Action at Omega Beacon

SOL

2191 A.D.

Ajax hauled two passengers besides the load of “extra-formulated” Serenity tablets that he was paid to carry. The others were along for the ride and to provide company. Transit from Lalande 21185 was a 42 month nap in the icebox: a cold-sleep pod, the easy part. He shivered from the lingering effects at times but his passengers had fared worse.

His female passenger was added to the log when Utbird 3, his Sokhoi-500 medium freighter, passed out of radio contact with the Transterran factory-stations churning out meds. Her name was Vexus and, unlike the man minding the engines, had not paid for her passage across light years. Ajax found her in the ship’s galley gnawing a ration-pack. Then and there the girl offered him a deal. Just as positive tendencies developed into good habits, the opposite was also true. His bad habits were anchored by well-buried roots.

The girl, Vexus, wept silently and strained against the cargo straps that spread her like Vitruvius Woman. She was anchored in space between the inner surfaces of the Utbird’s small pilot stateroom. The cuffs holding her to the straps were kept onboard as a precaution. Ajax trusted very few people, especially not when it meant taking stupid, unnecessary chances. Inside-job was a favorite of more than one pirate gang.

Ajax studied her naked proportions and let his mind drift. What would a man with imagination do in this situation? Maybe I should start with what I wouldn’t do, he thought as he as he maneuvered around Vexus in zero-g. Not a bad looker. Those weak station diets always make them so thin. Nice ass, no bosums. “You’ve got an amazing body. How much time do you put on the gravity bike?”

“There isn’t much else on the station to do.” Vexus said as he wiped her nose with a cloth. The stray hairs that escaped from her tight brunette bun hung in space around her head.

“I’m sure that’s not true. No need for tears, Vex. Now you’re part of the crew,” Ajax said and smirked when “maybe that’s what she’s afraid of” arrived by thought. “Enjoy yourself. This is going to be the best fun you’ve ever had in your life. Doing this in zero-G is a unique experience, believe me. There really is no wrong position.”

“Then how-come you haven’t untied me?”

“Because for this to work one of us has to be an anchor, otherwise inertia takes over and we go tumbling into things. Does that make sense? Basic Physics have to be taken into account. There’re a few sharp edges around that might hurt.”

“Do it.” Tears rolled off her eyelashes into perfect spheres that drifted away from her face. Behind the supplication in her brown eyes he could see a thousand nightmarish thoughts of things that happened to stowaways.

“Patience, Vex, patience. A man has to have consideration when he’s presented with this sort of opportunity. That’s why we dropped out of transit early. The autopilot can get us through the beacon line at this point. We got weeks before we make planet-fall,” He drifted softly onto her back. She trembled at his touch as he reached around and cupped her breasts. His hot breath was on her neck. “I’ve been having thoughts, Vex.”

“Like what?” She said as he thumbed her nipples. His flaccid cock was cradled between her buttock cheeks and growing stiffer by the moment.

“Tell me what Transterran fems like,” He said. Vexus gasped as he ran a hand down her stomach to the thin plot of dark hair covering her sex-mound. He crooked a finger inside of her and found that the dampness he expected was missing. “I’ve never had Transterran.”

“The station sucks,” Vexus said as he lifted himself off of her and spun in place. “It’s all routine. School, work, play and family times are the same each station cycle. Every second of every cycle I have a place to be on the schedule.”

“What do you do in the play time?” Ajax said as he spit at his hand. The semi-liquid formed into a ball that bounced off his skin when hit touched. A cupped hand guided the glob between her legs and onto her sex. She twitched once as he rubbed in with his palm.

Vexus closed her eyes as she felt a tingle. “There’s no privacy. We cram ourselves into one-person shower pods just so two can exchange pleasures. Our families arrange matches. If they are kind, sometimes they leave us alone together during family time, but that’s rare.”

Ajax used a fingertip to circle her clitoris. “Are you a virgin, Vexus?”

“I lost it spinning in a multi-axis,” She gasped. “During zero-g training.”

“Do you like training?”

“Yes,” She bit her lip as Ajax slipped a finger into her, then a second. “All I ever did was go out tethered to a collar.”

“Were you scared?” Ajax said and planted a nibble on her smooth taint.

“At first, then I realized it was nothing to be afraid of.”

“Are you scared now?” Ajax said and paused his treatment.

“No.” She sniffled and shook her head.

