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2507: The Star Trader Chronicles

Episode 7: Lost and Found

Oro knelt in front of the cargo vessel’s hatch. She pulled a Velcro pouch from the leg of her suit and laid it in front of her, unfolding the flaps that held the contents in. Inside was a brick six inches square and two inches thick of keslic, a dough-like substance that was highly explosive. She pinched off pebble-sized amounts and placed them strategically around the hatch seals of the other ship. Microscopic detonators were placed inside the keslic waiting for her to key in the detonation code on the keypad she wore on the wrist of her EVA suit.

“Everyone grab hold of something,” she warned through her comm unit. “Sometimes the shock breaks the lock with the ship. We could be open to space.” She waited a heartbeat for the others to act on her warning. She gripped one of the straps that were inside the docking tube for safety and keyed in the code. Without atmosphere there was no sound, but a ripple went through the flexible material that the docking tube was made of. The hatch fell away to one side, dangling by one intact hinge inside the cargo ship. The team lost no time moving in, weapons drawn.

Adrenaline coursed through Oro’s veins making her heart jump like a caged beast struggling to get free to join in the fight. She had to tongue the volume control on the comm unit implanted in one of her teeth in order to hear the transmissions coming in over the clamor of her heartbeat. Sweat started to pool at the small of her back inside her EVA suit.

A heads up display in the upper right corner of her visor showed her what was happening outside the cargo ship they had boarded. Blue and green dots darted around a central red target. Each of the dots represented small attack fighters flown by pilots of the UEF, or the pirates that they had come to trap. The central red figure represented the independent cargo vessel that had been allowed to become bait, the ship she now moved through. Oro suspected that the Indies who ran the vessel had not been willing participants in the plan that her commanding officers had come up with to lure the pirates in this sector out into the open. All communications with the cargo ship had stopped before the UEF had arrived. She wondered if there was any crew left alive to save.

“Space the pirates and the UEF!” she thought to herself as she felt the cargo vessel take more damage.

Fourteen other UEF soldiers made up her battle unit. Like her, they were dressed in EVA combat gear because there was no atmosphere left in the cargo vessel after all the damage she had taken. Some of the pirates had managed to dock a mid-range shuttle with the cargo pod of their victim, and her team was moving in to stop them.

Oro well knew that the UEF combat transport could have destroyed the pirates’ shuttle with one shot of the TS3-particle cannon. Her training as a weapons specialist gave her the knowledge of exactly how much fire power it would take to destroy the shuttle’s reinforced hull, the vectors for aiming the cannon in order to take out the craft and leave as little damage on the cargo ship as possible, even the odds against the shuttle carrying weapons that would be able to damage the larger troop transport as they came in range. She also knew that in spite of the official line that the UEG gave about the sanctity of life and orders not to take life unless absolutely necessary, there was something else that was motivating her superiors to refrain from a kill shot. Instead, her team was sent in to fight face to face with the pirates on board the cargo pod with no intel on what kind of weapons or numbers they would face. Where was their regard for the sanctity of her team’s lives?

“Everyone switch to internal scan display,” their squad leader commanded.

Oro used her chin to tap the control inside her helmet. Her heads up display switched from darting dots representing the ships outside to red dots moving inside a schematic of the cargo ship. She noted that within range of their scanning equipment there were no blue dots in the crew section of the ship.

“They probably never got a chance to get into emergency suits before their hull was breached and they lost their atmosphere,” she thought.

Anger fired her bloodstream like molten lava. There was an ache in her chest that stretched to her arms and legs, an ache to hurt someone for the senseless deaths that had occurred already. She carried her Tallis Rifle like a beloved pet, ready to use its deadly bite on her enemies.

They reached the hatch of the cargo pod. The hatch was secured with a code that only the dead crew would know now. Oro was ordered to the front to blow this hatch as well. The second the hatch fell inward the team flowed through the opening into the pod. Four figures moved clumsily in EVA suits between a stack of cargo and the docked shuttle at the other end of the pod. UEF soldiers were trained to fight in EVA gear and they moved much faster than their opponents. Weapons’ fire criss-crossed the open space between the two groups.

“Take cover and continue to fire at will,” came the order. “Fierro,” Oro heard her name, “get to a position where you can keep them from getting back into that shuttle.”

Oro looked around the cramped pod. Moving in a direct line down the aisle between stacks of cargo was suicide. She looked up. There was plenty of room between the ceiling of the pod and the crates. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and climbed up to the edge of the stack in front of her. From her vantage above most of the fighting, Oro inched her way in a crawl over the top of the crates towards the other end of the pod, rifle ready. Two other team members had taken to the same tactic on the other side of the aisle. A head appeared at the end in front of her as one of the pirates realized his vulnerability. Before his shoulders could follow, he was dead with a bullet through his helmet from Oro’s rifle.

Oro had almost reached the opposite end of the crates when she saw one of the red dots representing her team flash and go out. There was a cry over her comm and she realized that her team was taking casualties. She looked to her right and saw that the two men on top of the crates that had been moving with her towards the pirate’s docked craft were both pinned down. She tracked the line of fire that was holding them. Just in time, she realized she was the next target and rolled off the crates between the pod wall and the cargo. The space was barely big enough for her suited body to fit. She took a good look at her heads up display.

They had assumed that the pirates would retreat towards their shuttle when they realized they were about to be under attack from inside the ship. Instead, blue dots were pouring out of the docking hatch and advancing on the UEF troops. She had to admit they had guts! Her team was outnumbered now. And in the tight quarters between cargo there was very little space to maneuver and get behind their enemy.

“Sir, I have an idea,” Oro waited for a response from her squad leader. “Sir?” There was no answer.

Another voice replied, “Shepherd’s down, Fierro. You got a lock on any of them? I’m pinned at the back. Can’t get over or around without being hit.”

“Negative, Reese, but I have an idea. I can get outside and get to their ship.”

“What?! You’re as nuts as a chippie, Fierro,” the voice came back with disbelief, “What good would that do? You can’t destroy a ship with a rifle.”

“No, but I can break their docking lock. They won’t be able to get back into their ship, and no more backup will be able to join them to come after us.” She put the plan together as she spoke. “When I blow their lock, use the distraction for half the team to fall back and move out of the pod and back to our own docking hatch. From there, get outside and make your way to the other end of the pod. The remaining troops hold them from escaping the same way. We pinch them between the two ends.”

A pause followed and she knew that Reese was looking for other options. A loud sigh of resignation came through loud and clear. “OK, Fierro. Get to their lock and blow it. We’ll be ready.”

Oro felt down her leg to the pouch containing the explosive. It took her a minute to turn enough in her small space to be able to work on the wall behind her. She smeared the keslic this time in an unbroken circle just a little larger than her own body. She used as little as possible, calculating the thickness of the pod’s hull so that she would have enough of the explosive left to finish the plan when she got to the other ship. She had to squeeze herself down the row of crates, wriggling her suited body to get past a couple that stuck out an inch or two more. When she was a safe distance she hit the detonation key and felt the blow against her own chest as the hull reverberated with the shock of the explosion. Quickly she slid back to the opening she had created. Open space!

Oro activated magnetic grips on her EVA boots as she moved out of the hole. She pivoted her body around so that her boots contacted the hull, and waited for the solid snick of their grip before she let go of the edge of the opening. For a dizzying second her senses tried to orient up and down in space without gravity. As she had been trained, she named her feet ‘down’ and ordered her brain to accept it as reality. She began to work her way along the hull toward the pirate ship docked at the other end of the pod. Her rifle was slung over her shoulder but did not hang properly now that she had no gravity to pull it into place. She tried to ignore it. As she moved she began pinching off pieces of the keslic from the brick, placing each blob on a different pad of her suit glove. She had to get the docking lock blown quickly. Seconds could make a difference. Her heads-up display showed her that her team was ready inside.

She reached the docked ship. She was happy to see that their docking tube was made of flexible plastic just like the troop transport shuttle’s. She knew she would not need even a quarter of the keslic she had ready in order to break the lock to the cargo pod. On an impulse, Oro moved to the pirate shuttle and clamped her boots to its hull. She passed the docking tube and made her way to the engine bell at the back of the ship. Saving just enough of the keslic for the docking tube, she placed the remainder in a thick smear around the narrow end of the central engine bell. The welds here were reinforced, but she knew the power of her explosives.

“Where in vacuum are you, Fierro!” an impatient voice cursed from her implant.

