Smuggler's Dilemma
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Authors: Jamie McFarlane
SMUGGLER'S DILEMMA
JAMIE McFARLANE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Cover Artwork: Sviatoslav Gerasymchuk
Copyright © 2015 Jamie McFarlane
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Tradition calls for spacers to celebrate a voyage’s mid-point. This crew was exhausted and beat up, but we'd managed to stay together and deliver the bad guys into custody. Those were all good reasons for a celebration.
The downside? Our flagship, the General Astral Cutter,
Sterra’s Gift
, was completely wrecked. I'll admit it – mostly my fault. Ramming it into a frigate wasn't a choice most captains would make, but it was the only choice I had at the time. She'd never sail again and that fact alone was hard to accept. All the work we'd put into the ship… all of those hours scrubbing out the septic… all that investment… lay on the barge, not much more than broken pieces. In return, however, we’d captured a pirate frigate that was worth a small fortune.
Destroying the frigate’s engines was great for capturing it, but it sure made moving it around difficult. In the end we finally just lashed it to one of the three loaded barges we were pushing back to Mars. We must have presented such a sight - two broken ships and a crap-tonne of ore.
Mid-way between the Jeratorn space station and Mars, we cut the tug's engines and were gliding without power. Ada Chen, an extraordinary heavy-freight pilot, was sailing our tug, named after her deceased mother, Adela Chen. She’d just finished sliding the tug out from one end of the string of three barges and had successfully mated back onto the opposite side. We’d have our equatorial celebration before she fired the tug’s massive engines to decelerate us on our long approach to Mars.
The spread of food Nick and Marny laid out in the frigate's mess hall, looked better than anyone had reason to expect given that our pantry on
Sterra’s Gift
had been destroyed by blaster fire.
“Is that chocolate cake?” I’d only recently been introduced to real chocolate and I’d have to say I’m a big fan.
"Aye, Cap. That it is," Marny’s cheerful voice reassured me from around the corner in the galley.
"Are you sure you and Nick are solid? ‘Cause if you’re not, I might make a run at you myself," I said.
Nick’s voice came from the same direction. "Hey, I heard that."
"I’m just saying. Treat her right." Like he had any choice. Nick weighed in at fifty kilograms if dunked in hydraulic fluid, and was one-point-seven meters tall - small, even for a spacer. Marny, on the other hand, was taller and outweighed us both at ninety kilograms. The size disparity didn’t bother either of them.
"Keep it down or I’ll tell Tabby," Nick entered the mess hall carrying a platter filled with thick, steaming slices of ham. His threat was good. Tabby was the jealous type and wouldn’t like to hear about me flirting. I understood, though, it was hard on both of us with her at the Naval Academy, but we were figuring it out. Marny followed with another platter of fresh bread, something we didn’t see very often.
Ada had disembarked from the tug and was already seated at the table along with our two passengers, Tali Liszt and Jordy Kelti, former military special operators we’d hired for the voyage out to Jeratorn Station.
I sat at the head of the table, reserved for the captain. I wasn’t currently the captain of anything, other than two broken ships that sat atop a load of ore. Technically, the only captain in attendance was Ada, who’d removed the colorful beads from the tight curls on her head and was sporting four centimeters of what she called a ‘fro.’ She was one of the most naturally beautiful women I’d ever met, but lacked any self-awareness of that fact, something I found refreshing.
It seemed years ago when Captain Sterra had grabbed the attention of an entire table on the
Kuznetsov
by tapping the side of her glass with a fork. I tried the same, but since we didn’t have any actual glass or crystal on board, all I got was a dull clacking sound. It was hard to feel sorry for myself when I looked around the table. As a group, we’d been through harrowing experiences, each contributing value in their own unique and critical way. I felt like I needed to say something, though.
"My dad was a man of few words. I’ve always believed it wasn’t that he didn’t have anything to say, rather he liked to make sure that when he said something, people understood it was important. One of the pieces of advice he gave me when I was younger was that ‘It is the people in your life who are important, not the things.’ Looking around this table, I can’t imagine any truer words spoken. I’m better for having known you all."
