Lucas cursed softly to himself as he came across another body lying in the street. He pointed his wristcomp at it and captured a quick image before continuing on through the war-torn streets of New Pittsburgh.
In the distance, sharp pops of gunfire interspersed with the occasional boom of explosives could be heard; rising and falling in cadence like a madman’s symphony.
Even though New Pittsburgh was a warzone, Lucas’ sidearm remained holstered and he was protected only by a battered chest plate.
He continued his trip through the city, eyes constantly roving, ears pricked, and nostrils occasionally flaring. Eventually he made his way to a nondescript middle-class district. Though the fighting was more distant now, the sounds indicated it was picking up in ferocity.
Now that he was in a seemingly deserted neighborhood, Lucas abandoned his casual walk and slunk into an alleyway. Pulling out a slightly bloody earbud from his pocket, he connected it to his wristcomp and stared at the display.
After a few moments, orders started coming through the earbud and his wristcomp quietly struggled to break the encryption and trace the signal.
There was a very soft scuff of a shoe deeper in the alley, and Lucas whirled, pistol instantly snatched from its holster.
His target turned out to be a waif of a girl. Her hair was matted and filthy, her clothes full of holes and covered in dirt, and she seemed to have been malnourished for quite a while. She froze and slowly raised her hands in the air as he kept the pistol pointed at her.
Then, his wristcomp gave a soft vibration as it finished cracking the encryption on the earbud’s signals.
Without lowering his pistol, Lucas twisted his wrist and checked the display.
He lowered his gun, pulled out one of his few remaining ration bars, and tossed it to the girl.
“Get out of here, it isn’t safe here anymore.” Without another word he stalked past her, following the directions from his wristcomp.
After a few blocks he began to regret his decision; if the girl had been a lookout or informer, he could have warned his target. Still, she looked like she was only a few days from death, hopefully she would be grateful enough for the food to keep quiet.
His wristcomp and the ‘liberated’ earbud led him to a hotel. He made sure to capture a quick image of it before he smoothly and quickly slunk around to its backside. There he found the expected loading docks and dumpsters, all seemingly abandoned.
He gave a quick sniff, but could detect nothing except the foul odor of something leaking from the grease trap.
Sure that there were no guards, and not spotting any cameras, he moved to the doors and pulled out a small wand. He held it over the rear doors and after a moment, they unlocked with a soft chunk.
Pistol once more in hand, he slowly edged his way into the back rooms of the hotel. Encountering nothing but an empty storeroom, he quickly made his way to the employee stairs. After one more glance at his wristcomp, he shut it and the earbud down, relying only on his senses as he crept up the stairs.
He encountered no signs of the hotel being inhabited, just like the rest of the district, but he was sure he had the right location. At the 6th floor, his nose finally caught the scent of something other than stale air and dust; cigar smoke.
After checking to make sure the smell wasn’t coming from the 7th floor, he returned and pressed his ear to the door. There were no sounds or vibrations to indicate life, so he smoothly and quickly opened the door to find an empty hallway.
The scent of smoke grew stronger, and after seeing no traps or sensors in the hallway, Lucas made his way forward, looking at anything and everything for the slightest clue.
His noticed that the aroma was particularly strong about halfway down the hallway, but quickly faded afterwards. He returned and noticed he could see where his footprints had disturbed the dust on the floor, and he carefully searched the ground for more scuffs.
Finding what he believed to be the correct door, he carefully put his ear to the wall and heard quiet murmurs from inside.
Taking a step back, he considered the door and the lack of traps or sensors he had seen so far. It seemed his target was relying on stealth to secure his location, and defenses would have given him away. But to have nothing at all was pure foolishness.
Shaking his head, Lucas decided to assume his quarry was more dangerous than it appeared, it was a good strategy for staying alive. Quietly, he crept to the next room and tested the handle on the door. He found it locked, which was strange. The target shouldn’t have been able to override security doors like Lucas could. Getting inside the building without going through any of the locked doors wouldn’t be too hard, but cracking the building’s server to unlock a specific hotel room was quite unlikely. Most black-market hacks would have employed a ‘scorched earth’ attack to unlock every hotel room in the building.