“Good,” Ajax slid around her body until her pubic pelt was in his face. His erect penis was poised near her chin. She obliged by lowering her head until she took his first four inches between her lips. He groaned. “Very good.”

He locked his legs against her arms and buried his face in her vagina. Vexus made sounds of pleasure that mixed with the smack of wet suction on his manhood. He picked his head up as the ship’s PA system came to life with an automated warning. Because the ship was of Russian manufacture, the message arrived in Russian first. The translation software he’d installed repeated it in English.

“Proximity alert. Proximity alert. Proximity alert.”

“Always when I’m eating,” Ajax sighed with disgust. He detached himself from Vexus and floated toward the hatch. His first duty was the safety of his ship. The autopilot had been programmed with specific parameters about things requiring pilot attention. Objects passing close-by raised a red-flag in the ship’s rudimentary A.I. He caressed Vexus on the flanks as he floated past. “Patience, Vex, I’ll be right back.”

***

Ajax zipped his flight suit and slid into the pilot’s acceleration couch. Once the alarm had been silenced he brought up the sensor log and did a often practiced review. The cause of the alarm was immediately obvious.

“What the hell is going on up there?” The engineer called up from the engine room. “What was that alarm for?”

“My fixer was right, I’m picking up a gap in the radar coverage, those beacon stations must’ve been drifting. Good news for us. How are you holding up back there? Did you face stop swelling?”

The reply was a belch over the ship’s intercom.

Kupier regions outside Sol system were places that, if mapped like ancient explorations of Earth, would have been marked as unknown territory with the warning, “there be dragons here.” Neptune marked the theoretical inner boundary.

“Once we’re through this, it’ll be an easy burn the rest of the way in.”

“Reactors stable,” Todt called up from the engine compartment with a belch. He was the best star-drive engineer available when Ajax had launched from the Lalande 21185 system for Earth. His real name was Todt but he matched the other well. “If I get caught in Sol system, it’s SolMax for both of us.”

“Quit worrying, Toad. I’ve shot this line a dozen times with no aborts,” Ajax said and extended the sensor array from its housing. “You’ll be back on Mars in time for the twelfth hour news. I need you to focus on keeping that reactor cooking.”

Lessons learned from 30 years of trial-and-error helped him anticipate things. Life had become a constant process of insight and adjustment. 20 cumulative years spent in cold sleep didn’t show. The deep lines creasing his face were from concentration.

“Standby for main engine start,” Ajax said. Utburd 3, his abused Sukhoi freighter, flared as it emerged from the displacement tunnel created by its transit drive, an ex-military TIL unit that was reliable and took parts that were commonly available. “The beacon can detect the flare. Customs will send a detachment to have a look around.”

“Nozzle temperatures are in the safe range.” Todt said. He had started the celebration of his return to Sol early and was smashed on Centauri brandy.

“No wonder I got you so cheap, Toad.”

“A trained monkey could run this system,” Todt retorted. “I’ve been babysitting an automation since we jumped. What did you expect me to do?”

“Know how to push the reactor shut-down switch if we start going critical.” Ajax said and listened to the hull groan as he flipped a toggle. The drone on the freighters outer hull detached as he fired the 120-pound thrusters, inducing right rotation to turn the Utburd’s tail toward distant Sol. The drone, a robotic decoy had taken up the forward docking ring- now there was no getting off the ship except by life-pod, space-dock, or soft landing.

Carried along by the Utburd's inertia, the drone powered up and initiated transit twelve seconds after launch, continuing on the heading that Utburd 3 was curving away from as Ajax fired the main engines and decelerated.

The spray of heavy Lithium and Berylium atoms produced by the drives provided .003 G constant. Larger, more powerful boosters generated enormous thrust for high-speed running but devoured fuel. He’d installed massive tankage for extended maneuvering.

“How’s it look up there?” Todt called up. “Tell me when we’re through so I can start open a fresh bottle. The last one was only half full.”

“We’re not even officially in-system yet,” Ajax said as the first signals coming into his passive sensors showed a radar gap between the Omega and Tau beacons four hundred kilometers wide. He usually snuck in through other, more time consuming approaches, but his fixer at Horseman Station clued him to the secret route. “But as long as they concentrate on the drone we should be able to slip right in. Get your bottle and both of you strap in. We’re gonna be maneuvering.”

“Fuel system primed.”

