by Greg Chase
The monitor indicated they’d be an hour away from the convoy at her current pace. She eased back on one stiff lever and pushed on the other. Rampike swung from an intercept course to an approach to Io. From the small fleet’s perspective, she’d look like just another ship making a routine run between the moons. Adrenaline began to produce its familiar intoxicating desire for action in her. She’d based her attack method on those of the great predator cats on Earth—sneak up behind the herd as unobtrusively as possible then single out the target and separate it from the rest. But in space, with no heavy grass or topography to hide behind, she had to rely on stealth. A more leisurely advance on the convoy would add anywhere from half an hour to a full hour to accomplish, but she was in no hurry. It was like what Mira had taught her growing up in the village on Leviathan—the sexual anticipation only added to the final event. Don’t rush through the stages of conquest—savor them.
She put Rampike into an extended barrel roll around the volcanic moon. Looking up, she marveled at the yellow-and-red mountains that dotted plains coated in white sulfur-dioxide frost. The landscape slowly passed from right to left on the bridge view screen. Her maneuver made her giddy with her mastery of the pirate ship, not that anyone would be paying attention. Coming out from behind the moon, she set up her approach to the trailing end of the convoy. From that direction, the convoy wouldn’t see her until it was too late. Combined with her stealthy approach, the high-energy radiation of Io’s atmosphere—from being so close to Jupiter’s magnetosphere—made it nearly impossible for those on the convoy to detect her ship no matter what they aimed at her. The area was a perfect setting for capturing transport ships.
She steadied her nerves as she focused on the last ship in the line ahead of her. This was the hard part—the single-focused, creeping approach. Jess spent the forty-five minutes singling out her prey. The Moons had grown wily in disguising their cargo ships. Three months earlier, taking a ship had been no problem. Spike would only need a quick look at each ship—big, slow moving, and with a Tobe at the helm—to determine what the vessel had to offer a cunning pirate. Now their band of pirates needed Dagwood’s contacts to figure out which convoys had ships worth the taking, followed by a visual inspection of the various non-Tobe vessels, which all looked frustratingly the same. Spike was the worst at the little game. Having been conditioned to find answers on the network, doing actual detective work was not his strong point. Twice, they’d ended up taking down gypsy vessels—wandering vagabonds not much different than pirates but with no discernable form of income, not even the illegal kind. Their ragged crews were almost happy to be boarded. Dagwood’s ribbing of Spike about the encounters didn’t help the Tobe’s morale. Jess finally resorted to secretly pointing out a juicy cargo ship to Spike just to get Dagwood off his back.
Of the twenty-three ships that made up the convoy on their first sighting, four had veered off to smaller moons. The guard ship was easy enough to identify—no other ship flew that precisely out in space when no one was watching. Space-going transports all looked somewhat the same, but the ones carrying people usually had an advertising theme to their paint jobs. Conservative families headed to wholesome vacations didn’t typically want to accidentally approach a vessel headed for Lysithea and its sexual entertainment. From a distance, all words looked the same. However, no one would ever mistake the destination of the ship covered in undulating, naked bodies—each carefully positioned so that no naughty part could be seen—as being any moon other than the one of ill repute. That left seven vessels that could potentially be hauling cargo. Unfortunately, ships that were too old or had seen too much action often lost their Tobe captains, so there was no way to verify what they were carrying. And the Moons had grown clever in making their fast-moving cargo ships appear decrepit to the casual observer.
Jess snuck Rampike in behind what she knew to be a party shuttle on its way to Lysithea. She thumbed the onboard communication link to let the others know she had caught up with the fleet.
Spike, who never slept anyway, materialized in the copilot’s chair. “Which one are you thinking of going after?”
“I want to work up behind the lower port engine of that slow-moving, ugly gray ship. If it’s carrying anything, it’ll try to be nonchalant as it avoids me.”
Larry put his hand on her shoulder. “Check out the one above and in front of your gray one.”
The bright-orange ship, which had no distinguishable markings, had caught her attention earlier. She’d dismissed it due to its fine finish and loud color. Board members were known to travel in style if not always incognito. “It looks too nice to be a cargo ship.”
“Agreed. But if your gray ship doesn’t move, sneak up on it anyway.”
She’d learned to trust Larry’s intuition. With the number of times the Moons had changed tactics, she had to be on the lookout for any possibility. The last thing they needed was to step into a convoy of camouflaged gunships. Fear gripped her stomach, but it was the familiar anxiety before a quick takedown.
Dagwood was the last to find his way to the bridge. “Did you catch the second gunship?”
Jess quickly scanned the ships around her. Their main adversary was well toward the front of the convoy. She’d felt comfortable with the vessels around her other than the one ship of menacing precision. “I don’t see a second gunship.”
“Well, you were about to ram into his port engine. That gray ship isn’t as innocent as it looks. Zoom in on that trailing antenna array at the back.”
How the hell did I miss that? Intermixed with the thin protrusions meant to pick up the various Moons’ networks were stubs Jess had discounted as damaged antennae. On closer inspection, they concealed small-diameter blasters. Other larger ports, which at first appeared to be sealed-off access doors for loading cargo, would be hiding its larger, more lethal, weapons.
