Smuggler's Dilemma (16 page)

"Do you still have decent contacts at Baru Manush?" I asked.

"We’ll monitor channels, but I can’t risk sending a comm. If that fleet is anywhere near us, they’d be able to track back on us and I’m not about to announce our location," Marny said.

"You think they’re coming this way?" I asked.

"It follows that they’d move on to Baru Manush," she said. "If the Indian government can’t protect Anaimalai, what hope would Baru Manush have?"

"Are you worried that Captain Stabos is already part of it?" I asked. Last time we’d been to Baru Manush we’d had a run in with the head of station security.

"I know we had problems with him, but I’m not sure he’s Red Houzi. More likely, he’s just dirty. He’s got family on that station," Marny said. She didn’t sound overly convinced.

"You want to cut our losses?" I asked.

"Not yet. This outpost is small potatoes compared to Anaimalai. It’d be too expensive for them to bring the whole fleet. At best they’d send a raiding party."

"I’m not sure we want to run into a raiding party," I said.

"We only need twenty more hours. Everything we do out here is a risk, I don’t want to run unless the threat is real," Nick said.

I didn't want to make this decision without more input. "Marny?"

"There's no real threat right now, so I don’t see a problem with staying. I’d like to have the
Hotspur
on patrol first thing in the morning, though, which means you need to get some sleep."

Nick relieved me from the watch. I didn’t think I’d be able to get to sleep, but the next thing I knew, Marny was trying to wake me up and I was annoyed that I didn’t feel rested at all.

"Anything new?" I asked, noting that it was 0800, which meant I’d actually gotten five and a half hours of sleep.

"A little more news on the attack on Anaimalai, but nothing that affects us. I’m asking everyone to wear armored suits today," she answered.

I sighed and started changing. "Have you talked with Jake and Ada yet?"

"Aye. Nick and I briefed 'em this morning," she answered.

"Any issues?" I wondered how Jake would handle the stressful environment.

"Yeah. Ada was concerned that Nick didn’t have the gravity boxes installed for Filbert. I think she’s anticipating problems."

I smiled at this. She’d learned about a pirate fleet in the neighborhood and her primary concern was that the kitten would be taken care of.

Marny continued, "Nick installed one box behind the starboard pilot’s chair and said he would install the other one later. He and Jake have already disembarked and I’ve got coffee and a meal bar in the cockpit for you."

"You’re ready to get going," I said.

She was apologetic. "I let you sleep as long as I could."

I followed her out of my quarters and slid into the pilot seat next to Ada.

"Anything to report?" I asked, starting our watch change ritual.

Ada responded with her report. "All systems are green. Nick and Jake are onboard the
Adela Chen
. Marny is reporting that we are secure."

"I relieve you," I finished.

"I stand relieved," Ada answered.

Display preflight checklist
. The center console displayed a list of items we needed to work through. Ada and I efficiently checked them off. We’d worked together so much in the last several weeks that we were able to anticipate each other.

"All sections report status for immediate departure," I announced over the ship wide communication. I knew Marny was the only other person on board but we had a discipline that I preferred to observe. A green indicator on my console showed that Marny had responded positively to my query.

Engage silent running
, I directed and pushed the throttle handle forward gently. We slid gracefully through the piles of trash and lifted from the asteroid's surface. I rolled onto our side and caught a glimpse of the construction robot working on the skeletal warehouse.

I set a course for Baru Manush on a lower schedule burn plan. I had no intention of actually going to the colony that orbited the planetoid Ceres, but wanted to focus much of our patrol in that direction. I broadened our navigational path in a widening oval spiral that started well within the sensor range of the outpost and skewed toward Baru Manush. Each revolution would bring us closer to Baru Manush, but would also keep us from straying too far from the outpost. On our final revolution in sixteen hours, we’d be within two hours of Baru Manush.

To say that the day dragged on would be an understatement. For me, the idea of a patrol was mind numbingly dull. We weren’t trying to go somewhere, we were just sailing around in one of the most desolate areas of the solar system with a slim possibility of running into trouble. I’m not sure why I found it so much harder than sailing toward a destination, but it was.

