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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 September 6, 2008
"This is actually the re-written version of this story. Two Wrongs was the second 'official' Privateer story that I wrote, and the original iteration was, if it's even possible, more poorly written than Damsel In. It's set about a month afterwards, and confirms Carla as a permanent character in the series.

When I decided to re-write this story, I added a lot of detail that was previously missing. I also challenged myself to make better use of my knowledge of physics, and so the mechanics of the battle with Captain Stills is affected heavily by inertia and varying thrusts, which I found absolutely fascinating at the time.

I still didn't manage to make the logic of the double-cross situation fully believable, in my opinion. It's sci-fi, however, and so that's not always as important. Lucky for me, right?

Also, I still get a chuckle out of Carla's treatment of the boss at the end, and also of his unhealthy jealousy over his burger and beer. I'm still not sure whether he was more worried about the expense of the food, or the fact that he was hungry and unwilling to spare her any. While reading over this story prior to posting it, I laughed out loud when she called him "crybaby"."

Two Wrongs Don't Pay Right

The PRIVATEER Stories
"Two Wrongs Don't Pay Right"
by Nicholas Mahaffey

To put it bluntly, it was dark. Space was all I could see, and through the somewhat dimmed plastiglass of my cockpit's viewports, space itself was pretty dim. I could vaguely see the stars, which weren't even twinkling. Twinkling is an atmospheric effect on star light. Out here in the open ranges of the Outter Rim, they never twinkle. They just shine on diligently. Aside from the dark, there was also the cold. Along with the cold came hunger, which I remedied by munching on an energy bar. It was banana flavor. I detest banana flavor.

I'm a Privateer. My partner, Snake, and I fly missions for hire. In times such as these, freelance work of any type is a thankless (and nearly payless) job. We were currently on something of a stakeout. Mrykrah's Finest (that is, the local authorities in Mrykrah system) had hired us to investigate some drug smuggling at one of their in-system jumps. Our official charge was to wait for a vessel matching a certain description and ID, which was suspected of hauling illegal substances, confront them in the name of the Mrykrah militia and ask for their cargo manifest, and, if they were found guilty, escort them to Mrykrah militia forces for apprehension. Of course, we'd been instructed to escort them thusly by "any means neccessary", which was a lovely euphamism for "If they don't comply, you are to blast them unmercifully to stray ions". Oh yeah, working for local militias is a safe and thankful job.

For this task, Snake and I had agreed to sit outside the nexus in question (the nexus in Ramsweed system, leading into Mrykrah), amidst the floatsam of a small asteroid group there, and power down in order to spy on incoming traffic unawares. The light of the nearby star, while not angled into my cockpit, sadly, would illuminate, briefly, the hull of any ship that passed through the lane to the jump point. We'd been comissioned to find a Zenith ECC bulk haul with certain hull markings and a certain ID signal. We'd been out here for maybe six hours, and our estimated "window of opportunity" was almost expired, after which we would return to the planet in Mrykrah and look for our next "window of opportunity". I, for my part, was anxious to power up and get some heat flowing in the cockpit. Our tiny personal heaters had functioned decently for a few hours on their power cells, but now they were wearing down and the cold was becoming unbearable.

It was about the time that I'd gotten half way finished with my energy bar that I noticed a soft glow coming through the hatch of Snake's turret. I turned in my seat (it was easy in the lack of gravity, as our grav-units were shut down with the rest of the main systems) and peered down into his turret to see what he was up to. Lo and behold, Snake was quietly typing something on his periodical computer. Floating just beyond the flip-up screen of the small computer was a two-dee picture of Carla, a girl we'd met just over a month ago, who had shown some attraction to Snake, for reasons unknown. I kept quiet as I spied, trying my best to see what he was typing. "Dear Carla" . . . Why, it was a letter! Most likely a love letter. Oh, I thought to myself, I have no choice but to harrass him for this! As silently as I could, I floated myself down into the hatch of the turret, stopping just a few inches above Snake's occupied head.

"Whatcha doin, there, ol' buddy?", I asked in my cheeriest voice. Snake startled and swung about with the speed of a . . . well, snake, and planted the flat end of the periodical computer squarely in my temple. Of course, that blow sent me straight into the side of the turret wall, and the lip of the hatch caught my ribs hard. As soon as I stopped bouncing and cursing, I clubbed at Snake with my fist. "Hey, you startled me, idiot! Don't blame me because you weren't prepared for my reflexes." I opened my mouth to curse again, but more pressing matters took over.

