Chapter 1: Gypsy Rose
Tired but capable, the old freighter cruised through hyperspace at several hundred times the speed of light, bypassing Einstein's theorem. An insistent tone from the communications console roused the ship's sole occupant from a fitful slumber. He mopped the sweat from his face and scratched at the grizzled stubble gracing his chin. He stumbled from his berth, directly behind the command deck, to the communications console, still blinking the sleep from his eyes.
“Alpha, Charlie, Charlie, seven … two! Distress call! Mayday! Reactor breach imminent! Request immediate aid from all vessels within reception range… an’t vent plasma. Reactor temperature critical!” the voice called frantically over the channel, the transmission broken by static and distortion.
Shize, he thought as he struggled with the headset, wires tangling. His pounding head didn’t make it easier. He pressed buttons on the communications console.
“This is delta, delta, two, one, four, to vessel in distress. Please transmit coordinates and status. How copy, over?” he replied to the frantic distress caller, his gravelly voice sounding calmer than he was.
“…. two, one, four, positional data transmitted! We are dead and adrift! …. power! Main reactor core is damaged! Purge procedures are not responding! Request immediate evac, six souls,” the panicked voice replied.
“Please say vessel class and configuration. Inputting positional data into my navcomp, awaiting a solution for FTL,” he answered, punching buttons and twisting dials.
“We are the heavy freighter, Gypsy Rose. Cargo…. dicinal supplies and equipment bound for the …lonies in the Callumn system.” The transmission was barely audible due to interference.
“Gypsy Rose, this is the Passive Swindler, enroute to your position. ETA: four minutes," he said, moving to the navigation console. Sitting in the captain's chair, he wrapped the restraint webbing around his chest. Course corrections were possible in hyperspace but not recommended. Proper protocol dictated a ship should drop out of hyperspace and calculate a new jump to ensure accuracy. He was confident in his ship's capabilities.
“Gypsy Rose, what’s the weather like?” he asked, his fist hovering over the large red button on his left. His query was spacer talk, inquiring about hostile actors.
“The weather is pretty damn hot right now, Swindler ...ternal sensors are down, but we think there were two birds. …umped cargo and they broke off. Say again, two birds, from what I saw, are modified pleasure craft. Proceed with caution! Awaiting your arrival in the …lock! Out!” The man left the comm open. Riordan could hear bursts of static, likely from panels shorting out. Voices were audible in the background, and then silence as they moved off the bridge of the disabled freighter.
Riordan punched buttons on the panel to his right, powering up the automated defenses. Armed with half a dozen civilian-grade plasma cannons, the maximum allowed for defensive purposes, the Swindler could deal with average threats. He set them to auto-track, lock, and fire on any vessels in range with energized weapons. Automation was expensive, but for a ship that normally needed a crew of four, it was necessary.
Riordan hammered the large red button with his fist, bracing for turbulence as his ship corrected her course at faster-than-light speeds. The thick glass viewport in front of him went crazy with swirls of light and spasmodic flashing. The ship lurched with gut-wrenching suddenness as the gravity emitters cut out, diverting power to the twin FTL drives and inertial dampeners. Liquor bottles clinked together in his small berth behind the command deck. With a groan and a familiar knocking, the ship steadied, and the mess outside the viewport solidified into the normal rainbow streaks of hyperspace. His ship careened toward the stricken Gypsy Rose.
Riordan checked the weapons status. All six plasma cannons showed green. He would have liked to have more, but galactic law only allowed so much firepower on civilian vessels. Riordan, however, had an ace up his sleeve. Kinetic weapons were several hundred years obsolete but perfectly legal to mount on your ship. Riordan installed a 30-mm multi-barreled MK-III Hybrid-Rail cannon behind the forward airlock door in the bow of his ship. It was capable of firing 300 steel-jacketed tungsten core projectiles per minute—that's five rounds per second, each weighing 3 kg.
Modern shielding only protected against energy weapons such as plasma cannons, lasers, and particle beams. Tremendous amounts of energy were needed to deflect kinetic weapons. Once they fell into antiquity, most ships had only counter-energy weapon shields and basic deflectors to handle small debris. Riordan tied the fire control for the cannon to the manual control panel by his right hand. A targeting HUD flickered into life on the forward viewport. Sixty seconds until the Passive Swindler dropped out of hyperspace. The forward airlock door opened, the lights in the airlock staying off to keep from alerting anyone in visual range. The ship suddenly felt like she was upside down and spinning. Riordan shook off the feeling; it was just the drop out of hyperspace.