Oro realized from her visor display that her team needed her to take action now. She was out of time! Oro calculated the distance between her position on the pirate’s hull and the docking tube. She reached down and disengaged one magnetic boot clamp. The other boot was just enough to hold her as she prepared to hurl her own body like a projectile from a gun. She took careful aim, uselessly held her breath, and kicked off with the free foot. Her body shot true and she slammed into the side of the flexible tube. But there was nothing to grip, and her momentum caused her body to rebound off the material. She was going to bounce into space!

Panic gripped her throat and for several heartbeats she heard a scream in her own head. Her rifle smacked the back of her helmet with a clank. One hand still scrabbled along the surface of the tube trying to find some edge to grab. There was a lip at the edge of the lock but it was out of reach. With her other hand Oro grabbed at her rifle and pulled it free over her head. She acted on pure instinct and held the rifle out, desperate to extend her own reach. The rifle slipped off the rim. But her efforts, and the pressure of the rifle against the metal lip, were enough to pivot her body. Her foot was now inches from the hull of the cargo ship again; the foot with the magnetic boot-grip still activated. Oro willed her foot to extend far enough to touch the metallic surface.

As suddenly as she had been flying off into the void of space, she was anchored again. Oro let her breath out. Her heart was choking her in its wild thumps in her throat. She took a ragged breath and activated the second boot. She forced herself to ignore how close she had come to disaster and moved back to the docking lock. It took her seconds to place the keslic around the lock.

“Here it comes!” she warned her team as she hit the key for detonation.

On her display she watched half the red dots peel out the hatch at the front of the cargo pod and then begin to crawl out onto the hull from the docking port where their transport had been locked on when they had entered. The blue dots, representing the pirates, began to move towards the end of the pod where their ship had been tethered. That ship was now slowly drifting away from the cargo pod. The loose docking tube was hanging limp and ragged from its side like the entrails of a gutted animal. There was no escape for the pirates now.

Oro’s team reached her and the open docking hatch. Reese was in the lead and had taken command since their commander was down. “On my mark we move in,” he instructed and they each took position around the hatch.

They were ready and Reese gave the signal. The pirates were caught by surprise as the troops flowed in from space. They were pinned between the two groups of soldiers and knew that there was no hope of getting out. Within seconds they calculated their odds of survival, and surrendered. Oro willed just one to continue to fight. The adrenaline and fury were not burned out of her system and she wanted to feel her fists against someone’s flesh, even though she well knew a fistfight was nearly impossible in an EVA suit.

The troop transport moved into position to dock where the pirate ship had been. A team took custody of their prisoners and Oro’s team retrieved the wounded and dead. They had lost five of the fifteen soldiers that had boarded, including their squad commander. Another three were wounded but had managed to get seals onto the holes in their suits and would live. Seven pirates had been killed, four wounded. Oro was sure some of them would suffer from exposure to vacuum and probably still die. And when they examined the crew section of the cargo ship, not a single Indy was alive.

Most of the fighter ships were recalled. The few pirate fighters that had escaped were not worth chasing down. They were short-range fighters and would not be able to make it out of the system. They would be easy to track down on the few worlds that were able to sustain life that were within range.

At first no one paid any attention to the mid-range shuttle that had slowly drifted away from the melee. It had appeared to be completely empty, but then an engine flared to life. Before the troop transport could respond with its canons the central engine fluttered and the ship was about to jump to light speed and escape.

An explosion lit up every display on the transport ship. The pirate vessel became bright sparks and bits of burning metal. “Whatthehell?!” commented the captain of the transport. “Did someone get a target-lock on that ship that fast?” No one could answer.

In front of the suit storage lockers in the room outside the airlock, Oro slipped her gloves off and stored them in her helmet as she unsuited from her EVA skin. Her body was tired and sore from moving inside the stiff, bulky suit. Some of her skin felt like it was scraped off where the material had rubbed at her joints. Sweat caked her hair to her forehead and she wrinkled her nose at her own odor. But a satisfied smile quirked one corner of her full mouth. No pirates would escape this time.

That was how the dream ended every time. Oro’s body jerked into a sitting position and she was half way out of her bunk before she even realized she was awake. Her heart was pounding and sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts. She gulped in cool air and tried to will herself to calm down.

In her dream the pirates never got away. Somehow she always managed to get to that engine and sabotage it so that they could not escape justice for the lives of the civilian Indies that they had killed, and for the dead members of her team. In her dream Reese was still alive and he took over the final actions of the raid. Reese lived and she won.

Oro pushed damp hair off her face and flipped the blanket off her legs. No point in trying to get back to sleep now. She knew from experience that the dream would only haunt her if she lay in the dark. She reached out a hand for the wall switch and willed herself to turn off her memories as easily as she turned on the light.

A few minutes later Oro was in the makeshift workout room that the crew had put together in one of the empty quarters. She always felt better when her body was working. She focused on the feel of her arms as she squeezed them towards each other, working the pects and enjoying the burn in her chest. It took her mind off the burning ache that the dream had left there.

“I thought I heard someone up and about,” Ian’s voice came from the doorway. “Couldn’t sleep?”

The last thing Oro wanted was to talk to Ian. He had a way of trying to goad her and at the moment she wasn’t sure she could control her temper. “Just want to be left alone, Ian,” she said between gritted teeth.

Ian was surprised at the rebuff. Lately he and Oro had been getting along pretty well. It instantly put him on edge. “Sure thing. I wouldn’t want to be batherin’ a grunt while she was pumping up her muscles.”

“And don’t call me that!” Oro let the weights fall the last few inches with a clack and removed her arms from the weight machine.

“It’s what you were, isn’t it? A grunt for the UEF?” For some reason Ian couldn’t just walk away. He enjoyed digging at the shell that Oro put around herself. He needed to know that she felt something, that she was human after all and not just a product of her military training. 

Oro ignored his comment and turned to pick up a free weight so that she could work her forearms and biceps. Her silence seemed to anger Ian somehow.

“Well?” he demanded. “Isn’t that right? A grunt used in combat and later a sharpshooter used to hunt down targets for the UEF?”

Oro refused to turn around. Her fist clinched on the metal as she curled the weight upwards and then lowered it slowly under tight control. Ian watched her back as she continued to ignore him. He wasn’t even aware that he was going to say what came out next, “How many did you hunt down, Oro?”

She did turn around then. There was fire in her eyes and her jaw was clenched. “Just as many as I possibly could!”  She put the weight down and shoved past Ian where he stood half blocking the doorway. Ian let her go.

Ian returned to the bridge where he had been when he first heard Oro moving around and checked to see who else was awake. Just as Oro found comfort from working her body, Ian was comforted by the stars. Whenever he had trouble sleeping he would sit in the darkened bridge to watch the stars as the ship moved through space. It reassured him that he was free, and beyond the reach of the UEF, at least for the moment.

He frowned into the darkness as he thought about his exchange with Oro. She’d had at least one chance already to turn him in as a fugitive to the UEF, but hadn’t. Yet she had just admitted to hunting down other fugitives when she was in the UEF as a sharpshooter, and from the sound of it, she didn’t regret what she’d done. He imagined he had even heard satisfaction in her tone when she said she’d hunted down as many as possible.

How was he supposed to completely trust her? If he were caught by the UEF now they would use him to set an example for other chipped pilots. His death would not be swift, nor painless. They would remove the computer chip from his brain that allowed him to connect to a ship, and they would do it in such a way that all his consciousness would be destroyed along with it, but not before he felt the loss of everything that made him who he was. They would make sure of that. Then they would kill him. He wondered if by that time he would even have enough brain function to be grateful for the release of death. He had so much to lose.

And, if she turned him in to the UEF, she would have a great deal to gain. She would get quite a reward for his capture. Oro often talked about her dream of saving up enough of a stake to prospect a claim and become a miner like her father had been. Sometimes the gold fever would shine in her eyes as she talked about how she would strike it rich and prove to the big conglomerations and First Families that an independent miner, a sourdough as she called them, could still find the big deposits. Would she use the reward on his head for her stake? He just couldn’t be sure of her.