A dull light swooped through the cabin, and was gone. "Company!", Snake announced as I turned to look out his viewport. With that, I pushed myself back from Snake's turret and floated myself back to my cockpit. Even as I strapped myself in, I could see the light of the system's star reflecting off the hull of the ship at different angles. Another dull flash of reflected light swept across my viewscreen, and I caught a glimpse of the hull and its markings. Indeed, this appeared to be our quarry. "Markings look good, Snake. Let's move in and check her ID."

I flipped the neccessary switches on the console to my right and pressed the starter. With a bit of sputtering and whining, the engines began turning over and the primary systems came online. My viewscreen lit up as the visual enhancers kicked in, and I could clearly see the Zenith ECC and her hull markings, slowly plodding her way to the jump point. I engaged the shield system, and set my weapon capacitors to start charging. Snake's turret swivelled as he limbered himself for the possible engagement. When everything was set in motion, I applied thrust and vectored towards the Zenith on a lead pursuit trajectory.

We caught up with them within a moment and took station about a hundred meters off her starboard flank; our weapons systems showing a full charge to any scans, and Snake's turret poised to unload a capacitor full of laser fire into the nearest of the four defensive turrets if they didn't cooperate. I held position as my scanner took a look at the vessel. Within a few seconds of the initial call, her scanner system responded with her ID, and I cross-checked it with the one we were looking for. It is, gruesomely enough, perfectly legal to open fire on a vessel which does not transmit an ID signal . . . at least, in this area of space, it is. Pays something of a bounty, too. I smiled, satisfied, at the confirmation. It wouldn't be long now until we were recieving our credits and taking a day or two off. I indulged a quick fantasy that included sunny skies, blonde hair, and cold drinks. The promised payoff for reeling in this smuggler was worth the risk of the "any means neccessary" clause. I held my smile and opened a frequency to the vessel.

"Good morning, Captain . . . Stills, is it?" The contract had included a packet on information about the vessel, named The Thinker, and her captain, J. Stills. The man who appeared on my vid screen was probably in his mid forties, bearded, and wary. "Good morning, Captain.", he replied. "What can I do for you?" "Captain Stills, in the name of the Mrykrah Space Law Enforcement Division, I hereby request that you surrender your cargo manifest, and, if anything illegal is found, follow me as I escort you to Mrykrah authorities." Snake nearly laughed out loud at the official nature of the language I'd used. I had a hard time keeping a perfectly straight face myself. Stills' face blanched noticeably in the pale green of the comm display. When he had regained his composure, the game of hard-ball ensued.

"Sir, I demand to see your authorization in this matter. I'm hauling furniture to Mrykrah, and I don't have time for punks and their pranks!" I cocked my eyebrow and did my best to hide a satisfied smile. "Punks, eh?" and I casually stabbed a few buttons, transmitting the electronic copy of the warrant. "I'll remember your name-calling if you have anything other than just furniture on that tub." He scowled, both at my words, and at the proof of my authority in the situation. At length, he scowled again and turned his head to speak to someone; muting the audio. I heard Snake chuckle. Everything was going according to plan. Within a moment, Stills returned to me. "We're transmitting our unaltered manifest now." Said manifest appeared on my monitor a few seconds later, and, sure enough, amongst the pieces of furniture, there was listed an item named "wood varnish".

The warrant had come with a few instructions. The police on Mrykrah were onto Stills' drug smuggling, and had confiscated, unbeknownst to Stills, one of his cargo manifests from a drug delivery. "Wood varnish" was his code-word for his illegal goods. In reality, the furniture he hauled wasn't made of real wood, but rather of a semi-organic composite that resembled wood in appearance, texture, and smell, but required no varnishing. Seeing the incriminating evidence, I muted the comm channel and said to Snake, "Looks like we're about to make money and help the authorities at the same time. How's that for irony, eh?"

Famous last words.

Even as I was gloating, the two turrets that we were exposed to opened fire.

