Version Innocent

by Pete Molina

Chapter 41

  Dawson was sleeping in his fog field bed when he felt the gravity disappear; that meant they weren’t thrusting any more. He checked his displays and found that they had been underway for only a handful of hours, far too soon to turn and begin deceleration. After a moment thrust resumed. Dawson accessed the ship’s Nav system to have it plot their course and the distance they’d traveled. They were only approaching the asteroid belt, and even he could see that halfway didn’t happen for more than a day. Something was definitely going on, and he decided that he’d better find out what, especially if the Express had changed course. He wouldn’t put it past Terra Gates to pull a fast redirect especially if she still suspected that they were being bugged. Unfortunately, The Express was now too far away for him to eavesdrop through Sam’s implant, so he’d need more information.

  He put his legs down and walked out of the field, stopping to put his clothes on. He could have queried the Captain directly, but he wanted to go the bridge first. Just as he was getting his pants on, the Captain came over the intercom. “Attention all hands, prepare for ten-g deceleration beginning in two minutes, mark.” That was all.

  Ten-g’s was nothing to laugh about. It was going to hurt like hell. Now Dawson had two options, go to the bridge and hope that the restraint chair and fog system could keep him from being squished or get back in his fog field bed so that the forces wouldn’t be pushing his head into the deck. He decided on the second and quickly finished pulling on his pants before jumping back in his fog field.

  In an emergency the fog in the ship would solidify to almost a gel consistency to help to shield the body from some aspects of large decelerations. In his bed, which was designed for that purpose, he could take ten-g’s for hours, but it would be uncomfortable. The fog would also hold him immobile a thought which terrified him even with his daily backups on the machine below. Dawson was getting upset and he wanted answers, so he opened a connection with the Captain.

  “Captain, what the hell is going on here?” he asked in a tone that spoke volumes of his disapproval. It took her a minute to respond, which just irked him even more.

  “We’ve received a distress call from a transport in the belt. They’re being attacked by pirates. We’re the only ship in range with a chance to do anything, so we’re going to decelerate and engage them,” the Captain replied matter-of-factly.

  “You realize that if we kill our velocity we’ll never make our arrival time at Europa,” Dawson snarled. “This will seriously jeopardize our mission, which I remind you has top priority.”

  “I’m sorry, Agent Dawson, but the distress signal has top priority right now, standing orders.” As if that explained everything. “I’ve had NAV compute a correction based on our expected time of engagement and we believe that if we thrust at ten-g’s after the engagement for four hours, we’ll be able to arrive within two hours of The Express.”

  “That’s unacceptable. We could lose them,” Dawson said angrily.

  “Unlikely, Agent Dawson. We have radioed ahead to one of our small patrol vessels that will keep an eye on them for us. We’re going to begin deceleration in twenty seconds. I suggest you strap in. You’re welcome to come to the bridge once we’ve matched speeds to watch if you like. I will be asking Lt. Madison to assist me. I trust that you won’t object,” Captain Whetherstone continued, seemingly impervious to Dawson’s arguments.

  Dawson mulled over her words and briefly considered having Lt. Madison implement the contingency plan to take control of the ship. But the law enforcement drive in him told him that if they could save lives and property and get to Europa at near the same time as The Express with a little discomfort…okay, a lot of discomfort…then it was probably worth it. He knew he’d regret his decision, but the Captain was only doing her job.

  “I won’t object, Captain. Just make sure that we make that rendezvous at Europa. And I’ll be up at the end of deceleration, which will be when?”

  “One point two hours, Agent Dawson, and thank you.” she said in a voice that for the first time in days sounded somewhat friendly.

  Then the connection was gone, and the ship began its massive deceleration. The air seemed to solidify around him and he couldn’t move at all. He felt as if he had an elephant sitting on his chest, which by now no doubt was filled with fog that was helping his chest cavity to remain operative despite the forces. At least this way he might have a chance of getting the Captain back on his side, which would be worth it in the long run. He didn’t want to take the ship if he didn’t have to. He just wished that they’d arrive less than two hours behind The Express.

