My Other Car is a Spaceship (11 page)

“
This will do nicely for our new base of operations.” Penrod ran his EVA-suited right hand, minus the pinky finger—the result of welching on a bet in his younger days—along the smooth plasma-fused stone walls of the corridor. “It looks like we can house at least a couple hundred people here, along with supplies, munitions, and ‘visitors.’”

His second-in-command,
V.P. of Operations Jern Ishtawahl nodded his shiny, nearly fluorescent yellow-green head with enthusiasm.

“That is right. Even better, this base extends more than
two kilometers into the asteroid. The Unity, should they ever find us, has nothing capable of reaching us down here. They could pound away at the surface for weeks with their heaviest weapons and all we would feel is some minor tremors—and that assumes no shielding. The rock is extremely dense. That is the reason the mining company finally abandoned operations here. It was too much work for too little reward at the end.”

Penrod nodded. “You’ve done well, Jern. So what will it take to make this place operational?”

The taller Alberian frowned. “Quite a bit, but the hardest part was done for us by the miners. Hundreds of passageways and chambers are already excavated. It would have taken us years to blast through all this rock—just as it took the miners. On the other hand, they removed all the useful equipment—life support, gravity generators, shield generators, etc., when they left. We will have to replace all that, plus we will need to carve out weapons emplacements on the surface, as well as ship hangars. After all, we would not want anyone passing by to notice ships docked outside a presumably abandoned mining site. Plus, there is much additional infrastructure to install: internal wiring, external sensors, computer gear, a water treatment plant, plumbing, air recycling equipment, environmental systems for slaves that require special atmospheric conditions—not to mention making the entire facility airtight—and so on.”

“Of course. So what’s the bottom line? When can you have this fortress operational?
”

“It depends on a lot of factors, Tarl
. This asteroid is nearly
seven kilometers
in diameter. That’s a lot of surface area on which to place sensors and proximity mines. And I know you want to convert some of the nearby asteroids into perimeter guard-posts and remote launch points—”

Penrod responded with steel in his voice. “I
understand
, Jern. I’m confident you’ll handle them with your usual deftness. I just want a ballpark estimate.
When?
”

Ishtawahl cleared his throat before answering. He knew how much his boss di
sliked bad news. He was taking a calculated risk with his lie. “Approximately twelve to fifteen months.”

“
Twelve—!
Too long, Jern. I need this place up and running as soon as possible. You’ve got nine months.”

“But sir!
”

“Nine months, Jern. And this place had better be spectacular.”

“Yes sir!” Ishtawahl said with conviction. “Don’t worry, it will be. We will work double shifts if necessary.”

He
smiled inwardly. His actual estimate was that it would take only eight to nine months to complete the transformation from an abandoned thorsite mine to BAE’s stronghold. The corporate offices on Pensor were merely for show. This would be the pirate organization’s new headquarters and the primary processing center for slaves and swag. When he completed the refit in less than nine months, he’d look like a hero. And some day, when Penrod had an unfortunate “accident,” Ishtawahl would be his logical successor.

“Excellent.
If the Unity thinks they have it bad now, just wait ‘til this base is fully operational. They won’t know what hit ‘em.” Penrod smiled.

“
Now, show me where my command center will be.”

“Hang on! We’ve got two more quems on our tail! Ejecting decoys.”

Hal
fired the APCs and launched a mass driver slug at one pirate ship even as he evaded the quark-enhanced missile that didn’t take the bait. The other Unity vessels were similarly engaged with a swarm of pirate ships, bobbing and weaving, biting and stinging. Each side took hits; each side suffered losses.

Two pirates hit
Adventurer’s
shields simultaneously—one with antiproton cannons and the other with a FoMA: focused microwave array. A quem from another pirate weakened the shield on the opposite side.
Adventurer
shook with the impact.

“Shields down to
thirty-two percent!”

Hal
fired a torrent of slugs at the largest of the pirates, one, two, three, four, five of the superdense slugs. The other ship slipped the first three. The fourth vaporized the prow and a split-second later the fifth blasted through the heart of the ship, nearly ripping it in two. The shockwave from the strike did what the impact itself failed to do. The fore and aft sections of the ship tore apart and gradually drifted in different directions. Atmosphere, fluids, and bodies spilled from the two halves of the wreck.

“
Got ‘im! He’s dead in the water. Yes! The remaining bogeys are breaking off,” Hal reported. “Chalk one up for the good guys.” He took a relieved breath.

The six
functioning raiders jumped to hyperspace one by one. The carcasses of three pirate ships and one Unity vessel tumbled adrift. The acrid stench of burnt insulation wafted through the bridge.

