Vitalis Omnibus

by Jason Halstead

  “That’s not an asteroid!” Sharp growled. He turned to Eric. “Get Tarn up here now!”

  Eric took off with barely an, “Aye, Captain!” tossed over his shoulder.

  “That’s why the dump from cold sleep, sir,” Kira said. “The autopilot adjusted course but so did the other ship. It’s closing with us fast. ETA is less than ten minutes. It must be accelerating,” Kira muttered to herself as she fed more commands via the cybernetic link into the computer. “I don’t understand. Even a cold dump takes hours – this hit my outer threat range seventeen minutes ago.”

  “Had some modifications done to our chambers,” Sharp explained. “You’re going to feel like hell for a week or so because of it, but most of the time it’s only temporary.”

  “Most of the time, sir?” Kira turned to look at him.

  Sharp shrugged. “Guy who done it said he only had one case of somebody suffering permanent brain damage.”

  Kira swore.

  “Hey, you prefer to let them board while we’re still snuggled up in dreamland? What happens then? Pretty thing like you might get raped a few dozen times before they sold you as a slave. The rest of us most likely get our throats cut – if we’re lucky.”

  She nodded at the Captain’s logic. He said no more until Eric returned with a grumbling Tarn behind him. “Tarn, where’s your threat sensors? And the plasma defenders? Why aren’t they on line and tracking?”

  Tarn ignored him, staring at the screen and deciphering it. “Fuck! Must be bugged up,” he muttered, and then turned away to head over to the security station.

  “Don’t give me that; you said everything was fixed!” Sharp roared. “Get them up and running now or I’ll shoot you at them!”

  “Sir, we don’t know who it is,” Kira pointed out. “It could be another transport or even a naval vessel.”

  “Uh-uh,” Eric said, slipping up quietly beside her chair and pressing his hand against her shoulder. Kira glanced up at him and smiled. This proved he wasn’t the kiss-and-tell type and that he would still respect her in the morning. Then again, after the things she’d made him do in the heat of the moment, she wasn’t sure she could respect herself.

  “Free agent would be steering clear of us,” Sharp confirmed. “Naval vessel would be broadcasting to us. This ship’s silent. You tried hailing?”

  Kira nodded. It was standard procedure on seeing another ship, especially one with an intercept vector. “No response, sir.”

  “Tarn?”

  “Hang on,” he grunted. “Must be a bug in the activation code. The program’s in there but it never executed properly.”

  “What about our guns?”

  “Enemy ship is out of range. They’ll be ready when it gets closer though!”

  “What’ve they got to use on us?” Sharp asked.

  Tarn laughed bitterly. “This is a transport! No sensors worth a damn on here. Mining rig’s got better eyesight than this thing does.”

  Kira looked at the Captain and saw the muscles in his jaw flexing. She felt Eric squeeze her shoulder again. Her own free hand went up to rest on top of his. “Are these pirates?”

  “They’re not a welcoming committee,” Tarn muttered.

  Kira stared at him, eyes narrowed. Eric gave her shoulder another squeeze, forcing her to relax. She looked at the display again. Even though they could all see it, she felt the need to announce, “Seven and a half minutes, sir.”

  “Tarn, how long until they’re in range?”

  “Four minutes.”

  Sharp swore. “Glad I spent so much on the weapons you recommended!” The ex-Marine wisely chose to stay quiet. “Kira, what’s our position? How long were we under?”

  “A little over a month, sir.” Kira had already figured that much out from the data on the display. She input several more commands to analyze the stars and compare their position. “Otherwise we’re on course for the mining region, roughly two months out. The rotation of this system’s planets and stations are further from us than a return to the jump station would be.”

  Sharp swore again. “No outrunning them either, I bet.”

  The display popped up a new frame with calculations and text within it. The answer was clear seconds later. “No, sir,” Kira parroted the system’s visual display.

