I pulled the gun from its 3D printed holster, snapped it out to its intended target, and pulled the trigger. The red point of a laser illuminated the small off-colored patch of wall panel I had been aiming at. This was a new exercise for me. At some point, I had concluded that I was a fairly decent shot. I could only assume this came from days worth of playing video games, and while I had the knowledge to use the weapon, I still lacked the necessary muscle memory to use it well. Fifteen minutes of this drawing, shooting, and then changing the magazine practice, and I was getting damn good and damn fast with my pilfered pistol. I occasionally practiced with the Arc pistol as well, since that was my less-lethal option. Sam was busy cooking lunch. X-Talia was busy using the three mining drones. We were collecting raw ore at a slightly faster rate than we had the last two trips. Currently, we weren’t making much more than if we were just flying from station to station delivering cargo, but we were slowly gaining on that formula. After adding another couple of mining drones, we’d be looking at attaching some type of freight container to the hull. That put redesigning the ship a little higher on the priority list, but at the moment we were probably just going to weld something to the ventral side.
“Uh, can you guys get to the bridge and maybe get ready for combat?” said X-Talia over the ship’s internal communication system.
Sam and I both took a half second to stare at each other before bolting across the galley and rushing onto the bridge. I had my soft suit halfway on before Sam had even locked the hatch door.
“What’s going on?” I asked the room, hoping that X-Talia would hear me.
“Two vessels with Sentinel mercenary group transponder codes were on a flyby. They deactivated their transponders and turned towards us as soon as they noticed us.”
“Well, shit. Maybe we should start using the Flying Brick again, for a little while at least?” X-Talia’s avatar gave me a nod from one of the screens before her image blanked out, replacing it with an extrapolation map of where she thought the two vessels might be.
“Did you withdraw the drones?” Sam asked.
“No, it totally slipped my mind,” X-Talia retorted. “Of course, I withdrew the drones.”
“Disable safeties on the engines, please.”
“Done.”
“And let’s turn off our transponder code. We’ll hide behind the asteroid.”
Despite every depiction of an asteroid belt being a rock-filled area where things constantly tumbled into each other, that was almost never the case. The spacing between asteroids was often so far apart that it was impossible to see one from another’s location. The rings were a little different. All the asteroids hovering around Azore were tightly packed. Collisions were quite common, but nothing was moving at a very high relative velocity to anything else. There was plenty of room to maneuver when peacefully mining. A fast-paced dogfight, on the other hand, was likely to be a different story. I maneuvered the Res-a-tesseract behind the asteroid we had been working on, keeping just enough of the ship’s sensors exposed that we could see the oncoming ships, provided they were actually coming.
“X-Talia, remind me to look into getting a couple drones or something that we could set out. Something with some sensors and relays so that we can do a better job of hiding.”
“Hm. That’s a great idea. I should have thought of that?”
Sam and I were both strapped into our seats in our soft suits. We didn’t have to worry about evacuating the atmosphere from the cargo bay. It was already done. Our ammo was full and our heat sink was loaded. So if this was gonna come to a fight, we were as prepared as we could be. Nothing left but the waiting. I briefly considered moving the Res-a-tesseract to hide behind a different asteroid, but as the minutes passed, X-Talia glimpsed our pursuers and sure enough, they were heading directly towards us.
“Fuck,” X-Talia muttered. She put both ships up on a screen. The small one was bad enough. A small fighter, which likely had similar firepower to the Res-a-tesseract. Tiny antenna-looking things covered the larger ship, poking out all over its skin, giving it the appearance of a pufferfish with hair-like thorns, which were the telltale sign of shields. A small fighter and a damn gunboat.
“Is that the ship you sold to that junkyard?” Came Sam’s flabbergasted voice, causing me to look at the screens and scrutinize the image more. It certainly looked the same.
“They’re going to comm first, right?” I asked, not specifically to anyone. It may have been more for myself, but X-Talia did reply with an “uh?”
Then the fighter broke off from the gunboat, which inturn launched two small objects that skidded out sideways from the gunboat in the opposite direction of the fighter. They didn’t even hail us first.
I waited a few ticks, almost a full minute, before over-saturating the gravity emitters and launching the Res-a-tesseract backward, with the fore facing the incoming death tubes and the aft facing the incoming fighter. I had a stupid idea. Theoretically, the only sane option in this situation was to run. However, the Res-a-tesseract had crappy acceleration. We’d never outrun the smaller ship, and it was unlikely we’d be able to outrun the gunboat. If by some miracle we could take out the smaller fighter and continue on in that direction, maybe we could get past the gunboat and build up enough forward momentum to activate the Rift Drive and get the hell out of dodge. That was the hope, at least.