Frowning, he filed the information away for later as he withdrew his wand again. After a few moments he found himself in the room right next to the target. After confirming the sound of a voice quietly talking, he pressed gently on wall between the two rooms.
Finding a spot where the wall buckled slightly between two boards in the internal frame, he withdrew some more liberated supplies, this time in the form of plastic explosive. He quickly formed it into a very thin two meter tall ‘t’ on the wall and inserted the detonator. A shaped charge would have been better, but this was what he had.
Withdrawing to the bathroom he crouched down on the floor, took several deep breaths and hit the button on the detonator.
BOOM!!!
Before the shockwave or dust had even dissipated, Lucas threw himself back into the hotel room and through the newly formed hole in the wall.
Inside, he found a man with straw blonde hair and an unkempt beard screaming into a headset with fear in his eyes.
Lucas didn’t hesitate; he raised his pistol and put three rapid shots into the man’s chest. His screams abruptly choked off as he fell to the ground, but Lucas noticed a lack of blood, so he quickly crossed the room and after grabbing the man by his hair, broke his neck before removing the headset.
After he flipped the man onto his back, he quickly took a photo of him and several of the room. There were empty ration boxes scattered everywhere, a claymore rigged to the door, and a powerful computer on the desk. He quickly connected his wristcomp to the device and began cloning its memory. Once that was running, he methodically searched through the dead man’s pockets and removed his wristcomp.
His own wristcomp announced the completion of its task with another small vibration and Lucas disconnected from the larger computer before setting up a small charge with the rest of his liberated explosives.
Setting the new charge inside of the computer case, he inserted the detonator and prepared to leave. He contemplated disarming the door charge and leaving that way, but he decided to leave it for any of the dead man’s subordinates that were now likely rushing to check on him.
After crossing through his mouse hole, he quickly began his exfiltration. As he neared the employee area though, he heard sounds coming from the previously empty kitchen.
Lifting his pistol he carefully came around the corner to find… the waif from before, busily stuffing dry cereal into her mouth. She smiled as she noticed him and gave him a wave.
“Thanks for leaving the door unlocked!” She said.
Lucas lowered his pistol, although he still kept it ready by his side.
“Kid, you really need to get out of here. Lot of bad folks are going to show up in a few minutes. Take the box with you if you like, but don’t be here when they show up.”
So saying, he followed his own advice and made his way to the back entrance. He heard the sounds of the girl crunching a final mouthful of cereal behind him and sighed before turning around.
“Why are you following me?”
She tried to give him an innocent smile. “I’m going with you!”
“Like hell you are, it’s going to be hard enough just getting myself out of this city.” He retorted.
“I can keep up! I’m fast and quiet!” She said earnestly.
Lucas sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Why do you even want to come with me, we’re strangers. Look, I’ll give you my last ration bar, I can make it back to my ship without food, but you really need to go hide somewhere now.”
Truthfully he was a little impressed. She was stealthy enough to have followed him here without his notice; she might survive until the revolt died down in a month or two.
“Ship, you have a ship? Please! I’m from the Wastes and I got sold here. My owner died and I’ve been living on my own, I don’t have anyone, anything; please, you can dump me back in the Wastes if you want, just take me somewhere!” As she pleaded her face fell. “My owner… used me. I’ll let you use me too if you take me, I’ll let you do anything you want. Please, I’ll die here.” She finished quietly and desperately.
Lucas let out a heavy sigh, he really shouldn’t have mentioned the ship. “Fine. If you can keep up, I’ll take you. I won’t use you though.”
Her desperate expression disappeared and he saw a small flicker of hope blossom in her eyes.
Seeing a pallet of water bottles, Lucas quickly grabbed one and tossed it to the girl before grabbing one himself. Then he tossed her his last ration bar. “Eat this, you’ll need your strength. Keep up and keep quiet.”