"Ahh! Crap on a hydraulic wrench!", Snake bit out a mild epithet as the first shots spashed against our shields. He wasted no time in delivering said capacitor's worth of laser fire into said turret. The Thinker's shields blazed to life around the turret and surrounding hull with Snake's shots, and the thinner section of shielding over the turret collapsed altogether, allowing the last remaining shots of the volley to hull the turret (and probably the gunner inside). It fell quiet, and gave us a bit of breathing room, as now there was only one turret imediately neccessary to deal with. I changed our trajectory to throw off the turret gunner's aim a bit, and then swooped back in as Snake pinpricked a few shots off of the shields over the turret. The gunner was doing the same thing to us; peppering shots at Snake's turret in an attempt to cripple both Snake's ability to shoot back, and Snake himself. The hits and near-misses flashed across our fuselage, the shimmer of the shields washing over the hull.

"Get me away from this guy." Snake requested through clenched teeth as his capacitor ran dry again. I glanced at the shield readout, noticing that our bottom-side shields were down to roughly half capacity. "Sure thing, Snake" I pulled us away from the Zenith, with her one exposed turret still firing after us, and rolled us over to let the top-side shields fend off any lucky hits.

"Let me know when you're ready, Snake."
"Gotcha.", he replied. "And . . . take me back in."

I U-turned and dived back towards the vessel, who had now repositioned itselt to give line-of-sight to the remaining two turrets. "You've got your work cut out for you, buddy." I said to Snake as we made the first pass at the vessel; Snake's shots raining on the nearest of the three. Arcs of laser fire flashed past us as the gunners corrected their leads, and the three lines of fire began to intersect. I pulled the stick in one direction, and rolled the ship in the other, creating a corkscrew effect that threw the gunners through a loop (no pun intended). Snake's aim, however, stayed tight as his shots battered one of the three turrets. As we passed, it didn't turn to track us, but continued to fire; its actuators most likely burned into a fused mass of molten metal. Thinker rolled again, keeping her two remaining turrets towards us as we finished our pass, leaving our engines exposed. Shots thinned the rear shields and rattled my ship.

"Snake, the shields are getting thin. I'm going to make a wide pass and then dive in with a pair of infrareds."
"Copy that."

I did as I said I would. I gained way from The Thinker and made a wide circle back around to her rear section. Thinker tracked us, making a lazy turn to keep the turrets facing our way. After our shields had regenerated to three fourths of full strength, I sharpened my turn and afterburned in across Thinker's rear, pulling into formation in her wake. The turrets opened up again as soon as we were within range. "Snake, let's concentrate on taking down her engines. If she can't run, she can't escape the boarding party, and we'll get our pay." Snake's concise "Wilco." was the only reply. His Starburst lasers filled my forward viewscreen with bolts of bright orange, and I toggled my own weapons systems on, switching my scanner into "target acquisition" mode. I added my own forward-facing lasers to Snake's fire, mixing red with orange, and Thinker's shields flashed and sparkled as we chewed through her capacitors. Thinker's turrets also found us, and my own forward shields flashed into view as their shots found their mark. I held my course, though, hoping that the missile locking mechanism would work quicker than the aim of the opposition.

Snake bit out a tense epithet as our bottom shields grew thin and hits started bouncing him around in his turret. "Hang on, Snake." I called to him. "Keep pushing her shields down. I've almost got a solid lock." It was only a second or two after I said the words that the H.U.D. bracketed the Thinker's engines with a lock indicator. "I've got tone! They're away!" First one munition, then the other blasted away from their hardpoints and streaked towards Thinker. The first rocket slapped against her thinned shields, and the resulting explosion flashed across her rear quadrant as her shields flared to life, then died as the capacitors dried up. The second missile, just a scant second behind the first, plunged through where the first had broken the shield, and streaked into the engine housings. The Zenith's first and fourth engines sputtered momentarily, then blasted out the side as the fuel lines ignited. She slewed to starboard from the blast, and I could see her maneuvering thrusters overdriving to stabalize the motion. The fuel lines continued to spray fuel and oxygen across the flaming casing, blowing out an uncontrolled plume of fire and smoke which propelled Thinker deeper into a spin.

"She's spinning, Snake." I reported. "I'm gonna try to keep us in position to disable her other engines. Keep firing!"
"Yeah."

