Smuggler's Dilemma (36 page)

"What could we do against a dreadnaught? Even more, what if we got it, what would we do with it?" Tabby asked.

Nick was on it. Just like he always was. "Leverage. The Navy's got us over a barrel. If we had control of that ship, we'd have leverage."

"Are you nuts?" Tabby asked looking first to Nick then to me to get my support.

"It takes a lot of people to man a ship that size," I said.

"If they lost their first fleet, they're already short of manpower. There can't be anything more than a skeleton crew on that dreadnaught and most of those workers are press-gang and won't provide any real resistance. The key is getting control of the bridge. Red Houzi Captains are afraid of the crew and as a result the bridge controls everything. The only problem is, it's also the most heavily armored part of the ship," Xie said.

My mind spun with options. We could escape right now, Tabby would get her arm replaced and we'd get the Navy off of our backs. The target was tantalizing, though. What Xie was saying was easy to understand and believe. Unfortunately, those were hallmarks of a good deception.

"How do you propose we get command control?" Nick asked. Straight to the point. If we couldn't sail the ship, then all was for naught.

"We bluff. I bet I outrank anyone on that station," Xie said.

It was almost too ridiculous even for me. "You want me to believe we could walk in there and just take it?"

"No. It wouldn't go that way," she said. "Whoever the captain is, he won't be giving control to anyone of any rank. But if we can get to him, I'll get the command turned over to you."

"Let me guess, you'd need to be in charge? What'd stop you from just turning on us once we're inside?" Marny asked.

"What if I could get us on the ship? Could you get us to be recognized as friendlies for long enough to make it to the bridge?" I asked.

Xie was having trouble with that. "How would you do that?"

"They can't possibly have patched that thing up entirely. When we saw it last, there were three hundred square meter sections of missing armor. We could just sail in."

"That'd never work. They'd see us coming," Tabby said and she pointed at the holo. "And this ship looks patched up."

"No, that's just the AI filling in details. The missing sections wouldn't really light up that well. I'm with Liam on this. We could probably get on board," Nick said.

"There's no way to know if their systems will recognize me," Xie said.

"I'm not sure if they need to. We're talking about pirates here," Marny said. "How much inter-factional fighting is there?"

"Competition between the franchises is pretty fierce," Xie said.

"Fierce enough that you might see a power play while the fleet's away?" Marny asked.

"Of course," Xie answered.

Marny gave us a frightening smile. "I've got a plan,"

Like most of our plans, this one wasn't particularly complex. The first part was simple. We had to get close enough to see if we could actually land the
Hotspur
inside the big ship.

Xie knelt on the stairs between the two pilot's chairs. It gave her a good look through the glass in front of us, which was all we'd have since we were totally blacked out.

"They'll have a lot of defensive guns. You don't have to worry about them, though, because if they see the ship, we'll be dust before we know it," she said. I didn't find the comment to be overly helpful.

I held my breath as we passed the outer ring of asteroids. If our armor was leaking energy we'd know it shortly. We were strapped in and prepared for a combat burn, but I agreed with Xie on this. We'd have to be extremely lucky not to get tagged by their defensive systems if they saw us.

I breathed more easily as we sailed, apparently unseen, beyond the outer ring and approached the dreadnaught. Then, my heart fell as we passed along the flank of the giant ship. Somehow, they'd reskinned the missing sections of armor. It wasn't armor, but it might as well have been, because there wouldn't be any stealth landing.

"I'm backing off," I said. Everyone was listening intently on the crew's comm channel.

"I think we're down to Plan-B," Marny said.

I released a breath. "I've always been a big proponent of Plan-B."

BLITZKRIEG

"I hate this," Tabby said.

"Of course you do," I said. "You're a warrior at heart. The thing is, there are a lot of lives that are counting on the Navy knowing where this base is. If we're unsuccessful, you have to make that call. People are depending on you."