Kalen
wrinkled his nose at the smell and toggled the shipwide intercom. “Good work, everyone. Security, send out a search party. Look for survivors. Everyone else, stand down from alert. Make repairs. Keep watch in case the bogeys decide to double back for a surprise visit. Meanwhile, if anyone needs me, I’ll be in my ready room.”

He rose from his command chair
, walked calmly toward the rear of the bridge and stepped through the doorway as it appeared in the wall and then disappeared behind him. He went to his desk and sat.

Kalen closed his eyes and let his head fall back against
the seatback. He massaged his eyelids with his fingertips.
How much longer can we keep this up? They can afford more losses than we can. Our ships may be better, but they have so
many
of them. We’re always outnumbered. Hal’s done phenomenally so far, but it only takes one mistake, one moment of inattention, one minor miscalculation, one lucky shot, and we’re as dead as those poor bastards drifting out there.

He sighed.
Or maybe I’ve just been doing this too long. It was great in the beginning. It was easy to feel like I was making a difference, making the pirates pay for Julie’s death. We managed to keep them away from most of the planets for awhile, and even reduced their numbers quite a bit. But now…. Now we’re losing ground, planet by planet, system by system. It’s only a matter of time until the Unity….
He snorted bitterly.
Until the Unity loses its unity.

Face it—we’ve lost. We just can’t bring ourselves
to admit it. Sure, we win a skirmish here and there, but it’s just a holding action. For every step forward we take, they knock us back three. When the rest of the new ships come online that’ll help, for a while. But it’s a stopgap measure at best. We’re already losing support in the frontier systems. Soon it’ll be the core systems. And the Unity can’t keep demanding ever-higher dues from the member merchants. Some have already dropped out. If the dues go up again to fund more ships and more crews,
more
merchants will pull out. And then it’ll all fall apart.

Eventually the systems that refuse us admittance will come to realize that we’re the only hope they have against the pirates.
But by then it’ll be too late. Once we’re gone, the pirates won’t have any reason
not
to raid those systems. There’ll be no one to stand between them and the pirates.

The navies of the core systems do a
decent job of policing their own systems, but that’s as far as they go. We’re as close as there is to a galactic police force and we’re failing.

The energy seemed to
drain from his body.
I’m so desperately tired. Tired of fighting, tired of losing ships, tired of burying good men and women—those we can
find
enough of to bury, that is.

Kalen took a deep breath and opened his eyes
, steeling himself. “Enough wool-gathering. This pity-party is over. I have a job to do.”

He stood
, squared his shoulders and exited the ready room, resuming his seat in the command chair.
Someone
had to coordinate the cleanup and rescue operations with the less senior Captains. As always, someone had to take charge.

Right now t
hat someone was Kalen Jeffries.

“So how close are we, Jern?” Penrod stood in the middle of the stronghold’s command center. Around him, dozens of workers rushed here and there installing sensor consoles, viewscreens, workstations, and other furnishings and equipment.

“Less than a week. All the major
installations are done. We are down to the small stuff now. We start filling the weapons lockers tomorrow. The missile launchers and energy weapons are already in place. Those eight massive power generators are operational. You will have plenty of power for the energy weapons and the shield array. With our multilayered overlapping shields, this fortress could hold off a fleet of the best the Unity has at their disposal. Also, we have moved many of the larger nearby asteroids to provide additional shielding from external assault. Anyone wanting to attack us will have to approach from the directions we dictate. And, of course, while they are doing that, the asteroids we have equipped with missile launchers and energy projectors will be blowing them out of the sky. Whatever ships manage to survive our outer perimeter will have to deal with the dozen ships we can house in the hidden hangar bays here.”

Penrod shook his head in amazement. “I have
to admit, I gave you an aggressive deadline I didn’t think you could meet. You not only beat my deadline, you’ve exceeded my expectations for the finished result. I’m impressed.
Very
impressed.”

“Thank you, Tarl.
I am proud of the work we have done here.”

“As well you should be. Nothing like this has existed before, to my knowledge.
” He lowered his voice. “Even at full strength, we want the location of this base to be a secret.” He glanced at the multitude of workers milling around them. “What about all these witnesses?”

“
They will not be a problem. They were all brought here in our ships, so they do not know the location of this base. They have been here the entire time. No one has yet left.”

“Still, they have information about the design of this base. Someone could use that information to exploit any weaknesses we might have overlooked.”

“There are no weaknesses, I assure you.”

“
Maybe; but better safe than sorry, Jern. When this place is fully operational and you return the workers, see that there’s an unfortunate accident and they all suffer from explosive decompression. There’s an old saying on my home planet: Loose lips sink ships. And an even older one: Dead men tell no tales. Let’s not leave any loose lips around to tell tales.”