A long sigh escaped Ian. He knew there was no way of resolving his fears except to let time prove who Oro really was. Leaving Brock and the Aurora Lady would solve nothing, even if he had the heart to do it. Asking Brock to let Oro go would only precipitate a crisis if she were the sort of person who would turn him in. He really only had one choice; wait and see.

~~~~~~~~~~

Back in her own quarters, Oro took deep breaths trying to control her temper. Ian never knew when to walk away and leave her alone. When she’d heard the accusation in his voice, she had wanted to wipe the deck with his face.

“How many did I hunt down?” she asked herself in an imitation of Ian’s tone. “Not enough! Not anywhere near enough!”

In that one action alone, pirates had killed a crew of fourteen civilians, some of which had been women and children since Indies often carried their families. And of the five soldiers killed in the attempt to apprehend them, one of them had been the best friend she had ever known.

She had grown up playing with Reese in the tailing piles that surrounded her father’s mining claim. His father had worked along side her father, and his mother had been the camp cook. While her sister Danai had been playing with dolls, Oro had been competing with Reese to see who could climb the highest on the rock faces that towered above the mining camp. They had dared each other to go higher and higher, defying all adult authority, to see which one was strongest and bravest.

Both her parents passed away before Oro reached her eighteenth birthday and her sister Danai married a nice accountant on Earth. She had considered Reese her closest family after that. When she decided to join the UEF, and Reese had followed her, it had only seemed natural.

There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t miss him. After his death, she had taken every opportunity to volunteer for assignments that targeted the pirate trade. Only when the UEF started to assign her to other targets did she feel the need to escape orders that she could no longer follow, and still look herself in the eye. She had resigned, but she had no regrets for the lives of pirates she had taken.

By ship morning, Oro had managed to clean and inspect every weapon available on the ship in an attempt to get her mind cleared. A slight headache was starting to throb between her eyes. She decided to get breakfast and coffee in the galley, even if there was a risk of running into Ian again.

Zahirah was carefully folding an omelet onto a plate when she entered the galley. “Thought you would be hungry soon. Coffee is hot. Here, have a seat.” Zahirah passed her the plate and began pouring a cup of hot coffee for her. Oro sniffed at the omelet for a split second before she realized that Zahirah was watching. “What, you don’t like my cooking all of a sudden?”

“It’s not that,” Oro quickly denied. Everyone enjoyed the way that Zahirah somehow made great meals out of even the most common of ingredients. “I just have a bit of a buzz starting in my head and wasn’t sure how my stomach would feel about eggs this morning. “

“Want me to make you something else? Maybe you should ask the doctor for something for your headache.”

“No, thank you. This will be fine,” Oro put a large fork full of the fluffy eggs into her mouth and savored the taste of peppers that were tucked inside with cheese. “It’s great,” she said, with appreciation around the mouthful. “And I don’t need any pills. My headache will clear up with the coffee. I just didn’t sleep very well.”

“Want to talk about it?” Zahirah offered.

Oro chewed thoughtfully. Zahirah was a good listener and was becoming a good friend as well. It was hard for Oro to share her feelings with anyone, but of all the crew, Zahirah was the most likely to understand. She had been in military service too, and Oro suspected that she had seen her share of carnage. “Nightmares,” she said as she picked up her coffee cup again and blew across the hot liquid.

“From your time in the military?” Zahirah suggested when Oro did not continue.

“Yah, from one mission in particular.” She watched steam swirl up off the surface of the coffee like a wraith escaping from a dark pit. “We had some pirates trapped. These guys were particularly nasty, had killed every person on board an Indy ship, even some children, and they weren’t about to give up.” Oro didn’t realize it but her speech had taken on a clipped pattern, as if she were reporting facts to a commanding officer. “They also killed a lot of my team, including a friend of mine.”

“Close friend?”

“They don’t come any closer. Reese was like my brother.” For the first time Oro looked up from her coffee and Zahirah could see the pain that lingered in her dark brown eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Zahirah knew that words couldn’t fix the type of pain Oro carried, but they were all she had to offer.

Oro waved her hand as if to brush her thoughts away like crumbs from breakfast. “That’s the UEF. People die. Reese died and the pirates got away.” Silence went on for so long that Zahirah thought Oro had finished talking then, finally, she continued in a softer voice. “Only,” she paused, “in my dreams Reese doesn’t die and the pirates don’t get away. In my dreams, there’s justice.”

“Just because you didn’t see justice done that day doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually meet up with a final justice later.”

“You believe that?” Oro questioned. “A sort of ‘what-goes-around-comes-around’ Karma thing? I wouldn’t have guessed that you had that sort of philosophy in you.”

“When I left my homeworld, I left a lot of my beliefs and upbringing behind, but I still have some faith deep down that there is some sort of order and ultimate justice in the universe.”

Just then, quick footsteps came from the corridor in the direction of their sleeping quarters. Cowboy entered the room with so much energy flowing from his every move that he was like a gust of fresh air that swept away the moment of melancholy that Oro had settled into. He sniffed the air appreciatively. “Zee, that coffee smells like heaven!” He gave her a smile that showed the dimple in his right cheek.

“There ought to be a law against being so cheerful in the morning.” Oro gave him a frown as she finished the last swallow of her own coffee.

Cowboy lifted the coffeepot and poured himself a cup as Zahirah offered him the rest of the eggs that she had already prepared. He settled at the table across from Oro and gave her a mischievous grin. “I could see to it that you wake in a better mood if you want to shift cabins for a few nights.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“I could see to it that you don’t wake up at all.” She aimed an imaginary gun at his chest and fingered the trigger.

“Uh, she got me!” Cowboy playfully grabbed at the imaginary hole in his heart and dramatically fell forward onto the table with groans of agony. “Call the doctor! I’m a gonnerrr…” He laid his face down beside his plate of eggs.

Right on cue Win entered the galley. “Did I hear someone needed me?” Everyone burst into laughter.  The doctor looked at them in puzzlement, assured by their reaction that no one really needed medical help.

“You can give this one a sedative, Doc. I think he’s losing it,” Oro suggested.

Cowboy sat up and tucked his fork beneath his eggs to take a large bite. He smiled at the doctor until he finished chewing, and then pointed with his fork at Oro. “Or you can give her a happy pill. She woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“And you could wake up on the wrong side of the airlock one of these mornings.” Oro pushed her chair back and left the room. She wasn’t really angry at Cowboy’s banter. He wasn’t really trying to suggest anything with his off-color humor. He liked to tease everyone on the ship. She just wasn’t in the mood to play his games.

The galley fell silent after she left. “Was it something I said?” Cowboy looked around with an innocent expression.

Zahirah slapped his shoulder with a towel. “Sometimes you just don’t know when to quit, Cowboy.”

“Well you can’t kill my mood today,” he shot back. He reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded and refolded many times.  He looked around the table as he unfolded the paper. Each movement he made was obviously meant to get their attention.

“All right, I’ll bite,” said Win. “Why are you in such a good mood?”

“Because I have here,” he flipped the edge of the paper with his finger, “a solution to our water problems.”

Zahirah gave him a skeptical look, “What would that be?”

“Our old recycler is broke down half the time. We all have to ration how much water we use for showers and washing, but Nova said that if we had a more efficient, newer gray-water recycler we could have almost twice as much use of the same water. It wouldn’t take up much space, wouldn’t add a significant amount of weight, but would make it possible to filter water that was used for washing and bathing so that it could be used again- not for drinking of course. In other words, longer showers. And Nova wouldn’t be fixing it all the time.”

“Nova said all that?” Win asked in surprise. “I don’t think I have heard her say that much since I’ve been on the ship.”

“Well, maybe she didn’t say all that, but that’s what she meant.”

“And what is it on that paper that is going to get us a new gray-water recycler? That’s an expensive piece of equipment.” Zahirah knew that the UEG purposely raised the price on some equipment that would make life easier for Indies in their ships. Water recyclers were one of those conveniences, no essentials, that they liked to hold just out of their reach.

“Water recyclers are expensive everywhere, except on a planet like Craitor, where water is so abundant that no one even thinks of conserving it.” He smiled as he drew out the answer to Zahirah’s question. He was enjoying being the center of attention. “I tracked down probably the only water recycler on the whole planet, when we visited Craitor, and I made a deal with its owner. This,” he waived the paper again, “is a list of things he wants in trade for it the next time we are back there. And, I have everything on the list already, except one item; which I intend to find on Freeport when we land there.”

“I don’t like that we are going back to Freeport so soon,” Win said with a worried frown. “Last time we were there, you and Oro were arrested. Don’t you think Overlinger has heard about what happened the last time we were there? If he knows we’ve been there before, he could have a trap ready for us, hoping we will come back.”

Zahirah had some of the same worry. It seemed too soon to be showing their faces around Freeport again, but the cargo that Brock had arranged to take there was going to pay off better than any other run they had made so far. She couldn’t argue that it was worth the risk. “The Aurora Lady looks like many other Indy ships out here. No one will be able to visually identify her from the outside. Ian changed our automatic transmission ID code, so as far as traffic control is concerned we’ve never been here before. We just have to be careful about who is seen outside the ship, which means you,” she gestured to Cowboy, “won’t be able to leave the ship. We can’t take a chance that you might be recognized.”

“But I just need one more thing to complete this deal. It’s not that big a risk. I mean, it’s not like I’m wanted for a crime or anything. Oro and I were released. Charges were dropped. We were free to go. As far as Overlinger is concerned, he doesn’t know there is any connection between the Lady and me. There’s no reason I can’t walk freely on Freeport.” Cowboy was almost indignant.

Zahirah wasn’t reassured. “We still don’t know why those charges were suddenly dropped, nor who it was behind it. For all we know, it could have been Overlinger who got you off so that he could have you followed back to the ship.” 

“If it was Overlinger,” Cowboy pointed out, “we would have been stopped a long time ago.”

Winter decided to stop the argument before it went any further. “What is the last item on your list? Maybe one of us can get it for you.”

Cowboy snorted and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest to pin the doctor with a knowing smile, as he replied, “A Carthagian Pleasure Chair.”

Win started blushing before he finished his sentence. The Pleasure Chairs made on the planet Carthage were famous among certain pleasure seekers for their rumored ability to heighten certain sexual sensations.

“You’ve located one on Freeport?” Zahirah asked, ignoring the smirk Cowboy wore.

“Yep, and all I have to do is trade the case of Ipp Wine that I won on Halcyon, along with three spare coolant coils that I collected on Breezeway, and several steaks from a grazer on Craitor.” He looked triumphantly from one woman to another.

“What have you been doing? Collecting a treasure hoard in your cabin?” Zahirah asked with a smile.

“Something like that.“ Cowboy shoved himself upright and put his empty cup and plate in the sink. He headed out of the galley before either one of them could argue with him further about his plan.

“I still don’t like the idea of him going out trading on Freeport,” Win said with a shake of her dark curls.

