Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

"Strange Bedfellows" part 1

The PRIVATEER Stories
"Strange Bedfellows"
by David Dixon

The Ogre headed straight for us a couple of dozen klicks out, upper and lower turrets blasting past our Black Sun 490 and dangerously close to me. My turret was facing rearward, and I sweated in my cramped quarters as I tried to throw off the aim of the Jasper 12 who was in the process of eating our rear shields for lunch.

The boss faked a climb and then dove, exposing the Jasper to the full fury of the Ogre’s guns. The larger ship’s lasers stripped the Jasper’s shields in a scant half a second and peeled his armor back a half a second later. The Jasper tried to pull off his attack run, realizing his mistake in veering too close to the massive cargo ship’s guns, but didn’t make it. I winced as the ship came apart in a bright conflagration—front half disintegrating into rivets, exploding oxygen, armor plating, and probably pilot parts while the rear of the ship flamed briefly and then went dark, still continuing on its present course.

“Got one diving on us, Snake!” the boss called from the cockpit and rolled the ship.

I swore and slewed my turret around to face the threat—some variation of a Razor combat shuttle. The most vulnerable part of the Black Sun is the rear upper quarter—where neither the turret gunner nor the pilot could see or fire on the threat—the turret gunner and pilot, in this case, unfortunately being the boss and I, not respectively.

The Ogre again came to our rescue, driving him off before he could do serious damage to our shields. I got a few good shots off before he dove out of my field of vision and saw his port engine flame out as he disappeared below the artificial horizon formed by the bottom of our ship and the white-pinpricked blackness of deep space.

The boss again rolled the ship on its horizontal axis, to bring the Razor back into view for me. I felt our ship veer hard left and saw the Ogre flash past us through the corner of my right eye. The Razor pilot was good, though; he cut his throttles to full reverse and nosed upward, spraying us with laser fire which knocked our shields out and scorched our bottom armor—one of the ship’s computers beeped—an electronic expression of pain that indicated his shot had penetrated the armor and damaged something—I hoped it wasn’t vital, or expensive.

This catfight was shaping up to be quite a nasty one: us, the Ogre, a pair of tricked-out Hradi’s and the Young Bronson versus an ad-hoc hit squad of about the nastiest two dozen mercs, bounty hunters, and outright killers money could hire.

People say politics makes strange bedfellows—and for once, people are right. If someone would have told me the boss and I would be flying on Blackie Crisk’s Ogre’s wing three days ago, I’d have laughed in his face, and probably hit him, just for being such an idiot. But, in the business of interstellar privateering, the near impossible is a standard occurrence and the impossible is just rare—in fact, the highly unexpected happens so often, it is expected.

That said, the boss and I still never saw it coming. We’d taken advantage of the brief humanitarian sanction lift during the UNF’s recent siege on Oceana Roho and made some serious cash. We’d raked in about 14k on a single run, shipping bulk foodstuffs and toiletries to Oceana Roho after the UN caved to public pressure about supporting Domingo Raul and cutting off the planet for a month and half. As soon as we heard the UN promise they’d lift the sanction and blockade, we bought all we could store in the hold and headed off for the H115 jump point and waited in line along with about 450 other merchies to jump into Oceana. More ships were streaming in even as we were leaving, so it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that the Ogre took advantage of the sanction lift.

The boss and I figured, in a rare smart moment that predictably horribly backfired on us, that we would stay legit—we’d ship only goods that could in no way be used against us. The UNF had announced that while ships would be searched, none would be stopped unless they carried items on the standard blacklist. This meant, technically, that frowned-upon “grey” list items could be shipped—things like legal weapons, ground combat armor suits, vehicle and ship repair parts, and weapon targeting software. We figured that while the UNF was being rather generous, they’d probably find some typically Federation way to hold it against us. Plus, we figured, correctly, that there would be plenty of weapons for sale, and that maybe the residents of Oceana Roho might want to do something besides fight—like eat. Dry land only accounts for less than an eighth of the small planet’s surface, and most of it is rock, so land grown food is a fairly precious commodity.

The cause of the rebels on Oceana Roho didn’t much concern us at the time—Domingo Raul, the Planetary Chancellor, supposedly had his prime rival in the upcoming election bumped off and then after he was nearly assassinated in retaliation, he put down a riot or two with what some might call excessive force, which pushed most of the planet’s security forces over to the opposition side and forced him to flee the planet surface and left security forces loyal to him in quite a pinch. He’d appealed, as was his right, to the UNF, and they sent troops, which clashed in a few bloody battles with the people and security forces of Oceana Roho until they retreated and cut off the planet until the UNF could sort everything out and figure out who was in the right and in the wrong.

I figured that this guy Raul was probably a crook, but that was just because he was a politician, so it was no big deal—I mean, if every planet’s population rose up every time some sneaky bureaucrat dipped his hand in the public till or tipped the scales of justice in his buddy’s favor or offed an opponent there’d be no governments left, right? What gave the people of Roho the right to rebel just because they got the same unfair treatment everybody else did?

Anyway, this whole bizarre, twisted, team of us, some unknowns, and our sworn worst enemy “recruited” us, to use the word recruited very loosely, from Gringo’s, one of the few English language bars on Oceana Roho, just as we were patting ourselves on the back for our recent success.

“Good beer,” the boss said, looking intently at the bottom of his empty mug. The beer was Dos Grande Zapatos, a local planetary microbrew which I believe means something like “Two Big Shoes,” but despite its name, the boss was right—it was good beer. Stuff made on just one planet is so much better than those major galactic brews.

“Yup,” I agreed, downing the last of my own mug. “Funny name, though. Wonder why’d you’d name a beer after shoes…”

“Probably so dunderheads like you would waste their time wondering about it and drink more of it,” the boss replied from his barstool next to me.

“At least I know some Spanish,” I retorted. “You asked me what day Cinco De Mayo was.” At that, there was rather loud laugh from a patron two stools down the bar. The boss glared at him.

“Shut it. The only reason you know any Spanish is because you had to take it while you were in prison.”

I shrugged. “Never been to prison, jefe—that means boss in Spanish, just to help you out—I just did two tours on the Braxton, which they relentlessly beat into you, is not prison—you just wish it was.”

