Aces (11 page)

Taney, the group
’
s muscular weapons and explosives expert, grinned wide, his
white teeth gleaming against his dark skin. “Glad to have you back, Boss. That
Ted Miller guy looks like a chump.”

“He
’
s
supposed to be a chump, he makes the other chumps,” Valjean gestured toward the
freighter
’
s cargo section on the
Nightengale
’
s view screen, “feel all warm and fuzzy, puts them off their
guard.” Not that it had mattered much, since
Nightengale
was armed and the freighter was not.

“Dooley, that
rust bucket of yours goes first,” Valjean pointed to Dooley
’
s
combat robot, which was resting in a corner, “in case there are any surprises
when we force the airlock.” Dooley had bought the combat unit third-hand on the
black market, and Valjean didn
’
t trust it. Combat bots
were twitchy, and Dooley wasn
’
t the best programmer in the
Orion Arm. The thing had come close to freezing up in simulations, and it still
had a nagging personality disorder left over from whoever the previous owner
was. Some idiot had programmed it with a rudimentary, and unhelpful, sense of
humor that bordered on disobedience. Dooley couldn
’
t fix
that problem, despite wiping the memory twice.

“Rocko will get
the job done, Boss,” Dooley assured Valjean, “I
’
ll see to
it.”

Valjean
’
s eyes narrowed. Without the robot, he didn
’
t need Dooley
for much. Dooley irritated Valjean, Dooley had
been hired for his expertise with computers, but beyond that, Valjean
considered him sort of a dim bulb in the brain department, and Dooley looked
it, with his boyish, curly red hair, and easy smile. Valjean didn
’
t
trust him. In fact, Valjean figured Dooley would not be alive long, just long
enough to be useful. One less to share the money. For right now, Valjean might
need ‘Rocko
’
, which was the idiotic name Dooley called his
toy. “You do that. If that thing freezes up, I
’
ll shoot
you both.”

“Thirty meters,
Boss.” Becker called out from the pilot
’
s station.
“Slowing to one meter per second.”

Valjean nodded
silently. Becker was ex-Navy, a skilled pilot, and good in a fight. He still
kept his blonde hair short, in a military style crew cut. Otherwise, he was
vain, greedy, untrustworthy. Just the sort Valjean needed. A man with simple
motivations is a predictable man. Valjean liked predictable people, they could
be manipulated and controlled. Until he didn
’
t need them
any more.

Rocko, who had
been motionless but alert, turned toward Dooley, as the pirate mechanic
activated it with the remote control. “Rocko, you
’
re going
in first. You see anyone, you blast them, you got that?”

“I go in first,
in case someone is shooting at us.”

“That
’
s right, you
’re our combat ready, killing
machine, Rocko.
” Dooley said, pleased.

“
Twenty
meters, Boss.
” Becker said.

“
One
question,
” Rocko asked, looking Dooley right in the eye. “What
’
s in it for me?”

“What?! Why, you
piece of junk, I should-“ Dooley never finished his thought, because he was
drowned out by a shout from Becker.

In
Ace
’
s sickbay, Jen blinked to make her eyes focus again. She was
feeling nauseous and having trouble concentrating. The pain in her ribs was so
sharp at times that tears flooded her eyes. It was time, now or never. She took
extra pleasure in holding up her middle finger, and pressing the Activate key
with it.

Ace
’
s portside thrusters fired, all of them, full on. Such
maneuvers were reserved for dire emergencies, to avoid a collision. If the ship
’
s AI had been online, Jen would not have been able to order the
thrusters into such a long full power burn. Thank goodness for small favors,
she told herself, as the giant, bulky freighter lurched to starboard. She held
onto the remote console with one hand and the bed with her other hand, and
braced for impact.

Becker saw the
enormous transport ship suddenly looming closer. For a split second, he froze.
A collision seemed inevitable. Now
THIS
, he thought, was the type of
thing that damned simulator training really should cover! He shouted for people
to hang on, or something like that, and kicked his ship to starboard. No time
for whimpy thrusters, he knew, their only chance was to get the ship pointed
away and fire the main engines, get out of Dodge pronto. The ship slewed around
violently, and he just got the main engine fuel pumps up to full pressure, when
everything went black.

