CHAPTER 5
The Privateer Ship Andromeda
Heinlein
St. Augustine Spaceport
Dressed in a cargo pants and hiking boots, Nickson Armitage made his way up the gangway connecting the landing tower to the Andromeda. He wouldn’t normally have dressed so casually for a job interview, but the instructions he had gotten were quite specific about him needing to dress for outdoor work. The roof of the gangway had polarized transparent sections which automatically tinted when exposed to sunlight. Despite the tint, Nickson got a good look at the Andromeda as he approached, and she was a beauty. Her gunmetal gray hull was decorated with blue accents. Captain Blackwood, the ship’s owner and commander, had told him that she’d recently gone through a major refit: new engines, updated systems, and a general refurbishment to keep the old girl flying. From the look of her, Nickson imagined she’d be good for another fifty years, at least.
The gangway was attached to the ship’s cargo bay, and the bay doors were open. As Nickson approached, a short, stocky man in a sage-green flight suit appeared. He had curly hair, a neatly trimmed goatee, and a transparent eyepiece over his right eye.
“Greetings!” the diminutive spacer said, beaming. “You must be Gentleman Armitage.”
“I am,” Nickson answered, extending a hand. “Permission to come aboard?”
“I’m Kimball, the Andromeda’s cargomaster,” the spacer said, accepting the handshake. “Permission granted, of course. Please, follow me. You’re right on time! That is fortunate, as the captain favors punctuality. You’ll be meeting with her up on the astrogation deck. Did you have any trouble getting here?”
“Not at all. I caught the tube from Coventry yesterday, and got myself a room in the Duty-Free Zone for the night.”
The cargomaster raised an eyebrow. “I hoped Portside didn’t treat you too badly.”
Nickson grinned. The Duty-Free Zone around the St. Augustine Spaceport, Portside, was the sort of place that had sprung up around every major port since the age of sail. Business could be conducted, and goods could be sold tax free, so the place was a bustling commerce hub. Every type of enterprise imaginable, all designed to separate spacers from their accumulated pay, packed the crowded Zone: bars, brothels, virtual reality arcades, massage parlors, and recreational drug dens. It was a place where thieves, pickpockets, and scammers of every stripe would clean you out if you didn’t keep your wits about you, and the police patrolled in pairs. “Ah, I stayed out of the bad side of town. They’ve really cleaned up the north end in the last couple years.”
“Very good. Let us begin the tour, shall we? This is the cargo deck, as I’m sure you’re aware. We are currently replenishing our stores, and much of the open space will be filled before we depart.” They came to a ladder, which led through a hatch to the deck above. “After you, Gentleman.”
“Odd that a ship this big doesn’t have a lift,” Nickson mused, climbing the ladder.
“She was designed as a military patrol ship,” Kimball said, following him. “Polaris-class ships have been made in dozens of configurations, and the contract specified that there would be no lift. It saves mass and cost.”
“Makes sense.”
Kimball joined Nickson on the upper deck a moment later. “This is the crew deck. We have thirty berths here, though our normal complement is sixteen to twenty.”
“I’m sure the extra berthing comes in useful,” Nickson said, looking around. This deck took up nearly the entire diameter of the primary hull. In the center was what looked like a common area, with tables and benches fastened to the deck. This area was ringed by two rows of one-man berths, fifteen in each row. The top row was slightly offset from the bottom and was accessible by a metal catwalk.
“The showers and heads are on this deck, as well as a galley area for preparing rations. If you enjoy manual meal preparation, you are welcome to do so.”
Nickson smiled. He’d never cooked anything by hand in his life. “Where to next?”
“We continue upward, Gentleman, until we get to the astrogation deck. Please, follow me.”
A short while later, Nickson found himself standing outside the hatch to the astrogation compartment. Kimball tapped the console next to the hatch.
“Cargomaster Kimball reporting, Captain,” he said. “I have Gentleman Armitage with me.”
“Very good,” a woman’s voice replied. Nickson recognized it as belonging to Captain Blackwood; the Scotch-Avalonian accent was unmistakable. “Send him in.”