Lifting his pistol once more, he quickly moved out into the deserted district.
Keeping to the shadows, he left the hotel and its dead inhabitant behind. After a few blocks, he slowed down and slipped once more into the alleyways, aware that the dead man’s subordinates would likely be closing in.
For the next few hours, Lucas and the silent girl slipped their way through the city until they were standing in a park at the bank of the river.
“Can you swim?” This was the first time they had spoken since they left the hotel.
She nodded hesitantly.
“We’re going thirty kilometers downstream, it should only take a few hours. It’s going to be cold and tiring, but just focus on floating, I’ll pull you out when its time. Clench your muscles from time to time to stay warm.”
She gave him a soft smile. “I can make it, I have to.”
Without further ado, he stepped into the cool water and quickly made his way to the middle of the river and let the current carry him away. Looking back, he saw the girl following behind.
At first the water was pleasantly cool, relieving the heat of the summer day, but as time went on and the sun set, it quickly leached the heat from his body. Lucas focused on floating on his back and started clenching his various muscle groups in a slow rotation to make sure he didn’t lock up.
With nothing to occupy him, he thought about the girl. He hadn’t asked her name yet, because it would just make it that much harder if she wasn’t strong enough to make it. He wondered about where to drop her off after he left New Pittsburgh. There were several war orphanages set up across the Stellar Alliance that he could probably leave her at. Either way, he wasn’t making a trip anywhere specific to drop her off, especially not to the Wastes.
After a few hours, Lucas spotted a row of homes near the water, homes with docks. There was a small boat tied up at one of them. He turned to check on the girl and found her bobbing along behind him. She was clearly at the end of her strength and every few seconds her face would slip slightly under the water.
His original exfiltration plan called for him to stay in the river for at least another hour, but she wouldn’t make it at this rate. So he swam up to her and carefully began pulling the both of them to the shore.
They landed pretty close to the docks and he left her there shivering miserably on the ground while the made his way to the dark houses, pistol in hand.
After using his wand to unlock one of the houses, he found some food, blankets, and some clothes that vaguely looked like they would fit her.
Returning to the girl, he noticed that she had passed out and was dangerously cold, so he quickly stripped her wet clothes, dried her off, and stuffed her into the dry ones. Then he picked her up and placed her into the small boat he had seen before untying it and pushing off into the middle of the river.
Another quick application of the wand and he started the motor and began driving them downstream. This was a risk, if there were checkpoints or patrols they could easily spot or even hear a boat, but the sun had set and the small electric motor was fairly quiet.
Crossing to girl, he made sure she was dry before wrapping her in a blanket. After a few minutes she seemed to be warming up, so he took a sugary sports drink he found and slowly began forcing her to drink it. Right now her body desperately needed energy, and sugar was one of the fastest ways to get it. She soon came around and seemed grateful, but Lucas tried to ignore her and busied himself by checking their position with his wristcomp. He didn’t risk connecting to the satellite network, but by matching the features of the river with a map he had predownloaded for this purpose, he could plot their course.
The girl lay on the bench, resting and busying herself with eating and drinking, but from time to time he could see her sending curious glances his way.
As they were passing under a bridge, a bright light flared to life and a loud voice called out from the bank. “Halt! Bring the boat in to shore or we’ll shoot!”
Lucas smoothly and quickly unlatched his holster from his belt and left his gun on the bench next to the girl before slowly raising his hands and making his way to the boat’s wheel. “Don’t shoot! I surrender.” He called out.
As Lucas brought the boat in to the shore he narrowed his eyes and stretched his senses, looking for their opponents. However he could only find one additional person standing next to the one shining the light.
When the prow of the boat grounded itself with a small crunch, the voice called out again. “Alright, step out of the boat slowly. No funny business!”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Lucas hoped that they hadn’t seen the girl lying down on the bench or assumed she was a bundle of clothes of some sort. He slowly stepped out of the boat, careful to keep his hands visible.
