Marauder Kronos: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars) (8 page)

I should feel frustrated or dejected, but I don’t. I lean back in my chair and think it all over. It would be too easy if things just fell right into place, wouldn’t it? Nothing in my life has ever come easy – not even close. Hell, I’ve known Delphie since we were both kids, and she
still
doesn’t listen to a thing I say. If I want Minna’s heart, I’m going to fight for it. I’ll have to fight for it like a pirate. I’m going to have to
steal
it.

Ramu comes back in. “Delphie signed. I saw her on the privateer manifest.”

I smile. “She didn’t tell you she signed though, huh?”

“Nope,” Ramu says. “I guess that would be admitting too much.” He twitches his ears rapidly and licks his lips.

“She’ll come around,” I say.

“What about yours? I just saw her beating some eggs to death.”

“I pissed her off,” I say, grinning.

“You seem pretty pleased about that….”

“Look, Ramu,” I say. “If you want a relationship to work out – not in the short-term, but for the long-haul – you’ve got to make sure you can survive through thick and thin. My parents burned bright and fast – like one of those big blue suns – they went fucking supernova, and it fucked me up.”

“Fallen Seraphim…,” Ramu mutters.

“Yeah, whatever,” I say. “The point is, they thought everything was peaches and roses because they liked to bone each other, but when it came to the reality of spending their lives together and raising an asshole kid like me, it was too much for them.”

“So you’re saying you gotta’ start fights with your girl to make sure you won’t go supernova later?” Ramu says. “Sounds like a stretch to me.”

“A fight lets you get everything out in the open,” I say. “Like maybe you and Delphie need to fight – ”

“We’ve been punching and kicking the shit out of each other every day!” Ramu says, throwing his hands up in the air.

“That’s just training,” I say. “Maybe you want to get a rise out of her, so she hits you for real.”

“Like when she kicked me in the fucking balls?” Ramu asks.

I point at him. “Exactly. She kicked you in the balls, and then you pissed her off by bragging about the threesome, and now she’s practically joined to you at the hip. Why do you think she signed that contract?”

Ramu’s mouth hangs wide open, and he looks up at me with ears taut. “Damn, Captain...I think you might be onto something. I think I’ve gotta’ let Delphie kick me in the balls if I want to be able to drain the balls into her, you know?”

“Phrase it like that,” I say, “and she might just kick you in the balls again.”

He grins. “I’m still wearing the cup.”

T
hat asshole
.

I’ll cook. Or I’ll tag along behind Delphie. He makes Delphie train with Ramu; Delphie isn’t too weak and delicate to fight, but
I am
?

“Hey.”

I turn around from the pan and see Delphie.

“Hi, Delphie,” I say.

“What are you cooking?”

I grit my teeth. “I guess that’s the only real relevant question for me, huh? What am I cooking? It’s the only real mission-critical topic of conversation for the cook, right?”

Delphie puts up her hands and pulls her ears back, “Hey, sorry, I was just trying to make some small talk.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m making baked eggs with no salt.”

“That sounds...awful.”

“That’s the idea,” I say. “If I cook poorly enough, maybe Captain Fucking Kronos can give me something of real value to do.”

“If you give me some salt,” Delphie says, “you can come with me to calibrate the heat sink coils.”

I narrow my eyes at her. Did Kronos send her?

“Why are you looking at me like that? You’re not going to let me have any salt, are you?”

“Did Kronos send you?”

“Send me?” I ask. “How would he know you were going to make eggs with no salt –?”

“I’m not going to make
anything
,” I say, tossing the dish to the side. The raw eggs slosh around and spill out over the burner plates. Kronos or Ramu can clean it up. “Show me how to calibrate the heat thing.”

“The heat sink coils,” Delphie says. “The waste heat gets channeled into them and sent to the microwave converter, if they are calibrated incorrectly they can melt.”

I nod and follow her down toward the engine room.

“Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you.”

“Why does Kronos let you train to fight?” I ask.

Her ears flick as she walks, but she doesn’t turn around. “You’re worried he’s not taking you seriously?”

“Yeah,” I say, “something like that.”

“I don’t think he really wants me to fight. I think he mainly is just trying to set me up with Ramu. But beyond that? I think he just wants me to be able to defend myself. He couldn’t live with himself if something happened to his crew. He’ll want to protect you most of all.”

“Then why not at least let me train to do something other than crack eggs?”

Delphie stops walking. She turns and lunges at me, grabbing for my throat.

Tendrils shoot out from my shoulders and swat her away. She falls flat on her back and grunts. She gets back up slowly, then says, “That’s why. You’re already protected.”

“Sorry!” I shout. “I didn’t even know it was going to do that to you!”