~~~~~~~~~~

 “You say these steaks are genuine Craitor grazer-beast?” the man across the table from Cowboy was fairly licking his lips as he thought about the tender cuts of meat that were being offered as part of the bargain. The native grazing animals on Craitor were renowned throughout the galaxy for their tenderness and flavor. It was said that they could even make veal taste like tough rawhide in comparison.

“That’s right, an even dozen of them, all flash frozen. Just thaw them out and they are as fresh as the moment they were packaged.” Cowboy leaned back in his chair and tried to relax his shoulders. He really wanted this deal to go through and so far it had not gone as smoothly as he had planned. For one thing, he had been hoping to only offer six of the Craitor steaks and to hold the rest back for a future trade.

“How good are the coolant coils? I don’t want any junk that I can’t resell.” The other man picked up a tankard of beer and drank with gusto, but he kept his eyes on Cowboy’s face, watching to catch some expression of deceit. They were in a quiet bar at the edge of the port, near the bar where Cowboy and Oro had run into trouble with a port patrol in the past.

“I wouldn’t sell you junk. In a port like this, with Indy ships coming and going, you should be able to sell those coils for a good profit within the day.” Cowboy frowned. This trade was not going as easily as it should. Something was wrong. He felt like the other man was stalling for some reason. “Look, what’s the problem here? I have goods you can use. You have an item I can use. Or have you already sold the chair?”

The other man looked nervous, but Cowboy couldn’t put his finger on the source of the man’s unease. “No, I still have the chair. Ok,” he made up his mind. “Ok, let’s do the deal. We each bring our merchandise to slot five-one-seven in the merchant storage section of the port facilities. If the goods check out, we make the trade.”

“Done,” Cowboy said with a smile and held out his hand to shake with the other man on the deal. “Say an hour from now?”

“Fine.”

Cowboy was feeling pretty good about himself as he walked back to the docking pad where the Aurora Lady sat. His contribution as crew, so far, had been limited to helping with loading and unloading the cargoes that they carried, as well as keeping track of where things were stored. He felt like any dockworker could have done the loading for Brock, and he knew Rose was good at keeping track of things. Sometimes he felt like Brock had given him a berth on the Lady out of obligation because he had helped rescue Rose from some muggers back on Earth. It felt a lot like charity. Cowboy had survived off of charity enough in his life to know it well, and to hate it.

This was the first time he felt like he had accomplished something for the crew that no one else could have. He was a born wheeler and dealer. From his poker winnings, and progressive trades, he had worked up a sizable cache of goods that he kept in his quarters, storing up for bigger deals, like this one. And this one was a real score for the Lady! With this Cathagian Chair he would be able to make the final trade the next time they dropped at Craitor and the crew would have their new recycler. He would prove to Brock that he was worthy of his place on the Lady. No need for charity for Patrick Sean “Cowboy” Williams.

The streets were pretty crowded. Cowboy looked at the overhead sky and realized it was nearly evening. He figured it must be the time when most shifts ended and either people were going home or just heading to their jobs. He decided to take a short cut through some smaller back streets to the port and save time. Cities were cities no matter what world they were on. Cowboy had grown up on the streets on Earth and he had a good sense of direction. There was no way he was going to get lost this close to the port.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What do you mean Cowboy went out and never came back?” Brock asked in exasperation as Oro answered his question about how soon the crew was going to be back on board. Brock had found a job and it looked like they would be able to leave by morning, if he could get things ready.

“Everyone is on board except Cowboy. We thought it was a wise idea just to stick close to the ship this time since it wasn’t that long ago that we were here and had some trouble,” Oro explained. “But Cowboy went to do some trading and hasn’t come back yet.”

Brock wasn’t worried. He hadn’t given a time limit to the crew about when to check in. There was no reason to think that anything had happened to Cowboy. Still, a prickling worry started to tingle in the back of his mind. “How long has he been gone?”

Oro looked at her watch. “Half the day. About six hours now.”

“Did he take a tic with him?”

“I think so,” she shrugged uncertainly.

Brock moved through the ship to the bridge hatchway and leaned in to talk to Ian. “Can you contact Cowboy, via his tic, and let him know I need him to wrap up whatever he’s doing and get back here soon?”

“Problem?” Ian asked, almost out of reflex. It seemed like in most ports they went to they had had some problem or other.

“Not that I know of. He may just have gotten into a good poker game. It’s not like he had a curfew, but I need him back so that we can get ready for some cargo, and so we can take off in the morning.”

“Right oh,” Ian turned to his instrument panel and toggled the comm switch. “Cowboy, this is base. Check in please.” He paused for a minute and repeated his signal. “Cowboy, check in please. Are you there?” When no reply came he looked over his shoulder at Brock with a raised eyebrow. “What now, Captain? Are you sure there’s no trouble?”

Brock answered with a snarl and flung himself back towards the galley. The rest of the crew were already there, gathering to eat. Ian followed him and stood just behind his shoulder.  “Does anyone know what kind of trading Cowboy was going to do?” Brock asked. “Where he was meeting the other guy? Anything about his plans?”

“He was meeting a guy with a chair, hoping to trade for it, so that he could take it back to Craitor the next time we stopped there. I don’t know who the guy was.” Win answered.

“A chair? What does he think this ship is? His personal transport for moving goods for him to sell on the side?” Brock spit out in frustration.

“That’s not it at all, Brock,” Zahirah was quick to defend. “Cowboy found a gray-water recycler on Craitor and worked out a deal to trade for it, for us, for the ship. He’s been trading things on every planet we stop at, and accumulating them in his cabin, so that he could work his way up to this final deal. This is the last item he needs in order to get the recycler.”

“He’s a good trader, Cap’n,” Nova interjected. “He’s gotten us parts a couple times. Hard to find things.”

Brock was surprised. He had hired Cowboy because he seemed like the sort of person who would be desperate enough to stay with the ship, and because he had helped Rose. Since Cowboy had been on board he had always done just what he was needed to do, and he had shown a cool head when they were in some tight spots. But as a person, Brock had not gotten to know Cowboy well and had just written him off as young, inexperienced, and out for an adventure. This seemed a little out of character. Maybe he should not have tried to put the kid in a box like that. He’d have to get to know him better after this, but where the heck to look for him?

“He’s probably in a poker game,” Oro suggested. “We can start at McSorley’s, where he played before, and then look at other bars where cards are the main game. He wouldn’t go for a high stakes game, so he should be out in the open in whatever joint he’s in.”

“If we’re trying to keep a low profile, I don’t think we should have our people seen in every bar in the port area,” Rose objected.

“What about this chair?” Ian put forward. “Was it som’n special that we could track down? T’at might be the place t’start.”

“Good idea.” Brock turned to Win and Zahirah, since they seemed to know the most about Cowboy’s entrepreneur plans. “Tell us about the chair.”

“It’s not just any chair, it’s from Carthage,” Win answered.

“From Carthage? As in a Carthagian Pleasure Chair?” Oro asked with raised eyebrows.

Zahirah nodded, “Exactly.”

