Pirate Moon

by C P MacDonald

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Lunar Escape Preview

  Lunar Escape

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About the Author

  Pirate Moon

  By

  C.P. MacDonald

  Copyright © 2019 C.P. MacDonald

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means,

  Including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author,

  Except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  P.O. Box 314

  Paris, Tn 38242

  U.S.A.

  www.cpmacdonaldauthor.com

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 1

  In one fluid motion Calin Aku drew his blaster from its holster and pressed the barrel between the eyes of the dust-covered miner. A rainbow of vivid colors reflected off the metal of his cybernetic arm and blaster from the bright neon bar lights above, a stark contrast to his mood.

  “That ain’t your beer, boy,” he growled, the irritation in his voice unmistakable.

  The drunk miner starred at the blaster barrel in his face with wide eyes. Then he placed Calin’s mug back on the bar and raised his hands into the air as he backed away. In his haste to get away he tripped over a bar stool and hit the floor with a drunken thud.

  Calin dismissed the intoxicated miner on the floor by turning back to the bar. He slipped his blaster back into its holster and took a slow sip of his beer. His eyes skimmed over the rowdy crowd of lunar miners for any threats, but his little altercation had gone unnoticed. He suppressed a gag at the taste of the poor excuse for a beer, the drink as crude as the bar he sat in. The tavern was assembled out of cargo containers on the dark side of the Moon. Part of an illegal mining operation that had been carved into the side of a crater and deep into the lunar crust. And the air, clouded with smoke and thick with Moon dust, stank of overworked bodies. The jerry-rigged air scrubbers overhead whined with the effort to keep the CO2 below lethal levels.

  “Making friends as usual I see“, said Dean, his crewmate and the Engineer of the ship The Sea Rover. Dean lifted the fallen bar stool off the floor and sat beside him.

  Calin motioned to the barkeep to bring another round for both of them. "That's me, Mr. Friendly." He said with a shrug.

  Dean gave the dirty mug in front of him a skeptical expression before he took an experimental sip, shrugged, and swallowed a large gulp of beer.

  Without taking his eyes off the zero-g volleyball tournament displayed on the vid-screen above them, he asked Calin “Is she finished yet?”

  Calin glanced toward a shadowed corner of the room where a short, small-framed woman was wagging her finger in the tattooed and pierced face of a large miner. He replied with a sigh, “I think she’s still getting warmed up”.

  He was referring to Neomi Otani, Captain of the Sea Rover, and their employer. If the Moon had a Smuggling Queen, it was their boss. With a legendary hot temper and cold-as-space bitchy attitude, Neomi had been smuggling throughout the Solar System for as long as anyone can remember. And right now she was directing her notorious temper at the supervisor of the mine. After working for her for years, Calin knew it meant contract negotiations were not going well.

  With a shake of his head, Calin tossed down the last of his beer and motioned for Dean to follow. They slipped through the crowd of ragged workers toward Neomi as the mine boss towered over her and waved his arms in agitation. Calin did not hear what he said but he could see the supervisor's few remaining teeth gnashing as he cussed at the Captain. Behind the supervisor, a bodyguard stood up as the tensions rose and tempers flared.

  When they got closer, they heard Neomi bark “You better sit your big ass back in that chair, boy!”, her voice cut through the noise of the bar with ease. She glared up at the miner with her fists on her hips and an amused glint in her eye. Calin had worked for the Captain long enough to know even a large miner would not intimidate her. Right now her manner was more of a mother dealing with a petulant child.

  “Did you think, even for a second, that you can strong-arm me, much less screw me over on a deal? Without me, your ore sits in that tunnel and goes nowhere. And I will make damn sure no one else will touch it.” Neomi stood her ground and twisted her neck to look up at the miner. The discrepancies in their sizes were almost comical, a petite older woman and a giant that made Calin feel small. At almost 2 meters tall himself, even he had to look up at the mining boss.

  The bulky boss continued to glare down his nose at Neomi, his fists opened and closed repeatedly as he struggled to control his urge to swat her like a fly. His guard placed his finger on the trigger of his rifle and stepped up beside his boss. Calin saw this and edged closer to Neomi, his metal right arm reached down and rested on the gun holster strapped to his thigh. Dean moved to the other side of the Captain to flank the mining leader and his guard.

  Calin hated it when negotiations got touchy, but he always admired Captain Neomi’s stubbornness because she never backed down or accepted a bad contract. His official position was the pilot of the Sea Rover, the Captain’s ship. But he seemed to spend more time saving her ass than flying for her. He couldn’t complain, she had taken him on and given him a job when no one else would.

  Back when he flew surface patrols for the Planetary Patrol Division there wasn’t a smuggler or pirate he couldn’t catch, including the smugglers who worked for Neomi. During his service, he believed what he was doing was the right thing. It was his duty to uphold the laws and to catch criminals. It wasn’t until later did he understand some of those “criminals” were ordinary folk who wanted real freedom in their life. The freedom to go where they want. The freedom to do what they want. And the freedom to live their life their own way, all without a government committee to dictate what they said, what they wore, and where they worked.