  It was one hour and twelve minutes of sheer hell, but when the deceleration stopped and they were back at one-g and the air became clear again, he took a breath that felt so good, it was almost indescribable. It hadn’t been so bad except for the last hour, Dawson had tried to keep himself busy using his implants playing games and trying to ignore the crushing weight on his whole body, but eventually he’d just wanted out by any means necessary. You can’t argue with ten-g.

  The Captain came over the intercom. “Prepare to engage target in five minutes. Marines, please suit up for combat. All hands, please don your space suits.”

  Dawson had read the procedures for combat, and the Captain was following them to a T. She had an advantage that most ships didn’t, a platoon of space Marines who were no doubt at this minute linking up to form their group mind and armed with the most deadly personal combat equipment ever devised. Dawson opened the locker in his quarters that contained a space suit, and he shucked what little of his own clothing he had managed to get into before the deceleration, not wanting the suit to destroy them. They were his only pair of real pants. Without them he’d have to resort to wearing standard issue Fleet civilian clothes, for which he didn’t particularly care.

  Dawson lifted the small container over his head and poured out the black contents which oozed all over him, and then the transparent helmet formed over his head. He had his companion retract the hood before he walked in to the central shaft. He didn’t see any activity at all. Apparently the only person without any real place to be or thing to do was himself. He then felt the engines cut off and simulated gravity was restored, giving his stomach a whirl, followed by some more subtle thrusting.

  He stepped into the shaft and only seconds later was emerging from the irised entrance to the bridge now enlivened by combat visuals displayed in the large space in front of the Captain. She didn’t even glance at him as he took a seat in the chair at the back of the bridge. Lt. Bowman was seated in a restraint chair next to the Captain, also staring at the visual.

  The three-dimensional image was displayed using the fog already occupying the bridge, and it was showing a bubble that was about five meters across with icons that showed the cargo ship in blue, the pirate vessel in red, and the Powel in green. There was a line that radiated from each of the ships showing their velocity and direction as reported by the ship’s radar system. It looked like a video game. No doubt the tactical system had a much more complex display, and Dawson almost wished he could see them right now.

  “The pirate ship has been identified as a Sirius model Twenty Two Alpha,” the Tactical Officer reported. “The Tactical SS is giving good odds that it’s armed with particle cannons and lasers. So far they haven’t activated any mirror shielding.”

  “Good,” the Captain commented. “Any sign of antimatter usage?”

  “Not yet. They’re not thrusting at all so we can’t tell from their signature. Our particle detectors aren’t picking up anything either,” the Tactical officer reported further. They were still five minutes away at their velocity.

  “Have they seen us yet?” Dawson asked.

  “You can bet they have. Our rocket plume at ten-g’s would have been pretty bright, but we engaged our stealth system as soon as we were close enough. They haven’t pinged us with their radar yet, and we’ve moved off our
arrival vector. Hopefully, they don’t know where we are,” the Captain explained.

  Even though she was in command, most of the combat and decisions would be left to the computer which gave the Captain time talk with him. “Until they turn on their radar, they really can’t know where we are. We’re passive right now after our first few sweeps right when we came out of acceleration. If they turn back on their radar, they’ll just give themselves away.”

  “What’s the plan?” Dawson asked, hoping he wasn’t being too obtrusive to the operation.

  “Well, any minute now the Marines will be making a landing on the cargo ship. We deployed them just after we stopped decelerating. They’ll disable the pirate’s weapons if everything goes right. We could fire, but we don’t want the cargo ship to suffer collateral damage, and we’d like to get the crew back alive. Some bright lights appeared in the display.

  “They’ve pinged us,” Tactical said. Which, as Dawson understood, would mean their position would be given away entirely.

  “So much for the plan,” the Captain grimaced.

  Dawson had had some time to read up on Fleet combat tactics and space combat tactics in general during the more boring portions of the journey. The pirate would now use any course positional information on the Powel to start sweeping with their lasers. Just on cue they lit up again in the display. Then the real attack began.

  The camouflage on the Powel was mostly passive. It was state of the art, but it only helped, which was why they had mirror shielding which had been activated the instant they were pinged. The entire surface of the ship had a small layer of active shielding, much like that of a space suit, consisting of very small mechanisms that turned a mirrored tile a millionth of an inch on a side outward forming an almost smooth reflective surface all over the ship. The rest of the time they either tried to radiate heat or used a camouflage system that actively sent out light to make it look like the Powel wasn’t even there by projecting the background on the opposite side of the ship.