Brock frowned. He was no prude but he did not relish the idea of seeking out a pleasure chair in an effort to track down his crewman. It also did not fit with his idea of keeping a low profile. “Alright, we give him two more hours to report in on his own. If we don’t hear from him then, then we’ll start tracking down the chair trader, see if he knows where Cowboy went. In the meantime, let’s get ready to receive that cargo.”

~~~~~~~~~~

 Cold water shocked Cowboy into taking a deep breath and then he choked on some of the water that he inhaled. His senses were sending him so many messages at once that he couldn’t orient himself at first. Where in vacuum was he?

“Get up scum!” a voice growled from above him.

His eyes adjusted to bright light. He was in a bare room, sitting on the floor and held up only by the wall at his back. There were six other men, a few were still unconscious, scattered around the small room. One man stood in the center with an empty bucket and glowered at him.

“Didja hear me? Get up!” A boot connected with his leg and Cowboy scrambled up to avoid another kick. “Follow me.”

It was obvious that the man he was following was not going to answer any questions about where he was or why he was there. The last thing Cowboy remembered was walking down a small side street towards the port. He tried to push his memory further, but there was nothing. He did not even remember a moment of fear, or some blow with pain. The complete blank worried him more than his current circumstances.

His brain still felt slow and foggy. He raised his hand to his head and felt for a knot, something to explain loss of memory and his unconsciousness of moments ago. His exploration was fruitless. There was no painful bump anywhere on his head, no splitting headache to suggest concussion. As he walked down a long corridor behind the silent guide he took inventory of the rest of his body. His tic was gone. There were no apparent bruises, with the exception of where he had recently been kicked. His clothes were wet but not dirty. There was no sign that he had been in a struggle at all.

“Drugs then,” he thought to himself. It was the only explanation that fit. Somehow he had been drugged. But, when? How? The thought of the nervous trader at the bar flashed through his mind. For some reason it had seemed like the man was trying to stall their negotiations. Was this the reason? Had he snuck something into Cowboy’s drink and wanted it to take effect while Cowboy was still at the bar? He could not be sure, but it seemed like the only scenario that fit. And why would the trader want him drugged? Nothing was making any sense.

They reached the end of the corridor and made a sharp right turn. That was when he noticed the outer bulkhead. The new corridor that they had turned down was on the outer wall of a ship. If his brain had not been so slow, he would have noticed sooner that there was a slight throb of engines beneath his feet. He was in space!

“Where am I?” Cowboy demanded of the man who had stopped in front of him outside of a doorway. The man ignored him and pushed open the door, then pushed Cowboy through as he hesitated on the threshold. The door closed behind him with a sharp snick.

There were two men occupying the small room, seated behind a large wooden desk with several stacks of papers before them. They didn’t give any attention to his entrance. One was dressed in the uniform of a UEF ship’s captain. The other was obviously an officer as well, but Cowboy could not read the rank insignia on his collar and sleeves. His heart sank into his stomach as the realization hit him that he was on a United Earth Force ship.

“Why am I here?” he asked. The men continued to ignore him a moment longer as they conferred over a paper between them. “I don’t remember coming here. How did I get here?” he let his voice rise with anger.

“What is your name?” the captain asked, finally looking up and addressing Cowboy.

“Why am I here?” Cowboy countered.

“You will answer the Captain,” the other officer said in a matter of fact tone.

Cowboy could think of no reason not to answer. He was frustrated and starting to really worry about his circumstances. Maybe the only way he was going to get answers was to give a few of his own. “Patrick Williams. Patrick Sean Williams, actually, but everyone just calls me Cowboy.” Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe they wanted someone else and just happened to grab him. Once they realized their mistake, they would let him off at some port and he would contact Brock and the ship. “Yah, right,” he said to himself.

“You have no tag. Do you have a BID?” the captain asked as if following some formality. Only the wealthy firsts could afford one of the Biometric Identification Disks.

“Sure, I got it right here,” Cowboy said with heavy sarcasm, as he made a show of patting his pockets. “No, wait, I think I left it in my other suit. I’ll just call my man and have him drop it by for your inspection. Now where would I have him bring it?”

“No tag, no official ID of any kind, equals no citizenship.” Again the captain’s voice had the tone of going through some formal procedure.

Cowboy was at a loss as to what was happening, but he could feel that he was being swept along in some string of events and needed to get control of what was happening to him soon. “What is going on here? Am I on trial for something? For being an indigent or something like that? I’ll pay whatever fines.”

“Patrick Sean Williams,” the captain was reading from the paper in front of him, “by the authority granted to me by the United Earth Government as Captain of the United Earth Force ship Yuki Yanagi, I now commission your service in the United Earth Force patrol as Landsman Third Class, this twenty fourth day of April, two thousand five hundred and seven, Earth calendar. As of this moment, you assume all responsibilities and privileges of crew and serviceman in the United Earth Forces. Your service time will be no less than, but not limited to, two years. At the end of said service time, you will be evaluated for qualification as a citizen of the United Earth Government. Should such qualifications be found, you will then be issued a standard citizen tag and be given full citizenship, acquiring all rights, privileges and responsibilities of such.”

The man never looked up from the paper from which he was reading. Cowboy felt his head reeling with the shock of the realization that he was on some sort of UEF patrol ship, and had just been enlisted into the UEF military. He had been shanghaied!

~~~~~~~~~~

“He was shanghaied?” Brock’s grip tightened on the clothing of the man he held slightly up off the floor. The man’s toes were still touching but he was unable to wriggle free as Brock’s anger penetrated his beer soaked mind. “You saw him get picked up?”

“I, I,” the man stammered for a second, “I said I might have seen him get picked up by a shore patrol looking for volunteers.”

“Shore patrol? Volunteers? You mean they were a press gang looking for men they could kidnap!” Brock let his grip relax and the man slipped back onto his own feet.

“Well, you know, ‘tomayto, tomawto.’ They say shore patrol, you say press gang.” The smaller man shrugged his shirt back into place and nervously looked passed Brock’s shoulder to see if there was a clear path to the door. Maybe he could bolt if the ship captain got distracted for a moment, but his path was obviously blocked by a blond woman wearing a gun holstered at her hip. She stood near the bar drinking, but her eyes never left Brock and his companion. “Look, it’s none of my doing. I was just trading with the bloke. He and me, we made a deal. We were going to meet up later to make the swap. He left to go back to his ship. I was just behind him, on my way to where I keep my own goods. I just happened to see him run into those other blokes. Weren’t nothing I could do about it!”

“Sit,” Brock emphasized his order with a slight shove against the man’s chest. They both sat at the small wooden table. “Do you know where this press gang was from, which ship?”

“They were UEF, that’s all I know.”

Brock tried to read the other man. He was sure the man knew more than he was telling. Somehow he was going to have to get the man to tell him the whole truth. Fear could only do so much, maybe a little bribery would get him further. “That’s too bad. ‘Cause if I could find out what ship he was on, I might be willing to pay a little reward to the person who could give me that information.”

“A little reward? How little?” the trader’s eyes lit with the prospect. Now that he was not in fear for his life, his mind was starting to click over the possibilities of making even more money. Selling lose Indies to certain captains only paid so much.

“Maybe not so little,” Brock suggested.

“Maybe none at all!” Suddenly the blond that had been at the bar blocking his escape was beside the table, leaning in threateningly with a drawn knife. Her body blocked the view of anyone not at the table, but her eyes made it clear that she would not hesitate to use it. “The bartender there, just shared a little piece of information with me. Seems you are friendly with the captain of a certain ship, who just happens to like to take on new crewmen every time he’s in port.” She turned to glance at Brock but kept her attention on the trader who was obviously beginning to fear for his life again. “He wanted to make sure I didn’t let you leave here alone and get picked up. Seems this fellow here gives them some sort of heads up, whenever someone who looks like they won’t be missed for a while leaves here alone.”

“Is that right?” Brock gave the man across from him a disgusted glare. “You know, my friend here, she was rather fond of the man we were discussing. I hate to think what she might do to you if it turns out that you set him up. In fact, I’d bet that if she were to find out that anything happened to him on account of your actions, she’d probably make you wish you’d never been born.”

The other man looked up at Oro’s cold stare and swallowed with difficulty. “I didn’t do anything to your friend. I swear! But I might have heard something, a rumor, you know, about a captain that does what you said.”

