Status Quo

by Drew Wagar

  The Pod was ahead, now clearly visible. The agent felt no remorse as he adjusted the Courier’s attitude and brought the tiny triangular ship into the crosshairs. He thumbed the laser trigger. A Galcop Fugitive rating would mean nothing to him. The forward military laser pounded out with a scream of pure power.

  The screen went blank. The agent saw a flash of duralium, a blast of magenta engine flux and the sight of his laser hitting shields at point blank range. The SuperCobra was right in front of him, decelerating rapidly. The Courier rocked violently in the engine flux wake.

  Instinctively the agent slammed the throttle closed but the ships were too close. They collided violently.

  The agent heard the sounds of shields scraping across each other and the Courier was knocked aside. He was flung across the cramped bridge as the Courier tumbled out of control, its internal gyro wheels temporarily destabilised.

  When he regained his position and steadied the ship, both the escape pod and the SuperCobra were nowhere to be seen. The scanner was blank.

  Jim had broken the rules, performing a crazy manoeuvre no sane pilot would have ever tried.

  He’d gotten in front of the Courier just as it triggered its forward gun. In a deft move he’d cut the injectors just in time, the SuperCobra decelerating directly in front of the Courier just as it was picking up speed. The rear shields absorbed the military laser at point-blank range, barely maintaining integrity.

  He’d scooped the pod at high speed.

  Unable to turn aside in time, the Courier had rammed him. Both ships had been spun apart but the Courier had taken most of the torsional stress due to its width and the angle of impact and had been spun out of control. The SuperCobra escaped with depleted shields and a two-foot-long scrape along the lower port dorsal hull plate. Lesser ships would have been pulverised.

  In the brief moment of confusion that followed, Jim had hit the injectors and accelerated the SuperCobra out of range.

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 5

  Rebecca woke, her head pounding. For a moment she couldn’t tell where she was, her memory blank. Then it all came back to her. The attack; Jenner, Jante, Red, Lance, her father’s ship exploding into atoms. Her father…

  The Imperial Courier! I'm not dead!

  She looked up, trying to focus her eyes. She was still inside the escape pod. Had the Courier let her go after all? She couldn’t remember what had happened after that final blast. Was she still en route to Zaonce? Or at the station already? She was still lying in the reclining couch. There was no telling how long she’d been out.

  Without warning shock and grief caught up with her: her entire family had been destroyed by that ship. The realisation pounded at her mind, almost driving her into complete panic and breaking her down in tears. For long moments she was paralysed with sorrow, struggling to breathe, her heart racing.

  Then she realised the Pod’s engines were off; in fact, there was no movement whatsoever, no sound but the faint whirring of the onboard computers. She forced her eyes to focus enough to check the Pod’s basic instruments, located above her. They were offline. The status indicators showed she was aboard a ship, docked.

  She must have been scooped by the Courier. She could have sworn she hadn’t seen a scoop on the ship…

  Then she did cry, with terror and despair. She’d have been better off dying on the Boa, rather than face a life as a slave, a whore or an… experimental subject. Life as a slave was short, and brutal. They wouldn’t take her, she swore; she’d fight to the death first. Anything other than surgery or hex-editing. To be a shadow of yourself, with all your memories intact, yet with neither emotions or will to express them. Doing whatever you were told without the ability to express your refusal, no matter how degrading…

  But why was she awake? Escape pods normally put you into cryo-freeze to preserve oxygen and supplies. If they were scooped it stood to reason the pilot would do the same: there would be no danger of the would-be slave escaping. She shouldn’t have woken up until…

  She ruthlessly squashed that thought. Perhaps something had malfunctioned.

  She wiped her eyes and resolved to get a grip on the situation. While there’s life, there’s hope, as Red might have said. Red; he’d died a hero. She guessed that’s how he’d have wanted it.