Ace
smacked the little pirate ship hard, like a bus hitting a bicycle. The impact
made both ships shudder, and stove in a hundred meters of cargo pod 4, venting
air and cargo into space.
Nightengale
’
s
stern was crushed, her main engines destroyed, fuel tanks punctured. The fuel
exploded in a brief fireball which enveloped and scorched the rear of the ship,
then the fuel ran out of oxygen in the vacuum of space, and the fire went out.
The two damaged combatants drifted apart, with
Ace
’
s
thrusters popping wildly to steady the ship, and
Nightengale
spinning, lifeless, looking dead and out of the fight.

“
Whoo-hoo!
”
Schroeder whooped, and punched his fist in the air. He had been watching the
pirate ship approach
his
ship, watching with binoculars through the
viewport, feeling helpless. “Ja!”

Gina and Seth
exchanged a glance, surprised. ‘
Whoo-hoo
’
?
They had never heard Schroeder even come close to a whoop before. “Captain,
what
’
s going on?”

Schroeder kept
the binos pressed to the viewport and held up one hand for silence, until the
rotation of the command section caused the two ships to fall out of view. He
turned to Joy and his crew.  “We have an answer; Jen is alive. And I
believe that means your children are being taken care of, Ms. San-, Joy. 
Ace
just rammed the
Nightengale
, stove in her whole aft
propulsion section!”

Schroeder thought
Joy would recognize his announcement as good news, but she had the opposite
reaction. “Jen
rammed
the pirate ship? With my children aboard?

Schroeder moved
quickly to reassure her. “Joy, I am certain that Jen made sure they were
somewhere safe first. The
Ace
is so much larger than the pirate ship
that it wasn
’
t a dangerous maneuver for our ship. 
Keep in mind that Jen is making the best of a bad situation, she realizes that
your children are in much greater danger if the pirates get aboard.”

Gina added
“Captain
’
s right, Joy. Jen
’
s doing
the best she can over there.”

The best Jen
could was not very good at all, right then. Jen was unconscious. The collision
was not very violent, she hadn
’
t been flung across the
room again, or knocked out. The strain of keeping awake and alert, the loss of
blood, her difficulty breathing, being on duty rather than resting, had caught
up to her. She slumped in the bed, her arms went slack, and the remote console
fell to the deck.

 What saved
Valjean and his crew was their being securely strapped into seats for the
docking maneuver. The initial shock had been violent, more than the inertial
dampening system could compensate for. Power then snapped briefly off, and they
lost artificial gravity and all control over the ship, which was spinning
wildly. The power came back on after three terrifying seconds. Becker fought to
get the ship stabilized, in addition to the spin induced by the collision, they
were venting air, fuel and other substances, all of which knocked the ship
about.

Once the ship was
no longer spinning like a top, a queasy Valjean ordered his crew to assess the
damage, quickly, with priority given to making sure the hypercomm jammer was
still working. The last thing he needed was for someone aboard the transport to
have the opportunity to signal the Navy for help. Valjean checked on that
system himself, it had been offline only briefly, while the power was out. Not
enough time for a distress call to have been sent out.

“We ain
’
t going nowhere, least, not in normal space. The main jets are
gone, crushed or torn clean off. We lost almost all the fuel, too.” Becker said
disgustedly as he wiped his hands on a rag and sat down heavily in the pilot
seat. He and Dooley had just returned from checking on the reactor. “Fusion
reactor
’
s still putting out power, and the Jump engines
will hold a charge, so we can get out of here.”

“We
’
re
not going anywhere!” Valjean snarled. “Not till we get what we came for.”

“Hey, Boss, in
case it slipped your attention, this ship is beat up and out of this fight.”
Becker protested.

“So we use our
shuttle!” Valjean shouted.

