Two days later, the
Fortune
took off from Marksburg Spaceport and set course for the Vivian system jump point. It would take a week for them to reach their destination, a deserted system along the Mustang-Vespa trade route simply called Trine. The system got its name from having three tiny red-dwarf stars orbiting each other.
Several jumps from any settled system, Trine was a favorite location for pirates.
The job of
Fortune
’s crew was to find those pirates and drive them out.
Victor spent his time getting to know the crew. There were two other boarding specialists, in addition to Victor and Gaz.
The heavy-worlder Toren, a rather high-strung man who liked to spend his time drinking from a still he had jammed into his bunk. He often smelled of rotted fruit.
The other was Dom, a very muscular woman as tall as Victor, who could be charitably described as homely. She had a wide and flat face with a nose made crooked from repeated breaks. Several gold teeth filled her mouth.
None of the crew seem particularly interested in making friends with Victor. But he had seen that kind of thing before, during the war with Lysander.
He was the FNG, the Fucking New Guy. An unknown quantity, likely to get himself killed. Or one of them killed if he really screwed up. Until he was bloodied before their eyes, they wouldn’t become his friends anytime soon.
Victor spent much of his free time checking the equipment he bought. It cost half the remaining credits on his card, but he wouldn’t skimp on gear.
There was no shortage of stores selling weapons and equipment for mercenaries on Mustang. Victor had first tried to see if any variblades were for sale, but all the ones he found were obvious fakes.
Instead he settled for a short curved blade with a basket hilt—a cutlass, as the vendor had called it. It had a tip like a Japanese
tanto
sword and was sharp enough to shave with.
The most expensive item he bought was a vacuum-rated suit of armor. While the suit itself was sound, he had to spend a fair amount of money on replacement filters, which he had to then install while in flight. But he needed these for all the environments he was sure to encounter.
He also bought a couple vacuum-rated firearms. They were both simple weapons: a pump-action shotgun with a detachable magazine, and a revolver that fired low-recoil, high-velocity rounds. The latter wouldn’t have much stopping power, but it would punch through most body armor and wouldn’t launch Victor into an escape trajectory in the process.
He spent a few hundred more credits on changes of clothing and sundry items. He deposited what money remained on the card in a bank account on Mustang. It wouldn’t do to lose thousands of credits by having the card slip from his pocket.
One thing Victor became accustomed to was carrying his weapons on his person. All the mercs on the
Fortune
did. He wasn’t sure if it was just the look for mercenaries or because they simply didn’t trust each other. Possibly both, he supposed.
He kept his cutlass in a sheath on his back; wearing the blade at his hip like he was accustom to simply got in the way. He holstered his pistol at his right thigh and stored his shotgun in the locker under his bunk.
It was somewhat amusing, spending his time on ship armed to the teeth, as well as worrying. All the guns being carried around presented a very real risk of a negligent discharge. The
Fortune
’s hull was more than capable of surviving a hit by a bullet, but stray bullets could still bounce around the interior, hitting important things. Like Victor, for example.
Other than managing his equipment, Victor cleaned the ship's head, per Fowler’s orders. Victor hadn’t cleaned a head since his days as a midshipman, and the heads of the
Fortune
were far dirtier than those of any Republic warship, at least before he brought them up to navy standards.
After the fourth day of bathroom cleaning, Victor was polishing a metal surface when Captain Hyde walked in and whistled. “Damn, I don’t think this head has been so clean since the
Fortune
left the shipyard. You should’ve told me that you used to be a janitor.”
“No, Captain, I just like to keep things clean,” Victor said.
“
Hrmmph
. Fowler should have you clean the kitchen,” Warwick said.
“If you say so, Captain.” Victor smirked. “Just so long as I don’t have to cook, I’m afraid I’m no good at that.”
The
Fortune
’s captain smiled back. “No, I think we’ve found your talent. You’re a very neat man. Military neat.”
Victor kept his face carefully blank.
Warwick’s smile broadened. “I suspected as much. You fold hospital corners when you made your bunk. No one else on the crew does that. Not even Cormac, and he’s the neatest creature I know. What outfit were you with?”
“I’d rather not say,” Victor said.
Warwick regarded him for a moment. “Fair enough. Dishonorably discharged, I take it?”
Victor couldn’t help but smirk. “After a fashion.”
“You mentioned a lot of skills—piloting, navigating…”
“And gunnery, Captain.” Victor had done time as both a helmsman and a gunner early in his career, before he had settled into command.
Warwick nodded. “An officer then. That would explain the diverse skill set. Well, if you survive your time in Gaz’s goon squad, then perhaps I could put your other skills to use.”
Victor was curious why Warwick didn’t want to put Victor’s skills to use now. “Yes, Captain.”
Warwick nodded and left. It was the first time since coming aboard that the captain had talked with Victor.
A day out from Trine, Victor was in the workshop, spending his free time checking his suit, making it ready for combat. The suit was steel gray, with darker gray protective plating covering the vitals. It wasn’t power armor, so it wouldn’t stop any really heavy-duty weapons, but most small-arms fire would be stopped by the plating. At least he hoped they would.
“Hello there,” a woman said.
Victor turned. It was Fara, the nightwoman, standing at the hatch. “Hi.”
She pointed at Victor’s suit. “Working on your suit, I see.”
Victor looked down at the suit laid out on the table and then back to Fara. “Just testing the airtight integrity. Hopefully I won’t run into anyone testing its ballistic integrity.”
She chuckled. “I wouldn’t hope too hard. The captain likes taking jobs where people get shot at.”