  She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the couch, still feeling sick and disoriented. She peered through the Pod’s small plexiglass windows and saw only an empty and nondescript cargo bay. Then, while she was looking, she saw a figure walk into the bay and head towards the Pod. She ducked down, looking around for a weapon, for anything she could use.

  She’d been shoved into the pod quickly, with no chance to grab a handgun or even a stun stick. The emergency fire suppresser was about the only thing loose in the whole capsule. She grabbed it and squashed herself into the emergency suit locker. It was fortunate she was small, it meant she was almost able to close the locker door behind her.

  The Pod’s rear hatch opened with a hiss of equalising air pressure and the hum of the door mechanisms. A man entered, carelessly moving towards the central couch, leaning over and looking closely.

  'Hello?' he said, squinting in the dim light. 'Is anyone here? Are you hurt?'

  Rebecca jumped out as he passed her. He turned, sensing movement, just as she triggered the fire suppressor. A thick stream of white foam splattered all over the man’s face, causing him to yell and stagger back. Rebecca gave no quarter, she hit him as hard as she could across the side of the head with the suppressor and he went down without a sound.

  'Murderer!' she hissed, kicking him in the stomach for good measure. 'Goidson spawn of a fraggin’ stard!' She kicked him again, and again. It felt good.

  'That’s for Jenner! Jante! Red! Lance and Dad!'

  Revenge was sweet. The man on the floor was unconscious, a small pool of blood mixing with the fire goo from a cut in his head.

  She kicked him one more time as hard as she could. 'And that’s for Coran!'

  She paused, gasping for breath and feeling dizzy, emotions overwhelming her, a heady mix of fear, rage, anger and terror.

  'You stard! You complete and utter stard!' She whispered, rage boiling within her. She fell to her knees, grabbing the man's hair in her hands and jolted his head upwards, boiling with fury. 'YOU KILLED MY FAMILY!' she screamed at his insensate face.

  For long minutes she sat there, unable to move, unable to do anything except sob scalding tears as the waves of hatred and sorrow kept washing alternately over her. The man didn’t so much as twitch. Maybe she’d killed him. She hoped so.

  Eventually she steadied her breathing. It was time to look after herself. She was alone yet, miraculously, somehow alive.

  She climbed out of the hatch and jumped down from the Pod, sealing it behind her and locking it with a code. She looked warily around the cargo bay. It was virtually empty: there were no cargo canisters aboard, just a few crates. It also seemed deserted, but she was taking no chances. She ran across the cargo bay, immediately searching the crates.

  She was surprised, yet delighted, to find an assortment of pistols and rifles along with emergency rations, body armour, and other assorted assault gear. A military ship then, but where was the crew? And were there soldiers aboard somewhere else? Was this some kind of invasion? She grabbed a couple of pistols, checking they were usable. Armers on, safeties off. The power packs hummed reassuringly.

  More confident now, she looked around her with more attention to detail.

  For an unknown Imperial ship it seemed oddly familiar. If she hadn’t known better she’d have guessed she was in Coran’s old Cobra, apart from the fact everything looked new and it was significantly bigger. The pistols appeared to be standard Galcop designs and so were the doorways, hatches and other cargo bay fittings. Even the labelling was in standard Galcop lettering. Maybe the Imperials had copied them. Maybe they had stolen them.

  Whatever. She wouldn’t find any answers down here.

&
nbsp; She ran out of the cargo bay as quietly as she could, both pistols ready. She made her way forward, moving silently and smoothly.

  A thorough search of the ship revealed no one other than herself appeared to be aboard. The living quarters appeared virtually unused.

  She jumped up into the gravity well leading to the bridge, cautiously peering over the top. It too was deserted.

  Weird.

  The ship appeared to have only the lone pilot, and it was almost completely shutdown. None of the controls were locked out, however, and when she reactivated and moved them the ship obeyed her immediately. It wasn’t booby-trapped like some of the ex-military Asps. What a dumb-ass the pilot was, leaving himself open to being hijacked. Not even a bio check or passphrase! What a Goid!