“Right away.” Kimball turned toward Nickson. “She awaits you. Good luck to you.”
Nodding at the cargomaster, Nickson tapped the hatch control. The door slid opened, and he stepped inside. In the center of the compartment was a large holotank, on which was displayed a three-dimensional schematic of the Andromeda. Captain Blackwood stood on the far side of the tank, her face lit up amber from the hologram, studying the image.
“She’s a fine ship,” Nickson said, as the hatch closed behind him, “with an outstanding service record.”
“She is,” the captain agreed, smiling. She was tall, almost as tall as Nickson, with fair skin and a strong jawline. Her dark hair hung over her right shoulder in tight braid. “Flattering my ship is a good start to your interview. Captain Catherine Blackwood,” she said, stepping around the holotank and shaking Nickson’s hand. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you, Captain. It wasn’t flattery, though, just a professional observation. You know as well as I do the state most privateer ships tend to be in.”
“I do. That’s why I’m rather particular about who my exec is. There’s no secret to keeping a ship in fighting shape. It’s a matter of maintenance, discipline, and morale. I expect my officers to be dedicated to all three, to take care of the ship and my people both. Complacency has killed more spacers in history than any other hazard.”
Nickson wasn’t sure about that statistic, but he understood where she was coming from, and she wasn’t wrong. In deep space, there was only a razor-thin margin between life and death, and spacers often didn’t live to see old age if they neglected the little things. “We had the same philosophy on the Maddy D. Captain Ogleman was personable and laid back, but displaying a lackadaisical attitude toward maintenance or your duties was the fastest way to get booted off the ship.”
“I see. Tell me about your duties as XO.”
The responsibilities of a ship’s executive officer had millennia of tradition behind them, but they did vary from ship to ship. “Given our small crew, I wore a few different hats. My primary job was overseeing the maintenance of the ship and the welfare of the crew. The crew was small and we’d worked together for years, so the second part was easy. Maintenance was my primary focus most of the time. The Maddy D. was a great ship, but she was old, and she needed a lot of upkeep. We were planning on a major refit when we got back from our last contract.”
“One of the primary reasons I’m considering you for the position is that you have experience on a licensed privateer. My other applicants all have a merchant fleet background. This job can be dangerous, as you’re aware, and merchant officers generally lack combat experience. While I try to avoid combat, sometimes it is unavoidable. I can’t expect my exec to garner much respect from the crew if my junior officers have more combat experience than he does.”
“Oh, I agree, Captain,” Nickson said, with a grin. “I think you’ll find I’m a perfect fit for the position.”
“We’ll see. Your last contract didn’t go so well. The publicly available records on the Madeline Drake show that she limped home, so badly damaged that she couldn’t land. Captain Ogleman was reportedly killed, and the ship was auctioned off in orbit.”
Nickson looked down for a moment, his smile gone. “That about sums it up. It was a bad tour.”
“Can you tell me what happened? I’m not trying to imply that you were responsible. I am just curious as to what lessons could be learned from your experience.”
Nickson took his jacket off, folding it neatly over his arm. “I loved the Maddy D. I was hired on as a pilot, and over the course of eight standard years I worked my way up to XO.”
“Eight years? That’s impressive.”
“She had a small crew, as I said. Things were less formal than on, say, a military ship. Captain Ogleman and the previous XO, Aziz, took me under their wing as soon as I came aboard. I guess they saw leadership potential in me. I was thrilled. My previous ship, the Eledore? If you didn’t play politics, you had no shot at promotion. The skipper liked to play favorites.
“Anyway, our last contract was with the colonial government of New Babylon. They couldn’t afford much of a military of their own, so it was easier to just pay privateers to do it.” Many smaller or less prosperous colonies either relied on mercenaries completely, or used them to supplement their own armed forces. Maintaining an astromilitary was a technically challenging and enormously expensive endeavor. Colonies with small populations and modest economies often couldn’t manage it on their own, but soon found that a lack of a military left them vulnerable to pirates, raiders, and hostile governments. Outside of Concordiat space, especially on the frontier, privateering was big business as a result. “We were steadily employed by them for a couple of local years.”
