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Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

The Privateer Stories

by overmortal

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a piece of a longer writing project. You can view the entire project here: The Privateer Stories

The following is a piece of writing submitted by overmortal on August 6, 2008
"So, this is part two of David's "Strange Bedfellows"."

"Strange Bedfellows" part 2

The Privateer Stories
"Strange Bedfellows"
By David Dixon
Continued . . .

The boss rolled and we traded shots with the diving Razor briefly, but he thought better of it, cut hard left, and throttled away from us. I noticed, to my chagrin, that his last burst had done something to our computer system—my VDU screens displayed the all to familiar “relay missing or inoperative” message, meaning he’d either blasted a relay or a subcomputer or our targeting radar itself. I knew which one it was—whichever would be most expensive to fix if we ever made it to Salt Station.

Suddenly, things seemed calm. No laser fire, no missile tracks, no explosions. I’d hoped it was because things were calm and not because I was dead or something similarly horrible.

“Hey, Snake! That was the last of them! Everybody else has broken off! Oh yeah! Score one for the good guys! We’re still alive, oh yeah!” The boss exulted.

I had a prickly feeling in my stomach, though, that told me we had better save the gloating until after we’d safely reached Salt Station and after we and Crisk had gone our separate ways. I’m not a fatalist, but I am a realist. There was still a very good chance that this whole misadventure would end in us sucking hard vacuum, turned into cinders by the bomb in our cargo hold, or staring down the wrong end of Crisk’s neutron gun.

“I’d just save all that, for later, you know, when we know we’ve made it, aight?” I replied and began the tedious process of trying to reboot the targeting computer.

Ninety-Six Hours Later

“Salt Station! Finally—we’re only a few hours out, Snake. And no problems since, well, you know, the battle from hell.”

“Uh huh,” I agreed darkly, “from which I am still recovering, thank you. You sure it only took fifteen minutes? Felt like three days.”

“For the seventeenth time, Snake, yes. It was only fifteen minutes, and I’m sorry to hear, again for the seventeenth time, that you were traumatized by the fact that you suck as a gunner and nearly died for it.

“Note, by the way, that I’m not sorry you’re traumatized—I’m just sorry to have to hear it again.”

I sighed. The boss and I had been arguing the whole time about how he could have flown better and I could have shot better—the bottom line was that we estimated about 19k in repair costs, conservatively, and there was no way either one of us was accepting blame.

“Well,” I retorted. “I’m sorry that while I may be a sucky turret gunner, you’re an idiot, who forgets to turn off the coolant pump and instead pumps it all out into space, thus causing serious damage to our number three powerplant and venting 200 liters of coolant at 45 credits a liter. I’m sorry about that.”

My pilot started to say something stupid, but was interrupted by a beep from the comm computer: incoming mail.

The boss read it aloud. “’Good work back at the jump point.’ Yeah, thanks, bud,” the boss interjected sardonically, “’As long as you make it in, the mission is accomplished. The money will be split two ways now, since Stine is gone. You have the Molocube, so do not endanger yourself to defend Crisk.’ It’s from Perez,” he finished unnecessarily.

“Yeah, well, no crap, there, Miss Marple. Who else would it be from? Nice of him to tell us now, though, that we’ve got the real Molocube, seeing as how we nearly got ourselves killed trying to save Stine and Crisk. But why tell us?” I wondered.

“Dunno,” the boss said. “Maybe he’s getting nervous that we’ll get ourselves blown up and he’s this close to the finish line.”

A chilling thought struck me. “Or maybe he sent an email just like that to—“

A multitude of alarms went off as our shields dropped to almost nothing in an instant. I slewed the turret around to where I knew the fire must be coming from—the Ogre. Sure enough, Crisk was only 2k out below and behind us, blasting us. The boss cut the throttle and dropped us down almost right into the Ogre. Since the Ogre’s top forward turret had been destroyed in our earlier fight but their ship was so big, the only safe place for us was the dead space formed by the front of their ship as we hid from their fire right in front of their bridge, using the bulk of the Ogre to mask the bottom forward turret and the top rear turret. The side turrets also couldn’t reach us, and apparently Crisk didn’t have any guns mounted forward, or they had been damaged. Either way, we were safe, but only momentarily. As soon as the Ogre started moving, we were going to be hard pressed to stay right where we were, and when Crisk unmasked his turrets, it as taps for us. All the same, I poured on the lasers right at the bridge, despite the fact that their shields were way too tough for us to even think about penetrating without a lot more time than we were going to get.

“Are you crazy!?” the boss roared at Crisk over the net, “You’ll kill us both, you idiot!”

“Fool!” Crisk shot back, “I’ve got the real data—Perez just told me, and I already owe you a painful death!”

“Perez just sent us the same message! I don’t know what he’s thinking, but—“

I interrupted the boss. “I know what he’s thinking! He’s trying to cut down on the number of people he has to pay! I’ll bet he sends an email after we’re dead telling Crisk he’ll keep our piece of the cash—we must all have had the data—and there’s no thermite bombs at all—that lying son of a—” I was pretty bitter about being double crossed twice in less than two minutes.