  Still, his stupidity was her gain. Against all odds she’d got herself a ship! Her trader instincts automatically took over, egocentric nature and entrepreneurial mind moving swiftly to the fore. She could eject the pilot into space, claim salvage and sail this ship into Zaonce, flog it for whatever someone would buy it for and still claim her father’s insurance. She’d be made, with more than enough to get a big fat ship and give it an iron-clad ass. Grief could wait, she thought, pushing it all to the back of her mind; there were credits to be had.

  She quickly familiarised herself with the controls and figured out the basics. Some of the controls were unfamiliar, but again she was surprised: the astrogation configuration was virtually identical to the standard designs she was used to. She’d always heard that the Imperials did things completely differently. She pulled up the schematics with the intention of checking the shields and laser config.

  Huh?

  She stared at the screen.

  Where she had expected to see the schematic of the Imperial Courier, the screen indicated the familiar outline of a Mk3 Cobra. She’d not flown one before, but the hull shape was unmistakeable. As familiar as a dodec station. The most common ship in space. No wonder it all seemed familiar.

  What am I doing on a Cobra? Whose Cobra? And who is the guy I brained down in the cargo bay?

  Commander James Feynman

  Present System Zaonce

  Hyperspace System Lave

  Condition Green

  Fuel 1.2 Light Years

  Cash Suspended

  Legal Status Fugitive

  Rating Harmless (0)

  That didn’t make much sense either. A harmless fugitive, with no Elite rating? How could he be a fugitive without having killed someone? Cash accounts suspended too!

  'Kicked your ass, James.' She muttered to herself.

  She ran it all back through her memory, Courier attacking, Courier destroying, Courier pursuing. There had been no Cobra there at all. Yet, here she was. Now she felt confused, unsure and guilty. Had she jumped to the wrong conclusion?

  She ran through the astrogation console. It appeared to be a heavily equipped ship, maybe a match for the Courier itself. The specification seemed very comprehensive, excessive even.

  She frowned, rubbing her forehead. The headache was getting worse rather than better.

  There were seven energy banks, not four. That wasn’t right. Lance had known the Cobra specs inside out. He’d bored her silly with it many times and she could recite the stats. He loved quoting specs.

  Had loved. Grief threatened to overwhelm her again as she remembered the sound of his voice chattering statistics, but she ruthlessly crushed the emotions she felt, reciting the specification like a mantra through gritted teeth.

  'Dual Ziemann energy deflection shields. Four energy banks. Point-three lem. Four hardpoints. Four gun mountings. Twenty-tonne cargo capacity, unmodified. System space Kruger ‘lightfast’ motors. Irrikon Thru-Space drive.'

  Definitely, she was absolutely sure of it. The spec on the console was different, even down to the system space drives. Nothing was making sense.

  There was a small stylised plaque on the console, just below the main scanner.

  Apocalypse Engineering is proud to present the SuperCobra. Your vision; our reality.

  SuperCobra? A custom ship? The ship’s manifest stated that it was called Enola Gay. Two of the missile pylons had ECM hardened missiles stowed. Handy. The other two had… well, something else. Two odd-looking disk-shaped devices according to the vid link. Both had labels. One read ‘Little Boy’ and the other ‘Fat Man’. She had no idea what they were or what the names meant. She punched up the computer armament inventory.

  2x Quirium Cascade Mine.

  Still none the wiser. Sounded neat though. She toyed with the idea of setting one off to see what it did. She toggled the arming sequence. It was, as the name suggested, a mine. You just dropped it; there was no thrust, guidance or targeting system. What was the point of that? Nobody would hang around if you threw a static mine at them unless they were brain-dead. Mines were a throw back to the ancient wars of three centuries ago or more, when battles were fought with huge lumbering hulks of ships that couldn’t turn for anything less than a moon; before injectors, before decent engines, before hyperdrives. Mines were obsolete, like missiles were fast becoming; particularly those prakky Faulcon ones.