The boss ignored my little explanation of the way things really are, as he’s prone to do, and instead flashed four fingers at the waitress who nodded and disappeared to get us four more beers.

A hand clapped softly on the boss and my shoulder simultaneously. I tensed, briefly, waiting for the knife—long years of living a rough life combined with being on a war ravaged planet, especially one which seemed to have plenty of alcohol, made me nervous. I tried not to show it, though, being the privateer I am.

The voice was low, and held a slight Spanish lisp. “Gentleman, I am Constable Perez of Oceana Roho customs—could you please come with me?”

Oh boy, I thought, we’re in some real trouble now.

Constable Perez’ next words confirmed it: “You’re in no trouble, I assure you. We just have a matter to discuss with you.”

The boss and I shared a look—we knew that this was less of an offer than it was a polite command.

“Sure, man,” the boss sighed and we stood to face the man who had spoken to us. The man was about a head shorter than me, making him roughly the same height as the boss and had brown eyes, and close cropped dark hair, a five o’clock shadow, and slightly brown skin, which betrayed his Mexican heritage—a local, for sure. His suit was a conservative grey, with a subdued and unimportant looking badge tucked into the jacket pocket. Behind him stood two blank faced men in the same suits, with the same badges, but underneath their jacket, I could see handguns bulging. The goons.

Perez pointed at the bar, and one of the goons withdrew his wallet and paid our bill, which was displayed on the glass bartop next to our seats. He didn’t even leave the waitress a tip, the cheapskate—at least that told me that these guys really were the government.

“This way, please,” Perez said, as we followed him out the back door of the bar and into a narrow street where a pair of grey nondescript government hydrogen fueled cars waited. The rear one had a driver already, but the first one was empty.

Perez opened the rear doors for us and climbed into the driver’s seat himself. I was surprised to see him shift the car into manual control—most governments, even backwater planetary ones, use autopilot to avoid the spectre of lawsuits.

Perez gently started off and left the boss and I in uncomfortable silence as he pulled out onto the main street and headed right—towards the government complex the boss and I had spotted on our approach—but the opposite direction from the main spaceport and customs office. The other car with the goons followed us at the perfect distance.

As he drove, I noticed Perez had the tendency to not look where he was going except out of the corner of his eye and that he frequently slowed down early and missed making passes he could have—he was driving as if he wasn’t driving—mimicking an autopilot on its low priority setting. I began to get worried. Secrecy and subterfuge when you’re dealing with government officials usually meant you were in way over your head.

The boss cleared his throat. “Ahem, mister—ah, Constable Perez, where exactly are we going? I mean, what are we being, umm, held for, I guess?” That’s the boss, ever the eloquent one.

“You are not being held,” Perez then called us both by our names—which meant he already knew more than we wanted him to about us. This wasn’t a random thing then. “This is actually a rather lucrative business opportunity.”

“Ah. I see,” I answered tersely. “I’m guessing you’re about as much a customs agent as I am a rich man, then, eh?”

“Well,” Constable Perez replied, turning around to face me, which given that I knew he was driving the car, unnerved me quite a bit, “if everything works out, perhaps you will be a rich man, Senor. And then, perhaps, I will be a customs agent…”

I snorted and plopped back in my seat. Ten minutes of silence later, Perez slowed the car and pulled us into a below building parking deck. He deftly swung us into a spot and even beeped two short beeps before turning off the car—mimicking an autopilot down to the last detail.

The other car parked beside him and we exited. Perez led off again, with his two thugs trailing us as we filed into an elevator. Perez inserted a cardkey into the slot and the doors closed and we descended into what the elevator said was the second subbasement.

The doors opened and we stepped out into the foyer of a typical government office. The place was poorly decorated, over lit, and fairly crowded. Nothing like in the movies—no holoprojecting walls, no ceiling projection screens, no retinal scanners, and no armed guards visible, save the ones that came with us.

I did notice that the crest emblazoned on the desk said Agencia Federales Proctection de Republica de Oceana Roho, or something like that. I figured it was roughly “Federal Protection Agency of the Republic of Oceana Roho” or something like that. The planetary government’s security organization. Great.

“Let me guess,” the boss sighed when he saw the crest didn’t match Perez’ badge, “this is a lot worse than customs.”

Perez turned to us and smiled a wan smile; I just nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re about to be asked to something unpleasant, dangerous, illegal, or, more than likely, all three.”

“Actually, gentleman,” Perez said somehow both softly and threateningly at the same time, “you aren’t being asked to do anything. I’m afraid if you refuse you’ll be spending quite a bit more time than you’d planned—time measured in years, comprende?”

“Si,” I muttered.

“So much,” the boss mumbled, “for good ‘ole Spanish hospitality.”

Perez led us down a hall, inserted his key into a rather old looking lockslot and the door lock clicked approvingly. He twisted the handle and led us into the bizarre world of politics.

The boss stepped inside and then stepped immediately backwards and onto my foot. He moved like he’d seen a snake.

“What the?” I asked as I stepped back into the goon behind me, who rather roughly shoved both the boss and I forward.

I recoiled just as the boss did when I saw the seven men sitting at a conference table in the room. Or rather, I recoiled at the sight of one of them and never even saw the other six.

Staring at me was Blackie Crisk. This unnerved me the way few things can for any number of reasons. Reason one, of course, was the fact that years ago he’d sworn he’d kill me after I abandoned his crew before my tour was up. Reason two was that he’d sworn he’d kill the boss after the boss turned him in for chemical weapons smuggling on Rio Blanco. Reason three was that he’d tried to kill us both the last time he’d seen us on Greenly and very nearly succeeded. Reason four was that because of that little flap, the last I’d heard he was still supposed to be in prison. Reason five was that a couple of months ago he’d sicced a particularly persistent bounty hunter on us to try and finish what he didn’t accomplish on Greenly.

Crisk didn’t look any more pleased to see us than we did to see him, although he wasn’t afraid of us. Instead, he had the same kind of look a mad dog gets when whatever juicy bit of meat he wants to eat is just too far out of where his chain will let him go.

“You!” Crisk, the boss, and I said at the same time, although with predictably different emotions.

The boss’ was a whispered “you,” as if he’d had the life scared out of him and was about to go into shock.

Mine was only slightly better—“you?” like Caesar said “Et Tu, Brute?”

Crisk’s “you” was a raspy snarl, as if he wanted to spit at us.