Finally, at the end of my second shift, we turned away from Ceres and Baru Manush for the last time and sailed for the asteroid. By the time we got there, Nick and Jake should have everything packed and ready to go. We’d agreed not to send comms while on patrol, since military craft would be able to pinpoint our location if we did. Had we run into something dangerous, we could have sent a warning, but letting Nick know we were on our way back wasn’t considered important enough for the additional risk. I blithely recited an old saying in my head, 'just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.’ We were taking an awful lot of precautions for an enemy that we’d had no contact with.

CAT AND MOUSE

When we arrived back at the outpost it was abandoned. The
Adela Chen
was nowhere to be found.

"Marny, you seeing this?" I asked.

"Aye, Cap."

"Any thoughts?"

"I think we should go to high resolution on our sensor package," she said.

I ended silent running, allowing our sensors to actively scan the area. I sailed up to the outpost’s main asteroid and observed that, other than trash, it was completely clear.

"Anything?" I asked.

"The last stationary gun is still there," Marny said. She’d sent me a view of the asteroid that held the final gun.

"Frak. Something got past us," I said.

"Maybe," she said, "but if they were under attack, we’d be hearing about it. The only reason to keep comm silence is because they haven’t been discovered."

"And the only reason to abandon the outpost is because they saw something and bugged out," I finished her thought and re-engaged the ship’s silent running mode. If there was something out here, there was no reason to poke the bear. I pushed the throttle down and burned away from the outpost. Stealth would do us no good if we were sitting next to an obvious landmark.

"Any thoughts on where they might have gone?" I asked.

"You’re not going to outrun anyone in a tug," Ada chimed in. "If it were me and I didn’t want to be seen, I’d find the biggest rock I could and shut down behind it."

Map all asteroids within a thousand kilometers greater than four hundred meters across
, I said. The holo displayed ten large asteroids all significantly larger than four hundred meters. The AI predicted my next request and displayed a navigational path that would allow us to inspect each of them, in turn. I pushed the throttle handle forward and started maneuvering around each of the large asteroids. It would take thirty minutes to finish the passes.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when lights around the ceiling started pulsing red and the warning klaxon sounded, but we’d been sailing quietly for hours with an expectation of trouble and hadn’t run into anything. In our attempt to locate Nick and Jake, we’d actually found someone else, hiding amongst the asteroids, and they had seen us.

Combat controls. End silent running
, I said as calmly as I could manage. The
Hotspur
lurched to the side as we took a fusillade to the aft, on the starboard side. I mashed the throttle stick down. I had no idea what we were facing, but I knew that we certainly didn’t want to be sitting still when we did.

With our sensors turned back on, the AI was able to display the three ships that were pursuing us. There were two smaller cutters and a frigate. We certainly couldn’t expect to stand and deliver with this group. I’d be willing to take on the cutters, but not the frigate.

While the frigate was a fearsome combatant, it wasn’t particularly well suited for chasing down prey. It had only a few of its weapons available when behind an opponent. The cutters, however, didn’t have that problem and directed their single turrets at us. One advantage we had was that we were faster than the frigate and at least on par with the cutters.

I decided to gamble that they wouldn’t split up and burned as hard as we could stand away from them. We took some hits on our aft, but so far the heavy armor was holding up well. It didn’t take long to get out of range of our pursuer’s guns. I backed off on our acceleration, not allowing them to close in, but keeping out of their turret’s range.

"What’s your plan, Cap?" Marny asked.

"Split them up. That frigate could be the end of us if we get in too close," I said.

She agreed with me. "Aye. Doesn’t look like they’re biting."

"I’m good with it as long as we keep dragging them away from where we found 'em. They were hunting for Nick and Jake."

"The thought crossed my mind," she said.

We ran like this for almost thirty minutes, but the cutters were disciplined and stayed close in with the frigate. Finally, they broke off their pursuit and turned back toward the outpost’s location, which I assumed was where the
Adela Chen
was also located. I backed off on our acceleration and allowed them to slip out of sensor range.

