Independent Flight (Aquarius Ascendant)

by K. L. Tremaine

  First Mate Benjamin “Matt” Mattingly was more concerned with the fact that they were running drugs. He ran his thick fingers over the tight curl of his hair, trying to figure out the angles that Ress wouldn’t have. It was how their partnership had worked for more than a decade–Ress, as shrewd as he was on the business end of things, tended to let a lot of things slide as details and trust to Mattingly to work out those details in the end. True, every owner-operator in the outer rim had done runs from time to time that mixed legitimate cargos with illegitimate, but in this case, the illegitimate cargo was the main cargo, not a small addendum to the manifest that they could wave away and ignore the consequences of. Running a cargo like this made them drug runners in fact, not just a small courier company that happened to have something less-than-legal in one of their shipments.

  Saving them at the moment was the fact that there was a lot of nothing in this star system. Many people took the fact that space had an ambient temperature of three degrees above absolute zero and assumed that because of this there was no such thing as “stealth” in space, that it was impossible to hide even the coldest ship’s heat flare. What they failed to account for was that no sensor had infinite resolution, and passive sensors tended to have lower resolution than active ones.

  Ress had had to repeatedly remind him that they didn’t have a ship if they didn’t do this run. Besides, Alluvian silver wasn’t exactly illegal –it just wasn’t exactly legal either. It was a controlled substance on most worlds, making its import tightly controlled at best, and frequently an outright felony. It was a song and dance as old as the age of technology, especially when people put intellect and motivation to converting a basic plant product into narcotics.

  A potent euphoric distilled from the needles of the Alluvium silverpine tree (which in their native state were no more offensive than the coca leaf back on Earth), it was currently popular on inner worlds like Mahan and his current destination world, Tiara D, and even strong diplomatic pressure from the United Planets couldn’t keep Alluvium from exporting it. It was barred from shipping through United Planets space (and in much of the rest of the Stellar Alliance as well, due to strong lobbying from Terra), but that just meant it had to go the long way around. . . or under their noses, “Which doesn’t mean that smuggling it isn’t illegal, or won’t get us in trouble,” insisted Mattingly. He, at least, had toed the line–Richards and Carmona had outright walked off the job, forcing Ress to hire new kids off of Ifrit’s payroll.

  That was the worst part of the whole thing. Carmona had been on Arrant Knave for years, and Richards all the way back since he’d bought the thing fifteen years ago. Both of them were as hardened as Ress, and he would have sworn they were as utterly devoted to keeping the ship afloat. But they’d just walked away, accusing Ress of selling out to someone who was going to eat them all alive. They were the only deserters, but it was a safe bet that the rest of the regular crew was probably unhappy about it as well. And the dozen intermodal shipping containers split evenly among the after four holds glowered in silent judgment over his decision to take on a job that had so thoroughly split the loyalties of the crew.

  As if that wasn’t enough of a mess, they hadn’t been able to upgrade the Knave’s aging single-phase warp drive to a modern poly-phase unit. That meant they had to drop down to slower-than-light speeds when they passed through a star system, which was going to add days to the journey. Fortunately, as with most trips, their course only put them close enough to a star system to have to do so once. So he ground his teeth and put up with it. Just four days, then they’d be fine.

  That was Mattingly’s last thought before something struck the hull with an almighty bang. The deck bucked underneath him, and he paled as a howling alarm went off. He’d only heard that alarm once before in his life, but every spacer knew it by heart–Hull breach.

  The computer helpfully underscored that by adding, “Hull breach alert, cargo bay four. Force field failure. Force field failure.”

  The ship’s rattling grew worse as the offending micrometeoroid–the very same one that Natasha Leblanc had noted and logged three and a half days previous–tore its way through the hold, knocking the uppermost container on the stack loose and slamming it out through the wall of the ship. That turned the small and relatively contained leak into a catastrophic failure which blasted two crewmen out into space, and only one of whom–the new kid–was wearing a life support suit. The rest of the spacers working that hold had been in shirtsleeves.