Perez was visibly amused. For a moment, if it’s possible, I hated him worse than I did Crisk.

“You three are acquaintances?” he asked in his usual soft tones. He looked from Crisk’s mask of rage to the boss’ terror and my utter state of disbelief. “Mr. Crisk does have a lot of enemies—I suppose you two are some of them?”

“I’m not working with those two,” Crisk growled.

The boss and I nodded a silent assent.

“See,” Perez said, obviously enjoying this turn of events, “agreeing already.” Suddenly his tone changed—still soft, it was distinctly threatening—it promised a soft painless death, but death nonetheless—think of verbal poison gas. “You will work together, mi amigos, or else you will spend the rest of your life enjoying our fine penal system, if something most unfortunate does not happen first.” He glanced over at his blank faced guards who, while not changing their expression, changed their demeanor from one of boredom to one of a jungle cat about to strike—silent, still, but poised. Perez pointed at two chairs across the table from Crisk. “Sit.”

The boss and I sat down glumly. I noticed as we sat that the boss’ hand was on the holster on his belt and I unconsciously found myself reaching behind my back to where I kept my knife. Crisk often has that effect on people.

“These are the last members of our team,” Perez announced from his seat at the head of the table. He nodded to us and waited for us to introduce ourselves.

“I’m Snake,” I said, as confidently as possible while sitting across from Blackie Crisk, “and this is my partner, and my boss… sort of,” I finished, pointing to my friend. The boss nodded weakly.

“Since you two are the last to join, I’ll introduce everyone else,” Perez told us. “This,” he said gesturing unnecessarily to Crisk, “is Mr. Crisk, and his first mate Mr. Thorton.” Only then did I recognize Thorton—he had been first mate when I’d flown for Crisk years ago and he didn’t look any happier to see me than his boss did. “This is Lieutenant Simon Perez—no relation to me—and Lieutenant Carlos Montes, of the Ocean Roho Defense Force.” He pointed to two military looking guys about the same age as the boss and I near the head of the table. “These three men are the crew of the Young Bronson—registered out of… well, it really doesn’t matter in your trade does it?” The three guys he was referring to looked slightly wealthier than the rest of us, excepting Crisk, but no more reputable. The oldest of the three nodded at us when they were introduced.

“I am Agent Perez, of the Federal Protection Agency—the Oceana intelligence and security service. As I’m sure you’ll be glad to know, I am no more a willing participant in this venture than the rest of you, but just as this will pay well for you, it will pay well for me—you will all make a nice sum of money, and I will get to live and keep my position.

“As you all know, I’m sure, Domingo Raul is currently accused of murdering his opposition in the upcoming Chancellor’s race, Fernando Chavez—this charge is quite true, among the other equally true charges made against him.” Perez’ declaration was very matter-of-fact, and it was clear that the veracity of the charges meant very little to him. The two lieutenants sitting next to him, however, seemed rather disgusted at his glib treatment of Raul’s crimes, although I sensed they were familiar with Perez’ views. “This matters very little to me,” Perez continued, confirming my earlier observation, “but it does to some.” He nodded slightly to indicate the world outside the building. “If the UNF finds out these charges are true, the rebels will be vindicated, and Raul will face a lengthy prison sentence, or worse, since Oceana still has the death penalty.

“Unfortunately, in this day in age, data is easily forged. We have, here in this building, information which will seal Raul’s downfall, however; information which must get to the popular press and the UNF.

“My agency had quite a large part in gathering this information, and—“ one of the lieutenants snorted contemptuously, but Perez ignored him, “and in doing some of these unpleasant deeds. The opposition which now controls the planet is fully aware of this, but have given me and a few others a chance to right these wrongs and escape the fate which will surely come to Raul.

“If we fail, I will never see the light of day either. So, mi amigos, we are all in this together, you see? If you fail, then I fail. This data must get off Oceana.”

I was disliking agent, constable, conductor, or whatever this guy Perez was more and more. I don’t trust people who can calmly discuss betrayal of their boss and death as if they were ordering lunch at a nice restaurant.

“If it’s data you need, why not just transmit it or post it on the ‘Net?” asked one of the crewmen on the Young Bronson.

“And, since you’re the one in trouble here,” Crisk said in his usual lethal tones, “what exactly do you over us—and why put all of us in this together?” I sensed his last remark was aimed at us, but I found myself agreeing with him. I’d rather fly with the devil than with Crisk.

Perez smiled again. “First—as I said, data is easily forged, so transmitting it and posting it on the ‘Net does not guarantee its acceptance. Remember, Raul is a powerful businessman in his own right—and the rightful Chancellor of this planet. What would bring down a private citizen or common thug will not necessarily bring down someone of his stature.

“The data we have here, in its present form, cannot be a fakery.” He pointed at the wall behind him and the projection wall lit up. On the screen was what appeared to be a three foot by three foot glass cube, which shimmered and sparkled as the light filtered through it, as if it contained thousands of internal prisms. I didn’t recognize it, but apparently the boss did. His eyebrows rose in appreciation. Perez continued.

“You see here, for those uninitiated with modern data storage techniques, an IBM Photomemory Molocube. The data is indelibly written by a special laser on the tens of trillions of the cube’s internal vertices at the molecular level. The data cannot be written over without destroying the vertice, and the timestamp written on the vertices cannot be forged, based solely on simple radiation carbon dating methods. This is the original data, recorded by this agency’s central computer. This data, is, as I said, completely genuine, and cannot be construed otherwise. You now, no doubt, begin to see the reason why the opposition needs this. With this in reliable hands and presented to a Federation court, Raul cannot escape.”

He turned to Crisk. “As for your question, which was, I believe, simply stated, ‘why should you work with me?’ the answer is obvious—I have something on all of you. That, and one other reason, is why you were selected.

“All of you are listed in UNF records as bringing foodstuffs to Oceana when the sanction was lifted. This is good, because while the UNF let you bring them in, I assure you that those who shipped us weapons will have quite a bit of trouble leaving this planet—the scans will be invasive, time consuming, and the slightest mistake in record keeping or violation of equipment or safety protocol will result in fines or jail time. Of course, one of the crews here did not ship only food.” I knew immediately that Crisk, no matter what the records said, had shipped weapons—food just wasn’t his style. Perez calmly stared at Crisk. “You, of course, used some rather sophisticated smuggling technology to ship us weapons, which we appreciate, but the UNF might not take quite as well.

