Privateers in Exile

by Jamie McFarlane

  Relief flooded my chest as Ada applied wide med-patches to the skin over my ribs. "Whew. That feels amazing," I said. "Yeah. Sort of old, I guess. Marny has some gray hair and she's lost all her muscle. Well, that's not exactly true. She is still strong, but without workouts and the right diet, she's not nearly as big."

  "That's hard to picture," Ada said.

  "Long light brown hair with gray streaks," I said, trying to help complete the picture. "Kind of talks like a Zen monk."

  "Oh, she always did that," Ada said. "It just sounded different because she was so intimidating physically."

  I laughed and was pleased to discover that it only hurt a little. "Peter's all grown up. You want to talk about a mountain of a man. That's him. No more boy."

  "You're not talking about Tabby. Is she okay?" Ada asked, her face very concerned.

  "Yeah, she is," I said, my voice taking on a neutral tone. I didn't intend to give away any of my feelings, but there was no getting around Ada.

  "Spill it, Hoffen. What's going on with Tabby?" she growled, lifting my right arm, her scanner locating the break that Nothando had healed with his rocks.

  "You gotta know, none of it is her fault," I said.

  "Liam." Ada's voice held a warning. She wasn't going to be satisfied without the full story.

  "She and Peter hooked up a year ago or so," I said. "They believed I was dead and that they were never getting out of here. She lost a baby before it was born. When they found me, she got pretty messed up about it. She gave me the ring back."

  "Oh, Liam," Ada's face filled with pity and she instinctively wrapped her arms around me. "I'm sorry. She must be hurting so bad."

  "We had words," I said. "I didn't handle it very well."

  "You left it that way?" Ada asked, her eyebrows almost disappearing into her scalp.

  "No. She's still trying to figure out what she wants to do," I said.

  "What do you want, Liam?" Ada asked.

  "I want to kick Anino's ass," I said. "We can't sit here much longer. People are depending on us back in the city."

  "That's not really an answer, you know," Ada said.

  "It's the best I have right now," I said. "Geez, it's so good to see you, Ada."

  "It's weird," she said. "It feels like yesterday when we got into the tanks."

  "I know. I felt the same way. Only for me, somehow, I'd turned into a stick," I said.

  "Well, you're not a stick now," she said. "Mountain living is good for you."

  "It's a hard living," I said. "Marny, Nick and Tabby have been through some real crap to survive."

  "Let me guess. Nick has a workshop set up?"

  "Barn. Yes. They make their own clothing and houses. He even forged an iron knife," I said. "I wish we could hang out, but I need to go back to the city. There's a woman who risked her life for me and might still be alive. I've got to help her."

  "What do you need me to do?" Ada asked.

  "Put together a med kit programmed for Scatter biology," I said. "Bongiwe, that's the woman, took an energy blaster to her arm. Lost a lot of blood. I'm afraid she might have died."

  I really wanted to look for Thabini, but had no way of locating the area where he’d fallen from his bird. Even if he had survived, there was no doubt in my mind that Belirand would have scooped him up. Nonetheless, once I got to Bongiwe, we'd scour the forest for him on the off-chance he was alive and had evaded our common enemy.

  "Copy that," Ada answered. "I'll see if I can get us back into Hotspur's systems."

  "You might think about taking a shower, too," I quipped as I exited the medical bay. "You've got suspension goo in your hair and I'm not the only one who's got a smell going."

  My first stop wasn’t the armory, but rather the galley. I hadn't eaten in forever and it had been almost as long since I'd had anything to drink. Oddly, however, I needed desperately to use a bathroom.

  Standing inside Hotspur's head felt weird. For the last several months, I'd either used a bucket, outhouse or just done my business in the woods. Seeing a personal groomer next to the sink, I couldn't help but pick it up. Bongiwe needed my help, but it would only take a minute or two to cut back the massive hair growth that had been driving me nuts. While I wouldn't feel right about take the time for a full shower, I did grab hygiene wipes for a quick once-over, removing long built-up layers of grime. It was an amazing feeling to be back to a semi-civilized state. Having taken a moment to clean up, my suit-liner and vac-suit would easily take care of the rest.

