The Privateers

Inspection

Satisfied that I wasn't being tailed, I finally let my white-knuckled thumb off the afterburner switch. In the old days, I'd jet around willy-nilly, too impatient to just cruise, knowing they'd top off the fuel tank as soon as I landed. Lately, though, my only thoughts were on how much that stuff cost. Life, death, or otherwise; that last skirmish probably just cost me another 136 credits, to say nothing of the cost of repairs.

I turned my chair to check my six out of habit, but all I saw was the rear wall of the pilots' compartment. I hadn't had a ship with a rear window since leaving Coalition service. My only comfort was my radar - each blip flickering and dancing randomly, as the signatures hit parts of the dish that the computer wasn't expecting them to. I didn't have the money or expertise to fix it, so I just spent time learning to read the raw outputs on the amber-scale monitor. The debug output from my aging targeting system - so old, it had reverted to its text-only failsafe mode - assured me I was the only ship in the vicinity, as of about 2 minutes ago.

I kicked back in the chair, propping my feet up on the sill of my side window (the only place on my dash on which it was safe to do so, without accidentally kicking the keyboard). maptty told me it was about 200 kilometers until I'd be at the last jump back to the Lloyd system. I was still drifting at a fairly decent pace, coming off of afterburners, but I figured it'd be a long while before I got there.

A glint out the side port caught my eye for a split second. It was far enough away I could only see a tiny speck with my eyes, but sensor debug was printing off the license numbers already, MTA5783. Colony militia member on regular patrol. I kicked my feet back up with a sigh, grabbing my mic with my left hand in case I needed to do any talking. I wouldn't be kept wondering for long. My debug screen flashed a few messages as the speakers behind me popped and clicked.

It certainly wasn't the first time I'd seen a phony militia man, but it didn't happen often enough for me to consider it until now. But normally, militia don't board vessels. Part of the authority given to them by the Coalition is their scanners. X-rays, backscatters, whatever powers them, they can just hit a button on their fancy helmets and get a reading of everything inside. A boarding attempt was unnecessary, if he was militia. This guy was a fine actor, but the procedure was all wrong.

Even if I did figure out he was a pirate, there wasn't much I could do about it. I glanced at the sorry state of my fuel gauge, wiggling just above the 20% notch, then tapped the R key on my console to get a damage report. I'd taken some hits to my rotational thrusters, so evasive maneuvers were going to be tricky, but I wasn't completely out of options. Not yet.

I pulled the only trick I had left. I slapped the throttle as high as I could and flicked the afterburners with my thumb. I still wasn't going very fast, certainly not fast enough to outrun a pirate, but it was better than drifting by at roughly the speed of a golf cart. The pirate hadn't expected this, and his initial meson burst went wide of the mark. The next wasn't so lucky for me, as one bolt struck my tailpipe, crippling the engines more than they already had been.

I thought I was done for. I was still only clocking 75 meters a second, now that my thrusters had a few extra dents in them. Two more lucky hits clipped both my wings, and as soon as my poor space-truck had quit shaking from the force of impact, I saw one of them float past my window, with my only remaining gun still attached.

A nearby explosion rocked the entire ship again, or what remained of it. I thought for sure I'd taken a missile hit, and frantically grabbed for my evac helmet in case I had to bail. But I stopped - I was hearing another hail coming in. It kept ringing for a few seconds as I debated whether to answer it or whether I was going to die either way. I let the evac helmet rest on my right hand and grabbed for the mic again, and watched as the debug feed lit up across the screen a second time.

I hadn't recognized the voice. This wasn't anybody from my old squadron. Given where I was, I didn't think the SLCN Sword Beach was anywhere nearby, so maybe I didn't have anything to worry about. But I still thought better of giving them my name.

I'm sure my paranoia was understandable. The pickings were ripe. I was an easy kill. I still stared at the debug sensor output for a few minutes to make sure everything on the manifest was consistent with a real Coalition fighter. It was one of the older model ships, a Taiaha-class rapid response fighter. I'd never flown one before. All my sorties were in the faster, less-armored Spyglass-class recon craft. Enough guns to defend itself, if you're quick enough to not get hit. If. I shuddered. Nobody in my flight group pulled that off, back then. Nobody but me.

It was going to be another 55 minutes until that towboat showed up, and I didn't much care to be in the company of my thoughts right now. Maybe I've still got that solitaire game on my PDA.