Chapter 1: Pod
Chapter 2: Grief
Chapter 3: Jaques never forgets a face
“I’m…DISAPPOINTED,” shouted Darklord Harmsway over the comms, venting his frustration by firing his SRV weapon continuously at a mangled section of ship’s superstructure that dared to defy the 7g pull of the planet. “When I track an Orca across the skies I expect more at the end of the chase than a heap of wreckage.”
“I’ve found something,” Tocsin Rappta reported. “It’s an occupied escape pod; looks like there was at least one survivor.”
“Scoop it,” Harmsway ordered. “It might be all we get from this disaster.”
“I found something, too,” said Cara Jonkerson, the third member of the wing. She’d had the good sense to drive her SRV in the opposite direction to her wing-leader’s fire. “You should come and see this.”
Harmsway tried to move but was snagged on a piece of twisted metal. His default power distribution was four pips to weapons – power to weapons was how he liked to express himself – so the vertical thrusters achieved little. He cursed, gave the engines more power, and when he was free, he and Rappta set off to find Jonkerson.
She had crested a low ridge and, when the others found her, she was reversing down the slope with her lights off. They slowed and drew up alongside her.
“I saw it first with my scanner and came to investigate,” she said, talking quietly as though she didn’t want to be overheard. “There’s a wreck the other side of this hill; it’s not like any ship I’ve seen before. Also, there’s some kind of sentinel – a big beast – that’s guarding what look like meta-alloys. They’re all lined up in a row, and I saw it turning a few of them over – just a quarter-turn for each one. I didn’t want it to see me, so I backed off.”
“Do you think we can take it?” Harmsway said, putting power back into weapons. “A harvest of MAs would make me feel a whole lot better about this trip.”
“I’m sure the three of us could, if it’s alone,” said Rappta.
“Okay, here’s the plan: we all synthesise Premium Ammo Restock, then we split up and go over different parts of the ridge. I’ll go front and centre; Jonkerson take the left; Rappta, you go right. Fire at will as soon as you have the target.”
It was a good plan, and it lasted as long as it took to reach the top of the ridge. There were four of them, waiting. Their weapons were accurate and punishing. Jonkerson took the first burst of concentrated fire, and they hit her hard, almost stopping her in her tracks.
“Return fire!” Harmsway bellowed. “Target the big one first; if we take that down we’ll have a chance against the others.”
The wing opened fire, soon learning to compensate for the gravity. They had the advantage of agility but their opponents had better shields and more powerful weapons.
The battle raged.
Noticing that the sentinels were ground-based, the SRVs used vertical thrust to buzz around the enemy like angry wasps.
“My shields are gone! I’m down to seventy percent hull,” Jonkerson reported after only a few minutes of combat.
“Pull out and recharge,” Harmsway said. “Rappta, sitrep.”
“One ring left; half my ammo gone.”
Harmsway could see they were losing.
“Wing – pull back! Return to the ships. We need our beams and cannons for this job.”
Before boarding his ship, Rappta transferred Kit’s escape pod to the cargo hold.
Kit slept on, unaware of the battle.
Using their big weapons, Harmsway’s wing made short work of the ground defences. They noticed the sentinels always moved to place themselves between their attackers and the cargo they were protecting. The wing separated and attacked from further away and from locations separated by one-twenty degrees, avoiding friendly fire. The sentinels became easy targets and were soon destroyed.
When they returned to their SRVs the wing approached the undefended meta-alloy ‘fruits’.
“They’re much bigger than the ones we picked up in Pleione,” Jonkerson said. “My cargo bay is full after scooping only one.”
“Right, let’s get to work, then. We’ll need twice as many trips to get them all aboard.”
“Is there even a market for these big suckers?” Rappta asked, thinking aloud as they drove back and forth between the wreck and their ships.
“There’s always a market,” Harmsway said, “and in this case we are the only supplier. We should sell them one at a time; that way we build interest – and value; by the time we sell the last one, the rich collectors, the museums, the researchers – they’ll all be slavering to own one.”
“What is this ship, anyway?” Jonkerson said, pausing to look at the atypical geometry of the control surfaces and examining the unusual markings on the damaged hull. “It must be strongly built; it survived the crash here in much better shape than that Orca. Could it be alien?”
Harmsway didn’t care; he thought aliens were bogeymen that parents used to cajole their children. He could see only the value of the meta-alloys. “Less talking; more scooping.”
When their holds were full, he gave the order: “Let’s drop off the pods we’ve collected then start trading the MAs. Darnielle’s Progress in Maia is the place for that. People wanting meta-alloys to unlock engineering go there regularly."
Coming out of cryo is never a comfortable business. The splitting headache is a given. On top of that you can experience a range of strange and disconcerting side-effects.
As core temperature rises, when your physiology starts to function again and the pod automatically matches internal and external temperatures, you are heated from inside and out; sometimes it feels like there’s a cold, numb layer a few millimetres below the surface of your skin. It can be like you have two bodies, one inside the other.
Hearing returns before the other senses and well before motor function. If you hear something vaguely threatening, your feeling of helplessness is acute; you trying forcing your limbs into action, but nothing happens; you can only listen, wait, and panic.
Kit was in this state when rough hands plucked him from the pod and dragged him over the ground.
Full consciousness was returning and with it came the memories. Visions of the crash flashed into his mind’s eye and the last moments of his parents’ lives were replayed to him.