I engaged the afterburner and angled just outside of Thinker's arc, hoping that I could go around that arc faster than she was spinning. With any luck, we could damage the other engines enough with just gunfire to disable them. As I passed Thinker's direct six, I tightened the turn to give Snake the correct angle. His shots lashed out at Thinker's remaining engines as her nearest turret tried to adjust its aim to compensate for the spin. Snake's shots burned deep holes in her engine's armored casings; each impact softening up the defenses a little more. Her second engine visibly cooled down as the mechanisms inside melted and clogged. Within a moment, the turrets stopped firing; three of Thinker's four power plants had been disabled or destroyed, and there wasn't enough power to keep her turret capacitors charged. It was only a few shots more before Snake also disabled the third engine and Thinker was completely at our mercy.

Stills' face appeared on the VDU; a trickle of blood running from his forehead. He appeared to be screaming at us in rage, or desperation, but the audio signal was nothing but static. Pulling away from the arc of Thinker's spin, and dodging a small cluster of rocks, I waited for Stills' transmission to stop moving before I tried to respond. "Captain, it appears that your communications are damaged. We, therefore, assume that you're surrendering, and hereby-"

Kaboom.

Three small capsules jetisoned from Thinker's hull, and one of the turrets as well.

Thinker erupted into flames as small explosions blossomed up her fuselage. I recognized the pattern as a built-in self-destruct. The capsules and freefloating turret were the crew members who weren't interested in going down with the ship. Sadly, all four escaping criminals ended up dashing themselves against asteroids within a matter of seconds, and their pods were beaten open, exposing all living crew to hard vacuum. As for Thinker, her self-destruct charges managed to ignite the remainder of her fuel and oxygen supplies, which weren't far from the engines. The rear of the ship shattered violently in the explosion, and the forward section, or what was left of it, careened into the rocks, still spinning, and ended up wrecking itself against a larger one.

"And, that's that." came Snake's surmise of the situation as he crawled up from his turret; his brow somehow free of sweat. I used my sleeve to mop my own sweat from my brow and face, and turned to face him. "Gun cameras were on. I guess we used any means neccessary." Snake gave an amused snort and reached into his green duffle bag for his black book. "Do we count this one as a kill, or just leave the score as it is?" I pondered his question for a moment, grimacing at the sound of a small bit of Thinker's debris bouncing off our shields.

"Well, the destruction of the ship was a direct result of us attacking it, wasn't it?"
"I dunno. I think it's more of a direct result of Stills choosing to self-destruct, making it an indirect result of our attack."
"But Stills wouldn't have self-destructed if we hadn't attacked. Thus, we are still eventually directly responsible for the destruction of the Thinker, and that means we get credit for the kill."

Snake considered this for a moment, then marked his book and opted to take a nap on the passenger couch after we jumped back into Mrykrah.

Two Hours Later . . .

"Alright, Snake, wake up. We're here." Snake's only reply was a yawn as he sat up from his nap.

We had arrived at the rendezvous point, where we were supposed to either escort Thinker, or report back with news of her demise. In the interest of keeping Stills' capture a secret (and thereby giving the authorities an opportunity to use him to track down his suppliers), it had been arranged for us to meet our military contacts at a point just outside of Mrykrah's normal shipping lanes; not too far away, but far enough to avoid being easily seen. We'd been told to expect our contact to be flying unmarked craft (with the exception of military weaponry) and looking like a lost freighter with a small escort of armed civilian one-man craft. More hush-hush about capturing Stills, I had guessed.

We arrived at the point to find everything exactly as we'd been told. At the rendezvous was another Zenith ECC, but I could see extra turrets mounted on the hull, and the guns appeared to boast McMahon lasers, which are quite high on the laser food chain. Along with the Zenith were the three promised one-man ships. They looked like beefy hardware on the frame of a Puma SE 120 hotrod. Not exactly military spec, but obviously intended for shooting and fast flying. Snake, glancing over my shoulder, gave a low whistle.

"Those look like nice hardware."
"Yeah, they do, don't they?"
"Good thing we don't have to shoot them. They're probably too fast."
"You're just too slow, Snake."
"The only thing in here that's that slow is your cognitive capabilities."
"Would you shut up and find something to do?"

Snake gloated over my foregoing the match of wits. I had more pressing things on my mind. I opened a general hail and addressed the group.