  "Naked, coming through," I said, dropping my ruined clothing into the recycler and grabbing a water pouch from the nearby galley.

  "You clean up nice," Ada said, leaning out of the medical bay and slapping me on the ass as I passed.

  "Pervert," I called over my shoulder, chuckling and turning into the armory, where I pulled on a fresh suit-liner, relishing the snug fit.

  I took a long drag from the water pouch and considered my next move. Ideally, I'd have my grav-suit, but that'd been taken from me. It was something I'd need to deal with, but wasn’t a today issue. I could either choose a normal vac-suit or the much bulkier armored suit. Then it occurred to me that Tabby, Marny and Ada's grav-suits were all up on the second deck.

  "Where are you going?" Ada asked as I ran past her, turning to starboard as I passed the engineering bay.

  "Grav-suit," I called back. "Mine was taken. Borrowing Tabby's."

  I stepped into the zero-grav field that joined the lower deck to the upper. I'd worried that Anino's lockout might prevent me from using it, but was grateful to discover the field was still there and I landed softly on the top deck.

  We hadn't spent any time in our quarters beyond just dropping off our luggage before we'd left. It felt weird to find our duffels just where we'd left them twenty years ago. The moment I saw Tabby's duffel next to mine, I came to a decision. I would not go down without a fight. I'd loved Tabby from the moment we met in pre-school. It was a different kind of love, but that love had grown into a high-school crush and finally into the relationship of our lives. I would not allow time to steal that from us anymore than I would allow my bruised ego to push her away.

  I smiled as I pulled on the grav-suit that still smelled faintly of her. I checked for power and was glad to find the display indicated one hundred percent. While the grav-suit didn't have quite the armor of the military-grade armored suits, it would more than repel either the charged-particle rounds or the blaster-energy rounds Belirand soldiers had so fondly sent my way.

  "I'll drop a couple of comm repeaters along the way," I said, joining Ada in the medical bay. "You might get company since they know we were in here. I think Hotspur is deep enough inside this cave system that Belirand won’t be able to bring in a weapon big enough to cause you much trouble."

  "Go, Liam," Ada said, handing me a pouch that contained medical supplies. "Why are you smiling?"

  "Grav-suit smells like Tabby," I said.

  "You're such a goof," she said with a grin. "Don't worry, I know how important this old girl is to us. I'll keep her safe."

  On the way past, I stopped back in the armory and took a heavy blaster rifle, a heavy flechette pistol, a strip of grenade balls and my favorite: FBD or flash-bang-disc. While neither my knee nor ribs were back to normal, I felt better than I could remember feeling in months.

  Exiting the ship, I considered my options. No doubt Belirand would be guarding the cave entrance. Inside, the crystals turned energy bolts against the wielder. The same would not be true once I got outside. Looking around at all the light filling the grotto, I got an idea. I moved across the room and slid through the beautiful crystal structures, discovering a narrow route to the surface.

  "I'm outside, Ada," I said, dropping my first comm repeater, a simple device about the size of a fly that would relay our communications.

  "Do we still have company?" she asked.

  "I came out a different way. Checking." I used the grav-suit to lower myself into the surrounding tree
s. I wasn't surprised to see the decrepit Belirand cutter just outside the cave entrance. Four soldiers had constructed a barricade and taken up defensive positions facing the opening. The ship's one blaster was also pointing in that direction. I was just starting to turn toward the Thandeka, when Tabby's suit connected unexpectedly with my broken grav-suit. Interestingly enough, it was on the ship in front of me. A data-stream transmitted and I discovered that only one soldier remained aboard. To make things even more interesting, that soldier was the one who'd stolen my engagement rings.

  "Yeah, their ship is here, and it’s guarded. But you know what? This shite's getting old."

  "Liam?"

  "Yeah?" I asked, ducking back into the cover of the tree tops while peeling a grenade marble from where it was stuck to my belt.

  "Don't do anything heroic, okay?" she said. "There are a lot of people relying on you."