For a time he didn’t care what was happening to him; his only feeling was self-pity for his new situation as an orphan. He would never see his parents again and that made him immeasurably sad.
He didn’t notice that he was shuffling along in a line; he saw only the feet of the person walking in front of him. Eventually he lifted his eyes and looked around. There was a conveyor belt to his right along which an endless flow of escape pods was moving. Operatives initiated the revival procedure as each pod entered the workspace. Further down the line, the rescued people were extracted from their pods and pushed into the shuffling column. At the end of the line, the escape pods were separated into two groups as being either reusable or scrap.
Kit looked up and saw a sign announcing his location: Robigo Mines, Liverpool Dock, Pod Extraction Unit.
Liverpool Dock is a landing pad on the Robigo Mines outpost reserved for the arrival of slaves. The PEU was only one small area of the outpost dedicated to the slave trade.
The doorway through which Kit was passing led to the Assay Unit. In his turn, Kit was weighed in a centrifuge and his mass in kilograms was stamped on his forehead.
The next area was dedicated to Assignment.
Beneath the dirt, the bruises, and the pale face that was a remnant of the cryo, Kit was a handsome young man. An assessor examined him, using a stick to lift his chin and to push his face from side to side. Kit was prodded in his back.
“Stand up straight!” the assessor ordered. “I want to see if you are fit for service in an imperial palace…on reflection, I think not. Move along.”
In the next area, empty cages were filled with people until they weighed a little over one tonne – the Slaver’s Tonne was ten kilograms high, which saved a lot of argument at the other end of a shipment, especially given the problems of weighing cargo in space and the fact that slaves invariably lost weight while in transit.
An assignment operative called out to the queue manager: “I need 67.5 kilos over here.”
The procession of slaves had been split by weight range and the queue manager found Kit’s line, looked at his forehead, and said: “You’ll do.”
Kit was manhandled into the cage and its door was slammed and locked.
The mood in the cage was one of subdued resignation. People slumped on the floor, nobody spoke, and most people looked down. They had a good idea of the fate that awaited them in some remote mining operation.
The middle-aged man next to Kit was different. He had keen, fiercely blue eyes and his whole demeanour was one of determination. He looked at Kit.
“Hey there, son. I’m Virgil Capra. Do you want to get out of here?”
Kit had not yet given this a moment’s thought. “I…I suppose so.”
“That’s the spirit,” Capra said. “We can’t do it here; we’ll have to wait until we’re en route to wherever. We’ll probably go to the market next.”
Once full, the slave cages were trundled through another door into a larger, wide-open space. Here the cages were arranged in lines for display. Traders walked up and down the rows, accompanied by a market-maker. After a sale was made, the market-maker recorded it and tagged each cage with its buyer and the ship into which it should be loaded.
Veteran Josef Egger, entrepreneur, arbitrageur, and slave market-maker was showing a grim-faced commander his latest batch of slaves.
“These are fresh in; straight out of their pods. They’re usually very compliant at this stage in their careers; you won’t have any trouble with them.”
“Have they been fed? I don’t want to waste time and money feeding them,” the trader asked.
“Oh yes, of course,” Egger lied. “You won’t need to spend a moment on them, or a single credit. Can I put you down for thirty tonnes?”
The slave trader nodded and, after an electronic handshake, the deal was struck.
Kit’s cage was picked up by a robot forklift and carried to the cavernous hold of a Python. The ship was battered and dented, and it was some time since the paint-job had been refreshed.
“Look over there,” Capra said as they were carried up the ramp into the hold. “This Python’s been modded to carry a fighter.”
Kit saw the occupied fighter bay in the centre of the hold, with the ship itself clamped inside its own airlock.
“That’s our way out of here,” Capra said.
“Really! I’ve never been in a fighter before. How fast are they?”
“Fast enough. We just need to wait for an opportunity. Tell me about yourself, son.”
Kit told Capra about the crash and the loss of his parents.
“That’s a tough lesson to learn about 7g landings,” Capra commiserated. “In a way you’re lucky you were found, though. Better being here than sleeping in a pod that might never be found.”
Kit was recovering his composure; he was never one to brood, despite the enormity of the events that had befallen him.
“What about you, Sir? How did you come to be here?”
It was Capra’s turn to tell Kit how pirates had brought him from Jaques Station. They thought they had picked up a rich tourist whom they could ransom, but when they discovered the truth they brought him to Robigo as a slave.
“Jaques! I’ve heard of that! I’d love to go out that far. Furthest we went was the Pleiades and Barnard’s Loop. We had an expedition planned that would take us out to the Formidine Rift – but that won’t be happening now.”
“Sure, there’s plenty to see close to the bubble, but it’s a big old galaxy we’re in.”
“But to fly out to Jaques! What is it, like eight hundred jumps? That’s travelling!”
“Depends on your jump range and whether you take the scenic route or the straight line.”
“Scenic every time,” Kit said enthusiastically. “I want to see it all.”
“A man after my own heart,” Capra said, puffing Kit up with pride to be described as a man.
“How would you like to go there?” Capra asked. “I need to get back there; where my daughter, Lyra, is – and my Anaconda, of course.”
Maybe Kit saw Capra as a substitute father-figure; maybe he felt a need to do something different – something that would take him away from the life he had led and its recent tragic events.
“It seems like the best thing I could do right now – start a new life at Jaques Station.”