"Hello there! Someone lose a shipment of fine wines?" That was the scripted greeting, to let my contacts know that I was the one they wanted, as opposed to just some random passer-by offering help. "Ahoy, strangers! Yes, we're a bit off course. A little wine would be good right about now." That was the countersign, of course. "Switch to channel 323 and we'll compare wine lists." I switched to the appropriate channel.

"Roger."
"Very good, Captain. Did Stills show?"
"Yes, sir. They resisted arrest."
"I assume that explains why you don't have him in tow."
"I have pictures of Thinker's wreckage, if you'd like."
"Actually, yes. Send me those, please."

I used the console to select a small segment of the gun footage and sent it to my contact. "Very good, captain. Very good indeed. Now power down and prepare to be boarded."

I had been nodding and smiling up until that last line. "Say what?! For what reason?"
"You are under arrest. You are in violation of Myrkrah Space Statute 472b."
Snake's confused face popped back out of the turret he'd just scrambled into. "Uhh . . . Boss . . . umm . . we've just been accused of serving illegally prepared foods on a luxury-liner."
"What?", came my incredulous response; whether it was to the accusation itself, or to the fact that Snake recognized that law so readily, remains to be seen to this day.
"They just picked that law out of the vacuum. Something isn't adding up here, and I'd suggest getting the heck out of here now, because I more than suspect we're about to get shot at again.", and he vanished into his turret, closing the hatch behind him. I swore.

"What kind of bogus garbage are you trying to pull on us?" I demanded.
"Just power down, chump! You're coming with us, one way or the other!"
Snake's voice crackled over the internal comm. "Boss, I think I know what this is. I remember reading that there was a rivalry between Stills' group and another group of runners. This group may not even be Mrykrah militia at all! They're probably the rival druggers, and we just eliminated their competition!" I swore again.
"Alright, Snake. I'm going to make a run for the main lane. Make the space around us unfriendly for them, would you?"
"Roge-O"

I came about, maxed the throttle, and punched the burner as Snake swivelled around and waited for someone to come into range. With those sporty hotrods, it didn't take the three escorts long to close on us. Snake opened up at maximum range to let them know that we weren't just going to let them take us. Of course, those bristling gun mounts they were carrying answered back in like fashion, and our rear shields lit up as shots found their marks.

"Snake," I instructed, "We're not going to be able to outrun them. See if you can pick one of them off. Maybe I can use a missile to knock out the next, and we'll be able to take the last fighter one-on-one." Without replying, Snake's fire concentrated on the closest of the three, and his shields flared to life as I came about. Resetting my scanner to lock-acquisition mode, I bracketed the next in line and fired off a few shots with my fixed forward laser. The first ship in formation peeled out and took cover behind his buddy just as the warhead acquired a stage two lock. I lined the up the reticle on the nose of his ship and depressed the button on my flight stick. The munition rocketed ahead, plowing into his belly as he attempted to pull up-and-away from it's path. The blast and shrapnel tore most of the armor from his underside. I watched his fighter stabalize it's rotation, but the engines were fried, so he had no way of accelerating or stopping. As his buddy careened off into the void, the first ship rolled out from behind the smoke and debris and dived after us again; the third ship tight on his wing and firing. I rolled out of their cone of fire just as my forward shields started collapsing.

"Snake, can you pick off the damaged one?"
"Funny, I was about to ask you the same thing", he replied through clenched teeth as he held down the trigger, giving said vessel a half-capacitor of laser fire. His forward shields collapsed and Snake's final burst scored the armor underneath deeply. I attempted to use my forward laser to augment Snake's accomplishment, but the fighter juked out of my gunsight and sprayed our barely recovering shields with lasers; puncturing the shields and returning the armor damage we'd inflicted two-fold.

"Dangit!", Snake snarled as the vessel peeled off his approach and avoided the Snake's next burst of fire. The third craft dived in from our starboard side, hoping to finish us off where his buddy had opened up our shields, but I climbed away from his firing arc and turned my rear shields to him in an attempt to buy us some time with them in order to finish what we'd started with his pal. I punched the afterburner and closed the distance between us and the damaged fighter as Snake emptied his capacitors into its rear shields. They collapsed, but only briefly, and the fighter afterburned away with his superior acceleration.

