Victor tilted his head. “He made a heavy-worlder his second-in-command.”
Fara chuckled. “And he’s just as expendable as the rest of us. More so really. Cormac and I both have valuable skills. Fowler’s just too dumb to question Warwick’s orders.”
Victor looked to Cormac. “Do you believe that?”
Cormac nodded. “It has been my observation that Warwick devalues the lives of those who fall outside the boundaries of what he considers to be ‘pure’ human.”
“If that’s true, then why am I here? I’m pure human.”
Cormac tilted his head. “Captain Hyde simply does not like you. You embarrassed him when you answered Holace Quill’s question about the Trojan horse.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “So, not only is he racist, he’s petty as well?”
Fara nodded. “Yes, but he’s not stupid. He’s set this up as a win-win for himself.”
“How so?”
“If we beat the odds and destroy the pirate base, he gets the lion’s share of the five-million-credit reward. If we fail and die, then he gets to pocket our share of the money from the antipiracy patrol.”
“Huh. So, either way, he gets money and doesn’t have to stick out his neck,” Victor said.
“Like I said, he’s not stupid,” Fara said.
“
Hrmm
. Well, I don’t plan on dying on this mission. I still have things to do,” Victor said.
“How do you propose we improve our odds of survival?” asked Cormac.
Victor thought for a moment, rubbing his rough, stubbly beard. “Can you rig a dead man’s switch on the bomb?”
“Yes. Why?” asked Cormac.
“If we get caught, we could use it as leverage to keep our skins intact,” Victor said.
Fara smiled and reached up to pat Cormac on the shoulder. “I like the way this guy thinks.”
Cormac nodded. “It should be simple enough to make. The only question is, who will carry the detonator?”
***
When the
Corsair
reached low orbit over Lucille’s Bay, a comm laser from the surface activated.
“
Lucky Corsair
, you’re back early. Where’s the
Harlot's Due
?”
“Got blasted by the merchant cruiser we hit,” Fowler said into the microphone. Cormac had rigged a voice emulator based on the voice recordings of the
Corsair
’s late captain.
“So you didn’t get any loot? Don’t waste my time getting a landing clearance if you’re coming back empty-handed.”
“We got lots of loot from the freighter,” Fowler said.
Victor shut his eyes, wishing someone else was speaking into the microphone.
“With a tiny ship like yours, I doubt it. What you have better be valuable. You’re cleared to land,” said a female with a rough voice who Victor assumed passed for Lucille’s Bay’s space traffic control.
Fowler acknowledged and closed the circuit. “Take us in, Fara.” He turned to Gaz. “Are your people ready to play pirate?”
“I say we look the part,” Gaz said.
Victor looked down at his armor, now decorated with bits taken from the suits of the
Lucky Corsair
’s former crew. The boarding party’s job was to offload the cargo, including the bomb Holace Quill paid them to deliver. That meant being outside, where the actual pirates could see them.
The prospect of that didn’t exactly fill Victor with joy. If things went sideways, which they likely would, his job was to fight off a horde of angry pirates until the
Corsair
could take off.
He hoped the dead man’s switch Cormac had fashioned would make a good deterrent, should it become necessary.
Fara broke orbit and dove the
Corsair
for the surface of the dark side of the dwarf planet.
The dwarf planet itself was utterly mundane. Its airless, cratered surface was colored in shades of green by light amplification.
Fara followed the approach vector provided by Lucille’s Bay’s traffic control, flying the ship over a shallow crater just north of the base, on a slow final approach.
Then Victor saw dozens of bright flashes coming from below. He had just enough time to remember the
Corsair
’s shields were down before multiple hammer blows shook him in his seat.
Shrapnel bounced around the bridge, one piece hitting Fowler’s chest and blowing through the back of his seat, smearing the heavy-worlder’s insides over the deck.
And then the gravity cut out, and the ship fell. Victor sealed his visor and bent over in his seat.
Seconds later, a long metallic screech echoed through the
Corsair
as the stricken ship’s hull scraped against the surface of the dwarf planet.
***
The first thing Victor noticed when he came to was the weak pull of gravity. The second thing he noticed was that he was upside down.
He looked around, confused, until the memory hit him like a bolt of lightning. The ship had been shot down. It must have rolled over as it scraped across the surface. The low gravity was likely the reason why he survived.
Victor released his straps and slowly fell to what used to be the ceiling of the
Corsair
’s bridge. He reached out with both hands to break his gentle fall and to get his feet under him.
In front of Victor, Fowler’s corpse hung from the command chair, blood seeping out the back. He was definitely dead.
But others were alive. Toren fell from his own chair, righting himself just as easily as Victor had. Gaz wasn’t in his seat. For a moment, Victor thought Gaz had been thrown out. But then Victor heard Gaz’s voice from the front of the bridge.
“Hey, you two fuckers. Help me out here!”
Gaz was cutting away at the restraints to Fara’s seat. When she dropped, Gaz caught her and set her down on the deck.
Fara suddenly woke up and let out a scream of pain, reaching down for her left leg. “Shit!”
The thick pressure suit made it hard to tell, but Victor noticed her left leg below the knee was sideways, not like a human leg was ever supposed to bend.
He opened his first aid kit and applied a painkiller patch to the side of her neck. She relaxed a few seconds later.
Gaz patted him on the back. “Good thinking, Victor.”
“Thanks, I—” Victor noticed a beeping noise coming from inside his suit. It was an unfamiliar sound; the suit wasn’t like those he used in the Republic Navy. He looked at the small status screen inside his helmet; the pressure was dropping. Breathing his suit’s air, he didn’t realize how thin the bridge’s air had become.
