Rookie Privateer (16 page)

I looked back to the attacker Xie had knocked to the floor. He was getting up, so I aimed again and shouted, "Stay right there!"

He lunged for Xie, but she was ready for it and twisted gracefully. She grabbed his arm as he lunged, causing him to awkwardly fall back to the floor while she danced out of the way.

"I'm calling the Sheriff," I said to her.

"
Not a good idea," she returned.

"
What. Are you serious?"

"
You won't take off in seventy-two hours if you do. Let's just go back to the ship. These guys won't be back anytime soon. You have a med kit on board?"

"
No idea."

"
You'll live either way, but you need a quality med-kit before you sail."

Xie didn't seem too upset about the altercation. I was pissed. My injuries were adding up. Jumping on the floor with cracked ribs and darts in my arm completely sucked.

"Give me your weapon," I demanded, holding my pistol to the guy's head.

"
Lower," Xie said.

"
What?"

"
Lower. Aim at his chest. If he moves quickly, you will never get the head shot, but if you aim at his chest you can plant three or four before he does too much."

I lowered the weapon to
point at his chest. "Hand me the pistol."

He carefully handed the weapon to me and said,
"You're in deeper than you want to be kid. You better run and run hard." With that he pulled up and ran, gambling I wouldn't shoot him in the back. It was a good gamble.

"
Won't the sheriff see this on the vid-feeds?"

"
No vid-feeds down here for years. Apparently, they keep getting shot out." She seemed pleased by her statement.

When we got back to the ship,
Nick wasn't too happy about me getting shot, but he seemed pleased we had a load lined up. Xie turned out to be excellent at removing darts. It was all about getting the barbs to lay flat before extracting them. Turns out there was a tool for that in the med kit. Xie layered a generous amount of glue on the wound and pronounced me as good as new. The glue burned like fire for a few minutes, but didn't hurt much after that. I was starting to think flechette guns might not have enough stopping power to be a successful deterrent.

"
Where did you learn to fight like that?" I asked her.

"
Where I grew up, you learned to fight."

"
Where was that?"

"
How about I'll show you some stuff when we're underway?" she evaded.

"
That'd be great."

Nick showed Xie the repairs we had made, although he skipped showing her the new turret.

"You boys have made great progress. I was a little worried you might try to fly her without a nav system. This is probably better than what they had in it before." She glanced around. "Any chance you gonna get some better sleeping mats and linens? I didn't see a suit freshener either and are we eating meal bars the whole way?"

Xie was back to her normal self. I was glad Nick couldn't kill with a look because that was what he was trying to do.

"Hold on there, tiger. Xie is a paying customer." I pled my case and Nick narrowed his eyes. I wasn't out of danger yet. "Ten thousand up front."

"
Hmm, I suppose we can make that work," Nick replied.

"
So, bed roll and suit freshener?" Xie pushed.

"
You install the freshener?" Nick countered.

"
Agreed. How about some fresh food?"

Nick passed the buck to me.

I answered, "Sorry, Xie, that's what we have, although we do have coffee. I will make a new pot each morning after 0400 watch."

The promise of coffee seemed to mollify her.

"Is there coffee now?" she asked sweetly, turning on the charm.

When Xie left, she let us know she'd be back
at 0600 on the day of departure. I definitely enjoyed being around her when she was more relaxed, but I wondered if I could take her constant chatter on a long trip. For ten thousand Mars credits though, I figured I'd make it work.

I couldn't escape the guilty feeling that thinking about Xie gave me, though. Tabby had made it crystal clear that she didn't have expectations about our relationship, but it was hard to sync that up with how I felt about her. Xie was at least ten years older than me, but she definitely had my attention.

Nick and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the bridge. My first task was to remove the broken feet from the pilot chairs and unbolt the broken fittings from where the vid screens had been torn off. Every bolt was so rusted in place that I had to use an impact wrench and more than half of them sheared off when I applied force. I was left with the unpleasant task of drilling them out and re-tapping the holes. Each frakking bolt took at least thirty minutes. It put me in a grumpy mood.

I felt a sense of accomplishment when we got to 2300 and I had a good sized pile of fittings and broken vid mounts. Nick spent that same amount of time working on the port side flight yoke. There had been no other option but to manufacture an entirely new one and the cost had been high due to the pattern’s complexity. There was only one replicator on station that could handle the job and we had to pay to bump up our priority. There was nothing to be done about it
. Without the yoke we weren't going anywhere.

"
I have an outfitter coming tomorrow," Nick said from the captain's bunk, "Replacing the fabric on the chairs is too difficult without the right tools. I figure they can also fix the couch. I checked and it extends into a bed. The mattress is too messed up for tonight, but tomorrow you can sleep in style."

I lay on the couch after moving some of the ripped up stuffing around and then stared up at the ceiling wondering what the next couple of weeks would bring. So far, adventure had meant getting the crap beat out of me. With all of that, it still felt pretty awesome to be lying on my couch in a ship I owned
, with a load of cargo waiting to be delivered.

"
What's on deck for tomorrow?" I asked Nick.

"
I'm about done with the port side yoke. We couldn't afford to manufacture the one on the starboard side. I have two vid screens coming and we are replicating the chair legs tonight. I also found a suit freshener." He was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Any idea what those guys wanted?"

"
Not really. They made some comment about being in over our heads. It seemed like they could have done a lot more damage but they didn't. You should have seen Xie. She was awesome."