“Alright, now walk right towards the light.”
Following the directions, he carefully walked towards the light, but made sure to angle off to the side to draw attention away from the boat.
“Okay, that’s far enough. Now, explain yourself! Why were you on the river after curfew?”
Lucas still hadn’t located more than two opponents, and they hadn’t asked him for identification, so he assumed they were more than likely bandits.
“It’s my daughter, she’s sick! I need to get her to a hospital.” As he spoke, he pointed at the boat.
As expected, the unknown man swung the flashlight towards the boat.
“What dau…”
His question was interrupted by Lucas’ muscular frame slamming into him and knocking him – and more importantly his light – to the ground.
Lucas quickly grabbed the one who hadn’t revealed themselves yet, and grasping them about the waist, he spun and threw them in the dark towards a tree he had made out. From the balance and short stature of the unknown person, he quickly guessed they were either female or fairly young. He had sparred more than enough while in the Marines to have an instinctive feel for such things.
He dove on the cursing man, who was fumbling with his light. He could have gone for a choke hold, but in the dark and unable to see the man’s hands, he decided going for limb control was a better option.
Lucas quickly twisted his arms around his opponent’s, forcing his arms to the small of his back, then he twisted further and grabbed the man’s shoulders, neatly locking his arms up and forcing him to bend over at the waist.
Knowing he might not have much time before the second assailant recovered, Lucas slammed the first man’s head into the ground several times before lunging for the light. As soon as it was in his hands, he directed it towards the tree where he had thrown the second person, only to see them lying on the ground, with a large wound in their skull.
He picked up a convenient rock and slowly moved towards the body on the ground. As he got closer, he could see it was an older woman, clearly past her prime, and wearing a much-patched dress. She had tripped on a root when he threw her and bashed her skull open when she fell. Lucas had seen a lot of wounds over the course of his career; he knew she didn’t have long.
With a sigh he strode back over to the man who was groaning and holding his head. He picked him up by the scruff of the neck and saw that he too was older and past his prime.
He dragged him over to the dying woman and dropped him nearly on top of her. “Say your goodbyes, she won’t last the hour in this state.” His voice was cold.
He saw the man looking at the woman in shock.
“You… you monster! How could you do this?”
Lucas squeezed the man’s shoulder. “This is your doing.”
“We have to save her!”
“We? There is no we here. You accosted me. You threatened me. And this is the result.”
“I wasn’t actually going to kill you! I was going to let you go after we had your stuff.”
“Then you are a fool, and your foolishness killed her.”
“We can still save her, there’s a patrol base half an hour from here. They’ll have medical supplies on hand...” His begging trailed off as Lucas’ grip tightened on his shoulder.
“Sorry, but I need to get off planet. I can’t have you alerting any patrols.”
“So you’ll slaughter us both then? You’re despicable!”
“You’re the ones who decided to try your hands at highway robbery. You failed. But no, I won’t kill you. I’m just going to break one of your legs and take your shoes. Her though… She’s going to suffer; I’ve seen wounds like this before.”
“You… You animal! You’re going to kill her?!” The man’s voice rose hysterically.
“I told you, she’s dead already. Unless you can get her into a neurological trauma suite in the next few minutes, she’s just going to suffer. Now, say goodbye.”
The man started sobbing and draped his body over the woman, as if to defend her. Lucas firmly pulled him aside before stoving her head in with the rock. She didn’t even twitch as she departed.
Then Lucas proceeded to pull of the elderly man’s shoes and socks and throw them far into the river, before suddenly stomping on his calf.
It broke with a snap like a dry branch and the man began wailing.
“Why? Why? What did we ever do to you?”
“You tried to rob me in the dark. I’m sorry the lady cracked her head, but what I did was a mercy. And this broken leg is a mercy too.”
“How is this mercy?”
“Like I said, I need to get off this planet, and if you alert a patrol, people will try to stop me. If people try to stop me, more people end up dead. Mercy, see?”
“I wouldn’t have told anyone, trust me!”