“That’s settled then,” Capra said. “It’s not only Jaques, of course; there’s a new outpost there and the prospect of developing a whole new colony away from the bubble. Most people want to make a fresh start – get away from the politics and conflict that mar the so-called civilised world.”
Kit’s imagination got to work; already he saw himself as a miner, a trader, or an explorer. Even a spell in the security services would appeal to him.
“But, how do we get away?”
“We bide our time,” Capra said. “I know how to break the lock on these cages – that’s easy. I even know how to take control of that fighter; the tricky part is making sure we escape into an occupied system. We can’t jump in that fighter, so we need to know there’s an outpost or starport we can run to.”
Kit was familiar with the standard navigation systems found on all ships. “We need to use the system map to see what’s in each system we jump to.”
“That’s right!” Capra said, avoiding making Kit feel he was stating the obvious. “But, we don’t want to alert the pilot to our intentions until the last moment; he will know if we access the system map down here in the hold, or once we’re in the fighter. We might only get one shot at this.”
“How do we know when to go?” Kit asked.
“We count jumps,” Capra said. “We’re in the Robigo system. Most smuggling runs are between twelve and fifteen jumps, but the first nine or ten will be in systems with no government or economy. After that we’ll enter occupied space. There’s still a risk of breaking out into an empty system, but the odds in our favour are greatly increased.”
“Can we get out while we’re in supercruise?” Kit asked innocently.
“Erm…it’s never been done as far as I know, but under the circumstances I’m prepared to give it a go.”
They heard the grinding and groaning of the heavy machinery as the landing pad carrying the Python rolled forwards and then upwards to the surface of the outpost.
Then came the roar of vertical thrusters and the sequence of clunks and clanks as the landing gear was raised and stowed.
The sound of the main engines was deafening in the cargo hold as the Python pulled rapidly away from Robigo Mines.
“Remember, we count jumps; I’ll break us out of here after ten jumps then we get in the fighter; after another few jumps, we’ll open the system map and see what we’ve got.”
Before long they heard another sound not normally heard from the pilot’s seat. It was a whine, rising in pitch and volume as the Frame Shift Drive was charged. The immense amount of energy built up in the drive caused spontaneous electrical discharges in the surrounding air and the smell of ozone was pervasive.
The slaves felt the massive punch as the hyperspace jump hit them. Without the benefit of contoured seats and flight harnesses, the slaves were flung to one end of their cage.
Recovering quickly, Kit and Capra agreed: “That’s one.”
Three jumps later, the occupants of the cage were distressed; some were hysterical, some were sobbing, others prayed to their personal gods for an end to the ordeal.
Kit and Capra remained composed, holding eye contact. “That’s four.”
They recognised the movements of the smuggler between jumps as he made quick fuel scoops at each star before turning to align the Python with the next destination.
“This is not an experienced smuggler,” Capra said. “He’s scooping fuel which makes you vulnerable to attack. Heat and gravity are your enemies when you’re smuggling. Career smugglers will fit enough fuel tanks so they can fly at maximum thrust throughout the run.”
Suddenly, it all changed. The ship started to twist and turn unpredictably, throwing the slaves in all directions.
“What’s happening?” Kit asked, eyes wide with fear.
“It’s an interdiction,” Capra said. “Quick, Kit! Get ready to run to the fighter – or get there any way you can. If the pilot loses the interdiction he’ll launch the fighter to defend the Python. We’ve got to be in it.”
Capra immediately got to work on the cage lock, to the puzzlement of the other slaves. It was an easy job and soon they were dragging themselves from cage to cage to reach the fighter bay. They opened the airlock and sealed it behind them.
“Kit,” Capra said, “squeeze in behind the pilot’s seat and let me fly this thing.”
Kit complied and Capra was soon strapped in and running the pre-flight checks. He knew how to take control of the ship and readied himself for the end of the interdiction battle.
There was an ear-splitting crash as the FSD failed. The smuggler had lost the interdiction, but the big question was, to whom? If it were a pirate or another smuggler they would just be trading captors.
The Python spun wildly until the pilot brought it under control; they heard the loud groans from the FSD as it began its cooldown cycle.
“Get ready,” Capra called. “As soon as the hatch opens, we’re away.”
Kit was jammed in behind the seat, straining to see round the headrest, desperate to watch what happened. He was exhilarated beyond anything he had felt before.
The hatch opened and in an instant Capra punched a sequence of buttons on the control panel between flight stick and throttle.
“Command override off,” the ship’s voice announced. “You have control.”
“That’s what we need,” Capra said, and he launched the fighter before the smuggler realised that the fighter was not his to direct. His first action was to get some distance from the Python, then he scanned the contacts in range of his sensors.
“It’s security services pulling over the smuggler,” Capra said, with relief in his voice.
The bad news was that the cop treated them as hostile and immediately opened fire on them. In the time it took Capra to find the right comms channel the fighter’s shields were down.
“Security Services – this is Virgil Capra, escaped slave; I am not a threat to you.”
The message was too late; a powerful burst of laser light burst through the canopy.
“I’m blind,” Capra screamed in agony. He cut the engines and turned off flight assist. Then he made the fighter tumble randomly, simulating the behaviour of a disabled ship. This was enough to fool the cop into turning his attention to the Python. After reinforcements arrived – a wing of elite Vipers – the Python was soon overcome.
One of the Vipers flew over to the fighter with a view to disintegrating it. Capra managed to convince the pilot, just in time, that he genuinely was an escaped slave. Their run to safety was over, and sooner than they expected.