Ajax shook his head as Todt hiccuped. Zero-gravity made one gassy but the man had been overdoing it. The ship rattled as a two-minute main engine burn oriented the Utburd’s shield of RADAR-absorbent-material to the signals from the distant sensor outposts, putting them on a vector to shoot through the static haze at the fringes of the outposts electronic sights.

Why can’t they all be this easy? Ajax thought as he watched the signal wave from the beacon on the virtual oscilloscope. As a last resort, the ECM arrays mounted on the trailing face of the Utburd would actively disrupt any attempt to localize him while he broke contact. No trace. The Customs Authority console-jockeys fighting sleep at their posts might not even notice first contact. There would be no second.

“It’s about time,” Todt said while Ajax checked the temperature of the engine nozzles. All the man seemed to know besides engines was how to make demands. “We had a deal. You fly the ship, I work the engines. Do you get where I’m going with this, Kinkaid?”

“Helm online, navigation online,” Ajax said and pulled on his harness to make sure it was locked down. “Hold onto your lunch-paste, Toad, here comes gravity,” His eyes dropped to the countdown on the engine display. “In ten…”

Todt groaned. “The crushing hand returns.”

“Nine,” Ajax boosted gain to his primary dish as the second-hand speaker wired to the nearest bulkhead came alive. His eyes shifted to the sine wave that rippled across the sensor display. Ajax rubbed his cheek as he considered the implications and said, “Hold on. I think we might have something.”

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

There was another signal coming in over the one from the beacon, the sensors picked up a fan of energy and translated it to audio and visual form. A constant tone rose and fell in volume with a corresponding wave.

“We’re being scanned by something close. Real close.”

The peak power on the signal was 60GHz in the XV-band and getting stronger as the source got closer. He was alone in the cockpit and the chill spreading through his body only reinforced that fact. Toad’s face disappeared as he put his head against the camera.

“What?”

Ajax removed the goggles, unlocked his harness and slid out of the seat in micro-gravity, easing his head into the observation dome built into the hull. It gave him a bubble view of open space and filling the void before him was a fleet, three big cruisers in close, line formation surrounded by smaller escorts: fast destroyers.

“Do you remember that one percent chance I was telling you about before we jumped out of Lalande?” Ajax said, referring the chance that they’d be spotted. “I think it just caught up with us.”

“Don’t play with me, Melvin.”

One of the escorts had broken off from the main group and was approaching on an intercept vector. The range finder built into the dome indicated that it was twelve hundred kilometers away and closing in. He had no room to attempt an evasion. Unlike Utburd and Utburd 2, both agile F-300 fighters, Utburd 3 maneuvered like a sick whale.

“Ship registry zero-six-zero-four-seven-two-charlie, this is Devonshire, you are in a restricted area. Reduce your speed and prepare to receive customs inspectors.” A voice blared out across the Guard channel. Everyone kept one ear on it for it was the one everyone listened to.

“Ajax, what’s going on up there?” Toad called up from the engine room. “Tell them to chew your drive nozzle. I think it means ‘I-surrender’ in Terran dialect.”

“That slime set me up,” Ajax whispered to himself. He’d been betrayed. There was only one person who knew his timetable so precisely- Flick, his Centauri fixer. Ajax eased the yaw control stick to the side, firing the 50 pound thrusters at the nose and tail, rotating the ship to point the main engines at his direction of travel. “If I get out of this I’m going to find him and flush him out an airlock.”

“Why are we decelerating?” Toad called up from the engine room again. “I thought you done this a hundred times before.”

“They’re already maneuvering on us. If we even look like we’re about to start an evasion attempt they’ll pop us without a second thought. Hop in a pod if you want to take the chance. They might never find you out here, and I mean never.”

“We’re on the Sol system boundary. I’ll take my chances.” Todt said and his face disappeared from the vid screen.

“Toad, wait!” A red warning light went off as a life-pod was ejected from the dorsal surface of the spacecraft. Ajax silenced the alarm and watched the end coming.

The trailing warship resembled a long slab with turrets and engines attached to one end. Its approach face was brightly lit by a corona of reflected sunlight, close enough for him to see turret weapons trained in on him.

“Attention ship, registry number zero-six-zero-four-seven-two-charlie, this is RN Devonshire. You are in a restricted area, reduce speed and prepare for boarding. Reduce your speed and prepare for boarding."

