The Knockabouts Read online

  “They were wearing police uniforms. That doesn’t make them cops.”

  “Commo traffic says different. Play it, Ho.”

  “All of the communications traffic we captured, Mister Jessop?”

  “Just the portion where the ‘idiot’ is mentioned.”

  Teller glanced at the Mech. “I’d forgotten he was here.”

  A hiss came over the command deck speakers, and then it was gone. “Some idiot really fouled up. They’re here now!” The sound of weapons fire popped and hissed in the background. “They are early. Far earlier than you said would be the case. The planned ambush is blown. We tried to get in place, but we didn’t get here in time and it’s turned into a firefight in broad daylight, and one that’s going to Hades fast,” said one voice.

  “Get the case and make sure there are no living witnesses,” said another voice. “Check their ship as well, there may be someone aboard. We’ll worry about the rest after.”

  “We have blues down and a Sergeant Florry nosing around. How do we deal with that? The duty sergeant and watch commander will come down on us like Gorsaurians on a free buffet if this takes too long. They’re not in on this and I don’t know what section this Florry is assigned to.”

  “Florry’s not a cop, he’s mil so forget him. You get the damned case first. After that, you clear out, dummy up, and don’t get stupid. When they investigate, all they’ll know is some cops got shot on C-Deck. You just responded to an incident. You don’t know a thing about it. Got it?”

  “And if our injured brother blues talk?”

  “Make sure that doesn’t happen. If they can’t walk away, they go to the morgue, not the med center.”

  “All right. Grim work, but if it’s gotta be done…. I hope whatever’s in the case is worth it. I guess our splits get bigger.”

  “Less cops, bigger chunk. Considering what they’re paying us, I’d guess it’s worth murdering however many it takes. It’s corporate, Bombo, so don’t screw it up. We don’t get the case, then we get something else. Got me?”

  “Got it.”

  The recording stopped.

  “We pulled that from one of the police bands,” Jessop said.

  “So it was dirty cops…,” Teller said. “They said it was corporate too. That could mean a lot of things.”

  “ARC Lance, this is Boddan-Three Control. Return to Commerce Station. I repeat, return to Commerce Station. This is an order, not a request.”

  “Perhaps we should,” Ursula said. “If a rival of Altairie hired corrupt police officers, the proper authorities should be able to get to the bottom of this.”

  “And if those dirty cops happen to be the ones who drag us off to lockup?” Teller said as he scanned his displays. “What then? If another corp is backing this play, there could be a lot more people with proper authority looking to do us in if they’re paying enough. I say we clear this system and—”

  “Station bringing up defense system and alerting patrol ships,” Ord said.

  “That tears it. We run and straighten this out where nobody is shooting at us. Let’er buck,” Teller said as he pushed the thruster controls forward and altered course. “I’m taking us around Boddan-Three. The station’s sensors can’t track us through a planet, plus there is a moon we might use to mask our trip out of here. It isn’t much, but it’s something.”

  . . .

  Sergeant Florry watched as police swarmed over the scene of the fight and the berth where the ship ARC Lance had rested. Although not a police officer, he knew they were contaminating the crime scene. He found it odd there were no medical personnel on scene yet. Unless ordered by higher authority or he received a request from the police, Florry could not intervene. He had little to do but seethe until Nance could raise the security forces commander on the overtaxed communications system.

  “Sarge, I got him!” she said finally.

  Florry let out a breath as he walked to Nance’s console.

  “Sir, Sergeant Florry here. I saw the entire incident, sir.”

  “You saw the attack on the police officers? Can you identify the assailants aboard the spacecraft?”

  Florry’s brow furrowed. “The men in the berthing area were actually cops, sir? They were the assailants, not the people on the ship.”

  “That’s not what I was told, sergeant.”

  “I observed the entire incident, sir, as did members of my section. We have vid evidence.”