“It’s fine,” she says. “I was going for the throat, I’m lucky it just knocked me over.”

So Jerky is already protecting me. That’s why Kronos won’t train me in self-defense?

“Why did you and Kronos never…,” I start to ask, but I decide not to finish the question, for fear of how awkward it will sound.

“Me and Kronos?” Delphie says, ears going taut. “That’s….” She laughs. “Never.”

“But why?” I ask.

“He’s like…my big brother? I mean not literally, but we could never see each other in that way, you know?”

“Is there any other reason you’d stay away?”

She gestures for me to keep following her, and she opens the hatch to the engine room. We get inside and see all the gleaming machinery.

Attached to the engine is a massive piece of metal, but when I look more closely I see that it’s more like hundreds of incredibly thin sheets coiled together.

Delphie points at it. “The heatsink.”

I see a number of thick, cobalt-colored metal tubes snaking out of it and running into the walls.

“The coils are superconductor nanomaterials,” Delphie says. “So you probably have a good idea how they work.”

I smile. “At least
you
know what kind of scientist I am.”

Delphie scoffs. “You can’t expect Kronos to figure out stuff like that on his own. If you tell him, he’ll remember, but it’s just not his strong point. And no, to answer your question from before, I can’t think of any big reason to stay away. Him being a pirate keeps most women away, but if you can look past that? He’s got a heart of gold.”

She hands me a small metal cube with a wire attached to it. “Plug this into your tablet and stick it onto the heatsink...but make sure you don’t let your skin touch it.”

I follow her instructions, being careful not to touch the metal. The cube sticks itself onto the heatsink – it must be magnetized – and my tablet starts to give a temperature readout.

“Three hundred fifty degrees Celsius,” Delphie says. “That’s a bit too cool.”

A bead of sweat drips down into my eyebrow, and I wipe it off with my sleeve.

Delphie points to me. “If your tablet is ever destroyed or something – say we’re under attack, or you find yourself in here with no tools. If you
feel
the heat in this room, that means the coils are too cool, and you need to adjust this thing here. Any heat you feel in the room is heat that
isn’t
in the coils.”

She takes a wrench out from her bag and hooks it onto a big dial, and then she turns it a few centimeters clockwise. “Now the heatsink will take on more of the heat.”

I watch the readout and see it increase up toward 500 degrees Celsius.

“Six hundred degrees is the sweet spot,” she says.

“What if I walk in here and it’s too cold?” I ask.

“Climate control on the ship is better at keeping it warm than cooling it down, so that usually won’t happen.” She holds up her wrench. “This wrench is aluminum, and it will melt at 660 degrees. So if you touch your wrench to the heatsink or coils and your wrench starts to melt, you need to turn it the other way.”

“How do I turn it if my wrench is melted?”

“Very carefully,” Delphie says, smiling.

Kronos’s voice breaks out over the comms. “We’re entering into a wide Earth orbit, joining the privateer swarm. Prepare for zero-g.”

“Let’s get back,” Delphie says. “I try to calibrate this every time we run the engines. If it gets out of whack it can cause a chain reaction of fuck-ups. Oh, one other sign...if the oven isn’t reaching temperature, it can mean that the coils are too cool.” She winks at me.

I roll my eyes. “Ah, now I know why I had to learn this, so that I can fix the oven.”

“Just kidding,” Delphie says. “But you really can tell, the oven runs on the waste heat, so if you ever notice the oven not – ”

“Got it, Delphie. I’ll cook still...sometimes.”

“Your cooking is way better than the shit Kronos whips up.”

“Oh?
He
cooks?”

“He did, before we brought you and Ramu on.”

“Captain Kronos in the kitchen?”

“He probably doesn’t want you to know,” Delphie says, “but you can probably get him to make cooking like other chores...split evenly among the crew.”

“Sounds good to me.”

* * *

A
n alarm starts
to beep when we are halfway back to the command room, and the engines are all but shut off, so Delphie and I are basically moonwalking down the corridor.

“Everyone strap in!” Kronos shouts as we enter the command room.

I strap myself into a harness and take a look at the map.

“Insanely fast ship breaking out from Earth’s atmosphere” Kronos says. “We’re the only ship on an intercept path.”

A familiar voice crackles on and talks over Kronos. “Not the
only
ship.”

“Fuck!” Ramu grunts. “It’s Malcolm!”

“Good to see you again, too,” Malcolm says. “As much as I’d like to shoot you assholes down, you’re privateers now. How convenient for you.”

Kronos starts laughing. “We showed you, huh? Nothing like putting a pompous peacekeeper in his place.”