“That sounds like the kind of work many privateers would be thrilled with.”
“We were, at first. The pay was good, and New Babylon is a nice planet as far as planets go. Good air, clean water, and soil that took to Terran crops without much difficulty. The colonial government spent most of their budget on terraforming, and had been doing so for years and years. The terraformed zone was huge, covered in forests and grasslands. The rest of the planet was a little bleak still, but there was plenty of room to grow.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for conflict.”
“I’m willing to bet that if they’d been left alone, New Babylon wouldn’t have much use for privateers, or even a military. The population is mostly homogenous, and they’re far enough away from any other inhabited systems that going to war with them would probably be more trouble than it’s worth. In theory, at least.”
“I take it that theory didn’t pan out?”
Nickson paused before speaking again. “Have you ever encountered a lost fleet, Captain?”
“I haven’t,” she answered, after a moment. “They’re rare.” Lost fleets, rogue fleets, homeless fleets, whatever you wanted to call it, were usually groups of ships that, for one reason or another, didn’t have a home port. Their crews and passengers lived perpetually in space, constantly on the move. Such notions were often romanticized in pop culture: the truest of spacers, wanderers, explorers, mysterious societies harboring lost technology or arcane knowledge. “I haven’t read up on New Babylon, but do recall hearing something about a small colony being attacked by a raider fleet.”
“The troubles began before we were hired,” Nickson explained. “Attacks on ships coming and going to New Babylon, ships disappearing, things like that. The government of New Babylon got nervous and started sending their patrol ships out to do reconnaissance. I guess one of them reported a massive fleet, dozens and dozens of ships, in deep space, in an uninhabited system. Nobody knew who they were, but they knew they were outnumbered. They took the threat seriously enough to be proactive and beef up their pretty meager defenses with privateers.”
“Fascinating. This lost fleet, where did it come from?”
“You know, we never found out. It’s possible that the New Babylonians have learned something since I left, but we had no idea. They didn’t answer any communications. Their ships were old, some of them centuries old, of many different makes and models. They had everything from large people-haulers with rotating sections, to atmospheric-capable ships, freighters, military ships, everything. Intelligence estimated their number at a hundred and five, total.”
The captain’s eyes went wide. “A hundred and five!”
Nickson nodded. “The New Babylon Space Patrol had all of three ships in its inventory, and they were search-and-rescue cutters, not warships. They were badly outnumbered and started hiring every privateer they could afford. There was something like thirty of us at the height of it all, based on New Babylon. The Colonial government went all out, spending every credit they could spare on defense. They’d send us out on regular one- or two-thousand-hour patrols, searching the nearby systems in pairs or threes for any sign of the lost fleet. There were a few scattered engagements in the beginning, and they grew more and more frequent as time went on. After a year of this, we finally encountered what seemed to be a main war fleet. Not the whole thing, but the bulk of the combat-capable ships. We found them two translations away from the Babylonian system, and they were headed right for it. We engaged them one translation away from New Babylon.”
“I see. Is that where your ship was damaged?”
“No. The battle was over by the time we got there, and the lost fleet ships scattered. That system had four transit points, and different ships made for all four of them. Captain Ogleman opted to have us pursue what seemed to be the lost fleet’s flagship, a midsized cruiser. It headed for the fourth transit point alone, and we followed. We chased them for weeks, through two systems, before we caught up to them in Rashid-231.”
“I take it the engagement didn’t go well?”
Nickson was quiet for a moment. He didn’t like talking about this. “That’s putting it mildly. I pleaded with the skipper to give it up. We were by ourselves. The cruiser was damaged, and had to have been two hundred years old, but it was a lot bigger than us. He just wouldn’t listen. If we killed it, or captured it, we’d get a huge bonus from the client. The damned thing was his white whale.”
“I see.”
