“Surrender the Imperial Prince, and your ship can go free. You have ten Galactic minutes to make your decision.”
The comm crackled off, and Captain Tusca leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He rubbed a hand over his face and then leveled a stern gaze on his sheepish science officer.
Who was, apparently, His Imperial Highness, Lukas Rayhan Goliat, Crown Prince and Heir to the Human Galactic Empire.
“Luka, when this is over, you and I are having a long conversation about the things I need to know about my crew,” he said flatly, and Luka winced. Tusca took pity on him and turned to the scanning officer. “Do’, how many of them are there?”
“Thirty-two,” Dorinda reported dutifully, and leaned over to smack the back of Luka’s head. “You lie to us again and I’m gonna whoop you, prince or no!”
It was a crime to strike the Imperial Personage, but Luka only yelped and ducked when she went to whack him again. “Sorry! Sorry! Stop hitting me, Do’!”
She cursed at him creatively in Spanish, but she did stop hitting him. Tusca hid a smile. Do’ was the Ship Mom, and Luka was their youngest crew member. She would calm down eventually.
“How can you be so calm?”
Ah, there it was.
Tusca turned in his chair to examine Graat. He had four non-humans on his ship, and Graat looked the part. All white fur, lizardy face, and kitty ears. Of course, he was also nine feet tall, which sort of took away from the ‘cute’ factor. Ha’reet were powerful fighters, but Graat was a scientist, and somewhat timid in the face of adversity.
He was, however, a very fine navigator.
When he wasn’t panicking, anyway.
Tusca supposed he could forgive the panic. His ship, the Wavedancer, wasn’t a battle ship, and definitely wasn’t prepared to take on thirty-two heavily armed pirates.
“I assume they have weapons on us?” he asked his gunners. Their names weren’t actually Left and Right, but the twins were utterly identical, and stood nearly seven feet in sock-feet. Tusca loved taking them with him on negotiations. “And tell me who is who today.”
They liked to switch places on him. He could tell them apart, but neither of them knew that yet, and he was saving the revelation for a good moment.
“All the big stuff and most of the little stuff,” Left reported dutifully. He had a black eye at the moment. Probably thanks to his twin. “I’m Left.”
“they also have communications blockers on us,” Right called. He leaned back in his chair and pointed out the viewscreen at one of the smaller ships. “See there? The dish on that one? Super illegal. Can we get one?”
“If you can find one that’s fixable or works for less than a thousand Imperial, we can get one,” Tusca allowed, and heard Graat yelp a protest.
“Captain!”
“What? Looks useful.”
“We first have to survive this,” Graat reminded him forcefully, his furry mane standing on edge. “You cannot believe they will release us, even should we agree to their terms!”
“Which we’re not doing,” Tusca said with a reassuring smile to poor Luka, who looked very pale at the thought. “Impie prince or no, you’re one of ours.”
“Got a plan?” Do’ asked tentatively. She was tough, but it was bad odds. “We can’t fight this one out.”
“We’re gonna run for it,” Tusca told her, and caught the eye of his pilot. “Carlito, will you be offended if someone else flies this one?”
“Does it matter if I am?” Carlito asked in reply, and shrugged helplessly. “I’m not a combat pilot. I mean, maybe I could get us clear, but it would be pure luck if I did.”
“Good. You’re on copilot until I tell you otherwise,” Tusca told him, glad his crew was being professional. They didn’t have time for clashing egos. Not now when time was of the essence. “Right, get Roja up here.”
Right turned to follow orders, and Do looked Tusca over speculatively. “Roja is a doctor.”
“Best there is. Time check?”
“Four minutes and twenty-four seconds,” Graat said. His fur had gone from puffy to ‘got caught in a hair-dryer’ and his eyes were white all the way around. “Captain, you cannot possibly believe we can escape. The moment we try, they will blow us from the black.”
They would try, anyway. People were always underestimating humans.
Tusca smiled, just a little. “What do you know about Earth, Graat? About Earth-history, specifically. Early nineteenth century.”
“It was before you left your home-world,” Graat said warily, clearly baffled by the question. “Other than that, nothing.”
