetic grapnel. It caught, energized, and reeled her in until her magboots could lock down on the “floor.”

  Vanneck, on the other hand, was gaping like a fish as his helmet drifted lazily across the bridge. He’d been strapped in place, but his helmet had flown free, and without it he’d be dead in seconds. He was a decent sort, despite the company he kept, so Xandra tracked his helmet, and after rolling onto her toes to break the maglock, she launched herself across the cabin. She caught the helmet mid-flight, bent at the waist in a gymnastic pike tuck, and twisted to throw the helmet back to the weapons officer. She extended her legs beneath her just in time to absorb the impact, and her boots clamped onto the rear wall of the bridge. Vanneck caught the helmet and locked it in place, and gratefully began breathing atmo again.

  It took a few moments for him to catch his breath, and his ragged voice breathed a sigh of thanks over her communicator. “What was that?” she replied. “That was a helluva bang for assault pods.”

  “They hit us with some kind of spinal laser,” Vanneck read off his sensors. “Engines offline. Shields, offline. Power is intermittent, and the assault pods will hit us in”—he checked his board again—”thirty seconds.”

  “Damn them,” Grymalkynn snarled from his own station. “They’ve vented all the fresh out into space, too. The laser slashed through all six pods of protein, and now it’s all ruined. Not to mention we just lost anyone not already suited up.”

  Xandra felt more shudders through the soles of her boots, and launched herself back to her workstation, reading the displays while upside down hanging off the ceiling of the bridge. “MinSha naval infantry ingressing mid-hull, frame six; frame nine; frame ten…”

  The power to the bridge died a moment later, plunging them into absolute black. One by one, the three bridge crew ignited their helmet lamps, and the entire room was bathed in a dead, icy gleam as sublimated frost reflected on every surface. Captain Grymalkynn cursed yet again. “I can’t reach Karrl in the engine room; we have to assume he’s dead. Everyone, with me to the barracks. Vanneck and I will partner with Donnell and Eetria to lead the counterattack. If we can take the MinSha troops alive, we use them as barter to escape with our lives.”

  “I notice my name is conspicuously absent from the thrilling heroics?” Xandra asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “You’re plan B.” Grymalkynn slipped a card, somewhat like a UAAC, on a chain off his wrist and passed it to her. “Make your way aft with Karin and her pack. If we fail—this chip is the captain’s override. Overload the power plant, scuttle the ship, and take us all to Vorrha.”

  She stared at the small card he offered and took it gingerly.

  “If you fail to repel the boarders, kill us all,” she translated dubiously. “Aye, sir.”

  At that moment, Ruxandra of Roxtador began to worry that perhaps this particular op had gotten a bit out of hand.

  * * *

  “Oh, I’m sure she has everything well in hand,” Drake said with a touch of snark. “I’m not worried. Why would I be worried? A frigate full of MinSha versus an all-too-small, entirely Pushtal crew? Punch it, Meekos. We’re not abandoning her.”

  The Dannyn Blythe III’s Cochkala pilot, Meekos Klo’Rook, poured on the thrust. The bounty hunters had been creeping up on the Herald as it flew to the Antaro system’s hyperspace gate, but the MinSha frigate Kryvayla had been lying in wait as well and had gotten the jump on the Herald.

  “I still don’t see why you’re risking your hide for some Pushtal pirate. She played her game, she rolled the dice, and she lost,” their newest crewmember commented. Klovelo was a newly deputized Veetanho, and thus far, her attitude was not ingratiating herself with the Dannyn Blythe III’s crew. “Cut your losses and run. There’ll be more targets.”

  “She’s a deputized bounty hunter,” the massive Besquith replied evenly, “with ten times the experience and vastly more contacts than you.”

  “She’s a Pushtal—”

  “And she’s a member of my crew. Right now, you sound more and more like one of my ex-crew members—”

  “She’s a spy and a pirate!”

  “—and if you keep that shit up, you’re going to find yourself on the wrong side of the airlock.” Drake lifted the smaller, rat-like being out of her gunner’s chair and held her aloft, muzzle to whiskered muzzle. “No one would ever know.”

  “You…you wouldn’t dare!”

  Rylak laughed from his intel station. “We dare, all right. Strap your Veetanho butt down in your gunner’s seat and shut your yap. Your job is to run the weapons board, not have opinions. Do you know the story of Godonii Two?”

