Rookie Privateer (32 page)

"Tie these guys up and make it tight this time. I'll cover you." Marny picked up her rifle and crouched down behind a tall shelf full of crates.

I tied up both of the pirates and pulled a lot harder on the ties. By the time I finished, one was already coming around. Marny checked, but didn't see fit to pull the ties any tighter. I left them to lie on their stomachs.

"Easier to tie 'em down once they've shot at you 'eh?" she asked and for the first time in a while she sounded more like the Marny we had met in Wuzzies.

She continued.
"We need to clear the rest of the structure. Only thirty-five minutes before we have to be ready for Mr. James."

Thirty-five? Where had the time gone? It felt like it had only been ten minutes since we touched down on this asteroid. It took us twenty minutes to clear the warehouse and the remaining functional living spaces. Marny's explosives opened up an entire section of the habitation domes to space. Fortunately, we didn't find any bodies in there.

A metal staircase led to a small, windowed room on the second level of the warehouse. Inside the room was a control center. The room was sparse, boasting only a few metal chairs and a bank of vid screens. I sat down at the screens while Marny took a guard position at the door. She'd retrieved one of the room scanning pucks she had been tossing out to warn us of movement and placed it strategically in the warehouse below.

We had fifteen minutes before Nick would
try to land. He would, hopefully, have put some distance between himself and the pursuing enemy ship. This was our gambit. We would use their defensive systems against them. Nothing else in this entire sector of space could provide us with enough protection against the pirates that were converging on us. I sat down at the console to reprogram the defensive systems to not fire at
Sterra's Gift
. I wanted to draw the other cutter in before opening fire on it. I panicked as I discovered that I was locked out of the system.

"
Marny! We have a problem."

"
What? Frak!! Hang on."

Marny returned in a minute with one of the pirates. She sat him down hard on the floor, legs outstretched in front of him. She ripped his helmet off and if I hadn't been sitting down I would have likely fallen over. There sat Sheriff Blaen Xid, the bastard who coordinated the attack on Colony 40 and stole my Dad's biggest payday ever. I rose up with murder in mind.

"Not yet." Marny commanded. Her fierceness was startling and stopped me. She looked over to Sheriff Xid, "Command override now or Hoffen here cycles you through the airlock."

"
Yeah right. Frakking pansy-ass kid."

I stood up and held my hand out to Marny.
"Knife. Go get the other one. This one isn't going to last," I said.

Marny extracted her black knife from her sheath, handed it to me and simply walked out of the room.

"You took my foot, shithead. You won't be missed." I jammed the knife into his chest, then pulled out my laser blaster and fired twice.

Marny ran back into the room with the female who had attacked us first.

"Crap. You killed him?" She was genuinely alarmed.

"
He ruined my family. I swore I would end him if I ever saw him again."

"
I, I don't know, Liam. That's pretty twisted. He was tied up." Marny was shaken. I could almost understand.

"
You'll get paid and we can part ways. Let's get through this first. I reached over to Xid's prone body and pulled the knife out. It was dripping with blood."

I leaned over the body of the woman we had tied up
earlier. "Okay. So we have one more pirate after you. Then I have to start making decisions. We could easily just shut down the power and wait for our friend, Nick. He had plenty of missiles and will have taken out your buddies’ ship by now. There is no help coming for you." I looked at the now terrified woman. "Do you have the codes or not? I have five minutes before I have to figure this out."

I crouched in front of her and showed her the bloody knife.

"Houzi 498," she said, cowering.

I jumped to the console and typed in the code she gave me. I was in. I ran a quick scan of local space and didn't see
Sterra's Gift
yet. Oh man, I hoped Nick was okay.

"
Marny, get something on Xid's chest or he's gonna bleed out," I said over my shoulder.

Marny's head swiveled to me and understanding slowly crossed her face.
"You rat crap little spacer trash bastard!"

"
You need to work on your cussing. Or are Earth Marines not quite as badass as their Mars brethren?"

"
Don't push it," she said.

I figu
red I'd better leave that alone for now. I heard Marny working on Xid. I'd purposefully tried to miss his important parts with the knife, even though I would have been fine with things going another way. The laser blasts were completely for show. Then I hit him as hard as I could in the head with my gloved fist. That was purely personal. He probably had a concussion. Even if he were damaged for life, we still wouldn't be even.

I punched
Sterra’s Gift’s
signature into the defensive system and locked out all other ships. The pirates had programmed in more than one hundred ships that this computer would recognize and treat as friendlies. Great, I had made some powerful enemies.

I downloaded as much information from the defensive system as I could for Mar’s Protectorate.
With great relief, I finally saw
Sterra's Gift
show up on the far scan. Nick was decelerating hard and I couldn't yet detect any pursuit craft.

Nick was running the play.
He had put significant distance between himself and the other cutter. I hoped it had been enough to stay safe, but not enough to discourage the pursuit. Nick's deceleration vector was such that he would blow right past the asteroid, but he would be well inside the range of the hideout's heavy turrets. He had too much faith in me. It made me proud and scared all at the same time.

After applying a med-patch to Xid, Marny dragged the last pirate into the room, dropping him on the ground.

"What about the first guy?" I asked.

"
He's dead. I got him chilling," she responded.

