Unfair, page 18
“If you’re sure about that.”
“Very sure. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Darren, causing me to give him a sharp glance.
He smiled at me.
“Agreed,” I said. “Do you have an AI?”
“Certainly do. Why?”
“You better control our droids then. We don’t have one.”
“Seriously?”
His XO looked shocked.
“Yeah. Most of them won’t even talk to us.”
“That sounds like a story I’d like to hear,” grinned Bonko.
He looked towards the place where AIs normally sat on League bridges, and nodded to the avatar there. A screen popped up I recognised as my armoury. All the combat and security droids were there now, and they all came to life at the same time, changed weapons, and marched out.
“How do you get them on board their target?” asked Nyle.
“Jump salvage droid,” said Bonko. “We’ve put some bug bots on board all three ships already, and so we know safe spots where the sleds can appear. But we’ll have to do them one by one. Once we get control of a ship, it’ll be stabilized if it can be. If it has propulsion, it will come back here. If it doesn’t, we’ll jump it back here. Then do the next one.”
“Which one are you doing first?” I asked.
“The frigate. That one is still dangerous if they get main power working again.” He sighed. “Makes me wonder if letting our marine teams go was such a good idea after all.”
“You know it was,” said his XO. “Let’s not descend into reminiscence, shall we?”
“I guess not.”
“Ready to go,” said the avatar.
Bonko looked at me.
“Go,” I said, surprised they wanted me to say it.
Screens popped us showing a cargo hold with not a lot in it, and human shapes fanning out.
“Who wants dinner,” said Bonko, grinning and rubbing his hands together.
Forty One
Dinner lasted longer than ours normally did.
I got the impression Bonko loved his food, and wasn’t in a hurry to do anything. And my three other pilots came in and joined us one by one, extending it out. They seemed okay, but we were all a bit shaken at how things had gone. None of Bonko’s people said anything though, and they all seemed concerned about our welfare.
I was mainly watching the screens. The combat droids swept through the frigate stunning everyone they came across. The bridge crew made a proper fight of it though, and they’d managed to put some sort of armour on. The result was more dead people, as the droids had been forced to switch to kill shots.
The ship itself was badly damaged, and in hindsight, no longer any sort of a threat. The droids shut down what systems were still running, locked the remaining still alive crew in a room with life support and no way out, and a salvage droid jumped it back near Bonko’s Club.
The combat droids moved to the mercenary freighter, and did it all again. But this time the crew were well kitted out with armour, and a number of the droids lost their belt suits to too many hits. The first time that happened, the person who’d been thinking they’d made a kill shot suddenly had a horrified expression on his face. A moment later, he didn’t have a face.
That wasn’t dinner table entertainment, but no-one there who’d seen it flinched. Brook was still eating at that point, having been last in, as usual it seemed, and didn’t appear to have seen it. Had I been eating, I think it would have put me right off. As it was, I had to suppress a queasy feeling. I wasn’t a marine, and never would be.
The freighter was in better condition, and came back to us using its own power, but only after some repair droids went over and did some very fast repairs to a control junction point which had been damaged.
The small crew left on the fighter carrier surrendered as soon as the combat droids appeared. That ship had been more surgically damaged, but it was going to take a shipyard to get the engines going again. It was jumped near to us again.
By then, the rest of the debris field had been collected, and dumped into a secondary hold. Cargo droids were picking through it looking for anything that had come off our birds. What they did find was being put with our fighters. The remains of the pilots, and they hadn’t found anyone alive, were being retrieved as well, and sent to a freezer unit used for storing bodies.
“What do you want to do now?” Bonko asked me.
“Be more specific.”
He chuckled.
“Your ship should be repaired enough to fly shortly. We need to go back and finish offloading our cargo. I suggest we put your fighters back in your hangar for now, and call you a jump tug to take you to where you need to offload. Once you’re docked, you can assess what you do next.”
“We’ve got a load to take to Karn waiting for us.”
“In that case, I’d suggest you ask Gitte for a jump straight there, and you can put your ships into her shipyard.”
“Sounds like a plan,” muttered Nyle.
I pulled up the repair screen for Camel, and was surprised to see that I now had engines and full manoeuvrability again, but not speed. I could dock, but we couldn’t outrun a station maintenance pod. The hole had been in the engine section, and was well sealed, and life support was back to normal. But once again, we had no reserve.
I looked around at my pilots.
“Jump tug? Whatever it costs?”
They all nodded. So I pinged Aisha we’d need a jump tug to take us to our destination, with permissions to jump in close to the dock, and out again once we were loaded back up. She acknowledged, and told me she’d let me know when she had the permissions in place.
“We just need to wait for permissions to jump in and out.”
“Mercenary Guild,” said Bonko.
I nodded, and did a report of the action, claiming all three ships, and notifying them we had prisoners, and would need to get them jump tugged anywhere they had to be taken. The local guild responded immediately, and requested confirmation I was claiming we’d taken down twenty four fighters, a frigate, and two mercenary freighters. I did so.
