Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  I coughed. “Someone should probably check on him.”

  “Why do you say that?!” exploded Sturb, flicking a few droplets of sweat in my direction as his face snapped around.

  “He may have smashed his head open in the jump.” Henderson’s death in our custody might not have been the worst possible outcome, and would certainly solve a few of our immediate problems, but it was easy to imagine some negative consequences in the long term. Besides, killing a defenseless prisoner didn’t sit well with the old hero instincts, testicle executive toys aside.

  “Or he may have smashed the chair and is plotting the takeover of this vessel as we speak,” contributed Derby.

  Sturb knuckled the sweat from his eyes and stared us both up and down as if assessing us for the first time. “In that case. We can all go check on him.”

  “You two go,” I said. “I have to stay at the controls in case something finds us.” I tapped a few buttons that had no effect, but which I kept around to randomly tap when I wanted to emphasize a point.

  Sturb didn’t move. His gaze swept over my controls, and I could practically hear the cogwheels turn as he thought about all the terrible things I could make the ship do unsupervised. “N-nooo. You have to come with us, too.”

  “Look—”

  But Sturb would never find out in what precise way I wanted him to look, for at that point the proximity monitor gave an urgent triple blip, swiftly followed by a second.

  “Two ships entering sensor range,” I reported, leaning over the scanner to check the readout, booting the scanning unit in the vent until the twelve black holes it was mistakenly reporting disappeared and were replaced by two small, fast-moving dots.

  Sturb inspected the display. “Penelope’s people?”

  “I’m assuming as much.” The two lines were undoubtedly moving toward us, so either they were two of Warden’s pet star pilots from Salvation who knew to look for us here or they were pirates with a profoundly good nose for booty.

  Shortly, the approaching ships entered visual range. They looked like the usual star pilot fare—small, maneuverable, curved like a beach beauty reaching for her suntan lotion—with none of the cosmetic spikes or tattoos that signified career pirates. Then again, they could have been new recruits. The line between pirates and star pilots tended to be blurry in the Black, since each were routinely turning into the other.

  I wriggled my headset back on and opened a direct channel. “Neverdie to approaching ships,” I said to get the formalities out of the way. “You from Salvation?” I transmitted Salvation’s designated friend signal, just in case.

  The ships continued approaching in silence. They were definitely within listening range, and my headphones were receiving the telltale static of a connected line with someone on the other end hovering their finger over the button, ready to answer.

  I added a hint of gruff impatience to my tone. “Approaching ships, please respond.”

  Another few seconds of wordless hissing in my ears, then an abrupt clunk, a few words too staticky to even determine the gender of the person speaking, then another clunk. “Neverdie, stand by.” I got the impression that a discussion was taking place between the two ships, and possibly also Salvation, if that was where they were from.

  “What are they doing?” asked Derby. The ships were close enough now to be visible through the forward view screen. They slowed and stopped around eighty yards ahead, outside the range of umbilicals but well within the range for weapons.

  “Something’s wrong,” I whispered uneasily.

  “Oh, come on, guys,” said Sturb with slightly strangled joviality as he mopped sweat from his face again. “Look, I know we all got a little bit paranoid back there, but these are Penelope’s people, and we’re all equally keen to get this antidote to Robert Blaze. They’re probably doing a systems check. The interesting thing about the systems in early-model SST-grade ships like those is—”

  The two ships opened fire.

  Luckily, my constant annoyance with Sturb had been keeping me good and tense. My hands had been irritably clamped around the control sticks and I was able to instinctively twist them the instant I saw the first volley of white plasma burst from the ships’ frontal cannons. The Neverdie pitched left, and the two streams of death sped by, above and below us.

  I yanked the sticks back and to the side and kicked the reverse thrust lever to build up a bit of distance before their guns could cool down for another round. The more alert of the two ships broke off from its tiny formation and tried to get its sights back on me, and soon we were spinning around each other in the classic ballet of the circle strafe.

  “Warden! Call them off!” I yelled into my mic. There was no response, but somewhere amid the clatter of controls and the warning bleeps, I imagined I heard the scratching sound of a mic being deactivated.

  “Stand down! We’re carrying antidote for Robert Blaze!” cried Sturb, butting his head against mine to yell into my mic. “The cryonic cylinder is onboard! Stop attacking!”

  If anything, that only spurred them on. Another plasma lance scythed through space and glanced off the Neverdie’s protruding underbelly, leaving a black mark that would be hell to clean off. The second ship was a bulkier model, too slow to keep up with me like its partner could, so it was holding position and rotating in place, trying to line up a shot.

  “Assassins!” declared Derby.

  “You don’t know that!” said Sturb. After the firing had started he had none-too-subtly taken a defensive position crouched behind my chair. “It must be Henderson’s people. Did you call them here?”

  “When could I have done that, you idiot?! We’ve been in the same room!”

  “I wasn’t directly looking at you the whole time!”

  I gave the artificial gravity unit a kick, throwing my two nonseated passengers to the floor. “I don’t have time to destupid this entire cockpit right now. Shut up and let me concentrate.”