“Ah, but I can’t trust you; you’re a highwayman, remember?”
Tears and snot were flowing down the man’s face, but Lucas felt no pity. The old man may have fallen on hard times, but he had made his choices, and he would have to live with the consequences. He left the man and strode back to the boat, giving it a good shove to get it moving back into the water. He clicked off the flashlight which he had decided to liberate and steered the boat back towards the middle of the river. By his reckoning they still had a few more kilometers before landfall.
As the riverbank flowed by and the man’s faded into the background, Lucas held his hand out to the girl. “You know, you would’ve only had one shot with the gun holstered like that.”
“The holster is noisy, it might have given me away.” The girl said as she placed the gun in his outstretched hand.
“Good job either way. Rest up, we have a ten klick walk ahead of us.” He really meant it, she had not only instinctively hid, but had smartly backed his play. He wasn’t too worried about her shooting him, yet. He was her ride out of this hellhole after all.
Lucas was starting to tire; he hadn’t slept since he had landed his ship nearly seventy hours ago because it was just too dangerous to sleep alone in potentially hostile territory. His original plan had been to recover for a day or two after returning to the ship, to make his departure less connected with the removal of his target, but the incident with the bandits meant he would have to depart as soon as possible for fear of word of his departure leaking out.
Soon, he grounded the boat once more and after they disembarked, he pushed it out into the water to continue its journey downstream, hopefully obfuscating their trail from any potential trackers. Before they set off, the girl pressed a bottle of sugary drink into his hands.
“Drink, you need energy. You look tired.” She said.
Lucas just nodded his head in thanks and chugged the bottle down before setting off with long ground-eating strides.
New Pittsburgh’s large gray-green moon was finally setting by the time they made it to his ship, Night Errand, a small, seventy-five meter light freighter. Lucas and the girl quickly busied themselves with taking down the camouflaged radar absorbent sheet that had helped disguise her for the last three days.
Entering the ship Lucas pointed out a spare cabin. “This is yours, keep it tidy, and eat whatever you want out of the galley.” He said before continuing on to the cockpit.
Lucas stepped through the hatch coaming into the cockpit and dropped into the pilot’s seat. He began rapidly flipping various toggles and switches to wake the ship’s systems from their slumber. After a few moments, a rising infrasonic rumble from the reactor could be felt in his chest, chased by a higher pitched whine as the engines warmed up.
While the ship warmed and preheated its various systems, Lucas recorded a quick message into the com system. “Lucas Nite, New Pittsburgh. Turov eliminated, medium-low chance of exfil compromise. Complete After Action Report to follow after exfiltration.” He encrypted the message, before storing it in the primary buffer, primed to fire off at his command.
Once the reactors and engine reached their safe operating temperatures, he powered up the radar arrays. There were several atmospheric-only patrol craft visible in the vicinity of the capital, but as long as he had a decent lead, they wouldn’t be a problem. His light freighter could flee to space after all.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl standing hesitantly near the bridge hatch. He wordlessly gestured to the copilot’s seat to his right and a smile lit up her face as she scurried forwards to claim it.
He expanded the range on the sensor screen and saw something that definitely did not bode well for his prospects of a successful exfiltration; two corvettes and a destroyer were orbiting nearly directly above New Pittsburgh’s capital, more or less on top of the Night Errand. He would be spotted almost from the moment he lifted out of the sheltered valley the ship was hidden.
Frowning, he thought over his options. Even though the Night Errand had been modified to suit his particular vocation, the amount of firepower arrayed in orbit would easily overwhelm her. He might be able to successfully engage two corvettes and flee, but his light freighter had been modified with evading trouble and keeping a low-profile in mind, not direct combat with a warship, however small the particular warship happened to be.
“Strap in. This could get… bumpy.”
He immediately fired up the inertial compensator, it would consume hardly any energy while stationary, but the faster they accelerated the more power it would demand to keep the ship, and their delicate meat bodies, in one piece.