“What?” asked Darren.
“The guild doesn’t seem to think my claims stack up.”
Bonko chuckled.
“They don’t, and they’ll find out in due course we were here from some of the freighters currently giving us a wide berth. We’ll get a rap over the knuckles for jumping in without permission, and your files will get linked to ours as having worked together, but officially, this was your success.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” said Doug. “You did the heavy lifting.”
“We don’t care about such kudos anymore,” said his XO, who I was now beginning to think was more than that. “We’ve retired from this life. We’ll shit kick with the best of them if someone asks for help, and you can do that at any time in the future if you need it, but we don’t need any more notoriety than we already have. You on the other hand, are just starting out, and the wins are important to get recorded.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m not calling this one a win. If you hadn’t arrived when you did, we were dead.”
“That’s not certain,” said Tom. “They did manage to not kill us. That had to be by design.”
“They wanted our ships,” said Brook. “Engines are easy to replace. The rest is what makes them better fighters. They’d have shot us, and tossed us out the airlock.”
She sounded certain of that.
“We’re going through their databases now,” said Bonko. “So if there’s anything there that throws some light on how this went down, we’ll let you know.”
He looked blank for a moment, and a new screen popped up, showing a fourth ship had arrived. A pink triangle Chaos class had just appeared. A moment later, Matriarch Gitte was standing there.
“Someone wanted a tug?” she said, smiling.
Forty Two
When the person doing the jumping is a head of state, no-one argues about it.
Gitte put us back on Camel, along with the badly damaged fighters and the assorted parts for them out of the debris, and fixed the hole in the engine section. Two of the fighters were actually resting on the closed hangar doors. She did nothing for the rest of the damage though, but we didn’t need it done yet. I could dock, and undock and that’s all I had to do for now. There were decisions to make before any more was done.
I’d told Bonko and his crew we owed them dinner sometime when we caught up with them again, but we actually owed them more than that. They’d be getting paid though, so it was just the social aspect we needed to make good on. As soon as we were back on Camel, Bonko’s Club vanished back to wherever they’d been unloading. A moment later, the gym was full of boxes, and all of the people still on the three ships appeared in our brig. The ships themselves just vanished.
According to Gitte, they’d gone to her shipyard to await adjudication. Since none of the ships had any outstanding warrants on them, she expected that to take longer. The bodies from two of the ships, and the remains of the pilots, were now in a refrigerated cargo container on the cargo bay of Chaos.
When we were all seated on the bridge, we moved. Camel appeared meters away from an empty dock, which she assured me had been assigned to us courtesy of her co-pilot talking to the station on our behalf. Chaos appeared a short distance away from the station, and apparently the container moved to the security area of the station, as close as a container would fit to the medical facility security used.
Arrival control greeted us stiffly, but docking was normal. We were actually only a few hours early on our estimated time of arrival, and they had been expecting us. They hadn’t expected us to jump in looking like we’d been mauled though.
Gitte pulled up some screens, and they showed people at the windows at each end of the dock, well away from the freight section, gathering there to stare out at the back end of Camel. Another screen popped up showing what they could see. Only a small part of the damage was visible, but what was, certainly looked bad.
I confirmed we’d be unloading in our morning, and made sure the butler didn’t open the airlock for anything until after we were all up. Then I remembered we had prisoners, but when I checked the brig, I found it full of boxes again. Gitte grinned at me, and confirmed she’d moved the prisoners to security cells, pending the determination of their status.
That was something we hadn’t considered. They’d attacked us and lost, but if they had a valid contract, then technically they couldn’t be charged with anything. But even then, having lost by being boarded and captured should result in the ships being adjudicated our way. If so, the survivors were effectively put ashore, with whatever stake they’d had in the ships lost.
I asked Gitte what happened to their possessions, and she glazed over for a few moments, then smiled and said they now had them in the security office. They’d be returned to them if they were set free. She’d also apparently asked that if that happened, it wasn’t until after we’d left tomorrow.
On that score, she told me she had a much lighter day tomorrow, so I was to call as soon as we were ready to leave. With that, she vanished abruptly, followed by Chaos vanishing as well.
We went to bed.
Forty Three
We all looked pretty sorry for ourselves the next morning.
I woke normally, had a long shower, and then went down to breakfast. Darren was already there, saw me flinch a bit as I sat, and admitted he had a few yellow bruises himself. Nyle actually limped in, and said he’d spent a few hours in a care unit during the night after waking up in pain he hadn’t felt before. The other three were obviously in about as much pain as I was.
“What’s the plan?” asked Doug.
“We unload. We load up. We call for a jump. We unload.”
“In that order?” asked Brook.
“In that order, yes. Why, you wanted to do it some other way?”
“No. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Your attempt is noted,” said Tom, deadpan.
It should have been at least chuckle worthy, but that’s how down we all were. We ate in silence, although it looked like Darren and Lyle were pinging each other. Or someone.
“Anyone want time on the station today?” I asked, once I’d finished eating.
