My Other Car is a Spaceship (7 page)

“How come?”

“Believe it or not, the Unity isn’t in the habit of shanghaiing people from embargoed planets and putting them into service piloting our ships. Normally, we only take experienced pilots. So we’ve never had a need to teach basic piloting skills. I thought it might be overkill to drop you directly into the immersive combat-mode recordings.”

Hal snorted.
“You’re probably right. Still, some extra practice in battle conditions might have helped.”

“Perhaps so.
” Kalen conceded with a sigh. “Let’s hope I gave you
enough
time.”

“Pilot to the bridge. Repeat, pilot to the bridge.”

The interruption ripped
Hal’s consciousness from the middle of an evasive maneuver.

“Huh? What?”
The pirates!
“On my way.”

He burst from his quarters
into the control room amid barely restrained chaos. Men, women, Chan’Yi, Sestrans, and others bustled about preparing the ship for battle.

Hal
climbed onto the pilot’s couch and waited while it conformed to his physique and secured him in place.

Kalen
was already seated in the captain’s chair, just to Hal’s right. “Ship. Activate full pilot command interface, authorization Kalen Jeffries, Captain. Colonel Nellis, the ship is yours. You have unfettered access.”

“Roger.”
Within milliseconds, Hal’s consciousness expanded, and for the first time encompassed the entirety of the ship.

Whoa!

He seemed to be everywhere at once. His hundreds of eyes absorbed interior views of the engine room, the weapons bays, common areas, in fact everywhere but crew’s quarters and the infirmary. Right now, he focused on the exterior view.

“Status report! Belay that.”

He remembered a split second after asking the question that he could instantly call up all information collected by the sensors.

“Kalen?
”

“Yes,
Hal.”

“
Sensors detect a ship coming toward us at high speed out of the glare of the sun. But I have no indication that it’s a hostile. How can you be sure it’s a pirate? Sensors register energy signatures for weapons, but only on minimal power. Maybe it’s a commercial craft with defensive arms. I don’t mind blowing enemy combatants out of the sky, but I’d like to be sure it’s an enemy first.”

“It’s quite simple. Because Earth is an embargoed world, no one comes here except
Unity patrol ships and pirates. A patrol ship would have a Unity transponder. That leaves pirates.”

“But how do you know it isn’t just a tourist on vacation checking us out?”

Kalen shook his head. “Impossible. No embargoed worlds appear in the navigational databases of commercial and private ships. Only someone with restricted access to the embargoed worlds database could find the coordinates of those planets. Unfortunately, someone must have bribed a Unity official and now dozens of pirate organizations have that information. That’s why we’re out here.”

“So there’s no chance someone could have stumbled onto our system by accident?”

Kalen shrugged. “It’s highly unlikely. But if it’ll put your mind at ease, feel free to ask them.”

“I’ll do that.
Thanks.” Hal mentally toggled the radio. “Unidentified spacecraft on a vector to Earth. Please identify yourself. This is Merchants’ Unity patrol craft
Adventurer
. Repeat, please identify yourself. This is an embargoed world. You are trespassing in restricted space. Identify yourself or be fired upon.”

Hal
turned his attention back to Kalen. “Weapons are online. I’m moving to engage. The bogey will be in weapons range in just over three minutes. Do you want a warning shot first?”

Kalen shook his head. “You’ve warned them. If they’re tourists, they’ll turn and run.”

“Acknowledged. How close should I let him get before I open fire?”

“
Wait twenty seconds after maximum range. That’ll improve your accuracy and give them less time to react. If they don’t respond or head out of the system by then, shoot to kill.
They
certainly will.”

“Roger
that. I’ve compared the energy signature of the bogey against the database of known pirate ships. It doesn’t match any of them. So much for knowing what we’re up against.”

Kalen shrugged. “I’m not surprised.
The ships usually start as stock models and then the pirates customize them. The engines and shield generators are replaced with ones from larger ships and the weapons are either hand-made, military surplus, or stolen from patrol craft they’ve destroyed. So they won’t match the signatures of standard ship models. Some of the bigger ships think they can take on anyone, but most lose their taste for combat after the first battle. As a result, the same pirate rarely takes on a Unity ship twice.”

Hal
nodded. “Makes sense. All I can tell by analyzing the ship at this distance is that it has a huge power plant and a big engine—much bigger than a ship that size should have. You’re right about that. They’ll be able to generate a pretty powerful shield. I imagine whatever energy weapons they have will be equally powerful.”

“More so than ours?”

“Definitely. They’re probably faster, too. There’s no way to tell yet what other types of weapons they might have.”

“Very well. Proceed with caution, but we can’t afford to be timid.”

“Roger. Proceeding with aggressive caution.” Hal chuckled. He cracked his knuckles, then he gave a mental salute to his opposite number aboard the pirate ship.

I think I know how good
I
am. Let’s find out just how good
you
are.

“General, the Unity ship is moving to intercept. Following protocol, they won’t open fire for another thirty seconds or so.” Pilot Gabby Simmons tucked a loose strand of auburn hair behind her ear and glanced back and up at the Chan’Yi sitting behind her in the command chair. Simmons and others like her disproved the notion that all humans freed from slavery pursued noble causes, such as joining the Unity fleet.

Self-appointed “General” Chouros’Aboun’Suriel stretched his lips in a feral grin. “Well then, let us not give them thirty seconds.”