“We’re losing air.” Victor looked to Fara. “Where’s her helmet?”
“Don’t know,” Gaz said, flipping down the visor of his own helmet with a flick of his finger. He looked around.
“My helmet should still be on my seat,” Fara said.
Looking up, Victor saw it right where she said it would be. He grabbed it and sealed it over her head. The suit’s readouts confirmed she had a good seal, though her heart rate was still elevated.
“Thanks,” she said.
Cormac appeared from the small engineering space at the back of the bridge. He was fully suited and unhurt, much to Victor's surprise. Limbs as thin as Cormac’s looked like they would snap like twigs.
“We have a problem,” the starchild said.
“No shit!” Gaz said. “What now?”
“The bomb is gone,” Cormac said.
“You mean it fell out when we crashed?” asked Victor.
Cormac shook his head. “I mean, it is gone. The bomb is not showing up on the remote interface. I suspect it was destroyed by whatever blew away our cargo hold.”
Well, there goes our deterrent
, thought Victor. “Is our comm still online? Can we contact the
Fortune
?”
“I will check,” Cormac said.
“You better check fast, Cormac,” Gaz said. “Those pirates are gonna be here any minute to look for survivors.” He pointed to Victor and Toren. “You two fuckers better be ready to fight.”
“We could surrender,” Toren said.
“Fuck surrender. I ain’t goin’ back to being a slave,” Gaz said.
“Then we should send out a distress call and get the hell out of here. Hide out in one of the craters until the
Fortune
arrives,” Victor said.
“Yeah, good luck with that. Warwick won’t risk his neck to save us,” Fara said. She propped herself up on her elbows. Her eyes squinted against the pain of her broken leg.
Cormac pressed a button on a console. “The tightbeam laser comm is still functional. Captain Hyde should know of our status in just over an hour. I suspect he will jump from this system not long after he receives it.”
Victor sighed. “So we’re on our own.”
Cormac nodded. “I am afraid so, Victor.”
“What are our options?” asked Victor.
Gaz pulled back the slide on his grenade launcher. “I say we make a stand here and go down fighting.”
“We could surrender. We don’t have to die,” Toren said.
Gaz scowled at Toren, showing his spiked teeth. “Just for saying
surrender
a second time, you’re gonna be on point.”
Toren snarled and drew his pistol, a vacuum-rated automatic, and fired two rounds into Gaz’s chest, staggering the man backward.
Victor drew his own pistol as Toren brought his gun around. Victor fired at the same time Toren did. What felt like a sledge hammer hit Victor in the chest, driving the air from his chest and attempting to topple him. Thanks to the low gravity, he stayed on his feet.
Victor looked down where he had been hit, seeing the dent in the right side of his chestplate. His investment in quality combat armor had paid off.
“Good shot,” Gaz said, standing over Toren’s supine form. Gas leaked from the half-centimeter-wide hole in the middle of a concave dent in the heavy-worlder’s visor. The rest of the visor was painted red with blood.
“Well, it’s just up to you and me now,” Gaz said. He pointed at Victor’s inverted seat. “Grab your carbine. We’re going outside.”
Victor's gun was still attached to the side of his seat. He unlatched it and hooked one end of the gun’s strap to a ring on his suit. He then reached over his right shoulder, touching the hilt of his cutlass, finding it still in its scabbard.
Victor looked over at Fara and keyed his radio. “Will you be all right?”
She smirked through her helmet’s visor. “I don’t know about all right, but I probably won’t get any worse. At least for the moment.”
Cormac walked over to Fara. “I will keep an eye on her. If we get the chance to bring her into a pressurized environment, I can probably set her leg.”
Victor blinked. “I thought you were an engineer.”
Cormac nodded. “I am. I am also a trained medic.”
“Right. I forgot about that,” Victor said.
“You coming or what?” Gaz said via the radio.
“On my way,” Victor said. He turned and exited the bridge, traveling to the rear of the
Corsair
’s wreck.
By the time he got there, the air had gotten so thin he could no longer hear anything outside his suit. Just his breathing and the thumps of his boots as he walked.
Gaz stood at the sealed hatch leading to the cargo hold, staring through the porthole.
“I’m here,” Victor said.
Gaz turned around, a grimace on his tattooed face. “Take a look.” He gestured at the porthole.
Outside the small disk of glass, Victor saw the barren landscape of the nameless dwarf planet on which Lucille’s Bay was located. A long trench had been cut into the regolith. Pieces of the
Corsair
, including the cargo hold and drive section, were visible in the distance.
“Wow, that regolith is thick. Probably cushioned our impact. Helps explain why we’re still alive,” Victor said.
Gaz looked bored. “Yeah, whatever. Help me open this hatch.”
Victor checked the hatch's control screen. It was red with white letters written upside down in universal, helpfully warning of a hard vacuum on the other side of the hatch.
Victor checked his pressure gauge. Almost a vacuum on his side as well. There would be no explosive decompression when they forced it open.
He flipped open a panel and pulled the Emergency Override lever, deactivating the safeties. He felt a vibration through the handle, and the screen next to the hatch went green.
He nodded to Gaz, who pulled against the hatch; the heavy door swung open with ease. Outside was complete darkness.
Victor pressed a button on the back of his wrist to activate his helmet’s light amplifier, revealing the green-scale landscape of the airless dwarf planet.
“Turn off your radio when we’re outside the ship. I don’t want to give away that we’re alive,” Gaz said. His face disappeared as he activated his light amplifier, his visor going opaque to contain the green glow the amplifier gave off.