“This is especially true for you, Mr. Crisk, given that I believe shipping weapons, even legal ones, is a violation of your probation terms, which are, I might say, already quite generous given your previous history.”

The boss and I grinned, despite the situation—seeing Crisk hamstrung, even by this guy Perez, was a rare treat.

Perez turned to the crew of the Young Bronson. The screen changed behind him to display a picture of a middle aged man wearing a very nice blue suit and bowler hat. The picture looked as if it were taken from a press release or news holo. “I am sure you recognize this man. The authorities in several systems are very interested in what might have befallen him.” A look at the faces of the crew told me that they did indeed recognize him, and that whatever had happened to him, it must have involved them. Perez then swiveled to face us.

I had the distinct feeling that the boss and I weren’t going to like what was coming next.

“Uh oh,” I heard the boss whisper.

On the screen flashed a copy of a ship’s owner’s title—I recognized immediately. The boss groaned. “I see,” Perez said in his trademark tones, “that you still recognize the title to the Romulus. I am glad—there are people who would like to know more about the particulars of what happened to it.” I was sweating bullets—the people he was referring to could do some very nasty things to people. I looked to the boss—his face was blanched white. Perez seemed to be pleased at the reactions he had gotten from all of us.

“Now that I have secured everyone’s full cooperation, let me explain the plan.”

The plan wasn’t that complicated, in all actuality. Our ship, the Ogre, and the Young Bronson were all loaded with identical Molocubes. The two lieutenants would fly civilian Hradi fighters modified with the latest military and civilian defense technology as escorts. They were, it seemed, the only willing contributors to this cabal, if what Perez told us about his and his agency’s part in all of this. We were to fly in convoy through the initial UNF military blockade—and we wouldn’t be scanned, according to Perez, because we’d shipped foodstuffs in which made us clean coming out to the military. From there, we’d fly the opposite direction as practically everyone else, away from the H115 jump, through the Rock River asteroid belt, to the Salt Station jump Point and then jump to Salt Station and give the data cubes to the Turner-Fox-Warner media conglomerate sector headquarters, which Perez assured us was the closest place with a computer capable of reading the Molocubes and that was safe from Raul’s influence. He vetoed outright Thorton’s plan to fly right up to the nearest Federation cruiser and just turn the cubes over to UNF directly. According to Perez, Admiral Mall, whose 3rd Fleet was running the blockade, was a good friend of Raul’s, so the data would never make it to UNF courts. Once we completed the seven standard day trip to Salt Station, each crew save the two patriotic lieutenants would be paid a full 35k for our troubles.

Oh yeah, the catch. Actually, there were three.

The first was that while the Federation wouldn’t try to hunt us down, Raul probably would. His agents, according to Perez, had already tried to destroy the data during fighting on the planet surface, and would probably be on the lookout for the rebels to ship the cubes off world. Perez practically guaranteed that we’d be jumped, which I wasn’t looking forward to.

The second catch was that there was only one Molocube with real data. The other two were filled to capacity with random numbers—static, basically. Of course, without a computer to determine which was which, no one could be sure if they had the right one, thus discouraging any of the three cargo crews from flying off and selling Raul’s data back to him. That wasn’t all, either.

Thus comes the third catch, the real clincher: Molocubes weren’t all our ships were being loaded with. In addition to the Molocubes in their large sealed shipping crates was something else—a thermite bomb, the kind the military uses to destroy damaged equipment they don’t want to leave behind. The 700 kilogram thermite bomb loaded into each of our ships inside the Molocube shipping crate was rigged to melt our ships from the inside out if the transmitter attached to the real data Molocube stopped transmitting, or if any of the ships left the designated flight path and tried going to a different system or jump point, or if the shipping crate was tampered with by someone other than the opposition contact at Salt Station who had the proper code. Basically, the only way any of us were going to survive this is if everybody played by the rules and nobody got any bright ideas, because if anybody tried anything fancy, we were all going to go from flying starships to flying million degree miniature suns as the thermite bombs turned our ships and everything in them a single solid piece of metal.

“Don’t worry,” Perez added as he finished his briefing, “if a ship is destroyed, as long as it is not the one with the data, the thermite bombs will not go off—the death of one of you is not necessarily the death of all of you.”

“Thanks,” the boss snorted. “So the only thing standing between us and a horrible death is our reliance on a man who wants us dead? I’m not liking this one bit.” The boss glared at Crisk.

“Well,” spat Crisk as he stared daggers at both of us, “I’d be glad to save you the trouble of worrying about it and do the deed right here.” His skeletal face tightened and I could see murder in his eyes. His right hand snaked slowly underneath the table, where I knew his Colt neutron gun lurked in its holster. From my vantage point, I could already see the boss’ hand on his .45 in his belt. It may be less powerful, but at the range of three feet, the first shot was going to win. The tension between the two was palpable. Part of me took some comfort in the fact that Crisk seemed more obsessed with killing the boss than with me, but it was only a small part.

I tore my eyes away from Crisk’s death glare and to the head of the table—if Perez didn’t step in, I had no doubt there was getting ready to be a brief but bloody gunbattle right there across the table.

“Try it,” the boss said icily. “Touch that neutron gun, and I’ll blow you right out of your chair.” Perez still wasn’t stopping anything, so I prepared from the worst. I figured if the boss was determined to take Crisk on, then that meant Thorton was my responsibility. A glance at him really made me desperate for a diplomatic solution: he was already leaned back in his chair, left hand wrapped around the grips of whatever pistol he had tucked under his right arm in a shoulder holster. I had no better chance of beating Thorton to his pistol with my E-19 combat knife than I had of winning the Nobel Prize for physics.

“You don’t have the guts,” Crisk replied, words full of venom. The muscles in his jaw tensed and his hand continued to reach beneath the table.

“Enough!” roared the captain of the Young Bronson. “I know your reputation, Crisk, but if you can’t forget your grief with these two for long enough to do this mission, I’ll kill you myself. And you two—“ he gestured at the boss and I—“are small fry—so don’t try to make your entry into the big league with my life on the line.” Though I bristled at being called a small fry, it was true, and I was relieved that at least someone was stepping in—I couldn’t see any good way out of this—the boss would shoot Crisk and then Thorton would shoot the both of us. While it’d be nice to see Crisk dead, he was probably headed the same place we were, and knowing our luck, we’d probably be eternal cellmates or something like that.