With a flash and a groan of stressed metal, the streaks became points of light. They slid across the viewports as the Passive Swindler reoriented herself toward the stricken vessel. Alarms blared, and rapidly flashing red lights filled the command deck. Radiation warning, Riordan thought as he checked the sensors. The levels were high, but they should be out of the area before they become dangerous. Sensors showed two small ships near the Gypsy’s jettisoned cargo containers. Heavy cargo vessels were typically built to mount cargo containers directly on the hull or on a long trailer arm extending from the ship's rear. This allowed for efficient loading and unloading of bulk containers. The smaller vessels were over 100 kilometers away, out of weapons range, but Riordan could hear the hum of servos through the hull as the plasma cannons oriented themselves in the direction of the threat. If they didn’t come closer and interfere with rescue operations or fire upon the Swindler, galactic law forbade taking offensive action.
Riordan scanned his boards; the aft airlock showed green, ready to receive boarders. Weapons, life support, and shields were all good, or as good as they would get. Riordan switched to manual control. He flipped the Swindler to face away from the Gypsy, preparing to mate airlocks. The alarms became more frantic, and red lights started to pulse erratically on the engineering console on his left. Sensors showed the Swindler had entered the radioactive plume of plasma coolant leaking from the larger ship's core. Debris pinged off the hull as the ships drew closer.
“This is the Passive Swindler. I am in position to mate with your airlock. 15 seconds," Riordan said, unsure if they had communications capability in their airlock. Beeping alerted him that the ships were within 20 meters of docking. The small view screen to the left of the viewport flickered to life, showing a grid and the Gypsy's airlock. He made small corrections, making sure everything would mate. He allowed the Swindler to slowly drift rearward, locking onto the disabled vessel with a clang. The airlock board turned red and then orange, showing that someone was cycling the airlock.
A whooping alarm screamed out in the command deck. Riordan glanced left, checking sensors, as his auto-cannons began to fire. One of the ships was approaching the Swindler with weapons charged. The Swindler shuddered as blue-white plasma fire scintillated off her shields. Pirates! I guess they don’t want sensor logs recording their activities, Riordan thought. Shields were down to 70% but holding. The pirate vessel passed over the mated ships, its strafing run finished.
“Y’all need to hurry the frek up down there! We've got company!” Riordan yelled over the intercom, knowing the personnel in the Gypsy’s airlock would hear it since they were mated. The airlock control panel started to flash red and buzz.
“Filius moecha putida!” Riordan cursed aloud. The outer door was jammed. If the ships detached before it was sealed, everyone not in an EVA or emergency evacuation suit would die when the airlock lost pressure. His eyes darted to the sensors. The second pirate ship was heading in their direction as the first ship reached the end of its arc and oriented for a second strafing run. The Swindler could take a pounding, but her shields wouldn’t hold out for long with two ships hammering at her. Detach and save his own ass, or go aft to override the inner airlock door and manually let the boarders onto his ship? Seconds counted. He only had sixty of them before the first of the ships was within firing range.
Riordan tied the hybrid-rail cannon to the auto-defense fire controls. Being inside an airlock, the cannon only had a few degrees of movement. Normally, the cannon is aimed by moving the ship, but he couldn’t move the ship until the airlock was cleared and sealed. Frek! He might still get lucky. He set a timer for airlock separation and an emergency FTL jump for 120 seconds. If he couldn’t get the inner door open in that amount of time, it wasn’t going to happen.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He unclasped the restraint webbing and headed aft. He slid down the ladder at the rear of the command deck, next to the head. Two flights down to the cargo deck, his bare feet hit the grating with a painful slam. He sprinted across the mostly empty, cavernous main cargo hold. He hit the ladder below the airlock and started to climb upward to the platform. The freight elevator was too slow and was already waiting outside the airlock doors.
