Jirik nodded in satisfaction. "Great. Do it, Bran. Anyone have any other ideas?
Tor timidly raised a hand. "Uh, Captain? Uh, maybe we should turn on our fake beacon before we emerge. By the time they realize that we're not a robot ore hauler, we might be able to duck into the nebula."
"Good thinking, son," Jirik replied. "Do it, but keep your finger on the switch when we emerge. If we're in the nebula, or if there's no traffic around, we won't want to advertise ourselves. Okay, anybody comes up with any other ideas, let me know. Via, how long before we emerge?"
Via looked at her ring watch. "Seventy-three point two hours, Captain."
"Okay," Jirik replied, "Everybody keep thinking. About both problems. We have to survive to get to Alpha, of course, but Tomys will be waiting for us if we make it."
Shipboard life returned to a tense routine. The close encounter with the pirate had caused each of them to be haunted by a sense of impending danger. The strain showed in small ways. Jirik was having trouble sleeping. Via became irritable and snappish, and began dropping by Jirik's cabin just to talk, to try to relieve her tension. Bran became even more introspective, spending nearly all his time on the engineering deck, puttering or reading. Tor, on the other hand, was bright-eyed and excited. He chattered incessantly, only momentarily abashed when Via snapped at him or Bran rebuffed him. Naturally, he continued to hover around Via, trying anxiously to keep the attention of his "lady love", and instinctively trying to always place himself between Via and the other two male crewmen. Surprisingly, Tor's puppy love antics and his chatter actually ended up easing Jirik's sense of foreboding. He relaxed, and slept better. As a result, he spent quite a bit of time in the boy's company, which pleased Tor considerably, and made him even more talkative.
The strain increased to almost unbearable levels as the jump timer clicked down toward emergence. Via took to pacing the bridge deck and endlessly adjusting sensor arrays that needed no adjustments. Bran had emerged from his self-imposed isolation to modify the sensor circuits, then immediately returned to the engineering deck almost without a word.
As the timer clicked toward zero, even Tor's ebullience couldn't relieve Jirik's tension. He pried Bran from his ever-present bookchip, and had the crew run emergence drills until he was satisfied that every possible contingency had been anticipated, and counteractions devised.
When the moment arrived, all hands had already been at their stations for some time. As the timer counted off the final seconds, Jirik turned on the sensors, and hovered nervously over their displays. There was an audible click from the Comm station as Tor activated the fake beacon identifying them as a robot ore hauler. A nervous cough from the intercom told Jirik that Bran was on station in engineering, preparing to cut the supralight drive if the automatic system failed. Via sat still as a stone statue, her clawed hands hovering over the nav computer's keyboard. Suddenly, Jirik's screens flickered, and the sensors shuddered to life. His shout of "Blip!" and Tor's "Traffic!" were simultaneous. Via jumped as though shot, and nearly activated the microjump accidently. Then Jirik shouted "we're in the nebula!"
Chapter 9
As Via snatched her finger from the microjump button, Jirik shouted, "We're too close to the edge!" A high whine announced that the inertial drive generators were online, and Via's fingers flew as she keyed in coordinates to take them farther inside the nebula. As soon as her fingers slowed, Jirik activated the inertial drive, and the Lass began a ponderous turn deeper into the interstellar dust cloud.
Bran, blind in engineering, could stand it no longer. "Pirates?" he asked over the intercom.
"Don't know yet!" Jirik shouted in reply, "Shut up! Tor! What beacons?"
"Robot ore hauler!" came the reply. "Would you believe it?"
"Not yet!" Jirik shouted. "Blip size fits, though."
"Is it changing course?" Came Bran's voice over the intercom, "Is it headed for us?"
"Negative," Jirik replied, unconsciously returning to Navy terminology, "She's bearing past us, from low-right to high-left. No other blips."
"No other beacons!" came from Tor.
A tense silence fell over the ship as the Lass lumbered deeper into the safety of the nebula. Only the faint whisper of dust motes against the hull could be heard as the silence dragged on.