  Mattingly cursed helplessly as he slapped his hand down on the button marked SEAL DOOR. At least six of his men and women had just died, and sealing the hold was a near-guaranteed death sentence for anyone still alive in there since they would be locked out with few options to get to a hatch–even if they could reach a pressure mask before losing consciousness. But he couldn’t achieve anything by venting the rest of the ship to space. More rattles and rumbles worked their way between the walls, shimmying ominously aftward. Mattingly kicked his way down the corridor to try to keep ahead of them. No one else was in the axial shaft, thankfully. He was hoping to cut outward at Frame 19 almost two hundred meters abaft the bow, to get to an airlock and go EVA to assess damage. It was any spacer’s first instinct: To heave to, to check their damages and effect repairs.

  But Ress–or whoever else was on the bridge–had evidently chosen that exact moment to firewall the throttle, because the ship quivered and leaped forward, and Mattingly’s instinct to grab at a hold-down bar on the wall was the only thing that protected him from a lethal tumble a hundred-forty meters to the engine room wall. He heard thumps and cries of alarm and pain from other compartments around him, and gritted his teeth. Minutes ticked by as Mattingly painfully worked his way towards the emergency couch just ten meters ahead of him. Two gees apparent meant the ship had to be running at her maximum acceleration of nearly six hundred actual, and it meant that he was effectively climbing a forty-five degree grade to get to his damned couch. Only a blockade runner could kick up that kind of acceleration in the first place, so doing it would expose her as such a ship in the first place–that wouldn’t be good for the career of anybody aboard Arrant Knave.

  Mattingly’s worries skyrocketed when he started hearing a pulsating hum from the drive impeller. That had not been there after the refit. Whatever they were running from, he hoped they could escape soon, because Mattingly had the feeling that the newly-repaired drive might pack it in at any given moment.

  “Jonah, what the fuck are you up to,” growled Mattingly.

  Something was chasing Arrant Knave, and it was probably something carrying a military roundel. That meant missiles weren’t far behind at all.

  That was as far as Mattingly’s thoughts went before the deck heaved under him and he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head. Then blackness.

  *

  It was by barest chance that Dog Two-oh-Seven was close enough to the bulk freighter Arrant Knave to catch the hull breach on her long-range scanners.

  MSS Arrant Knave MSS-407734121A–Private Owner-Operator–Atmosphere Loss. The sudden spew of air into deep space and loss of heat was unmistakable, and Veronica winced.

  “Captain, did you see that?” Yeboah’s voice was tight as Natasha’s data update flashed to both of their consoles.

  “I saw it, all right. Debris, air, and a couple of humans. It looks like they just blew a hold. Damage, or dumping?” Veronica switched to the intership/intersystem communicator. “MSS Arrant Knave, this is Alliance Naval Corvette SV Dog Two-Oh-Seven, we see you have experienced a bit of atmosphere loss from one of your holds. May we render assistance?”

  Veronica swallowed a sudden curse when the vessel suddenly turned away from her and kicked up its engine to nearly six hundred gees. Her eyebrows climbed as well–that was within a hundred gees of what a warship of that tonnage could pull, and no ordinary civilian ship could manage anything like that kind of acceleration. “It’s go time, kids. I don’t know what she’s carrying, but i
t’s hot, and she’s just basically advertised ‘I Am Up To No Good.’”

  “We should catch ‘em, Skip,” replied Louis. “Natasha and I can get in our seats in twenty seconds, then we’re good through fifteen hundred.”

  “Alyse?”

  “I’m with Bowman. A runner means they’re either smugglers with a hot haul, or slavers.” Louise and Kellie pounded down the ladderway to their stations and Veronica, Natasha, and Yeboah dropped into their own shock cushions. A moment of fumbling with four-point harnesses, and Veronica was watching with unease at the range opening more second by second as her ship continued to coast along at a relative crawl. “Everybody ready?”

  “Locked down tight.”

  “Green here.”

  “Ready to kick some ass, Skip.”