“Stay out of this, Stine,” Crisk ordered the captain of the Young Bronson without looking at him, “or else I’ll deal with you next—and it won’t be quick.” I shuddered. Crisk had a well documented mean streak as wide as the sky and as deep as ocean trench.

Perez finally stepped in; his tone was, as usual, soft and seemingly aloof. “Oh, mi amigos, there is one more condition—the thermite bombs will go off if you don’t reach Salt Station within eight standard days. Given the contact I expect you to make, your timeline will be rather tight. Your ships have not yet been loaded, and that will take at least an hour—I suggest you stop wasting time.”

Crisk let out a noise like a low growl and the boss ground his teeth. Neither man moved for a brief second but then relaxed. I breathed a silent sigh of relief and slowly backed my chair away from the table. The three man crew of the Young Bronson stood; I glanced up at them and saw the fear in their eyes. I agreed—with allies like this, who needed enemies?


Seventy-Four Hours Later

We’d gotten off world without too much more trouble, but it had been a tensely silent trip thus far; of course, who do you talk to and what do you talk about when your worst enemy is flying on your wing, your ship is rigged to blow, a hit squad is somewhere lurking with your death on their minds, and you’re racing against the clock. Transmissions between us, the Ogre, the Young Bronson, and our fighter escorts were kept to the minimum necessary and even mine and the boss’ usual banter was strangely absent.

I had spent most of my time thus far trying to sleep to make the time pass and trying to figure out if there was any way out of all this. I hadn’t been able to come up with one just yet. The only thing we had going for us was that we’d been making good time thus far. The Hradi fighters were plenty fast, the Ogre was almost as fast as the fighters in open space, and the Young Bronson was fairly speedy Grey-Allen Stellarliner XL; in fact, our aging Black Sun 490 was the slowest one, and we weren’t all that shabby. We were approaching the entrance to cleared nav lanes in the Rock River belt.

“Crap,” the boss called from the cockpit. “Here they are… figures.”

“What we got?” I called as I switched my upper left VDU to display targeting data. My software still couldn’t acquire—the ship’s radar was much longer range though, so the boss usually beat me to acquisitions.

“Right at the edge of the asteroid field—they’re moving too much to be rocks. Got looks like… ahh… maybe fifteen or so acquisitions,” the boss replied. “’Bout 100k out, looks like. They aren’t easy to pick out, but that’s got to be them. Who else but a bunch of headhunters would hang out in the ‘roid belt?”

The commlink crackled; it was Stine’s navigator. “Targets at twelve o’clock. This is probably Raul’s boys. We’ve got good looks at six of them, but even with the Hotspurs we’re carrying, they’d probably evade by the time they missiles got there.”

“Roger,” the boss replied. “We can’t touch ‘em at this range, either.” He didn’t mention that unlike the Young Bronson and the Ogre we didn’t have anything but short range missiles. No multistage Hotspurs or Cat III imrecs for us.

“I’ve got ‘em too,” Crisk’s voice said over the commlink. “I’ve got a passive torp lock on that Avenger—he’s a good distance out from the asteroid field—I could probably get him…”

I swore—Crisk’s targeting radar was top notch if he could identify ship types at this range, and against the backdrop of the asteroid field!

“Yeah, I know,” the boss said to me. “I wonder what kind of system he’s running. No wonder the Ogre’s such a tough rig…”

“Roger,” one of the lieutenants called from his Hradi, “we’ve got a tally-ho on eighteen bogeys. Looks like seven class III powerplants, ahhh, two class II powerplants, and nine J rated fighter engines. We cannot engage at this range, and we’ve got no passive lock capability. None are transmitting valid IFF signals.” Valid identification signals probably meant something to him, as a military pilot, but in our business you learn that identification signals meant very little, valid or not. Of course, if they weren’t transmitting, that probably meant they were up to no good since they didn’t want any local military trafficsats or navsats tracking their location.

“That’s some serious heat, Snake,” the boss told me unnecessarily from the cockpit. “Sounds like a pretty powered up crew… and why, for crying out loud, if Oceana has anything better as military ships, are our escorts Hradis? Even up gunned ones? I mean, couldn’t they scrape anything better up?”

I shrugged. “Probably didn’t want to draw too much attention—and, if you’ll notice, those Hradis aren’t registered as military craft. I’d say they belong to the Agencia de Protection Federales or something like that.

“Ask Crisk what else he’s got out there.”
“No,” the boss replied.
“Look,” I said, “I hate the guy too, but we need to survive this—just ask him what other ship types he’s got. C’mon, everybody knows his ship is better than ours, it’s no big deal.”

“Huh uh,” the boss obstinately insisted. I grit my teeth—here we were about to face at least eighteen bounty hunters with our nemesis on our wing and he was involved in some pointless anatomy measuring contest with the only man who could help us.

“Ask him!” I ordered.
“No,” the boss said. I poked my head up out of the turret and looked through the cockpit door. The boss was shaking his head. I could almost hear the rattle.

“I’m serious—I need to know what we’re facing!” I yelled at him.

He turned around to look at me. “Get back in the turret, you idiot! And I’m not asking Crisk for anything—so just forget about it!”

I swore and plopped back down into the turret. I still couldn’t acquire.

“Missile tracks!” the boss called. “Looks like we’ve got twenty-one inbound!”

“Twenty one vampires inbound,” one of the Hradis called.
“Moving out to interdict; launching countermeasures and jammers on. We should be able to keep the missiles off you… vanya con Dios, mi amigos.”

The Hradis fired a score of mini-pack anti-missile rockets each and also launched a pair missile sized ship decoys which my targeting system incorrectly identified as the Ogre and the Young Bronson. I was impressed—I had heard military ship decoys could perfectly imitate the signature of a ship, but I’d never seen them in action myself.

The Hradis hit their afterburners and sped away from the three cargo ships and rocketed towards the hit squad waiting for us. The two ship decoys flew out a dozen clicks in front our formation and then dove. I could now see the flaming engines of most of the missiles; the few that didn’t get destroyed by the anti-missile rockets went after the decoys with little success. Long range missiles generally didn’t hit, but if they did, you were still dead.