Both Jirik and Tor jumped at Via's satisfied "Good! Cut drive!" Jirik cut the drives, and killed their forward motion with the steering jets, then slouched back in his chair. The relaxation of the tension aboard the Lass was almost tangible. They were comparatively safe here. Unenhanced sensors would be unable to detect them in the swirling dust and gases, but their own enhanced sensors were easily able to gather the readings and bearings required for recalibration. If a suspicious ship did emerge near the nebula, they could simply retreat even farther into the cloudy nebula to avoid its presumably enhanced sensors.
The relaxation was palpable, but far from complete. Via's fingers flew on her computer Keyboard, computing the jump point and the length and direction of their next jump. Jirik maintained a close watch on the passive sensors for the emergence of any traffic, and Tor was equally attentive to his 'comm scanners.
Bran, unemployed for the moment, carefully refrained from breaking the concentration of the bridge crew. Once Via computed the next jump and the next jump point, which would presumably be outside the nebula, Bran's chance would come. They would need every centimeter of acceleration that the old bitch could muster for the dash out of the nebula to the jump point. That, after all, would be when they would be most vulnerable to interception.
It was more than three hours later that Via pronounced herself satisfied with her calculations, and Jirik, monitoring her course calculations at the command terminal, agreed. The jump point, unfortunately, was nearly half a million Kilometers outside the nebula. Even at max acceleration, the old bitch would need over half an hour to cover that distance. If a pirate emerged from supralight while they were running for the jump point, they were in deep trouble. They debated the wisdom of retreating even farther into the interstellar cloud to get a "running start." Bran and Via favored the idea, but Jirik wasn't so sure.
"If we retreat any farther, we lose our sensors. We won't know what's out there until it's too late to stop before we leave the nebula." he protested. "Besides, the dust in the cloud will be a drag on the ship. We won't get max acceleration from the old bitch!"
"But skipper," Via replied, "Even with the increased drag, we might be able to build up to almost .01C. If we came blasting out of the nebula at that speed and accelerating, even a pirate would have a hard time catching us before we reached the jump point, especially if we caught him by surprise."
Jirik grunted. "He wouldn't need to catch us. We couldn't outrun a laser or a missile."
Via shrugged. "Either way we run that risk. If a pirate emerges while we're driving for the jump point, the same risk exists. I really think that our best chance is to blast out of the nebula as fast as possible, at max acceleration."
Bran's voice on the intercom seconded Via's opinion. "Captain, the faster we come out of the nebula, the shorter the risk period. The only advantage that our sensors give us is the chance to sit in here and wait until a pirate goes away. If he does."
Jirik was still not enthused, but he assented gracelessly. Via and Bran began computing the Lass' maximum acceleration against the friction of the cloud, and the distance that they would have to retreat to reach .01C by the time they exited the nebula. With their sensors' range reduced to mere kilometers, they felt their way deeper into the swirling gas and dust. Finally, they reached the point which Bran and Via had agreed would let them exit the nebula at .01C. They swung the Lass ponderously around to a reverse course, and Jirik slammed the inertial drive controls wide open. The whispering of the dust on the hull slowly grew louder as they picked up speed. By the time Jirik's sensors again registered clear space ahead, the whisper had become a roar, and Jirik had become concerned about hull damage. As his sensor screens cleared,
he shrugged off his worry, staring intently at the screens. No blips announced the presence of other vessels, and Tor's silence confirmed that the system was empty. Jirik relaxed slightly as the roar of the dust subsided, then disappeared, but the intensity of his gaze on his screens never wavered.
Via had estimated 20 minutes from exit of the nebula to jump point. Exactly fourteen had passed when a flare on one of Jirik's screens announced the emergence of another ship. Tor's nearly simultaneous snout confirmed that they were no longer alone.
"Beacon Ident!" Jirik snapped.
"Alliance Trader, Epsilon Class" Tor replied crisply. "Fake beacon running."
Jirik shook his head. "Won't work. We're six minutes from jump. Unless their Captain's an idiot, he's going to realize that our blip is too big for a robot ore carrier a lot sooner than that!"
Via was hovering over Jirik's shoulder, staring at the blip. The pressure of one soft breast on his shoulder was a momentary distraction before Jirik firmly refocused his attention on his displays.