The faces I looked into around the table smiled back at me. Inspiring words, to be sure, but there was hot food on the table, so I declared, "Now, let’s eat!"
After we’d eaten and drunk our fill - and even sung a little, Ada and Jordy headed back to the tug to resume our journey.
"Do you think they’re a thing?" I asked Tali, who was the oldest in our crew and leader of her small group of ex-special forces.
"Not sure. She’s not the type he generally goes for."
"Pretty?"
"No, that he likes. More like smart and confident. He’s a love 'em and leave 'em type."
"Interesting. Think she’s in over her head?"
"Not at all. We talked. I didn’t want any bad blood because of his commitment issues. She said he’s been a perfect gentleman and they just enjoy hanging out and talking."
"Oh crap, he’s in trouble," I said.
"That’s kind of what I thought," Tali said. "What are you all doing next? I hope you’re taking the Navy’s warning about laying low seriously." She didn't have any commitment to me from here on out. Her team had done just what we hired them to do and done it well.
"I’m not sure," I said. "We're still trying to figure it out."
Nick slid into a chair opposite Tali. "I’ve got an idea. We should tear down that pirate compound we took from the Red Houzi and bring the loot back. There’s got to be at least half a million still there, not to mention the stationary guns, warehouse and habitation domes."
Tali interrupted, "I’ll leave you boys to it. This sounds interesting and all, but I’ve got an appointment to get beat up by your girlfriend." Tali and Marny regularly practiced their hand-to-hand combat skills together.
Nick nodded with a smile but didn’t respond, focused on his current train of thought. "We should stop at home and visit. Mom’s been wanting to meet Marny."
"We’ll need to take the tug," I was still thinking about that pirate outpost. "There’s no way we’ll have a ship big enough to carry the outpost defensive guns and the buildings. The buildings will pack up pretty good, but the cannons and their generators will take space."
"We could rent a barge and run the tug out. It’d be a little sketchy if we ran into pirates, though," Nick was the most thoughtful person I knew. He needed time to work this out.
"No way. I’m not going back without serious firepower. I don’t want to get trapped by Red Houzi again." Once we took the heavy station guns offline, we’d be vulnerable to whatever was in the neighborhood. I doubted Red Houzi would still hang around a base they’d lost control of, but I wasn’t willing to risk it either.
"What are you thinking?" Nick asked.
"We’ve got to replace
Sterra’s Gift
."
"As long as we have the hull, we have the ability to replicate all of the parts. That was the deal we made with the Navy. All we need to do is find another General Astral CA-12 and we’re in business."
"I was also thinking we should cut Ada in on the company," I said. "I can’t imagine a pilot I’d rather sail with. If we don’t keep her, she’ll just end up working for someone else and I don’t want to sail a tug forever."
"A cut like we gave Marny?" Nick asked.
"Yes, that and a salary, but she’d get a captain’s share if she’s running the ship."
He nodded. "Sounds like we have a plan."
PUSKAR STELLAR
There were a half dozen shipyards near Puskar Stellar and Coolidge, the two cities where we spent the majority of our time. Like any large city on Mars, both had space elevators connected to large, public transportation terminals - in orbit and on the ground.
Contrary to what you might expect, finding a shipyard that would let you drop off a couple of derelict ships is difficult. Both of our ships, Sterra’s Gift and the much larger frigate, had seen quite a bit of hostile action. None of the yards wanted to deal with anything that remotely looked like pirate activity. It took several hours to get someone from Mars Protectorate to acknowledge that we were indeed not pirates and had legal right to both craft.
Once we worked through the security issues, a shipyard over Puskar Stellar became quite helpful. Yard-hand semi-autonomous robots easily plucked the derelicts from the barges and placed both hulls in their designated spaces. They even conveniently stretched a catwalk between the frigate and their small station.
"I guess this is it." We’d called for a space taxi to take Tali and Jordy to the closest Puskar Stellar space station. From there, they’d catch the elevator down to the surface.
"Look us up next time you’re in town. We’d like a rematch in the simulations." Tali’s grin was more than a little mischievous.