The two missiles came around the asteroid, their long bodies pointed back towards the ship that launched them, making it look like they were trying to return home, but I knew enough about how things fell through the void to know they were only counteracting their momentum in one direction so they could switch it to a new direction, more specifically at the Res-a-tesseract. The enemy fighter made a similar correction, less noticeable because it didn’t use a propellant thrust system to move, but it was no less effective in changing its course.
I stared at the screens a moment longer and wondered if I had actually timed this correctly. I held down the triggers for the forward-mounted chain guns only a few seconds before rotating the ship backward and bringing the guns to bear on the fighter. We passed each other, tracer rounds flying between our ships as both vessels continued to point their faces at each other. Sam screamed, her terror-filled shriek sounding tinny over my helmet’s comm as one of X-Talia’s worried faces exploded, an errant round driving through the hull plating, the viewscreen, and then the bulkhead behind us. In an instant, the bridge’s atmosphere dumped itself into the cold vacuum of space with a sound that was felt instead of heard. I didn’t let it distract me. I kept the Res-a-tesseract pointed at its target, and more importantly, I thrust the ship downward, putting the two trailing missiles directly on the opposite side of the fighter.
“I can’t believe that worked!” The fighter exploded into flashes of light, and it stopped firing at us, turning into a debris field. I stared for perhaps a moment too long, fascinated at how easy it had been to trick the missiles into slamming the wrong target. A moment later, my focus returned to the interior of the bridge.
“Sam, are you okay?”
“Um, I, I think so.”
I turned my head to see her checking her suit, looking for any punctures. She seemed fine.
“X-Talia, damage report.”
“Hull breaches: cargo bay, bridge, galley, engineering. Damage to the water recycler.”
Well, that sucked, but it didn’t suck anywhere near as much as the other ship that was pursuing us. I corrected the Res-a-tesseract’s orientation and poured on as much acceleration as possible.
“Two more missiles!” shouted X-Talia, putting up markers on my screen again. I flipped the ship around so we could fly backward, increasing our velocity while targeting the oncoming missiles. One missile down, two. Then there were two more coming at me, followed by another two. What universal law of launching missiles required ships to have two launchers? It didn’t matter. These were not the complicated ones the stealth ship had shot at us, just dumb warheads with their primary advantage being that they kept coming. The other thing that kept coming: the gunboat. It was clear it had much better acceleration than we did.
“X-Talia, are we gonna make it to a point where we can jump?”
“No,” came X-Talia’s response, clear, concise, and full of certainty. Well, shit.
We weren’t gonna be able to run. The only option was to fight, and fighting a ship that had a shield was one of those David and Goliath scenarios, except in that situation, David had a sling to keep his distance and hurl rocks at stupid amounts of acceleration while I had ripper cannons, which were supposed to be wonderful at chewing through ship’s hulls and absolutely terrible at chewing through shields.
A quick run through of all my options and I realigned the Res-a-tesseract to dive into the most asteroid-dense section of Azore’s rings that we were close to. We’d weave through the rocks backward while shooting missiles. Maybe the debris would confuse the gunboat’s sensors long enough that we could make our escape. I took a brief look at Sam, mostly because she had been a little too quiet and I was afraid something might have happened. She held onto the armrest of her chair with her eyes squeezed shut and her lips moving as though she may be praying. I didn’t believe in any gods, but I couldn’t blame the girl for praying at a time like this.
“You keep calling out incoming missiles, keep me updated on damage reports, and update me on anything you think I might miss,” I told X-Talia. The two-dimensional avatar pressed her lips together in a grim line and gave me a nod. If I was gonna die, I was gonna try to take that bastard with me.
Twenty-something minutes. That’s how long the gunboat chased me through the asteroid field before it was close enough that I had to do something other than run. We were almost at the point where I was shooting at missiles within seconds of them being ejected. The thing seemed to have a never-ending supply of the damnable death tubes. However, the crew on board the gunship must have been hesitating with so many rocks around as they were being launched at a slower rate. I took my chance around a very large asteroid.
“Sam?”
“Yeah.”
“Hang on to your ass.”
Sam gave a nervous squeak of acknowledgment as I delayed firing at the next two oncoming missiles, instead choosing to swing the Res-a-tesseract around the large asteroid, expecting the two death tubes to chase me down. Sweat was still trying to pour into my eyes, blurring my sight, a salty, stinging annoyance despite the considerably less oven-like conditions of the bridge. No atmosphere meant that all heat was being radiated instead of sent to us via convection. Still, I wished I could wipe my brow.