“Yes sir,” Ishtawahl replied.

“Good.” Penrod took another look around the impressive display of equipment in the spacious command center. “The day this fortress comes online will mark the beginning of the end of the Merchants’ Unity.”

A slow smile of anticipation spread across his face.

“
I’ve got good news!” Kalen approached Hal in yet another nondescript bar on yet another space station, back from a briefing at the local Unity office.

“I could use some of that,” his pilot replied
between sips of beer. He signaled the waiter for a matching one for Kalen. “Pray tell. Did some full-of-himself government official in some piss-ant system deign to let us stop and refuel on the way to getting our asses kicked by another fleet of pirate ships? How kind.”

“My, haven’t we gotten bitter in our old age.”

Hal shrugged. “Maybe so, but I’ve about had it. We risk our lives every day for these people and they practically spit in our faces. I’m fed up with it. In fact, I think I’ve had all I can take. I’ve had enough of empty promises. I’ve had enough of losing. I’ve had enough of ungrateful people who go out of their way to make our jobs even harder. I think I’m about ready to hang up my spurs and take that well-deserved retirement you interrupted—what is it, almost three years ago?”

Kalen nodded. “I know exactly how you feel. I’ve had similar thoughts myself lately. What if I told you that
twenty-six of those long-promised ships will be coming online in the next three weeks?”

Hal
perked up at that bit of information. “
What?
How?”

Kalen shrugged.
“A combination of things. Just as it seemed the universe was conspiring against us, several obstacles disappeared at the same time. The factory-worker strike on Pelvore was settled, finally. Those five ships that were sitting around almost finished can be completed now. And the Unity figured out how to solve the problem of the lack of crews for the ships that
have
come off the production line lately. With all the defeats the past months, and all the ships destroyed and crews lost, it’s been hard to recruit people to crew new Unity ships. No big surprise there.

“
But recent advertising has really hammered home the message of the deaths the pirates have caused and the people they’ve enslaved. The ads incensed so many people that there’s been an upwelling in friends and families of victims joining up. That’s a
good
thing. These crews are motivated by something stronger than simply a paycheck, or even moral outrage. They’re fueled by revenge.”

Hal
nodded with a tight smile. “I certainly see the motivation in that, but it worries me that they might be a bit too bloodthirsty and not think with clear heads.”

“
Well, sure. We need crews willing to take prisoners that we can pump for information, rather than killing them to get satisfaction. But I’d rather have a passionate crew than no crew at all, or one that’s only working for a paycheck.”

“Yeah, there’s that. So what about the rest of the ships? The strike and the crews only account for about half.”

“Hmm? The rest? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Some of them are behind schedule. The others are
on
schedule. It just worked out that they’ll all be ready about the same time.”

“That certainly
is
good news.” Hal smiled. “Maybe I’ll hang around a bit longer to see how it all works out.”

“I hoped you’d say that. Cheers.”

He held up his glass and Hal clinked his own against it. Beer sloshed over the sides of the glasses and splashed onto the table. Neither man cared. This was the first good news they’d gotten in months.

“Begin rescue and cleanup operations,” Kalen ordered. He sucked the blood from the inside of his cheek where he’d bitten it sometime during the battle.

This had been one of the worst yet. Seven Unity ships had found eleven pirate ships in the midst of pillaging a small colony world of the Foren.
Squadron 6 had gotten the drop on the pirates, attacking before many of them were able to return to their ships.

The eighteen ships fought in a snarl-up that made a cat’s hairball seem or
derly by comparison. More than one ship was hit by friendly fire in the mess, as ships dodged a missile or energy beam only to run into one fired at another ship. When all was said and done, fifteen of the eighteen ships drifted dead or incapacitated. The lone functional pirate ship scurried off with its tail between its legs.

Meanwhile
, several dozen pirates on the planet below, no longer protected by the ships in orbit, were taken into custody by the civilian authorities. Three by three, they were lined up against a wall and shot in retribution. Although the timely intervention of the Unity squadron prevented
most
of the slaves from being ferried up to the pirate ships, eighty-nine Foren had boarded one of the ships at gunpoint and died when that ship exploded in the battle.

More than four hours later,
the recovery crews finished combing through all the wrecks for survivors.

“
Captain, I have the final tally,” Hal reported. “We’ve recovered forty-seven Unity personnel and sixty-two pirates. No civilians. Many are injured, and a few might not make it.”

Kalen nodded and closed his eyes.
So many dead. Nearly four hundred of us and more than that of them. We may never know exactly how many. Plus the civilians. Maybe a thousand dead overall in this one minor skirmish. God only knows how many total casualties in the past few years. Such a waste.