Unfair, page 12
Brook kept changing partners regularly, and if she drank much, I didn’t see it. But finally she came off the dance floor, did some sort of signal with Nyle, and continued out the door with her last dance partner in tow.
That for me was the signal to leave, so I made that known, and the guys finished their drinks and escorted me out. The station had plenty of activity going on, and I had no idea what shift was the current one, not that it mattered since stations like this never stopped operating.
We were about half way back to our docking bay when something hit me solidly in the chest as my suit went into protective mode, and I went down like a rock. Given that four other thumps happened about the same time, I figured we were all down. The suit shifted to leave my face clear, and the integrity level on my HUD went down about what I’d expect from a heavy kill pulse.
I pulled my sidearm, my combat routines went primary, and I looked around for where the fire had come from. The guys were doing the same, and they were moving to cover me as well. My PC painted a target on someone in a group still coming towards us, and obviously still thinking we were going to be easy kills, in spite of the fact we’d already moved again. I shifted into a sitting position, sighted in on my target, and pulled my trigger three times rapidly. He went down just as fast as I had, and so did four of the others. The remaining two dived for cover.
Darren pulled me to my feet, and we moved behind a plant stand, and took cover. More fire began hitting it and damaging it, but not as much as before, because only two were firing.
“I’m going left,” said Doug. “Take them from the right.”
The three of us shifted position the other way, waited for him to pop up and start firing around one end of the stand, and then as he came back into cover, the three of us popped up at the other end to find the remaining two popping up out of their cover as well. My two shots hit one of them in the head, and the other two got a shot each on the other one. Both went down.
We picked ourselves up properly, and went over to find the whole group out cold.
“Are you okay?” I pinged Brook.
“Sure. Why?”
“A group just took a shot at us. When you’re ready to come back to the ship, call for an escort. At the least you should have a couple of security droids with you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I sighed. But at that moment station security officers arrived, and began questioning us. We ended up back at the nearest police station, and gave statements, which were backed up by the surveillance recordings. By the time we arrived back at Camel, where nothing untoward had happened, I was feeling sore.
A half hour in a care unit followed, and then bed.
Twenty Seven
The next morning there was a mottled yellow bruise where I’d been hit.
But it could have been worse. The care unit had done enough that the mild pain was easily handled by the medical monitor when I adjusted its settings. As a warning to not get into firefights, it was a pretty good one. These suits had only a fraction of the protection we’d trained with, but all the same, they were better than nothing.
It had been a kill shot after all, so without the suit I’d have been dead for sure. The realization that someone now wanted us dead followed that line of thought, but while it might be associates of the pirates we’d taken down, it could simply be someone who saw us as a threat, or someone who considered the escort business in this area theirs. We’d probably never know, and that was backed up by station security, who’d sent me a message saying the group who’d attacked us were just local thugs, who could have been employed by anyone, and were not saying a thing.
Brook had returned with her guy of the night and three of his friends around her, and they’d all been armed. She kissed him goodbye at the bottom of the ramp, and walked up with a smirk on her face, as the four men had headed back the way they’d come. She went straight up to bed again, and when pinged, told us she didn’t care where we went next.
Breakfast was a bit sombre. We all had a bruise somewhere, but we didn’t discuss what had happened. But it did give us a reality check. While we ate, we looked at options for where to go next.
Darren was inclined to head straight across to Naranja space and see what was happening there. Tom was more inclined to head in towards the core of the DU, on the basis that further in, there’d be more police presence. Nyle didn’t seem to care, and Doug didn’t seem too sure about the safety aspect of anywhere. But we were out on the outer edge of DU space, and both stations had a frontier vibe about them.
The thing was though, if we wanted a safer environment to fly in, we shouldn’t even have been here. There was plenty of trading and merc activity down the human spine, and the top end of that had plenty of military coverage. But then, we’d end up just traders who didn’t fly very often, and even rarely did any combat at all. What I hadn’t expected was people shooting at me in my own cargo bay, or on supposedly civilized stations.
A new freight entry popped up on the list, and Darren drew our attention to it. It was a full load of containers wanted at the Naranja border planet. It was effectively a two day flight to get there, going through several systems further into core DU space, and thus taking us away from the frontier area.
There was nothing else going there, but there was to one of the systems we had to go through, and delivering there wouldn’t add more than eight hours to the whole trip. And we might find some pallets or boxes to load up with at the first stop. We’d not stay there at all, just unload, load, and move on.
Darren ran the timing of things, and there wasn’t a good time to leave that gave us uninterrupted sleep. And now we knew someone didn’t like us, no-one argued against launching fighters before every jump point, and us going through at the same time ready to fire at anything that launched on us.