  Arming sequence complete. Deploy mine?

  The computer was waiting for her input. Her hand hovered over the release coder.

  Arming sequence complete. Deploy mine?

  She decided against it. Not a very pragmatic thing to do. Maybe it would do something weird and backfire or something. There must be a reason why the mine was there.

  This really was an odd ship. Then she realised.

  Stupid girl!

  She must have banged her head harder than she thought in that pod. It had to be the Cobra the ident computer on Eclipse had got all wrapped up over! A fifteen percent discrepancy would be about right. Lance hadn’t screwed up the programming after all. Maybe the pilot responded to the distress call. Had he killed the Courier? Rebecca would be impressed if he had.

  Could the Cobra pilot be in league with the Courier? A traitor, leading the Imperials into Galcop space? Maybe it had been a setup? Where was the Courier then? The scanner was blank. She searched for a ship’s log, but there was nothing in the databanks at all.

  Her father had said the Courier wasn’t a pirate, and it hadn’t scooped their cargo. It wasn’t a bounty hunter either, and unless one of them had had some secret life they’d never mentioned, which seemed pretty unlikely, an assassin made no sense either. She smiled involuntarily at the thought of her father being an undercover member of the Dark Wheel. Hardly; not with that stomach!

  None of this makes any sense at all!

  She shook her head, explanations would have to wait. It didn’t matter now, it was time to secure her claim to the ship.

  Her second thoughts were that it was too risky to fly direct into Zaonce; she was sure she’d be arrested. She had some distant relations on Diso. If she could get there, with a bit of help she could buy a stock Mk3 Cobra with the insurance funds from the Boa, swap the transponders, clone the identities and leave the stock Mk3 adrift in space somewhere. Then she could fly around in this mega-machine with impunity. With this ship around her she could be Elite, she knew it.

  Next she toggled the cargo log. It was empty save for a single entry of a few lines.

  Cargo Manifest Addition: Escape Pod.

  Beginning cryogenic freeze, please wait…

  Manual override. Cryogenic freeze aborted by user command.

  The pilot of the Cobra had scooped her but aborted the standard freezing process. Why? He wanted her fresh for some reason? She shuddered, not wanting to think about that.

  She looked on the scanner for other ships. Still blank. She could see the Cobra was currently located some way off the main space lane running between Zaonce and its Sun, almost a whole AU off. They were pretty much out in the black.

  What to do with poor old Mr. Feynman?

  Her escape pod was still fully functional. She could eject it into space. He’d live, assuming she hadn’t h
it him too hard. She felt a pang of guilt. Maybe he was innocent? No, the profile said he was a fugitive. Nobody out here in space was innocent really. You didn’t live long if you were innocent. Nobody was exactly who they claimed to be. He’d get back to Zaonce all right. He could claim on his own insurance. He might even loose his fugitive status. Everyone’s a winner.

  Of course, he might get scooped, shot, crash or just disappear out into the void because of a malfunction. Part of her didn’t care; part of her felt shame and guilt. She’d rather not be responsible. Vague memories of her grandfather talking about moral fibre, honesty and integrity floated through her mind. She shook her head to clear it, and then wished she hadn’t. She was sick.

  She realised she was in no fit state to fight the pilot again. She’d got lucky once, no need to push it any further. Anyway, integrity was the first thing out of the airlock, or so her father had said. ‘An expensive and wasteful luxury’ was his other expression. On the whole, she agreed with him.

  Prak it.

  The pilot was a complete goid for getting himself caught by a sick girl with nothing but a fire suppressor. People that dumb didn’t deserve any favours. She’d been worse off than him, it was the luck of the draw and that was all. She set a course for the star, triggered the hyperspeed drive and moved across to the cargo bay inventory controls, preparing to dump the pod.