  But all of this was before the accident and before he lost his arm. To the PPD, a one-armed space jockey was no pilot at all and they medically discharged him out of the service. But Captain Neomi had admired his innate skill for flying and hired him, even got him this cybernetic arm so he could fly again. Over the past 10 years, he had worked off the cost of the arm and could have moved on to other jobs. But he stayed on as Neomi’s pilot, and as her occasional bodyguard because he respected her. And with her almost every day was a new adventure.

  The deep voice of the mine boss boomed throughout the bar, "Damn, woman. You really are the cold pirate they say you are."

  “Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now if we're finished insulting each other, maybe we can move on and make a deal? Do you want the mining equipment I brought or not?” Neomi asked with a raised eyebrow. “I’ll even throw in an extra blasting barrel for free.”

  Before the agitated mine boss could respond, an alarm blared through the makeshift bar, strobing red lights illuminated the crowd of ragtag miners and their confused faces. Their confusion changed to fear as the sound of blasters thumped against the outer wall. Someone yelled “It’s a raid!”

  The vid-screen they had watched earlier switched to the exterior surveillance cameras. Outside PPD troop carriers covered the floor of the crater, with surface patrol ships hovering above them. Squads of armed soldiers in battle spacesuits streamed out of the carriers and took up offensive positions outside the mine.

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 2

  The mine boss jumped up, whipped out a pistol, and pointed it straight at Neomi’s head. “You pirate bitch! You snitched us out!”
His guard snapped his laser rifle up and tried to cover both Calin and Dean at the same time. Calin used the cramped conditions of the bar to his advantage and moved to where the guard could not get a clear line of fire. The frantic motion of the miners exiting through the rear airlock into the mine covered his movement.

  Captain Neomi, crossed her arms and replied to the mine boss, “It wasn’t me. If there’s a leak it’s from within your organization, not mine.”

  Calin could see the paranoia in the supervisor’s eyes flare, his finger tightening on the trigger of the pistol pointed at Neomi.

  Checking the security camera feed of the PPD troops outside again, Calin interrupted “We don’t have time for this.” And in one motion his cybernetic arm snatched his blaster out of his holster and squeezed off two quick shots at the mining leader. The bolts hit their target in the chest center mass and punched through the thick mining spacesuit. Dean, ever resourceful, grabbed a chair and smashed it over the head of the guard. As the engineer of the Sea Rover, Dean never carried a gun, not that he could hit a target with it if he tried. Meanwhile, the loud blasts and bright flashes of Calin’s shots increased the frenzied rush of the crowd toward the airlock.

  As the mining boss fell to the ground dead, Calin grabbed Captain Neomi by the arm and pulled her toward the back of the bar. "Party's over Boss, time to go!" he said.

  They caught up to Dean at the airlock where they sealed their spacesuits before they exited the bar through the airlock force field into the mine. The tunnels had enough atmosphere to keep the temperature above freezing, but not enough to breathe without a mask or helmet. No one is going to complain about working conditions in an illegal mine, the miners only want to get paid, to support their families and make a living. Quality jobs were in short supply on the Moon, and the regulated jobs rarely paid a livable wage. Unless you were the owner of a mining company or tourist attraction, survival on the Moon was a constant struggle.

  “Damn it Calin, did you have to kill him?” Neomi asked over the suit comms as they entered the mining tunnels behind the bar.

  "Sorry, I had aimed for his gun, but this damn prosthetic glitched out again," he apologized as he raised up his metal arm.

  “Bend down here so I can smack that empty head of yours.” Neomi exhaled her frustration before she continued, “But remind me to look into an upgrade when we get out of this mess. Killing our clients is bad for business. Right now we need to find a way to the Sea Rover.”

  She turned to the crowd of miners that had gathered in the tunnel and switched her suit comm to a public channel.

  Waving her arms for their attention, she said, “If you don’t have a ride off this rock, you are welcome to come with us. It won’t be comfy but we can squeeze all of you on board my ship.”

  Calin, did not agree with his Captain’s generosity and expressed his concern over their private channel. “That many bodies will slow us down. We need to get out of here, and fast.”

  Rejecting Calin’s objection she pointed out, “I’m not leaving them to the PPD. They were only here to do a job and get paid, illegal mine or not. They don’t deserve what the PPD will do to them, and you know it.” Calin reluctantly agree with her. It didn’t look like the PPD were in the mood to take prisoners with the amount of firepower they had brought with them. Any survivors would be sent to The Deep, the government-controlled deep mine here on the dark side of the Moon. It made this illegal mine look like a vacation resort. Most lunar mining operations, legal and illegal, mined Ilmenite. The mineral was high in titanium and oxygen, both considered precious resources here on the Moon. But difficult to extract and process.

  As he watched her gather up the scared miners, he didn’t know what to think of the Captain. At times she was heartless and cold as a Moon rock. And other times she was one of the most caring people he had ever met, in a relentless, nagging mother kind of way. A fact his metal arm reminded him of every day.