"I can't keep a solid bead on him at this range, boss!", Snake called out. I frowned, and shots from out tailing foe blazed across our port side shielding. "Well, Snake" I began, "I'll see if I can finish him off with another missile. But the third guy is all yours, you got that?" Snake's reply was a rather negative remark about my mother's temperament.

I allowed the fighter to stay out ahead of me, but kept him in my scanner's cone as I lazily followed his maneuvers. The fighter behind had exhausted his capacitors for the moment, so I had some breathing room, and Snake swiveled around and gave him some entertainment. The distance between us and the damage fighter actually helped the locking mechanism, and I let it fly with a solid stage-four lock, also known as the "sure kill" lock. It rocketed after the damaged ship and found its mark amidships as the fighter attempted to shake the munition by steering towards it. The explosion of the warhead rolled the fighter unrecoverably, and the G-forces of the spin tore the wings off. It only took a well-aimed burst from my forward laser to finish it.

Snake let out a snarl of frustration, which nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. "He's hiding in our upper quarter! I can't get to him! Roll me over!" Obediently, I rolled us over to expose the fighter to Snake's line of sight. The two of them traded fire at close range with devestating effect. Our rear shields collapsed completely, as did his front. His last volley scored marks up our belly, and even sheared some of the outter skin from Snake's turret. Our own shots punched into the front quarter of his ship, and he swerved away to give his shields time to recover. I punched the afterburner again and tried to keep us close on his six o'clock as Snake drained the capacitors again at his rear quarter. He dodged most of Snake's fire and accelerated away; once again out-performing my Black Sun 490's capabilities. I attempted to gain a missile lock on the heat signature of his engines as Snake's capacitors recharged, but the fighter slewed around, denying the locking mechanism the heat of his engines to focus on, and ignited his own afterburners in order to overcome inertia and accelerate towards us.

"Snake! Shoot him!", I screamed as he began his staffing run, but it was to no avail. Snake's capacitors weren't charged, and our forward shields weren't fully recharged either. Our only defense was my pitiful forward laser, our damaged front armor, our thin shields, and the mercy/pity of whatever deity is benevolent towards poor privateers like us who find themselves with a larger bite in their mouths than they can successfully chew. That deity, if he exists, is the laziest, most unreliable deity I've heard of to date, and owes us considerable back-pay!

The hail of fire came. His shots splashed across our flimsy shielding, and then washed away streaks of expensive armor underneath. My own shots miraculously found their marks, but his superior lasers carried easily quadruple the power of mine. My cockpit came alive in an orchestra of alarms and klaxons, along with flickering displays and flashing warning lights as my poor ship's systems failed one after the other. As merficul last, the fighter flew past us and Snake tracked him with his turret. As the fighter came back around, Snake laid out a trail of fire that intersected the fighter's front and finally, gloriously, tore it from his ship in a display of debris, smoke, and gasses. The pilot's cockpit ejected from the dying fighter at the last second, and stabalized itself a moment later with tiny maneuvering thrusters.

I slumped back into the acceleration couch, heaving a sigh of relief. The warnings and klaxons blared around me as I rubbed my eyes and face, but it was Snake's voice that interrupted my moment of triumphant recuperation. "Umm . . . boss? Boss!"

"What?!" I screamed back, irritated that he wouldn't allow me my moment of respite.
"Boss, that Zenith is closing on us! It's almost in range!"

I'd gotten so caught up with the three fighters that I'd forgotten about the Zenith ECC that they were escorting. I checked my scanner for its position, only to notice that my scanner wasn't working. I swore. "Where is it, Snake? My scanner's out."

"Seven o'clock low and closing. I'll have a perfect bead on him when he gets in range. How're we lookin', boss?"
"Not good enough to tackle another ECC today, Snake. Especially a heavily upgraded one. We gotta make a run for it!"

I turned us back towards the nav lane and pushed the throttle to maximum. Even though our ship couldn't outrun those Pumas, we were light enough to outrun a lumbering Zenith ECC, even heavily modified, and make it to a crowded space lane where we were sure to find some protection. Or, at least, under normal circumstances, we could. In reality, two of our engines were on the brink of overheating, which was one of the many warnings I was ignoring at the moment. After about fifteen seconds at maximum output, engines one and three shut down.