He made it to the airlock with 60 seconds on the clock. Unlike more modern ships, there was no porthole on the inner airlock door. Acquired from a locker on the way aft, Riordan pulled an emergency respirator over his face. Once he opened the inner door, the ship could start to lose its atmosphere. He ripped the service panel off the door, exposing the manual override. He started to frantically spin the wheel. Under normal conditions, the inner door would not open unless the outer door was sealed, and vice versa. Riordan could feel the vibration of the cannons firing through the deck plates. The ship shuddered hard as she took half a dozen impacts. His hands slipped off the wheel, and his knuckles lost skin on the edge of the service panel recess.
The airlock control panel suddenly squawked, all indicators showing red. The airlock lost pressure! Riordan frantically spun the wheel the opposite way, securing the inner door against the vacuum of space as precious atmosphere screamed through the narrow gap he had opened. There was nothing he could do now but hope whoever was in the airlock took the time to suit up and secure themselves.
Riordan reentered the command deck as the ship lurched forward on her maneuvering jets, breaking the seal with the Gypsy's airlock. Riordan strapped himself into the captain's chair. 15 seconds until the emergency FTL jump. Riordan reached out and turned off the weapons system. The FTL needed every joule of energy the ship could produce. He glanced at the cannon targeting HUD, shocked to see one of the pirate vessels approaching dead ahead. Almost as an afterthought, he pressed the firing stud, sending a dozen rounds at the ship. The first of the rounds blasted right through the vessel as the sickening vertigo of FTL gripped his stomach. He knew the rest of the rounds would impact in a pattern less than a foot away from each other. The damage would be catastrophic at such a close range. Riordan felt the ship flip and twist as she entered hyperspace.
After 30 seconds, the Swindler dropped out of hyperspace, then rapidly jumped back in. Sensors can only follow the trajectory of a ship they can observe in the act of jumping. A ship can be followed through hyperspace, but jumping right after dropping out leaves no trail that can be followed. Back-to-back jumps are a necessary security protocol that most pilots are too cautious to employ due to the risks involved. The Passive Swindler dropped back into normal space, only a few hundred kilometers from the Gypsy Rose's last position. There was nothing left but a cloud of highly radioactive debris. Sensors told the story. The core breached seconds after the Swindler's emergency jump. Riordan scanned the sensor spectrum, finding only the damaged pirate vessel. Sensors showed a temporal dissonance, showing the remaining vessel had entered subspace. Newer ships use subspace FTL drives, unlike the Swindler's antiquated hyperdrive, which uses dual artificial singularities. He guided the Swindler into a slow flyby to check for survivors.
The pirate vessel drifted in a maelstrom of debris. Riordan completed a full sensor sweep. The hull breach was catastrophic; every bulkhead was pierced. Even if the occupants were wearing EVA suits, the superheated slag created by the heavy 30 mm slugs would have ripped them to shreds. Riordan made sure that the sensor logs were recording correctly. The standard procedure was to report to the nearest law enforcement element. After recording the carnage, Riordan set the autopilot to rendezvous with the jettisoned cargo containers.
He toggled the intercom to the airlock. “I’m coming down to check on you; hold tight,” he said. He kept the intercom open, hoping to hear a response. Nothing. Shize, he thought. Fearing what he would find, he hurried to the aft airlock, grabbing the medical kit from the tiny medical bay on his way aft. Riordan arrived at the airlock door and checked the panel. The outer door was still exposed to space. He removed the panel on the right side of the airlock door and spun the manual controls for the outer door. The door closed a little more than halfway before it stopped. Something was blocking it. Damn! He spun the wheel back a few turns, then forward again. It closed a little more. Half a dozen more tries had the same result. Finally, the door wouldn’t close any further; it was still not sealed. If anyone was without a suit, they were beyond recovery. He was hoping it was only debris blocking the door. Riordan scrubbed his hand through his sweat-slick hair. Fighting pirates with a hangover sucked big time. Going EVA to remove whatever was blocking the airlock was going to suck even more.
Riordan crouched in the cramped forward airlock. It was a tight squeeze past the multi-barreled cannon to the exterior hatch. Many years ago, this was the chute used to load ordinance into the hold of the ship when she was a bomber. The Swindler was originally manufactured as a fast assault bomber when the Greater Galactic Cluster was in a state of civil war. The irony of her current owner being a direct descendant of the insurrectionists the ship was produced to fight was not lost on him.
