by J. F. Holmes
“Sean, is Amanda here?” The bartender motioned to the back office, off to one side of the kitchen.
“LISTEN UP. THE WINCHESTER IS CLOSED TILL TOMORROW. EVERYONE OUT!” boomed Knight in his best Sergeant Major’s voice. The music stopped and a dead quiet settled over the place.
One big spacer stood up from his table and said, “Who the fuck are you to close down our fun?” Another stood up with him, a short, muscled guy from a heavy gravity world. He took a knife from his pocket and drove it straight into the table, halfway down the six inch blade, then wrenched it out in one motion.
“What year is it, Captain?” asked Knight.
“Um, 2382.”
Knight reached under his shirt and slipped a foot and a half long ceramic blade from a sheath strapped to his back. “Gentlemen, the Kikuichi family has been making swords for the Chrysanthemum Throne since 784 AD. That’s one thousand, five hundred and ninety-eight years. I think, in that long of a time, they figured out thing or two about knives. Shall we dance?” He drew the blade along the edge of a steel support column, leaving a curled shaving to slowly fall to the floor. Both men grew pale and backed slowly toward the door.
“Thought so,” said Knight, slipping his blade back in its sheath.
The bar emptied quickly, and Sean locked the door. He then resumed cleaning the glasses behind the bar. Amanda stood at the open door looking at Meric. She saw the news on his face, staggered a bit, and put her hand on the bar, face pale under her dusky skin. Then she straightened.
“All of them?” she asked, brittle steel in her voice.
“Mandy, I’m sorry. The French caught them. The Governor General, well, he made it personal.”
She laughed a small, bitter laugh. “Jason always did have an eye for the pretty ladies. But he never strayed, he told me all about it. She fell for him.”
“Well, we paid them back, as best we could. Took out half a heavy frigate, the Governor’s flagship.” Meric waited for some spark of interest in her face, but if anything, her look became even more bitter.
“And how many husbands and sons aren’t going back to their wives and mothers? Did it bring Jason back?”
They had nothing to say to her about that. She turned her back to the two men and was silent for a moment, then turned back to them. The pub owner looked twenty years older, with a grey pallor to her face. She sighed and said, “Thanks for telling me, Nate. It’s better than not knowing, waiting all those years with some hope. Some of the crew had girlfriends and boyfriends on station. I’ll let them know.”
“Here are the coordinates and the ship’s trajectory, but we nuked it. I thought you’d want it that way.” He left a data chip on the bar, and the two men turned and left the Winchester. Behind them a soft sobbing broke out.
Chapter 12
Spacers claimed you could hear the subwoofers from the sound system at the Short Skirt all the way through the hull of the station as you came in on final approach. Nadija wasn’t sure about that, but she could feel it on the deck as Poison’s crew made their way along Deck 22. Her knee high boots transmitted each heavy boom of the bass as her feet hit the floor. The airlock slid open, blasting them with a wave of sound and lights, making her heart give a little skip of anticipation.
“Time to DANCE!” she yelled, and dove into the crowd.
Dennis Yee felt the hundred credit note in his pocket. There was a long-standing bet between him and Specialist Shupe, the team Poison medic. When he broke his dry spell by actually picking up a girl, he would get to keep it. If not, he owed her the hundred. This was getting really, really old, and costing him a lot of money.
“Scotty,” he yelled over the noise “I’m counting on you to be my wingman, brother!”
“Screw that. I got some music to make!” He waved to the lead singer of the band that was playing up on stage, a short young blond woman. She waved back and motioned to a bass guitar sitting on a rack. “See you back on the ship!” called Orr, and he disappeared into the crowd.
“Hailey, help me out!”
“No way, slant eyes!” She eyed a passing spacer like a piece of meat, and moved in for the kill, long legs flashing under her miniskirt, tattoos on her face glowing in the neon light.
Trying one last time, he looked over at the giant Scandinavian. Bjorn Stenger shook his head and leaned back against the wall, scanning the crowd for threats. He never turned it off. Ever.