  “Then this will be messy, Florry. One way or another,” The commander growled quietly. “Right now, I need you to take command of the Rapid Reaction Force and board the patrol craft S-21. They are part of the pursuit of this ship and need a boarding party in case they can affect an intercept. The RRF is ready to go and they’ll meet you there. I’ll expect a full report when you return.”

  “On my way, sir.” Florry waved at Nance and rushed out the door. You wanted to get out from behind the desk… you got it.

  . . .

  “We’re clear of the station’s sensors, but we have other sensor platforms and patrol ships out here,” Teller said. “We need to stay on our toes, keep our sensors on a swivel, and get clear of the gravity well as soon as possible.”

  “Can I assist?” Jessop said.

  “I’m not sure what I might do,” Ursula said with a shrug, “but I’ll help also.”

  “Two more sets of eyes for displays,” Ord said.

  Teller spared a glance at his friend. “Good point.” He looked over his left shoulder at the two dormant stations on the port side of the command deck. “Green up all stations.”

  Ord flipped some switches and the displays on the two portside and one starboard station came to life, the portside seats sliding out and open.

  “Can I be of assistance, Captain Skellum?” Ho offered.

  “You’re on the weapons station. Don’t touch a smoking thing, got me?”

  “I do, Captain Skellum.”

  “We’re not looking to use any weapons except for defensive purposes. We scorch some ship in pursuit, we’ll still have to answer for it even if we get clear of whatever that was on Commerce Station.”

  “Where do you want me, Captain?” Jessop asked.

  Teller cracked a slight smile. “Engineering if you think you can handle it. Raik, you’re on defensive weapons and systems.”

  She nodded with an uneasy look. “You don’t expect me to—?”

  “We can control the anti-missile systems and shields from here. I want you to watch the display. Put those corporate organizational skills to use. It’ll show the ships and weapons out there, their types and nomenclatures, their velocities, closure rates, things like that. All you have to do is call them out.”

  Alarms sounded from the defensive monitors on Ord’s panel. “Two patrol ships coming over the top of planet, subjective. Tracking us,” he said.

  Teller let out a breath. “Looks like we’ll have to dance before they’ll let us go.”

  “Your engineering station is in need of calibration,” Jessop said.

  “No doubt. We only use it during major overhauls. It’s a bit finicky. Might take a while.”

  “I think I remember how to do it.”

  “We have three… five, no six orbital platforms tracking us,” Ord said as his displays sounded alarms. “Several from groundside too. More coming up.”

  “This says the two ships are tracking with missile targeting systems,” Ursula said. “We are continuing to pull away.”

  “All right. Ord, get the shields up. If Jessop can get the engineering station up, he can monitor and adjust.”

  “Powering up shields.” Ord paused and watched the display. “Up.”

  “Show them at ninety-seven percent efficiency,” Jessop said. “I’ll have them into the double nines in a couple of units.”

  Teller did a double take at the back of Jessop’s head. “The station’s calibrated?”

  “I used to do this for a living, kid.” Jessop kept his gaze on his instrument panels. Teller
saw the engineer’s cheek wrinkle with a smile.

  “You play’em close to the chest, old man. I’m taking us at the moon. We put it between us and all the sensors snooping us, we’ll get out of here clean. Straps tight, I’m putting some distance on the tubs behind us.”

  Lance’s cockpit sang with the sound of alarms, warnings, indicators, and voices as the crew dealt with an increasingly complex situation. The situation brought an old memory to Teller’s mind.

  He recalled the speech the senior flight instructor gave on Zero Day at Aerospace Fighter Pilot School on Nethar-III. Less than 30 percent of those who aspired to get to AFPS made it, and Teller was one of them.

  The senior flight instructor wasn’t going to talk about the schedule or curriculum. No, he talked about space combat. The man had more time logged under fire than any of the students had total flight hours. For many, Teller included, that carried considerable weight. What the man had to say was worth considering.