  I focused my attention on the slower ship. I wasn’t sure offhand how much of my ammunition I’d pawned since I’d last been in a dogfight, so I started with a burst of Gatling fire that my target easily saw coming and lazily dodged, but at least it got them on their toes. If I could keep the pressure up, avoid giving them time to adapt, I’d roll them over quick.

  But then I sensed the other, faster, ship sneakily slipping out of my field of vision on the left edge of the view screen. On instinct, I fired the vertical jets, and the Neverdie bounced upwards just in time to let another lance of plasma pass by underneath. I turned my attention back to the faster ship and strafed toward rather than away from it, just as a shot from the slower ship passed through an area where one might assume a less experienced pilot would have moved to.

  So they knew how to work together tactically, which confirmed that we were dealing with actual star pilots, or rather discounted the possibility of them being mercenary thugs or sophisticated Zoobs. I didn’t think they could have been on Henderson’s payroll, but why would star pilots be trying to sabotage the Robert Blaze rescue effort?

  Maybe it was Warden trying some incredibly convoluted backstab. But that didn’t make sense, appealing as it would have been to build a case against her; if she’d meant for Blaze to die, she could easily have not organized the heist. Was she so desperate to rid herself of Henderson that she’d sacrifice everything, just as the heist she’d planned so carefully was about to pay off? It didn’t feel right.

  The fast ship and I had been circling each other for several seconds now, with the slower ship making little circles of its own nearby, so it was about time someone made another play. I seized the initiative first and swung back toward the slow ship, hitting the boost to cross the distance quicker, making them back away defensively like an awkward partygoer getting their personal space invaded.

  But I kept boosting even when we were close to collision, forcing them to get o
ut of the way to let me fly straight past, neatly placing the slow ship between me and the fast ship and ensuring that the latter couldn’t fire on me without hitting his friend. In a single moment, slapping two buttons at once like an overexcited pianist, I sent one of my last precious torpedoes toward the slow ship and sped off in the opposite direction.

  I didn’t think for a moment that the torpedo would actually hit. The guidance system was horrendously out of date and the occupants of the target ship could have thrown it off by chucking a fridge magnet out their airlock. But it would give them something to think about for a few moments while I considered my next move.

  The torpedo impacted the hull of the slower ship just where the port nacelle met the main body, and the fireball tore through to the engineering decks. I knew this for certain, because a moment later their main reactor went up, consuming the entire ship in a sphere of white-hot conflagration, leaving nothing but a blackened skeleton that had once been a star pilot’s pride and joy.

  My hands came away from the joysticks damply as my arms went limp. I boggled, jaw slack, at the scorched wreckage that was drifting apart before my eyes. The other ship hung back, apparently as shocked as I was. “I killed them,” I heard myself say.

  “Ye-es,” said Derby uncertainly. “Are you waiting for us to blow party squeakers?”

  “You don’t shoot to kill!” I barked at him, showing him my shaking hands. “Star pilots don’t shoot to kill! Not against other star pilots!”

  “They were shooting to kill,” he replied. “They were using plasma.”

  I gave him an aghast look. “Obviously you use live ammo! You just don’t shoot to kill! You’re supposed to dodge! Make it interesting! A five-year-old could’ve dodged that! They . . . it wasn’t . . .”

  “I think we’re losing him,” said Derby to Sturb dryly.

  Sturb leaned in close to my ear. “Er, Captain, you’re doing a really good job at flying, well done; don’t you think you should take the controls again and get us away from the other one?”

  “Unless you feel up to killing them as well,” said Derby reasonably.

  “I didn’t kill them!” I spun around on my chair and made gestures of protestation to no one in particular. “I barely even fired! It was more like littering with missiles! They just didn’t dodge! It’s not my fault!”

  “Jimi, could you scan the near vicinity and determine our best escape strategy,” whispered Sturb tactfully into his phone.

  “Of course it wasn’t your fault,” said Derby, with a slightly sarcastic ­attempt at a soothing tone. “All you did was take your torpedo out for a walk. How can you be blamed if someone should trip over it?”

  “Shut up, Derby! You’ve stolen plying loads of things. That’s worse than killing someone. Probably. If you put it all together.”

  “Debris field located in the orbital path of the third moon of Biskot 2,” chirped Jimi. “Density and average object size suggests multiple opportunities for concealment.”

  “Captain,” said Sturb timidly. “Jimi says there’s a debris field located in—”

  “And you!” I turned to him. “You’re Malcolm Sturb. You enslave people’s minds. I’m still the least worst person in the room.”

  He emitted a pained little sigh. “Yes, you’re absolutely right. But I think it’s fair to say that if you don’t get us into that debris field soon, you are going to be indirectly responsible for at least four more deaths.”

  I checked the proximity scanner. The other ship was still hanging back, the destruction of its friend having given it pause for thought, but the way it was edging back toward the Neverdie’s flank suggested that it had paused for long enough. And that it wasn’t thinking that the best approach was for everyone to shake hands and part ways with good sportsmanship.

  I pulled up the navigation map. Jimi hadn’t led us astray—the debris field added a pretty halo of orange glitter around the circle representing Biskot 2. The moon itself was visible through the view screen, close enough to be a bright blue beach ball among the thousands of grains of sand that was the star field.

