Star Dragon Box Set One

by Blaze Ward

  Over the radio, low moans suddenly sounded, so the man was awake. Probably mindless with pain, but there was nothing any of them could do until they got him out of his armor.

  Gareth reached back awkwardly as Duewall and Hlavka draped the arms over his shoulders. He stood up to his full height, which thankfully was enough to clear the shorter man’s feet. It was too much to leap there in a few bounds, so Gareth focused on keeping his balance forward, even as his men helped him. In the distance Vitro was entering the airlock, so he’d be ready when they got there.

  That amount of mass made him feel like Atlas lifting up the world, but Gareth would not be defeated. They would get the miner to safety and do everything they could to make sure the man survived.

  They were Earth Force Sky Patrol. They would always protect the innocent first.

  And then punish the guilty.

  Gareth looked up from his paperwork as Vitro entered. The medic looked like he’d been drug backwards through a knothole.

  “How is he?” Gareth asked.

  “Badly wounded, but I think he’ll make it, sir,” Vitro sighed. “Another ten minutes or so and it would be a different story. Problem is, he needs a proper hospital. I’ve done the best I can, but mostly that’s to stabilize him until real doctors can open him up and fix things.”

  “Very good, Vitro,” Gareth said, standing. “He’s your primary duty until then.”

  “Yes, sir,” the medic departed.

  Gareth let his thoughts crystalize for a moment, and then came to his decision.

  From his office he went forward to the bridge. Spacer Three Mohammed bin Aziz al-Bukhara had the ship’s wheel for now, with Atkins resting. Omar Ferrie should have gone off duty at the radio station, but had refused all orders, sure that the faint signal he still held would be lost if someone else tried.

  Gareth couldn’t really argue with the man, so he opened the ship-wide comm and took a deep breath.

  “Chief Edevane and Spacer One Atkins to the bridge,” he called. “All hands stand by for maneuvering orders.”

  Quickly, the two named men appeared on the tiny bridge.

  “What’s up, commander” Edevane asked as they arrived.

  “We have a problem,” Gareth said. “The injured man needs to get to a base hospital if he’s to have any chance to survive, but our faint trace on the pirates will vanish if we do.”

  Both men nodded. Most of the crew knew the score on that one. And to a man it probably galled them nearly as much as it did Gareth. They were Sky Patrol. They were supposed to be the good guys, but sometimes the good guys were stuck.

  “Chief, there’s only one way to handle this,” Gareth said. “I’m going to board the miner’s vessel and stay in pursuit. You’ll get this ship back to base and then round up help to come after me.”

  “Sir, are you sure that’s wise?” Atkins blurted out.

  “No, Tommy,” Gareth replied. “It’s probably stupid, but it’s the only chance we have to capture those men before someone else becomes the next victim.”

  “As you order, sir,” the Chief said with a quiet, stark voice.

  As senior enlisted man aboard, he was used to being in temporary command while Gareth was off ship, perhaps on the surface of an asteroid as before. Now, he would have to be responsible for everyone and everything until he could get the little ship and crew to Asteroid Base Three and the Commandant.

  “Atkins, I need you driving for a bit,” Gareth said. “You’ll need to put us right next to the miner’s ship so I can move some gear over in short trips. After that, you and al-Bukhara will have to hard burn home as fast as you can. Questions?”

  “Negative, sir,” they both said in unison.

  In a moment, the ship was a flurry of activity. Gareth left the Chief forward and went aft to locate the miner’s badly-damaged armor. It would be key to the next phase of the plan he had considered.

  Outside, Atkins used his deft touch to drop Bellerophon almost close enough to the other ship to simply toss things by hand between airlocks. Gareth suited up and he and Hlavka hauled the armor over, as well as several other things Gareth would need.

  Finally, he moved to the bridge. Thankfully, the ship was designed to be easy to fly, even in the armor suit. Some men evacuated the ship of all air for weeks at a time, just boarding to move to a new location, but not bothering with anything else.