“Torp launch,” Crisk called.

“Roger,” both lieutenants answered almost simultaneously. The boss and Stine didn’t reply—we weren’t used to fighting with anybody else.

Crisk’s torpedo streaked out much faster than the missiles and I gave a low whistle. “Good model…”

“Uh huh,” the boss agreed. “Oh boy, here they come. They’re all coming to meet us now… guess they don’t want to risk us trying to make a run into the belt when we get close enough.”

I reflected on this. On one hand, I didn’t relish marching straight at them while they ranged us with multi-stage missiles, but on the other hand I wasn’t too pumped about eighteen bad guys coming out to mix it up with us either. I’d rather everybody just went home. I could only think of one thing to say, so I said it.

“You said it,” the boss replied. “Get ready—they’ll be on us in about a minute and a half.” I did a last minute capacitor heat check and slewed the turret all the way around just to make sure the actuators were responsive.

“Boom!” the boss called excitedly. “Scratch one Avenger!”

I couldn’t see which radar dot Crisk had shot at, but I could see the explosion. “Yep. Looks like he got it from here too.” I was not only glad that the Avenger was gone but that there was one less torp Crisk could shoot at us someday. Streaks of light flashed beside me and I jerked instinctively. “Tell him to tell us before he does that!” I called to the boss. The streaks of light were missile launches from the Young Bronson.

“Firing,” the lieutenants called and I saw a pair of missiles streak out from the Hradis towards our opponents.
My targeting system finally decided everybody was suitably in range and suddenly I had targeting information. I was tracking no fewer than 78 targets between our five ships, their seventeen, and the numerous missiles, decoys and countermeasures out there. The good news was that my software hadn’t identified any locks against us.

“Looks like everybody’s worried about the big guys or the fighters, boss,” I told my partner.

“Yep,” the boss said, as he began juking anyway. “Got a Banshee in range!”

“I got him,” I called and began firing at him. The Banshee was a fast ship, but maybe a little too fast for his own good. By the time he was in range of our guns, he had been in range of the Ogre for quite some time, but Crisk had held his fire. As soon as I opened up, so did the Ogre from off our right side a dozen kilometers out. The Banshee dove to escape the Ogre; simultaneously, the Young Bronson surged forward using its afterburner and dove after him. The Banshee rolled left to evade, but that put him nicely in my cone of fire.

I plastered him with my twin Powerpoints and when my targeting system said his shields were at zero percent, the Young Bronson hit him with a burst of rapid fire green bolts from a hitherto unnoticed turret on its right side. The Banshee exploded and sent part of a wing sparking of our shields. Our Black Sun 490 climbed and pulled left.

“Whoa!” I called up to the boss, “the Young Bronson’s got a quad mounted! On the right side—looks like a computer autoturret—but still, a quadmount! Everybody’s got a nicer rig than us, man!”

The boss grunted, partially in agreement, and partially in dismay. He was very sensitive to comments about the Black Sun 490.

By now, the comm was all chatter—the lieutenants talked to each other in Spanish, Crisk, the boss, and Stine were all calling up shots and targets. It was too much for a poor turret gunner like myself to listen to and shoot.

“Cutting off my comm!” I called up as I tracked a Juno as he flashed past our lower left quarter. “Just tell me if anything important happens!”

“Gotcha—Snake, twelve high!” The boss rolled the ship and I gave a Yangtzee Blue a dozen bolts to his nose, even as he took our shields down to 85% with a burst of his own.

There were ships everywhere. Fighters flew everywhere, between the rough triangle formed by our small cargo ship, the midsize Young Bronson, and the hulking Ogre. Along the outside of the battle, combat shuttles and corvette class fighters roughly the same size as our Black Sun ran strafing runs or tried to line up missile shots without hitting their own fighters. Our two Hradi escorts were everywhere, twisting and corkscrewing after Raul’s hired guns or popping up close to the combat shuttles to draw fire off of us.

I had plenty of targets, but unfortunately, that meant there were plenty of targets to shoot at us too. There was fire everywhere, and with as many fighters and shuttles as there were flying around, it was difficult to focus fire on a single ship. They weaved in and out, taking damage to their shields and then withdrawing outside of our gun range to let them recover.

In the meantime, since we were the most maneuverable of the cargo ships, we tried to follow the less skilled fighter pilots or home in the few combat shuttles without rear or bottom turrets. The Ogre maneuvered to avoid the long strafing runs but generally kept the swarming smaller ships at bay with the large volume of fire it put out in all directions. The Young Bronson played a dangerous game, swooping close to the Ogre to draw fighters near the larger ship’s turrets while trying to dodge friendly fire from the Ogre and then at the last second rolling right to expose its computer operated quad turret, which, like all quadmounts, drained its capacitors in seconds, but drained enemy shields just as quickly.

“Cut that out!” the boss yelled into the comm.
“What?” I called up, while I scorched marks in a FRL99’s belly as he desperately tried to avoid my fire.

“Stine’s an idiot—he keeps masking Crisk’s fire when he pulls in too close to him. Crisk’s so crazy he’ll probably light him up if he does it again. If he—one high!” The boss rolled, dove left, and hit on the afterburners at the same time.

I lost my mark on the FRL99 but picked up the ship he’d warned me about. Another Banshee, firing his three lasers forward and juking quite well to avoid my fire. A lot of good it did him, as a missile from one of our wingmen obliterated him in a ball of flame.

The boss swore at something and we heeled left. Red lasers flashed past me and I heard my right VDU beep a warning about our low shields. I spun my turret straight down and caught the nose of a combat shuttle I couldn’t identify as he lit us up, rocketing straight up at us, filling space with fire.

“Roll right, roll right!” I screamed, and the boss did so. The shuttle barely missed us and we scraped his shields, arcing brightly against our hull and killing what remaining shields we had.

The ship shook from several hits and I heard the boss yell something incoherent.

Meanwhile, I was trying to blast a Delta who was tailing one of our Hradis. His shields must have already been low, because after a short burst, the Delta’s right rear engine flamed out and he went into a barely controlled flat spin left at top speed. Seven klicks out, a heavily modified military surplus C Model Interceptor Corvette tried to move ponderously out of the way and still keep away from the Ogre who was pounding him, but couldn’t move quite fast enough. The Delta smashed right through the shields and punched into his hull. The ship split right down the horizontal axis, venting flame and then nothing. The corvette was out of the fight, its crew of six just as dead as the ship itself.