No surprise. It was ancient history. Tusca hadn’t actually expected him to know anything about it.
“There’s a story from that era,” he explained casually. “See, it was our first World War, and aircraft were still real new to our race. Not good. Prone to lighting on fire or dropping out of the sky, and that was before they got shot up. But there was this pilot. Better than anyone else. Arguably the best in the world at the time. They called him the Red Baron.”
“Does this have a point?” Dorinda wasn’t the patient sort. She turned to Graat. “The Red Baron turned into a sort of title for the best pilot in the air- or in the black. Generally, there’s only one and they always fly the same colors. A red ship as tribute to the first Red Baron. Tusca, why the story time? I don’t see where-“
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She cut herself off and her mouth dropped open just as Roja walked in. The doctor took in the bridge with his usual unflappable calm, and then the viewscreen, with the timer counting down the seconds.
“Why do we have an army after us?” he asked, and leaned his hip against Tusca’s chair. At this angle, Tusca could just barely see the red swirls of Roja’s tattoos under his sleeves. “And why am I here, and not downstairs in the MedBay?”
“Do you remember,” Tusca said, and turned to face him. “What I said when I hired you?”
No one ever claimed the doctor was stupid, ad he chuckled, eyes crinkling at the edges. “You said if I ever got within spitting distance of the helm, you would shoot me in the head, and fire me out the airlock.”
Oh good. He did remember. That was nice. It was a long time ago.
“Consider that revoked.”
Roja eyed him, all humor evaporating away. Without another word, he turned and walked purposefully towards the helm.
“What-“ Graat still didn’t understand. Tusca flashed him a hard grin. “Captain?”
“You’re gonna want to hold onto something,” he advised even as Roja yanked the cables out from the helm’s console and twisted several of them together. “No one flies like the Red Baron. Crew, until we’re out of this, Roja is in charge. He tells you to do something, you do it. No hesitation. No questions. Just do it.”
“Yes sir,” they called, although he heard plenty of doubt there too.
“Are you serious?” Carlito said as Roja tore the ship apart, and did something mysterious with the wires. “You’re tearing apart the auto-flight assist!”
“Yup,” Roja confirmed from under the panel. “Time?”
“Two minutes, nine seconds.”
“Good. More than enough. Flight-assist is too slow,” Roja said, and popped up from under the console with a twist of wires his hand. To everyone’s’ surprise, he reached up behind his ear and pried off a skin-colored tab, revealing a socket that went straight into his brain. The frayed wires went in, and he winced as electrify crackled across the metal socket. “Hate doing this raw, but there’s no time to install a proper plug.”
“Didn’t know you had a cerebral socket,” Tusca commented as Roja quickly adjusted the console to his preferences. Some pilots had them, although Carlito didn’t. No wonder Roja turned off the auto-flight. His own mind was faster. “Guess I should have known.”
“Can’t do my kind of flying without an implant,” Roja muttered, shoved his sleeves up to show the ancient-style red airplane tattooed down his arm, backed by a brilliant red-and-yellow starburst, and curled his hands around the controls. “Strap in. Don’t want to scrape you off the ceiling later.”
He didn’t wait for them to do it, and slammed a button. Music pounded out of the speakers, fast and loud enough that Tusca could feel the beat vibrating through his chair. For a minute he didn’t understand, and then he saw Roja’s finger counting the beats.
He was tracking time dilation with the music. There was always some, from the jump-drives in every ship, and sometimes from the ships themselves. Plus, the almost-unnoticeable patches that lingered, unseen, in space.
The sort of thing that a pilot could track, and use to their advantage, if they knew how.
He was going to have to pay Roja more after this.
Assuming they survived it.
The ship kicked forward and spun in a tight barrel-roll one way, and then the other, somehow shaking most of the auto-targeting leveled on them.
Tusca held on tight to the arms of his chair as the shot directly towards the waiting ships, and flipped open the comms. “All crew, strap in!”
Better late than never.
“What in the name of-“ Graat was the closest and Tusca wondered if the Ha’reet knew he was leaving marks in the steel of his console. Probably not. “What is he doing?!”
That was fair, honestly. No one flew like this. It was the kind of expertise that came with a very particular pairing of insanity and a few seconds of genuine foresight.