“What do I do now?” She was too close to break off her approach without looking suspicious.
“Drift down below the gunship,” Larry said. “It’ll put him between us and our prey if we’re going after that orange monster. The first step is to not give him a reason to shoot us.”
Spike started flexing his fingers, a sure sign he wanted to pull his cannons out from their hiding places along his hull. “We can blast him from under here. With one quick shot, I know I can take him out.”
Dagwood shook his head. “That other gunship up there would be on us before you finished taking your shot. We need to separate that orange ship from the fleet.”
Jess still wasn’t positive that was the prize they sought. “So you agree with Larry that there’s something interesting about that one?”
Jess often listened to Dagwood’s advice even if she questioned how he got to his conclusions. He was the only true human pirate with experience. “Our gray friend there confirms the rumors I’ve been hearing. If we succeed in taking this one, our reputations will be cemented as the greatest pirate crew in the solar system.”
She considered turning the controls over to Larry. Her skills would never surpass his. Her hands gripped the throttle levers so hard her knuckles turned white. This is my play. She edged Rampike along the undercarriage of the gunship. Someone had done a remarkable job of hiding its true intentions. Even up close, she had trouble seeing it as anything other than an old transport. Though the gray ship might be small for carrying cargo, as a loaded gunship it’d have a lot of hidden firepower—too much for their pirate ship. “I can ease toward the edge of the fleet and make our escape. I doubt they’d follow us.”
“I want that ship,” Dagwood said. “We’re pirates. Give in now, and they’ll have every convoy set up like this one. If that gray ship was on the list of possible targets, that means it doesn’t have a Tobe, so it will have to have a sizable crew to man the guns. With all these other ships around, they’ll have to be careful not to hit one of their own—something of a challenge without a Tobe to keep an eye on where the weapons are aimed.”
Larry pointed
to an opening between the ships ahead. “Thread that needle. If we can work our way ahead of the orange ship, maybe we can hit the brakes and pick it off from the fleet.”
“We’re not going to get many chances at this,” Dagwood said. “A couple of suspicious moves, and that gunship will be onto us.”
Jess took her time, maneuvering Rampike in such a casual way as to make it appear to drift into the gap between the ships. Then even more carelessly, she floated above the fleet so far she’d look to be easy pickings for some passing pirate. With any luck, they’d think she was either tired from the typical run or slightly inebriated like too many other captains—just another random ship that had joined the convoy for protection. The lazy advance tended to work because pirates were known for their direct, threatening approach, not subterfuge.
If their adversary noticed her maneuvers, they did nothing to show it. Guard duty, especially without a Tobe captain to handle the monotony, could be tedious work. The bridge crew would be constantly trying to avoid running into other ships as they casually kept an eye on things—all the while trying to appear not to care in order to maintain their cover.
Jess had done what she could to lull the crew of the secretly dangerous ship into a false sense of security. She would just need a stray ship to slip between the orange craft and its protector. The shuttle bound for Lysithea worked perfectly. Based on its random maneuvers and quick course corrections, the shuttle’s captain was clearly more interested in joining the party on board than attending to his duties. A quick burst from the garish ship’s engines gave her the opportunity she was waiting for. As the party ship settled into place, Jess dropped Rampike into line—aft first—in front of the orange ship. Just about the time she thought she should be getting an angry voice message from the irritated captain, she swung the tail of her ship, with its engines blasting hard up against the orange nosecone. As she’d hoped, the larger vessel quickly decelerated to drift far back from its post.
“Pull out your guns, Spike.” Jess pulled hard at both control levers to angle Rampike like a ramp. Hitting reverse, she forced the tail of her ship under the orange vessel, separating it from the convoy.
In every confrontation, Jess planned to take an opponent’s ship out with one well-aimed shot to its engines. Spike often had other feelings regarding the use of his prized cannons, but he usually acquiesced to whomever was at the helm. As the large ship drifted over them, Spike aimed one las-cannon across two of the four powerful propulsion units and let loose with all the firepower available. The two remaining engines swung the cargo ship up and to port—an easy snag for their grappling-line tow beam.
Larry slapped her hard on the shoulder. “This is where we earn our keep.”
He and Dagwood raced to the control consoles on either side of the bridge. Spike had all his guns aimed fore and aft long before the two gunships worked themselves free from their stations among the other vessels of the convoy.
With nowhere to hide in space, the options were either fight or run. Rampike was well suited for either. For all of her reticence to fire on a prize ship, Jess relished a good gunfight with a worthy opponent. All her anger toward the Moons of Jupiter found its voice in the rage of battle. But being outmanned by two ominous gunships was not a reasonable option. Spike might love his cannons, but he too wasn’t crazy enough to take on that many weapons single-handedly.
With the orange elephant of a ship strapped to Rampike’s underbelly, maneuvering and running were tough propositions even in space. Inertia was a bitch no matter the conditions. The pirate ship would look like a crew of foolish adventurers to the oncoming, heavily armed guard ships, angry at having been roused from their slumber amid the peaceful convoy.