“Oh yeah!” I gloated. “That’s one for the books!”

The computer beeped again, as a Jasper started hammering us from the rear. The boss hit the afterburner and rocketed us straight towards the Ogre as, he couldn’t shake him. I tried to fend him off, but the guy was good.

So here we are. Jasper on our tail, Ogre ahead, and on our side, and a massive battle swirling around us. The Jasper blew up as the Ogre tore him trim to stern.

“Got one diving on us, Snake!” the boss called. Our shields went out, and the computer beeped.

The boss rolled and the Razor diving on us fired a dumbfire at us, which missed, and then locked onto us with an imrec.

He lost his lock as soon as he got it, though, as one of our Hradis scissored between us and the Ogre, flashed past us on the right and afterburned right at the Razor. The Razor climbed instinctively to avoid being hit by the Hradi, and I scored some good hits against his belly armor.

The Hradi that saved us, however, paid for it—in full. The Razor’s rear turret lanced into his right engine, and it blew up, taking the rest of the ship with it.

“We lost one of the Hradis, boss!” I called.

The boss swore and gave me some more bad news. “We’ve got
more inbound from the belt too—and we’re not getting any closer to the nav lane, not with all this!” The situation, which wasn’t exactly great, was about to get a lot less exactly great.

My VDU chirped a warning—a missile lock. The boss got the same warning in the cockpit and hit the afterburner, swerving right to avoid a large piece of debris that looked like it used to be a large fighter. “The Young Bronson’s lost an engine, Snake, keep those fighters off of him—crap!” We dove to avoid something else and our Black Sun’s internal lights blinked out and then on again as more bolts tested our armor.

I spun the turret and what I saw made my heart skip. The Young Bronson was about twenty five klicks out, and slowly heeling right—probably due to its damaged right engine—but worst of all was that it was being swarmed by fighters and broadsided by a Crescent Warrior corvette. While that gave our shields a chance to recover, it also meant that we were close to finding out the hard way whether or not the Young Bronson had the real Molocube.

“Turn us around! Turn us around! We’re going to lose them!” I cried desperately.

“Can’t,” the boss yelled, equally as desperately. “I can’t shake this lock! We turn around and whoever that is has us for sure!”

I looked around for a fighter tracking us, but couldn’t find him. I figured one of the shuttles had a rear mounted autotracking rack system or that the Warrior had us locked on from one of his turrets. I swore. Even though he was probably too far out for accurate fire, I fired a long burst at the Warrior, which had the fortunate, sort of, effect of pulling some of his turret fire off the Young Bronson and onto us.

The Ogre passed underneath us, moving back towards the Young Bronson and firing with everything it had at the Warrior. The Warrior was almost as big as the Ogre—classified legally as a corvette but it was built on the Crescent Navigator spaceframe, which means it’s really a small cap ship. The Ogre launched four torpedoes at the Warrior; the Warrior returned fire with all of its turrets, buying the Young Bronson some more time. I too kept my fire up on the Warrior, thinking of the kilos of ship melting explosives a few meters away and desperately hoping for a miracle to save the Young Bronson.

The Warrior pulled off the Young Bronson and accelerated away from the fracas even as one of Crisk’s torpedoes made it through the Warrior’s defense system and took his shields down to nothing. I felt slightly better—our opponents’ biggest ship had apparently decided that no matter how much money he was getting paid, it wasn’t worth dying for. I hoped the other mercenaries developed a similar self-serving duty concept, and quickly. A pair of fighters followed the Warrior away. The missile lock warning disappeared and the boss quickly heeled us around and turned on our afterburners.

I noticed to my dismay that we were overtaking the Ogre. Either Crisk wasn’t pouring on full throttle, which I doubted, given the situation, or the Ogre was damaged.

Apparently the boss was thinking along the same lines: “Snake, what’s the Ogre’s hull look like? Its shields haven’t come up past 60% and I think they’re leaking coolant.” The boss chortled. “Sucks to be them, eh?”

I shook my head. “Hey, genius up there, as much as it’d be nice to see Crisk’s monster ship in pieces, that wouldn’t exactly be a great thing right now, okay, so just work together now and kill him later, okay?” As I was talking I noticed that indeed, the Ogre was indeed leaking coolant; it formed a trail of vapor out their number two engine.

Almost as if the universe was unwilling to cripple someone else without crippling us, our ship shook from a hit, and as I slewed the turret rearward to find our attacker, another twin orange set of bolts flashed narrowly past my turret. I heard a cacophony of warning tones from my VDU, but didn’t have time to check them—I was too worried about finding whoever it was that was pounding us from our six to concern myself with whatever expensive part of our ship they’d shot off this time.

My turret was surrounded briefly in a cloud of blue vapor—engine coolant, blowing out of the reserve tank. Oh, the irony. “Snake! Take that guy out—I don’t know where he came from and he’s not showing up on radar, but—piss off, bugger!” he yelled in frustration at our opponent. The boss juked left, then dove right, cut his throttles, and then afterburnered almost straight up from our previous plane of flight, rolling the whole time, but to no avail.

The guy was good—his gunnery was almost surgical. He didn’t try to fill space with laser fire; instead, he just lined up his shots perfectly and cut chunks off our ship. What’s more, he was staying just out of my cone of fire; the boss was rolling the ship around its horizontal axis in an attempt to expose him to our belly, and thus to my turret, but every time we rolled, the pilot corkscrewed around at exactly the same speed, always staying maddeningly out of my vision.

I watched in morbid fascination as he peeled a meter square of our armor about a foot and a half from my turret, revealing the rather sensitive-to-laser-fire innards of our ship. I still couldn’t see him.

“Snake!” the boss cried, “I can’t shake him—and we’ve got no shields left—this guy must be out of missiles, but he won’t need them at the rate he’s going! Do something down there!”

I almost literally threw up my hands. “What do you suggest? I can’t see the bugger! He’s good, man, real good!” As I was talking, the boss was still putting our ship through the craziest maneuvers he could think of, even as more ships strafed us from the front, sensing that we, like the Young Bronson were in serious trouble.