  “What they said. I can give you an extra five percent if you hold off on charging weapons and shields until we’re right on the engagement bracket. Nearly ten if you authorize creativity.”

  “Do it. We are ‘go’ for sixteen-fifty gees. Hold on.” An incredible force of gravity pushed the five of them into their seats, rendering restraints shockingly superfluous. Five gees was nearly as bad as a cat shot, and all five crew members gritted their teeth against the sustained strain. Keeping this up meant their heads would show some nasty pressure bruising tomorrow. Their velocity mounted with every passing second, as the freighter pushed itself hard for the minimum “depth” of the star system where it could engage warp drive and escape from its pursuers.

  Despite the terrific strain, Yeboah called their course without hesitating., “Velocity zero relative to target in one-two-point-two-five minutes, zero-range intercept in… four-five-point-one. Compensators steady and holding at five gees felt.”

  “Freighter Arrant Knave, this is Dog Two-oh-Seven. Cut your engines and prepare to receive boarding party or we will consider you ‘in flight’ and respond accordingly.” Veronica’s voice was cold and steady. The fleeing speck on her screen remained silent and active, running for the edge of the star system’s gravity well.

  Knave would have been accelerating away from her for nearly fifteen minutes by the time Dog Two-oh-Seven stopped losing ground, after that she would start gaining - rapidly. She could fire her warning shot in… twenty-two minutes, mark. Veronica felt the math was with her, but that was a cold, dark comfort compared to the sight of her quarry seemingly slipping away, even if its relative speed advantage was being cut by over a kilometer per second every second.

  “Can we vector Four on the Floor onto the heat sources in that hold dump?” Veronica desperately hoped that was the case–it would simplify the moral problem she had to solve in the next minute or so.

  From behind, Leblanc replied, “Yes, Ma’am, but her angle’s not as good. She can’t get there as fast as we can.”

  Kellie chimed in from the mid-deck, “Commander, recommend we adjust vector for a close sensor scan of the cargo dump and vector 204 on it for a zero-zero intercept and rendezvous once we’ve made our grab.”

  Veronica nodded fiercely. “If we do that, do we have the energy to make an intercept before they hit their safe warp threshold?”

  “Aye, Captain, but just barely–we won’t be able to make a zero-zero intercept at that range, we’ll have to force them to heave to with missiles.”

  Veronica chewed her knuckle for a handful of seconds. “I see what you mean, Chief. Sensors, inform Saitova in 204 that she has a rescue op, those coordinates. I don’t think she has the energy curve to meet Arrant Knave before she escapes into deep space anyway.”

  Veronica anxiously watched the vector of her corvette change direction, curving slightly away from the target. But as long as they kept him inside the energy envelope neatly displayed on their HUD, he wouldn’t be able to escape her before she could meet him. Long fingers wrapped and re-wrapped her control stick.

  “Negative, Captain, she doesn’t,” confirmed Natasha.

  “But we do.”

  The corvette swept within eight kilometers of the debris field, and Veronica wrenched the stick to the side, smoothly rolling Two-oh-Seven onto her new heading. Yeboah dropped a buoy as they passed.

  “Now give me a hundred and ten percent,” said Veronica, wrenching the corvette back onto its pursuit vector and hoping that the divergence hadn’t cost them too much time. The computer said they had enough acceleration advantage, but they were cutting it awfully close.

  Minutes ticked by without a response, as Dog Two-oh-Seven’s net drew tight around the fleeing freighter. Now she wasn’t merely losing ground less quickly, but actually gaining on the ship. As time dragged on, Veronica anxiously shifted sensor modes back and forth, seeing if she could get a clearer view of the other ship’s condition, perhaps if she could see why they were fleeing…

  “Ready to engage, Captain,” reported Leblanc. They were close enough to fire a warning shot without the torpedo expending its entire energy load before it even got to the target. Their oblique approach angle meant that they wouldn’t have to program a missile popup maneuver to get it around the quarry’s drive field.

  “Mister Bowman–one missile across her nose. Detonate at six thousand, repeat, six triple zero kilometers ahead of target, sixteen kilometers to port.”