“A support ship will be here shortly to pick you up and take you to a slave restitution centre. Have a better day,” the cop said.
“We’ll be all right now, Kit,” Capra said.
“But you’re blind,” Kit burst out indignantly. In a flood of compassion he added: “I’ll be your eyes. Together we’ll go to Jaques Station and you’ll be with your daughter and she can look after you.”
Capra was moved. “Kit, I can’t thank you enough – but maybe there’s a way. My flying days are over. If you can get me to Jaques I will give you my Anaconda.”
Without hesitation Kit replied: “And I’ll use it to make a living that will keep all of us.”
The feeling surged in him that here was a new family that he could be part of.
Restitution was not as generous as they might have hoped.
“The standard package, to get you back on your feet, is a free Sidewinder and 1,000 credits. That’s all we can offer in the current economic climate, I’m afraid,” the scheme administrator said, embarrassed at the meagreness of the offer. “There are so many freed slaves, like yourselves, who have nothing. It’s only fair to share the resources we have.”
Kit and Capra debated what they would do.
“To get to Jaques we need to upgrade the basic Sidewinder the best we can,” Capra said. We’ll need a 2A frame shift for jump range, and all other core internals D-rated for lightness.”
“Even the power plant and thrusters?”
“Yes, Kit, we’ll take the smallest power plant we can and we’ll be in supercruise most of the time when the thrusters make little difference.”
“We’ll need at least a 1E cargo rack,” Kit pointed out. “The Sidewinder is single seat, so you will have to be in cryo for the whole journey, which bothers me because I won’t have you to help me.”
Capra smiled at the compliment. “Don’t worry, Kit, by the time we’re ready to go you’ll be plenty experienced.”
“What about the other optional internals? What will we need?”
“Well, the best fuel scoop is 2A; we’ll fit one of those, and I’ll teach you how to plot your route so we don’t run out of fuel.”
Kit looked worried. “That can happen? When we’re trapped in a system where we can’t scoop?”
“We would be, if it weren’t for the fuel rats – a dedicated group of commanders who will fly any distance to give you fuel using transfer limpets. The galaxy is a safer place thanks to them.”
“What else?”
“Well, with one of the class 1 slots used by the cargo rack with my pod in it, the other class 1 should be an Advanced Discovery Scanner. Okay, so they cost one-and-a-half mill to buy and you’ll have to work hard for that, but selling the cartographic data when you get to Jaques will make about seven or eight mill. That’s easily enough to set up a basic mining loadout in a T6, and with that the money will start to flow.”
“So that just leaves a size 2 slot and the weapons to decide on.”
“And the utilities. As to weapons, they just add weight – plus we aren’t going to win any fights. Once we’re away from the bubble, I doubt we’ll meet anyone until we reach Jaques.”
In Kit’s imagination he was already on the way – jumping, scooping, checking for shinies, and moving on. The thought of eight million credits and what he could do with that much money gave him an itch to start as soon as they could. But Capra was still thinking and planning.
“The remaining size 2 – we have a choice. We can fit a cargo rack, a field maintenance unit, or a 2G planetary vehicle hangar so you can search for materials. There’s no engineer at Jaques yet, as far as I know, so you’d be looking to synthesise FSD boosting.”
The thought of planetary landing cast a momentary shadow over Kit’s day-dreaming, but then he saw its appeal.
“A cargo rack would add mass if it’s full, and we won’t need field maintenance if I fly carefully, so my vote is for the SRV.”
Again Capra smiled at the confidence and adventurous spirit of the young man who reminded him in many ways of himself.
“Even though I’ll train you to fly carefully, we’ll take some heat sinks for those occasions when we jump into the middle of a binary system – and it will happen, I can assure you of that. I’ll be cold in my pod, but the ship will need some help to cool down while you escape.”
Kit had only thought of the long sequence of jumps needed to get to Jaques as a sight-seeing tour; now he imagined himself dealing with all types of emergency – binary, ternary, quaternary systems – bring them on!
“When can we get started? Let’s go now.”
Capra now laughed out loud. “Kit, I want to get back to Lyra as much as you want the adventure of long-distance space travel, but first we have to make some money. I estimate we’ll need something over two million. What we’ve talked about is our final loadout for the journey; before we get that we need a quite different loadout which will bring in some cash. That means cargo racks throughout, at least to begin with, and finding the best value missions and trading opportunities.”
Kit was a little disappointed, but saw the sense in Capra’s words.
“This is the plan,” Capra said. “When we get our basic Sidewinder, we’ll sell the weapons, the shields, and the discovery scanner; that’ll give us sixteen thousand credits to play with. We spend five of those on cargo racks and then look for a short-range delivery mission. If there’s spare cargo capacity, we look for something in the commodity market that will add to our profit – not forgetting to cover our insurance premium of course.”
Kit, who had never considered the life of a trader before, immediately imagined himself to be the savvy wheeler-dealer making big profits on shrewd trades. In his mind he was already in a Type-9 Heavy shifting five hundred tonnes of precious doodads from A to B and bragging about his acumen in some bar, to the admiration of those listening.
“The way I see it,” Capra continued, “is that I will stay at our base and get on the holo’ to my contacts; I’ll seek out the best deals while you do the flying; it should work out well.”
Kit was fired up. “Let’s do it!”
“You sound just like Lyra.”