Riordan toggled the control to purge the forward airlock. The atmosphere pumped out into the interior of the ship. The panel bulb blinked green. He activated the control, and the small outer hatch slid open. Riordan contorted his bulky EVA suit to squeeze past the cannon and exited the ship. The ship’s gravity generators were designed to energize the interior of the craft, not the exterior. Riordan set his sticky boots to medium and started to slowly walk the hull back toward the rear airlock. Tools swayed from his belt. His breath hissed loudly in his ears. He inspected the ship for damage as he went, finding nothing more than scorch marks. Good, he thought. He rounded the top of the ship’s FTL drive, being careful to avoid the cooling vents. He peered down toward the airlock door and saw the obstruction, a pair of legs.
“Shize!" he said to no one. He carefully lowered himself to make the transition to walking on the ship's rear and went to the airlock door. He used the key tethered to his left glove to open the heavily armored external override panel. The airlock door slid open soundlessly. Riordan shoved the legs inside as best he could and followed. There were three bodies. Two men and a woman, none with EVA suits. They were wearing standard jumpsuits of professional spacers. Riordan cycled the outer door closed and re-pressurized the airlock. What in the hell? he thought. The airlock was drenched with sprays of blood and bits of tissue. He rolled the man that was blocking the airlock door over. He had a huge crater in his chest surrounded by burned tissue caused by a plasma bolt from close range. He checked the other man and found his torso riddled with bullet holes. The woman was missing most of her face, which explained all the blood. Riordan inspected the airlock and found half a dozen small dents; bullet strikes.
Cursing, Riordan tripped over a large storage container on his way to open the inner airlock door. Damn helmets, he thought, can’t see shize. The inner door opened, and he stepped out of the airlock. He closed the door behind him and cracked the seal on his helmet. Three people were killed in his airlock. There were two shooters, one with a plasma rifle, expensive tech restricted to the military and criminals, and one with a rifle. He imagined the scene in his head. They were chasing the crew to the airlock or waiting to ambush them, which means they were boarded. The killers shot them and almost made it into the airlock. He remembered the storage case. Did they bring the storage case, why? To keep it safe? Spacers are supposed to abandon all gear when evacuating. Carrying anything can slow you down and cost you your life, as it did in this instance. If they had been a few seconds faster, he would have three survivors to look after instead of corpses to clean up. If the killers had succeeded and reached the airlock, he would have had at least two armed pirates on his ship.
Riordan finished wrapping EVA tape around the last plastic sheet wrapped body. He dragged the body across the cargo floor and stowed it with the other two in the refrigerated locker he used to transport frozen goods. He hadn’t decided what he wanted to do yet. He could transmit his logs and report to the nearest spaceport and spend days answering questions. Alternatively, he could space the corpses, incinerate them with the Swindler’s plasma cannons, scrub his logs, and forget this ever happened.
As he hosed the blood from the walls of the airlock into the floor drain, Riordan couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Finishing that grisly task, he dragged the case to a pallet and strapped it down. It was heavy. It looked like a standard transport case made from gray carbon fiber with two latches and an electronic lock keypad. There could be anything from ration bars to the Grand Chancellor’s cigar stash in there. He gave the ratchet strap another click and walked back to the airlock to inspect his cleaning job.
Stowing the EVA suit back in its locker near the command deck, he returned to his cramped quarters. He showered and dressed in his standard brown canvas pants, black t-shirt, and deck boots. He could have chosen any of the six passenger suites for his quarters, but he preferred the proximity of the crew quarters to the command deck, just in case. A ten-section response time versus a 60-section response time can make all the difference when you fly alone. Pausing as he left the small chamber, he dug his holstered pistol from a drawer and buckled it around his waist. Like the Swindler, it too was a relic from another time. It was made entirely from steel aside from its wooden grip panels and held eight 11.43 mm hollow-point slug cartridges. Two pouches holding spare magazines balanced the weight of the pistol on the other side of the belt.
He took his seat in the captain’s chair and stared out the viewports at the stars floating by for a moment. He grabbed the control stick and manually turned the Swindler toward the jettisoned containers. He slowly piloted the Swindler along the trail of containers. Most were standard shipping containers, 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters by 3 meters. Some broke open or were opened by the pirates. He scanned the contents. The containers were now legal salvage. There were over 100 containers in the area; he could load 8 an hour through the airlock. Riordan made several passes, marking the containers with the most valuable contents.