We considered a convoy again, at least for the first leg, but decided it added a complication we didn’t need at this point, and would slow us down. That was in spite of us getting some enquiries through the Merchant Guild about if we were going to be available for a convoy going somewhere, with several suggestions for destinations included. One of those was our proposed stop.
I for one was feeling a little gun shy, and I could see it in the faces of the others as well. We’d had a wakeup call last night, and for me, it was a strike against me going it alone.
So we took the freight we’d decided on, and it would be on board and we could leave by late morning. That would put us at the first stop around nine tomorrow night, and the destination around eleven the following night. Leaving later made the arrivals even worse, and if we slept though after docking, the trip became a three day one.
No, we needed a fast run. The slowest part was getting the freight loaded to start with, but it was all on the station waiting, so there was no real delay getting it to us. After we locked it in and finished eating, I went to the bridge, and got the undocking procedures set up. Then I looked at the view from the cargo bay cams, looking out at the docking bay.
The shiver that went down my back suggested a feeling of vulnerability. The view wasn’t all that good, and mainly focussed on our ramp, and the station’s freight ramp, obviously designed for monitoring loading and unloading, without any sort of security concerns being taken into account.
The public walkway on the other side of the bay was there on the screen, but you couldn’t really make out any details. So while a group of people standing there was discernible, them preparing to storm us or not, was not. We’d not know for sure what was going on until they came half the distance towards us.
I called Darren up, and he walked in a few minutes later.
“Problem?” he asked.
“I’m not happy with our dock coverage. Do you know any way of getting a higher resolution on the people walking past the bay?”
“Not off hand. And yes, I think that’s a good point. Let me see what I can find.”
I kept watching the screens, flicking glances at him, but he was obviously scrolling his own screens, which I couldn’t see. Finally a screen became visible, and I looked at it.
“What the guilds have is all crap,” he said. “It’s better than what we have now, but I found something much better. Our friend Jane sells it. Not only is it much better resolution on the cams, but the software ties in the ship computer, and any security droids you have. So if drawn or carried guns start appearing out beyond the bay, we’ll get a warning, and the droids will move to intercept the threat without orders. We just need to set some settings as to how they respond.”
“Sounds good to me. How do we get it?”
“Same way we got the repair droids. But we pay for the rift mage as an extra, and there’s an installation charge as well.”
“When can it be done?”
He looked like he was sending a ping.
“Half an hour. If we book it right now, the installation should be done just before our cargo arrives.”
“Do it then. I’ll pay for it from the ship’s share.”
He went blank again, then looked at me.
“Done. Someone will be here as soon as it can be organized.”
“Thanks. That will make me feel a lot better, although I think we should consider leaving the airlock closed when we’re not expecting activity.”
“Probably a good idea, but as far as I can gather, not the normal procedure for traders. Although some of the ones smaller than us probably do that. They tend be more insular, and I don’t blame them for being that. Family units would want their privacy after all.”
“I’m not sure I care what everyone else does. Not after someone shooting us.”
“Agreed. You’re the one with your finger on the door controls though, so you do what you want.”
“I will.”
He went off, I got an invoice to pay and paid it, and fifteen minutes later I got a ping saying someone was arriving. I shot down the stairs, getting a twinge of pain from my bruise, and found the airlock was closed already, and a sled had come through a rift.
“You wanted a cam upgrade?” said the guy, walking behind the sled.
“We sure did.”
“Good. I’m never sure those mages are sending me to the right place, except they haven’t made a mistake yet. Where are we anyway?”
“Frontier area of the Democratic Union.”
“Ah. Yeah. That would be a good reason for a cam upgrade. Well, let me get on with it, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
He got on with it. When he left a half hour later, he’d used the grav sled to swap out all the cams in the cargo bay, and been up to the ship computer to install the software upgrade. The moment it went online, the screens I’d been watching all became much clearer, including one cam he hadn’t touched.
Now I could zoom in on someone’s nose pimple a hundred meters away if I wanted to.
We’d had four year old cam tech. Right.
Twenty Eight
We undocked on the dot of eleven.
I backed us out, spun us to a course to clear the station, and pushed in the maximum speed allowed this close to it. The system had multiple jump points, but the one we were taking was the one with the most traffic going both ways. Not that it was a lot. But between us and the jump point were a dozen ships we could see going in each direction.
We’d be nowhere near any but those passing us heading to the station. And I altered our course a bit so we’d put a little more distance between the lanes than usual. If anyone altered to intercept us, it would be more obvious, earlier. Not that I was expecting it, but I had to acknowledge my paranoia level had gone up several notches after last night.
Once past the station limit, I pushed us up to full cruising speed, and engaged the auto-pilot. No-one had come to the bridge for leaving. And as far as I knew, Brook was still asleep. I checked over the navmap as we headed out, checking for bounties or warnings, and then checking for anyone with any way of threatening us. But there was no-one I could determine was an actual threat.
