by Dain White
“Archaea, we copy emergency launch. You are cleared for landing on pan twenty, lights are green-green-red-blue on cycle, over”
“Copy pan twenty NTLC, dropping now, Archaea out.”
I watched the clock count down, and fired retros on the mark to decelerate for planetfall. The Archaea dropped with Janis on assist, fast enough to glow at first, then lifter compensation kicked in and we all felt a little lightheaded as the black sky turned mauve, and we punched through pink clouds down to the blastpans of New Turiana Port. They had scrapers and haulers throughout the blast pans, clearing drifts of dirt and dust, glittering in the sun. The lights of pan twenty lit up for us, and I brought her in as lightly as a kiss on the cheek of a sleeping baby.
“Yak, how would you like to go on a little spin in the gig with me?” I asked, once the post-flight procedures were done.
“Sounds good sir. When do you want to head out?”
“Well, time is of the essence... let's say 30 seconds after I get some coffee. There's an alarming amount of blood in my coffee system right now, and I honestly can't recall what happened earlier than a few moments ago. I probably shouldn't have been flying anything bigger than a confident eyebrow in my condition.”
“Sounds good sir, are you expecting a peaceful mission, or should I gear up?”
“Well son, there's only a few things that can bring a tear to my eye. A lost pet, an ice cream cone on the ground, and a marine without a weapon, I think you better gear up. ”
“Sir, yes sir” he said smiling, and headed aft.
I unbuckled and stretched, and yawned enough to swallow the world. “Pauli, can you stay on station here for a bit? I need someone to stay on bridge watch, and I expect Gene and Shorty will be busy making those turrets go bang.”
“No problem, Captain. I am just going over the data Janis backzipped from the runabout. Pretty juicy stuff, sir. This will really come in handy.” I paused on my way out of the bridge and looked at his screens. I didn't see anything juicy, just a number of scrolling screens full of tables of data.
“Very well, Pauli, thank you son. I am off to see a pot about some coffee.”
The galley was cold and bright, the opposite of what I wanted out of it, coffee hot and dark. The sound of the grinder, the smell of the beans, the moist heat of the water in the press, the ignored timer. I know how long to brew, this process is part of me, it's my routine. Today has been a long day made even longer without my one true love, my reason for existence, my fully charged coffee cup. I just about broke down and wept when the rich aroma of the brew wafted through the air caressing my senses with a soft embrace.
“Gene! Is that gig ready for launch yet?” I barked, as I skipped into the cargo bay with my warm coffee cup leading the way like my one true friend.
“Dak, were you wanting to take her out?” Gene asked, with a monkey face looking into the racks. The gig was one of our prizes salvaged from the Mantis, a totally sweet little ten meter runabout.
“That's correct Gene. Yak and I are going to fly on over to these coordinates and see if there's anyone who wants to pay us a tiny little insignificant amount money for running some proscribed medical supplies right into the heart of AV territory. Sounds like fun right?”
“Only for you Dak...” he groused, waving me off of the cargo deck hatch and cycling it open.
Yak walked in from the gun deck companionway, moving like he wasn't wearing 50 kilos of gear, guns, ammo, armor, boots, knives and grenades. Yak makes a heavy chemser rifle look like a toy. He passed me a railer pistol in a shoulder harness and helped me get it strapped.
“Yak, does this pistol make my jaw look more heroic?” I asked with a serious face.
“Absolutely, sir.” he said with a smile, shaking his head as if I was stark, raving mad.
As we were talking, Gene was dropping the gig down through the deck hatch, to the blast pan below. It was a tight fit, but he made it look easy, as usual. Gene's a pro at just about everything he does, I guess gig-docking is one more skill for his resume.
While the gig powered up, I strapped in. Though it was a tight fit for my shoulders, I have to say it looked even better on me than the pistol. After I worked through the pre-flights and started the turbines, I swiveled to make sure Yak was secure, then keyed comms.
