"I'll go back in a minute, okay?"
Tommy nodded slowly. He knew it was the best deal he'd get from her.
"So," she repeated, "anything?"
"Nope. They're probably regretting not jamming us right now…if they even have jammers, anyway."
"Captain," Adele interrupted, "it appears they are increasing speed."
"Alright. Dianne?" he asked.
"Yeah?" the woman replied.
"You need to go back to your cabin."
"But-"
"No," Tommy replied. "You need to get on the quancom to Max. He needs to know what's going on in case this scheme Cody cooked up doesn't work like we hope it will."
She nodded silently and turned, disappearing down the passageway.
"How far?" Tommy asked his pilot, his ships passenger forced to the back of his mind for once so he could focus on the task at hand.
"We are still out of their range," Adele replied, knowing what he really wanted to know.
"Go to maximum burn. We've got enough juice to do that for a while, and we don't want these guys to think we're going to make it easy on them."
The pilot nodded and increased the throttle.
Tommy winced inwardly, painfully remembering the last time they pushed it this far.
Inertial dampeners are wonderful things for ships, and now that they had a full complement of function dampeners, Tommy could fully appreciate them.
Whereas before, he felt he was becoming one with his ship—literally—this time he only felt a slight pull backward as they reached maximum acceleration for Sabercat.
A quick glance at the scope showed the fighters had pushed through with their own acceleration, continuing to overtake them.
Without any warning, the ship banked hard to starboard. "We are being fired upon," Adele said rather matter-of-factly considering the gravity of the situation.
Tommy examined his scope to try and identify the projectile. It was a Narwhal missile, a relatively dumb munition by modern standards, but still nasty from what he'd read on them. They were locked on a particular point in space, and after a few thousand kilometers beyond they would self-detonate if they failed to make contact. However, what they lacked in intelligence, they made up for in punch.
Again, he hit the external coms. "Unidentified Fighters, this is Sabercat. You are firing on an unarmed, Earth-flagged vessel outside of Ararat's orbitals! Cease fire! I say again, cease fire! We are unarmed!"
No sooner had he completed the transmission—and they were close enough to hear it in almost real time—than the ship banked hard to port.
"Well," he muttered, "so much for trying to reason with them." It also was clear that they either knew what they were doing, or they didn't care either way. The latter was far too common these days, Tommy mused for a moment.
"Adele?" he asked. "They close enough?"
She nodded just once as she began a series of maneuvers designed to minimize the chance of a shot getting through.
Tommy hit the coms to the cargo hold. "You boys ready?"
"Copy that," Cody replied. "She's already in the hold. Just have Adele release like we'd talked about, then let me know when to hit it and wait for the fun to begin."
"You read that, Adele?"
"I did," she replied. "Beginning release maneuver now."
With that, the boat began to seemingly drift, with the aft pulling upward and the nose remaining stationary. Intellectually, Tommy knew she was using maneuvering thrusters to accomplish it, but those weren't usually used at this speed because they made transports handle wonky.
Once they were in the perfect position, Adele commed Cody. "Release."
Beyond their sight, the keel cargo doors opened, releasing a single crate which immediately drifted away from Sabercat and toward the incoming fighters, though it was too small to show up on their scanners. Not yet, at least.
Now clear of the ship, Adele corrected and leveled Sabercat off and pushed the engines back to full and resumed her evasive maneuvers as more incoming fire came in, now from the fighter’s railguns.
Chapter 13
McDonald watched as the freighter—a bulky, angular thing— pull off some of the most intense maneuvers he’s seen, as if a piloting deity was at the controls. For a pilot such as himself, it was almost a shame to waste such talent, but orders were orders and a paycheck was a paycheck.
He sat in amazement, however, when the ships aft section drifted up for a moment, then the ship leveled off again relative and punched it.
"Did you read the hull cargo doors opening?" Waco asked.
"Negative. I wasn't looking," he answered. He didn't get into why. Waco was a mercenary with no appreciation for the art of piloting. McDonald liked to get paid, to be sure, but he also could appreciate a great pilot at work as well. Waco? Not so much.
"Well, they're closed now apparently. Damn weird, I'm telling ya."
"Copy that," McDonald replied.
** ** **
Despite what he knew were extraordinary speeds, the fighters appears to be approaching what Tommy had dubbed the "magic point" agonizingly slow. Millimeter by millimeter, they approached on his scope. "Come on," he said to himself, his voice soft with anxiousness.
After what seemed an eternity, they reached the point in space he'd been waiting for.
He slammed his finger down on the com. "Cody! Now!"
"Done!"
** ** **
In the vast empty of space, one would think the odds of encountering odd objects would essentially be an impossibility. This was generally true. However, space isn't really as empty as one might think. The further one travels, the more likely it becomes that a ship will come across something, and mankind had been traveling in space for centuries.