“Uh, bad news on
that, boss,” Dooley said reluctantly. It was never a good idea to bring bad
news to Valjean. Especially not when the boss was angry. There was, however, no
way around it.
Nightengale/Isaac Newton
was not big
enough for an internal shuttle bay, instead, the shuttle attached to the side of
the ship. Being outside, it had been vulnerable to flying debris, and it got
hit. “The shuttle
’
s main fuel tank was punctured, it
’
s out of fuel. And there
’
s some engine
damage.” Seeing the outraged expression on Valjean
’
s face,
Dooley stammered to add “No-no-nothing we can
’
t fix,
b-boss. It
’
ll take time. And f-fuel.”

“The shuttle uses
the same fuel as our thrusters, right?” Valjean snapped.

Becker answered.
“Yeah, yeah it does. We can drain thruster fuel, we
’
ve got
plenty. And it
’
s not like we need it here.”

“How long to fix
the shuttle, and refuel?” Valjean demanded of Dooley.

“Uh, I, uh, well,
there
’
s say, three or four hours to fix the shuttle
engine, the damaged part is hard to get at, I
’
ll have to
work outside, and remove the engine cowling. Then I patch the fuel tank, and
start transferring fuel.” Dooley looked like he
’
d just
volunteered to kiss a cobra. Transfer highly volatile thruster fuel? With what?
He would think of something. While he fixed the engine.

Valjean shook his
head. “No, you
’
ll patch the fuel tank first, and transfer
fuel while you work on the engine.”

Dooley
’
s face went white. Becker spoke up for him. “Whoa, whoa,
hold it, boss. Dooley
’
s right on this one. This fuel is
nasty stuff. You do not want to be working on the engines while you
’
re transferring fuel. One spark, and we could lose the shuttle,
and this ship.”

Valjean was a
realist. He scowled at Becker, then nodded. “All right, damn it. How long until
the shuttle is ready?”

Dooley swallowed
hard. He was, right at that moment, truly regretting his chosen line of work.
“Six hours, maybe more? Boss, I know! I can
’
t go any
faster without making it worse.”

“Then you
’
d better get your ass moving! Becker, we still have functioning
thrusters on this ship, right? And plenty of fuel for them, right?”

“Yeah.” Becker
admitted. “Even if we fill the shuttle
’
s
tank, we
’
ve got plenty.
” What
was the boss getting at?

“Then burn the
thrusters, and keep us from drifting further away!” Valjean ordered. Did no one
else among his crew have an ounce of imagination or initiative? “
I
don’
t want that damned freighter getting out of our sight.”

Becker opened his
mouth to argue, then thought better about it. Man wants to waste thruster fuel,
that
’
s his business. The retro thrusters in the nose were
undamaged, Becker got the ship pointed in the right direction, then fired the
thrusters. “That
’
ll take time. I
’
ll
have to fire them in bursts, let them cool down. They
’
re
not designed for continuous use. And Dooley, I
’
ll let you
know when I
’
m firing thrusters, so as you can hang on
tight. What next?”

“What next is I
’
m thinking about it!” Valjean knew that indecision was not a
useful leadership trait, especially not in the leader of a criminal gang.
Indecision was weakness. Weakness could be fatal. “Bring us to within a
kilometer, and hold us there.”

“What if they try
to ram us again, Boss?” Dooley asked. The idea of being outside, working on the
engines, while Becker flew the ship backwards by nose thrusters, had him just
about wetting his pants.

“They won
’
t! Use your head for a change. If they could fire their main
engines, they would have already. One klick is a safe distance, if they try to
move that big tub again with thrusters, we
’
ll have plenty
of time to get out of the way.” Valjean pulled out his gun, extracted the
powercell, checked the energy charge, and slapped it back together. “We
’
ll use our shuttle to get aboard, it
’
s
faster and more agile, so if they fire their thrusters again, we
’
ll
be ready.”

