Stubby fingers danced over the keys on her control panel. Hercules carried a full crew plus a few of Willer's toughs. They manned the secondaries but everything else belonged to her. The pilot selected a launch tube, armed a torpedo, and sent it on its way. "Torpedo fired and running hot."
A green blob slammed into the Hercules and pushed it toward a distant asteroid.
Cy used every swear word he'd ever heard. Willer had launched a torpedo! The borg was crazy. So what else was new? Could he stop it? In 6.2 seconds he'd know the answer. Cy held up two of his hands and waited for the missile to hit.
Lando's heart was in his throat as the torpedo made a bright red line across his plot screen and headed straight for the drifter. Cy was using the blobs to hit Willer's ship and the cyborg was trying to stop him!
Two of the green blobs leapt out to intercept the torpedo. There was a brilliant flash of light and the blobs disappeared. And so did all the rest.
Lando checked his vid screens for confirmation. Something was terribly wrong! The greenish light was gone! The drifter was a dark and drifting hulk.
Junk staggered under multiple missile hits. The force field went down. The starboard drive failed. Lights flashed and alarms sounded. Lando wondered if they should scramble into their suits. All things considered it didn't seem worth the trouble.
He touched a button. "All hands to the bridge." It was time to get ready.
Melissa's energy cannon missed the tender but her words went right through her father's heart. Sorenson gave a cry of pain and rage as he realized what he'd done. My God! He'd left his own daughter to die! Blood rushed to his face and Cap felt a terrible sense of shame.
Cap considered suicide, but remembered Willer's words: "He's running away… that's what he does best," and realized it was true. If he cared, really cared, he'd do something to save his daughter and crew.
But what? What could one man in a tiny spaceship do? All around Cap the asteroids whirled mocking him with their silence. Then he had it. An idea that just might work.
Sorenson's hands were suddenly steady where they touched the controls. He knew what to do, and by God he'd do it!
"Hold your fire." All the ship's weapons fell silent when Willer spoke. Junk was helpless and the cyborg wanted to savor the moment. Besides, now that the battle was won, there were mercenary considerations. He had an alien drifter, obviously worth millions, if not billions of credits. Why not add Junk to the total? If lots of money was good, more was even better.
Willer turned to his pilot. "Put us alongside. We'll board and neutralize the crew."
The pilot gave a barely perceptible nod and shifted the dope stick from one side of her mouth to the other. Neutralize the crew? Kill little girls? Not her. She'd find a way to avoid the boarding party. She needed time to think. The pilot chose the longest approach she could.
The bombardment had stopped, and without sufficient power for her weapons, Junk was forced to do likewise.
Dee looked at the main screen. "They're going to board."
Lando nodded. She was incredibly beautiful. He wanted to say so, to reach out and hold her, but the way Melissa clung to Della's side made that impossible. He pulled his handgun and checked the load instead. "We might as well take a few along with us."
Dee caught his eye. She looked down at Melissa, then back to him. Lando nodded his agreement. At the very last moment one of them would kill her.
Meanwhile Melissa was doing her best to look brave. But it's hard to look brave with tears rolling down your cheeks and a trembling lip. Dee was a comforting presence and Melissa stood as close as she could.
Pik and Della hadn't said anything but Melissa knew anyway. They were about to die. She was about to die. It seemed sad, but maybe she'd see Mommy, and that would be good. If only Daddy were here.
Melissa looked up at the view screen and shouted her surprise.
"Pik! Look! It's Daddy!"
Lando took one look, understood Cap's plan, and threw himself at the controls.
"Della! Put every tractor beam we have on Hercules! Do the best you can to hold her in place."
Cap grit his teeth. Just a little bit longer, just a little more time, and he'd crush Willer like a bug. He pushed the drive to max.
A proximity alarm went off. Willer couldn't believe his pickups. There was an asteroid headed straight at him!
At first he thought it was a rogue, a buster that had bounced off another roid and tumbled his way.
But a second look told the cyborg he was wrong. The roid was maneuvering to intercept him, and that meant someone was steering it.
Cap! The miserable bastard had poured himself enough manhood to actually do something. The tender! Of course. The crafty old sonovabitch had managed to grab a small asteroid and use it as a battering ram. Well, it wasn't going to work. He yelled at the pilot.
"Full speed ahead! Do it now!"
Not understanding, the pilot took a moment to scan the view screens. All of her attention had been focused on Junk. What was Willer screaming about now? Then the pilot saw the asteroid and understood. She shoved the drives to max.
Hercules shivered but that's all. A combination of tractor and pressor beams was holding her in place. Willer screamed and the pilot joined him.
By the time Cap released the asteroid it had lots of inertia. That, plus the fact that Dee was holding Hercules in place, equaled maximum effect. The tug was completely destroyed. Both it and the asteroid tumbled away.
There was a long moment of silence on Junk's bridge, followed by a quick radio check on the rest of the crew.
"Cy?Are you there?"
"I sure am, Pik. Is everyone okay?"
"Thanks in part to you," Lando answered. "What you did with those green blobs was absolutely incredible.
"Cap? How 'bout you?"
There was silence for a moment followed by a hoarse croak. "I'm fine, Lando, better than I've been in a long, long time. Melissa? You okay?"
There were tears streaming down Melissa's cheeks, but tears of joy. "I'm fine, Daddy. I'm sorry about what I said. You were wonderful!"
"No," Cap replied, "I wasn't 'wonderful,' but I was better. And maybe that's a first step."
It took three days to check Willer's tug for survivors, there weren't any, and make temporary repairs to all the damage. The good news was that the drifter had somehow started to repair itself. The luminescent green light was back and bit by bit the blobs were reappearing on the surface of its hull.
Cy said, "It's my guess that she'll be as good as new, or old, as the case may be."
The bad news was that Junk had sustained even more damage than was immediately apparent. It would be a toss-up to decide whether she was worth the cost of repairs. Still, barring further battles, she'd make it to Pylax. And given the drifter's obvious value, that was far enough. In the meantime however there was a long journey through the asteroids to face.
With the temporary repairs complete, and many days of work ahead, the crew held a party. It centered around the best dinner that Melissa could muster, some nonalcoholic drinks, and the rest of Captain Neubeck's ice cream.
Cap raised his glass. "I wish to propose a toast."
"Hear! Hear!" Lando said, rapping the side of his glass with a spoon.
Cap smiled. "To the chef, my beautiful daughter Melissa, the most important person in my life!"
Melissa beamed happily, and raised her glass. "To Daddy, and a ship named Junk!" Everyone laughed.
Cy waited until the laughter died down to raise his glass, a symbolic gesture since he couldn't drink from it, but appropriate nonetheless.
"And my toast is to 'them,' the ones who built the drifter, and disappeared. Sol bless them wherever they are… and thanks for the ship!"
That brought more laughter. Now it was Dee's turn. Her eyes sparkled as they swept the table and stopped on Lando. "My toast is to all of you, for accepting me into your family, and for giving me something a bounty can't buy!"
Lando sm
iled and raised his glass high. "And I give you my father's favorite toast. 'To the end of this run, and the start of another!'"
Outside, beyond Junk's durasteel hull, the asteroids and stars continued to dance. They knew what lay ahead but wouldn't tell.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by William C. Dietz
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-0700-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Drifter's Run Page 20