Galactic Odyssey Ch. 02

In the meantime, the ship came closer and I got a good look via the main sensor array. It was a lightly armed transport - the type that was very popular with mercenaries and bounty hunters. Ships like these were able to carry a crew of three or four people, but only minimal payload. Our freighter was much, much larger, but also slower and unarmed. It was no match for an agile craft like this.

Without any warning, they opened fire, hitting our starboard side. The ship vibrated, but the shields absorbed the energy without problems.

They managed to fire their forward blasters once more before the jump drive was ready and I initiated the sequence, taking us to hyperspace.

*

"Shit, what was that about?" I asked while getting dressed.

"I don't know," he answered, but the way he avoided eye contact, I could tell that he was keeping something from me.

"Did you share the flight plan with anyone?"

"No."

He walked up and down the bridge, clearly upset, checking the long-range sensors every few seconds.

"This didn't look like a coincidence to me," I said. "Who were these guys?"

"I don't know. Pirates, probably."

"That wasn't a pirate ship, they looked like bounty hunters. Do you have a price on your head?"

"Nope. You?"

Just to make sure, I checked the bounty registry via hyperspace comms for both of us. He wasn't listed and despite the recent Ildarian episode, none of my various aliases was mentioned anywhere. So either that was a private contract by someone with significant money to spend, or it had really just been a coincidence.

*

Still not sure what to make of the encounter, I stayed on the bridge, keeping an eye out for further company.

Fourteen hours and two hyperspace jumps later, just when I got to the juicy parts of my book, the sensors picked up another signal.

These guys were seriously pissing me off. After tens of pages of boring drivel, handsome but dumb-as-fuck Guillermo had finally overcome the defenses of his sexually repressed love interest. I was holding the book in one hand and rubbing myself with the other while he was fucking that frigid bitch, giving her what she had secretly craved all along. For fuck's sake! I had been this close and I guessed it would only take a couple more pages until her slutty mom joined the action.

I cursed and licked my sticky fingers before sounding the alarm.

My scans confirmed it - this was no doubt the same ship, but this time we weren't so lucky. The hyperspace drive still needed three more minutes to charge for even the shortest possible emergency jump. Once again, the unidentified vessel was on an intercept course and opened fire, targeting our starboard side. I tried some evasive maneuvers, but knew that we couldn't hold them off for long.

I longed for the Mariah's Virtue and her souped-up engines. According to Morrison, she was able to outrun an Omega class destroyer - an ability that would have helped a lot in our current situation.

"Do something," I heard Stanley shout, who had come running after I had sounded the alarm.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do," I snapped. "We're slower, unarmed, and we're not ready to jump."

The attackers followed the same pattern as last time. On their third approach, and despite my evasive maneuvers and rerouting of additional energy, they managed to break through. The starboard shield generator collapsed and the resulting explosion rocked the ship.

"That's it," I said. "They're going to board us."

Stanley was holding a small blaster that he had pulled from somewhere, nervously pacing up and down the bridge.

Helplessly, I had to watch how the raider docked itself to the starboard airlock, ninety seconds before the jump drive was ready. I moved over to the engineering console, locking down all bulkheads and disabling the lift. While that wouldn't stop them, it would at least slow them down a little.

On the airlock camera, I saw three heavily armed men enter the ship. They moved swiftly, using manual overrides to open the locked-down bulkheads.

"W-we ... we have to fight," Stanley stammered, clutching his blaster, panicking.

"You wanna go toe to toe with a bunch of mercs?" I asked. "That's suicide. Look at you, you couldn't even shoot straight."

I took another look at the internal cameras. To my surprise, they were not trying to gain control of the bridge - instead, they headed downstairs towards the cargo holds. Apparently, they didn't consider us a threat.

"See, they're not coming for us. Let them take whatever they came for and hope they leave without blowing us to bits."

"I ... I took something from them. They're going to kill me."

"What the fuck did you steal?"

He didn't answer, but I had to assume that he was right. Looking at how these guys moved, they were highly trained professionals, not normal guns for hire. You needed to piss off someone important to have an elite team like this on your tail.

"Look, Stanley," I said, rediscovering my enterprising nature, "if you want me to help you, I need forty percent of whatever it is you stole."

He shook his head in disbelief. "Forty percent? That's insane!"

"Think about it. You get to keep sixty and best of all, you'll still be alive. They aren't after me, I can probably get out of this by sucking a few dicks."

It was a bluff, of course. If they were going to kill him, they wouldn't leave witnesses. In any case, he knew there wasn't much room to negotiate.

"Alright, alright. Forty percent."

The jump drive was now fully charged, but that was no use while the mercs were on board. I needed them off the ship. Think, girl, think! What would Morrisson do?

I remembered an old story he told me when he was drunk and it was exactly what I needed.

*

I redirected extra energy to the busted starboard shield generator, causing another explosion close to the raider. Then I shut down the primary and secondary reactor cooling system.

The result was predictable - sirens and emergency announcements blared across the ship.

"Attention! Abandon ship, core breach is imminent. Attention! Abandon ship, core breach is imminent. Estimated time to breach: ninety seconds."

On the security cameras I could see them discussing for a few seconds. If they talked to their pilot, he would confirm an energy spike on the starboard side and unusual readings from the ship's reactor. With all systems locked and doors requiring manual overrides, they wouldn't make it to engineering in time to diagnose the problem.

Unable to tell whether this was a trick, an act of desperation by the crew, or a genuine malfunction, they had no other choice than to abort their mission. Calm and without a hint of panic, they walked back the way they came.

The nav sensors showed the raider craft moving to a safe distance with ten seconds to spare.

I quickly re-enabled the cooling system and activated the jump drive.

*

Safe for now, I took a deep breath and stretched my legs.

"What the fuck did you steal?" I shouted after Stanley, who was hurrying off the bridge. "Don't forget my forty percent!"

I cursed. When mercenaries shoot at me, I figured I deserved some answers. I checked the transmission logs, but there was no outgoing call except the one I had made to check the bounty registry. And that had been before our latest jumps.

Still, being found by the same ship on a modified flight plan and after two jumps - the chances for that were way too small to be a coincidence. Following the only logical explanation, I spent half an hour combing through sensor logs until I found it: A hyperspace transmission that wasn't sent by the ship's communications array, repeating itself in twelve-hour intervals.

There was a tracker on the ship, and it looked like it was hidden somewhere in cargo hold three.

*

Armed with a hand-held scanner and a crowbar, I walked around the cargo hold, checking my surroundings. I didn't pick up a transmission, but that wasn't a surprise - the next one wasn't due for another ten hours.

Unsure what to do, I looked around until I found a suspicious crate in the far corner of the cargo hold. It was a wooden box like many others, two by two meters and one meter high. This one, however, wasn't nailed shut - instead, the top was secured with a padlock and there was a bad smell coming from it.

Using my crowbar, I pried the locking mechanism off the box and when I opened the cover, the stench that hit my nose made me retch. I stepped back and steeled myself before I gave it another try. Holding my breath, I opened the cover a second time and I froze when I saw what was inside.

It was a woman - and judging by the way she was tied, she wasn't here by choice.