The Ogre dove suddenly and I cried out—“Dive! Dive!” The boss obeyed and we stayed covered.

“Left! Left! Hard left—climb!” As Crisk continued to maneuver, I kept pouring on the fire and trying to keep us covered. I was successful, more or less, although a stray bolt or two melted holes in our armor and our number two engine cut out completely.

I heard the lock warning and then a second later heard the collision warning. The boss killed the throttles and the Ogre almost rammed us. I also heard a loud crash as the missile Crisk fired at us skipped off our armor—at the less than half a kilometer range the boss’ last desperate maneuver had put us from the Ogre, the missile didn’t have time to arm. That was a wonderful turn of events, but not wonderful enough for me. I was sort of looking for angels to come down out of heaven and start whooping up on Crisk, as it seemed that was going to be the only thing to save us.

I wasn’t that far off, in all actuality.

Orange laser fire flashed under us into the Ogre, along with a streak of light that could only be a missile. It impacted against the Ogre’s shields about midway back, and the lasers blew off several pieces of armor plating nearby. The Ogre dove to prevent exposing the damaged area of the hull any further and got raked by the orange lasers along the spine of the ship in response. I felt our ship surge forward as the boss hit the afterburner to try to put as much distance between us and the Ogre while Crisk was focused elsewhere and to put our mystery savior between us and Crisk. While we appreciated the guy’s help, we didn’t appreciate it enough to help him—we’re sort of selfish that way.

Hoping Crisk would appreciate the gesture, I stopped firing at the Ogre. I didn’t want to, but I also wanted to make sure they would focus all their attention on whoever it was that was firing on them now, and not us.

I slewed the turret around and tracked the red Mitsubishi we’d tangled with earlier before the jump point. “Oh yeah, it’s the Red Baron! Take him out, my man, take him out—and then stay far far away from us!”

The Ogre turned away from us and turned around, as Crisk tried to keep his functional rear turrets facing his new opponent.

“See you around, Crisk; actually, wait, I hope I don’t,” the boss called tauntingly over the comm, “I hope you don’t survive this—been nice working on your wing, until you know, you tried to kill us and all.”

The Ogre kicked on its afterburners, and quickly began fading away. I watched the pilot I termed the Red Baron nimbly pick his way around the Ogre but didn’t breath any easier until they disappeared completely from our sight.

Four Hours Later

We landed at Salt Station without further incident, which was good, because I’m not sure our Black Sun could take too much more.

To my surprise, and utter dismay, I might add, Agent Perez was waiting for us in the hangar bay as soon as we maglocked our ship down to the deck.

He smiled an insincere smile. “Mi amigos; I am glad to see that you made it thus far. I heard about your… troubles. I appreciate your earnestness in doing the job, and I’m sorry I could not have been equally as earnest and up front.

“I apologize also, for the whole bit about the thermite bombs. I had to insure that you would bring the Molocubes here and not to Raul, you understand.”

The boss mimicked his soft voice: “And I’m sure you understand that if we ever see you alone in a dark alley, you won’t be walking out unhurt—if alive at all.”

Perez laughed quietly. “Yes, yes, of course. Although, I have something that may take some of the sting out of all this. Since Stine is dead, and Crisk has presumably gone to sell what he believes is the only real data set to Raul, I will pay you 35k, with a 15k bonus.”

“A fifteen grand bonus?!” I asked incredulously. “That’s it?! And you pocket the rest of the money for the Agent Perez Charitable Trust, I guess? You’ve got 105,000 credits to pay three ships, only one of them comes through for you, and the best you can do is 50 grand?”

“Yeah,” the boss agreed indignantly, “you lie to us, set us up with the wingman from hell, then try to get us killed by said wingman, and we’re supposed to let you pocket 65k?”

Perez lowered his voice to a deadly whisper. “Well, gentlemen, it is either that or…” He flicked his eyes to his left. The boss and I followed and noticed his two goons waiting beside our ship, hands tucked into their jackets. That deflated the boss and I quite a bit.

Satisfied that we knew he was firmly in control, he smiled again and resumed his earlier quiet tones. “So, gentlemen… our business is concluded, si o no?”

“Si,” I agreed flatly.

“Perhaps you would also like to know that Mr. Crisk is going to make no money off his treachery; I must admit that while I anticipated his attack on you after I sent the mail message, I did not expect him to go to Raul. However, he will probably be most unhappy to learn that Raul is no longer in a financial or legal position to buy the data from him.”

I almost grinned, thinking of the look on Crisk’s face when he found out he had a now worthless bit of data in the hold of his quite damaged and expensive to repair Ogre. I almost grinned, as I said, because Perez ruined it for me, as was his way.

“Of course, he will probably take that out on you two, given your prior business history, but… that is not my affair.” It was Perez’ turn to grin—this time sincerely. “Good day, gentlemen.”

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