Engage silent running
. I turned the ship on a lazy arc and accelerated back toward the outpost.

"They saw us before, don’t you think they’ll see us again?" Ada asked.

"I think they saw us when we were inspecting the outpost and were lying in wait," I said. "If we can sneak up on them, we might be able to free Nick and Jake."

"Worth a try," she agreed.

It didn’t take long to get back to where we’d started, but this time I sailed in uncomfortably close to the asteroids. They’d fooled us once, I wasn’t getting sucked in again. I felt like I could sense their presence even though they weren’t visible, either through the cockpit or from our passive sensors. Two could play at this game, however, so I stayed close in on one of the larger asteroids and waited, slowly orbiting as closely as possible. It was a tense game of cat and mouse, especially since I wasn’t sure who was the cat and who was the mouse.

"Movement off the starboard bow," Marny said quietly, as if they might pick up our internal ship communications. I understood. She dialed our external video sensor package onto the location she’d highlighted on the tactical holo. The AI picked up on it and painted one of the cutters moving among the asteroids, hunting.

"They must have seen Nick and Jake but lost 'em," I said. "You ready for this?"

"Aye."

I waited for the cutter to pass behind an asteroid and took off, following around the back side. We crept silently around in pursuit, my heart hammering with anticipation. I hoped the frigate wasn’t waiting for us on the other side.

"Everything you’ve got, Marny," I said once the smaller ship came into view. Simultaneously, I switched into combat burn and shut down silent running. The frigate would know right where we were, but it would give us significantly more acceleration. It’s not like once we started firing, they’d have any trouble locating us anyway.

We flew past the side of the cutter and all three of our turrets raked its side, mercilessly tearing through its armor. In a single pass we’d wounded it critically, but to my disappointment we hadn’t put it down. I doubted we’d get a second chance.

"Give me aft cannon," Marny requested.

It was brilliant. We’d just raked its side and were pulling away from it. I swung the nose of the ship over using the arc-jet thrusters and accelerated as hard as I could. We’d end up passing closer to the frigate than I’d like, but it was a gambit that made sense. Our weapon batteries dropped thirty percent with that single shot but the cutter exploded violently.

I dodged down, away from the frigate, trying to locate the other cutter. Two on one was a game we might have a chance of winning if we could stay away from the frigate’s broadside. I found the other cutter racing toward the frigate, its captain understanding that they couldn’t hope to survive if they were separated.

Our gun batteries had been depleted to forty percent. I was shocked to see how much we’d used in such a short period of time. I closed the distance, careful not to overshoot it too far and rolled onto our side as we passed so Marny could use all three turrets. The cutter returned fire but its smaller blasters did very little against our military grade armor. Marny attempted an aft cannon shot as we passed and unfortunately missed.

I spun around and executed a combat burn to catch the fleeing ship. We’d wounded it, but not put it down. It was a devil’s choice. If we continued to chase it, we’d come within range of the frigate’s guns. If we let it go, we’d be back to stalemate. For me, stalemate put Nick and Jake at considerable risk.

"We’re going in," I said. We’d damaged the cutter’s engines and overtook it easily. Our batteries were empty and Marny was unable to do more than plink at it with a single shot.

Maximum combat battery regeneration
, I said.

The cutter pulled away toward the frigate and I pushed the throttle handle to maximum. We’d lost one engine to weapons power generation. At maximum thrust we were losing ground, but more importantly the batteries were filling back up.

The
Hotspur’s
guns thrummed back into life and ripped into the smaller craft that hadn’t yet escaped our reach. It didn’t explode as spectacularly as its predecessor, but we’d finished it all the same.

Restore engines to normal operation
, I demanded, then pushed over the stick and accelerated hard toward the approaching frigate. I’d had enough experience with the angelfish-shaped ship to know that it had little weaponry along its center line. We were still far enough away that it had a clear lane to pound away at our armor though. By sailing directly at it I would be able to use its acceleration and our own, since they were in opposite directions, to put significant distance between us once we passed. It was down to a game of chicken again.