Chapter 5: Asellus Primus
Chapter 2: Grief
Chapter 3: Jaques never forgets a face
“I’m…DISAPPOINTED,” shouted Darklord Harmsway over the comms, venting his frustration by firing his SRV weapon continuously at a mangled section of ship’s superstructure that dared to defy the 7g pull of the planet. “When I track an Orca across the skies I expect more at the end of the chase than a heap of wreckage.”
“I’ve found something,” Tocsin Rappta reported. “It’s an occupied escape pod; looks like there was at least one survivor.”
“Scoop it,” Harmsway ordered. “It might be all we get from this disaster.”
“I found something, too,” said Cara Jonkerson, the third member of the wing. She’d had the good sense to drive her SRV in the opposite direction to her wing-leader’s fire. “You should come and see this.”
Harmsway tried to move but was snagged on a piece of twisted metal. His default power distribution was four pips to weapons – power to weapons was how he liked to express himself – so the vertical thrusters achieved little. He cursed, gave the engines more power, and when he was free, he and Rappta set off to find Jonkerson.
She had crested a low ridge and, when the others found her, she was reversing down the slope with her lights off. They slowed and drew up alongside her.
“I saw it first with my scanner and came to investigate,” she said, talking quietly as though she didn’t want to be overheard. “There’s a wreck the other side of this hill; it’s not like any ship I’ve seen before. Also, there’s some kind of sentinel – a big beast – that’s guarding what look like meta-alloys. They’re all lined up in a row, and I saw it turning a few of them over – just a quarter-turn for each one. I didn’t want it to see me, so I backed off.”
“Do you think we can take it?” Harmsway said, putting power back into weapons. “A harvest of MAs would make me feel a whole lot better about this trip.”
“I’m sure the three of us could, if it’s alone,” said Rappta.
“Okay, here’s the plan: we all synthesise Premium Ammo Restock, then we split up and go over different parts of the ridge. I’ll go front and centre; Jonkerson take the left; Rappta, you go right. Fire at will as soon as you have the target.”
It was a good plan, and it lasted as long as it took to reach the top of the ridge. There were four of them, waiting. Their weapons were accurate and punishing. Jonkerson took the first burst of concentrated fire, and they hit her hard, almost stopping her in her tracks.
“Return fire!” Harmsway bellowed. “Target the big one first; if we take that down we’ll have a chance against the others.”
The wing opened fire, soon learning to compensate for the gravity. They had the advantage of agility but their opponents had better shields and more powerful weapons.
The battle raged.
Noticing that the sentinels were ground-based, the SRVs used vertical thrust to buzz around the enemy like angry wasps.
“My shields are gone! I’m down to seventy percent hull,” Jonkerson reported after only a few minutes of combat.
“Pull out and recharge,” Harmsway said. “Rappta, sitrep.”
“One ring left; half my ammo gone.”
Harmsway could see they were losing.
“Wing – pull back! Return to the ships. We need our beams and cannons for this job.”
Before boarding his ship, Rappta transferred Kit’s escape pod to the cargo hold.
Kit slept on, unaware of the battle.
Using their big weapons, Harmsway’s wing made short work of the ground defences. They noticed the sentinels always moved to place themselves between their attackers and the cargo they were protecting. The wing separated and attacked from further away and from locations separated by one-twenty degrees, avoiding friendly fire. The sentinels became easy targets and were soon destroyed.
When they returned to their SRVs the wing approached the undefended meta-alloy ‘fruits’.
“They’re much bigger than the ones we picked up in Pleione,” Jonkerson said. “My cargo bay is full after scooping only one.”
“Right, let’s get to work, then. We’ll need twice as many trips to get them all aboard.”
“Is there even a market for these big suckers?” Rappta asked, thinking aloud as they drove back and forth between the wreck and their ships.
“There’s always a market,” Harmsway said, “and in this case we are the only supplier. We should sell them one at a time; that way we build interest – and value; by the time we sell the last one, the rich collectors, the museums, the researchers – they’ll all be slavering to own one.”
“What is this ship, anyway?” Jonkerson said, pausing to look at the atypical geometry of the control surfaces and examining the unusual markings on the damaged hull. “It must be strongly built; it survived the crash here in much better shape than that Orca. Could it be alien?”
Harmsway didn’t care; he thought aliens were bogeymen that parents used to cajole their children. He could see only the value of the meta-alloys. “Less talking; more scooping.”
When their holds were full, he gave the order: “Let’s drop off the pods we’ve collected then start trading the MAs. Darnielle’s Progress in Maia is the place for that. People wanting meta-alloys to unlock engineering go there regularly."
*
Coming out of cryo is never a comfortable business. The splitting headache is a given. On top of that you can experience a range of strange and disconcerting side-effects.
As core temperature rises, when your physiology starts to function again and the pod automatically matches internal and external temperatures, you are heated from inside and out; sometimes it feels like there’s a cold, numb layer a few millimetres below the surface of your skin. It can be like you have two bodies, one inside the other.
Hearing returns before the other senses and well before motor function. If you hear something vaguely threatening, your feeling of helplessness is acute; you trying forcing your limbs into action, but nothing happens; you can only listen, wait, and panic.
Kit was in this state when rough hands plucked him from the pod and dragged him over the ground.
Full consciousness was returning and with it came the memories. Visions of the crash flashed into his mind’s eye and the last moments of his parents’ lives were replayed to him.
