Virgil Capra looked fondly around the bridge of his Anaconda; the ship was his pride and joy and it represented ninety percent of his net worth. Only his daughter, Lyra, was closer to his heart.
He locked the ship, left the storage bay, and made his way to the hangar where a Type-6, kitted out as a mining ship, was waiting for him. The credits for carrying a bunch of tourists the twenty thousand light years from the bubble to Jaques Station had paid off the final instalment on the ’conda – it was his outright now – but funds were short. He’d heard about the painite and palladium that could be extracted from a nearby metallic ring and he thought he’d try his hand at mining.
The holophone sparked into life as Lyra answered his call.
‘Lyra, I’m heading out now; are you sure you’ll be all right?’
‘Sure thing.’ The face smiled, but there was a flicker of dissemblance; she was hiding something from him, but what young woman wants her father to know everything she is up to?
‘And you’ll stay close to the hotel?’
‘Of course, Papa!’
There it was again; the subtle hint of deception masked by a smile.
Capra sighed; there was nothing to be done. He turned off the ’phone, found the T6, and ran the pre-flight checks. He remembered at the last minute to buy some limpets – he really was that new to mining.
He’d flown a T6 years ago, in his early years as a trader, so everything was familiar and he felt affection for the model. Those were the grinding days – hauling precious metals, rare goods, and yes, the occasional smuggling run when the price was too tempting. He’d been out to Hutton Orbital more times than he cared to remember.
The jump range on the T6 was good enough for exploration and there were many systems in the galaxy map with Capra’s name on them as first discoverer.
The tough life in space soon etched itself into the features of those who dared to explore. The skin of Capra’s narrow face was dry and wrinkled by the sunburn of ten thousand stars; his eyes seemed to be permanently narrowed, with only a hint of bright blue pupil peeping through. He had always been scrawny, but his tall body was now a little stooped, and his long hair, once blonde and thick, was grey and rather lank.
After the massive bulk of the ‘conda, flying the T6 out of the starport was a joy. Capra had given himself the nickname Brick On The Wind, after his early attempts at getting the Anaconda through a starport entrance.
Once outside he spent a few minutes enjoying the manoeuvrability of the T6 before firing up the Frame Shift Drive and heading off to the extraction site.
Mining turned out to be fairly straightforward, but rather tedious. The limpet controllers did all of the hard work; he had to spend some time discarding lower-value minerals so the refinery bins were put to best use. The rest of the time he was calculating how much profit he had made.
When the limpets were used up there were still three tons of cargo space available and the refinery was close to delivering gold, osmium, and painite. Capra started blasting random rocks and checking the fragments that flew off.
Progress was slower; picking up the fragments was time-consuming, and he had to concentrate harder.
The Python approached out of the sun, drifting silently towards him. The T6 was fitted with the cheapest sensors so the hail from the pirate ship, shortly followed by the ‘Scan detected’ warning were the first that Capra knew about it.
[Griff Grief] ‘What have we here? A hold full of shiny metals. Nice.’
Capra’s blood went cold. He had dealt with pirates many times before, but not recently in a T6 and never while mass-locked in a planetary ring. He opened comms and spoke as calmly as he could. Negotiation sometimes worked, but only if you weren’t talking to a psychopath.
[Capra] ‘What can I do for you today, gentlemen?’ He spoke in the plural because he had noticed the vicious looking Viper, hardpoints deployed, floating around the rock he had been targeting.
[Griff Grief] ‘First off, don’t even think of running; you won’t get as far as the next boulder.’
A pulse of laser fire from the Viper bounced off the shields of Capra’s ship, just to convince him they meant what they said.
[Capra] ‘No need for violence, gentlemen; I say again, what can I do for you?’
[Griff Grief] ‘We want all of it, friend; empty your hold.’
[Capra] ‘Tell you what; leave me a ton of painite so I can restock; if you come back later I’ll fill your hold.’
[Griff Grief] ‘That sounds like a sweet deal, but I think we’ll take all you have…and now.’
The Viper had manoeuvred behind Capra; a shot to the engines would cripple his ship. He knew he was beaten. Sometimes losing your haul was the only way to survive – correct that, it was often the only way to survive. Capra wished he were in his ‘conda right now; he’d give them a good run.