“Okay folks. Just so everyone is clear, Yak and I are going to scoot on out to the coordinates we pulled from the runabout's core, and see what there is to see. If there are friendlies there waiting to load some cargo, we'll be back soon, and looking to raise ship right away. If they aren't friendly, then we'll be back even sooner, and may need to launch considerably faster. Please be ready to launch for orbit and the great unknown, as soon as possible.”
“Aye Captain”, Pauli said. “We'll be ready sir.”
I called the tower for clearance, and with Yak's good-to-go ringing in my ears, clicked my coffee cup to the bulkhead, and raised her up on lifters for the western sky.
“Some mover, hey?” I screamed through teeth that felt like they were welded shut.
“UNNNNGGGHHH...” Yak screamed in answer, as the turbines howled like the fine precision machines they were.
I snap-rolled over to take a better look at the landscape we were hurtling over, and Yak's screams stopped abruptly. Poor kid, he's probably taking an involuntary nap... it's been a long day.
I was at the absolute limit of my capacity for joy. The gig was an incredible dream to fly, so light on the stick, and so much power. She was fully capable of an orbital shot, so mach three was hardly getting her into gear.
Mach three at this altitude was probably not too safe, but the gig had a great terrain mapper and I wanted to stay low enough to come in below sensors and fast enough to not be recognizable to anyone with eyeballs.
I rolled up on her port wing with a slight nudge on the stick, and kicked in a bit of right pedal while pulling a tight high-g turn around a rapidly approaching hillside that didn't look soft or cuddly. I held it around and linked a few more flat turns through a drainage between two windswept mesas.
Now this was flying! I was right where I belonged, hands on the stick and feet on the pedals.
It's too bad Yak wasn't awake to see this, but maybe that's for the best. I didn't want him to have to clean lunch out of the cushions.
I held her right down on the deck across a massive playa and bounced off the lifters set at 10 meters. As hot as it was across the dry borosilicate lake bed, we wouldn't look like anything more than a mirage or gust of wind to anyone looking. Hopefully no one was, but you can never be too careful.
The coordinates were coming up fast. At our speed we were hauling along at a smidgeon over a click per second, and I wanted to come in like a banshee. I had a little over a minute to go at this speed, and I wanted to try and get eyes on the situation before I considered slowing down.
Yak stirred behind me, as I was checking the terrain mapper for the most protected route. “Good morning sleepy head – did you have a nice little nap?”
“How long have I been out?” he groaned.
“Not very long, a few hundred clicks... just a few minutes, really. We're getting close, and I am going to do a pass at speed over the rendezvous in case there's any bad intentions waiting for us.”
“Sounds good sir. This gig really moves... I am definitely not used to this sort of flying.”
“Hang in there son. Did I mention yet that I am the best starship pilot in the galaxy?”
He laughed, a nervous sort of laugh.
“I am, you know. Keep this between us, but there are only a few things I don't exaggerate. My skills as a captain, and my skills as a pilot. Luckily, as that's about all I do these days, you're in good hands. I suppose the only thing I actually under-exaggerate, is my capacity for coffee – I drink a lot more than I would ever admit to.”
Of course, this reminded me I needed to stay freakishly alert, so I took a long pull off my wonderfully full cup.
“Do people live out here?�
� he asked.
“No, not this far out. Closer to town, it's solid with people, mostly running tubefarms, but there are all sorts of topside industries as well.”
“Tubefarms?”
“Well, as you may have noticed, Vega 6 isn't the most hospitable place unless you live in town, or want to go to the beach. Tubefarms are the main reason they colonized this rock in the first place. They're incredibly efficient, and the long summer season here they can really produce amazing crops. They're pretty easy to set up, just fire up a tunnel puncher, tap the aquifer for irrigation, and then install funnel lights. I used to work on tubefarms when I was younger, trying to make my way in the world.”
“Are there other cities on Vega 6? Is there an Old Turiana out here somewhere?”
“There used to be a bunch of cities around the inner sea, though they live on in name only, as sectors of the Warrens. Old Turiana is probably down there somewhere. It's not that people haven't tried to make a go of it out in the hinterlands, there are small communities here and there, mostly around the inner sea – but it's a hard existence out here... Hang on back there Yak, we're almost there.”