Ajax put revenge out of his mind and pondered his few options. Utburd 3 was larger than Devonshire but not a warship. The only armament the ship carried was a turret mounted HEPAC (High Energy Plasma Acceleration Cannon) to ward off pirates.

A light of potent intensity streaked across the freighter's nose, tinting the control cabin with a red glow. The sensors identified it as a shot from the ventral turret on the Devonshire- a 300 Gw HEPAC. He had received his last warning.

"Devonshire, cease fire, I am complying, I am fuel critical,” Ajax said as he tried to keep his voice from shaking. “I’m set for a gravity capture with Jupiter and cannot abort."

“If that’s true you have our deepest sympathies, sir. Our readings indicate you hold a level-one controlled substance in your forward spaces. Our directives in this case are quite clear.”

Utburd 3 shook with impacts as the Devonshire engaged its main-guns. The Transterran goods in his hold were banned from the Sol system like the company that manufactured them. If not confiscated, they would be destroyed, along with the unfortunate ship that carried them. The nearest escape pod was on the next deck. Ajax unstrapped himself and made haste for the hatch.

He was pulling himself into the pod when he heard someone screaming: Vexus. His plethora of invectives was insufficient to describe the rage he felt at his own stupidity. Instead, he saw ugly red symbols appear in his mind dripping feces, things painful to look at. He pounded a fist on the nearest hull support. “Goddammit!”

The Utbird issued a scream of its own, first a Hepac strike, then the sound of groaning metal. A compartment near engineering had just been vented. He pushed himself out of the pod and scrambled up the ladder toward the forward deck like swimming through glue. He took his military knife from a cargo pocket as he paused at the hatch. It opened half-way but froze when the engineering deck was hit and the ship lost power. He clenched the blade in his teeth and squeezed through.

Vexus stopped screaming as Ajax drifted into the pilot’s stateroom arrested himself with a cargo strap. He took the knife from between his teeth and applied its fine blade to the strap. In less than ten seconds, Vexus floated free. Ajax caught her by the wrist and towed her toward the hatch.

“What’s going on?” She said as the ship shuddered again.

“You saved your own life, kid.”

They were in the pod and away before Devonshire’s guns inflicted catastrophic damage but had a courtside view of Utburd3 being shot to pieces. Ajax contemplated his fate. His string of successes had ended.

An armored shuttle appeared outside the single viewport before an hour had passed, using a manipulator arm to drag the pod into the rescue bay. A security team removed him and placed him in restraints for the trip to the Pallas asteroid and the SolMax facility dug into its surface. Vexus was taken into custody. Toad was gone.

***

USS Constellation

“Tactical, conn. Sound General Quarters.” The XO called out.

“Sound general quarters, Aye.”

“Hey, Jena, it’s showtime,” The navigator, Tali, called back. “You know what I think? How can they tell us we don’t have the best gear?”

It cost the fleet a million credits to get you this far. Don’t tank it now. Mitchell- Jena- C- US301073F- USVF/NORCOM thought and wiped her sweaty palms on her legs of her light vacuum suit. “You got it right, Tal.”

She slid her finger under the plastic safety cover on the console at her hips and flipped up the lid, settling her fingertip on the button beneath it. Pushing the key until it clicked, she braced, waiting for the GQ horn to sound. The battle lights would come up first, so as the bridge dimmed and the shadows turn crimson, she took a reinforcing breath. The klaxon was mounted right over her duty-station so she jumped as the alarm went off. It was loud, and at a maddening pitch, one just right to spur instant action.

“Tactical control to section O-I-C’s, red alert. Status update… go.” She said. The siren would stop when all sections reported in and she delivered her summary report to the deck officer.

C'mon, c'mon. She mentally urged on those who she could hear but not see- those crewmen racing to their duty stations and the petty officers hurrying them on.

“Tactical, sensor control. Configuring high-gain array, initiating boom extension… stand-by… secondary receivers in position… negative contact.”

“Sensor, tactical,” Jena said as the first reports began coming through her station. “Increase power to mass detectors and continue to monitor. Tactical out.”

She closed one comm-channel and then allowed another signal through.

“Tactical, weapons control. ‘Cuda A.I.’s loaded in tubes one through five and decoys in six, seven, and eight, ready to go. Main batteries charging and on standby. Secondary batteries charging and on standby. Close-in systems on standby. Thirty seconds to main battery charge.”