I over-saturated the gravity emitters and launched the Res-a-tesseract around the asteroid. The plan had been to come around at roughly the same time the gunship was going around the other side. It was gonna be close as hell, but would give me plenty of time to shoot at it. I apparently didn’t realize how close.
As soon as I was around the asteroid, the ship was right there. I slammed all energy into the port side gravity emitter in a desperate attempt not to collide with the ship. The thing wasn’t any bigger than the Res-a-tesseract, a bit sleeker, and the hull plating certainly looked thicker, but it wasn’t designed to carry cargo. It did, however, have an extra power core and a shield emitter. The thing started firing on us as soon as we came around, and I did the same. Point defense cannons on turret mounts swiveled towards us, not requiring the ship itself to move. The space between us lit up with tracers. The Res-a-tesseract’s rounds splattered ineffectually across the shields, causing the usually invisible energy to flash bright light. Sam screamed as another round flew through the bridge, this one from the floor and up out of the ceiling.
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“Lock damaged, main coolant link leak, damage to Rift Drive capacitor,” X-Talia said, listing the damages in a dry monotone.
Then we were past the ship, and I launched our over-saturated heat sink directly at the fucker. The twin missiles, which somehow knew not to blow up their own origin point, suddenly veered down in a desperate bid to blow up the white-hot thing currently flying towards the gunship. The heat sink bounced off the gunship’s shields, and the missiles bloomed into twin explosions, causing the whole side of the gunship to light up.
“It’s breached!” X-Talia shouted, highlighting the area as a vibrant red weak point.
For a moment, I poured on the power to the forward gravity emitter, attempting to slow our momentum in one direction and send us back towards the damaged gunship, all while keeping the projectiles flying at it. The gunship rotated, moving its weak point out of our line of sight and attempting to bring to bear its other turret-mounted point defense cannon. Being this close to an enemy vessel, specifically one with shields, I quickly noticed that the turrets sat outside the shield. I didn’t know how shields worked, but it stood to reason that they functioned in both directions, which made that turret my new target. We were too close for that thing to launch missiles and not blow itself up.
X-Talia started droning out damage reports as we flew into the line of fire. “O2 tank rupture, water tank rupture, forward gravity emitter partially damaged, port gravity emitter offline, port chain gun offline,” X-Talia reported.
She droned on. We got closer. Then the firing stopped. The turret turned to slag, opening a large hole in the shields for me to drive more fire into. At any type of reasonable ship-to-ship range, this would be impossible, but we weren’t at reasonable ship-to-ship range. We were so damn close. I could practically reach out of the forward viewport and touch the thing. Figuratively speaking, that’s what I did. I practically wedged the starboard chain gun into the hole and kept on firing. Large chunks of the shield went down as shield emitters were destroyed. The rounds that made their way in between the ship and the shield ricocheted back and forth, damaging the ship far more than the invisible energy barrier. Now, the Res-a-tesseract and the gunship were lodged together, the forward gravity emitter pulling both masses to a single point. I kept firing, sliding the Res-a-tesseract closer to the bridge. When I was there and it was free from shielding, I let go of the forward gravity pull, swung the back end up, and dumped as many rounds as possible into the gunship’s bridge.
The thing had probably stopped fighting a while ago. I found myself sweating in my soft suit, breathing heavily. Only 32 rounds left in my working chain-cannon. Trying to get my breathing and heart rate under control, I mentally ran down a checklist of what I needed to check on. By some miracle, the first thing that popped into my mind was Sam.
“Hey, Sam?” You still alive?"
The expression on her face startled me at first. She had her teeth clenched together and bared; her face scrunched up tight like she was in massive pain. As she opened one eye and looked around, it seemed like she might have just been sitting there terrified. Honestly, terrified was probably a better reaction than I was having, at least a more logical reaction. I hadn’t been scared. Concerned, yes. I fully didn’t think I’d still be breathing, but I hadn’t been scared or terrified. Mostly just angry. The fuckers didn’t even hail us. Hell, if they had played the whole system authority thing, they might have been able to get a lot closer before I…
“Uh, I think so.”
“Ok. So just hang on, alright?”
She nodded through her helmet, and I returned my attention to the ship’s consoles, at least the ones that were still working. There had been a lot of flickering going on, and I was extraordinarily surprised that things were still functional.
“X-Talia, you got an updated damage report.”
The two-dimensional avatar existed on only one screen, and she gave a bit of a grimace before speaking.
“Um, well, the Power Core is working. It’s been a little overtaxed, which causes more damage, something that has been building up. Gravity Drive is still functional by some miracle. We’ve lost a few connections to various emitters. Amazingly, the systems cabinet didn’t get hit and there’s enough electronics that we still have power and gravity in many places. Yeah, that’s about it.”