“We never even closed to laser range. They kept fleeing, lobbing missiles at us. It’s like they just wouldn’t run out. They hit us, more than once. By the time we broke off and turned around, only five of us were uninjured. The ship’s doctor was dead and Captain Ogleman was on life support. He died before we translated out of the system, and I was left in command.” Nickson paused again, looking at the hologram of the Andromeda. “I know this is a fantastic-sounding story, Captain, so here.” He handed her a data drive. “This is a record of the Madeline Drake’s logs. You can review it all yourself, if you care to. Consider it part of my resume. We made back to port and got repaired enough to make the flight back to Heinlein. We had been badly damaged enough that the client was contractually obligated to let us go.”
The captain studied the plastic drive in the palm of her hand for a moment, then looked back up at Nickson. “So, what you’re telling me is, you thought your captain was making a poor decision, and you tried to talk him out of it?”
“You’re damned right I did, Captain. I didn’t think the cruiser was as badly damaged as the reports said it was. That ship had killed two of the ships in our fleet and had badly damaged half a dozen more. Captain Ogleman was less pessimistic and thought we could take them. He reasoned that if they kept running from us instead of engaging, then that meant we were a real threat.”
“That’s a reasonable assessment. I can’t think of any other reason for a cruiser to run from a single patrol ship.”
“My gut told me something was wrong, though. She was flying too straight to be that badly damaged. I tried, and failed, to convince the skipper that we should just let it go and regroup.”
“What did you do when he didn’t take your advice?”
“What could I do? I did everything I could to get the crew ready for a fight. I programmed the best representation of the cruiser into the computer that I could and ran drills on my people. We went over contingencies again and again. It just wasn’t enough.”
“And after this experience, you want to go back to privateering?”
“I do. Dirtside life is…well, you know how it is. I got the itch, Captain. No sense in denying my nature. I love it out there, and I’m bored down here. I’m a spacer. I need space.”
“I see,” she said, looking at the drive in her hand again. She was quiet for a moment. “Well, I need to be honest, you’re a strong candidate. I’m also pleased to see that you followed my instructions regarding your attire. Let’s go for a hike, shall we?”
“A…hike, Captain?”
“Yes. I know of a trail that leads to an overlook, to the south of the spaceport. It gives quite the view! Consider this part of your interview, Mr. Armitage. A physical assessment, if you will.”
It was unorthodox, but if that’s how she wanted to do it, Nickson wasn’t going to argue. “Lead the way.”
* * *
“This is it,” the captain said. “Quite the spectacular view, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Nickson said, breathing heavily. “Spectacular.” They were several kilometers from where they’d left their vehicle, and every damned meter of it was uphill. Taking a long drink from her canteen, the captain sat down on a small boulder. Catching his breath, Nickson sat next to her and took in the view. Surrounded by hybrid evergreen trees, they sat a few meters short of a sheer cliff face. Far below and several kilometers away was the St. Augustine Spaceport. It was massive facility, spanning hundreds of hectares cut out of the dense forest. It had seven launch pads, arranged in a circle around the central terminal. Four of the pads were occupied, tall ships locked into landing towers, casting long shadows in the afternoon sun. One of those ships was the Andromeda.
“Thank you for coming up here with me,” the captain said. It was quiet, save the singing of birds and the buzzing of insects.
“Hey, no problem,” Nickson said, grinning. “I hope this proves that I really want the job.”
“You’d be surprised at how many spacers let their health go to hell, Mr. Armitage.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all, Captain. I’ve seen spacers so fat you wonder how they can even get around if they’re not in freefall.”
Captain Blackwood laughed at that. She reached down into her pack, which she’d set at her feet, and retrieved her handheld. She tapped the screen a few times, then offered the device to Nickson.
“What’s this?” he asked, taking it.
“Your contract. The job is yours, if you want it. Take a moment and read it over.”
Nickson quickly scanned the contract. Most of it was standard privateer fare, nothing he hadn’t seen before. After scrolling to the bottom, he signed it with a thumbprint, then handed the device back to the captain.
“Welcome to the crew, Mr. Armitage,” she said.
“Please, Skipper, just Nix.”