  “Every last one of you had to clear some hurdles to get here. You’ve learned how to fly, navigate, dogfight, and drop or launch ordnance down here in atmosphere. That’s an accomplishment, but don’t pat yourselves on the back just yet. You’ve barely begun. Know this: For every four of you that earn your cert for aerospace fighters and see large-scale space combat, two of you will not make it past thirty chrono units combat time. Of the two who do, only one will survive past one hour.

  “If by the grace of good fortune you do survive your first hour, you have a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the two hour mark. You make that… well, you got a shot at being somebody.”

  He paused to let his words sink in.

  “I’ll tell you what combat is like. It’s like a knife fight in a shower cubicle. Survival is half skill and half luck, and you’ll need an abundance of both. I can’t say what it’s like to fight the infantry’s battle, but I’ve talked to enough combat grunts to have an idea. Your place in the galaxy gets very, very small in combat, no matter the battlefield. Sometimes a grunt can look left or right and see a squad mate and take some small comfort in that. An aerospace fighter pilot doesn’t receive such an honor. You are all by your lonesome self in an environment filled with lethal hazards. You can do it all by the book, one-hundred percent down the line and still get yourself dead when the Big Black hosts a real live shooting war.”

  The instructor’s eyes bored into the collection of trainees as he scanned the class standing and kneeling before him.

  “You see, the fight in space is insanity. It is that simple. You will be in the smallest craft in the match, and nobody likes fighters. Fighters are like blood gnats or dagger flies. If one buzzes around you or bites you, what do you do? You swat it. Everyone will take a swing at you when the shooting starts. They do it because, like a blood gnat, you are irritating and easy to swat.

  “But it’s more than that. The fight out there is a complexity of madness. Beams, bolts, and missiles fill the combat space. Ships close with one another, they fire and die and come apart. Communications go straight to Hades until beamed links are reestablished, but they’ll go down again in seconds and you’ll get snippets of chatter and no more.”

  The instructor began to pace back and forth, talking with his hands as fighter pilots do.

  “The same thing will occur with the navigation, tracking, targeting, fleet coordination, identification, and every other system that’s supposed to make everything smooth and orderly. Why? Because your opponent will jam, scram, dazzle, disrupt, baffle, hack, and defeat every expensive system our superiors chose to equip us with. Our side will do the same thing to theirs, and when that happens every vessel is on their own unless you serve in a top-notch force that has drilled on how to fight in such conditions.

  “It gets real basic. The big ships slug it out. The smaller strike birds look for vulnerable points. You as a fighter will try to stay in formation and make your attack as a cohesive unit. Every weapon operator on every ship will be reduced to using the basic onboard sighting systems. Your flight leader will issue commands via lights and maneuvers, and if your flight loses cohesion, you will be on your own.

  “It doesn’t take much to tear apart a four-ship flight of fighters, one dodge to get past wreckage, one explosion, one dead body pinging off your shields, and then it’s just you against the universe.

  “Those in the ships with crews can communicate with their shipmates. So can you, but since you’re a single-seater, you already know what the crew thinks. It will be up to you to carry out your mission, but you won’t find the ship you were designated to attack because your eyes are all you have to locate it and space is very, very, big. So what do you do? You identify an enemy vessel and put your ordnance on it in the hope it does some good. Maybe you fly clear of the madness and destruction. Maybe you get clear of the jamming and find out how the fight is going. Maybe they send you back into the insanity once again to hunt down enemy fighters. And maybe, just maybe—if you paid attention here at AFPS—you survive.”

  The instructor stopped pacing and put his fists on his hips. His eyes burned with the fire of past battles. “That’s what I’m trying to drill into you. Focus on the job at hand. Focus on what must be done. All the random chance outside the cockpit is out of your control. Control what you can, react to what you can, and ignore the rest. Start learning how to do that here,” he said pointing his finger at the floor of the hangar, “and you add a few percentage points in your favor when you enter the equation of combat up there,” he said jabbing his hand at the sky.