“I dunno! You’re always talking about how you’re the thinking one, so you figure it out!”

The boss snap rolled and climbed to avoid gunfire from the front and we got a lucky break. The Delta that was lining us up in his crosshairs poured on the afterburners to follow us and must have gotten in the way of the Red Baron behind us. As the Delta blazed after us, I caught a brief glimpse of a red angular ship as it flashed out from behind our six o’clock high and slipped to our six low to avoid the Delta; he then pulled off tailing us as his ally’s errant flying made his earlier corkscrew maneuvers too risky. Our opponents were fairly good, but they weren’t used to working together, which meant they crossed each other’s line of fire and interrupted missile locks—the chaos of the melee worked against them. Of course, no one on our side had worked together either, but we had a stronger incentive to learn to do so—they were working for money, we for our lives.

I took advantage of the stupidity of the Delta pilot and scored a hit or two against the shields of the red ship—a late model Mitsubishi stealth fighter, I think, and hoped he didn’t want to scratch that pretty new paint job.

A bright glow from our front got our attention and I risked turning the turret to see what it was. The boss, meanwhile, pulled up sharply to throw of someone’s aim, so I got what I figured was a great last view of my life.

The bright glow was the Young Bronson exploding, throwing shrapnel, and burning debris outward from an expanding plasma cloud. A fighter that was too close went up too, and everyone else afterburnered their way away from the explosion. I saw, briefly, the Ogre as it dove, only a scant kilometer or two away from us.

I tensed, awaiting the inevitable searing heat from the cargo bay. Nothing happened. After a second or two passed, I figured we were safe. Well, not really safe, at all, but safe from that one particular danger.

“Yo, Ace! We just lost the Young Bronson! Guess he didn’t have the real one, though, as we’re still alive! ‘Course,” I added as a morbid afterthought, “that does numerically reduce our chances of survival by quite a bit, as they’ll all come after us now.” As proof of my statement, the brief pause in the laser fire following the explosion of the Young Bronson came to an abrupt end, as the mercenaries sought new prey—us and the Ogre.

The boss grunted at the news of the Young Bronson’s demise, and swore at someone or something as he suddenly hit the afterburner and rolled the ship right. “Yeah, and we also lost our other fighter escort—it’s us and Crisk now and—Snake, two o’clock low!”

I swiveled around and got a beautiful angle on the FRL99 I had been working on earlier in the battle. He was apparently running from the Ogre, but in doing so, he exposed his upper rear quarter to my guns and in a good ten seconds of gunfire sawed off the twin tail fins he needed for atmospheric flight. That must have unnerved him quite a bit, because he dove—or rather he tried to dive. The Ogre appeared fast underneath us, and less than a kilometer away.

I nearly crapped myself: I hadn’t seen him coming up from beneath us, being so concentrated on the FRL. The Ogre filled my view and I heard the collision sensor from above me in the cockpit start sounding a warning. I could see the forward top turret on the Ogre so well that I could tell what kind of guns he had mounted by the oddly shaped heat sinks—Raptor 225s.
The FRL realized he couldn’t dive, unless he wanted to suicide right into the Ogre, so he pulled up again, right back in front of me. He tried to punch his throttles and escape, but I didn’t let him get away. A few more shots breached his hull, a spurt of flame shot out, and then a secondary explosion blew the FRL99 to smithereens—most disconcertingly, a few pieces of his ship scratched my turret polymer and one cut an inch deep furrow in our armor diagonally from left to right, starting just under the cockpit and ending just short of my turret.

“I’m trying, I’m trying, but if you can’t hold them off with that star cruiser of a friggin’ ship you’ve got what makes you think I can help?” the boss roared.

“What?”
“I’m talking to Crisk—turn on your comms, we’re going to need all the coordination we can get…”

I switched on my comms just in time to hear Crisk call: “Got another one. Radar’s out—how many targets are you showing—and back off the Ogre you idiot—you’re masking my fire!”

The boss didn’t reply, but pulled us up off the Ogre, allowing their top forward turret to damage a scarred Yangtzee Red so badly that he pulled away and limped out of the fight, headed back to the asteroid field where all our trouble had deployed from in the first place.

Our earlier opponent in his red Mitsubishi blazed past us between ourselves and the Ogre. I couldn’t fire for fear of hitting the Ogre and was instead forced to watch as he got a nice long burst off, fortunately for us, he decided the Ogre was a more attractive target, and he scorched black blast marks down the length of the huge cargo ship. When his shots reached the forward turret, a brief bit of flame shot up—the Ogre had lost at least one turret; it was good for them, and us also, I guess, that their gunners, unlike me, kept the maglock on the turrets closed, preventing a full hull breach when they got hit. I figure, if I’m going down, so’s the boss, because its probably his fault anyway. Crisk swore vehemently over the comm channel that we weren’t doing our part.

I fired a few shots at yet another fighter trying the same maneuver between us and the Ogre and I felt the ship shudder as the boss fired a missile at an unseen target ahead.

“Where’s that been the whole time?” I roared. I was soaked in sweat, trembling from the violence of the battle, and my partner just now decides to start fighting?

“Not exactly easy to fly and fight, you know,” the boss replied angrily. “You can come up here and try it next time!”

Instead of dignifying my partner’s ridiculous excuses with a reply
I did something useful: I picked up a Yangtzee Blue lining up on the Ogre from the front and shot off forward mounted radar dish which caused him to think better of his attack run. He broke off to retreat, but a missile leapt out of a launcher on the underside of the Ogre and finished him off.

Our ship shook again as an enemy Hradi strafed us from above; the boss rolled and looped upward simultaneously, catching the hapless Hradi inside our loop and keeping my guns on him the whole time. My Powerpoints blasted a hole in his left wing and must have scored a hit on one of his missiles mounted in the hardpoint on the other side of the wing. There was a pretty explosion as the warhead cooked off and then an even prettier explosion as the whole ship followed.

“Scratch one Hradi,” the boss called to Crisk.

“Roger,” Crisk called up, “we just got another Delta off our two o’clock—watch it! Got one diving on you!”

Hearing Crisk warn us seemed surreal, but I figured, if he’s helping, why question it?

{See the rest in part 2}

More writing by this author

Blogs on This Site