“Damn it,” Yee sighed, looking around the crowded club. He sidled up to the bar and elbowed his way in, trying to order a drink. Failing to get the bartender’s attention for more than ten minutes, he finally gave up and turned to watch the crowd.
“Hey spacer, come here often?” yelled a voice in his ear. Yee nearly jumped out of his skin as he turned to look at the girl talking to him. She was stunning, hair cropped in a short red Mohawk that marked a merchant crewman. A select few were allowed to trade with Miranda Station, and their crews were prime targets for lonely spacers, but Dennis Yee had struck out repeatedly every time they were in port. Maybe his luck was changing.
Before he could do much more than introduce himself, Scotty Orr crashed into the bar, knocking the girl aside and spilling Yee’s drink down the front of his silk shirt. The musician got back up and wiped the blood off his lip. “I guess they didn’t like my playing!” he shouted and leapt forward as a spacer wearing the dark blue uniform of the Privateer Crucible came at them. Orr took him around the waist and carried him forward into the crowd on the dance floor. Yee reached down, helped the girl up, took out a sharpie, wrote his com address on her arm, then charged into the fray to back up his squadmate.
The entire bar descended into a brawl, with punches being thrown and body tackles landing people on the floor. The band played on, switching to an old, old song by a twenty-first century band.
“I LOVE FIGHTING TO THE MURPHYS! CLIMBING UP THE TOPSAILS, I LOST MY LEG!” sang Zlatcov as she took down a Crucible crewmember in an armbar and wrenched his arm out of its socket. He howled in pain and flailed hopelessly at her until one of his crewmates kicked her in the head from behind; she went down, out cold. Bjorn launched himself at her attacker and punched as hard as he could, sending teeth flying. He reached down and picked up the pilot, slinging her over his shoulder and making for the door, followed by Yee and Orr.
At the other end of the bar, ignoring the fighting, Shupe was surrounded by admiring spacers. She saw her squadmates heading for the door and muttered, “Shit. Here only ten minutes and they get in a fight!” and got up from her stool. One of the guys took her by the arm and sat her back down. She grabbed his wrist and twisted hard, levering the big man up and back. She twirled under his arm and shoved with her boot, sending him sprawling. Then the medic ran, to live to fight another day.
“Shupe, get your ass over here and check out our hero pilot,” said Stenger. He dumped Zlatcov down on a bench in a booth, but gently. They had all gone around the corner and ducked into an open fast food place.
“Orr, you’re a Mexican, get me some tacos, STAT!” said the medic as she shone a light into Zlatcov’s eyes. She reached under her sweater and pulled out some smelling salts from somewhere, snapping them open and waving them under the pilot’s nose. Her patient gasped and sneezed, rolled over and threw up on the deck.
“Ugh,” she said, wiping her mouth. “Waste of good Romulan Brandy.”
“No concussion, you should be fine, but you’re going to have a headache,” said the medic, stuffing her small medical kit back under her shirt. Where she hid it, Orr had no idea.
“Good, I have to meet Commander McHale, Bats and Jenny O at Baldrics in an hour.” The Russian pilot pulled a slim flask out of her skintight pants and guzzled a long chug. She handed it to the medic, who took a small sip herself and immediately choked.
“What the hell is that? Gasoline?”
“Vodka, honey. The only way to fix a Russian’s headache.”
Orr returned with a heaping plate of steaming burritos, and they immed
iately started devouring them. While they ate, they sat and discussed their next target.
“I think it’s a good deal,” said Yee, sucking the meat out of a burrito. “Soft target, none of this hard charging into a destroyer or taking on an armed merchantman with corporate security guards. You know half those jackasses are adrenaline addicts who can’t get over their service in the war, don’t know when to quit.”
“You now they’ll have an escort, at least a corvette, maybe a destroyer,” chimed in Orr.
The pilot washed down a taco with more vodka, then said, “Easy peasy. Since we aren’t going to try to take the escort, one round through their engine room from stealth, Specialist, and after we’re gone the research ship can pick up the crew. One less Frog ship to deal with.”