Malcolm coughs. “Might want to watch your mouth, privateer, the contract you signed says that peacekeepers get to boss you around.”

“Only if we get drafted,” Ramu spits. “You ain’t drafted us yet.”

“All right,” Malcolm says. “But I bet I can stop that ship before you can. I may not be able to arrest you, but I can at least deny you your loot.”

The screen cuts off.

“Shit!” Ramu says. “Our first haul as privateers and he’s going to hit it before us?”

Kronos scrolls all over the map. “Lila, can we reach it before him?”

“Hmmm, hmmm, ummm,” Lila mutters.

“Lila!” Kronos shouts.

“We
can
,” she says. “But it will be...very tricky.”

“I’m a very tricky guy,” Kronos says. “Let’s do it!”

T
he engines turn back
on at full force, and 1.5g’s crush down on us.

“We know what kind of ship it is yet, Lila?” I ask.

“Some type of scouting vessel,” she says. “Harmony must have realized that the pirate swarm would become a formal blockade – a wall – and it’s trying to get scouts out before we tighten the screws.”

“Dozens of these things launched all at once,” Malcolm says. “This one just happens to be coming toward us. Let’s hope the other privateers catch the rest.”

I slam my fist down on the console. “Why the fuck does he keep popping up onto our comms? Can someone please answer that for me?”

“Peacekeepers are allowed to override all privateer comms,” Malcolm says. His voice sounds so fucking smug.

“Can you try to shut the hell up?” Ramu shouts. “We’re trying to intercept this thing!”

“My ship’s computer is smarter than yours,” Malcolm says, “and it doesn’t think you can do it.”

“Excuse me?” Lila says.

“If you fail to intercept,” Malcolm says, “I’ll get it. Never send a pirate to do a peacekeeper’s job.”

“Privateers!” Minna shouts.

“It looks like there’s one...bio-signature...on the scout,” Lila says.

“One pilot?” I ask. “Human or Marauder?”

“Neither.”

“Seraph?”

“No...it’s inconclusive,” Lila says.

Kronos looks over Lila’s mapped-out intercept maneuver. “So it looks like we’re going to launch the harpoon and jerk the thing in. We only get one shot at this, though. Delphie, I want you near the winch. Be ready to move if the harpoon jams or something. Minna...you can go help her.”

“Sure you don’t want me to cook up a dish for when this is all over?” she snaps.

“No,” Lila says. “You are misreading the plan, Captain.”

“Huh?” Kronos says.

“The harpoon does not have sufficient tensile strength to hold against the scout’s acceleration. The scout will still be moving much too quickly relative to us and would break the harpoon.”

“Then what the fuck is the big rope you drew shooting out of our ship and hooking onto the scout?”

“It’s Minna’s biosuit, Captain,” Lila says.

“No,” I say, voice flat. “Find another way.”

“This is the only way, Captain.”

Minna stands up. “I can do it, Captain. I mean, Jerky and I can do it together.”

“No,” I say. “Forget it. Malcolm can stop the scout if we’re not able to.”

Ramu jumps out of his seat. “The fuck! I signed this contract so we can get rich and so I can retire! We’re not going to let that asshole take our loot! He’s not even gonna’ keep the loot for himself! He’s going to hand it back over to the Tsarina in exchange for a modest salary and a pension! You gonna’ let a shithead chump like that one-up us?
Captain
.”

“I’m not using Minna as a human harpoon.” I cross my arms.

“Let me do it,” Minna says. “Or I’m leaving.”

I glare at her. “Leave where?”

“I’ll turn myself into the peacekeepers.”

“This is getting interesting,” Malcolm says.

“Get the fuck off our comms, you creep!” I pound my fist down, as if I can punch him out of our comm systems.

“Look,” Minna says. “I anchor myself firmly in the airlock, and you tie the harpoon to me as a safety line. If anything goes wrong – if I get pulled out of the ship somehow – I will just release the tendril and you rope me back in with the harpoon.”

“This would work, Captain,” Lila says.

“And what if you get hit with a fucking plasma beam, or a laser, or a – ”

“Or a micrometeor? Or a sunspot, or
anything
. Captain.
Kronos
, if I’m going to be crew on this ship, then I need to do something, otherwise I’m not really crew.”

I grit my teeth.

“We have four minutes until optimal intercept range,” Lila says in a too calm voice.

“Ramu,” I bark, “you’re captain for the duration of this maneuver. I will personally man the harpoon. I’m going into that airlock with you, Minna.”

“Me? Captain?” Ramu says. “You hear that Delphie? You gotta call me – ”

“Shut up, asshole,” Delphie says.