  Looking back, Teller realized during his time as an aerospace fighter pilot that every single word the senior flight instructor said was pure, unadulterated truth. Teller had made the two hour mark in space combat, then went on to log many, many more. He learned the lessons the senior flight instructor offered, applying it for ten years and surviving the experience. He applied the lesson to the current situation. This was no major space battle, just a single ship trying to slip the pursuit of a planetary patrol force, but in its own way, the predicament was more confusing than a battle between space fleets, and likely just as dangerous. The incident on the station was behind them, and determining who was responsible for it and how much trouble they were in was in the future. The ships closing on them were the concern now. Get clear of this mess and figure out the rest later, he thought.

  Teller pushed the thruster controls forward knowing they would spread the gap between them and their pursuers much faster than before unless the patrol ships hadn’t shown all of their performance. He was trying to draw out their limits.

  “Their acceleration rate remains the same,” Ursula said. “Missile launch! The display says missile launch!” She turned to look at Teller. “They are firing at us.”

  Ord laughed softly. “Look at display.”

  She turned and scanned the screen. “Insolvable solution for missile under current parameters. It cannot hit us?”

  “That’s right,” Teller said. “I tested the performance of the ships by upping our velocity. They tried to draw out something from us. That might have been to see what our missile defense consists of or maybe see if we’d panic or quit. We get around the moon, we’ll be off their scopes for quite a while. Hopefully it’ll be enough for us to—”

  Before Ursula could call it, Teller saw the information display on his control panel: a pair of patrol ships arcing around the moon.

  “Change of plans. Steering to port”

  “Missile launch!” Ursula said. “AS-Five-Nine missiles.”

  “Anti-shield missiles,” Jessop said.

  “These guys are pretty good,” Teller said. “Pushing us back toward the gravity well. If they were smart—”

  “Two more patrol vessels,” Ursula said.

  Teller nodded unconscious of the act. “Got’em. Coming from around the planet. No ‘ifs’ about it. Smart or not, we’re not getting pinched. They think they have the time and numbers, but it’s not going to happen.”

  “The missiles
are still closing.”

  The Lance cut an arc through space as she mushed her way around in a sliding turn to the new heading. The missiles and patrol ships maneuvered to intercept.

  “We can deal with Five-Nines. They’re old. They were considered old when I quit flying aerospace fighters ten Standard ago. Our point defense arrays are up to it.”

  The controls for the upper and lower point defense arrays sat side by side in the center of the control panel. Pripyat Energy Weapons manufactured the systems installed on the Lance, acquired second-hand and refurbished by Teller and Ord. Pripyat Energy Weapons was a major player in the field, and their products carried the reputation for quality and reliability. The pair of panels were easily accessible by either captain or co-pilot, each prominently featuring the company’s abbreviated logo and read PEW PEW above the switches. To those that could afford or had the ability to refurbish PEW’s gear, it was well worth the credits or effort.

  Ned scanned the displays in front of him and was impressed. Virtually everything on the ARC Lance was better than the original Lancer class strike sloops he served on long before. Engines, sensors, shields, all better, he thought. He looked at the weapons systems. Teller had mentioned the point defense system was capable of offensive and defensive fire, but it was clear to the engineer the knockabout had downplayed the full capabilities. “Capable enough. Multi-spectrum, multi-target,” Teller had said. True enough, but Jessop could see the point defense system was extraordinarily capable for one equipping a light freighter. We might be okay.

  Ned looked to his left and could see the worry on Ursula’s face. “Don’t fret,” he said. “We’re in good shape.”

  She smiled weakly, but it was obvious she took at least some heart from Jessop’s words.

  They waited for the missiles to close, firing on them as they ended the long turn. Within seconds, all three missiles were nothing but high velocity junk. Despite the satisfactory outcome of the situation, they knew there might be more missiles coming their way and needed to be ready to deal with it.