"Oh, crap!" Snake heard me say. "’Oh, crap’?", I heard Snake say. Suddenly, we both noticed that the Zenith, and its bristling, murderous gunmounts were closing the distance again. "Oh, CRAP!", we heard each other say.

"I poured on the afterburner out of instinct, but with only one of our three engines working, the afterburner didn't accelerate us away from our pursuer, but rather pushed the ship into a circle. Remember that when your thrust isn't distributed equally around your center of gravity, your ship doesn't accelerate forwards, but rather into a spin. Our three engines are arranged as a triangle around our center of gravity so that, when they all work, the three equal thrusts push us forwards. Now, with just one of the three points of the triangle functioning, we were just screwed.

I pushed with the maneuvering thrusters to try and counterbalance the thrust from the engine, but they aren't designed to do that. In fact, the owners’ manual specifically states that attempting just such an activity is not recommended.

“Snake, I think we’re sitting ducks.” Snake’s voice sounded a little distant over the comm channel. “Looks like it, boss. Unless you can get a distress call out, those guns are gonna tear us apart.” I suppose that I should have been quicker to think of that myself. I scanned all of the displays and warnings around me to see if my communications were still operational. Nothing told me of their demise, so I broadcast to all channels and pleaded like a death row convict on his final stroll.

"To any available persons, we are stranded just outside the space lane and are being pursued by someone who is terribly unfriendly. Please, someone come save our butts!"

To be honest, the chances that someone was going to help us were slim to none. I cut the drives and stabalized the rotation, turning us to watch our attacker close the distance slowly but surely. It would, by my best calculations, take them a minute or two to get close to us. "Boss" Snake called from below, "I guess the least we can do is shoot them up as best we can when they get in range. Got any missiles left?" I sighed. "Yeah. Two, I think. I suppose I may be able to knock out a turret or something with them, but-"

The lock warning came on. "Oh, geez." I moaned, burrying my face in my hands. "What, boss? What is it?"
"Snake, they've added LRM pods to that thing. They've got us locked. We're as good as-"
"Uhh . . . boss, I'll bet you a million dollars that they don't."
I snorted in amusement. "Oh, really? Alright, Snake, I'll take your little bet, since I'll be too dead to pay it, either way. But, why do you think that?"
"Well, first, boss, why would they waste an expensive long range missile on a crippled ship that can't run?"
"Alright, Snake, I'll give you that one. And second?"
"Look behind us." I spun the ship around to see what Snake was talking about, and was rather shocked at what I saw.

There, not too far away, and moving at full afterburner, was a P-593 Razor modified combat shuttle. My jaw slacked as the comm flickered to life.

"Don't worry, Snake, baby! I'm comin'!" It was Carla. Snake's little girlfriend. Snake let out a whoop as she flashed past us, barrel rolling for effect. Snake popped through the turret hatch and stuck his head into the cockpit section. "Now you know why I write love letters. That woman is something else!" I grimmaced. "If she's so great, why'd she have a missile lock on us instead of that Zenith?" Snake's reply was smug; "Because her scanner is a lot more expensive than ours and can engage up to six targets at once."

Carla's Razor unloaded a barrage of lasers on the ECC, cutting down one of its turrets with the second full burst, and hammering its shields mercilessly. The other turrets opened fire and lit up the space around her, but she put some distance between the mammoth and herself, and then slug back around on a slow approach. I recognized what she was doing immediately: She was about to unload one of her expensive torpedoes on the ECC. The turrets converged on her, and her shields flashed into existance, absorbing every bit of the punishment without missing a beat. Snake gave a low whistle.

"It's away!", he announced. The torpedo streaked into the weakened hull around the skinned turret, punched through the ship's skin, and blew a Razor-sized hole deep into the Zenith's guts. I watched in amazement as Carla's firepower split our would-be murderer in twain. The other side of the Zenith blew out as the fuel lines ignited, and the ignition flowed down the lines all the way next to the tanks, and, conversely, the other way to the engines. The resulting explosion lifted the top rear of the ship completely off, and the rest of the ships innards were sucked out through explosive decompression. When the whole thing was said and done, there was an empty hull of a Zenith ECC and a bunch of wreckage, crew, and illegal cargo spreading across the vacuum. "Well, old buddy, I guess you owe me a million dollars. I'll have my accountant talk with you about setting up payments." I snarled and swatted at him, missing, and hoping that I wasn't going to have to put up with his bragging the entire trip to wherever Carla was going to lead us. With our navigation systems as damaged as they were, and our scanners down, she was going to be our seeing-eye dog until we landed somewhere. And, sadly, I knew that this whole rescue was going to cost us.