[Capra] ‘Very well, releasing the cargo now.’
He was calculating whether he would have a chance to run while the pirates were picking up their loot. He released half his cargo and hoped they wouldn’t notice as he retracted the mining lasers.
The bad news was they had collector limpets. That meant they could watch him more closely. He put full pips into the engines and looked out at the ring, trying to imagine a path that would give him some distance while dodging their fire. If he could get far enough ahead, he might be able to swerve away from the mass of the planetary ring and jump to supercruise. Then it would be a race back to Jaques Station.
The Viper was a MkIV and therefore only marginally more manoeuvrable than the T6. Experience might count more than equipment in evading that ship. But the Python was a different proposition. According to its specs, it was far more manoeuvrable, and probably it had more powerful weapons than the Viper. On the plus side, he would be heavy with Capra’s cargo.
He released the remaining metals and closed the cargo hatch. After deactivating the hatch and all other unwanted modules, his ship was good to go and ready to jump if he got the chance. He hailed the pirates.
[Capra] ‘There you have it. Can I go now? At least let me get out of the way of your limpets.’
Testing them, he gave a burst of vertical thrust. The Viper followed the move, and its commander spoke for the first time.
[Vish Wakeman] ‘You’re going nowhere, pal. We might have your cargo, but we don’t have your mats yet.’
This worried Capra. Materials transfer usually involved ship destruction. That meant he had nothing to lose by running.
[Capra] ‘But Commander, this is a new ship, straight out of Jaques; I don’t have any materials.’
[Vish Wakeman] ‘Oh yeah, so how did you get to Jaques? I’m thinking you flew here with a whole bunch of mats in your hold, and they were transferred to your T6 when you bought it; that’s standard procedure.’
[Capra] ‘Negative, Commander, I came out as a tourist and thought I’d try a little mining.’
It was a lie, and too late he realised his mistake. Tourists were rich and they knew rich people. He just made himself a kidnap target.
He tried to recall some of the combat tactics he hadn’t used in a while. In the Anaconda he used the full panoply of defensive modules: ECM, chaff, point defence, mines, and shield cell banks. These were backed up by shield boosters and hull reinforcement. Taken together they made running away much easier.
A plan was crystallising – at least the first few moves of a plan. The Viper was behind him and the Python was off to port picking up his cargo. He needed the Python to be facing him and he needed to be facing the Python.
He waited.
The rock nearest them was rolling over and getting closer; they would hit it if they held station.
[Capra] ‘Listen, Wakeman, I need to manoeuvre to clear this rock. You should do the same.’
[Vish Wakeman] ‘Go ahead, victim, but don’t try anything.’
This was his chance; he pushed away from the rock and rotated to port; it looked like an innocent move but by the end of it he was facing the Python, and as luck would have it the Python was slowly turning towards him. He waited until they were facing each other.
He rehearsed the move in his head and then saw no reason for delay.
He punched the booster and rammed the throttle to one hundred percent. He skimmed over the top of the Python and dipped behind it before either pirate knew what was happening. The Viper, already turning, couldn’t fire because the Python was between them, and the Python would have to turn one-eighty to pursue.
[Capra] ‘Good day, gentlemen. Fly safe!’
Capra flew like he hadn’t flown in a long time, throttling back to fifty percent and using the extra manoeuvrability to dodge round and under rocks as he came to them. He followed what seemed to be a crazily random course away from the pirate ships, but whenever he could, he veered towards the edge of the planetary ring that gave the shortest run to Jaques. He popped a few heats sink in quick succession, hoping they would mask his location.
He could see that the Viper was chasing him; that was good; he feared the Python more. Probably Griff Grief was mopping up the rest of the cargo, which was more valuable than any materials he had on board.
He had deliberately planned his move so he was flying directly away from the planet; he didn’t want to be slowed by flying any closer. When he thought there was enough distance between him and the Viper, he swerved away from the rocks and out into clear space. He was back at full throttle and continual boost, desperately wanting to break mass-lock.
Then the Viper was there, chasing hard and closing rapidly. Capra hadn’t reckoned on engineering mods boosting the Viper’s top speed. He prayed to the gods of the void that Wakeman’s ship didn’t have any experimental weapon mods that would shred him in short order.