Twisting the flight controls in his hands, he quickly raised Night Errand from the forest floor and began briskly climbing for orbit. The compensator translated the ship’s savage climb to the sky into something akin to a gentle push. Within a minute the sky started to darken as the atmosphere thinned and they were hailed by one of the corvettes.
“Freighter Night Errand, New Pittsburgh airspace is currently designated a no-fly zone, all traffic is to remain grounded. Cease your lift and state your intentions immediately.”
Taking a few quick breaths to prepare himself, Lucas toggled a com channel to reply. “This is Night Errand. We were delivering humanitarian relief when something happened in the capital! Everyone went crazy; it’s not safe down here!” He blurted out in a panicked voice.
“Night Errand cease your lift! New Pittsburgh airspace is closed!”
“Oh it was horrible. They shot Captain Richards! The last I saw the crowd was beating his body and screaming for blood! They were crazy; we have to get out of here! We didn’t finish offloading, but no contract is worth this!”
The line went dead as the corvette’s communications officer no doubt consulted with his superior. Lucas flashed the girl a quick smile, this might work after all.
“Night Errand what is your current cargo status?”
“Uh, I think maybe ten tons of medicines and fifteen of field rations. It might be a little more, we hadn’t finished unloading for the day. But we had to get out of there even if we broke our Association contract!”
Lucas was offering up very tempting bait. Night Errand had already broken New Pittsburgh law and could be easily impounded. And if the supposed merchant crew onboard tried to make a big stink about it, their contract violations would come to light and the Merchant Association would probably see them stripped of their affiliate status and bankrupt.
“Night Errand, we, uh, could take over delivery of the remaining supplies. Seeing as it’s a humanitarian effort, we would be remiss if we didn’t pitch in to help our citizens.”
“You could? Oh thank you! We just want to get away from this godsforsaken hellhole and back home to the Core.”
This entire time, Lucas had not ceased lifting, though he had slowed the rate some, and the light freighter was already at the same orbital altitude as the corvette.
The voice on the other end of the com line was silent for a few moments before replying in a slightly icy tone. “Right. Dock with the destroyer Hoover, and we’ll get your cargo cross-decked. Beauford out.”
Seeing that they had now cleared the atmosphere, Lucas raised the shields, such as they were on a light freighter. It was important to raise the shields in vacuum, otherwise various atmospheric gasses could get trapped between them and the hull, and the charged particle screens that constituted her shields could cause all sorts of corrosive damage to the hull if they had reactive mass, like oxygen, as a catalyst. As a rule of thumb, most spacers tried to avoid having any mass, besides the ship, inside the shields.
Looking over to the girl – he still didn’t know her name – he said, “When this all breaks down, it’ll be fast. I’m going to be busy piloting, so I need you to activate the defenses. When I tell you, and not a moment before mind you, you flip these two switches.” He pointed out the switches for the point defense array and concealed chaff launchers. The array would be more efficient with a trained operator overseeing them, but he couldn’t trust her with that, so they would rely on the system’s automatic programming.
She didn’t seem fazed by her responsibilities and nodded her agreement.
They were approaching the destroyer, Hoover, now, so he commed them. “Hoover this is Night Errand, approaching for cargo cross-decking. Where do you want us?”
“Night Errand match our orbit and lock with the starboard airlock.”
“Airlock? That’ll take forever! Don’t you guys have a cargo bay?”
“That’s a negative Night Errand, this is a destroyer, not a battleship.”
Lucas let out a snort before flipping a toggle near the throttles and after a moment the low-frequency rumbling from the reactor began rising in intensity.
“Roger that Hoover, starboard airlock, eta seven-five seconds.”
“We aren’t speeding up?” A quiet voice asked.
He looked over and the girl who had a puzzled look on her face.
“Oh, we’re going to blow right by them in about thirty seconds.”
“Why did that switch change the noise?” she continued.
“I’m prepping a going away present for New Pittsburgh. No more talking, it’s almost time.”