A number of ships had missile launchers, including one which left right after us, and was following us at a slower speed, but that didn’t make them a threat. And our combat sensors would pick them up going live if someone turned them on.
Brook didn’t even turn up for lunch. The others complimented Darren and me on upgrading the cams. Apparently the views all around the ship had improved as well, which had to be just the software update.
After eating, I went back to the bridge, and read a novel while periodically checking the navmap for what was coming towards us, or for anything overtaking us, if that was possible, which I wasn’t sure was. More paranoia, yes.
Thirty minutes out from the jump point, I used the ship’s com system to warn everyone to be ready to saddle up, and fifteen minutes later, they all went to their birds. There was no-one near us now, the closest ship being the one behind us, and it was more than half an hour back now. Someone might come through at any moment of course, but for now, we had the jump to ourselves.
“Launch,” I said, and the five of them did what was now a routine launch.
They formed up into a one, two, two formation close above Camel, and we headed towards the jump point without slowing down.
“Combat speed,” I said, about a minute out, and pushed the slider forward to the combat stop.
They’d been expecting it, so there was barely any lag, and their formation did allow for someone to be a little slow speeding up.
We shot through the jump point faster than anyone should expect, and I was feeling a little silly about doing it. But I shouldn’t have been.
There was a ship very close to the jump point on the other side, and six fighters which we flashed past before they could fire anything at us. The HUD had them painted grey, but they turned red as missiles were fired at us.
“Bogies,” I said, “and we’ve got missiles inbound.” More launched from the freighter, only these ones were capital ship killers, not fighter sized. “Break and attack.”
The fighters were now following us, but not matching our speed. The Excaliburs went in five different directions, and I headed for the ship missiles to allow them to get out of range so I could manoeuvre. The point defence turrets started firing, and the sheer volume of fire Camel put out didn’t really give the missiles much chance of getting into range.
With the capital ship missiles attended to, I started to pull Camel around to head for the one fighter which hadn’t been engaged already, and was coming after me. They’d been pretty arrogant, thinking they only needed one of them to take one of us, and so there was only one coming up behind me. I decided I wasn’t going to be fast enough on the turn, so I pulled an Imperator move, and pulled the speed right off, flipped the corvette right over, pushed the speed slider back to combat speed, and went head to head with the now oncoming fighter.
He juked hard, which caused most of his pulses to go wide, and at the last moment he must have seen death coming for him, because he fired two missiles at me, and turned away. I pulled the trigger, putting front guns and side turrets into him at medium range, and he blew apart. The missiles died soon after, without getting anywhere near me.
More missiles had launched from the freighter, but with four of its fighters already gone, it was now heading for the jump point. I pulled Camel around to come up behind it, and put five torpedoes into the rear end, but not all in the same place. Only three of them hit the ship itself, the first two taking down its shields first. Thrust stopped abruptly, but not from all the nozzles at the same time, and the ship lost alignment with the jump point, and missed it by a wide margin, now tumbling and ballistic at the speed it had been before.
The last two fighters died, so I pulled the speed off Camel, and checked the navmap. There were several freighters inside a half hour of us, but only one of them was coming towards. I sent it a warning there’d been combat at the jump point, and not to approach too close until we cleaned up the mess. I got nothing back, but the ship slowed a lot immediately.
“Brook, can you go through the jump point, and make sure no-one comes through until we clean up the mess?”
“On it.”
Her fighter sped up, and a moment later, vanished. Her feed popped up on a new screen.
“Keep your eye on that freighter that was behind us,” I said next.
“I know.”
“Do you need us to clean up the mess?” asked Nyle.
“No, I’m sending out the salvage droids now. Clear the area, but stay ready for anything. That freighter I hit might get some missile launchers going again.”
“I’ll go and help Brook then.”
“If you want.”
His fighter vanished as well.
“We’ll ride herd on the freighter,” said Darren.
“Just make sure it’s not playing possum.”
He laughed, and the other two birds formed up on his wing, and they flew after the freighter. That was something I didn’t know what to do with. I suspected I’d done them a lot of damage, and nothing I knew about could stop a ballistic freighter which had no engines.
The salvage droids started collecting debris, and a search and rescue droid did a round of each of the fighter remains, before returning empty. While I waited, I assembled the documentation for the Mercenary Guild. The freighter definitely had a set of bounties on it, but was also registered with the Mercenary Guild as a fighter squadron. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but semi-legit dark mercs was what it suggested.
The feeds from them firing on us, and the destruction of the fighters and me torpedoing the freighter were added, and I sent it off to the Mercenary Guild on the station behind us, and also to Aisha.
She appeared on the bridge a few moments later.
“Nicely done,” she told me. “I can clean this up for you, for a fee.”