Come on! Move it! There was only so much she could do regarding space and time. The large gunships would be closing in fast but not at anything approaching full speed—nothing even close to the screaming engines of her pirate brethren that swarmed out from behind the neglected moon to the port of the convoy.
The maneuver was simple enough: use the armada of pirate ships to dissuade the gunships from pursuing Rampike, which would hightail it out to some rock not under the Moons of Jupiter’s sphere of influence. It was a risky gambit but one that worked more often than it failed. And each time Jess engaged her fellow pirates, her reputation grew as someone worth following.
Uninhabited, desolate moons had their uses. With all the pirate activity in their wake, finding a truly deserted rock in Jupiter’s orbit was becoming a challenge. Running out to the centaur planets took time, and every minute towing some cargo ship just added to the risk of being apprehended.
There was an option—the option. The one moon no Tobe would ever set foot on. The one haunted by the death of their god. Jess had come to see the barren wasteland of a moon as her private domain. She hated using it except for her most prized conquests. Opening a newly captured cargo ship was a bit like opening an Erinomian beehive. She never knew what she would get—a rich cache of liquid gold or a hive of gigantic, pissed-off insects as big as her hand and devoted, heart and soul, to her destruction. With all the protection this orange ship had commanded, she doubted the occupants would be all that submissive to their captors.
Spike kept his big front-mounted cannons aimed at the bright-orange hull sitting pretty on the flat desert. “I could just cut a hole in it. One good laser shot, and they wouldn’t have much choice but to come out.”
“That won’t be needed,” Dagwood said. “Let me go over there first.”
Jess kept watch at the view screen as the pirate exited the craft and walked, unafraid, to the large orange ship that lay submissively below Spike’s guns. He then just stood there as if expecting the door to open. To her surprise, that was exactly what happened. Dagwood didn’t even raise his weapon. Twelve crew members stepped out of the ship with their hands on their heads.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. “What the hell?”
“It explains why we weren’t pursued,” Larry said. “And why they didn’t fire on us. Whatever’s in that ship, they didn’t want it damaged. Let’s go have a look.”
As they left Rampike, Spike swung his massive cannons over their heads to let them know he’d be watching just in case. Dagwood’s attitude couldn’t have been more different than the anxious Tobe’s. The pirate still hadn’t unholstered his weapon as they approached the orange ship. “Go on in and have a look. But even if you do see someone, don’t shoot. That’s a nuclear time accelerator in there—very temperamental machines when it comes to random energy. Give it any juice at all, and you could destroy an entire moon. From the look of it, I’d say that little toy in there was designed to speed up Jovianium to a point where creating a moon-sun would just be a matter of turning a dial.”
Larry looked hesitant as he inspected the outer hull of their prize. “There isn’t any Jovianium on board, is there?”
“They’re pretty careful with that stuff. Not even the Moons would put the raw material together with the machine capable of wiping out half of Jupiter.”
Jess knew Larry had explored more of the solar system than she had even read about. His continued reticence about entering the ship made her steer clear of the main hatch. “What is Jovianium?”
Dagwood pointed at the huge planet overhead. “Jupiter has so much gravity it’s developed some unique elements. It took the sneaky little mad scientists out here a while to find it, but naturally occurring Jovianium makes the weapons-grade plutonium on Earth look like a child’s-play polymer.”
A cold sweat ran down Jess’s back. “And that thing is designed to enrich it?”
“That’s what I was told. I’m afraid it doesn’t have much practical use to us pirates, and the market’s not very big for others who might want one, but us having it puts the Moons of Jupiter in a bad way. It took them decades to build this one. Without it, they’ll have to keep building their nasty little moon-suns the old-fashioned way.”
She looked over the craft, seeking out any
markings that might indicate its moon of origin. She didn’t find any. “Where might they have built such a machine?”
Dagwood smiled like a teacher whose student had just stumbled on the correct question. “Only one place I can think of. And the star chart for getting there would still be in the ship’s computer. The Board of Shadows’ secret world may no longer be as isolated as they hoped.”
Taking on the dreaded board wasn’t part of her immediate plan, but Jess couldn’t ignore the pieces of the puzzle—clues to that conflict—that kept falling into her lap. “Download the star map to Spike, then wipe that ship’s computer clean.”
11
Flames touched the tips of Arry’s hair, but otherwise, she took the news with remarkable calm. “How long will you be gone?”
Sara gave a last look to the room that’d barely functioned as a living space. “I don’t know, but it’s hard to imagine that I won’t be coming back. For now, you have what you wanted: a deity for your followers to worship. I have what I wanted: you as a partner to help organize the Tobes in a revolt against the Moons’ corporations and those Tobes being freed from corporate control. You can’t tell me you’ll miss me. That’d just be a flat-out lie.”
“Maybe I think there’s unfinished business between us. You’ve had your shot, and I’ve had mine. Want to go for a tiebreaker?” Arry’s dress grew transparent as she sat on the bed.