Poor Man's Fight (45 page)

Tanner let out a sigh. He didn’t want to be all doom and gloom in front of
Allison in the few hours they had together. He reached for something positive. “I got along fine with almost everyone in my recruit company. A lot of us are still in touch. And I guess the rest of the people on base treat me okay. But ships’ crews and shore departments all tend to stick to themselves. It’s not like we all hang out together.” His voice fell off as he stared at his glass with a frown. “The only one who seems to like me at all is the XO. But, y’know. Officers and enlisteds, right?”

Allison
’s head tilted. “Your XO? Gagne, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He also got a silver cross?”

Tanner nodded. He felt her give his wrist a squeeze.

“I think I know what your problem is, Tanner,” she said, her voice turning a bit firm and sounding every bit as much like an officer as a friend. “I think you’re surrounded by assholes.”

“It’s not that simple,” he
chuckled. “I can’t just make it all about them.”

“And you haven’t, and you don’t, and sometimes maybe that’s your problem,”
Allison pressed. “You’re still beating yourself up over bombing The Test, too, aren’t you? Tanner, have you considered how badly that whole thing was rigged even before your parents pulled the rug out from under you? And do you honestly think these guys on your ship are being fair to you?”

“What, you want me to blame my problems on everyone else?” Tanner blinked. “I’m not gonna go looking for easy excuses.”

“That’s boot camp talking,” Allison countered, shaking her head. “If you were the type to do that, you’d have made those excuses from the start. But you try your hardest every day, right? Have you done anything crappy to these guys? Insulted them? Taken anything for granted? I didn’t think so. Tanner, anytime you’ve got a fair shot, you do just fine. It’s only when the game’s stacked against you that you’re screwed.”

“Not everything’s a game,” he mumbled.

“No, it’s not,” Allison agreed, looking as if he’d proven her point. “Sometimes you gotta throw the rulebook out the window. And I can name a whole ship full of pirates who know better than to play with you when there aren’t any rules.”

She made him grin. Tanner couldn’t tell if it was what she had to say or if it was just her infectious spirit, but he smiled just the same.

Then his holocom went off. He knew the tone. It was a priority from
St. Jude
.

“Crewman Malone,” he answered.

“Get your ass back here, boot,” Morales said immediately. “We’re going out.”

“On my way,” Tanner responded. “What’s up?”

“Does it fucking matter? Just move.” Morales snapped with much more bitterness than urgency. With that, the channel cut out.

Tanner scowled. It wasn’t as if Tanner’s question was out of line; usually a call-out came with at least a few words of explanation. Morales
had no reason to slam the door on Tanner like that other than the simple fact that he could.

“Wow,”
Allison blinked. “When I’m right, I’m right.”

“I have to go,” Tanner sighed as he got up. “
Really wish I could stay with you more today.”

“Hey, no worries,”
Allison said as she stood. “I’m glad I got to see you at all. Listen, Tanner… hang in there, okay? You’re doing good. Don’t let these jerks bother you.” She put her arms around him once more.

Tanner hugged her back tightly. He had no idea when he’d get to hug anyone again.

***

“Son of a bitch is stalling,” Jerry announced from his spot on the bridge.

“Of course he’s stalling,” scoffed Lauren. “Doesn’t take twenty-five fucking minutes to link up two ships this size.”

“What’s he saying?” demanded
Casey.

“Guy cl
aims his maneuvering jet system shows all kinds of bugs from the damage we inflicted,” Jerry replied. “Says they’re firing at random and he needs time to have his people pull ‘em offline manually.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
Casey stomped over to Jerry’s station and stabbed his finger at the mic button. “
Pride
, this is the captain of the ship that owns you now. Lemme talk to your captain.”

There was a pause. Finally
Casey heard, “This is Captain Aaron Kennedy.”

“Yeah, sure you wanna go audio only,”
Casey grumbled to himself. He keyed the mic again. “Kennedy, you and I both know how many redundancies there are on your maneuvering systems. You’ve got one minute to get this link-up done. If it takes any longer than that, you’re gonna watch me murder one of your crew for every minute I have to wait. Do you fucking understand me, you little shit?”

There was another pause. “Acknowledged,” Kennedy said.

***

“Taking off in record time for a recall,” noted Gagne with a bit of a grin.

Stevens didn’t share his smile. “Can’t hurt that Miller’s still confined to the ship.” He sat in the captain’s chair with his eyes on a screen from his holocom as
St. Jude
escaped Augustine’s atmosphere.

“Malone could’ve gotten back sooner,” Morales grunted. He stood with his back to the bridge canopy, watching the sensor bubble dutifully.

“Sooner than fifteen minutes?” Gagne asked casually. “He was practically out of breath when he got here. I think you’re a little too hard on him.”

Morales bit his tongue. “Yes, sir.”

“BM2, command didn’t say anything more than this when they called?” Stevens asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure.” Morales turned to face the captain. “They just said they had a partial mayday call and the general coordinates. Said there wasn’t an
other available ship to send out.”

Stevens let out an irritated breath. He touched one of the many multicolored indicators on his holo screen. “
Pride of Polaris
, mayday,” someone said through an awful lot of static. “We are… dest… location… several casualties… mayday…”

“They don’t say anything about being under attack,” Stevens thought aloud.

“They don’t say they aren’t, either,” put in Gagne.