  Asteroid miners were some of the roughest, toughest men in the Solar System. Only comet wildcatters, mining for water on the fragile snowballs of space, could give them a close run for the money.

  And Earth Force Sky Patrol, of course.

  “Radioman Ferrie,” Gareth opened the radio between ships. “Confirm the last course laid in.”

  “Roger that, commander,” Omar said quickly. “They did a dogleg burn about three hours ago. Probably felt they were safe enough. Anybody but me might have lost them before that.”

  Gareth smiled. Not much brought Omar Ferrie joy besides outsmarting other people with his radio gear. There wasn’t a better radioman in Sky Patrol, as far as Gareth was concerned.

  “Very good,” Gareth concluded. “Chief, you are now in command until relieved. I’ll be expecting the cavalry soon.”

  “We’ll be there, Gareth,” the old man of the ship said.

  On his internal screens, Gareth watched the slender dragonfly of a ship hop delicately into the air and turn for home. They would probably break every speed record known in the process of getting there.

  Gareth spent a little time, just making sure everything was clear in his head as he pressurized his new ship and got ready. Then he lifted off and programmed in a course, based on the mathematical wizardry of his Radioman.

  All of space travel was just Newtonian geometry, with a little Einstein thrown in to give it extra flavor. So many seconds burn on a particular course for acceleration, and then you coasted for the most part until turnover. Sometimes, you could get lucky and slingshot your way around some planet or moon for a gravity assist. It was just like playing snooker back home, except that this table wasn’t flat.

  Still, he had them. Justice might be delayed, but it would not be denied. Gareth programmed in the course and watched it for a bit, just to make sure everything worked.

  Then he went aft and began to prepare a little surprise for his pirate friends.

  Gareth somehow knew the exact moment when the pirates detected him. A space cop develops that sixth sense, even across astronomical distances.

  Based on the first burn away, and then the dogleg the ship had taken, Radioman Ferrie had estimated one of three larger asteroids that must be where the pirates had their hidden base. Briefly, Gareth had considered chasing them directly, cutting the chord of the ring of asteroids, but he wanted to truly surprise these men.

  And all spacers are superstitious folk. They would recognize the ship chasing them, especially when it took almost the same course they did. Ferrie’s course had him maneuvering around a few larger rocks, but nothing terrible.

  In bad vids, asteroid belts are always shown with large and small rocks so close together that slips have to maneuver crazily to avoid collisions. It was like the director took a vehicle chase on the surface of a planet, and just projected it into three dimensions with rocks substituting for parked cars and trees.

  And sure, there were lots of rocks out here, but space was huge. Big rocks were almost alone in the depths of space. As long as you flew slow enough, the little ones wound usually bounce right off your hull, and you can dodge the small moonlets.

  So Gareth had taken the same, seven hour burn as the pirates had. Then the dogleg down and left. It wasn’t a crowded section of the asteroid belt, but perhaps less well-known. More dangerous. A shade denser, as two large asteroids had managed to graze each other in the last few thousand years and spalled off chunks of each other.

  Now was when things got a little risky, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Gareth had spent his time repairing the miner’s bat
tle-damaged armor from the inside so it no longer leaked air. He left the outside scorched and gruesomely covered with flash-dried blood.

  The man who had worn it wasn’t all that much shorter than Gareth, as these men tended to be big and burly, so the armor fit him a bit uncomfortably, but he didn’t need to wear it long.

  The mining ship itself had been vented back to space, like before. After that Gareth had programmed it to slave its movement to any other ship that came close. He had even run a private comm wire from the bridge down to the cargo bay through some ducting, and plugged it into the back of the armor, hidden as long as he stayed leaned back.

  Someone walking close should think that the armor was hung on the normal rack, but Gareth was standing exactly next to the rack, in front of a non-existent set of hooks.

  He could watch.

  On the scanners, his ship had autonomously gone into turnover as it approached the three moonlets, slowing at a reasonable, measured pace that wasn’t a threat to anyone.