“We’re listening,” Brock said with a humorless smile.

~~~~~~~~~~

 “I don’t know what we can do,” Brock said with frustration as he dragged his hand across his face. The rest of the crew was seated around him in the galley, looking at him with expectant eyes. “He was taken onto a UEF ship. It’s not like we can catch up to them, knock on their hull, and say, ‘Pardon us, but you took our crewman and we’d very much like to have him back please.’”

Winter wrinkled her brow in thought. “There’s no other possible explanation for his disappearance? You’re sure this man was telling you the truth?”

“I wouldn’t bet that he told us the whole truth, but I’m sure he was right about who has Cowboy now. It was a press gang for the captain of the Yuki Yanagi, at least I think that’s how you say the ship’s name.” Brock shrugged in hopelessness.

Oro was leaning back against the wall but now she shoved herself off and stepped closer into the group. “From the name, I’d guess it’s a third class destroyer,” she offered.

“How can you tell that from the name?” Rose asked.

“The Japanese branch of the UEF service has a strong naval tradition. When they name a ship they follow customs for naming that are centuries old. A battleship would be named for a region on Earth. A first class carrier would be named for a mountain; second class would be named for a river. First class destroyers are named for meteorological phenomena and second, or third class are named after flowers and trees. The Yuki Yanagi is named for a tree, a snow willow, and considering that it has been assigned to this region for long term patrol, I’d say it’s more likely a third class rather than second.” The others sat staring at her with surprise. “What? One of my commanding officers was wild about old navy traditions. I learned a few things,”  Oro explained defiantly.

“It really wouldn’t matter if the Yuki was a UEF tug boat. We couldn’t go near it, let alone do anything to force them to turn him back over to us,” Brock said with resignation.

“So that’s it? We just leave and go about our business without even trying to help him?” Oro asked angrily.

“What would you suggest, Oro? That we track the ship down, open fire and blast a UEF destroyer into submission, then storm on board and liberate Cowboy? Get real! There’s nothing we can do!” Brock looked at the other faces in the room. Rose held his eyes with sympathetic support. Ian and Zahirah both were upset but he could see the acceptance settling into their expressions even as he watched. Nova was looking down, unreadable, and Winter had tears in her eyes. Only Oro seemed unable to accept the truth that Cowboy was beyond their reach.

“Right! I forgot who I was talking to!” Oro stormed out of the galley heading towards her own quarters.

Brock was right behind her. “Just what do you mean by that?” His hand settled on her shoulder and he spun her around. Instinct alone saved his face from a vicious blow. As Oro twisted with her arm cocked, he ducked and her swing barely went over his head. “Hey!” Brock shoved Oro and backed out of arm’s length.

She was breathing hard, unable to hold her temper in check. “What did I mean? I meant, you run out on people! If the going gets a little rough you’re ready to just pull up and take off. Who cares who gets left behind? You were willing to just leave the doctor behind on Breezeway. I believe your mantra then was ‘there’s nothing else we can do,’ just like now. But there was something that could be done. Your crew did it. Who will you abandon next, Captain? Me? Zee? Ian?”

“That’s enough!” Brock’s voice bellowed in outrage at the unfair attack. “What happened on Breezeway was different, and you know it. I had no way of knowing that the doctor was not acting of her own free will. I am not going to make someone stay on this ship who does not want to be here. I was darn glad that it all worked out and you and Cowboy were able to help her. My decision then was based on what I thought was her wishes. This is a totally different story. And tell me Fierro,” he paused and folded his arms across his chest, “am I supposed to risk the lives of Zee, Nova, Rose, Win, you, and Ian by trying something against the UEF? They’re the military, for the love of Mike! And do you know what they would do to Ian if they caught him? Am I supposed to risk that?”

Oro felt his words sink in. Her anger bled out of her and her muscles were left trembling in reaction. She swung her head, trying to clear out the feelings that were crushing her thoughts. It was her nightmare all over again. She was losing a friend and there was nothing in her power to stop it. This time the pirates wore the uniform of the UEF. She wouldn’t even get the chance of revenge.

Brock could see her struggle to regain control. “I meant what I said, Fierro. I won’t keep someone on my ship who doesn’t want to be here. If you can’t live with my decisions as captain, then you need to clear out your berth. We’ll be leaving Freeport in four hours. Make your decision.” He turned and left her slumped against the corridor wall. He hated to lose Oro’s expertise but he would never put up with her insubordination again. She either learned to take orders or she was no good to him.

“Was that necessary?” Rose met him at the end of the corridor leading back into the galley. The others had cleared out. It was obvious that Rose had been able to hear most of what had happened between him and Oro.

“Not now Rose,” Brock moved to step around her.

“Brock, you’ve got to keep this crew together. Don’t let Oro leave like this.” Rose knew that Brock had been right to confront Oro after her outburst in front of everyone, but his ultimatum was likely to push the volatile Oro right off the ship, and right now they needed to hold together as a team. Getting over the loss of Cowboy was not going to be easy; losing Oro too might make it impossible.

“Not now,” Brock ground out between his teeth and went on through the galley towards the bridge. He knew that of all people, Ian would give him space to cool down. If he couldn’t go to his cabin and hide away for a bit, then the bridge was the next best thing.

“Did ya sort her out?” Ian asked as Brock settled into the copilot’s chair.

Brock wanted to hit something in frustration. “I’d rather not talk about it, Ian.”

“Right.” Ian was quiet for a moment and Brock started to relax. “She won’t do anything crazy, do ya think?” Ian pushed.

Brock let out a long sigh. He could tell he wasn’t going to find any peace with Ian either. “I don’t know what she’s going to do. I gave her a choice… start accepting my orders or get off my ship.”

Ian snapped around to look at Brock in surprise. “Ya don’ think she’ll leave do ya?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

Ian didn’t like to think about what the consequences would be to him personally if Oro were to leave. There was a huge reward offered for deserted chip-pilots like himself. She could decide to turn him in just as soon as she left the ship. It would provide her with the stake she would need to hold her over until she found another Indy crew to take her on. Without her tag, she would not be able to go back to Earth as a citizen. She either had to stay with the Indies or find that ore claim she always dreamed about that would make her rich.

“This is not good,” Ian said under his breath and continued to check through systems in preparation for their departure.

~~~~~~~~~~

 A sharp kick at the back of his knee sent Cowboy sprawling onto the hard deck, cracking his forehead against a solid corner of a piece of equipment on his way down. It began to bleed profusely, not because it was a big cut, but because of its location. He was forced to close one eye to keep the blood from dripping into it. With one hand he tried to wipe the blood away as he raised himself back up. He deliberately moved slowly, like a dog showing submission to the alpha animal.

“Yer worthless, Williams!” bellowed his attacker. “When I tell you to square this compartment away, I mean I want it in perfect order, everything exactly where it is supposed to be.”

Cowboy had quickly learned that military training meant that everyone higher in rank than he, was out to break his independence, in order to reduce him to a mindless tool. And everyone on this ship had a higher rank than he did.

“Yes sir,” he replied in a toneless voice. It was the only possible answer. That was another lesson that had been drilled into him. No matter what was said to him, his reply could only be ‘yes sir,’ anything else was called insubordination and earned a swift reprisal.

“Now take every piece of equipment back out of its place and square it away properly this time. You have eight minutes this time.”

Cowboy didn’t bother to protest. He was being set up to fail. He knew he would fail and be punished again for it. That was the point of the exercise, to break him, not to train him for the task.

What the officers of the Yuki Yanagi did not know about Cowboy was that life had already tried breaking him. Every day of his childhood had been a test to see if he would surrender his humanity. He knew how to put on the show of submission without ever resigning his own will. He told himself this was a game. He could hold his cards close to his chest, and maybe even a few up his sleeve. Until it was the right time to show his hand he could hold his poker face. It was just a game.

“You’re an idiot, Williams, with farts for brains! The captain’s grandmother could move faster than you.”

“Yes sir.”

“You’ll be on half rations until you can do this right, in under eight minutes. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir.”

“Keep at it.”

