The Star Pirate's Folly
Read The Star Pirate's Folly Online
Authors: James Hanlon
The Star Pirate’s
Folly
Book One of the
Surface Trilogy
by James Hanlon
Copyright © 2016
by James Hanlon
All rights
reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except
for the use of quotations in a book review.
First Printing,
2016
ISBN 978-0-692-70465-3
James Hanlon Books
Cover Art by Amalia
Chitulescu
Table of Contents
For Emma
I’d be lost
without you.
Montez unclenched her hands from the ship's controls and
rolled her shoulders back, stretching muscles stiff from hours of careful maneuvering.
Littlefoot
drifted in the dark side of a small carbonaceous asteroid,
the nearest object for a hundred thousand miles. The rock was one of millions
in the asteroid belt Styx, the scrapyard of the Luxar System.
On the live map between Montez and her copilot Crane, Styx
was a river of tumbling rocks ranging in size from planetoids to boulders to
dust. To any far-eyed observer from the Core,
Littlefoot
was just another
pebble tumbling in the current—it had been camouflaged as just another
pitch-black asteroid, stripped down, and modified for long-distance
spaceflights.
“Well, here we are,” she said.
“Oh joy—another big useless rock.” Crane smacked his harness
release and the restraints retracted into the seat. He spun his chair around to
plop his boots up onto the console projecting the map. A chunk of the map
vanished where his boots blocked the light. “All we ever find out here is ice.”
Montez shoved the other pilot’s feet off the console. “Shut
up, Crane. Ice is the only thing keeping us paid right now.”
“Ain't a reflection on your skills, just our string of bad
luck.”
“You’re old-fashioned, man. No such thing as luck.” At just
over five feet, Montez felt comfortable in the confines of the tiny craft despite
its size—
Littlefoot
was essentially a cockpit attached to an airlock.
With practiced fingers Montez configured the ship’s scanners
to crawl the asteroid. A topographical map sketched into place above the console.
As the map gathered data it updated instantly, sharpening to provide more
detail and flagging any accessible resources. Montez glanced across the
display, dismissing most of it as usual. The asteroid had a core of ice and a
crust of black sand, dust, and rock, but little else.
“If you don't believe in luck you're in the wrong line of work.”
Crane plucked an asteroid from Styx on the display, inspected it like he’d just
dug it from his nose, and tossed it back. It snapped into place with the rest.
“Never said I don’t believe. I said there’s no such thing.”
Montez gestured at the map. “Maybe something’s out there, maybe not. Kasim says
yeah this time, but hey—he’s been wrong before. How many empty rocks we been
sent out to, man?”
Crane scowled. “And we might get lucky, that’s what I’m
saying—”
The display chirped an alert and highlighted an object
tucked away inside the asteroid. A marker over the object blinked patiently.
“Cryo pod,” Montez said, snagging the object and inspecting
it. “Older model. Fifty-plus years for sure. That thing’s from before the war.”
“Told you!” Crane pumped a fist in the air. “I’m gettin’ my suit.”
The wiry copilot moved to the back of the ship towards their
sleeping quarters, which doubled as nullsuit storage. Crane’s armored suit hung
in the back of the cramped space like a corpse, its helmet slumping down against
the chestpiece, lifeless. He pulled out the near-weightless gear and equipped
one piece onto himself at a time. The mechanical armor had enough plating to
take a heavy beating and protect from radiation, but its nullsteel coating rendered
him almost massless. In a nullsuit, gravity didn’t exist.
Crane and Montez had found dozens of pods over the years on
jobs for Kasim, but most were damaged—usually meaning the occupant was dead—or
empty. Still valuable for parts, but it was always better to find a live one.
They got paid more if it worked. Kasim usually told them exactly what they were
after—scrap, weapons, whatever—but this time wouldn’t tell them what exactly it
was they were looking for. He’d sent them out on what he called a hunch.
Depending on its condition, a cryo pod that old could make for
quite the payday—no wonder Kasim kept his mouth shut. He could be an annoying
little prankster at times, but with a haul like this his discretion made sense.
The thing could be a relic from the Interstellar War fifty years back. After
the rebels were forced out of the Core they seeded the asteroid belt with
stashes and hidden bases. When the old Core Fleet came to clean the rebels out
they left a lot behind for freelance scrappers like Crane and Montez.