  "That's right. Nothing heroic," I said. "This is strictly payback."

  Chapter 17

  Mostly Harmless

  I took my eyes off the ship for a moment as I dialed back the lethality of the grenade marbles. This was a mistake. Fortunately, I caught the movement of the ship’s single turret as it swung and fired. Instinctively, I dove in the direction of the ship as a shot ripped the tops of the nearby trees off and I was suddenly awash in the boiling atmosphere left behind in its wake. While the top-of-the-line grav-suit I wore was no match for even a glancing blow from the smallest ship's blaster, the material deflected the momentary wave of gasses that followed the round.

  I grinned, emerging from the flames. I was finally in my element. No more slogging around in sodden boots on snowy mountain slopes. The suit's gravity tech propelled me through the air as if I were in zero-g and I pressed forward to the ship that lay only sixty meters from my position. I could envision the gunner trying to reorient his aim. Even with aid of an AI, a person can only move the mass of a heavy weapon like that so fast. The fact that I hadn't been blasted into paste told me no AI was involved. I liked my chances.

  I sailed to the ship, switching angles periodically, and was rewarded by a second shot that missed me by dozens of meters. It's hard to describe just how quickly things occur in this kind of combat situation. The entire encounter had only taken a couple of seconds and caught the three barricaded ground crew completely off guard. Unfortunately, being fired upon had startled me into dropping the grenade balls.

  The soldiers outside the ship had been expecting us to exit the cave and their barricade was set up with that in mind. I came at them from an oblique angle and used the piston arm of the ship’s ramp as a partial visual block. Still, I was only blocked by the piston arm of the ramp from which they'd exited the ship. Two of the soldiers were in a decent position to fire on me when I finally overran them. I still felt I had the advantage. Unless someone repeatedly practiced firing at fast-moving targets, hitting one was more a matter of luck. It is one of the unusual times when firing more rounds is helpful, if only marginally.

  While Anino's grav-suit was no match for ship fire, the material was designed to deflect modern blaster weapons like I was carrying. More important, however, is that the grav-suit dissipates as much of the energy received as possible and spreads out the remainder. Fortunately for me, the soldiers were carrying weapons that appeared to have been designed a couple hundred years in the past. It's not as if the three shots that made contact didn't hurt. To the contrary, each shot was quite painful. The best description I could come up with was that it felt like being hit on bare skin by an angry meter-wide jellyfish whose myriad tentacles were filled with electric charge, then having hot sauce splashed into the welts they left behind. Not a happy moment to be sure. The only good news was that the pain didn’t usually last for more than two or three seconds.

  Just to review. Up to this point, I'd been treated rather poorly by this group in general. I'd been imprisoned, beaten, chased and made to endure sitting impotently in my cell while a woman was raped outside my cell. Charity was far from my mind, even before I was pelted by their stupid weapons. Now, I was flat out angry. Just why I didn't drop a couple of fully-charged grenade balls on them is something I'm not completely sure of. I think I was tired of the killing, but I also think I was looking to cause pain. And I saw so many choices.

  I lowered my armored head and hit the first soldier straight in the chest. I was moving fast and by the time he realized my intent, there was nothing he could do. My suit stiffened upon contact and I might have grinned as I realized he’d been hurled up into the steel pole that connected the end of the ship's ramp to its belly. All my training with Marny kicked in and I rolled on the ground, twisting so I came back up facing two very surprised soldiers.

  Fear can often be confused with anger on a man's face. I'd always been good at reading people and the youngest soldier, who I estimated to be in his late teens, was terrified. That assessment was the only thing that kept me from mowing him down right then and there with my blaster rifle, even though he’d managed to land a very painful shot at waist level. That's right, hot sauce jelly fish to the midsection was about as bad as it gets.

  Instead, I slapped my chest and set off the FBD. It was Marny who'd first introduced me to the technology. The disk was named after the original ordnance from ages ago called a flash bang grenade, a one-time use device that made a big bang and bright flash. FBDs were a relatively simple technology you could put on an armored suit. When activated, the disc emitted an intensely bright strobe light and periodically caused an explosive sound well past anything human ears can deal with.