“Yes sir.” It was just a game.

~~~~~~~~~~

Michael Aster sat in an office lined with books that were actually printed on paper and bound with the hides of animals. His secretary had brought him a steaming cup of coffee, but for now it sat forgotten on the corner of his desk.

He hesitated. Hesitation was unusual for him. Aster had a quick mind that served him well as a personal lawyer to some of the wealthiest men in the United Earth systems. Decisions came easy to him, and action was close behind. Yet his hand did not move over the computer consul to activate communications with his wealthiest client of all. A grimace fleetingly chased across his face as he steeled himself for this conversation, and reluctantly, his hands began to work over the keys.

“You’re not going to like this,” he began when the channel was open. No salutations were exchanged. His client wasted no time and expected his lawyer to get right to business. “The young man you have shown an interest in has been,” he paused as he tried to find the right words to explain the situation.

“Has been what?” the other man prompted with impatience.

“Has been taken by the UEF,” he finished.

“You mean he has been arrested again? I would have thought you would know just how to handle that this time without consulting me. Get him out.” 

Michael quickly broke in to explain before his employer could cut off their communications without fully understanding the situation.  “No, not arrested. He’s been pressed into service. The Aurora Lady docked here on Freeport three days ago. I made sure to review all surveillance records of their activities. When it became clear that they left Freeport without the crewman known as Cowboy, I pursued further investigation as to his whereabouts. I learned that he was taken by a press gang onto a ship called the Yuki Yanagi. The captain of that ship is in the habit of taking on new crew from certain ports where he can find untagged Indies.”

There was a long pause. Michael was beginning to wonder if there was a problem with the communications channel. “Perhaps it will do him some good to be in the UEF for a time,” the dry voice finally replied. “His life has not exactly taught him discipline. Perhaps this time I should not interfere.”

“Sir, I’m not so sure about that. This captain has a reputation. One of the reasons he needs to regularly replace crew for his ship is because an unusual number of his crewmen meet with accidents, or die from unexplained injuries. The rumor is that the men are either worked to death or sadistically disciplined.” Michael Aster had been thorough in his investigation. He left out unsavory details that he had uncovered about the Yuki Yanagi, knowing that the man rarely wanted unsolicited explanations, but he would not let his employer think that he was doing this young man a favor by leaving him in the hands of his kidnappers.

“I see.” Oddly enough Michael believed the older man did understand completely without having the details spelled out for him. His client had not kept his power and wealth without having an uncanny understanding of people and events. “There’s no legal loop hole through which you can remove him from service on this ship?”

“Only if I were to come forward with a bio-identification disk that matched his DNA. That would prove his right to citizenship and would essentially nullify the contract that was created when he was pressed into service. Citizens cannot be forced involuntarily into service.” He waited for a reaction.

“No, that is out of the question.” There was no sign of clemency in his declaration. “I am not ready to have his true identity known, not even to himself.” There was another pause as the man thought over his options. Unlike most people, he always had options. “Alright then, no legal means are available. Thank you Aster, your services have been very valuable, as usual. I will be in touch if I need you to take any further actions.”

And that was the end of their conversation. It was always the same, ending as abruptly as it began. Michael knew that he would not hear from his client again unless he had a specific task in mind for him to do. Months may go by, but when he was needed Michael would be ready for whatever whim his client had. That was why he was so well paid.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I don’t know. A UEF destroyer is not exactly the kind of target I’d choose to take on.” John Richards rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he contemplated the request from his patron. He knew that it was, in reality, hardly a request. His patron was the sort of man who always got what he wanted in the end.

“Your ship should be up to it. I’ve paid for the best munitions that exist. She’s fast and can outmaneuver any UEF ship of the line. I’ve seen to that.” There was no imagining the slight emphasis he put on the personal pronoun. He was making sure that it was understood that all his support had been for a purpose. He had given Richards the Ranger and free reign, up until now. Now he was calling in the price for all his favors.

“This man you want off the ship, he’s that important?” Richards pried for more information. He didn’t like the idea of taking his ship in directly against a destroyer without knowing the true reasons behind it.

“He’s that important to me, and that is all you need to know,” was the only answer he got. The comm channel was cut abruptly. Richards knew from experience that there was no problem with the channel; it was simply the end of the conversation.

Richards was the captain of the Ranger, a ship that had been built with one purpose in mind, to be a raider. His patron had secretly had the ship built to his specifications and had given him all the help possible in his secret quest to attack the United Earth Government from the one vulnerable spot it had, financial commerce between its colonies.

Earth relied on many of the products brought in from other worlds. The colonies relied on products traded between worlds. The Firsts relied on holding control of all that commerce. They held control of all the official shipping lines and charged exorbitant fees for transporting all the goods moved in the UE system. They seized control of all products that could continue to make profits for their vast empire. It was a monopoly of all goods and services that kept the colonies alive, and the heart of it depended on interplanetary transport.

No group, no matter how organized, could hope to strike at the Firsts in their insulated lives on the planets they chose to live on. No individual could hope to make a dent in the protective layers of legal and illegal insulation that they placed around their lives. But here in space, one ship could make a difference if they carefully selected their targets. Interrupt the flow of their transports and you interrupted the flow of their profits. Stop the flow altogether and you stopped the heartbeat that kept them in power. That was Richard’s dream. To be the force that finally brought the Firsts to their knees. And if he could not bring them down alone, to at least weaken their hold enough that others, with the same dream, could follow in his wake and eventually finish what he started. He may be called ‘Pirate’ by all the political powers that sat in control today, but one day he would be called a ‘Revolutionary’, maybe even a hero.

He did not look too closely at the motives of the man who was his patron. Hewes was one of the wealthiest Firsts that had ever existed. Yet he secretly supported politicians that were campaigning for change, armed captains with ships that were willing to fight against the established shipping trade, and only he knew what else he was doing to support a quiet revolution. It was enough to Richards that he had built the Ranger for him and given him information that had led to successful targets. It was none of his business why a First would help destroy the very system that kept him in power. Maybe someday he would find out what motivated a man like Hewes, for today though, he had a battle to plan; disabling a destroyer, getting a boarding party on her to find one man out of the 19 officers and 75 crew on the ship, and getting away unscathed. For this, he had better become a hero!

~~~~~~~~~~

Four days had passed since the Lady had lifted from Freeport, minus one crewmember. Oro had stayed on board but she had said very little since her confrontation with Brock. She moved through the ship with an almost physical aura of pain around her. She checked through all their weapons daily, doing any maintenance that was necessary, quietly eating her meals with the crew, and putting her body through a grueling workout every day with the equipment in the makeshift weight room.

They all missed Cowboy’s teasing and sarcastic wit. None of them had had the heart to start to go through his belongings to clear out his berth yet, even though Rose had mentioned it once at the table. But for Oro, the loss of Cowboy had been harder than anyone would have guessed. They all knew that there had been no romance between the two. They were more like brother and sister the, way they picked on each other, but no one would have called them especially close. Her reaction seemed out of proportion.

Rose had tried to smooth things out between Brock and Oro to no avail. The two were ignoring each other as much as possible on such a small ship. As a result, Brock was spending almost as much time on the bridge as Ian.

“Uh, Boyo, I think we have company,” Ian said as he pointed to the screen directing Brock’s attention to a small blip heading their way.

“A patrol?” Brock asked.

“Not close enough to tell yet.” Ian began plotting alternate courses that they could vector out on if they needed to escape a close inspection by a patrol ship.

The communications receiver suddenly came to life. “Aurora Lady, this is the Ranger, and we have a message for you, please respond.”

“Do you recognize that name?” Ian asked Brock, casting a sideways glance at his captain.

“No,” he replied with a puzzled look.

“Aurora Lady, this is the Ranger. Captain John Richards requests a meeting with you. Please respond.”

“Richards!” Brock was surprised to hear that name.

Ian looked to him for confirmation. “You know him?”

“He gave us our first job. The Jannula’s set me up with him. He seemed to be pretty hot in Freeport. Anyone who was seen with him was likely to be picked up and questioned by the authorities.” Brock remembered the lean man who had been the first to try to explain the realities of the Indie life he had chosen. “Open a channel.”

Ian toggled a switch and nodded to Brock. “This is the Aurora Lady. What’s this about Richards?”

“I’d rather explain that in person,” was the reply. “My ship has the ability to soft dock with yours. May I have permission to come aboard?”

Brock was quiet for a moment. Not long ago, the Lady had been the target of pirates when Nova had inadvertently brought a tracking device on board. Could this be a trap too? Brock stalled for time. “You’ve come a bit out of your way to find us haven’t you?”

“More than you know, but it was necessary. You’ll understand when we talk.”

Brock remembered the other man’s steady gaze, how the man never flinched from confrontation. He didn’t know if he completely trusted the man, but he also didn’t sense any malice from him. “Permission granted. But Richards, we’ll be monitoring your approach and any sign of a threat from your ship and I will open fire.”

There was an amused chuckle that caused the hair to stand up on Brock’s neck. “Understood Brockman. Slow to stop and we will rendezvous with you in twenty minutes.” The comm went quiet as the channel was closed.

“You sure about this boyo?” Ian asked with misgiving.

“No.” Brock leaned forward and opened the mike to the whole ship. “Heads up everyone. We are going to have company. Fierro, I want you on the guns and ready to fire on the approaching ship if she even looks at us wrong. Zahirah, arm everyone and stand by to be with me at the starboard airlock while Fierro is tied up in the weapons seat. Nova, stand by with the engines. Ian may need to blast us out of here in a hurry and put them through quite a strain in the process. Doctor, be ready for anything. Cowb,” Brock broke off abruptly as he realized he had been about to give orders for Cowboy. “Rose, you be ready to help Nova if you can.” He flicked off the mike with a hard look. He put his hand on Ian’s shoulder then levered himself out of the copilot’s seat. “Be ready to pull our butts out of the fire if you have to, Ian.”