Micrometeoroids, in particular, are a problem that can plague any deep space vessel. As a result, any ship that's designed for the black boasts a forward shield array.
While the technology was insufficient for use against weapons, the shields could bounce away the odd space rock or two.
Fighters like the Biermann Industries Kestrels, like the two pursuing Sabercat, also had similar shields.
The problem with such shields, however, was they were only good for a few objects aimlessly drifting in space.
What they were completely useless for was the crate drifting just a few kilometers ahead of them.
That crate, dropped from Sabercat during its maneuver, was a nondescript crate on the surface. However, it had been specially constructed with explosive seals. Explosive seals were common on large vessels that often had to do their own repair work while underway. The seals existed as a safety measure, a means to get out of a ship if necessary. They were the spiritual descendants of the explosive bolts first used in the Mercury program on 20th Century Earth.
While most ships didn't carry replacements, they weren't controlled items as ships often needed to replace them as older seals expired.
Cody Chang, however, decided to use them to put together a crate, knowing that they were perfectly legal to procure.
When his captain ordered, Cody sent a data burst through the vacuum of space, detonating the seals, including a few extra placed against a reinforced plate at the back of the crate.
The effect of this was to send the contents of this crate—a couple tons of ball bearings—thrusting out into space as a fairly decent velocity.
In atmo, the velocity of the projectiles would be sufficient to injure or even kill a human being and cause damage to equipment.
When matched with the velocity of the incoming fighter, a velocity that was a significant percentage of the speed of light, it was more than enough to swamp the meager shields and tear through the skin of the Kestrel like it was wrapping paper on Christmas morning.
** ** **
The explosions didn't show up on Tommy's scopes, but he already knew what he'd see. Despite what the vids showed, spaceships didn't explode in a massive fireball with a lot of secondary explosions.
For Tommy, it was even less spectacular. One second, his scope showed two pursuing fighters. The next, nothing. Nothing at all.
He felt himself shake, unable to believe. Instead, he kept watch, waiting for the fighters to show back up.
"Uh, Captain?" called Cody. "Did it work? Hello?"
That was enough to snap him out of his fears, the paranoia that the pursuers were back. "Yeah," he finally commed, relief filling his voice as he spoke. "We're clear."
After a few more moments of letting reality settle on him, he turned to Adele. "Let's get the hell out of this system, alright?"
"With pleasure, Captain," he replied as she looked over her shoulder, a broad smile of relief on her face. Tommy figured it matched his own.
The pilot shifted course and headed toward the gate, not really slowing her burn. Tommy didn't care. They had enough juice to get to Hallstead Station in the New Paris system even if they never slowed down, and they'd get refueled on the station. Besides, he was ready to get out of here before any other fighters decided to make their acquaintance.
Regardless, the trip still took an hour or so, but nothing dusted off from Ararat during that time. At least nothing small enough to be a fighter.
"We are approaching Gate Control, sir," Adele said, her articulation as perfect as usual.
Tommy nodded to the back of her head and hit the com button. "Gate Control, this is Sabercat requesting queue position."
"Sabercat, this is Gate Control. You are next in the queue."
A quick check of the scope showed they should have a significant wait. At least a dozen other ships were in parking drift around the gate, meaning they should have to wait for everyone else to push through first.
"Uh, Gate Control, how do you figure? We just got here," A confused Tommy asked.
"Sabercat, the remaining ships have passed their queue position to you, so you're next in the queue. Please transmit gate destination and stand by for further instructions."
His console chimed, telling him there was a communication from another ship, tight-beamed via laser right to him. Tommy pressed the panel to receive the beam.
"This is Hank Masters, skipper of the Blue Dawn. I reckon you're a little confused?" the voice coming in said.
"You could say that," Tommy replied. "You've been here longer."
"Well," Johnson began, "We saw what was going on out there. Could have been any of us, and we're kind of tired of some of these people who think we should be easy targets. Reckon you're the same way…and the fact that you're here and they ain't means you did what a lot of us wish we could."
Tommy considered for a moment, then said, "Well, that's true enough, but that doesn't explain the generosity."
"Well, we figured you'd just as soon have Ararat off your scopes, and considering someone down there don't like you too much, we figured we'd help. Plus, for me, that was the best entertainment I've had in weeks that I didn't have to pay for."
He smiled at that and commed his thanks, ordering Adele to match drift speed with the gate. It was about time something nice actually dropped in his lap.
** ** **
Hallstead station was like most other permanent space stations. Once white walls now gone brown in years of use and insufficient cleaning making the whole place feel like the kind of environment you need a tetanus inoculation based on nothing more than proximity.
One unique thing about Hallstead and stations of her class were that they permitted small transports like Sabercat to dock inside the station, rather than lock on from outside. While this meant it was harder for a ship to make an escape, it also meant that there was something more substantial between them and vacuum when they left the ship, which is what Tommy and Dianne were doing at this particular moment.