  “You better hit those sons of bitches so hard they get turned into a wormhole,” Tarn grunted as he sat sweating over his chair.

  Kira stared. She could see the sweat running down the side of Tarn’s face. She was still chilled to the bone and only the adrenaline of the moment was keeping her from falling to the deck. She glanced up at Eric again and saw the misery in his eyes. He smiled in spite of it when she caught his eyes, which prompted a strange flutter in her own stomach. Her first real relationship and he was an engine jockey on a dead-end tanker in the middle of nowhere. She bit her lip to fight back the tear, and then smiled back at him. It wasn’t his fault that she’d fucked her own life up so badly that a desperate shot at running away on the Rented Mule was her only way out.

  “Five minutes, sir,” she croaked loudly.

  Sharp’s hand rested on her other shoulder, squeezing so firmly it hurt. Then it was gone. Kira felt her heart thundering in her chest, something she had read was next to impossible after being dumped out of cold sleep.

  “Where are Jeff and Kevin?” the Captain asked.

  “I told them to get suited up and stand by for emergency repairs,” Eric said. “They can handle pressure leaks and basic electronics. I’ve been showing them a few things.”

  “Might need you in the engine room.”

  Kira felt Eric’s hand stiffen on her shoulder. It might have been because she was suddenly squeezing his so much harder. “Aye, sir, I’ll keep an eye on things. Call me if I’m needed.”

  He pulled his hand away but the warmth of it lingered on her shoulders. Kira set her jaw and blinked away the tears. After everything she’d done and all the sacrifices she’d made, this did not seem like a fitting way to die.

  “Sir!” She screamed, looking at a fresh readout on the display. “We’re being—”

  Lights flashed and an alarm went off, even though nothing seemed amiss. “We’re under attack, sir!”

  “Damage?”

  “It was a relativistic projectile. No breech but it definitely hit us on the port side.” The inertial suppressors eliminated the shock from spreading throughout the two-thousand ton ship. It was neither graceful nor pretty, but the Rented Mule could certainly take a beating.

  A few seconds later another alert sounded, followed by fresh damage indicators. This continued for several more rounds, each spaced a few seconds apart. “Sir, they’re firing something large enough to clear our avoidance field but not big enough to do any serious damage.”

  “Tarn!”

  “Just a damned minute!” he growled. Then he slammed his finger on the panel, triggering the plasma defenders.

  Sharp stared at display that showed the star field in front of them, watching a green mist streak out so quickly it was barely identifiable. It disappeared into the blackness, giving no indication of what had transpired. “Well?” he asked, his voice overpowering the steady chirps that indicated fresh hits from the enemy vessel.

  “Limited sensors, sir,” Kira said.

  Tarn let out a whoop. “I got the bastards!”

  The ongoing alerts continued. “Why are we still being fired upon?”

  “Didn’t say I killed ’em,” Tarn snapped. He went back to his display and began hammering in fresh commands. He snarled as two more plasma shots went out, both missing.

  “Sir, less than two minutes until they’re on us!”

  “Roll us twenty degrees so I can bring both plasma guns on line!”

  “Do it!” Sharp snapped.

  Kira rolled the ship, firing the thrusters manually to save time. She arrested the roll too late, but Tarn had already triggered his attack. The star field display went blank. One of the frames on the main display stopped sc
rolling updated data.

  “What happened?”

  “Something else hit us,” Kira stammered. She was desperately trying to make sense of the data, inputting fresh queries to the system. “An energy weapon, I think. Looks like they found our primary sensor modules.”

  “So we’re blind?”

  Kira fought with her system several seconds before she slumped in her chair. “Looks like it…sir.”

  “Shut those damn alarms off. Internal sensors will still tell us if there’s a problem.”

  Kira silenced the alarms and stood by, expecting to have to cancel a new one in a few seconds. She realized she’d have to do it constantly and wondered if there was a way to issue a command so that only a different type of alarm would sound.