That made sense
to Becker.
Nightengale
’
s
shuttle was a spaceplane-type shuttle, small, light and highly maneuverable.
“We can do that. I can clamp on with the shuttle easier than I could flying
this thing. Ten klicks is a short flight for the shuttle.” He suggested.

“Bring us within
one kilometer anyway, I want to be close, in case of trouble.”

“
Jen,
Jen, wake up!
” Manny whispered, while gently tugging on the woman
’
s hand. He turned to his older sister for comfort, something he
would never have done before the pirates attacked. “Kaylee, is she going to be
all right?”

Kaylee frowned.
After the collision, Jen had not responded to Kaylee
’
s
calls on the radio. The children had hurried back to sickbay, where they found
Jen unresponsive. They figured she had just been asleep. That was hours ago.
Kaylee lifted the woman
’
s right arm and let it flop back
on the bed. Jen groaned and her eyelids fluttered, as if she were dreaming.
“She
’
s just asleep, see. This stabilizer thingy may have
drugged her.”

“What do we do
now?”

Kaylee
wasn
’
t sure she liked being in charge, liked
her normally annoying little brother looking up to her. “Jen will wake up soon.
We can wait here, if we
’
re quiet.
”

“But Kaylee, what
if the pirates come back?”

Kaylee had no
idea what to do if that happened. “Jen will know what to do. You
’
ll
see. She
’
ll wake up, and she
’
ll know
what to do.”

It was pitch
black, dark as the inside of a barrel. Ares didn
’
t have a
moon to reflect starlight, as soon as the red sun dropped below the horizon,
they were on their own, with only Rick
’
s small light to
guide them. The thin atmosphere didn
’
t have many clouds,
so they did have starlight above them, it made for nice night scenery, but was
useless for determining where to put their feet. Night time also brought
rapidly dropping temperatures, which created dust storms, requiring the three
men to huddle in the shelter of a large rock for over an hour, until the
atmosphere settled down for the night.

When they resumed
walking, Rick led the way, with Nelson to his left and Sam to the right. Rick
held the light high above his head, pointing it down to illuminate as wide an
area as possible. The beam of light made for interesting shadows, they
carefully stepped over rocks that didn
’
t exist, and
stumbled over real rocks they didn
’
t see. Nelson reported
hopefully that, at their northern latitude, and time of Ares
’
year,
the night was less than six hours long.

What the little
light did not do was allow them to see far enough ahead to avoid serious
obstacles. They came to the lip of a crater or canyon, and had no idea whether
they should go down, or go around. Twice they walked down into a canyon, only
to find it deep and steep enough that they turned around, walked back up, and
made their way around. After four hours of night walking, they gave up. They
had reached a canyon that was too steep to walk down, and apparently, too wide,
with too many connecting canyons, to walk around. Nelson called a halt for the
remainder of the night. They lay down in the dust as best they could, got
comfortable, and tried to rest. Nobody slept. Other than the brief message blip
they
’
d received hours ago, there had been no word from
Ace
.
Nelson pointed out that they weren
’
t picking up any radio
transmissions at all, not even from the bad guys, which he took to mean that
the bad guys were still jamming all signals. Which meant
Ace
was still
up there, with people aboard, and still posed somewhat of a threat to the bad
guys.

Rick was feeling
pessimistic, sitting there in the dark, breathing many-times recycled air. No
radio signals could also mean, he didn
’
t say aloud, that
Ace
was in shattered pieces, and the bad guys had gotten what they wanted and were
lightyears away by now. Why the hell had he dragged his family all the way out
here? His own selfish reasons? His need to poke around in the ruins of ancient
alien cities? Kaylee hadn
’
t wanted to go, Manny was too
young to understand what he was giving up, what the risks were. Now the risk-

No. That kind of
thinking wasn
’
t useful to anyone. Going to Valhalla would
have been great for the family, great for the children, even Kaylee. It wasn
’
t supposed to be risky! The
Atlas Challenger
had been
operating for thirty years with no incidents. There had not been a fatality on
a civilian starship in decades. If anything, travel between the stars was
boring, not risky. Driving in L.A. was more dangerous.