For a time he didn’t care what was happening to him; his only feeling was self-pity for his new situation as an orphan. He would never see his parents again and that made him immeasurably sad.
He didn’t notice that he was shuffling along in a line; he saw only the feet of the person walking in front of him. Eventually he lifted his eyes and looked around. There was a conveyor belt to his right along which an endless flow of escape pods was moving. Operatives initiated the revival procedure as each pod entered the workspace. Further down the line, the rescued people were extracted from their pods and pushed into the shuffling column. At the end of the line, the escape pods were separated into two groups as being either reusable or scrap.
Kit looked up and saw a sign announcing his location: Robigo Mines, Liverpool Dock, Pod Extraction Unit.
Liverpool Dock is a landing pad on the Robigo Mines outpost reserved for the arrival of slaves. The PEU was only one small area of the outpost dedicated to the slave trade.
The doorway through which Kit was passing led to the Assay Unit. In his turn, Kit was weighed in a centrifuge and his mass in kilograms was stamped on his forehead.
The next area was dedicated to Assignment.
Beneath the dirt, the bruises, and the pale face that was a remnant of the cryo, Kit was a handsome young man. An assessor examined him, using a stick to lift his chin and to push his face from side to side. Kit was prodded in his back.
“Stand up straight!” the assessor ordered. “I want to see if you are fit for service in an imperial palace…on reflection, I think not. Move along.”
In the next area, empty cages were filled with people until they weighed a little over one tonne – the Slaver’s Tonne was ten kilograms high, which saved a lot of argument at the other end of a shipment, especially given the problems of weighing cargo in space and the fact that slaves invariably lost weight while in transit.
An assignment operative called out to the queue manager: “I need 67.5 kilos over here.”
The procession of slaves had been split by weight range and the queue manager found Kit’s line, looked at his forehead, and said: “You’ll do.”
Kit was manhandled into the cage and its door was slammed and locked.
The mood in the cage was one of subdued resignation. People slumped on the floor, nobody spoke, and most people looked down. They had a good idea of the fate that awaited them in some remote mining operation.
The middle-aged man next to Kit was different. He had keen, fiercely blue eyes and his whole demeanour was one of determination. He looked at Kit.
“Hey there, son. I’m Virgil Capra. Do you want to get out of here?”
Kit had not yet given this a moment’s thought. “I…I suppose so.”
“That’s the spirit,” Capra said. “We can’t do it here; we’ll have to wait until we’re en route to wherever. We’ll probably go to the market next.”
Once full, the slave cages were trundled through another door into a larger, wide-open space. Here the cages were arranged in lines for display. Traders walked up and down the rows, accompanied by a market-maker. After a sale was made, the market-maker recorded it and tagged each cage with its buyer and the ship into which it should be loaded.
Veteran Josef Egger, entrepreneur, arbitrageur, and slave market-maker was showing a grim-faced commander his latest batch of slaves.
“These are fresh in; straight out of their pods. They’re usually very compliant at this stage in their careers; you won’t have any trouble with them.”
“Have they been fed? I don’t want to waste time and money feeding them,” the trader asked.
“Oh yes, of course,” Egger lied. “You won’t need to spend a moment on them, or a single credit. Can I put you down for thirty tonnes?”
The slave trader nodded and, after an electronic handshake, the deal was struck.
Kit’s cage was picked up by a robot forklift and carried to the cavernous hold of a Python. The ship was battered and dented, and it was some time since the paint-job had been refreshed.
“Look over there,” Capra said as they were carried up the ramp into the hold. “This Python’s been modded to carry a fighter.”
Kit saw the occupied fighter bay in the centre of the hold, with the ship itself clamped inside its own airlock.
“That’s our way out of here,” Capra said.
“Really! I’ve never been in a fighter before. How fast are they?”
“Fast enough. We just need to wait for an opportunity. Tell me about yourself, son.”
Kit told Capra about the crash and the loss of his parents.
“That’s a tough lesson to learn about 7g landings,” Capra commiserated. “In a way you’re lucky you were found, though. Better being here than sleeping in a pod that might never be found.”
Kit was recovering his composure; he was never one to brood, despite the enormity of the events that had befallen him.
“What about you, Sir? How did you come to be here?”
It was Capra’s turn to tell Kit how pirates had brought him from Jaques Station. They thought they had picked up a rich tourist whom they could ransom, but when they discovered the truth they brought him to Robigo as a slave.
“Jaques! I’ve heard of that! I’d love to go out that far. Furthest we went was the Pleiades and Barnard’s Loop. We had an expedition planned that would take us out to the Formidine Rift – but that won’t be happening now.”
“Sure, there’s plenty to see close to the bubble, but it’s a big old galaxy we’re in.”
“But to fly out to Jaques! What is it, like eight hundred jumps? That’s travelling!”
“Depends on your jump range and whether you take the scenic route or the straight line.”
“Scenic every time,” Kit said enthusiastically. “I want to see it all.”
“A man after my own heart,” Capra said, puffing Kit up with pride to be described as a man.
“How would you like to go there?” Capra asked. “I need to get back there; where my daughter, Lyra, is – and my Anaconda, of course.”
Maybe Kit saw Capra as a substitute father-figure; maybe he felt a need to do something different – something that would take him away from the life he had led and its recent tragic events.
“It seems like the best thing I could do right now – start a new life at Jaques Station.”