The range indicator was starting to flash and we were in sight of our destination, a small camp located along the north side of a largish mesa. Mindful of missile batteries that might be planted along the rim of the cliff, I tucked in as tight as I could and stood the gig on her starboard wing. We were right down on the deck, and moving way too fast for anyone who wasn't a bot to react – but I didn't see anything threatening, just a basic encampment, tents, fires, a few faces looking up as we blasted by, before they were flattened into the caliche dirt by the roar of our sonic booms.
I checked countermeasures, and there were no seekers, no focused beams, no radar – no emissions at all. If they were hostile, they didn't have anything that could touch us. A glom camp would have lit us up.
“Nothing tracking us Yak, I think they're friendly... well, they are as friendly as people who just threw themselves on their faces in the dirt. Come to think of it, they may not be very friendly anymore.”
As I spoke, I was pulling a high bank turn, dropping velocity and approaching the camp at a much more sedate speed. They were all up and out of their tents now, and looking up at us. As no one shot at us, I kept bringing her around even tighter, to the very center of the camp and burned retros until we were parked on lifters. I brought her down and dropped the turbines into idle while Yak stepped out and made some new friends.
*****
As I exited the lock I was keenly aware of how completely outnumbered I was by the people gathering around the gig. I watched hands and feet, trying to build a threat list, to prioritize targets in case things didn't stay mellow. One fellow, a head taller than the rest had a rifle of some sort slung across his back, the rest looked unarmed. I was very careful to keep an eye on people moving around in my peripherals.
“Hello folks... my name is Yak Onebull, from the independent frigate Archaea.” I smiled, keeping my barrel pointed down and my hands well away from the trigger.
“Hello Mr. Onebull, if I said 'Mallory Lights' would that mean anything to you?” a man said, stepping forward.
“Half a moment sir.” I said, and asked the captain on comms, “Sir, is there a password for Mallory Lights?”
“Yep, son. Tell him 'No one navigates the lights'. I'll be right out, just need to cool these jets. Try not to shoot anyone before I get a chance to meet them!”
I looked back at the man, waiting patiently.
“Sir, no one navigates the lights.” I said, securing my weapon.
He smiled, and started walking towards us as the crowd of onlookers continued to grow.
“Hello Mr. Onebull, my name is Cal Emerson. I represent the Solis Liberation Front. Are you here to take delivery of our shipment?”
“Yes sir. I can help your men get it loaded, we will want to move out as soon as possible.”
“Absolutely. After the howler blew over and you didn't arrive, we tried contacting you but there was no response. We weren't sure what happened. Did you run into any problems at the waterfront?”
“You could say that, sir... whoever I was supposed to meet with at the waterfront had been replaced by a whole bunch of really determined mercs. It's a long story, but I walked into a trap and was taken off-world in their custody.”
“How is it you happened to be here now?” he asked, eyes narrowing as he started to think about what that might mean. He was probably starting to think I was a decoy for an incoming drop of mercs, or a merc myself. The gig looked glommy for sure, as new as it was.
“Our captain tracked their launch, and rescued me. No one knows we're here, that I am aware of. The mercs that nabbed me are currently adrift near the orbit of Vega 5, and will be for a few more weeks.”
He looked thoughtfully at his men for a moment, then fixed me in the eye.
“So how did you know where we were?”
I met his gaze as calmly as if he had just asked me if I liked loud music or beer. “Sir, we pulled the coordinates for this location from a security block on their ship's core. Our technologist analyzed the data and thought this was a likely place to check, as they had it flagged for investigation as a possible location for insurgents.”
“So AV knows we're here?” he asked, a rising tone of alarm in his voice.
I spoke as calmly as I could, sensing that the wrong tone here might result in unnecessary drama. “Well, we don't know, and can't know. All I know is at least one team of AV mercs that was on New Turiana is now adrift with no way to communicate or signal their location. It's possible they had another team, but I don't think it's likely, or they'd be here by now.”