I suit up faster than I ever have, with just minutes to spare. We are accelerating away from Earth and at a slight angle toward the scout’s flight path. At the point we cross its path, it will be going nearly ten times as fast as us, and we’ll be almost a full kilometer away from it. We have just one chance to hook onto it, and that is assuming it makes no attempt to attack us.

Lila has scanned it and found it has no hard weapons such as torpedoes, but it’s packed full of unknown equipment, and any of those unknowns could be weapons as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t want to risk Minna, but if she’s so determined to be a real pirate, then I’ll have to let her do it. I’ll just have to give everything I’ve got to keep her safe, even if it kills me.

Minna’s biosuit covers her head as I shut the airlock behind us. The harpoon is mounted into this airlock, and if the winch mechanism on it breaks, I will pull Minna back in with my bare hands.

Minna looks down at her feet, and the biosuit turns to liquid, then melts across the floor. The liquid hardens, effectively bonding her to the floor.

“See,” she says, “nothing is pulling me out of here.”

“Two minutes, crewman Kronos,” Lila says.

“What happened to calling me Captain?” I ask.

“Captain Ramu is currently acting captain, crewman,” she says.

That was a hasty decision on my part. I didn’t think to build in safeguards. If Ramu is willing to fuck me over, he could refuse to give control back to me, and the ship – Lila – would obey.

But I’m more worried about Minna right now. She’s all that really matters.

“Going to open the outer hatch,” I say. “You’re sure that fucking suit has you sealed against vacuum?”

“I’m sure,” she says.

I start turning the wheel, and I hook my suit to the handrail. I kick the airlock open and grasp the rail. The small amount of air blasts out, and I hold steady to the rail. Now the only thing protecting me from vacuum is my suit, which is much more low-tech than Minna’s, but it’s tried and tested. I worry that Minna’s weird biosuit – the one that is actually a living thing named Jerky – could somehow lose control and expose her to vacuum.

“Hmmm,” Minna says, her voice channeling through comms. “I just realized I have no idea how to aim this shot.”

“You have just under one minute to figure it out.”

“Point and shoot, right?” she says smiling.

“No,” Lila’s voice cuts in. “It’s an advanced physics equation, and from a human perspective, you have to fire with near perfect precision, and assuming your aim is within .05 arc degrees of optimal, you will have a .0267 second window in which to fire. I hope this helps.”

“Shit, Kronos,” Minna says, her voice trembling. “That doesn’t help, at all. It sounds fucking impossible!”

If we don’t get it, Malcolm will. I don’t feel some huge sense of duty to the solar system, but
no one
likes Harmony. A super-advanced A.I. gaining control over the entire solar system could really cramp a pirate’s lifestyle. Even if Minna isn’t up to this, at least we have a second line of defense in Malcolm.

“Just do your best,” I say.

Though looting an advanced A.I.’s scout ship would have made for a great payday. It’s been two years since anyone has looted something from Earth – from Harmony – and it could be worth quite a bit.

“Wait,” Minna says. “You know when to shoot, and where, right, Lila?”

“Of course,” Lila says, robotic voice sounding almost smug.

A tendril snakes off of Minna and moves out of the ship. Minna looks back at me. “I’ll just plug Jerky into Lila, and she can shoot for me.”

“That sounds dirty,” I say, grinning.

“Very,” Lila agrees.

“It will work though, right?” Minna asks.

“Yes,” Lila says. “Brace yourself and take aim.”

Minna holds up her hand, and a few moments later a tendril blasts out at incredible speed.

Shit. Lila fucked up and fired too early, she –

And then I see a fierce glow of engines streaking across the black of space in front of us. The blinding glow blocks out my view of Minna’s tendril, but when my visor tints itself in response to the glow, I see the tendril moving in perfect synchronization with the scout ship.

The tendril from Minna’s end stretches taut, and she holds her arm out as if she’s reeling in a fish.

“Your legs are holding?” I ask, wrapping my arms around her.

“I’m letting the tendril get longer as it slowly hardens and tugs. I’m slowly tugging back on the scout ship to bring it down to the same speed as us. If I pull all at once, the tendril will slap just like the harpoon would have.”

“Well,” I say, “I’m not letting go.”

“I appreciate it,” she says.

It’s not like my grip on her will add anything more than the winch or her biosuit can.

“With all the weird and alien shit holding you down,” I say, “it must be nice to have something flesh and blood holding you tight.”

“You’re not a weird alien?” Minna asks.

“This weird alien isn’t letting go.”

“The scout has cut its engines,” Lila says.

“That’s good, right?” Minna asks. “It means we’ve won.”

“It’s reorienting itself toward us,” Lila says. “Oh, it’s firing.”