"That blip looks too big to be Epsilon Class" She muttered.
"It is," Jirik replied. "She's Delta Class, at least. And that means she's a pirate. We're not the only ones who can play games with our beacon, you know!"
Sudden excitement flared in Via's face . "Skipper, that gives me an idea! He already knows we're showing a false beacon. Suppose we convinced him that we're another pirate?"
Jirik jerked upright. "Of course! We might be able to string him along for a few minutes, at least. We might get to the jump point!" He swung around to Tor. "Kid, Hail that ship. Route the circuit to my console!" Tor made no reply, but Jirik's comm screen flared to life, revealing a fat, unshaven man, evidently the other ship's captain. The man's mouth opened to speak, but Jirik shouted first.
"Shear Off, you bastard," He roared. "We were here first!"
The fat man scowled. "Screw you!" he shouted back. "Who the hell are you? You're damned sure not a robot ore carrier!"
"You noticed!" Jirik replied with broad sarcasm. "And you're not an Epsilon Class tramp. So, we both know what we aren't, and we both know what we are! Now bugger off before I blow off your bow and stern, and ram you amidships!"
"Pah!" The fat man replied, "You and what fleet? Slow down, you bastard, and we'll talk about it. Maybe we can work out a deal. If we can get that hauler, there'll be enough for both of us."
Jirik glanced at his screens, and saw that the pirate had turned, and was now on an intercept course. Fortunately, the projected intercept point was over a million kilometers past the Lass' jump point. As he had mentioned, however, they couldn't outrun the pirate's lasers and missiles. He had to keep the bluff going.
The verbal sparring continued for several minutes before the pirate began to get suspicious. They were less than two minutes from the jump point when the pirate's suspicions were first verbalized.
"Where the hell're you goin' so fast?" The fat man whined, "D'you know something that I don't?"
"Screw you!" Jirik yelled, "That's none of your damned business!"
The man sat back with a satisfied expression. "So," he replied in an oily tone, "You do know something. You're gettin' ready to jump. Slow down and tell me, or I'll fire on you!"
Jirik smiled his most annoying smile. "Right. We really need to be shooting each other up out here, while the prize gets away!" He glanced at the countdown timer. Only seconds left to jump. "The hell with you," he continued. "You stay here and try your luck. I'm going to follow up on my own idea!"
The fat man's face turned red, but just as he was beginning to sputter out his obscene opinion of Jirik, the countdown timer clicked to zero and the Lass jumped.
Jirik collapsed back into his command chair with a tremendous sigh. As he wiped the sweat from his face, he noticed Via standing to one side, out of the range of the comm pickups, and grinning from ear to ear. Jirik was about to snap at her when Tor's voice interrupted.
"That was great, Captain!" The boy enthused. "He never even suspected!"
Jirik grunted, but Via responded. "The kid's right, skipper. You run the best bluff I've ever seen, or heard of. Are you sure you were never a pirate?"
Jirik flushed. "All right, damn you. It worked long enough for us to jump. That's what matters."
"Personally," Bran's amused voice came from the intercom, "I liked the part where you were going to blow off his bow and stern and ram him amidships. Sounded like fun to me!"
Via's white teeth gleamed. "Yeah. If only we'd had something to do it with!"
Jirik was redfaced, but obviously pleased. "All right, you idiots," he retorted with mock gruffness, "That's enough. Get your damned stations secured, and let's get something to eat. I'm starved."
They adjourned to the mess deck, but the adrenalin rush hadn't subsided, manifesting itself in loud and raucous horseplay. Finally, they began to calm, and to discuss the encounter more seriously.
"We were damned lucky that that pirate captain had the intelligence of a bagamo fruit," Jirik said.
Via's grin flashed. "He wasn't exactly the brightest light in the galaxy, was he?"
"No," Bran replied, "But the Captain's right about one thing. We were damned lucky. Again. Luck seems to be running with us, this trip."
"It wasn't luck!" Tor protested, "It was the Captain! His act was good enough to fool anyone!"
Jirik flushed. "Via came up with the idea. I was just able to carry it off – at least for a few minutes. If we'd had to go any farther, though, he'd have had us. I kept waiting for one of his crew to tell him that we were a DIN Class ship."