Over their heads, a pinpoint of glass, stuck above eye level, gave a bubble view of the dining room. The quantum computer compressed into the back side of the glass ran a pattern recognition program, scanning the faces in the dining room every ten minutes. Any matches to a database of over fifteen thousand individuals immediately turned on a listening program. The high cheekbones, full lips and straight nose of the pilot narrowed the search parameters, and after two seconds the computer came up with a hit.
“ZLATCOV, NADIJA. WARRANT THREE, SOVIET REPUBLIC. b. 2353 Service CCCP NAVY 2373 to 2380. DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE FOR STRIKING SUPERIOR OFFICER. LAST KNOWN BILLET PILOT PRIVATEER LEXINGTON OPERATING OUT OF JAMESPORT.”
A micro coating on the lens had a small static charge run through it, and the spy glass started recording sound, picking up their conversation at “…gone the research ship can pick up the crew.”
Stenger grunted and spoke through a mouthful of quesadilla. “I don’t give a shit one way or another. Stealing data, killing frogs, taking out corporate security douchebags, as long as I get to fight. Personally, I could go for some Old Earth programming, makes me miss home. I wonder if we’ll get some good war movies?”
“2D crap!” muttered Shupe.
“If it was up to me,” said Zlatcov, using her tongue to clean out a taco. “I’d just take the whole research ship and ransom the eggheads running it, or shoot ‘em. That Pre-diaspora video will make us a sweet chunk of money, though.” Catching Yee watching her tongue another taco, she said, “Not in a million years, chinaman. Keep dreaming.”
The conversation drifted off to more mundane things, finally turning into a debate about whether Yee had to pay Shupe the hundred credits for losing the bet again. He claimed that it was null, because of Zlatcov starting the fight.
“I didn’t START it, you idiot,” she said. “If I had, I would have finished it. You just suck with women!”
They finished their meal and headed out to find another hot spot to blow their hard won prize money on. The night was, after all, still young.
****
On a merchantman docked to Miranda Station, an Specialist off duty pretended to watch a holo movie on his tablet. Underneath the holo, on the flat screen, his eyes read a composite report of the conversation that had taken place between the Poison’s crew. He noted the reference to Old Earth transmissions and whistled under his breath. Major Jean LeFiere, undercover operative of the intelligence branch of Legion Étranger d'espace, saved the report and considered his options and timeline. He was aware of the deep space research mission, and it appeared to him that someone else was, and planned to hit it. Running a quick calculation, he figured the merchantman he was serving on would reach a neutral port before the Lexington could reach the area the research ship was operating in.
“Interesting,” he muttered, and the sailor in the bunk next to him told him to quiet down. The intelligence officer ignored him and returned to the report on Miranda’s defenses that he’d spent the last two days compiling. Operative Major LeFiere sat back in his bunk, tablet perched on his lap. He opened up a program and plugged a small joystick into the computer. To anyone passing by, he looked like an ordinary spacer, off duty and relaxing.
Attached to the hull of the merchantman, in a place rarely visited outside of a major refit, were several cargo boxes, each about two foot square. LeFiere keyed a command, and one of them popped open. A small drone with a flat disk attached to it rose out of the box, swiveling as optics were calibrated.
On his viewscreen, LeFiere swiveled the view back and forth, scanning Miranda Station. The Frenchman already knew that Lexington was sitting docked two berths over. He flew the drone up and over the intervening merchantman and came slowly down on the upper hull of his target. Open on another window on his tablet was the layout of the Unit’e class scout ships. He zoomed down to an area marked by his intelligence unit as the best spot to place the limpet mine.
The explosive itself was multipurpose, and divided into two packages. The first part, which he placed over the compartment directly behind the bridge, was a shaped-charge penetrator designed to hole the ship with an explosive force penetrator. It was placed to do maximum damage to the ship’s vitals. The second part was an electronics package that allowed ships within radio distance to hack the target ship’s systems. Any virus would quickly be destroyed by the ship’s AI, but a constant feedback from hacking computers and persons would wear it out and allow them, if not to seize the ship, at least to cut off all systems. It was hard to fight with no power or gravity.