“People like me, you mean,” Victor said.
She smiled, her large black eyes studying Victor. “Yes. Though you don’t seem too worried about it.”
Victor smiled. He hadn’t been worried about anything since his world was destroyed. Just angry. “I know the risks.”
“Do you?” she asked incredulously. “Are you aware of how many boarding specialists we go through?”
“A lot, I take it,” Victor said.
She nodded. “Gaz is the only one who’s lasted more than a year. But, as he’s a former fighting slave, he’s bred for close-quarters combat.”
Victor didn't know that, but it made sense. Based on his appearance, Gaz was meant to kill, and probably die, spectacularly. “I take it all the others didn’t get promoted out?”
“The only ones who didn’t die were the ones who got wise and quit when we returned to port,” Fara said.
Victor looked at her, curious, and not just because he found her attractive. “Why are you telling me this?”
She smiled cryptically. “The heads are cleaner than they’ve ever been. For that, you deserve to know Captain Hyde likes to expend boarding specialists like ammunition. They’re easy enough to replace. Just have to hire some tough guy at the next port.”
“Well,…thanks for telling me,” Victor said.
A thin black eyebrow rose. “You seem awfully calm for someone who’s just been told they’ll probably die.”
“We’ll all die at some point. Some sooner than others,” Victor said.
“
Hrmm
.” Fara stroked her pointed chin. “A fatalist, I see.”
Victor thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Yes, I suppose I am.” He shrugged. “Comes from living longer than I should.”
Fara’s brows furrowed. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Victor responded with a cryptic smile of his own.
Chapter 7
The
Fortune
arrived in Trine without incident, flying from the Messer 32 jump point at several hundred kilometers per second.
Captain Hyde ordered the ship to battle stations before the jump, so Victor sat with the three other boarding specialists in full combat gear. He locked his helmet over his head but kept the visor up.
“Contact!” announced Captain Hyde. “Looks like we lucked out. We got a twofer. Just caught a couple pirates knocking over a freighter. ETA to intercept, thirty minutes.”
Victor did some quick math in his head. Despite being a smaller ship, the
Fortune
had the same acceleration as his long-lost
Osprey
. That meant the contacts were a mere two million klicks away. Well within missile range, but missiles were expensive and tended not to leave much to salvage.
Warwick would want to close the distance and use kinetic weapons to disable both vessels. Then it would be Victor’s time to get to work.
“You fuckers all ready?” asked Gaz from his seat. His combat armor was as decorated as him, with patterns drawn over the plating using white enamel, matching the pattern of the black ink over his skin.
Toren and Dom both gave Gaz curt acknowledgments. Their suits were Spartan compared to their leader’s but still far more decorated than the uniform armor Victor had encountered during his navy days. Mercenary life was more colorful in both a literal and figurative sense.
“’Bout you, new fucker?” Gaz asked, looking Victor in the eyes.
Victor looked right back into the pit fighter’s eyes and nodded. Gaz nodded back and turned his attention to the feed inside his helmet.
Victor busied himself by checking his straps and weapons. He kept his pistol in a holster built into the suit’s waist and the shotgun secured to his chest by a magnetic connector.
The cutlass remained on his back, as usual, the handle just peeking over his shoulder. He reached up and grabbed the hilt and gave it a soft tug; the scabbard was tight enough to keep the blade from floating out in 0 g.
He repeated the process again and again as the
Fortune
moved to engage the pirates. He always got a little nervous before combat, but this was different. Every other time he went into battle, he fought from a control console and could easily distract himself by doing his job.
Now, as a mercenary boarding specialist, all he could do was sit here and wait. He developed a whole new level of empathy for the Republic Navy armsmen, all dead now, who had served under his command.
After half an hour passed, Victor felt the
Fortune
tremble as she fired her spinal gun. Victor counted the bursts. One, two, three—
As the fourth burst fired, he heard a
bang
and then a hiss. Instinct made him slam down his visor. Over the radio he heard Gaz’s rough voice echo through his helmet.
“That’s near us, fuckers.” He undid his straps and stood. The others, including Victor, followed him from their compartment.
The hissing sound continued over their suit feed, as they found a hole in the side of the ship’s pressure hull. The rest of the corridor was a scorched mess. The puncture likely came from a plasma jet generated by a hit to the outer hull.
On the opposite bulkhead were the scorched and splattered remains of an unidentified crewman.
“Well, that fucker’s dead,” Gaz said. “Cap, we got a hole in access corridor four. Gonna patch it. Also looks like…someone got splattered. Can’t tell who.”
“Worry about that later, Gaz. There’s still one more pirate ship I need to deal with. Patch that hole quickly. Air costs money.”
“You got it,” Gaz said. He walked over to a storage locker and pulled out an emergency patch kit. A hole had punched neatly right through the center of it. “Well, fuck me.”
Toren and Dom ran down opposite ends of the corridor, presumably to find another patch kit. Or so Victor hoped. For his part, he knelt down over what was left of the crewmember’s body and pulled out his utility knife.
“What are you doing, fucker?” asked Gaz.
“I’ll fashion a temporary patch from the dead guy’s suit so we don’t lose more air while the others look for a patch kit,” Victor said as he made his cuts. He peeled away the suit from one of the dead man’s legs until he had a patch of material large enough to cover the hole. He tried to ignore the pale white flesh of the leg revealed by his efforts. He walked over and covered the hole. The suction pulled the patch outward, but Victor kept it from being sucked into space.
Most important, the gush of air escaping from the hull stopped.