He changed tactics. The Viper was fast, but that might make him slower in the turn. Capra set the throttle to half and cancelled the continual boost. He started to jink and weave, putting an extra pip in the shields now the Viper was coming within range. He had no weapons; this wasn’t a dog-fight; he turned flight assist off, hoping to cause confusion by random thrusting in the left/right and up/down axes.
Mass lock was broken just as the first shock of thermal energy removed the outer ring of his shields. Capra stabbed at the control to charge the Frame Shift Drive and diverted all power to the shields. Each of the following seconds seemed painfully long as the meter indicating FSD charge state slowly grew in width.
He continued evasive manoeuvres but Wakeman had some skill. The fearful sound of the Viper’s lasers spraying heat over his ship grew in volume as another ring of his shields was torn away.
Capra knew that, with his shields down, Wakeman would switch to kinetic weapons. He guessed that his attacker had lasers in the medium hardpoints and multi-cannons in the small; it was a popular combination. He also assumed that Wakeman would target either his power plant or his FSD. With his ship’s trajectory set and with flight assist still off, Capra oriented the T6 to protect those sub-systems.
The final ring of shields came down and Wakeman got to work on the hull; the frightful thump, thump of the cannon shells was relentless. Capra’s ship was down to sixty percent hull integrity when the countdown for the jump to supercruise started.
5…4…3…2…1
He had escaped Wakeman with fifty-four percent of his hull remaining and a short cruise to Jaques Station.
Then Capra realised he had made another, more serious mistake.
He should have high-waked to a nearby system instead of jumping to supercruise.
On his scanner Capra could see another ship; it was the Python. When Capra made his bid to escape, Grief had clearly gone straight to supercruise to wait for him. The possibility of a ransom paid by the family and friends of a rich tourist was a greater pull than the twenty tons of painite he had left behind.
Capra selected Jaques as his destination but had little expectation of reaching it; already the Python was manoeuvring to interdict him.
What could he do?
The best he could hope for would be to win the interdiction battle against Grief and wait to see if Wakeman also came at him.
[Griff Grief] ‘You shouldn’t have tried to run; I told you not to; now it will end badly for you.’
[Capra] ‘We both know you were never going to let me go.’
Capra readied himself. He flexed his fingers and pulled the straps tighter on his harness.
The interdiction was a lengthy affair; Capra was fighting for survival and he used every trick he knew; trouble was he was rusty; the long flight to Jaques had been untroubled by pirates. It was a long sequence of jumps punctuated by sightseeing at some of the galaxy’s favourite nebulae.
The Python followed his every move and held the T6 in a deadly embrace.
After a long struggle, which he was about to lose, Capra decided to submit; he wanted to avoid further damage to his hull. He found himself spinning dizzily in space only 0.2Ly from Jaques.
[Griff Grief] ‘Congratulations, Commander, that was a good fight, but you need to understand, this is how I make my living; you never had a chance.’
[Capra] ‘So, what now?’
[Griff Grief] ‘I need you to climb into your escape pod and eject into space. You’re coming with me.’
[Capra] ‘And if I refuse?’
[Griff Grief] ‘Then you die and I take whatever materials you have on board. Let’s get this done before the Colonia Militia arrive.’
Capra had no choice other than to follow Grief’s order. He could wait for the security services to arrive, but he seemed to recall that half of the Colonia Militia were out on an exercise and the other half – the more skilled Viper commanders – were on leave; they had gone over to moon 7 A A to practice canyon racing. It wasn’t that frivolous an activity; low-level flying was an essential skill in the militia.
[Capra] ‘Don’t shoot yet, Commander. I’m getting into the pod.’
Capra dipped into his flight bag, which was secured to the floor, and pulled out a slim black storage stick no bigger than his thumb; he slipped this into the inside pocket of his tunic.
The escape pod was located immediately behind the cockpit so that a quick exit from the ship was possible. A few minutes later the pod was floating in space and Capra watched as the Python, with cargo hatch gaping, expertly scooped him up. Then he heard, but didn’t see, the frightening violence of Grief’s weapons as the pirate tore the T6 apart.