“So, it was easier to tell me what was working as opposed to what wasn’t?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I’m practically flying blind right now. Most of the ship’s sensors are down, so if there’s anybody coming, I can’t see them.”
“What about the mining drones?”
“One made it through unscathed. I think the charging station’s F-ed.”
I nodded. “Ok, we got things to do and probably not much time to do it. Sam, can you stay here? See if you can’t poke around and get anything to work.”
I stood up, starting to make my way back towards the Galley.
“Wh-where are you going?” Sam asked, with the slightest hint of panic.
“The gunboat was mostly shielded. It probably didn’t take that much damage internally. I need to go see if they have environmental before we run out of O2.”
“Oh, shit,” she said, possibly sounding more panicked.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get through this.”
That isn’t what I was thinking, but I figured she would prefer something a bit more comforting than “jeez, we’re probably gonna die.”
I made my way through the galley, which was a complete mess. A round had made its way through my chair, and now most of it lay crumpled in a corner, the rest of it scattered across the floor. I bent over and picked up the duffel bag I had the hard suit stashed in. I wouldn’t be able to change into it until I found somewhere pressurized, but considering what I was planning, it might make a reasonable shield. The cargo bay certainly hadn’t gone unscathed. The railing was twisted out at an odd angle, hovering over the open floor of the bay, and one step had been blasted through almost dead center. Collected ore lay scattered across the floor and the drone charging station sat split apart and sparking. It looked like a thin mist was emanating from the floor as whatever liquid was under the paneling boiled off and attempted in vain to fill the empty container that was the universe. Gravity was out in several sections, which made walking to the engineering feel like I was at some weird dystopian Fun Park. Engineering itself wasn’t good to look at. Well, it had fewer holes than the cargo bay, which looked kind of like Swiss Cheese. The Rift Drive had taken a sideways round that tore through its bottom forward section and out the top rearmost part, scattering bits of debris literally everywhere. Like all other liquids, the coolant had mostly evaporated into the void, leaving only the thick residue of whatever suspended solids it had spread across the floor like it had been some old blood stain. The Core seemed fine, as did the Gravity Drive. Environmental had taken a hit or two and there was a nice clean hole through the spares closet. It took some prying to get the door open. I stashed what was left of the closet’s contents into my duffel bag. With the spare patches and a torch taken, I about-faced and made my way back into the front of the cargo bay.
The forward lock wasn’t keeping space out or air in. The other vessel was visible through the holes in the metal plates, still practically within arm’s reach.
“Ok, X-Talia, cut the gravity in the cargo bay, open the doors, and start piloting the working mining drone. I wanna use it to get a ride over to the other ship.”
“Are you serious? There’s debris floating around and you’re in a soft suit?”
“I checked the O2 indicator on the upper left of my HUD, “and I got about 92 minutes of breathable atmosphere. How long did you want me to wait?”
“Fair enough.”
I held onto the edge of the lock as the doors opened, one of which got stuck. I put my boot against the edge and pushed, but I couldn’t get it further than about three-quarters of the way into its designated hole. It was good enough to get the mining drone out. The gravity cut off. One of the mining drones activated and slowly drifted its way over to me. I grabbed hold, positioned myself so that I wouldn’t be in the way of its reaction control jets, and then it pulled me out into the void.
It was almost easier to tell how many holes the Res-a-tesseract had from the outside. All the lights were still on and it lit up each scar and hole as if the ship was supposed to be some type of fancy lamp. While the other vessel didn’t look much better at the fore section where I had dumped as much ammo as possible into the bridge, the gunboat’s aft and midsections were pretty much pristine. I continued on my ride until I reached the jagged hole that had once been where the crew was operating the ship. Chunks of metal, plastic, glass, and people floated in the zero-G space in an intricate dance of tiny collisions, slow spins, and random trajectories. I pushed myself off the drone and through the twisted and slagged cavern that once was the bridge. The rear hatch didn’t exactly open. When I pulled on the lever, a sizeable chunk of the wall came with the door. It didn’t come all the way through, leaving a small jagged entrance, and I wasn’t 100% sure I was gonna be able to fit through. Some careful cutting with a torch left me with something I might pass through without puncturing my soft suit.