“Are you kidding?” asked Brook.
“Why would I be?”
“There’s a fair crowd on the dock, waiting I assume for any of us to appear. There’s even a media crew out there. The last thing I need is be interrogated by the media, and then appear on the news. I’m not going anywhere but back into a care unit for a while.”
“Ditto,” said Lyle.
The others nodded.
“Okay, then we’ll load up as soon as Karn’s shipment gets here, and call for the jump.”
“I’ll be glad to get to somewhere civilized for a change,” said Darren.
I gave him a speculative look.
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“Maybe. But I’m sick of being targeted. If we just run some cargo around in a safe space for a while, I’ll be happy. Are we taking that day off tomorrow?”
“I’ll be talking to the Karn shipyard about Camel once we get there, so probably. Maybe a few more days if they can’t fit us in immediately. We’ll need to get all your fighters repaired as well.”
“I’m thinking of buying a new one,” said Doug. “And this time getting all the possible upgrades done before delivery.”
“That sounds like a plan too,” said Tom. “Do you have costings on that?”
“Yeah. Anyone else want them?”
The rest nodded, and it looked like he’d pulsed them all something.
“What about getting your existing birds repaired and upgraded at the same time as Camel, and then we figure out somewhere to store them as backup in case of future need. We know we can get them jump tugged to us if we pay for it.”
“That’s also a plan,” said Nyle. “But it comes down to if it’s worth it. Mine took a fair amount of damage down the underside, as well as the entire rear end being totalled.”
“Well, up to you, but you should at least find out.”
“That we will,” said Darren.
“Anyone have anything else to talk about?”
They all shook their heads, so I rose, and headed for the airlock. I found the security droids already arrayed in a line there, and the butler was ready to open up. I told it to go ahead, and stood to one side as the doors opened, half expecting someone to start shooting. But no-one did. Instead, a broker walked up the ramp as soon as it was down, and the process of offloading our cargo began.
I retreated to the bridge, and took stock of what needed fixing. Then cross referenced that with the upgrade plans I’d had. A lot of the upgrade would now be replacement. It remained to be seen how much it would all cost though, and until the shipyard got a look at the repair reports and what it looked like, I wouldn’t know.
With luck, it wouldn’t be so bad that buying a new ship was cheaper. But the thought of that deepened my mood. I’d formed a bond with this ship, and the last thing I wanted was to have written it off through making one bad decision.
That side tracked me for a bit. Now I looked back on the last ten days, it seemed like I’d made a string of bad decisions. And that suggested my being shit canned from the League military had been more my fault than I’d ever suspected. Looking back though, I still didn’t understand what I could have done differently during that battle, or why the AI co-pilots didn’t like me anymore.
But given my record since, I was beginning to suspect I had some memory loss or something. There was that shiner I’d had as well, which I couldn’t remember getting, which happened around when I was found outside the medical facility slumped on the deck, and had been put back into a care unit out cold. That whole time was a blur. The assumption was I’d hit my face on the wall as I went down, but I really had no idea. And there hadn’t been any station vid. Memory loss was the only thing which fit what people had been telling me about that whole day.
Options for Camel depended on what the others decided to do. If they decided to go to a bigger ship without me, I could scrap the lower accommodation, gym, and brig areas, maybe even the mess area as well, and seriously upgrade the shielding and power generation. It would mean using one of the observation lounges as a kitchen, and the other as a small mess for passengers, but that was doable.
And if I only had a small shuttle in the hangar, most of that area could be used as well. In fact, that space was even more useful than the lower accommodation and mess areas. If I used both, I’d end up with a much better protected small freighter, with three passenger cabins, and still retain a fighter’s punch if I needed it.
What I needed now was a good time to talk to the others about what they wanted to do next. Because going to Karn did provide us with an excellent time for changing course.
The butler informed me when the cargo had been offloaded, and that the Karn shipment was already here waiting on the station level below, so I okayed loading to begin.
I could make a living this way. Just load up whatever was going anywhere, speed run it to the destination, take my time unloading and finding something new, then rinse and repeat. Take a few passengers now and again to get some company, and it would be a good living if I stayed out of trouble.
That, of course, was the wild card. We’d been in constant trouble since we’d started this, and we still had no idea why. But hopefully moving to Karn space would see an end to it. Even if we had to stay in League space for a while, we could do that to ensure that if anyone did try to hit us again, League response forces would be there to aid us.
That depressed me even further. It felt like admitting I couldn’t keep myself, or my people, safe without someone’s help. I went back to possible changes to Camel, and monitoring the loading.
An interesting email came in at one point, which side tracked me again for a bit. That tailor mage on Vincent wanted to meet me. My ideas for clothing with armour capabilities had sparked some interest, but she wasn’t sure if she understood what I really wanted, or was it needed? She asked if I could come there, with whatever I needed protection from. Getting there was easy, as I could walk to Vincent from Karn. I emailed back I’d let her know when I might be able to get there, but it wasn’t likely to be today.