Chapter 3: Jaques never forgets a face
He locked the ship, left the storage bay, and made his way to the hangar where a Type-6, kitted out as a mining ship, was waiting for him. The credits for carrying a bunch of tourists the twenty thousand light years from the bubble to Jaques Station had paid off the final instalment on the ’conda – it was his outright now – but funds were short. He’d heard about the painite and palladium that could be extracted from a nearby metallic ring and he thought he’d try his hand at mining.
The holophone sparked into life as Lyra answered his call.
‘Lyra, I’m heading out now; are you sure you’ll be all right?’
‘Sure thing.’ The face smiled, but there was a flicker of dissemblance; she was hiding something from him, but what young woman wants her father to know everything she is up to?
‘And you’ll stay close to the hotel?’
‘Of course, Papa!’
There it was again; the subtle hint of deception masked by a smile.
Capra sighed; there was nothing to be done. He turned off the ’phone, found the T6, and ran the pre-flight checks. He remembered at the last minute to buy some limpets – he really was that new to mining.
He’d flown a T6 years ago, in his early years as a trader, so everything was familiar and he felt affection for the model. Those were the grinding days – hauling precious metals, rare goods, and yes, the occasional smuggling run when the price was too tempting. He’d been out to Hutton Orbital more times than he cared to remember.
The jump range on the T6 was good enough for exploration and there were many systems in the galaxy map with Capra’s name on them as first discoverer.
The tough life in space soon etched itself into the features of those who dared to explore. The skin of Capra’s narrow face was dry and wrinkled by the sunburn of ten thousand stars; his eyes seemed to be permanently narrowed, with only a hint of bright blue pupil peeping through. He had always been scrawny, but his tall body was now a little stooped, and his long hair, once blonde and thick, was grey and rather lank.
After the massive bulk of the ‘conda, flying the T6 out of the starport was a joy. Capra had given himself the nickname Brick On The Wind, after his early attempts at getting the Anaconda through a starport entrance.
Once outside he spent a few minutes enjoying the manoeuvrability of the T6 before firing up the Frame Shift Drive and heading off to the extraction site.
Mining turned out to be fairly straightforward, but rather tedious. The limpet controllers did all of the hard work; he had to spend some time discarding lower-value minerals so the refinery bins were put to best use. The rest of the time he was calculating how much profit he had made.
When the limpets were used up there were still three tons of cargo space available and the refinery was close to delivering gold, osmium, and painite. Capra started blasting random rocks and checking the fragments that flew off.
Progress was slower; picking up the fragments was time-consuming, and he had to concentrate harder.
The Python approached out of the sun, drifting silently towards him. The T6 was fitted with the cheapest sensors so the hail from the pirate ship, shortly followed by the ‘Scan detected’ warning were the first that Capra knew about it.
[Griff Grief] ‘What have we here? A hold full of shiny metals. Nice.’
Capra’s blood went cold. He had dealt with pirates many times before, but not recently in a T6 and never while mass-locked in a planetary ring. He opened comms and spoke as calmly as he could. Negotiation sometimes worked, but only if you weren’t talking to a psychopath.
[Capra] ‘What can I do for you today, gentlemen?’ He spoke in the plural because he had noticed the vicious looking Viper, hardpoints deployed, floating around the rock he had been targeting.
[Griff Grief] ‘First off, don’t even think of running; you won’t get as far as the next boulder.’
A pulse of laser fire from the Viper bounced off the shields of Capra’s ship, just to convince him they meant what they said.
[Capra] ‘No need for violence, gentlemen; I say again, what can I do for you?’
[Griff Grief] ‘We want all of it, friend; empty your hold.’
[Capra] ‘Tell you what; leave me a ton of painite so I can restock; if you come back later I’ll fill your hold.’
[Griff Grief] ‘That sounds like a sweet deal, but I think we’ll take all you have…and now.’
The Viper had manoeuvred behind Capra; a shot to the engines would cripple his ship. He knew he was beaten. Sometimes losing your haul was the only way to survive – correct that, it was often the only way to survive. Capra wished he were in his ‘conda right now; he’d give them a good run.