“Ready to pull yer butt out of the fire once again, Captain.” Ian gave Brock a cocky smile and a mocking salute.

Zahirah was waiting for Brock near the airlock, holding a pistol for him. “What’s the situation?” she asked.

“We’re soft docking with another ship, the Ranger, to receive a message from a man named John Richards, apparently the captain of the Ranger. I don’t know what it is about and I’m not taking any chances that this might be a trap of some kind. Just be ready for anything.” He would have liked to have Oro at his side right now but she was needed in the weapons chair in case the ship needed cover fire while Ian got them away.

It wasn’t long before there was a soft scrape against the hull. “They’re alon’side, Brock. Should be ready to come aboard any minute now,” Ian’s voice came through the com box near the airlock.

Brock pushed the com button for ship-wide communications. “On your toes, everyone. I’m leaving this com box open. If you hear anything go wrong, Ian, get us out of here.”

There was a sharp rap on the airlock door. Brock held his pistol ready and indicated that Zahirah should do the same as he cycled the airlock open. Richards stood alone in the soft docking tube between ships. The tube had environmental controls so that it was not hard vacuum between ships, but he wore an EVA suit as an extra precaution in crossing between the two ships. The seals on soft docks were not always reliable.

“Permission to come aboard,” John Richards said formally as he stooped slightly, out of reflex, to step through the hatch. His voice echoed through the closed helmet he wore.

“Permission granted.” Brock closed the airlock behind him.

Richards took off his helmet but did not bother to take off his EVA suit. He wouldn’t be staying long. “Do you have somewhere we could talk, Brockman?” He wasted no time with pleasantries.

Brock gestured down the corridor towards the galley. “This way.”

The other captain did not bother to sit when he entered the galley. Sitting in an EVA suit was anything but comfortable. Brock chose to stand as well. He had tucked his gun in the back of his pants. Zahirah discretely took up a position near the door to keep the newcomer in her line of fire if any trouble started. She knew not to let Brock get between her and the target. Her gun stayed in her hand but was down at her side. Her training in the Israeli Peacekeeping forces made her nearly as good at security as Oro Fierro.

“So what was so important that you had to see me in person?” Brock asked.

“How badly do you want your crewman back from the UEF?” Richards countered.

“What kind of question is that?” He was surprised. The last thing in the world he would have expected from this captain was a question about his crew.

“Straight forward,” Richards replied with impatience. “Look, there’s a chance that your crewman can be retrieved. What I need to know is, how badly you want him?”

“I don’t understand. How could he be gotten back? The UEF has him,” Brock explained, as if the other man did not have all the facts. “It would be impossible.”

“Let’s just say my ship is a little better armed than she appears to be, a lot better, actually.” Humor curled his lips in a wry smile. “I can take out the guns on a small destroyer if I can catch it by surprise. My problem is that I can only do that if I have the complete advantage of speed; if the destroyer is at a dead stop and has to re-power her engines to overcome inertia in order to maneuver. With that advantage, I could completely disable her.”

“That’s nuts!” Brock said with disbelief. “Why would you take such a huge risk?”

“Never mind the ‘why’. That’s my business.” His tone clearly indicated that he was not going to discuss his motives. “What I need to know is, do you want him back badly enough to help me? I need a second ship to play decoy and get the UEF ship stopped. Not just stopped, but stopped long enough that they decide to power down her engines. I can handle the rest. My men will take all the risk of going aboard the destroyer and getting your man out.”

Brock did not know what to say. The other man was offering to rescue Cowboy, at huge risk to his ship, life, and the lives of his crew. It didn’t make sense. He said as much. “It doesn’t make sense. You’d risk your ship and everyone on it for my crewman, a man you’ve never even met. Why?”

Richards refused to answer. For a long moment both men stood with their eyes locked in a battle of wills. “How badly do you want him back?” Richards said, at last.

“I think you are insane.”

“Is that your answer?” Richards waited for Brock to give in. If he had not been sure of his end response, he would not have taken the risk of letting him know his ship’s true abilities.

“I need to think about it,” Brock stalled. “Just what would you need our ship to do? I won’t join in a suicide attack on a destroyer. Cowboy was part of my crew, and that means a lot, but I can’t kill the rest of us trying to save him.”

“I’m not into kamikaze attacks either. If my plan works, the biggest risk will be to the men who board the destroyer after it’s disabled.” He reached into a pocket, closed with Velcro on the outside of his suit, and pulled out a diagram of a destroyer. He smoothed it out on the table, still wearing his gloves.

“Wait,” Brock held up his hand to Richards to stop him before he got into his explanation of his plan. “Zee, tell Oro and Ian I want them in here to hear this.” It took them only seconds to enter the galley. Zee must have explained to them what was happening because they both moved directly to the table to take up positions on either side of Brock who was already looking at the diagram.

Richards went on to explain, as if he had never been interrupted. “Their biggest guns are here, here, and below here,” he pointed. “The smaller artillery is mounted here, here, and here. There are two torpedo bays here and aft. My ship can take all those, if the destroyer can’t power up and move in time to protect itself. That’s where your ship comes in. I need something to get the attention of the destroyer in the first place, a reason for it to stop.”

“And just how are we supposed to do that? Sit by the road and stick out our thumbs for a ride?” Oro asked with sarcasm.

Richards turned to look at her. “Bait,” he said. “We station your ship near the destroyer’s route. Put a little scoring along her hull to make her look like she’s been attacked by pirates. Your ship sends out a distress call and the destroyer comes to investigate. My ship stays out of sensor range. Standard operations for UEF would be for them to scan the area, maybe even patrol around your ship for a while, looking for the pirates that attacked. But once they are sure there is no other ship in the area, they will settle to a stop and start to determine what aid they will render. Your ship has to maintain the appearance of total helplessness through it all. If, for one minute, they suspect that your ship is not as desperate as it will look, then they will smell a trap and stay powered up. I need them dead in the water, so to speak.”

Oro’s brow furrowed suspiciously. “How do you know what the standard operations of a destroyer would be in a rescue op after a pirate attack?”

He chuckled, “Because, dear lady, it’s my job to know how my enemy thinks and reacts.”

“The UEF is your enemy?” Ian asked with interest.

“The UEF protects the interests of the Firsts, who control everything,” he answered indirectly. Richards usually did not leave himself so vulnerable. If these people were to repeat the little he had said so far he would not be able to put foot down in any UE port. He was already suspected of crimes against the government. But there was a difference between suspicion and confirmed treason.

Brock watched a dark cloud begin to form in Oro’s eyes. He knew the signs of her rising temper. He decided to get the conversation back onto the plan. “The scoring on our hull, it’s going to have to be pretty convincing to look like we are damaged to the extent you are talking about. How are we going to do that?”

Richards noticed that Brock had subconsciously begun to talk about the plan as though it were agreed upon already. He smiled. “My crew has an expert marksman. We’ll use the weapons on my ship to mark your hull and create surface damage. It won’t be real. Nothing will be permanently damaged. During the second part of the attack, while my men are on board the destroyer, your ship slips away. We can agree on a meeting point for reuniting your crewman with you after it is all over.”

Brock was quiet for a few moments. He looked to Ian to silently solicit his opinion of the plan. “It’s pretty risky,” Ian offered skeptically. Oro was silent, her lips pursed.

“I need time to think about it, Richards.”

“All right. I can give you twenty four hours.” He began to fold the diagram back into his pocket. “I can’t do this without a second ship, Brockman. I’ve looked at it from every direction. Believe me, if I could have done it alone, I would never have come to you. But I figure you have a stake in this and just might be what I need. I’ll wait for the answer,” He headed for the airlock with his helmet under his arm. Zahirah escorted him to the hatch and made sure he made it back to his ship.

“He’s a pirate!” Oro burst out as soon as the man was off their ship.

“He’s offering to risk everything to get Cowboy back,” Brock countered. “I seem to remember you challenging my authority just a few days ago over this very issue. Are you unwilling to do anything to get Cowboy back now?”

Oro furiously shook her head. “Of course I’ll help get Cowboy back, but this doesn’t change the fact that Richards is a pirate. We can’t trust him! Why is he going to risk this anyway? A destroyer wouldn’t have anything of value to a pirate. This doesn’t make sense!”

“Who cares why he does what he does, as long as he’s helping us,” Ian argued. “I’m just not sure I like the part of the plan where we become a sitting duck while a battle starts over our heads. Not to mention the part where we let someone deliberately create damage on our hull.”