“How do we know you're not AV?”
He had a good point, I guess. It's not like we can prove who we are.
Luckily, at that moment Captain Smith stepped out of the hatch and as usual, saved the day with an eyebrow at full attention, a brilliant smile, and a solid handshake.
“Hello Mr. Emerson, pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Captain Dak Smith of the Archaea, here to take delivery of medical supplies bound for Solis. Sorry I had to buzz you guys into the ground, I had to make sure you weren't hostile.”
As he spoke, I could sense everyone coming to attention, without even thinking about it. As I was pretty much always at attention, I guess I never noticed before what sort of affect he had on people.
“Certainly Captain Smith, no harm done sir. It sounds like you folks have had some adventures getting here”, Cal said, blinking as he stared straight into the blinding light of the captain's overwhelming personality.
“You don't know the half of it, mister.” Captain Smith looked grim and set. “Let me tell you, I wouldn't ever recommend trying to fly a frigate through downtown in a howler. Not unless, of course, you had to do it, and had me at the helm!” He laughed, adding with an impossibly serious face, “Did Yak mention I am the best pilot in the galaxy?”
I nodded, as he laughed out loud. He really was the best captain I've ever known and then some. He deserves the respect he gets, but he pays dearly for it as well.
He might be a guy that can sell you some pants to replace the ones he just bought off you, but you'd still name your child after him. Of course, it really didn't hurt that he's about the best person you'd ever hope to meet. You can tell he's cut from the old cloth of legends, a real captain among men.
“Mr. Emerson, I'd say it was more challenging by far, just making the time to get my coffee cup hot. Compared to that, collecting my crew from those thugs was hardly a challenge at all... speaking of which... anyone here drink coffee?” he asked hopefully, but was met with blank stares.
“Ah well, it's really been one of those days.” he laughed. “Well Mr. Emerson, let's get this bird loaded up so you folks can make yourselves scarce. Did Yak mention that AV knows about this camp?” He tossed a wink in my direction that I dodged with a smile.
They walked off, talking about Solis, whil
e a handful of men who looked like they'd been sleeping in the dust for a while started loading plastiform stacking crates up to the gig. I went inside and palmed the drop gate so they could walk it up into the interior, and directed the loading from the stern forward, allowing a small walkway to either side so we could attach tiedowns.
“What was it like out here when the howler hit?” I asked a man that was helping me connect the cable ties.
“We don't get them way out here... it's always windy, but nothing like those howlers. It's just dusty, dry and hot. Nothing is out here, except us.” He laughed, but it was the type of laugh I'd heard many times, the laugh that says there may be sand down my pants and in my ears, but it's better than the alternative. Any soldier knows the feeling. I can't say as I've ever deployed to a location with redeeming qualities – though Vega 6 was by far the most bleak, desolate, forsaken and barren landscapes I've ever seen.
“So do you guys tunnel out here? What do you do when it snows?”
“We're planning on only being here long enough to finish landing supplies for Solis. We will be heading back as soon as possible, I hope!”
“I hear that. This is certainly not where I'd want to live.” I said with a smile.
The insurgents were all very polite, and we loaded the hold pretty quickly. Before I knew it, the deed was done, the ramp was hatched, and the turbines were winding up. I couldn't help but feel bad for them way out here in the dusty heat.
They all had the look about them of indenture, one of the worst ways our modern civilization can treat people. Some are born into it, born for the purpose of working for the glom that controls their destiny. Some system indentures might last many generations, as the colony works off the investment of it's foundation while the glom exploits every last drop of money they can drain out.
It's the way things were, too large to change.
*****
I pointed and cursed a lot with Yak and Pauli while we wrestled around pallets of crates in the hold, dancing around Gene and the captain as they fretted and fussed over loading the gig up to the racks. Of course, the Captain had put some sort of microscopic blemish on a fairing, and Gene was having kittens about it. It felt good to have work to do, and as hard as it was, we laughed as we clamped down stacks of crates in the hold.