I gave her a lingering kiss and made my way down to the hold. Marny and Nick had already powered up their mechanized suits and Xie, tiny in her armored vac-suit, stood next to them holding a blaster rifle. I hopped into my mech-suit, still dormant in its crate. I think I'd always known it would come down to this.

I thought back to a couple of weeks ago when I'd first been introduced to the suit and how difficult it had been to even stand up. It didn't feel like a second skin yet, but I was more comfortable with it than I had been. I raised easily to my feet and did a few turns to make sure everything was limber.

"Cap, run through the checklist I just sent you," Marny said. I ran through the mostly familiar list that Big Pete had taught us. Marny had added a few additional ones that included the weaponry.

She continued, "I'm setting you both on three shot for your primary weapon and you'll have door breaching grenades as secondary. I've programmed that as Alpha. Beta setting is auto fire and heavy grenade loads. Be careful with that. You can run out of ammo pretty quickly that way."

"Roger that," I said. I cycled through the weapons interface. It was a little overwhelming.

Beta
, I said. I heard a positive chime and noticed the HUD's indicator showed AUTO where previously there'd been three bullets.

Alpha
, I said. It changed back to the three bullet display.

"I think I've got it," I said. "Marny, I'm taking tactical for the EVA. Once we're on board, it's all you."

"Aye, Cap," she acknowledged.

I cycled the atmo from the hold. We were too big to go back through the hallway to the hatch on the side of the ship.

"Tabby, we're ready for approach," I said.

I watched through my HUD as she carefully sailed us past the outer ring again and approached the same starboard flank where the new skin had recently been patched in. I lowered the cargo bay's ramp just enough for us to exit, hoping that the puff of residual atmo wouldn't draw any attention. From this point, we were on communication blackout.

I was the last to push off from the ship and I pressed the interior panel causing the ramp to retract. It was Tabby's signal to clear the area. She gently nudged the ship away. We were completely exposed, adrift next to the enemy behemoth.

With mere whispers from our arc-jets, we drifted, more than sailed toward the ship. So far, we either hadn't been seen or they were deciding what to do with us. I could imagine Marny chastising me to simply stay in the moment. If it wasn't something I could control, then I needed to put it out of my mind. Distractions would get us killed.

We landed on the side of the ship. It was easy to see how the decks were laid out from the welds stitched across the otherwise pristine metallic surface. The next step would be critical to our plan.

Nick placed the welder/cutter against the hull of the ship. Our gamble was simple. The material the pirates had stretched across the large wound would only be thick enough to hold atmosphere. They were, no doubt, still manufacturing armor. Without the ability to hold atmo however, they wouldn't be able to repair the interior systems damaged in the fight. There was no way to know what was behind the skin.

My suit's visor dimmed when Nick's cutter fired up. The light was extremely bright light and it made me nervous, but there was nothing to be done. His first cut wasn't deep and we were careful to stay away from the meter-radius hole he etched in the surface. His goal was to weaken the metal and allow it to blow out if there was atmo built up behind it. When Nick finally cut through, no atmo escaped. A few minutes later, the panel finally came loose and started to slowly flutter away from the ship.

I grabbed the metal disc before it could go too far, and held it in place while Nick tacked a small hinge in place. The plan was to pull the piece closed behind us, covering our tracks. The deception wouldn't last long and the crew would know we were here soon, regardless.

Marny jumped through the hole and I followed. All of our training in teams would pay off here. It didn't matter that we were in mechanized suits, the rules still applied. I knew Nick would be right behind me and we'd instructed Xie to stay between Nick and myself as much as possible. It would be the safest spot for a squishy.

We entered a vast open deck on the ship and clung to the side. Overall the ship was shaped like a huge shallow V. This deck was littered with debris and stretched across what looked like the entire two hundred meters width of the ship. It also extended forward a hundred fifty meters which was about ten percent of the ship's length. It wasn't hard to understand why we'd gone undetected so far.

Nick grabbed the metal disc he'd cut out and pulled it down, bending the metal, so that it sort of covered the hole. It would be discovered at some point. We needed to move.

