Indiscretion
17 Aug 2020Robert Lees
3306-02-26 2300INTERDICTION TETHER ESTABLISHED
The energy stream connected, forcing Lees back into his seat as Patricia’s drive acceleration jumped suddenly to match his target’s speed. The little Viper’s frame groaned and creaked under the stress, and the commander gritted his teeth as he fought against the controls, trying to maintain the tenuous link. The hazy image of a ship about a light second away jittered across his HUD. It was an Adder, and was to be his final mark in this ‘covert elections combat operation.’ A number of these politicians must have got their hands dirty in some way or another, because Lees’ transactions panel was filled with bounty tokens; enough to clear his own name and possibly even cover mission costs.
Some of them, however, were not so guilty - not in an official capacity, at least. The pleas for innocence and soliciting for negotiation from those pilots were hard to push through, and their hailing attempts amounted to no more than a distraction in his peripheral. Lees was no mass-murderer. Though perhaps if he had been, his attempts at self-justification would be less deplorable.
INTERDICTION COMPLETE
He felt the boom and dull roar of space giving way as the drive cut off and Patricia tumbled out of warp. He quickly compensated for the ship’s disorientation and zeroed in on the Adder, which had dropped a few hundred metres away. A muffled pop announced the arrival of another vessel and its unprofiled blip on the radar. Sure enough, he could make out a second silhouette in the virtual heads-up, which spun around, trying to get a bead on him. The wideband communicator immediately started filling as the pair protested his intervention.
“...thought we gave ATR the slip... Nah, it ain’t security. Probably just another snitch... Shit. The boss ain’t gonna like this...”
Lees deployed hardpoints and tailed the Adder, which ducked and weaved surprisingly effectively. The pilot likely wasn’t about to bet on its limitations in combat, choosing instead to buy time while their frame shift recharged. It took some adjustments, but Lees eventually managed to keep the craft in Patricia’s sights. He steadied the trigger, and the little Viper quivered with electromagnetic energy traveling along the armatures of its twin rails, before releasing the sabots with a jolt. The Adder’s shields were ruptured almost instantly, but no sooner had Lees opened fire than he came under attack himself. Turned out the enemy wingman was piloting a Vulture, also with bounty, but irrelevant to the mission. Its large weapon placements would potentially make short work of him should he miss a beat.
The Adder’s movements became more erratic, likely diverting power to engines as the last of its shields crumbled. Lees improvised with some manoeuvres of his own, but couldn’t avoid taking some incoming multi-cannon fire from the Vulture. He was just about to funnel some power to shields when the target lock indicator flashed up, prompting a new plan of action:
SURGE DETECTED
In some ways, he was thankful for the limited options available to him now that the other party was ready to escape. Lees cranked all available power into weapons and engines, burning hard to catch up to the fleeing Adder, at the same time letting loose as much hypersonic metal as his ship could physically put out. His shields quickly fell, and the heat generated from the rails quickly took Patricia over several of her limits.
That’s my girl. Hang in there...
Alarms buzzed and sparks flew in the cockpit. He was right behind the target now, his vision tunnelling as he struggled to keep it centred. Sabot after sabot struck its hull, from only a single rail now, as the other conductor pairing had malfunctioned. Thankfully, the Adder’s thrusters eventually gave in and it veered off course, losing its jump vector and charge. At least it wouldn’t be running anymore. Lees followed, ignoring the warnings as the Vulture’s cannons tore into his own hull. Fortunately his drives were holding up, and he increased throttle once more to shift position, putting the Adder between him and his pursuer.
Just a little more...
He strafed the dying ship and sustained fire, pushing his temperature over a hundred and fifty degrees. Through bleary eyes he cursed his choice of flight suit - an old pirated model with less-than-optimal cooling systems - yet kept it together all the same. The Vulture buzzed angrily, showing no regard for its doomed companion, now only looking to finish what had been started. Its dual machine guns continued to spray as Lees dispensed a payload of chaff, causing a sporadic hail of bullets to pepper what remained of the Adder’s hull. He landed a couple more direct hits with his good rail, and the target went up in one final blaze.
Lees didn’t register the bounty chit or logs announcing completion of the mission. He routed everything Patricia had to engines and boosted through twisting debris, narrowly avoiding the stocky anatomy of the Vulture. He didn’t like to leave potential trouble-makers in his wake, but his Viper was in no state to stick around and fight. Besides, he was confident HQ would see that any post-op enquiries were dealt with, and any loose ends swiftly tied.
With hard points stowed, he set a course for a random nearby system. He was primed for hyper space before his assailant had a chance to interfere again.
* * *
Lees’ ship hung quietly in a pocket of space, some ways off a lone M-Class star - unceremoniously named with an arbitrary combination of digits - somewhere in the Hyades Sector. Patricia had jumped as far as she could in one go, to an uninhabited system, with the lowest traffic density the galaxy map could find. He checked the navigation panel, which read ‘0-5’ vessels in the last twenty-four hours.
Can’t get much more discreet than that.
