Breaking In Barrett
22 Mar 2022Aurora Bael
Mal is not cut out for fighting.He is a fine pilot, don't get me wrong. Great even. Coming into Persephone on a test run last week, he set us down in 2 G softer than I generally manage in 0.2 G. I watched him squeeze our little Asp into a mail slot along side a T-9 without breaking a sweat. And dancing around Asteroids is practically a leisure cruise for him.
But as soon as there's lead and laser in the air? Forget it.
Feeling a little better about my life as a sailor in the Federal Navy, I heeded a call to Gliese 868, a busy mining system with a serious pirate problem. Not just Hudson's boys, but Winters and some LEO regulars had sent ships, too, letting the civil unrest be unrestful for a moment while we clean shop and kick the worst of the cutthroats out of the belts so the average miner can shoot rocks in peace. Pirates aren't as well prepared as soldiers when it comes to fighting. Most of them rely on flash and intimidation to scare the unarmed into surrender. I never was much for people who make their living by coercing the weak, so naturally I grabbed Mal by the collar and dragged him off with me. "If you're going to work with me, you have to actually see me work," I said.
He was clearly uncomfortable but quickly agreed to ride shotgun and manage power for me while I did the flying and fighting. The first clue something wasn't right was the stutter as soon as we hit the field and I told him to scan for targets. "Th-theres uh.. e-Elite pilot in a c-Conda bearing uh...uh 289055."
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Y-yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine."
"You're sure? Because once we start-"
"Look, I uh-I need to do this, okay? Okay?!"
...I decided not to press it. I probably should have.
I ran warrants on the Conda, and sure enough he was wanted for piracy in five systems and assaulting an officer in three of them. I lit up the hard points, set my beacon to alert the other Sailors in the area, and went in. It was a pretty tough fight, wearing down his shields through at least three auxillary batteries. By the time that was done, my shield was toast and I could hear the staccato thundering of flak and bullets against the outter hull. I yelled back to Barrett to divert power to shields to get the back up... No response. We took a missile on the port side that sent Paimon reeling toward an asteroid and I'm yelling for him to raise shield, start repairing internals, give me engines, anything that would keep us from taking the brunt of the hit... Nothing. I glanced back and he was chalk white in terror, knuckles practically split open as he gripped theseat, watching in dumbstruck horror as a volley hit the canopy and the spiderweb cracks spread along the glassteel plates. I cursed and took emergency control, diverted power to thrusters, and before you can say "how fast?" we were right side up, boosting away from the rocks and out of the belt.
I set the AFMU to knit the cockpit back up, and was about to relieve the poor son of a bitch when the 'Conda finished swinging around, fancying he'd get me unawares. I drifted starboard, turned the nose back to port, and perforated his O2 tanks with a satisfying "BANG" that shook his vessel to splinters.
"Malcom, you're relieved."
"Wh-what?!"
"I said you're relieved! Get the fuck out of that chair and secure yourself in quarters." Then WHAM, just as he's about to un-latch and head back, we're rocked by a railgun blast and lurch fifty meters aft as a pair of Cobras start bearing down on us. Thank God the shield was back up or that might have been our fuel tank. "Fuck! Never mind, just close your eyes!" I switched off his in-helmet synthesizer and left him in silence. With any luck all he felt was the G forces around high bank turns and the occasional barrel roll as I cleared the two would-be assassins. By then, a few Navy buddies showed up to make sure I was okay and covered my retreat as I jumped back to supercruise.
Switching the sound back on and pulling my helmet off I flung it through the air to bounce off of his and wake him up. "What the fuck was that?!" The helmet hung motionless between us in the air, tumbling slowly end over end in the microgravity of the cabin.
Like he was coming back from a long weekend at a Centauri Beachhead, his eyes cleared up and blinked him back to full consciousness. "I... I'm sorry, what happened?"
"You choked and nearly got us killed, that's what!" I screamed over my shoulder. "I can run a ship myself if I need to, but if you're going to co-pilot with me, then I need you awake, alert, and fucking PRESENT or we're going to have a really bad fucking time, you understand me?"
