My Other Car is a Spaceship (8 page)

Let’s see you dodge this!
He fired off a spread of five slugs in an X pattern and immediately flooded the pirate’s shields with jolts from the antiproton cannons.
You can’t dodge what you can’t see.

A massive blast overloaded
Adventurer’s
shields and knocked out many of the external sensors.

“Repair crews to starboard side, decks three, four and five, Blue and Red sections! We have multiple
hull breaches.” He shook his head. “Damn, he’s good!”

I didn’t even see those shots coming.

Kalen spoke firmly. “The battle isn’t over yet, Hal. You’re doing fine so far. Better than I could. Keep doing what you’re doing and that raider’ll lose his appetite for battle eventually.”

“I wish I was as confident.” He paused to fire off another barrage, twisting and turning all the while. “But I’m certainly not giving up. I—”

A tremendous hand swatted
Adventurer
and all went dark.

“Got ‘er!”

“Excellent work, Simmons.”
The Unity ship’s energy readings dropped to near-zero on the general’s console. “Move in—cautiously, just in case—and let us finish this. You know what to do.”

“
Yes sir. My pleasure.” Simmons smiled to herself at the thought of what she had just accomplished.
I can’t believe we took out a Unity ship that big. Damn, I’m good!

She chuckled.
I’ll have to remind the general of that when it comes time to divvy up the spoils of this planet.

Red emergency lights snapped on all over the bridge.

“Jesus! What the hell
just happened?” Hal checked the panoply of sensors at his disposal. He grimaced. “Most sensors are out. Whatever hit us, hit hard. Weapons are offline, shields are offline—we’re running on emergency power, barely enough for life support, partial gravity and instrumentation. Nothing more.” He swallowed the bitter knowledge of his failure. “We’re defenseless, Captain.”

Hal
took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m sorry folks,” he announced to the crew on the bridge. “I let you down.”

Kalen shook his head and spoke firmly. “Not at all,
Hal. You did superbly under the circumstances. You just didn’t have enough time to really master the interface. It’s my fault. I should have started you on the weapon systems sooner.”

Hal
appreciated the words, but it didn’t change the circumstances. It would be only a matter of seconds before the pirates blew them out of the sky. And with all his skill and knowledge, there wasn’t a damn thing Hal could do about it.

H
e watched the pirate on one of the few working sensors on that side of the ship. The enemy vessel slowly, cautiously approached
Adventurer
.

Why so
wary?

Of course. They’re making sure we aren’t playing dead
. I guess they’re worried we might be about to strike back.
He snorted.
I wish.

But w
hy don’t they just get it over with? They could have fired at any time. Are they toying with us?

He puzzled over the mystery for several long seconds.

The pirate ship continued to close with
Adventurer
, now matching speed.

Hal
’s eyes lit up with realization.
Stupid!

“
They’re going to board! They’re hoping to capture the ship more or less intact.” He toggled the intercom. “Security! Prepare to repel boarders!”

He called back to Kalen. “
What’s the procedure for defending against boarders?”

“I
— We don’t have such a procedure. As far as I know, it’s never happened to a Unity ship before.”

“Terrific.
Well, we’d better come up with a response in a hurry.”

“I’ll go help
Brute prepare.” Kalen leapt from his seat and sprinted for the doorway, awkwardly in the reduced gravity, to meet with Chief of Security Arouk’Brout’Voul.

“Good.
” Hal spoke into the intercom. “Engineering, how are we coming on restoring power and engines?”

Senior
Engineer Talbot replied. “The engines are a mess. Multiple systems are shorted out. It’ll be hours before we can go anywhere. I can get you some power in a few minutes, but not enough for weapons. Maybe some minimal shielding, but that’s about it.”

“I’ll take what you can give me, Jerry.”

“Yes sir.”

All right. What can I do with limited power? What systems are still working?

Let’s see. We can have minimal shielding. The magnetic docking grapples are operational. Whoopee. Yeah, those’ll be a big help.

Life support is online. That’s good.

No weapons, though. What the
hell
am I supposed to do without weapons? Open a window and spit at them?
He grimaced in frustration.

All the while, the pirate ship continued to close the gap.

“How’s the power situation, Jerry?”

“
I can give you six percent power now, maybe twenty percent in another ten to twelve minutes.”

“We don’t have that
long. The pirates will be alongside in six or seven minutes, tops. I’ll need whatever you can manage before that. How about weapons?”

“There isn’t enough power for the
APCs to damage their hull, let alone penetrate their shields. We could launch a missile, but the pirates are too close to us. We might just barely fire a slug, but it wouldn’t have enough kinetic energy to get through their shields. Face it, we’re not going to be able to fight back in the next few minutes.”

Hal
sighed. “Acknowledged. Thanks, Jerry. Do what you can.”

“Will do.”

There has to be
something
we can do!
Hal thought furiously, discarding idea after idea as impractical or impossible.

Two minutes
to docking.

Then
Hal had another thought. He checked the archives to see if anyone had ever attempted it before. As far as he could tell, no one had.
That’s okay; I’m a test pilot. I’m
used
to being the first to do something.
Then he checked the schematics for various stock ships.
Could it work? Maybe—if we’re very, very lucky.

“Jerry?”

“Yes sir?”

“I have the glimmer of an idea. It’s going to take split-second timing, and maybe more power than we have. Tell me if you think you can do it.”

He explained his plan. Kalen, over the intercom, injected several suggestions to fine-tune the procedure.

Jerry whistled. “I don’t know if it’s doable, but what
the hell.”

“My thoughts exactly. I’ll need all the power you can give me in the next thirty seconds.”