  “Did you cancel everything?” Sharp asked her as the seconds ticked past silently.

  “No, sir,” she said. “Trying to figure out how to differentiate between the existing attacks and more serious ones.”

  “You may not need to. They’ve stopped shooting at us.” Sharp stared at the unmoving displays and then turned to the ex-Marine. “Tarn, did your last shots hit?”

  “Of course! Both barrels down the throat!”

  “Your sensors show the damage before we lost them?”

  Tarn grunted as he tapped clumsily away at the display. “Feedback from the sensor loss must have wiped out the logging.”

  “So you don’t know for sure.”

  “That range—there ain’t no way I could miss!”

  Kira glanced up and saw the stare-down between the Captain and the security officer. She looked away, hoping she could ignore the growing tension in the room. “All right, no. I got no way of knowing what shape they’re in now.”

  Sharp stabbed the intercom button. “Everyone suit up now! Our attackers have destroyed our sensors but we believe they’ve also been damaged. If they board us, they won’t give us the time to arrange a welcoming party — they’ll just blow the hull. Suit up and stand ready to repel boarders.”

  “Sir, should I…”

  “Go get your suit. I’ll mind your station until you get back.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kira hopped up and hurried to the airlock. She met Eric on the way and they grabbed each other’s hands briefly, and then let go and hurried on when Tarn came huffing along behind them. The suits were unisex and universally uncomfortable. Kira grabbed the tallest one and turned to glance at Tarn. Eric looked up, catching her gaze, and then slipped between them while the ex-Marine busied himself with displaying a very hairy back and butt so he could slip into the suit.

  With him distracted, Kira shucked her robe and jumped into her suit, zipping it up quickly before fixing the helmet on. The onboard system powered up and did a system check. With a few adjustments, it read off a list of green statuses. Kira turned to see Eric helping Tarn into a different suit, and then waited patiently for the porcine man to be ready.

  “Get back to the bridge,” Eric told her. “I’ll help Tarn finish up; you’re needed up there.”

  “Be careful!” she whispered.

  “Careful’s my middle name, Legs!” Kira squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fist at Tarn’s voice over the suit-to-suit radio. He chuckled even as she turned and stormed off.

  Her station at the bridge was far from comfortable in a bulky spacesuit. They had evolved and improved over the years but still weighed twenty-five pounds and remained bulky enough to make even a runway model feel like they were wearing a fat suit. She settled in as best she could and then had to break the seal on her suit so she could route the suit’s internal data cable to her palm. After she resealed it, and noticed the Captain trying to look everywhere but at her, she applied the external cable to her station to allow her direct input to the system.

  “Sorry, sir,” she said, somewhat out of breath. “I’m ready now.”

  “Kira, the bridge is yours. Do what you think is best should the situation require it.” Sharp gave her a tap on the shoulder that she barely felt through the suit and then he turned and left the bridge.

  She stared after him for a long moment, and then turned back to look at the partially functioning screens. She swallowed loudly, aware that the only thing she could hear was inside her own helmet. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got left,” she muttered, feeding fresh commands into the computer as quickly as she could think them up.

  Chapter 4

  A week passed without further incident. They were blind on the inside, but they remained alive. Of the pirate that attacked them, they heard nothing further. Hour by hour, they struggled to come up with alternative plans to restore functionality to the ship. Aside from cutting power to the engines, nothing was viable.

  Eric had done a couple of walks on the hull of the Rented Mule to assess damage better. The ballistic projectile the pirates had used had cracked, bent, and done damage to numerous portions of the ship. Three thruster ports were damaged or destroyed, the main airlock was inoperable for the foreseeable future, and even one of the pushers had been damaged and knocked slightly out of alignment. The primary sensor array had been fused into a mass of metallic junk. Shielding that protected it from asteroids and incidental physical contact had done little to spare it from the high-power energy weapon that had fused it into a single piece of metal.