  Still, someone had noticed. A ship had lifted from the surface of the second moon, right where Ferrie had guessed from his math. Gareth’s ship came to a stop as it detected the other, and waited.

  They waited.

  Gareth smiled, hidden down on the cargo deck and watching a feed from the bridge sensors.

  The pirate pinged them hard, but the miner seemingly ignored the other vessel.

  It started to come a little closer, no doubt with their own, highly-illegal bow gun pointed at the intruder, ready to blast first and then run.

  But the new vessel didn’t react. Didn’t run. Didn’t chase.

  Just sat there, dead in space.

  Could it have followed them here?

  “Miner XJ-9641Q, what do you want?” an angry man called over the comm.

  Gareth didn’t bother replying.

  Superstitious.

  They knew who was chasing them. They had just shot the captain and killed him twelve hours ago, as far as they knew. Sky Patrol had been close enough to respond, but had gone to rescue the man, and let the them escape.

  And this wasn’t Bellerophon in pursuit.

  A second ping, this one omnidirectional as they looked for Gareth’s ship, maybe somehow hidden and lurking in the darkness.

  Nothing.

  “Miner XJ-9641Q, respond,” the voice was harder now. Meaner.

  Nothing. The ship was just programmed to wait now. If they got closer, it would let them. If it fled, it would begin to follow, but not at full speed.

  Just enough that an Auxiliary Agent of Sky Patrol could keep them on his scanners when they did.

  Time passed.

  The pirates waited.

  Gareth expected that they were preparing to run, but stuck by the strange behavior of the ship that had followed them.

  Someone would say it. All spacers were superstitious to some degree. Pirates were usually worse.

  Was it haunted?

  Gareth grinned and waited. He had covered the inside of his faceplate with a thin, black gauze. Not enough to limit his vision, but it would make his suit seem dark and empty when he moved.

  And he would.

  But he had to wait.

  Eventually, greed or curiosity got the better of them. The pirate maneuvered closer, running a curve to one side, where they could see the open bays of the ship. Their sensors would pick up no pressurization anywhere on the bridge. And Gareth had left the windows uncovered, so they could even look in and see nobody on the bridge.

  Ghost ship.

  Would they run at that point?

  This was the hardest part. He could only guess at their behavior, based on probabilities. That, and human psychology.

  An empty ship was worth money if they could fence it somewhere. And Sky Patrol probably hadn’t had time to set a trap.

  Probably.

  Gareth smiled and waited.

  Eventually, greed overcame them, as he had expected it would.

  The pirate ship came closer.

  She wasn’t a sleek, purpose-built warship like Patrol Cutter Bellerophon, but she also wasn’t an efficient box with engines, like the miner. Somewhere in between, with space for cargo as well as a pirate crew. Gareth suspected he might be facing two dozen men, all told, but many of those would have to remain on the other ship.

  He would have to face a dozen men, at most. Possibly less, since no captain would risk too many men in what might be a trap.

  Gareth set his radio to listening for nearby transmissions.

  He got lucky enough to actually see through the open cargo bay doors as the pirate ship navigated close, just out of the corner of his faceplate if he leaned forward. They came to rest a few hundred yards away and waited.

  Another hard ping lit up the miner’s scanners.

  Nothing.

  Nobody.

  Except perhaps ghosts?

  Gareth smiled and waited.

  Time was in his favor now. Bellerophon would be racing as hard as they could burn to headquarters, possibly using a tight-beam laser to tell the Commandant what was going on.

  Then again, maybe not, as his men would want to be the ones leading the charge to rescue their commander. Every minute the pirates sat confused just made it that much more likely that the cavalry would come riding over the hill with trumpets blaring at some point.

  Another ping. Hard and focused this time. Someone looking for anybody moving around. Any clue what was going on.

  Something other than an angry ghost stalking them for the many crimes they had committed.