  “Of course, everyone knows that one. That Oogar Enforcer who fought off an army of GenSha for days.” Klovelo replied, but was confused by the seemingly random question. “That was nine or ten years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. That Oogar Enforcer deputized Ruxandra personally. Since she joined the crew, we’ve become the guild’s number one pirate-hunter team. You, little rat, are our gunner, and no one would blink an eye if you were killed in action. In five or six or nine years, if you survive that long, you might have an opinion worth sharing. Now shut up, strap in, and fire up your point defense systems, because it’s about to get interesting.”

  * * *

  “Maybe on our next ship, we should invest in some kind of point defense,” Vanneck grunted. “Something that could pick off the occasional incoming assault pod? I’d much prefer the interior not be a target-rich environment.”

  Most of the MinSha assault pods had struck the Herald amidships, delivering their forces in a fairly concentrated area. The Pushtal, however, were on home turf and knew how to best move from compartment to compartment. Vanneck, Xandra, Packmaster Karin, and a dozen more packmates had flown down one such access conduit in zero-G and emerged aft of the intruders. Captain Grymalkynn, Packmaster Donnell, and another dozen of the crew blocked their access to the bridge. The engineering defense team hadn’t exposed themselves yet, but it was time.

  “Donnell, Xandra. On three, two…”

  The bridge defense team tucked back behind cover simultaneously. Xandra, Vanneck, and six more Pushtal leaned out from two sides of the aft corridor. They took advantage of the micro-G with four on the ceiling and the others on the floor. All eight opened fire at the same time. With the MinSha mostly looking the wrong direction, several of their shots hit and punctured O2 tanks, which began venting their pressurized contents. The corridor became a mass of confused alien limbs and laser bolts as the Herald’s crew poured fire into the intruders, then retreated back behind the corners. Captain Grymalkynn’s team resumed their attack and kept the MinSha off balance.

  Tricks like that only worked once, and after they were behind cover, Vanneck gestured to the rear of the ship.

  “You’ve got orders, Xandra, get moving. See you in Vorrha, if not before.”

  She waved the weapons officer farewell, and Packmaster Karin rounded up her pack and sent them bounding ahead, soaring down the corridor in a leapfrog pattern that always left at least two covering their advance. Karin and Xandra stayed in the middle, moving steadily as Karin’s troops moved in a dizzying pattern, always leaving someone to watch their rear, never staying static. Xandra was impressed yet again—Skipistal had never been one for such foolish things as “tactics;” he’d trusted drugs and savagery to carry the battle, which was one of many reasons she’d been happy to see a change in leadership for Roxtador.

  Klaar, a young male and Karin’s lead packmate, reached the hatch that would let them access the living quarters spread over the next six levels. When he threw it open, laser fire from below met him, and he sailed away, bonelessly twitching. Xandra caught a glimpse through his visor as he drifted past, and swallowed hard against nausea, given the chunky mess contained within. Karin an
d two more of her packmates pulled flashbangs off their harnesses. On cue, they pitched all three through the open hatch. The concussive bang didn’t propagate, but blinding light lit the compartment through the hatch, and then the Pushtal pack was swimming through.

  * * *

  “Does Assault Commander Ricktt have an update?” Commander Dyrkayl, XO of the MinSha ship Kryvayla, asked. She was visibly nervous, and that made the rest of her bridge crew nervous. Selected more for her accounting acumen than warrior know-how, Dyrkayl was there to ensure the interdiction contract remained profitable. Their captain had a tendency to apply violence first and verify intel second. Dyrkayl was there to gain combat experience as well, but the captain was down with a rather disruptive digestive system imbalance, made worse by days in micro-G stalking the pirates. Rather than watching and learning, circumstances had forced their XO to step into the breach.

  “They’ve encountered…resistance,” Communications Lieutenant Wyrne admitted. “It seems the ship was half-full of the damnable pirate scum, who are fighting tooth and claw. Two squads are pinned down and being squeezed between enemy forces, and we’ve lost communications entirely with the squad they sent to secure their flank.”

  “Signal their captain again. If they won’t stand down, and they killed the away team, we will have no choice but to destroy them utterly,” the XO said.

  “No response,” Wyrne replied after a moment. “No acknowledgment of receipt whatsoever. Much of the ship is without power, our second shot pierced the hull and severed a major power conduit.”

  “Can we…can we get Lieutenant Klerne to parlay with them? Relay our instructions through the away team?”

  “Yes,” Wyrne said, then paused with her finger over the comms button. Klerne was her sister, and her status indicator had just gone grey. She sent the away team’s status up on the board, already showing 30% casualties, including Klerne, and two more went grey before their compound eyes. “Correction. No, we cannot.”