No Red Baron was really sane, but they were the best, and sometimes that was all that mattered.
Shipkiller missiles tore at them, leaving ionized trails behind. Any one of them was enough to wipe out their little ship. A dozen would drop a destroyer.
“On my mark, drop the shields,” Roja yelled over the music, his hands flying across the console. “All of them at once. Do’, get ready to blast communications open at exactly four-ought-nine-six-omega.”
“Ready!” Left yelled back, although he glanced at Tusca, who nodded shortly. He might not know what Roja was up to, but he trusted their doctor and no one outflew a Red Baron. “On your mark!”
“Do’?”
“Ready!”
“Hit it.”
It was suicidal to drop the shields, but Left did it on Roja’s command. Less than a heartbeat behind him, Dorinda flipped the communicators on.
Tusca didn’t hear anything. The frequency was far out of human range, and even Graat tilted his head, expecting to hear something that never came.
The missiles quivered, sputtered, and turned back on the ships that fired them.
“Luka, I want full power from all the engines, but don’t fire them yet. And keep those shields down!”
“Roger!”
“That’s a good trick,” Tusca muttered to himself, and tried to control his stomach as Roja sent their ship into the pack of ships, sometimes so close that their hulls almost scraped together. One of the bigger ships was nearly the size of a moon, and came at them fast, cannons blazing.
Almost imperceptibly, the music fell out of time with Roja’s tapping finger.
Anything that big produced gravity of its’ own. Not much, but some.
Enough, apparently, for a truly incredible pilot to slingshot around the massive ship, and into open space before anyone could stop him.
Graat was praying in his native tongue. Tusca couldn’t really blame him. He sort of felt like praying too. Cannons blazed around them on every side, and somehow Roja managed to spin the ship between the shots without even letting the hull get warm.
“Can we put the shields up?” Right called anxiously. “Those blasts are real close.”
“Not until we Jump. Luka, are those engines hot?” Roja replied, his focus entirely on his task. To his credit, the prince didn’t hesitate.
“Ready!” he reported in, only a little frayed at the edges. E was doing good, for someone with no combat experience at all. “When-“
“Now!”
The stars blurred around them, and then they were ripping through space-time and into the smoothest Jump-transition Tusca could remember experiencing.
Perfect piloting to the last.
He didn’t even care where Roja was taking them as long as it was away from the guys with guns.
“I owe you a pint,” he said when it became apparent that none of the enemy ships had managed to follow them. “Maybe even two.”
Roja laughed and carefully pulled the wires out of his head. He casually turned the Jump-Auto on and stood, not even dizzy despite the areal acrobatics he just put their ship through.
Everyone else was decidedly green around the gills. Even Tusca felt off, and he spent years as a fighter pilot himself.
“You owe me a raise,” the doctor replied cheekily, and patted Luka’s cheek as he headed back for his MedBay now that the danger was past. “Don’t worry kid. We’re not gonna let anything happen to you. Captain, I assume the ban on touching the helm is back in place?”
“Damn right it is. Spitting distance or farther at all times.”
Roja was the best pilot in this galaxy and any other, but Tusca knew that sooner or later, the urge to do the thing overwhelmed even the most sensible pilot.
Roja was not the most sensible pilot, even if he was the best there was. Go fast! was in his blood. Sooner or later, it would get him killed.
“Ah well. It was fun while it lasted,” Roja only chuckled, because he understood. There was a reason he was a doctor now, and not any of the things he had been when Tusca met him.
The doors slid shut behind him, and Tusca looked around at his stunned crew.
“That,” he said casually, “is what it means to fly with a Red Baron.”
Behind him, there was the ominous sound of someone getting sick.
Tusca sighed, and caught Carlito’s eye. The young pilot looked at his ripped-apart console with the air of someone who wasn’t sure that what he was seeing was real. “Where did he send us?”
“I don’t- I don’t know,” Carlito said, and timidly took his seat back. “How- I mean-“
“Start with where we’re going,” Tusca commanded, and looked over at Luka. “And you, you get over here and explain to me how exactly I got the crown prince on my ship without knowing it.”