“Matching... locked,” Montez said.
Crane opened the inner airlock door and stepped inside. Vents
sucked the air from the room back into the ship’s reserves. “Check.”
“Green,” Montez confirmed. “Pressure equalized.”
Crane hopped back and forth, balled his fists, and wiggled
his fingers to test the suit’s dexterity. Responsive, agile. Same as always. He
took a deep breath of the suit’s too-clean air and exhaled. On the other side
of the door waited the unforgiving embrace of the void. Nothing between him and
death but the wonders of technology.
“You got me tethered?”
“Tethers green,” Montez said.
“Test.”
Crane leaned forward and a gravity tether on the ceiling
pulsed a gentle tug on each of his suit’s three rear nodes: one on each
shoulder blade and another on the base of his spine. It was an odd sensation,
like temporarily falling in the direction of the tether. He lifted each
heel—two nodes per boot. He turned around and held his hands up for the nodes
on his palms. Gravity tethers were his lifelines out in zee.
“Alright, you got me. Opening outer door,” he said.
He opened the outer door and pushed it open. The ship was
just a few dozen feet from the asteroid’s surface. Crane grabbed the edges of
the airlock with both hands and gently pulled himself through in a practiced
motion. For a moment his stomach fluttered as he drifted between the ship and
the asteroid. He ignored it, keeping his body taut and focused. Even the
slightest movement in zee could put him off course. The coal-black surface took
up his entire field of view. He resisted the urge to look away as he approached.
Crane felt
Littlefoot’s
gravity tethers slow him down
as he twisted in space to land feet first. Focused pulses from nodes encircling
the outside of the airlock slightly corrected his trajectory and he made
feather-light landing, right on target. His boots sunk into the crunchy black
ice-sand of the dune he’d landed on, and Crane took a moment to get his
bearings while his boots kept him rooted in place.
He stood on the crest of a dune which overlooked a steep
ravine.
Littlefoot
hovered above him with its floodlights pointed into
the chasm. Crane hopped off the dune with a light push and floated to a solid
rock outcropping halfway to the bottom, using his palm nodes to pull himself
gently toward the rock.
The cryo pod looked like it was buried underneath an
overhang on the opposite side of the ravine. Probably a crash site, then—meaning
the pod was likely another junker. There went his fantasies of luxury. Still,
maybe they’d be able to pawn it off on some collector. Kasim knew how to polish
a turd until it shined like a gem.
Another hop and glide, and Crane sailed over to the other
side of the ravine. He landed on target and crouched in front of the overhang, blinked
away his display lenses’ overlay, and activated the lights on his helmet,
revealing the entrance to a cave. No sign of impact. Seemed like someone must
have tucked it away there.
Crane blinked again and the overlay came back, a green
thread of light showing him the way to the cryo tube inside the cave. He
grabbed onto a chunk of rock and began to work his way inside on his belly,
following the path laid out for him. If not for the computer’s assistance he
would have missed it—a thick layer of black dust coated the whole thing, making
it almost invisible to the naked eye.
“Got ya,” he said.
“Can you get it out?” Montez asked.
“Maybe. Could be wedged in.”
“Gonna fit inside here?”
“Heh. Ain’t the first time I been asked.”
“Shut up, Crane.”
He laughed and swept a hand across the pod’s surface. Dust
swirled into a cloud, and through it he saw glass, a smoky blue-green that
obscured the pod’s contents. He pulled himself around to inspect the rest of
it. Intact. No leaks. The thing had definitely been maneuvered into the crevice
instead of crashing into the asteroid as he’d assumed it must have. Their find kept
getting more and more valuable.
“It’ll fit,” he said. “It’s a big one, though. Not sure how
the damn thing got down here. Definitely older model. You gettin’ any readings
inside? Looks like it’s in good shape.”
“I can only see outside, not inside. Bring it in so we can
take it home.”
“Fine, fine. Just get a tether on it soon as I come out.”
“Waiting on you.”