“Yes sir!” Simmons’ expression nearly matched the ferocity of her general’s.

“Continue on the same heading. Let them think we are simply a confused civilian craft—until it is too late.”

“We’ve reached maximum weapons range.”
Hal toggled the radio. “Unidentified ship trespassing in embargoed space. This is your last chance to walk away unharmed. Turn back, identify yourself immediately, or be fired upon. Your choice.”

He waited another ten seconds. Still no indication that his message had been received.

Is there any chance that perhaps they’re innocent tourists and their radio isn’t working?
He mulled over this thought for a moment.
I sure as hell don’t want to fire on a civilian ship.

It took but an instant to pull up the latest sensor data on the bogey.
At shorter range, the results were more detailed than before.

Their speed and trajectory haven’t budged an iota. As aggressively as I’m approaching, they’d have to be concerned regardless of who they are. And look at that shield. Why would a tourist or merchant vessel need that kind of shielding? And those weapons signatures. A civilian wouldn’t need all that for self-defense. No, everything points to someone up to no good.

He squared his mental shoulders.
I’ll give him five more seconds to peel off and then his ass is mi—”

He heeled the ship over and immediately initiated a corkscrew evasive maneuver. “Sorry, crew. Hang on!”

That’s the trouble with energy weapons. The shots travel at the same speed as the light you’d see them by. The first warning you have is when they hit your shields, unless you’re playing close attention to the other ship’s energy spikes—like I should have been doing. Damn.

“Shields holding at ninety-six percent.”

Okay, buddy, your turn. Let’s see how
you
like it.

“Direct hit, general! No damage, however.” An old hand at this, Simmons continued to fire and evade even as she spoke.

“Continue. You know the drill.”

“Yes sir. This pilot, though…. I don’t think she’s very experienced. Her handling seems indecisive. And she has trouble shooting and dodging at the same time. There’s always a momentary hesitation between one and the other.”

“Excellent! That means this should be over before mealtime.”

“My thoughts exactly, sir.”

“Finish her off and let us get on with the plundering.”

“Yes, sir. This shouldn’t take long.”

Hal fired a burst from the antiproton cannons.
It won’t penetrate his shield, but it ought to blind him for a moment.

Then he fired a trio of quark-enhanced missiles
: one to port, one to starboard, and one just behind—in case the pilot braked. Right on the tail of the missiles, he fired two slugs from the mass driver dead center.
Maybe it’s overkill, but if it all works as planned, the pirate shouldn’t even see them coming.

His lips curled upward in a wolfish grin. He finished with another burst from the
APCs, in case the slugs missed.

Even as he fired, he continued to evade the massive weaponry of the raider, jinking first right and then “down.” No matter what he did, however, the other pilot seemed to find him.

Come on, Hal, you can do better than this. Relax! You’re too stiff. Just let it flow.

Most of
Adventurer’s
defensive measures were designed for missiles, but the raider didn’t seem to have any kinetic weapons like missiles or mass drivers. On the other hand, it carried quite a collection of gamma-ray lasers, APCs, and other energy weapons, and they were having the desired effect on
Adventurer’s
shields. It was impossible to outrun energy weapons short of jumping to hyperspace. All Hal could do was try to stay out of their way as much as possible. And that meant keeping a close eye on the energy spikes that presaged a shot and jinking a split second before the other ship fired.

That was a task far easier said than done. The pirate knew the same tricks and tried to camouflaged its genuine energy spikes among a blizzard of decoy spikes. Hal couldn’t dodge every time the sensors “detected” a spike. He had to try to figure out which were real and which were fake. Dodge too soon and the enemy had time to adjust his aim. Too late, and you got hit.

A sweat bead dripped off the end of Hal’s nose as he absorbed
Adventurer’s
status data. “Shields down to seventy-four percent. Damn! One of our quems missed and the others detonated too far from the pirate to weaken its shields enough for the cannon fire to get through. Somehow their pilot managed to slip between the slugs. He’s very, very good.”

Better than me?

As a fighter pilot, Hal had always entered battle certain he was the better pilot. But not today.

The pirate ship rocked under a solid blow. It wasn’t enough to damage the
Fer’Yar,
but it sent a message.

“Simmons!” the general growled. “I thought you said the other pilot was not very good. We have been at this for almost an hour. The fight was supposed to be over by now.”

Simmons licked a drop of blood off her lower lip where she’d bitten it. “She
wasn’t
very good, but she’s learning. She’s learning
fast
. It looks like it’ll take a bit longer than I thought. But don’t worry, I can take her.”

“You had better be right—or else. There is a fortune in slaves on the planet below, but it will do me no good if you let her shoot my ship full of holes.”

“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll take care of her.” The alternative was not worth contemplating. Simmons knew what became of crewmembers who displeased the general.

Time to pull out the big guns.

Come on, Hal, you can do it.

Kalen clutched the arms of his chair as the ship bucked. He made a conscious effort to release his death grip. After all, he didn’t want to give the impression he didn’t have complete confidence in Hal’s abilities.

I know you have the raw talent, but
not the experience. You have to put it all together somehow, and soon.

Hal fired another salvo at the pirate and continued to stick-and-move like a prize fighter.
I think I’m starting to get the hang of this.

Take that, you bastard!

A missile/cannon combo rocked the pirate ship, but did no visible damage. Then a portside blast jarred
Adventurer
.

Whoa there, Hal. Don’t get cocky. That pilot can shoot as well as fly.