[Capra] ‘Very well, releasing the cargo now.’
He was calculating whether he would have a chance to run while the pirates were picking up their loot. He released half his cargo and hoped they wouldn’t notice as he retracted the mining lasers.
The bad news was they had collector limpets. That meant they could watch him more closely. He put full pips into the engines and looked out at the ring, trying to imagine a path that would give him some distance while dodging their fire. If he could get far enough ahead, he might be able to swerve away from the mass of the planetary ring and jump to supercruise. Then it would be a race back to Jaques Station.
The Viper was a MkIV and therefore only marginally more manoeuvrable than the T6. Experience might count more than equipment in evading that ship. But the Python was a different proposition. According to its specs, it was far more manoeuvrable, and probably it had more powerful weapons than the Viper. On the plus side, he would be heavy with Capra’s cargo.
He released the remaining metals and closed the cargo hatch. After deactivating the hatch and all other unwanted modules, his ship was good to go and ready to jump if he got the chance. He hailed the pirates.
[Capra] ‘There you have it. Can I go now? At least let me get out of the way of your limpets.’
Testing them, he gave a burst of vertical thrust. The Viper followed the move, and its commander spoke for the first time.
[Vish Wakeman] ‘You’re going nowhere, pal. We might have your cargo, but we don’t have your mats yet.’
This worried Capra. Materials transfer usually involved ship destruction. That meant he had nothing to lose by running.
[Capra] ‘But Commander, this is a new ship, straight out of Jaques; I don’t have any materials.’
[Vish Wakeman] ‘Oh yeah, so how did you get to Jaques? I’m thinking you flew here with a whole bunch of mats in your hold, and they were transferred to your T6 when you bought it; that’s standard procedure.’
[Capra] ‘Negative, Commander, I came out as a tourist and thought I’d try a little mining.’
It was a lie, and too late he realised his mistake. Tourists were rich and they knew rich people. He just made himself a kidnap target.
He tried to recall some of the combat tactics he hadn’t used in a while. In the Anaconda he used the full panoply of defensive modules: ECM, chaff, point defence, mines, and shield cell banks. These were backed up by shield boosters and hull reinforcement. Taken together they made running away much easier.
A plan was crystallising – at least the first few moves of a plan. The Viper was behind him and the Python was off to port picking up his cargo. He needed the Python to be facing him and he needed to be facing the Python.
He waited.
The rock nearest them was rolling over and getting closer; they would hit it if they held station.
[Capra] ‘Listen, Wakeman, I need to manoeuvre to clear this rock. You should do the same.’
[Vish Wakeman] ‘Go ahead, victim, but don’t try anything.’
This was his chance; he pushed away from the rock and rotated to port; it looked like an innocent move but by the end of it he was facing the Python, and as luck would have it the Python was slowly turning towards him. He waited until they were facing each other.
He rehearsed the move in his head and then saw no reason for delay.
He punched the booster and rammed the throttle to one hundred percent. He skimmed over the top of the Python and dipped behind it before either pirate knew what was happening. The Viper, already turning, couldn’t fire because the Python was between them, and the Python would have to turn one-eighty to pursue.
[Capra] ‘Good day, gentlemen. Fly safe!’
Capra flew like he hadn’t flown in a long time, throttling back to fifty percent and using the extra manoeuvrability to dodge round and under rocks as he came to them. He followed what seemed to be a crazily random course away from the pirate ships, but whenever he could, he veered towards the edge of the planetary ring that gave the shortest run to Jaques. He popped a few heats sink in quick succession, hoping they would mask his location.
He could see that the Viper was chasing him; that was good; he feared the Python more. Probably Griff Grief was mopping up the rest of the cargo, which was more valuable than any materials he had on board.
He had deliberately planned his move so he was flying directly away from the planet; he didn’t want to be slowed by flying any closer. When he thought there was enough distance between him and the Viper, he swerved away from the rocks and out into clear space. He was back at full throttle and continual boost, desperately wanting to break mass-lock.
Then the Viper was there, chasing hard and closing rapidly. Capra hadn’t reckoned on engineering mods boosting the Viper’s top speed. He prayed to the gods of the void that Wakeman’s ship didn’t have any experimental weapon mods that would shred him in short order.