Via sobered. "Yeah. He was on an intercept course. If we'd had to go another light-second, we'd never have made it."
"Right!" Jirik snapped. "Via, I hope that the rest of your recal points are safer than the last ones have been!"
The Astrogator shrugged. "I hope so too, Captain. Believe me, I didn't think that I was underestimating the pirates when I plotted this course. I really thought that we'd get to Alpha with very little trouble."
Bran was frowning. "You can't blame Via, Captain. All of us thought that she plotted us a safe course."
"Yeah," Jirik admitted, "You're right. After all, I approved the damned course. But, so far, we've had pirates show up at every recal point but the first. Something's wrong."
Tor's brow was knitted with concentration. "Maybe we're wrong," He said tentatively. "I mean, maybe our strategy was wrong. Maybe we're going about this whole voyage the wrong way!"
Jirik and Via frowned quizzically, but Bran's face brightened.
"Maybe the kid's right!" he said. "Look. Via plotted us a course to keep us as far from inhabited systems as possible. That's the obvious thing to do. So, that's what the pirates expected us to do. I'll bet that pirates are patrolling almost every out-of-the-way system between here and Alpha."
Jirik jumped to his feet. "Damn! You're right!"
"Of course!" Via added. "I thought that I was plotting an evasion course; but naturally, an evasion course is what the pirates expected! How could I be so stupid?"
Jirik waved away the question. "You were no stupider than the rest of us. I approved your course, remember? The question is, what do we do about it? Or maybe what can we do about it?"
Via frowned in concentration. "Well, we can't do anything about the next recal point. You can't change course in mid-jump. But we've got . . . " She glanced at her ring watch, "Ninety-four hours to plot a course change from there. That's no problem, but I need to know where you want to stop. We're going to have to try to figure out the safest recal points, and I don't have the foggiest idea which ones would be best."
"Yeah," Jirik replied, "I don't know either. All right, bring your astrogation charts to my cabin when we've finished here. We'll put our heads together and try to figure it out."
"Bullshit!" All heads turned toward Bran. "Sorry, Captain, but I think you're wrong. Tor and I may not be Astrogators, but our lives are at risk, too. Tor was the one who spotted to fallacy in our reaso
ning, not you or Via. I think we'd be smarter to put all our heads together."
Jirik had bristled at Bran's exclamation, but his irritation had subsided as Bran had explained. "You're right," He admitted, "You don't have to be an expert to plot strategy. Expertise only comes into play when planning tactics. Okay, Let's hear some ideas."
Bran had obviously been thinking about it. "How about plotting a more or less random course? As long as it moved us in the general direction of Alpha, I mean."
"It would mean a lot more jumps," Via said doubtfully
Jirik frowned. "More jumps mean more recal points, and more chances to be ambushed. Besides, I don't think it would help. Sooner or later, we'd jump into a system staked out by a pirate."
"S-Sir," Tor contributed, blushing furiously, "The obvious alternative is to stick to inhabited systems. In fact, we could set almost a direct course to Alpha."
Via grinned. "Yeah, Tor, but just because one choice is bad doesn't mean the other is good. One of the reasons we chose uninhabited systems in the first place was that any ship we encountered could be assumed to be an enemy. Inhabited systems mean traffic, with no easy way to tell the good guys from the bad guys."
Tor's brow had furrowed. "Uh, could we pick recal points with Guard or Patrol stations in them? Pirates would have to be crazy to jump us with Planetary Guards or Patrolmen around!"
Jirik walked to the table and leaned over the navigation charts. "Not a bad idea if we can do it, Tor," he said, "But we'll have to see how many Guard or Patrol systems we can use." Guard and Patrol stations and outposts were clearly marked on the charts, and the four began plotting possible routes to take advantage of as many as possible
Several hours later, Jirik sat back and sighed. "Well, that's it. The best course we can plot gives us eight more recal stops, and only five of them are guarded. That leaves us at least three recal points in inhabited but unprotected systems. Anyone have any ideas how we can avoid trouble in those systems?"
The Rim Rebels Page 17