The captain smiled. “Nix it is.” They shook on it. “Now that that’s taken care of, we have a contract offer. It’s a short-notice affair, but it’s too promising of an opportunity to pass up. How soon can you be ready to leave?”
“I need a couple days to get back to Coventry and move out of my apartment.”
“That’s right, you live in Coventry, don’t you?” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Do you feel up to starting a little sooner?”
“How much sooner?”
“Immediately.”
Nickson didn’t miss a beat. “Absolutely. What do you need?”
She tapped her handheld a few times. An image of a tall man with hard lines in his face and gray hair appeared in the holotank. “This is Zander Krycek. He’s our client. He has requested passage to Ithaca.”
Nickson had never heard of Ithaca. “I’ll read up on it. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m going to meet with him to hammer out the details of the contract. He’s currently staying in Coventry, and since you’re headed there anyway, I want you to join me. Consider it the start of your on-the-job training.”
She wants to have this meeting in person? It was strange, especially considering that the St. Augustine Spaceport was a continent away from Heinlein’s colonial capital, but if that’s how she wanted to do it…“Skipper, if you prefer negotiating contracts face to face, then I’m all for it. Do you want to fly back to the city, or take the tube?”
“You know, let’s take the tube. The costs for charting a flight from the spaceport are outrageous anymore.”
“Are we in a tight financial situation, Skipper?”
She frowned. “You could say that. I’ll let you look over the ship’s logs when we get back. We sustained significant damage on our last mission, and…well, keeping a ship spaceworthy is expensive.”
“If you’re not flying, you’re losing money.”
“Indeed. This contract could be a boon for us, if the money is as good as it seems.” She looked him in the eyes. “Listen, Nix, there’s something else I need to tell you about. The reason I hired you is because my previous exec was killed on our last mission.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Believe me, I know how hard it is to lose a crew member. May I ask how he died?”
She was quiet for a moment. “You know, I’ve never actually discussed this with someone who wasn’t there. Our last mission took us to Zanzibar. Have you heard of it?”
“Yeah. That’s that failed colony the Concordiat is going to annex, isn’t it?”
“The same. As fantastic as it sounds, we had a hand in the chain of events that led to that. I was hired by my own family, back on Avalon, to go there and rescue my brother Cecil.”
“Your brother? What the hell was he doing on Zanzibar?”
“That was my question. He was there on a treasure hunt, hoping to save the family business by obtaining antecessor artifacts. Before you ask, yes, we found them, but it’s a very long story. It’s all in the logs. In any case, on the way there, we had to pass through Orlov’s Star.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Indeed. There was an incident, and we left the system with the Combine quite unhappy with us. The mission to Zanzibar was successful; I got my brother back, and we only lost one member of the crew. Well, technically, he was one of the mercenaries we hired, but…”
“If he’s working for you, if he lives on the ship with you, he’s part of the crew.”
“That’s how I saw it. His name was Randall Markgraff, and he died on the ground on Zanzibar. I was hoping that would be our only loss, but as we were leaving the planet, we were engaged by a Combine light cruiser. They’d come looking for us.”
“You took on a cruiser?”
“We did. We prevailed, too, but not without cost. Wolfram, my XO, died in the battle, as did my assistant engineer, Charity. We were hit badly, you see, and they were conducting damage control. Wolfram had been with me since I took command of the Andromeda.”
“I’m sorry, Skipper.”
“These things happen, I suppose. It’s a risky business.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No, it doesn’t. I’ve been in no rush to replace him, even though it needed to be done. Somehow it felt wrong. But, there’s nothing for it. I can’t stay dirtside forever on account of a lost friend. Wolfram would have wanted me to get back into space.” She looked up at the spaceport once again. “It’s well past time I did. Shall we get back? It’ll be dark in a few hours, and it’s not good to be out here after dark.”
“Yeah…wait, what? Why is it not good to be out after dark?”
“You…aren’t much of an outdoorsman, are you, Nix?”
Truth be told, Nickson rarely left the city. He liked being surrounded by people. It was a welcome contrast to the dark emptiness of space. “I prefer the urban lifestyle is all.”