“That’s settled then,” Capra said. “It’s not only Jaques, of course; there’s a new outpost there and the prospect of developing a whole new colony away from the bubble. Most people want to make a fresh start – get away from the politics and conflict that mar the so-called civilised world.”
Kit’s imagination got to work; already he saw himself as a miner, a trader, or an explorer. Even a spell in the security services would appeal to him.
“But, how do we get away?”
“We bide our time,” Capra said. “I know how to break the lock on these cages – that’s easy. I even know how to take control of that fighter; the tricky part is making sure we escape into an occupied system. We can’t jump in that fighter, so we need to know there’s an outpost or starport we can run to.”
Kit was familiar with the standard navigation systems found on all ships. “We need to use the system map to see what’s in each system we jump to.”
“That’s right!” Capra said, avoiding making Kit feel he was stating the obvious. “But, we don’t want to alert the pilot to our intentions until the last moment; he will know if we access the system map down here in the hold, or once we’re in the fighter. We might only get one shot at this.”
“How do we know when to go?” Kit asked.
“We count jumps,” Capra said. “We’re in the Robigo system. Most smuggling runs are between twelve and fifteen jumps, but the first nine or ten will be in systems with no government or economy. After that we’ll enter occupied space. There’s still a risk of breaking out into an empty system, but the odds in our favour are greatly increased.”
“Can we get out while we’re in supercruise?” Kit asked innocently.
“Erm…it’s never been done as far as I know, but under the circumstances I’m prepared to give it a go.”
They heard the grinding and groaning of the heavy machinery as the landing pad carrying the Python rolled forwards and then upwards to the surface of the outpost.
Then came the roar of vertical thrusters and the sequence of clunks and clanks as the landing gear was raised and stowed.
The sound of the main engines was deafening in the cargo hold as the Python pulled rapidly away from Robigo Mines.
“Remember, we count jumps; I’ll break us out of here after ten jumps then we get in the fighter; after another few jumps, we’ll open the system map and see what we’ve got.”
Before long they heard another sound not normally heard from the pilot’s seat. It was a whine, rising in pitch and volume as the Frame Shift Drive was charged. The immense amount of energy built up in the drive caused spontaneous electrical discharges in the surrounding air and the smell of ozone was pervasive.
The slaves felt the massive punch as the hyperspace jump hit them. Without the benefit of contoured seats and flight harnesses, the slaves were flung to one end of their cage.
Recovering quickly, Kit and Capra agreed: “That’s one.”
Three jumps later, the occupants of the cage were distressed; some were hysterical, some were sobbing, others prayed to their personal gods for an end to the ordeal.
Kit and Capra remained composed, holding eye contact. “That’s four.”
They recognised the movements of the smuggler between jumps as he made quick fuel scoops at each star before turning to align the Python with the next destination.
“This is not an experienced smuggler,” Capra said. “He’s scooping fuel which makes you vulnerable to attack. Heat and gravity are your enemies when you’re smuggling. Career smugglers will fit enough fuel tanks so they can fly at maximum thrust throughout the run.”
Suddenly, it all changed. The ship started to twist and turn unpredictably, throwing the slaves in all directions.
“What’s happening?” Kit asked, eyes wide with fear.
“It’s an interdiction,” Capra said. “Quick, Kit! Get ready to run to the fighter – or get there any way you can. If the pilot loses the interdiction he’ll launch the fighter to defend the Python. We’ve got to be in it.”
Capra immediately got to work on the cage lock, to the puzzlement of the other slaves. It was an easy job and soon they were dragging themselves from cage to cage to reach the fighter bay. They opened the airlock and sealed it behind them.
“Kit,” Capra said, “squeeze in behind the pilot’s seat and let me fly this thing.”
Kit complied and Capra was soon strapped in and running the pre-flight checks. He knew how to take control of the ship and readied himself for the end of the interdiction battle.
There was an ear-splitting crash as the FSD failed. The smuggler had lost the interdiction, but the big question was, to whom? If it were a pirate or another smuggler they would just be trading captors.
The Python spun wildly until the pilot brought it under control; they heard the loud groans from the FSD as it began its cooldown cycle.
“Get ready,” Capra called. “As soon as the hatch opens, we’re away.”
Kit was jammed in behind the seat, straining to see round the headrest, desperate to watch what happened. He was exhilarated beyond anything he had felt before.
The hatch opened and in an instant Capra punched a sequence of buttons on the control panel between flight stick and throttle.
“Command override off,” the ship’s voice announced. “You have control.”
“That’s what we need,” Capra said, and he launched the fighter before the smuggler realised that the fighter was not his to direct. His first action was to get some distance from the Python, then he scanned the contacts in range of his sensors.
“It’s security services pulling over the smuggler,” Capra said, with relief in his voice.
The bad news was that the cop treated them as hostile and immediately opened fire on them. In the time it took Capra to find the right comms channel the fighter’s shields were down.
“Security Services – this is Virgil Capra, escaped slave; I am not a threat to you.”
The message was too late; a powerful burst of laser light burst through the canopy.
“I’m blind,” Capra screamed in agony. He cut the engines and turned off flight assist. Then he made the fighter tumble randomly, simulating the behaviour of a disabled ship. This was enough to fool the cop into turning his attention to the Python. After reinforcements arrived – a wing of elite Vipers – the Python was soon overcome.
One of the Vipers flew over to the fighter with a view to disintegrating it. Capra managed to convince the pilot, just in time, that he genuinely was an escaped slave. Their run to safety was over, and sooner than they expected.