With some difficulty, Crane managed to move the pod out of
the crevice without damaging it. He braced himself against a large rock near
the cave’s entrance and shoved the pod out in front of him, sending it drifting
toward
Littlefoot
. Gravity tethers grabbed hold of the pod as soon as it
was in range and pulled it smoothly into the ship’s open airlock.
Crane steadied himself on the asteroid, gauged his
trajectory, and pushed off. The tethers guided him like welcoming arms back
into the airlock. There was just enough room for him to squeeze in beside the
cryo pod. The door sealed behind him and the airlock pressurized.
Decontamination jets blasted the black dust off the pod while vents sucked it
out of the room and spit it back outside.
“Let’s bring it on home,” Montez said.
The inner airlock door hissed open. Crane stepped inside and
removed his helmet after the door shut behind him. He unsuited and stuffed his
armor back in his locker, then got into his seat and strapped in next to Montez.
She looked over at her partner. “Nav’s set.”
“Move your ass then,” replied Crane.
She guided the ship away from the asteroid and settled into
their plotted trajectory. They were headed back the way they had just come. The
ship thrummed with power, and a high-pitched whine sounded a moment before it
pushed. It would be four days until they met the trajectory of their ticket
home—a gate disguised as an asteroid, hurtling along like any other hunk of
space rock. Another drop in the storm.
“You taking first watch or me?”
“Me,” Crane said. “Bein’ out in zee always keeps me up
awhile.”
Montez unstrapped and moved to their sleeping quarters. As
she slid into the tiny weightless room exhaustion took hold of her. She belted
herself in across from her nullsuit and fell asleep almost instantly. Three,
four hours’ rest and she’d be set. For a time, she drifted dreamless through
the void with their cargo.
***
“Montez, we got trouble,” called Crane from the front.
Montez was there in a flash. “Pirates or Core Fleet?”
“Too far out to tell. They ain’t seen us.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
Montez could only hope they didn’t get spotted. They’d already
used most of the ship’s power after their voyage, they had no weapons, and any
half-decent ship could easily outpace them. Montez’s only tools for survival
were
Littlefoot’s
faint energy signature, its asteroid disguise, and its
extended-range sensors—they could see the enemy well before the enemy saw them.
The map showed a large flashing sphere around the enemy
ship—its sensor range. Montez felt her stomach twist into a cold steel knot.
The other ship’s long-range sensors were active, crawling constantly as they
moved—pirates didn’t need to hide, they were always on the hunt. If it was a
Core ship they might be looking at some fines and maybe jail time, but pirates
rarely took prisoners.
“Kill the power,” she said.
“What? If they really are sniffin’ around that leaves us
helpless.” Crane jabbed a finger at the display, where the other ship traveled
perpendicular to their course.
Littlefoot
stuck to the center of the
asteroid belt, following its curve, and the other ship was headed across it,
toward the far edge of the system. “Look, they ain’t even close. Just going
across. We’ll be fine.”
“Well slow down at least,” Montez insisted.
“Really, Montez? Use your brain—we slow down and they know
we ain’t just some other rock out here.”
Panic rising in her chest, Montez darted to her locker and
ripped out her suit. Crane guffawed when he saw her putting it on. He switched
on their comm channel.
“Montez, relax. We’re gonna be fine,” he said in her earbud.
“Gotta check the cargo,” she said.
“For what?”
“Don’t know. Call me paranoid.”
Montez snapped her helmet in place, moved to the airlock,
and spun the wheel around to open the door. She swung it open and stepped
through, sealed it behind her. The cryo pod was about the size of a couch, and
its smoky blue-green glass was encased in a round cobalt blue frame. It took up
most of the length of the airlock, leaving only a little room to squeeze by on
one side.
Montez deactivated the gravity plate in the airlock’s floor.
She grabbed the pod by the edges, guiding it carefully with the assistance of
the gravity tethers to the center of the confined space. When she had it
stationary she rotated it onto its back and stopped it again.
The base of the pod was flat, with a manual control panel
recessed into the corner nearest her. She motioned for the grav tethers to hold
the pod in place while she pried open the panel. Inside she found a series of
switches. Next to each was a label etched into the metal, but some had been crudely
taped over, apparently reassigned—on one she read the scrawled block letters,
PWR
.
She fingered the switch but didn’t move it from the
ON
position. No
telling if that was even right.