"
What are you going to do with us?" I heard a small voice from behind me.

"
Quiet," Marny replied. "Do you see Nicholas yet?"

"
Yes. Here." I pulled up a display showing
Sterra's Gift
decelerating. We couldn't see much, but it looked like she had taken some damage. We wouldn't be able to penetrate the hard burn with our transmissions until he passed us by.

I saw the other cutter enter
the range of our sensor net, showing yellow on my screen. I didn't want the guns to shoot at it yet. The trap would be sprung soon enough. I needed them to land that ship.

Fire a pattern of warning shots around Sterra's Gift. Do not hit the ship under any circumstance
.

All three turrets showed targeting solutions and fired a couple of shots.

Continue to fire warning shots for ten seconds
.

The guns barked to life and sprayed laser bolts on a near-miss course. It was an impressive display and I was glad it was AI controlled. I would have surely hit the ship if I had been aiming. Nick would overshoot us enough that it would take him five minutes to get back. He had changed our plan a bit but it made sense. He would gain safety behind the asteroid and likely sail back around the bottom side, forcing the pirate cutter to stay in range of our weapons for the longest period of time.

Sterra's Gift
finally passed the station, still decelerating. We could open communication with Nick.

Hail Sterra's Gift. Secure channel
.

"
Nick report! No casualties on station. I repeat. No casualties."

"
This is
Sterra's Gift
. We are flying without pressure in main hallway. I am not sure, but I think the airlock door got blown off. I am unable to raise the brig. Engines are showing stress and we are running at 60% ammo."

It was a good report. Nick was alive. That was the only thing I cared about.
To hell with the rest. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt Marny's large hand on my shoulder. I thought I might cry in relief, but of course I didn't do that sort of thing.

"
You made some tough calls, Cap. Welcome to command. You did good, now don't get cocky."

"
Nick, I got an idea. Give me a second."

"
Hey. You want your freedom?" I asked the young woman.

"
Like you would give it to me," she said.

"
You got any better offers? Besides if we lose, you can say we had a gun to your head."

"
What do you want?" I understood her suspicion.

"
Tell them that Xid and the other guy got hit by fire from my buddy's ship. You're here all by yourself. Tell them that the defense systems disabled the ship and forced it to land."

"
What do I get out of it?"

"
We will drop you at Terrence."

"
They'll kill me."

"
Red Houzi? What if you had money? How about Terrence with a platinum brick worth twenty thousand and anything from here that you can stuff in a bag?" I wanted this to work.

"
Okay?" I could hear in her voice that she didn’t trust me. That’s fine. I didn’t need much from her.

Marny stepped toward her menacingly.
"You cross us and I will kill you on the spot."

The woman glared back.
"Don't think you can hurt me."

I worried Marny might take it further so I stepped in.
"Look, we have no interest in hurting you. If you guys had left us alone, we wouldn't even be here."

"
They can't allow Mie-su to be captured by the Protectorate," she said almost involuntarily.

Hail Sterra's Gift
. "Nick, come around and set down way off to the side. Make it look like a forced landing."

"
Shouldn't be too hard." Nick wasn't one for a lot of words. I watched happily as he landed
Sterra's Gift
in front of the main building. Marny was outside the airlock when he landed.

Nick and Marny cycled through the airlock as the enemy cutter hailed the station.

"Xid. What’s going on down there? What's that ship doing on the ground?"

The young woman nodded at me and I knew it was go time.

"You do this right and I will live up to my promise. You say anything wrong and your life is forfeit." I helped her to the chair and cut her hands free.

I could hear Marny running up the stairs with Nick behind her.

"Alexander. They're all dead."

"
Who is this? Dontal? Who's dead? What do you mean? Spit it out, you stupid bitch."

"
Xid, Peng. We have a lot of damage here. They were firing on us. I think they are still on the ship. The turrets knocked them down. I haven't seen anyone come out. I didn't want to fire at them, Mie-su was supposed to be on board. I told them I have the turrets on them. Been waiting for you."

"
Sounds fishy. What are you up to? Gonna come down there and cut you if you are frakking with me."

I cut
communication at that point. It sounded like they mostly believed her. Nick and Marny were in the room. I stood up and walked over to embrace Nick. I hoped we wouldn't ever need to split up like that again.

"
Sounds promising," Marny said, "How many on that ship?"

"
Three," she replied. "Gunner, pilot, engineer."

"
You will understand that I have to bind you again. Not that you're not trustworthy and all." Marny was trying to keep it light, but under the circumstances I could also understand why she didn't get a great response.

"
Just like every other man," the young woman retorted.

It was eerie watching the cutter land.
It looked so much like
Sterra’s Gift
– although it was in much rougher shape. Our next action depended entirely on what the pirates did next. Two figures disembarked from the enemy cutter and bounded over to our ship.

I looked over at Nick,
"You locked it, right?"

"
Door got blown off."

Fire turrets between Sterra's Gift and approaching men
.

Laser bolt rounds fired deeply into the ground in front of the approaching men and they froze in place.

Hail cutter not identified as Sterra's Gift
. "This is Captain Liam Hoffen of the cutter
Sterra's Gift
. I am currently in control of your heavy turrets. Stand down or be destroyed."