"
I don't get it. What is that all about?"

"
I think they're trying to scare us. Somebody wants their ship back. That offer wasn't from Ordena, he was representing someone. It pissed him off when I turned him down. Then he kind of forgot about it and offered the load. He didn't even negotiate that hard."

"
Weird. Have you lined up anything out of Baru Manush?"

"
No. Worse case is we sail back. We should have eight to ten days to arrange a load. Do we have any creds left to buy some precious metals from Big Pete?"

"
Aren't those all contracted to M-Cor?"

"
Sure, but there is always wiggle room. Partial ingots, cast offs. We could pay 120% of what M-Cor price gives them and double our money with gold or platinum."

"
We are going to end up with fifteen thousand once we top off fuel, atmo, water and meal bars. By the way, do you want some blueberry?"

I laughed at his joke.
"Take ten thousand in precious? I know Big Pete can get us that much in platinum from his buddies. It will hardly weigh anything."

"
Does he deliver?"

The next morning, 0700 felt too early, but we had a big day ahead of us. There were forty-seven hours before we sailed and an impossibly long list of things that needed fixing. I received word from Gregor Belcose that the
Kuznetsov
would be departing later that day. He'd heard about the attack in the transfer station and wanted to make sure we were taking reasonable precautions.

"
Please contact me if you run into further pirate activity," he said. "Use the encrypted comm equipment. Remember that boat of yours is all about speed. Trading slugs with anything near your size will be a lose-lose proposition. If they can't catch you, they can't hit you. Good trading, Captain, and Godspeed." Lieutenant Gregor Belcose signed off.

I contacted Big Pete and asked him about finding loose platinum for us. He showed up just after lunch. Ten thousand m-creds of platinum turned out to be just over 500 grams and roughly twice the size of the palm of my hand. Nick made a small shelf up under the bulkhead that held the bridge's starboard pilot's vid screen. After placing the brick of platinum on the shelf he welded it closed.

"Been practicing with those flechettes?" Big Pete asked.

I suppressed a grimace.
"Some. We've been pretty busy though. It doesn't seem like they have much stopping power."

"
That'd be true. They're a non-lethal weapon, made for deterrent. Plenty of people been killed with 'em though. How about I check you boys out on this turret?"

"
What do you know about turrets?" I asked.

"
They aren't much to operate. Just a couple of things to keep your eye on." Big Pete pushed on the entry panel to the armory. I knew from experience, he was being sarcastic. Apparently, operating a turret was a big deal.

The lock panel flashed red, denying Big Pete entry.

"Sorry, Mr. Hoffen." Nick punched a code in and opened the door.

"
Good precaution, Nicholas. A slug-thrower is a big responsibility."

The room had closed shelves around the outer walls
and a slim metal ladder in the center leading to the crow's nest. Mechanical conveyers on the shelves kept the turret loaded. It was a fully automated system with more robotic parts than I could imagine.

Big Pete climbed up the ladder, through the hatch, and fell easily into the webbed chair. His hands found the joystick and he tipped it over with anticipation. Nothing happened.

"You mind unlocking the travel?" Big Pete called down.

"
Let me show Liam how," Nick replied.

He gave me a code and helped me navigate my AI to the control system for the turret. Releasing the travel on the turret was easy, although with the hatch open it wouldn’t operate. I could also see the target projection out into space. There were lots of different numbers, but a red line projected straight out from the turret.

"Good. Can you see that red line?"

"
Sure," Nick and I replied at the same time.

"
If you pull the trigger, that's where the bad stuff will happen. Watch the line as I spin." Big Pete slowly rotated the turret. The line turned, showing an arc away from the direction of spin. "It's a prediction line of where your rounds are going. If we were firing live ammo, the slugs would be rendered in your vision. The barrels you have installed have a rate of fire that is pretty significant. For short periods you can override it to cause more damage. If you keep overriding you will most likely slag your barrels. In an emergency the extra firepower might be worth it."

"
Why don't you hop in here, Liam?" I waited for him to come down the ladder and then I climbed up and slid into the chair. My ribs were feeling better but they still complained when I twisted.

I tipped the joystick all the way over to get an idea of how it worked. Bad idea. The turret spun at a crazy rate and it was all I could do to pull it back up. Dad and Nick were laughing down below.

"If you let go, they will reset to neutral. Full speed is not for the uninitiated." Apparently Dad was now into stating the obvious.

I spun the turrets around slower this time and watched the red line move along, estimating where we were pointing. Then, I got a ping on my comm marked urgent. It was from Gregor Belcose. I released the joysticks and connected.

"Hoffen," I answered.

"
We are tracking a free turret on top of the station but no new ships. Are you tracking any bogeys?" Gregor skipped the normal pleasantries.

"
That's us, Lieutenant."

"
You need to stow 'em. We‘ll have to report that to the station. We record all potentially hostile acts when we are at a station."

"
Crap. Okay." I replied.

"
Don't worry. Sometimes our reports take a while to get filed, say next week?"

"
Okay, thanks. We'll stow it. Appreciate the heads up."

"
Kuznetsov
out." Gregor closed the channel.

The afternoon was filled with the arrival of new mattresses and the outfitter. Between the chairs on the bridge, the couch in the captain’s quarters, and crisp new sheets on the new mattresses,
Sterra's Gift
was starting to come together. Nick replaced the broken suit freshener in the hallway next to the secondary head.