He placed the first mine, flickering smart camouflage to match the Lexington’s hull. Then he did the same with the second, just over the communications junction. Odds are it wouldn’t be found before he could work up an ambush. He happened to know that there was a Heavy Cruiser in transit from Ypres to New Turin that could be re-routed, and if they put a priority on the escorting Frigate, getting it out of the yards ahead of schedule…
Checking the fuel status on the drone, which was a throwaway, he returned it back to the ship and picked up another limpet mine set. This the operative flew along the bottom of the station, until he got to a place he had found himself a day earlier. He repeated the setting of the mines, and powered them down. Miranda Station would be a bigger nut to crack with those damn battleship guns, but good things came to those who waited. The receiver battery had a year’s worth of power. He set the drone on a terminal course into the planet’s atmosphere, shut off the tablet, and got up to go get a beer in station.
Chapter 13
Chief Sparks walked up and down the boat bay. In front of her were the enlisted members of the Attack Shuttle Poison. Ensign Zlatcov was currently cooling her heals outside the Captain’s cabin. Sergeant Major Knight stood behind the squad, using a pocketknife to clean his fingernails. The Chief’s stride was short but measured as she walked slowly in front of them, turning a half dozen times with military precision. She finally stopped in front of Shupe.
“Good job patching up Yee. His leg should be OK by the time we get to our rendezvous with the research ship.” Yee stood next to Shupe, a bandage over his leg, crutch under one arm.
The Chief then moved over to Yee and looked up at him. “You, dumbass, got shot.” Yee said nothing, merely continued to stand at attention the best he could and look over her head. She stood on the toes of her boots and stared him in the eye.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? First time? What was it, Shupe?” asked the Chief, not breaking her eye lock with Yee.
“Three millimeter grav gun. Pocket pistol, meant to hit center mass at close range. Yee deflected the guy’s hand and it went through and through his calf. Luckily missed the bone or arteries, otherwise he’d have lost the leg, at a minimum. Doc Morano says he should be OK in a few days.”
Sparks continued to stare at Yee, then let herself off her toes. She paced over to the next man in line. Specialist Orr also looked straight ahead, over her short haircut. Even the former Nova Spania paratrooper, who had done orbital insertions in only a heat shield and parachute, was afraid of the diminutive Chief. She ran the enlisted crew of the Lady Lex with an iron fist, and if you screwed up, like they had, she would make their lives a holy hell.
&n
bsp; Sparks shook her head and walked away from Orr, then stopped in front of the last man, Bjorn Stenger. The giant American bent his head to look down at her, but looked straight ahead again when he saw the fury in her eyes.
“You, Sergeant Stenger. You were the ranking man in the party, and you let your crew get jumped by those dirtbags from the Crucible, RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR OWN GODDAMNED AIRLOCK. I mean, a bar fight—well, that’s fun for everyone. But to get ambushed? Goddamned dumbasses!” She almost hissed out the last word.
“Do you know what your problem is, Tank? You’ve been spending too much time in the hardsuit, not paying enough attention to your surroundings, just running and breaking heads. I’m going to let Sergeant Major Knight deal with that. I’m sure if he’d been with you, things would have been different, but you’ve become too dependent on his guidance and skills. Got anything to say for yourself?”
Apparently he didn’t. Neither did anyone else. Sparks walked back to the very first man in line, Recruit Cahr. “You did a damn good job, kid. Quick thinking. You’re rated Private as of yesterday.” She turned and motioned for Knight to follow her, and the two of them walked off behind one of the attack shuttles. None of them broke ranks, still standing in a line, waiting.
Cahr leaned over and asked Shupe “Why the hell is everyone so afraid of Chief Sparks?”
“She had over two hundred confirmed kills in the Manchu border war, going after enemy command and control elements.”
“I guess that’s a lot,” he whispered, “but there’s a bunch of famous snipers that have done more than that; anyone can point a lazergun.”