Dianne's concern was written all over her face as Tommy smiled at her. She looked amazing, though. Narrowly escaping death in the cold hell of space agreed with her, and not just because it beat the alternative of not escaping death.
"What is it?" he finally asked.
"Can we…are these people trustworthy?"
Tommy chuckled. "You're worried about them working for people like Sowards and Hatcher?"
She nodded affirmative.
"These are station jocks. They don't like dust breathers any more than people like Sowards likes station jocks. We're probably safer here than we were on Ararat."
A soft chuckled answered. "You were under constant surveillance on Ararat."
"My point exactly," he said with a grin.
The two made their way out of the loading bays and into the maze of corridors that made up the station until they eventually found their way to The Experience, a nightclub that seemed to have been designed with the aesthetics of about thirty years earlier and without a budget to update the décor since then.
As the two entered, they saw Conway Reynolds sitting in the far corner.
The other captain waved the pair over.
Tommy pulled Dianne's seat out for her, then took his own. "Reynolds," Tommy said with a nod.
"Reilly," the other man replied, a mischievous grin dancing on his lips.
For a long moment, no one said anything.
"What?" Tommy said finally, tired of the weird chafe-eating grin on the other man's face.
"You're going to have to show me that trick."
Confused, Tommy asked, "What trick?"
"Whatever you did to the fighters," Reynolds replied.
Sighing, Tommy looked to the ceiling, then down at the table, and took a deep breath before explaining the "trick" to the other man.
"Nice," Reynolds said when he was finished. "I'm going to have to rig something like that up myself. Pass the word to other ships too. Assuming you don't mind."
Tommy shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me, but give Cody the credit. He earned it. Now, about my load?"
"Sure," Reynold's uttered before fishing a data chip out of his coat pocket. "Here you go. Once you're off loaded, we'll get you loaded up and you can be on your merry."
"Good."
"Don't get too antsy," Reynolds said. "It'll take a little while to get you empty. You might have to figure out a way to spend a few days. The docks are a little backed up at the moment. Can you handle that?"
Tommy looked at Dianne for a long moment and smiled. Looking at her, he was truly happy, and the two had spent little time together over the last few weeks. Looks like there was a chance to remedy that a bit.
"Yeah," he finally answered, "I think I can handle that."
** ** **
It had taken a week to get Sabercat off loaded, then Winter Born unloaded and her load put in Sabercat's hull, but they had clearance to take off the next morning, and they were ready. Tommy relayed the news about their scheduled departure time to a chorus of voices declaring their eagerness to leave.
"I'm surprised," Dianna said. "I thought you didn't want to go to Armstead?"
"We don't. Not as a general thing," Tommy said. "They tend to be a little…prickly."
"Then why is everyone happy to go?" she asked.
"Because," Adele answered, "we prefer the black or dirt to a station. All of us are planet born, so stations feel stifling."
"Exactly," Cody chimed in.
"Besides," Tommy said, "we've got an approved load for Armstead. We'll get there, off load the gold, grab the data chip you need, and be off world before anyone knows what's happening."
He then looked at the crew, holding the gaze of each one for a long moment, then shrugged and said with a smile, "So, really, what could possibly go wrong?"
TO BE CONTINUED…
From the Author
People think of writing as a solitary activity, and that’s certainly true to an extent. Even if authors collaborate, there still is usually just one person sitting at a keyboard, banging away at the keys and trying to make so
mething people will want to read.
It’s also not completely accurate.
There’s not a single author I know who operates in a complete vacuum. We all rely on our crews to help us manage to take an idea and put it down as a book. Those people need to be thanked, and thanked often.
That’s why I’ll start with my wife, Jennifer. She’s been rather patient with me and this whole writing thing, after all. She is, without a doubt, my number one cheerleader and the one who believes in me when even I don’t.
I also need to thank my son, Robert. A science fiction and fantasy fan, his enthusiasm for this project has been unwaivering. From the inspiration in a beloved, if short-lived, science fiction television show until completion, he’s been stoked about seeing the finished project. And for anyone with a teenage son, you know just how big of a deal it is to have your teen stoked about something you’re doing.
Next, I have to thank my daughter, Audrey. She’s too young to read these words, but one day she hopefully will. At that time, I hope she’ll remember how understanding she was when she was told, “Daddy needs to work.” Five-year-olds often aren’t patient, but she has been.
I also have to thank my dear friend, Sarah A. Hoyt. From the moment she booted me in the rear to publish my first story, she’s been incredibly supportive of my career as she continued her own. She’s always had time to talk about “the business” of writing with me and, in the process, she put boot to butt again and got me to finish Sabercat.
Finally, I need to thank my dearly departed mother. She passed away a short time before my last novel was completed, and after that book was out, I just didn’t have the will to continue like I had before. However, always in the back of my mind, was a conversation we had. I was considering at a career change, at least for the short term. While telling her about my plans, she looked at me and simply said, “You’re a writer.”
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