“A support ship will be here shortly to pick you up and take you to a slave restitution centre. Have a better day,” the cop said.
“We’ll be all right now, Kit,” Capra said.
“But you’re blind,” Kit burst out indignantly. In a flood of compassion he added: “I’ll be your eyes. Together we’ll go to Jaques Station and you’ll be with your daughter and she can look after you.”
Capra was moved. “Kit, I can’t thank you enough – but maybe there’s a way. My flying days are over. If you can get me to Jaques I will give you my Anaconda.”
Without hesitation Kit replied: “And I’ll use it to make a living that will keep all of us.”
The feeling surged in him that here was a new family that he could be part of.
*
Restitution was not as generous as they might have hoped.
“The standard package, to get you back on your feet, is a free Sidewinder and 1,000 credits. That’s all we can offer in the current economic climate, I’m afraid,” the scheme administrator said, embarrassed at the meagreness of the offer. “There are so many freed slaves, like yourselves, who have nothing. It’s only fair to share the resources we have.”
Kit and Capra debated what they would do.
“To get to Jaques we need to upgrade the basic Sidewinder the best we can,” Capra said. We’ll need a 2A frame shift for jump range, and all other core internals D-rated for lightness.”
“Even the power plant and thrusters?”
“Yes, Kit, we’ll take the smallest power plant we can and we’ll be in supercruise most of the time when the thrusters make little difference.”
“We’ll need at least a 1E cargo rack,” Kit pointed out. “The Sidewinder is single seat, so you will have to be in cryo for the whole journey, which bothers me because I won’t have you to help me.”
Capra smiled at the compliment. “Don’t worry, Kit, by the time we’re ready to go you’ll be plenty experienced.”
“What about the other optional internals? What will we need?”
“Well, the best fuel scoop is 2A; we’ll fit one of those, and I’ll teach you how to plot your route so we don’t run out of fuel.”
Kit looked worried. “That can happen? When we’re trapped in a system where we can’t scoop?”
“We would be, if it weren’t for the fuel rats – a dedicated group of commanders who will fly any distance to give you fuel using transfer limpets. The galaxy is a safer place thanks to them.”
“What else?”
“Well, with one of the class 1 slots used by the cargo rack with my pod in it, the other class 1 should be an Advanced Discovery Scanner. Okay, so they cost one-and-a-half mill to buy and you’ll have to work hard for that, but selling the cartographic data when you get to Jaques will make about seven or eight mill. That’s easily enough to set up a basic mining loadout in a T6, and with that the money will start to flow.”
“So that just leaves a size 2 slot and the weapons to decide on.”
“And the utilities. As to weapons, they just add weight – plus we aren’t going to win any fights. Once we’re away from the bubble, I doubt we’ll meet anyone until we reach Jaques.”
In Kit’s imagination he was already on the way – jumping, scooping, checking for shinies, and moving on. The thought of eight million credits and what he could do with that much money gave him an itch to start as soon as they could. But Capra was still thinking and planning.
“The remaining size 2 – we have a choice. We can fit a cargo rack, a field maintenance unit, or a 2G planetary vehicle hangar so you can search for materials. There’s no engineer at Jaques yet, as far as I know, so you’d be looking to synthesise FSD boosting.”
The thought of planetary landing cast a momentary shadow over Kit’s day-dreaming, but then he saw its appeal.
“A cargo rack would add mass if it’s full, and we won’t need field maintenance if I fly carefully, so my vote is for the SRV.”
Again Capra smiled at the confidence and adventurous spirit of the young man who reminded him in many ways of himself.
“Even though I’ll train you to fly carefully, we’ll take some heat sinks for those occasions when we jump into the middle of a binary system – and it will happen, I can assure you of that. I’ll be cold in my pod, but the ship will need some help to cool down while you escape.”
Kit had only thought of the long sequence of jumps needed to get to Jaques as a sight-seeing tour; now he imagined himself dealing with all types of emergency – binary, ternary, quaternary systems – bring them on!
“When can we get started? Let’s go now.”
Capra now laughed out loud. “Kit, I want to get back to Lyra as much as you want the adventure of long-distance space travel, but first we have to make some money. I estimate we’ll need something over two million. What we’ve talked about is our final loadout for the journey; before we get that we need a quite different loadout which will bring in some cash. That means cargo racks throughout, at least to begin with, and finding the best value missions and trading opportunities.”
Kit was a little disappointed, but saw the sense in Capra’s words.
“This is the plan,” Capra said. “When we get our basic Sidewinder, we’ll sell the weapons, the shields, and the discovery scanner; that’ll give us sixteen thousand credits to play with. We spend five of those on cargo racks and then look for a short-range delivery mission. If there’s spare cargo capacity, we look for something in the commodity market that will add to our profit – not forgetting to cover our insurance premium of course.”
Kit, who had never considered the life of a trader before, immediately imagined himself to be the savvy wheeler-dealer making big profits on shrewd trades. In his mind he was already in a Type-9 Heavy shifting five hundred tonnes of precious doodads from A to B and bragging about his acumen in some bar, to the admiration of those listening.
“The way I see it,” Capra continued, “is that I will stay at our base and get on the holo’ to my contacts; I’ll seek out the best deals while you do the flying; it should work out well.”
Kit was fired up. “Let’s do it!”
“You sound just like Lyra.”
Chapter 5: Asellus Primus
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