“No, they don’t,” the captain concurred. “Still.
Computer says
Polaris
is a luxury liner run by NorthStar, so she’d be armed. Their arrival points are randomized. If someone was going to jump her, it’d have to be either amazing luck or amazing planning.”

“Happened with
Aphrodite
last year.”

“It did, but that was a year ago. What’re the chances of the same thing happening in the same system twice? We’ll go in ready for anything, but
they’ve probably just had some sort of systems crash.” Stevens turned to Morales. “Prep the cargo bay to send over damage control parties.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Morales before heading off the bridge.

“Reed, you have a course laid in for me?”

“More or less, sir,” the astrogator mumbled. “
We don’t have an exact fix on the signal because of the interference. Best we can do is ballpark it. And we’re still technically within the system.“

“I’ll take full responsibility for going FTL here,” Stevens said. “Go ahead and log that and transmit it to command. How soon before we’re fully clear of Augustine’s gravity well?”

“Three minutes, sir.”

Stevens keyed on the PA. “
Attention all hands: Let us pray.”

***

Casey strode onto the liner’s bridge and shot Captain Kennedy without a word. The bullet tore through Kennedy’s midsection with an ugly explosion of blood, sending him staggering against the back of his captain’s chair and then to the deck. Screams and yelps burst from the other uniformed men and women all around them.

“
Stupid
asshole!” Casey spat. The liner captain clung to life, though with great pain. Casey kicked him in the head repeatedly.

The other pirates
watched their prisoners. Some of the
Pride’s
bridge crew witnessed Casey’s brutality against their patient, skilled captain. Others couldn’t bear to look.

“Oh, get a grip,”
Casey snapped at them, “he’s not dead yet. You. You’re the first mate, right? What’s your name?”

“S-second mate. Woo. Sarah Woo,” she answered as calmly as she could. Her boss and mentor
lay bleeding out on the deck in front of her.

“Where’s the first mate?”

“Dead. He’s dead.”

“Huh. Tough shit. You assemble
the passengers on the promenade deck like we told you?”

“Yes. We’ve done all you asked of us. You didn’t have to shoot him.”

“Didn’t have to?” Casey snapped. He stepped forward, bringing his face threateningly close to hers. “You’re right, I didn’t have to. I don’t have to do any of this at all. Hell, I could get a fucking job and a wife and all that other bullshit. But clearly I’m not here to just do what I have to do, so maybe you’d better concern yourself with what I might do just ‘cause I feel like it.”

At that, a thought struck him. He spun around, looking over the bridge, and found the astrogation station manned by a young woman. “You’re not the senior astrogator, are you?” he asked.

“N-no,” she stammered.

“Good,” smiled
Casey. He snapped up his gun again and put a bullet through her leg. The young woman lurched over in shrieking pain. “That felt good,” he said.

Glancing around the bridge once more,
Casey gestured to a couple of fellow pirates. They dragged the bleeding captain off the bridge. Casey keyed up his holocom. “Chang,” he said, “you guys in the engineering room yet?”

“We’re here,” came the response. “
Wilson’s looking over the engines now. He says we might need some time to get things rolling again, but hopefully no longer than an hour or two.”

Casey
’s mouth twitched. “Cutting it close,” he muttered. He moved over to the holo projection of the
Pride
’s sensor bubble. They were over eight light minutes away from Augustine. If the liner’s distress calls made it out of the jamming field, any ship underway and ready to jump on the crisis would have arrived by now. Any ship taking off from the planet would need time to get itself together and launch, let alone cover the distance. An Archangel corvette could perhaps do all that within two hours, but
Vengeance
would overwhelm any corvette.

He turned his attention to his holocom again. “I know I don’t have to tell any of you guys to hurry up,” he said in a friendly tone, “but I’m gonna say it anyway. We’ve got our asses out in the wind until this ship’s ready to jump.”

“Gotcha. Wilson and his guys are on it.”

Casey
cut the connection. This had been the plan all along: jump the liner outside of Augustine’s immediate sensor range, fix her up and do a short, simultaneous FTL run with
Vengeance
into deep space, and then wring every last cent out of the passengers before dumping them. All they needed was time to get the liner running again and for her passengers and crew to be kept cowed and compliant.

“This ship has retractable hull panels over its promenade, right? Gives you a big skylight window so people can look out at the stars or planets or whatever bullshit’s out there?”

***

“Contact from drone delta,” Jerry announced on the bridge of
Vengeance
. “Just dropped out of FTL, bearing zero-three-three mark zero-zero-nine, distance—“

“I see it,”
Lauren interrupted. She shifted from
Vengeance
’s sensor bubble to the bubble on the perimeter drone. The expensive drones offered an extended immediate bubble and a certain degree of information control. Deployed in a net around the
Vengeance
, they provided jamming interference for any signal within the sphere while continuously looking outward. Their presence meant that the newcomer likely hadn’t detected
Vengeance
or the
Pride
… yet.

“Dial down the jamming on the drones,” she ordered. “Helm, put us on the other side of the liner relative to that target. Do it delicately; don’t break our tethers or the gangway tubes.”

“She’s an Archangel Navy corvette,” someone said.

“Figured as much. Somebody get
Casey on the line. Jerry?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“How’s your manual targeting?”

***

“This is serious bullshit, man,” grunted Stumpy as he dumped off another bag of equipment in the cargo hold.

“Seriously,” Heifer concurred. He, too, was burdened with multiple canvas bags containing damage control gear.