  On the bridge feed, Gareth was able to pick up a half-dozen signals as pirates emerged from the other ship. Their suits were mostly functional, when they flew into visual range of one of the cameras he had left on, rather than the heavy-duty, powered mining exoskeleton Gareth wore. They were sealed tight and had some modicum of protection against sharp edges and such, but not anything like Sky Force Assault suits.

  He considered pitying them for a moment, but these men were pirates. They had left a man shot and bleeding out, only fleeing when Sky Patrol arrived to chase them off. He didn’t have a yardarm handy, so he’d just have to make do.

  Six men crossed the space between ships. This vessel was tumbling ever so slightly, relative to the pirate. Not much, just enough to show different faces over time.

  Ghost ship, right? No living crew would let a vessel roll on their gyros without at least compensating, even if it was too slight to notice, except for the pilot.

  The hull clanged as the first pirate landed with his boot magnets, hard enough that the vibrations passed through the steel at Gareth’s back as a sound, contained within his tiny world.

  More thumps.

  The internal cameras were on, but the feed was controlled inside Gareth’s suit, same as the ship’s scanners. He watched six men with beam pistols cautiously make their way into the cargo bay, trying to look all directions at once.

  A zero-gravity instructor had once thwapped the side of Gareth’s helmet with a cane when he automatically locked himself onto the deck during an exercise, even as the man was hanging from a side wall.

  There is no down in space.

  Gareth was locked to the deck himself, but only because the armor needed to look normal.

  Each of the pirates made the same mistake now, setting themselves on the same plane of motion with the ship, like they were under gravity. It would make the next steps easier.

  Gareth nearly laughed when the pirates came around a corner and saw his armor, covered with blast marks and dried blood. On the radio channel they were using, he heard the scream and cries of surprise. His risk now was that they might shoot on general principle. But armor was expensive stuff, not to be unnecessarily wasted.

  “But we killed him,” one of the men said shakily.

  Someone flashed a light at the faceplate of Gareth’s armor from across the bay, but it would show black with all the inside lights off and gauze across the glass.

  “He must hav
e gotten out of the armor and found the medbay,” another voice said. Probably the man in charge of the boarders. “Find him.”

  The group tromped into the bay, with a pair heading aft to the engineering spaces and four going forward. The space was small, but Gareth had locked each door and they would have to open them with the mechanical override to get inside.

  Finally, they got the first hatch open and the man in charge tapped one on the shoulder.

  “Wait here and keep watch,” the man ordered.

  The pirate nodded and stood to one side, watching the hallway forward as the other three went into the crew area, sneaking carefully looking for a ghost.

  Gareth leaned his head forward and the two aft were out of sight. It was just him and the one pirate.

  He didn’t like pirates.

  In atmosphere, a miner suit makes noise. They were all in vacuum now.

  Slowly, Gareth reached down for the weapon he had concealed in an outside pocket of the armor, and pulled out his Lasrifle, modified by removing the stock to become a long-barreled pistol.

  It was unsporting, but he was one cop against six pirates, and a dead man if they made any sound. Gareth shot the man, the beam going clean through the helmet bubble of his suit, cracking the ferro-glass as it did, and killing the pirate instantly.

  The man died without a sound. Without any clue what had killed him, most likely.

  Gareth slid the pistol down by his side, mostly out of sight but still in his hand.

  He waited.

  “Rudy, check in,” a voice said.

  That must be the dead man attached to the deck by only one foot, as his death thrashing had knocked the other loose.

  A good captain would have had life sensors constantly transmitting, so they knew when a man got into trouble. Here, a pirate had died and nobody even noticed.

  “Johansson. Mills. Find Rudy,” that stern voice from before said. “Wake the bastard up with a few kicks if you have to.”

  Those must be the two aft. The man hunting ghosts or ambushes forward certainly wouldn’t want to be alone. Not on a ghost ship.

  Gareth waited.

  Sure enough, the two emerged from the rear, clomping noisily along the metal of the deck rather than flying gracefully, like he would have done.