As horrific as the bridge had been, the small galley and rec room beyond seemed almost unscathed, beyond the wreckage next to the hatchway. I drifted through the room, gun in one hand, bag containing my hard suit in the other. Beyond the galley was a small berthing area, four bunks, and a small head. Beyond that was a lock. I plastered myself against the bulkhead and tried to throw the manual lever, an action made considerably harder in zero-G. The force of air pushed me back a bit, but once the gas had released, I wedged my fingers in between the seam and pull the damn thing open. Once inside, I looked at the lit touchscreen, pushed the close button, and watched as the door slid shut. Really glad Sam and X-Talia weren’t watching that. Cycling the lock, I watched as my suit tracked the pressure and atmospheric mixture. It claimed it to be survivable, so I popped my helmet off and took a breath. The air inside was warm and smelled a bit like burning plastic, but it sure beat cold vacuum.
Peering through the little glass window in the lock, I didn’t see anybody on the other side. I took my time peeling myself out of the soft suit in zero-G and trying to thrust myself into the hard suit. It took an excruciatingly long amount of time and made me long for gravity to come back. I checked in when I got my helmet back on.
“How you doing Sam?”
“I’m ok. I guess,” came her strained voice, “just cleaning up the galley.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that was a pointless idea, but caught myself. She needed something that she could do instead of just sitting there waiting for me to save her. I reworked my words before speaking again. “Yeah. Not a bad idea. Just be careful not to get a puncture. Ok.”
“Yeah. OK.”
Great, with the check-in and social interaction passed, I returned my attention to the other side of the lock, pushed the button to open the door, and floated my way into engineering.
This was clearly the aft of the ship. It appeared to house the environmental systems primarily and a small lift that likely went to the lower deck. On the left were a couple of consoles and a large locker. To the right was the lock. I floated over to check it and verify that it was in working condition. It appeared to be, but then I had a sudden realization that I couldn’t have X-Talia guide the ship over and connect to it without first making sure the shield was down. I drifted over to a ladder, flipped myself upside down, and carefully pulled myself down via the railing while keeping my gun at the ready.
Someone was in engineering, that someone had his leg looped around a hook, likely made specifically for keeping one’s body in position while working in zero-G. He threw a few levers and all the lights went out. That startled me. I pushed myself back up, primarily because I didn’t want him seeing the lights in my helmet and secondarily to swap out the armor-piercing rounds that were in my lead thrower with the more frangible ammunition used for on-ship duties. The guy was in a soft suit, so I didn’t need that extra armor-piercing ability. The red-colored emergency lights came on a little later than expected, but it was only a moment or two before the overheads flickered back to life, drenching the ship in visible light. I poked my head down and saw the guy give a fist pump in triumph and pat the Power Core before stretching his body out and reaching for the Gravity Drive. It was a perfect shot. I think he noticed me the moment before I pulled the trigger. I swear, I could almost see his eyes go wide through his foggy helmet, but the round slammed home dead center in his chest, sending him backwards and spinning slightly. Blood formed a large undulating bubble that tried to hang on to his body via cohesion, but separated as he twitched. I shot him again.
I carefully checked the rest of the room, but beyond mechanical equipment, I found no other signs of other people. Bringing my attention to the panel the mercenary had been reaching for. I found that the Gravity Drive said that it had completed its reset and was awaiting orders. It wasn’t gonna be getting orders from the bridge. The systems cabinet was slag. I didn’t want the ship going anywhere, so I unselected all systems that weren’t deck plating from the galley to the aft. Within a few minutes, my feet pressed firmly against the floor and the corpse fell to the ground. A few steps to the ship had me staring at the secondary Core and a large machine housing with several access panels and consoles attached to it. That could only be the shield generator. Like the Rift generator, I’d never even seen one before. I had no idea how it worked, but I was almost giddy with the idea that I now had one. The only question was how to turn it off. Like most things with easy-to-use consoles, it didn’t take long to figure out.
“X-Talia. I think I got the shields down. Can you use EMF Drive to bring the ship around and connect to the lock?”
“The lock on the Res-a-tesseract is dysfunctional. It won’t be a perfect seal.”
“Hm. I wanna take as much crap with us when we leave. Can I weld the Res-a-tesseract to this thing?”
There was a brief pause before a hesitant response came back. “Yeah, but you’d have to weld on some extra support if you wanna move both ships at the same time using the Res-a-tesseract. Also, keep in mind that I don’t really have a lot of sensors beyond a couple of cameras that are still working. We’re definitely going to need bracing if we’re gonna be pulling the whole thing in one big Franken ship.”
“We’ll figure it out. Let’s get connected to the locks and then Sam can have some mostly fresh air.”
“Ok.”
I looked around the engineering bay of the gunboat. As far as I was concerned, it was my gunboat now. I just had to find a way to fix it up good enough to get it out of here so I could fix it up better. Hmm, then I was gonna need some supplies. At least I wouldn’t be dying today.