  As frustrating as it was receiving no positive news or answers, Kira found the best way to get through the sickness of being dumped out of cold sleep was to stay focused on her job. Between that, running, and spending a lot of time sweating in the engine room with Eric, she managed to escape the majority of her sorrows and remain hopeful.

  The working theory was that an object in motion stays in motion. They should reach their destination on time. The computer would continue to track their progress, using simulated movement versus actual, and notify them when the time was up. It was ugly but with hand scanners and radio links inside the spacesuits they could still dock with the mining facility to offload their gear, take on the new payload, and conduct repairs while they were there.

  Until then, they still had almost two months of travel.

  “So what’s your story?” Kira asked her lover as the sweat cooled on their bodies. “You told me you hadn’t expected to end up here either, or something like that.”

  Eric smiled up at her. Kira felt her stomach flutter a little and she knew it must have translated into a muscular movement based upon the way his eyebrows raised. She was sitting on top of him while he reclined against a metal-paneled wall. “Nothing too complicated. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Kira could appreciate that, but it wasn’t an answer. “Isn’t everybody?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think of a place I’d rather be right now.” He flexed his abs and prominent other muscles that caused Kira to blush at the tickle inside of her.

  “Good point,” she said with a wink. “And yes, it is a very good point.”

  “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” Eric said after laughing with her.

  Kira bit her lip. It was why she could never play cards: serious thought required serious introspection. “This is about you, not me.”

  “Fair’s fair.”

  She pouted, and then shrugged. “Tell you what—I’ll give as good as I get. Deal?”

  He chuckled again. “So far you’ve done a great job of it.”

  “You’re a naughty boy,” she admonished, shifting her hips enough to let him know that she liked naughty.

  “Oh, good, I hope you spank me for it later.”

  “Ooh, kinky, too!” Kira loved their conversations almost as much as she loved the sex. He made her feel so alive and so exciting. She had already done things she’d never dreamed she could do with him just because he made her feel so wanted. She almost regretted what might happen when they reached the mining station. She hadn’t wanted to stay aboard the Rented Mule very long but Eric had made some very convincing arguments without saying a word.

  “You haven’t seen n
othing yet, baby,” Eric promised.

  Kira felt a shiver run down her back. “Later – now tell me why I get to ride this magnificent beast instead of some uppity princess on a Core world?”

  Eric laughed again, and then drew silent. He shrugged as he looked up at her. “You’ve got a keen eye; there’ve been a few uppity princesses in your place.”

  Kira knew her jaw was hanging open but it seemed impossible to shut it. Her entire body felt like it belonged to someone else; she couldn’t draw in a breath or explain the way her stomach seemed to have fallen through the deck of the ship.

  “Long time ago, Kira, but definitely wrong place and wrong time. I was a stupid kid who discovered girls while interning at an astrophysics lab.”

  “Sleep with the boss’ daughter?” Kira forced the question out as calmly as she could. It was stupid to expect him to not have been with anyone else but he was just so damn good it wasn’t fair that she’d have to share him with anyone. She knew it was irrational but just once she wanted something completely for herself.

  “No, the boss wasn’t married. He wasn’t into girls either. No, I had too much to drink one night and then ended up getting picked up by a Lady.”

  “That doesn’t seem so bad…” It did, but for personal reasons and not ones that made sense to normal people.

  “Not a lady, a Lady. The governor’s wife.”

  “Oh!”

  “Yeah, her daughter found out and she wanted some fun, too. At that level, you wouldn’t believe what people will do. Everything’s a game to them; it’s appalling!”

  “I bet you were thinking just that while you were slipping between their beds.” Kira ground herself down on him, trying to make it uncomfortable but she also had to admit she was kind of turned on.

  Eric grunted. “Yeah, maybe not so much. But afterwards I realized it. They just kept sucking me back in, though.”

  “I bet.” She twisted her hips, feeling him swelling to his full size again. He’d left her walking funny for days already; this time it was his turn. She was going to leave bruises.