Lucas focused his attention on the plot. He wasn’t exactly a hotshot, but he was fairly certain surprise and the Night Errand’s few hidden tricks would see them through.
Seven seconds after he should have started a decel burn to match orbits with the destroyer he slammed both throttles to their forward stops. Then he flipped the toggle near the throttles again and hit the switch to send out his prerecorded message.
Without looking over, he called out, “Defenses, now!”
The bridge crew of the destroyer was obviously caught off guard. What had been a panicked light freighter they probably planned to rip off, instantly transformed into what they had to assume was a smuggler. Their shields weren’t even powering up as Night Errand drew even with them and raked their hull with the point defense cannons that had sprung from concealed hatches on her surface.
Even though Night Errand had quite a dense point defense array – it was more or less on par with the destroyer’s – the damage was fairly moderate. Point defense arrays were primarily defensive after all. And the entirety of the hidden array fired projectiles instead of lasers; he would have liked an all energy beam array, but powering it would have required a larger reactor, which would have in turn given away the ship’s disguise.
The engines though, he had liberated from a decommissioned destroyer in a breaker yard. When empty, the Night Errand was actually capable of out-accelerating most ships, even full she was no slouch.
Unfortunately she was about half full right now, so given enough time, the Hoover would catch them. Luckily the two corvettes were even further behind Hoover and likely no faster than their bigger consort.
Hoover’s shield flickered to life with a shakiness that indicated either they’d overrode the generator’s warm-up sequence or one of Night Errand’s PDC’s had scored a lucky hit and damaged one of its emitters. Even damaged though, there was no way he would be able to break through it.
Maneuvering thrusters flared as Hoover turned to pursue. It looked like the surprise had bought them a twenty second lead. They were definitely out of weapons range now, but it would take almost four minutes to reach the hyperspace limit, and Lucas figured the destroyer could pull back into weapons range in little over two minutes.
The reason Night Errand had to flee so long was because of the planet’s gravity well. He wasn’t conversant in cutting edge hyperspace theory, but he understood that the gravity well of something the size of a planet or sun warped normal spacetime and affected the alternator’s effort to translate the ship into hyperspace. Translating with too much gravitational interference could literally shear the ship in half and spread the resultant mix of particles across both n-space and h-space.
His musings were interrupted by Hoover’s shields failing with a brilliant flash.
The problem shields represented was the energy needed to overcome them. The weapons on Night Errand – if they could be called that – didn’t output enough energy to take down a shielded warship before said warship ripped through her comparatively light shields. But a conversation with some drunken old smugglers had led Lucas to fitting a large, ejectable capacitor to his ship. He could charge it up and drop it from the ship, and it would continue on a ballistic course. If it ran into something or he hit the remote detonator, all the energy bound up in the capacitor would be instantly released. In essence it worked like a crude mine and afforded him one large but clumsy punch.
If the sensor operator on Hoover had been paying closer attention they would have seen him drop the capacitor, which was why he had distracted them by going to full thrust before dropping it. And why he had raked her hull with his PDA; he hadn’t been hoping to actually take her out, but there were plenty of things on the hull of a ship that didn’t take kindly to a fist-sized chunk of metal impacting them at a few hundred meters per second.
Hoover’s shields, recently formed and yet to stabilize into their strongest state, collapsed and a sizable amount of the capacitor’s energy slammed into the rear quarter of the ship, ripping one of her engines free and scouring her entire port flank.
Lucas let out a laugh as Night Errand zoomed away from the stricken destroyer. “Seems like we’ll make it after all.” He looked at the information displayed on the plot. “One of the corvettes might catch us right before we jump, but they don’t have the firepower to stop us.”
A few minutes later the gravitational disruption from New Pittsburgh and its large moon had lessened to the point where it was safe to jump, and so, with a bright streak the light freighter translated to hyperspace.
Lucas laid in a course to the Tau Boötis system and set the autopilot. Then he turned to the girl, who was staring raptly at the warped lights of h-space. “Now that we’ve made our escape, I think it’s time you told me your name,” he said.