  With a quick glance back through the airlock, Calin confirmed the bar was empty and fired a bolt into the control panel next to it. When the force field failed, a metal hatch slammed down and sealed the doorway. “That ought to slow them down a little.” He said with a grin and turned to follow the others escaping deeper into the mine.

  Dean used a map of the mine displayed above his suit gauntlet to lead the way through the spider-web of man-made tunnels. The tunnels also connected to large caverns carved into the side of the crater concealing mining equipment and ships out of view of orbiting satellites. He had parked the Sea Rover in one of these caverns, but getting to it was a problem with the PPD parked outside on the crater floor. Dean’s job was to find another way through the maze of tunnels their ship.

  They had only traveled a couple of hundred meters when, even in the thin atmosphere of the mine, they felt the pressure wave of an explosion and heard a low rumble. The PPD troops must have blown out the airlock’s metal hatch.

  “Hold up!” Neomi commanded as she stopped at a hover cart parked in the main tunnel. Even through the glare of her helmet, Calin could see a mischievous grin on her face as she examined the self-driving cart. She motioned for two miners to hand over their mining lasers. Calin and Dean glanced at each other, confused. The mining lasers were handheld lasers powered by a power core worn as a backpack. Unless you pointed the laser end at someone they were not dangerous.

  Meanwhile, Neomi placed the lasers in the back of the cart and bypassed the safety protocols through the control panel on each backpack. With a pleased nod to herself, she entered the bar as the destination in the navigation panel of the cart.

  With a tap of her finger on the screen, the hover cart rose off the floor and floated down the tunnel the way they had come. Neomi turned to them with a smile and motioned them to continue forward.

  Calin, with one eye on the tunnel behind them, asked, “What was that all about?”

  She looked at a clock on her glove, and in a calm voice counted down, “3..2..1..” When she reached 0 they felt the pressure wave of another large explosion from behind them in the tunnel. The ground jumped beneath their feet as a thick cloud of gray Moon dust billowed through the tunnel toward them.

  “I overloaded the power packs on the lasers. It should buy us a few minutes.” She said with an impish grin. “But we need to hurry, these tunnels are interconnected. It won’t take them long to bypass the collapsed portion of the shaft.”

  “And where did you learn that interesting trick?” he asked as their ragtag group followed Dean down the tunnel.

  Laughing, Neomi said, “What? Did you think I was always this suave, cool Captain of a spaceship you see before you?”

  The Captain rarely talked about her past, so Calin grabbed the opportunity and continued by asking, “Turning the power pack of a mining laser into a delayed bomb? That’s not something you learn on any job I know of.”

  The mirth in her voice vanished as she said, “And you won’t. I worked with an engineer once. He spent more time figuring out how to blow stuff up than fixing them.”

  “Worked with? He didn’t work for you?”

  With a shake of her head, she said, “Nope. At the time I was the Admin of a tech lab and he was my Lead Engineer.”

  The hint of loneliness in her voice gave Calin the impression the Engineer had been more than a colleague.

  “This Engineer, he was a friend?”

  Snapping herself out of her memories, she replied; “Yea, he was.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The idiot blew himself up.” Came her flat response.

  “Oh, sorry.” He offered sincerely.

  Even over their suit comms, he could hear the forced lightheartedness in her voice as she laughed and continued. “But, this was long before I found the Sea Rover and became the smuggler extraordinaire you see before you today.”

  While they talked their group had worked their way deeper into the mine, the only light coming from the lamps on their helmets. The tunnel disappeared into blackness
both in front of them and behind them

  During their escape through the tunnels, several miners with their own ships broke off from the crowd until there were only 6 left.

  Dean, with his head tilted down to his display, held up his fist to signal everyone to stop. “Here,” he said and gestured to the wall to their right, “3 feet through that rock is the cave with the Sea Rover. This is as close as we can get.”

  He gathered up the leftover miners around him and told them “If all of you focus your mining lasers at this section of the wall, we can drill our way through. And be prepared for the explosive decompression when you breach through to the cave on the other side.”

  Neomi contacted the Sea Rover through her command channel and ordered Rose, the ship’s on-board Artificial Intelligence, to warm up the engines and to lower the loading ramp.

  Everyone braced themselves behind large rocks and support columns as the miners drilled through the wall between them and the ship. Within a few minutes, there was a sharp whistle as the air in the tunnel escaped in a sudden rush of wind out to the surface of the Moon.

  They filed through the narrow opening, careful of the still hot walls from the lasers, and out into a large man-made cave. And there, parked in the center was the Sea Rover.

  For anyone who didn’t know her, she looked like an antique pile of junk. But Calin knew better and to him, she was always a beautiful sight.

  The Sea Rover was a decommissioned Solar System Authority Small Corvette. She had the smooth lines of an atmospheric shuttle but more range than a cargo ship because of her two large engines. When the military retired ships they were recycled and sold for scrap. But Captain Neomi somehow had gotten hold of the Sea Rover before it reached the scrap yard. Her hull was old, patched, and welded in a dozen places but her engines and tech were all updated with the best military hardware on the black market.