He didn't answer at first. Just sort of looked at the deck in shame before absentmindedly pushing my helmet back towards me. "Yes ma'am."
"Do you want to get us killed?"
"No ma'am."
"So when I ask 'are you okay' and you are not, what are you going to say to me?" Fuck, I was livid. My chest was burning, nostrils steaming, blood running through me like molten lead as the adrenaline slowly filtered back out of my blood.
"I'm going to tell you I'm not okay," Barrett finally answered after thirty seconds that felt like an hour passed by us in seething silence.
I let cool air pass in and out of my nostrils as I drummed on the armrest with my fingers. "...Okay," I said as my blood finally cooled. "I'm taking you back to port. They still need help out there and I'll be damned if that's all I'm giving them."
Then he said the most ballsy thing I could imagine in the circumstances. "Permission to stay aboard, ma'am?"
"You better have a damn good reason to ask me that." I said, cutting the throttle and putting my face in my hands.
"I've never done this before, Rory," he said, head hung low, voice full of shame. "I've shot back at pirates before, and I've done a few telepresence battles in the CQC circuit, but I've never been in the thick of a real fight like that." He balled fists and closed his eyes and drew his lips into a line tighter than a thermal coupling. "I can't avoid this forever. You clearly know enough to keep us alive just... Let me ride along?"
I grabbed my helmet out of the air and thought a moment. "So that Federal Navy reserve job was...?"
"I ran mail and hauled biowaste," Barret said. "Every time combat duty came up I was able to get out of it. I was just reserve so they couldn't force me. I'm not exactly the fighting type..."
"I know," I said, chuckling. "That's why I hired you." I checked the subsystems, magazines, primary power, and hull integrity. Everything was still green. Probably had another hour or two worth of fight left in Paimon before I'd have to come back in if I was alone. "If we go back, it might be a while before I can get back to the station. This is your last chance to say 'I don't want to'. No shame. I hired an explorer, not a bounty hunter."
"I'm sure," he said. I watched his nerves turn to steel and that steel slip into his eyes in real time as I hauled the ship back around to the Haz Res. Without asking permission, I cued up every single classical black metal album in my collection and settled into the groove. And back there he sat, stewing in his own adrenaline as for the next hour and a half I trolled around the asteroids with Federal Navy and Law Enforcement Agents in tow, picking off pirates and collecting any escape pod we could find. By wartime standards, it was easy going. But by the time we were done, at 65% hull integrity with jacked up thrusters and empty magazines, Malcom looked like he'd spent the last two months running naked through Hell itself.
When I turned off the music as we jumped back to Bacon Port, he peeled off his helmet, turned on the inertial damper system, and hopped out of his chair. "I need a fucking shower," he said, and disappeared into the rear of the ship.
We spoke later that night at dinner. He was all neat and cleaned and freshly shaved, but his hand still shook with the shock to his system. "Well?" I asked. "How we feeling?"
He scoffed. "Like dogshit, but I'm alive."
"I'm going back out for a few hours before bed. You wanna come with?" I asked.
He set down his fork and looked at me like I had sprouted an extra head. "How do you live like this?"
And I'll be honest, I really didn't know how to answer that question. The whole reason I became a commander was to get away from all the blood and terror of killing human beings for a living. But now that I'm established, it feels like I do almost nothing but fight. "I don't know," I admitted. "Something about it just... Fits."
"And you're the same lady who wants to disappear into the black for four months looking for Raxxla?" he said, with one eyebrow raised so high it nearly kissed the ceiling.
I nodded "Yup, that's me."
He shook his head, picking his fork back up and shoving mouthfuls of fresh veggies into it as fast as he could. "Then we better hurry up," he said between bites. "I ain't tryna puss out twice in one day."
And you know something? He did a lot better. He was actually able to take on targeting and power distribution that next time. He was scared, for sure. Twitchy even. But he kept his head and did what he had to. Thanks to him, we made it out of that field 30 million credits richer with empty magazines at over 85% hull. He might be useless behind the stick in a combat zone, but I might just make a fighter out of him yet.
Though, if I'm honest... I kinda hope I don't.
See you, space cowboy.
-Rory Bael