  Using an FBD is bad news if not worn in conjunction with an AI that coordinates polarization of the suit's faceplate with the flashes and a counter soundwave to blunt the banging sounds. I'd used the FBDs a few times and when they're active it seems like everything is moving in quick jerks and spurts accentuated by a weird whooshing sound which turns out to the be the tail-end of the cancelled explosive sound.

  The effect on the remaining two soldiers was almost instantaneous as first the light blinded them and then they were deafened by the explosion. Seeing their lack of mobility, I slapped my blaster rifle onto my back and unstrapped my heavy flechette. People who are being attacked get squirrely, as evidenced by the youngest firing wildly as he spun in pain. I needed to subdue them before they could recover. Recognizing my dilemma, the AI offered a prompt for sedative-tipped darts. I happily chinned agreement and triple shot each of the three men, starting with the wild shooter.

  The sedatives would keep my welcoming committee down for at least an hour, allowing me to turn my attention to the remaining soldier in the ship. I wondered just what he had planned for me. The fight had moved fast, but he’d no doubt been watching the events unfold. Belirand had found the Scatter population to be pushovers and as a result, their soldiers were sloppy, not believing anyone would put up a real fight. These guys had started the day believing they were the biggest and baddest on the block. I was guessing, right now, they’d all like to vote for a mulligan.

  Linking with my captured grav-suit, I discovered two people aboard, one of whom was a Scatter woman cowering against the bridge's starboard bulkhead. I didn’t think she'd cause me much trouble. Of no surprise to me, the soldier who remained was flipping switches and trying to start up the ship's old engines.

  "Too late, dumbass," I said, slapping off my FBD and redirecting speech through the stolen vac-suit that lay discarded on a filthy bench opposite the terrified Scatter woman. It would have been easier for me to enter the ship with the FBD still going, but I had some idea about how the woman had been treated to this point and wasn't adding any other abuses to that tally if I could avoid it.

  The man spun around, eyes passing over my suit, not picking up on what I'd done. "Who's there?" he asked, pushing the flight sticks forward and lifting off.

  "You should have closed the hatch when you heard the shots," I taunted.

  A blaster bolt from his pistol ricocheted off the bulkhead above my suit a
s he fired blindly, thinking I was somehow hidden in plain sight. "Get off my ship! You're so dead. We own this planet," he jabbered, looking for some way to influence the outcome.

  I slipped down the narrow passageway and was stopped by a locked hatch. I nodded in approval; at least he'd thought that far ahead.

  "Switch to the non-public Scatter language," I directed my AI. "To the Scatter woman: please move away from the back of the bridge. The door will explode inward in a couple of seconds."

  I wasn't sure she would understand or even if my AI had the ability to fully translate. The basic concept must have made it through, because she looked back at the hatch, scurried forward and affixed herself to the side of the ship.

  I hadn't brought breaching charges and wasn't even sure if we had any aboard Hotspur. This hatch, however, was corroded and the locking mechanism was simple. A central wheel was mounted on each side of the door attached to two long bars. When twisted, the bars extended, one into the ceiling and the other into the floor, locking the door in place. Without the view from my captured grav-suit, I wouldn’t have known where to place the grenade marbles, although it might not have mattered either way, given the door's condition.

  After placing the grenades on a ten second timer, I moved back down the hallway and around a corner. The grav-suit was more than capable of taking all but an adjacent explosion from a grenade marble, but I was tired of the jellyfish feeling already. What I didn't foresee was the random event that occurred next. In a million years, a person couldn't count on a breached door sending a silver-bullet piece of shrapnel into the room and perfectly taking out the enemy inside. When that enemy is sailing the ship you happen to be on, of course that's exactly what's going to happen.

  "Aww, frak," I complained as the ship lurched forward, listing to the side. Somehow the dumbass had effectively used the time I'd given him and gained several hundred meters in elevation. We were losing that at a ridiculous velocity. Even worse, as I ran forward through the debris, my AI showed me that one of the flight sticks had broken off in the guy’s hand.