  Bowman thumbed back the shield from his trigger and flattened it into the grip of his joystick. Below and aft, the “bomb bay” of the ship flicked open and her missile rack kicked a single Star Streak missile clear of the hull. Unlike its larger cousins carried on full-sized starships, this was a single warhead with a tiny single-stage warp drive and a sophisticated seek-track-intercept package directly attached. As soon as it crossed the safe threshold, that drive kicked to life, creating an eddy in spacetime that catapulted it ahead at an acceleration that no manned craft could match, compensator or not. The torpedo’s sophisticated tracker sneered at the best effort of Arrant Knave’s civilian-grade jammer, using it as a beacon to refine its firing solution. In less than a minute, a harsh point of nuclear light bloomed a mere six thousand klicks ahead and just aport of the charging freighter.

  The freighter’s captain must have had a cat’s reflexes. It lurched to starboard in the beginning of an evasive turn, but its inertia carried it through the blast anyway. It heaved as it overran the nuclear explosion at almost sixty thousand kilometers per second. Unlike a warship, the freighter had no point defenses worth speaking of, and its navigational shields and a pair of the thinnest hulls permitted by law were all that protected its contents from the depths of space. A direct hit would have instantly destroyed a vessel so fragile, but this shot had been carefully calculated, detonating far enough away for a mere nav shield to deflect most of it.

  “Acceleration dropping, Ma’am, I think we got her attention as she went through the explosion. Either that or we got a piece of her drive.”

  “Good, Guns.” Veronica toggled the intership again. “Arrant Knave, this is the Interstellar Navy. You are fleeing from a lawful challenge and we have fired a warning shot across your bow. Our next shot will be into your drive section. Heave to immediately and prepare for inspection.”

  Veronica wasn’t sure if the drop of the fleeing ship’s velocity was actual compliance or simply the consequence of damage to its main warp ring, but slow it did, dropping to a mere two hundred gees, then one hundred, and then merely coasting on the momentum it had already built up. No escape pods, no last-second maneuver attempts, and the ship’s laser turrets remained silent. Veronica wondered if the owner-operator was rational enough to argue their way out of a fine or a prosecution rather than try shooting it out with a Navy corvette, or simply too badly disabled to fight back. But you never knew for sure.

  “Reverse field, give me a least-time intercept vector for boarding,” her voice sounded crisp, but tired. The warp rings reversed the direction of their spatial distortions, turning the after expansion field into a contraction field. Having already accelerated past a perfect zero-zero rendezvous course, the ship would overshoot her quarry and
reach relative stationary roughly thirty thousand kilometers past her, within mutual laser range. “We’ll be close enough to throw rocks, Ma’am,” groused Natasha.

  “I know that, but we’re going to actually need to be even closer–we’re going to need to close to skin-touch range, in order to board.” Veronica smiled at Natasha’s image on the intercom. “You done good, kid. You done good.”

  The minutes ticked agonizingly by as Dog Two-oh-Seven slowed. The freighter swelled on the tactical display as the two vehicles converged, until they were sitting virtually nose to nose with just a few thousand kilometers between them, Veronica deftly slowed her corvette with small touches on the vector thrusters, bringing the two on a converging course. “We’ll have converged with their main boarding airlock in about ten minutes.”

  She peeked into the small hatch leading down into the middeck. “Alyse, Bowman. Suit up, you two are coming with me. Yeboah, you and Leblanc stay on Two-oh-Seven and keep watch for anyone else.”

  Veronica started powering up her suit as Yeboah carefully maneuvered Dog Two-oh-Seven to its rendezvous. The slow minutes ticking by felt maddening on her nerves. She was frustrated with waiting, and simultaneously worried by the fact that she was about to board a ship underway–it was a dangerous thing for a command officer to enter a foreign ship, but a corvette simply didn’t have the personnel to include a true marine detachment. Her only actual marine was Natasha, and she had to stay on the corvette in case of an assault past the landing party, at least for first contact–Veronica resolved to change out for a different force mix on the freighter as soon as she could.