  “R-right,” I said, shuffling forward in my chair and shaking the cobwebs out of my head.

  A burst of the rear thrusters and we were underway toward the debris field. That was enough to snap our opponent out of it, and they began their pursuit.

  They fired more plasma, but the advantage of hightailing it away from a fight is that the projectiles are only moving slightly faster than you, relatively speaking, and they’re a lot easier to dodge. I only had to leisurely shift left, right, up, and down to step out of the way of incoming fire.

  The attacker was maintaining pace with the Neverdie, so we must have been equally matched, speedwise. Either that or they weren’t willing to push their engines to full power, which changed nothing, because I wasn’t, either. My coolant reserves were partially depleted, because I’d made Krohar of Belj drink some of it. His species had the ability to do so without ill effects, and this was something I tended to find amusing when drunk.

  When we were halfway to the debris field, the pursuing ship stopped firing and slowed a little, allowing the distance between us to grow.

  “It looks like they’re backing off,” said Sturb, watching the rear view.

  “Doubt it,” I said.

  The other ship changed course, moving upwards in an arc that would take him right over the strip of debris that followed the moon like a comet’s tail, which was more or less what I’d expected. He was going to position himself where he could better cover the debris field. He’d be able to see if I popped out of the other side of it, and if I didn’t, he’d be in a good spot to watch for the moment we did decide to break cover.

  I was all but certain at this point that I was dealing with another star pilot who knew all the same star pilot tricks. Fortunately, I was an ex–star pilot, and as of recently a heist participant, so my trick repertoire was slightly more expansive. At least, I had to hope so.

  The debris field consisted largely of intact drifting ships and discarded modules from larger vessels and stations. There were no small broken fragments or plasma scarring to indicate battle damage. This wasn’t the debris of war; this was the monumentally more tragic debris of abandonment.

  The Biskot system was smack bang on the halfway point between the solar system and the Spanish colony in the Mateo system, so the Speedstar Corporation had constructed a space station in Biskot to act as a rest stop for star pilots making the grueling trip to Mateo. And after a couple of minor galactic wars broke out in the Mateo area and used up most of the natural resources, suddenly there were rather a lot of star pilots making the trip.

  The rest stop in Biskot swiftly expanded into a whole network of space stations and grew into a major hub for travelers, with a trading post, repair and refueling facilities, hotels, restaurants, entertainment centers, shooting ranges, anything the weary star pilot might need. Local business owners ­began hiring Biskot’s indigenous population to help run the place. The founder of Ritsuko City and father of off-world development, Kaito Ayakama, had pledged that humanity would never interfere with the development of lesser races, but profit was on the line, and the courts ruled that it was less a law than a piece of somewhat solid advice.

  Biskot’s downfall was, of course, quantum tunneling. After the construction of Quantunnel gates in all of Mateo’s spaceports, star pilots were no longer the only practical choice for transporting supplies. And as much as we all enjoyed stopping at Biskot Central, it wasn’t worth a trip by itself. Especially when work dried up and the fuel costs amounted to three weeks’ worth of blood donations.

  Biskot Central was among the first of Speedstar’s many branches to snap off as the company’s prolonged downsizing began. The locals returned to their home planets to resume pushing dirt around their farms or whatever, and all that remained of the system’s former glory was the dense clo
ud of discarded technology that now surrounded the Neverdie. All the stuff whose resale value couldn’t have made up for the cost of towing it away.

  I swiftly found a piece of debris bigger than my ship: a drifting residence module that had once clipped together with several of its fellows to form a mobile, flexible hotel. I positioned the Neverdie flat against its underside and oriented the stabilizers so that the ship would automatically match its rotation.

  After that, I cut the power and switched to emergency reserves, plunging the cockpit into red twilight. The constant electric hum stopped and silence settled upon my senses like a fat, tired dog.

  Derby looked around, interested, at the sinister atmosphere the ship’s interior had suddenly acquired. “So, what is the plan, mon capitaine?” he said, with sarcastic deference. “Wait until they go away? Assume their resources will run out before ours do?”

  “We’re buying time”—I drummed my fingers on the arms of my chair—“until I can figure out the next move.”

  “Then prepare to marvel, for I have figured it out with no time at all. We resume the battle.”

  “No.”

  He clucked. “There’s only one ship left. I thought things were going rather well.”

  I raised a warning finger. “A, that wasn’t even a fluke, that was an accident. B, I have nowhere near the ammo for a proper dogfight. And C, I do not kill star pilots. Not on purpose.”

  “So?”

  “So, we wait, and you, me, and Sturb stay together and away from Henderson, all right?” I spun around in my chair. “Where the plying hell is Sturb?”

  Derby followed my gaze and inspected the Sturb-shaped hole in the scenery. “Hm.”

  I leapt out of my chair hard enough to keep it spinning for a good minute, at least, and hurried down the steps, the metal thundering and rattling underfoot. I grabbed the edge of the doorway into the passenger cabin as soon as it was within arm’s reach and swung around it, dropping into what I hoped was a close approximation of a martial arts stance.