  Once the mirror tiles were in place, the lasers had practically no effect. The mirrors were good enough to reflect almost all of the beam’s energy, which was why it was only used to lock onto the target. The actual weapons were the particle cannons that were just particle accelerators that could throw particles at close to the speed of light. If there was enough mass flow, the particle cannon could eat through the mirror shielding in seconds at which point the lasers, which were quite powerful in their own right, could start damaging the hull where the particle cannon had breached.

  Most ships couldn’t hold up to a sustained attack for very long because they had minimal shielding and were for the most part unarmed, so space combat tended to be short lived. However, the Powel was both well shielded and armed to the teeth. The Tactical SS system pinpointed the laser and particle cannon within a microsecond of their becoming active and fired back using a one two punch, an antimatter beam to penetrate any shielding mirror or otherwise and a very high powered laser that vaporized the pirate’s weapons port. The pirate’s weapons became useless immediately. It was then that the real drama began.

  “Fleet Vessel, cease your attack or we will detonate this ship and take the crew and cargo ship with us,” the voice said, speaking for the pirates. Pirates always counted on the fact that there were few Fleet ships in range if they hit their target fast and then ran. It was a coward’s way out, but it was the one thing that they knew would buy them time.

  In most cases this was effective because the Fleet Captain couldn’t risk the lives of the hostages until there were no other options, but they also couldn’t negotiate with terrorists. On the plus side, all the crew members of the cargo ship had probably had a backup made in the not too distant past, so if they were killed, they could be restored, making the threat of the destruction of the ship the worse of the two. Captain Whetherstone, however, had an ace up her sleeve-the Marines who were presumably already out there. The Captain had the Com officer cut communication with the pirates, so she could speak to the Marines.

  “Lt. Madison, change in plans. I need you to infiltrate the ships and neutralize the pirates. Please confirm,” she ordered.

  “Confirmed. Contact with target in ten seconds,” Lt. Madison responded. The communication was quantum encrypted and so enmeshed with noise that the pirates had no hope of intercepting it.

  “Com, put the pirates on,” the Captain ordered.

  The Com officer indicated she could speak.

  “And with whom would I be speaking?” the Captain asked.

  “I’m sure you’d like to know. You can call me John Doe for now,” the Pirate leader replied.

  “Well then, Mr. Doe, as I see it, this situation can end in two ways. You can surrender now, or you can die.” The sound of a shot came from over the channel.

  “Captain, that was one of the hostages eating a bullet. I’ll keep shooting unless you deactivate your shields and weapons. If you don’t, or you come one inch closer, I’ll blow the ship.”

  “That’s unfortunate, Mr. Doe, because I can’t do that. So what do you propose we do here. The loss of the ship and cargo would be an inconvenience. The crew knows they can be restored. I don’t think you have the bargaining position you think you do. Now stand down and surrender,” she responded calmly. Hostage situations weren’t nearly as much a bargaining chip since restoration technology had been introduced. The cargo of that ship, however, did have a substantial value, whatever it was.

  “Afraid I can’t do that. I’d hate to lose my ship, but we’re all backed up here too. I should warn you, I have antimatter and I will use it if necessary,” he threatened.

  Dawson could see the Captain grow more concerned. She knew the pirates couldn’t have too much of the stuff, but a little of it went a long way, and it was pretty hard to defend against, depending on how it was delivered.

  By now the Marines must be inside. Dawson flipped his displays to show him the Marine’s view if it were available. What he saw was Lt. Madison’s perspective, moving through the cargo vessel. She was camouflaged and invisible. In a threat with an advanced enemy the Marines wouldn’t have risked their transmission, but the pirates probably couldn’t intercept it with their equipment, so Lt. Madison had probably decided it was safe. She rounded a corner in the cargo hold and saw three men with hand weapons circling five others who had their hands on their heads and were in an execution position.

  “You better shut the fuck up or you’re going to be juice on the wall, and the next thing you’ll see will be the fucking nurse on Earth,” one of the pirates threatened a hostage who was still standing.