He changed tactics. The Viper was fast, but that might make him slower in the turn. Capra set the throttle to half and cancelled the continual boost. He started to jink and weave, putting an extra pip in the shields now the Viper was coming within range. He had no weapons; this wasn’t a dog-fight; he turned flight assist off, hoping to cause confusion by random thrusting in the left/right and up/down axes.
Mass lock was broken just as the first shock of thermal energy removed the outer ring of his shields. Capra stabbed at the control to charge the Frame Shift Drive and diverted all power to the shields. Each of the following seconds seemed painfully long as the meter indicating FSD charge state slowly grew in width.
He continued evasive manoeuvres but Wakeman had some skill. The fearful sound of the Viper’s lasers spraying heat over his ship grew in volume as another ring of his shields was torn away.
Capra knew that, with his shields down, Wakeman would switch to kinetic weapons. He guessed that his attacker had lasers in the medium hardpoints and multi-cannons in the small; it was a popular combination. He also assumed that Wakeman would target either his power plant or his FSD. With his ship’s trajectory set and with flight assist still off, Capra oriented the T6 to protect those sub-systems.
The final ring of shields came down and Wakeman got to work on the hull; the frightful thump, thump of the cannon shells was relentless. Capra’s ship was down to sixty percent hull integrity when the countdown for the jump to supercruise started.
5…4…3…2…1
He had escaped Wakeman with fifty-four percent of his hull remaining and a short cruise to Jaques Station.
Then Capra realised he had made another, more serious mistake.
He should have high-waked to a nearby system instead of jumping to supercruise.
On his scanner Capra could see another ship; it was the Python. When Capra made his bid to escape, Grief had clearly gone straight to supercruise to wait for him. The possibility of a ransom paid by the family and friends of a rich tourist was a greater pull than the twenty tons of painite he had left behind.
Capra selected Jaques as his destination but had little expectation of reaching it; already the Python was manoeuvring to interdict him.
What could he do?
The best he could hope for would be to win the interdiction battle against Grief and wait to see if Wakeman also came at him.
[Griff Grief] ‘You shouldn’t have tried to run; I told you not to; now it will end badly for you.’
[Capra] ‘We both know you were never going to let me go.’
Capra readied himself. He flexed his fingers and pulled the straps tighter on his harness.
The interdiction was a lengthy affair; Capra was fighting for survival and he used every trick he knew; trouble was he was rusty; the long flight to Jaques had been untroubled by pirates. It was a long sequence of jumps punctuated by sightseeing at some of the galaxy’s favourite nebulae.
The Python followed his every move and held the T6 in a deadly embrace.
After a long struggle, which he was about to lose, Capra decided to submit; he wanted to avoid further damage to his hull. He found himself spinning dizzily in space only 0.2Ly from Jaques.
[Griff Grief] ‘Congratulations, Commander, that was a good fight, but you need to understand, this is how I make my living; you never had a chance.’
[Capra] ‘So, what now?’
[Griff Grief] ‘I need you to climb into your escape pod and eject into space. You’re coming with me.’
[Capra] ‘And if I refuse?’
[Griff Grief] ‘Then you die and I take whatever materials you have on board. Let’s get this done before the Colonia Militia arrive.’
Capra had no choice other than to follow Grief’s order. He could wait for the security services to arrive, but he seemed to recall that half of the Colonia Militia were out on an exercise and the other half – the more skilled Viper commanders – were on leave; they had gone over to moon 7 A A to practice canyon racing. It wasn’t that frivolous an activity; low-level flying was an essential skill in the militia.
[Capra] ‘Don’t shoot yet, Commander. I’m getting into the pod.’
Capra dipped into his flight bag, which was secured to the floor, and pulled out a slim black storage stick no bigger than his thumb; he slipped this into the inside pocket of his tunic.
The escape pod was located immediately behind the cockpit so that a quick exit from the ship was possible. A few minutes later the pod was floating in space and Capra watched as the Python, with cargo hatch gaping, expertly scooped him up. Then he heard, but didn’t see, the frightening violence of Grief’s weapons as the pirate tore the T6 apart.
Chapter 3: Jaques never forgets a face
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