My AI started mapping out the interior space, relating it to what we knew about the overall dimensions of the ship. It would continue to build out the map as long as more area was explored.

"Let's move," Marny said. Once again we were communicating using only line of sight transmitters. It made everyone's voice sound tinny, but it was better than announcing our arrival. She'd also assumed tactical command now that we were inside the ship.

Marny pushed away from the wall and slunk forward, sinking to the deck. My HUD showed that there was .1g. It was enough to hold items to the deck but wouldn't take much ship's energy to maintain.

We stayed close to the outer wall and moved forward, finally arriving at a large airlock that was big enough to move equipment between these large lower decks.

"It's locked," Marny said.

"We could bust our way through," I offered.

"No. They'll be on to us right away," Xie said. "Stand against the wall. Let me try to get us through. If that doesn't work, you can blast your way in. Stand back so they can't see you through the airlock."

We pulled back around the corner and Xie took Nick's welding unit from him and stood in front of the airlock door.

"
Bakunawa
command, this is Captain Mie-su. I need an unlock on the airlock in front of me," she said.

"Mie-su, I thought you were dead. What are you doing on my ship?" a voice came back.

"Identify yourself," she said.

"Captain Jakab. I'm sending a squad your way. I'm taking you into custody," he replied.

"Don't be an idiot, Jakab. I was sent to infiltrate your ship and I've done just that. Don't make it worse on yourself."

"Pardon me if I don't believe you," he said.

"Up to you, but you better send more than a squad. I'm feeling frisky," she said.

"Are you nuts?" I asked.

"No. I'm trusting you to come get me, Liam," she said.

"What? I don't understand."

"Jakab will drag me up to the bridge so he can humiliate me. I'll transmit everything I see along the way, you'll get a map of the ship. It's the only way," she said.

It was already in motion and there was nothing I could do about it. I had to decide who she was playing. If she was playing us, we were in for trouble. If she could get us a path to the bridge, it would be worth a lot.

It took a few minutes for a group of armor vac-suited pirates to show up. Contrary to her bluster she lay her blaster rifle on the ground in front of her and knelt on the floor with her hands behind her head.

"Not so tough," the lead pirate said, taking the opportunity to club her with the stock of his gun. It took all I had not to leave our cover at that moment. They'd sent six pirates, all men, after one single woman. Impressive.

As promised, Xie was transmitting as they drug her down the hallway and to a lift. It took nearly five minutes to drag her to their destination, but she finally stood in front of a red-faced man. The bridge was nestled deep in the center of the ship.

"So what is this about?" he asked.

A crew member approached and said something to Jakab that we were unable to hear, but it became quickly obvious what the conversation was.

"She's transmitting?" Jakab asked.

"Secure her," he screamed. "We've got intruders. Sound the alarm. Lock down the ship."

"Cap, we've got to move," Marny said.

I cut off the stream of information coming from Xie. It would distract me. I just hoped she'd make it through.

"Go!" I said.

Marny erupted from where we'd hunkered down. The end of her left arm sent a stream of explosives towards the airlock. We were in a vacuum so we didn't hear anything, but the lock exploded and atmosphere boiled across the deck. Marny, not waiting for the chaos to subside, charged into the fiery tumult.

"We've got to move, they'll be locking down that bridge," she said, sprinting forward.

The lift was a hundred meters directly forward, but two doors slid down, triggered by the sudden loss of pressure. We wouldn't be able to clear them both, but we successfully got under the first one before it slammed shut behind us.

"Blitzkrieg," Marny said. It was a tactic we'd discussed. Essentially, we would overrun enemy lines and not stop to engage, striking at the heart of the target.

"Go," I said.

She fired an ordinance at the bulkhead that had slammed down, blocking our path. The atmosphere had already started to return to this end of the hallway and no explosive decompression occurred when the door blew.

Marny charged through the opening. Before I was even clear of the smoke, I heard blaster fire and red targets appeared on my HUD. Marny wasn't stopping, however. I moved just to the left of her and raised my left arm, firing a grenade down the hallway.