  Behind them all Dawson could see two of the other Marines circling around. It only took a few seconds and afterward Dawson wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but the Marines all fired their weapons simultaneously and the three men dropped to the floor.

  The Marines didn’t wait around for the stunned hostages to figure out what happened but immediately regrouped and headed for the crew section of the ship. It only took four more minutes for John Doe to appear in Madison’s view. The Captain had managed to keep him occupied that whole time, but Dawson could tell he was getting more restless by the second. He was on the bridge of his ship sitting in a restraint chair, with the look of someone who is fully immersed.

  The pirate ship probably didn’t have a very sophisticated SS system, so John Doe was interfacing to pick up the slack and he didn’t even notice Lt. Madison who was approaching quickly. The Captain, who must have also been watching Lt. Madison’s display, finally said, “Fine, we’ll power down our weapons.” Then she gave the signal to cut communications.

  “Lt. Madison, please have your systems man crack the pirate ship’s systems. I don’t want any dead man triggers going off.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Madison responded.

  “Tactical, power down weapons. Let them think they’ve won.”

  “Lt. Madison, as soon as you
have the ship, you may break Mr. Doe’s interface the fast way,” she ordered.

  “Good, I’m glad you’ve come around Captain, but I warn you no tricks or I’ll use my antimatter,” John Doe said, apparently thinking that perhaps he’d won. “Now how about those shields. Lower them please.”

  Lt. Madison pointed her arm towards John Doe and a second later he screamed in agony. The Marine had used a directed EMP weapon to burn out the pirate’s implants, thereby rendering him incapable of interfacing with the ship and with all the residual charge in the implant’s circuits causing a great deal of pain. The EMP was short range, so it was unlikely it had damaged the ship too much. The Marines themselves were shielded from the effect.

  “We have control,” Madison said over the link. “The ship is secure. We only lost one hostage, and we have no casualties. All of the pirates are currently immobilized.”

  “Excellent job, Lieutenant. You’re to be commended. I’d like for you to gather the pirates, take DNA samples and confirm their identities. Ditto for their leader.”

  “Affirmative,” the Lieutenant replied and the connection was closed.

  “So what are you going to do with the pirates?” Dawson asked, he didn’t like the idea of having them along for the trip.

  “We’ll back them up with our system and then show them to the airlock,” the Captain said without hesitation. “I’ll also send to Fleet to have any restoration of them from any previous version halted until they are restored on Earth for trial.”

  Dawson had to admit this was one way not to have to carry the prisoners everywhere, and backups couldn’t try to escape. On Earth, when Dawson apprehended someone, he had to bring them in alive or have a backup made so the prisoner didn’t try to kill themselves before a backup could be put in the system. Those were the only ways to ensure that an out of date version wasn’t restored who might be innocent of the crime. The pirates’ restoration on Earth would probably be their last because the punishment for any serious crime was the revoking of the individual’s right to be restored and a long prison sentence.

  “Lt. Bowman, please take the launch and pick up the Marines and the prisoners. Put the crew members of the cargo ship back where they belong and tell them to be on their way,” the Captain ordered.

  “What about their ship?” Dawson asked.

  The Captain turned to look at him. “We’ll put a portable SS system aboard to take it back to Earth for impoundment. If the ship deviates from its course, then the SS system will self destruct and take the ship with it.” It was apparently standard procedure.

  “How long till we’re back on track?” Dawson asked. He was glad he got to see the ship and the Marines in action, but every second they were here was costing them.

  “We’ll be underway as soon as the prisoners are backed up,” she said. That wasn’t likely to take long at a few minutes each. Dawson was satisfied.

  As it turned out, there were fifteen prisoners and backing them up took an hour, as they weren’t willing participants. The crew of the cargo ship, which turned out to be called the Ursa Major, couldn’t express enough gratitude, and they wanted to throw a party for the crew of the Powel but the Captain refused, telling them they had urgent business and to be on their way. The prisoners were anesthetized and tossed out the airlock by the Marines. Ten minutes later the main thruster fired. It would accelerate them at ten-g’s for the next four hours. Dawson had taken a sedative in the hopes that he’d sleep through the whole thing along with everyone aboard who wasn’t urgently needed.