In the bar on Siphius Station . . .

I sat down in the booth with a plop and a sigh, unwrapping my burger while Snake brought the drinks. The repairs were going to cost us dearly. Our shields were in bad shape, our scanner needed a new emitter, our shipboard computer had lots of fried components, our engines needed some replacement parts, and our armor was in shreds. Unfortunately, Siphius isn’t exactly the station to go to for cheap repairs. It sat right on the main space lane, so the prices here for everything from ship parts to entertainment to food and lodging was high quality, but expensive. Even the burger I was about to eat cost about fifty percent more than the same burger just a few systems over. Snake set my beer down, and I handed him his burger from the tray.

“So, where’s your precious girlfriend?” I asked, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “I dunno, boss. She said she’d meet us here at oh-four hundred, standard, and it’s about fifteen after, so I figure she’ll be here any minute.” I took a bite of my burger, which, at the very least, tasted good for the amount of money I paid for it. I was about to take a sip of my overpriced beer when Snake set down his sandwich and stood up. I turned in my seat to see Carla, purple hair and all, walking our way, with Snake still motioning her over. She pulled up a chair and sat down.

“You guys are lucky that I was around to save your behinds.” She said, picking up my beer and taking a long pull. I snatched it out of her hand, spilling some on the table, and set it down just out of her reach. “Yeah, we’re lucky alright,” I replied, “but I know you’re not just gonna chalk it up to charity, now are you?”

She grinned, and took a swig of Snake’s beer instead. “You’re smarter than you look, flyboy. If it weren’t for the fact that your rat trap of a ship was hauling my Snake around, I wouldn’t have responded at all.” She ruffled Snake’s hair playfully as she said it, and he didn’t seem nearly as territorial over his beer as I was over mine.

“Well” I began again, “I just got the estimate on how much it’s going to cost us to get my perfectly good ship fixed, and I’m not sure if we’re gonna have any left over for your little bounty.” I paused as she took a bite of Snake’s burger. “Especially if someone keeps eating our food and drinking our beer.” Carla rolled her eyes and fished a bill from her pocket. “Here, now quit whining about your stupid beer.” Snake grabbed up the bill and headed for the counter, leaving his food for Carla.

“Like I said, though, we’re broke. So exactly what kind of payment are you expecting?” She set down the sandwich and wiped a bit of mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth. “Alright, I’ll make you a deal, crybaby. I’ll forget the money aspect of it if you’ll agree to loan me Snake for a few days.” I cringed. “And what am I supposed to do in the mean time? I can’t earn money without my turret gunner. What do you want with that ugly grease rag of a man anyway?” She leaned back in the booth a bit and eyed Snake at the counter, picking up his new burger and another mug of beer. “Well, flyboy, it’s a big universe, and I’ve been to quite a bit of it, but I’ve never met anyone as cuddly as your ‘grease rag’ of a turret gunner. That good enough for you?” I faked a gag reflex. “Ugh! Say no more.”

She laughed at my discomfort, but settled back in for a more serious note. “By the way, Mr. Poor Man, I don’t suppose it would interest you to know that there was a bounty on both Stills and the group I wasted?” I nearly choked on the beer I was trying to swallow. “You wasted?!? What about the escorts that Snake and I took out?” She laughed. “Don’t worry, flyboy. I’ll split that one with you. The Stills bounty is yours and Snake’s.”

Snake returned to the booth with his food. “So who put out the hits? You got a contact?” She shook her head. “Nope. It’s all posted in the Mrykrah Police station here on-base. I think it’s on F deck. As long as your gun footage of Stills is still good, I can provide proof of the other guys. Go find out how much we’re getting. I’ve got more important things to worry about right now.” And she turned and winked at Snake. I moaned again, and he gave me his trademark smug grin as I stalked away after our bounty, glad that this story had finally come to a happy, yet sickening ending.

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