He flicked through his messages, obsessively deleting all recent hails and mid-combat barks as though they were a stain on his records, not to mention his psyche. He found one from the representative of Escuadron Centinelas, promising remuneration, and archived it. The election to which this mission had been so surreptitiously yet violently related was a preliminary to an anti-retreat movement. Give the right people a taste of power, a glimmer of hope, and they will tear a star system at its political seams. During their turmoil, the Forces would step in and exact control, enjoying a handsome boost in influence while appeals from other suitors would go unanswered.
At least, this was how it looked within Lees’ limited understanding. He was quite content with being told where to go and what to shoot, but sometimes this meant working briefly against the tide of influence that his brethren had strived for in and around the cube of SSF presence. Indeed, to one who didn’t know better, a number of the transgressions he had racked up were sure to paint him as an enemy of the Forces. He would need to return to base without attracting attention if he was to return at all.
Having finished his inbox housekeeping, Lees opened the ship interface panel to assess damage. A pre-injected cartridge was jammed in the faulty rail armature, producing even more heat build-up during the jump, which had apparently spread to the other internals. Shields and sensors were shot, and he wouldn’t be getting them back without subjecting Patricia to a reboot and repair sequence. He cursed to himself and uttered her an apology. Even in an empty system he was a sitting duck after an emergency drop, but with no more module reinforcement and hull integrity teetering at sub-thirty percent, he wasn’t about to take any chances.
The little yellow Viper was plunged into darkness the instant he confirmed the procedure and everything powered down. He put on his helmet as life support followed suit, and the sound of his own breathing took over his senses. He watched the seven-odd minute timer begin to tick down, then promptly tried to forget it, occasionally glancing over to check progress as priority sub-systems underwent their painfully slow restoration.
Then, through the external auditory array, Lees heard another sound. One he had not expected; one that filled him with immediate dread.
Letting out an audible expletive, he peered up through the canopy in time to see the afterglow of a ship dropping in from light speed. There was very little chance of any security passing through this unknown system. Could it have been the Vulture? How did they find him? Surely they weren’t so boneheaded as to fit a high wake scanner on such a power-hungry combat outfit. No, that wasn’t it. He couldn’t make out the silhouette, but it looked bigger than his mission targets. It loomed in the empty smartglass, undisturbed by reticules or targeting information; just a sinister, dark smear against the stars.
A voice suddenly came through on an unencrypted wideband channel.
“My, my... Looks like somebody’s on their way home from quite a party!”
Lees wouldn’t have responded even if he was able. He held the controls tight, tracking reboot status in the corner of his helmet’s HUD.
Something seemed to stir near the faint outline of his uninvited guest. The space beneath it shimmered, and another smaller shape freed itself, casually circling the parent body once, before coming to rest off its starboard quarter. A ship-launched fighter.
“Whaddya make of it, Pilot?” The thick Texan accent prickled over tentative comms.
“Beats me, Cap,” said a woman’s voice. “But I vote ‘bag and tag.’ No special treatment.”
“Aw come on, where’s the fun in that?” said the first voice. “Two to one says we’re goin’ in for a closer look.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s only two of us, Cap.”
“My word counts as double! Now, no funny business unless I give the order, or our friend here tries somethin’ clever.”
To Lees’ utter dismay the engines of both craft flared up, and they began a slow, deliberate approach. He didn’t need his radar to tell hardpoints were deployed and aimed his way. The reboot timer ticked on excruciatingly as the pair closed in.
“Lights are off,” said the first voice. “Don’t tell me nobody’s home?”
As the last of the repairs finished and Patricia came to life, Lees hit her high beams in a moment of desultory inspiration, before gunning the throttle, heading straight towards the blinded intruder - which he could now clearly discern as the sleek, efficient form of a Krait Mark II.
“Son of a--!”
There was a dreadful grinding noise followed by a resonant strumming as the Viper clipped the antennae mount on top of the Krait, missing the canopy by a few metres. Lees boosted, trying to put as much distance between them as he could while firing up the frame shift drive.
“What’s the matter, darlin’?” the Texan snarled. “Ain’t gonna stick around for one last rodeo!?”
The Krait couldn’t quite wheel around in time to get a good shot, but the fighter quickly closed the gap. Lees’ ship broke mass lock and he released another chaff cluster, relieved to see beam lasers wildly flaring on all sides of the canopy in a relatively harmless light show. They nicked at the newly repaired shields, which held up just long enough for the FSD to finish charging.
He couldn’t make out the final comms exchange between his hunters as the countdown ended and a quantum tunnel opened up before him, swallowing what was left of the Viper into a patch of nomadic spacetime.
Nebulous currents and distant stars shot past, and Lees collapsed in his chair. The air escaped from his lungs in a sigh of relief and laughter, and he couldn’t help wondering at which point it was that humankind had come to put so much faith in so much uncertainty.
He closed his eyes, feeling dizzier for it, but no less safe. He took his hand from the throttle and ran it habitually over the armrest, offering his silent thanks to Patricia, who had seen him out of yet another fine mess. The fabric of space washed over them both, and he trusted that when the tunnel closed, they would be one step closer to home.