Jerry spoke now with determination in his voice. “You’ll have it.”

“Don’t increase the power output until I say so. We don’t want to alert the
raider.”

“Acknowledged.”

Hal counted down the seconds, brows drawn together in concentration. A trickle of sweat meandered down his left cheek.

I have to time this just right so we don’t give anything away.

“Everyone, brace for impact.”

He watched until the pirate was only sixty
meters away. It dropped its shields as it drifted closer and closer to
Adventurer
.

Now!

Hal restored power to the necessary systems. He triggered the forward magnetic docking grapples. The focused magnetic fields latched onto the stern of the bogey and Hal pulled with all the power available to him. The stern of the pirate ship slewed around toward
Adventurer’s
prow, which likewise swung toward the other’s stern. Within three seconds they were aligned nose to tail, twenty meters apart.

“Simmons! What’s happening?”

“I-I don’t know, sir. They’ve latched on with their grapples for some reason.
”

“They’re up to something. Shields up!
Get my ship out of here!”

“Yes sir!
Shields activated. Initiating main engines.”

“Go!”

“Firing!” Hal shouted.

The raider belatedly attempted to flee, but it was already too late. The grapples had held firm for the final split second Hal needed. He initialized the mass driver and fired a slug directly into the other ship. Two ten-thousandths of a second after firing, as Hal had specified, the computer activated
Adventurer’s
fore-shields with full remaining power, shutting down everything else, even sensors and life support. After all, if the shields failed, there wouldn’t be enough left of
Adventurer
for life support to be an issue.

The
108-kilo slug of depleted uranium blasted into the rear of the pirate ship at more than 1,600 kilometers per second. At this distance, its shields were irrelevant. Even traveling at less than one percent of the speed of light, the kinetic energy imparted was more than enough to penetrate the ship’s hull and send a hypersonic shockwave through the length of the ship—with devastating effect.

The
vessel literally disintegrated.

With
virtually all of the slug’s energy projecting forward, most of the debris missed
Adventurer
—most, but not all. Dozens of chunks of metal arrowed backward to smash into
Adventurer’s
shields. Nine pieces—slowed by the shield—broke through and penetrated
Adventurer’s
hull. The combined concussion knocked crewmembers from their feet. One chunk blew a hole in the small-arms locker, sucking a Chan’Yi out through the breach to her death. A fist-sized engine component crushed the skull of a Foren. A human and a Sestran suffocated from a puncture to the forward magazine locker.

Hal shouted,
“Repair crews to decks two, five and nine!” He dispatched all functioning repairbots to work on the external hull while the crews worked from the inside.

Adventurer
was hurt, though not fatally so. She would survive to fight another day.

That was more than the
raider could say.

Hal
’s lips lifted in a savage grin.
Apparently that uranium enema didn’t agree with him.

It took more than a week to complete the repairs on
Adventurer
. Five members of the crew had been killed in the battle, but it could have been so much worse. Had the pirates taken the ship, it was likely the entire crew would have been killed. Still, the funeral held for those lost in the battle was an emotional time for the survivors.

Hal stood at attention
, staring straight ahead as Kalen read off the names of the dead.

“L
or’Crouf’Mouk, Chan. Jenny Sumizu, Earth. Bjorn Nygren, Thetis. Pethsedar, Foren. SarMestil, Sestra. They gave their lives protecting the innocent.”

With such a
diverse crew possessing varied—or nonextent—spiritual beliefs, it was impossible to hold a religious ceremony that would be pleasing to all in attendance, So Kalen kept it simple. The purpose of the ceremony was as much to offer closure to those who remained as to honor the dead.

“We commend their essence to the eternal night.”

One by one, four missile casings containing the mortal remains of the casualties were fired through the port and starboard missile tubes on a trajectory that would intersect with Earth’s sun within hours. The remains of the fifth casualty, Pethsedar, were in deep freeze, in accordance with Foren custom, until such time as Adventurer returned to Foren space.

Although Hal hadn’t known the victims long
, they were members of his crew and deserving of his respect and honor.

I suspect this won’t be the last one of these ceremonies I’ll have to attend.

The remaining months
of
Adventurer’s
tour of duty were uneventful. Once the immediate pirate threat was past, Nude convinced Hal to let the doctor repair his damaged hip.

“You can
do
that?” Hal had asked, surprised at the idea.

Nude smiled and swept an arm to take in the entirety of t
he sick bay. “Look around you. Do you not think the level of Unity medicine is considerably in advance of Earth’s? Have you forgotten your implant?”

Hal chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. How long will I be out of commission?”

Nude frowned for a moment. “It is rather extensive surgery. I estimate you will be unconscious for almost an hour, and will need a day or so off your feet to recuperate. After that, your hip should be as good as new.”

“Seriously? Damn. I wish I’d thought to ask about that ages ago. Let’s do it!”

Later, he even returned home twice, to spend time with friends and concoct a story to explain his absence—something vague about hush-hush activities overseas. He didn’t mind if his friends thought he was a spy. It added some spice to their conjectures.

Hal
also had plenty of time to study, practice and think about his situation. Taking advantage of his implant and the same “instructional recordings” the rest of the crew had used, he learned to speak fluent Melphim, Alberian, and the major dialect of Chan’Yi’Cha during those months. He also studied the history of the Merchants’ Unity and some of the galactic civilizations it spanned.

That’s amazing.
Hundreds of populated planets and moons, and we had no idea any of them existed.
He shook his head.
We really are a backwater world. That’s something we’ll have to change if we’re going to survive and prosper once we step out onto the galactic stage.