“I see. Well, some of the local wildlife likes to come out at night, and some of them can be quite aggressive.”
“You mean like bears?” Nickson had read about bears. They were imported from Earth and lived in the forests of the terraformed zone.
“There are worse things than bears out here. Let’s get—” She fell silent and looked up. There was a bright light in the afternoon sky, accompanied by a deep rumble. The light, a brilliant orange, glowed through the layer of clouds several thousand meters above the spaceport. The glow intensified as the rumble grew louder, echoing across the hills, as if an angry god was descending from on high to smite the world. Then, all at once, the clouds parted, pierced by a column of smoke and thermonuclear fire. The rumble turned into a roar as the descending ship broke through the cloud layer, on final approach to one of the open landing pads.
The ship slowed as its altitude decreased, balanced on a column of thrust. The captain raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes and watched it as it descended, making minor course corrections to ensure it would land on the pad.
“That’s the Eowyn,” she said. “She’s a privateer, same as us. That’s the competition.” She was as tall as the Andromeda, but slenderer. The sleek lines of her hull and spaceframe were only interrupted by four stubby fins and two radiators jutting out from the lower part of the fuselage. Instead of the four-engine cluster that powered the Andromeda, the Eowyn relied on a single, massive fusion rocket, around which the rest of the ship was built.
“It’s a bold design,” the captain said, watching the Eowyn as she settled onto the landing pad. “One of those new single-engine types coming out of the Inner Colonies.”
“She looks new,” Nickson said. “I bet she’s only a couple of years old.” Having a single engine reduced complexity and, more importantly, mass. It required less piping, less shielding, fewer support structures, and freed up more of the internal volume of the ship for other purposes. Plumes of smoke and fire shot upward, away from the pad at forty-five-degree angles, as blast diverters dispersed the Eowyn’s thrust. Such a design was not without its drawbacks, however. There was no redundancy in her propulsion. If the engine failed, there was no limping home at reduced thrust. At best, it’d be a huge inconvenience; at worst, it would be catastrophic.
The Eowyn cut its engine, plunging the spaceport into an almost eerie quiet. The rumble of the ship’s landing echoed through the hills for a few moments and was gone. “The business is getting more and more cutthroat. The longer we rest on our laurels, the more time newcomers have to establish reputations and win contracts.” Inhabited space was vast, but it wasn’t so vast that a privateer could afford to sit around and let herself be crowded out of her own market.
The captain put her binoculars away. “I love these long hikes into the wilderness. Wolfram used to go with me all the time. Once, I even managed to get the entire crew, save Mordechai Chang, to go on a hike together.”
“Chang? He’s the purser, right? Why didn’t he go?”
The captain smiled. “You’ll understand when you meet him. We camped out here for a week, living out of tents and cooking meals over an open fire. Spacers like us spend half our lives in a sealed can. It’s good to get outside once in a while.”
Nickson nodded. “That sounds like—hang on. Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I think there’s something in the woods,” he said, quietly. “I heard twigs breaking, like something moving through the trees.”
More twigs snapped. “I heard that,” the captain said. She placed her hand on the grip of a laser pistol that she carried in a holster across her chest. The foliage rustled again. Something was definitely moving through the trees, and quickly. The stride sounded long and heavy, but the spacers couldn’t see anything through the dense bushes that grew along the sides of the trail.
An anthropoid stepped out of the bushes then, watching them through milky blue eyes. “Holy shit,” Nickson whispered. He’d read about the creatures but had never actually seen one before. They were native to Heinlein.
“Stay calm,” the captain said. “No sudden movements.” It was a muscular creature, a biped two meters tall, rippling with muscles and possessed of gray, leathery skin. Its head, shoulders, back, forearms, and legs were covered in coarse, bluish-gray fur. Its face was mostly hairless. It didn’t have a nose; these creatures breathed through gill-like organs on their necks. But it did have a large, almost circular mouth, full of gleaming white teeth. It hunched forward, striking an aggressive posture toward them, and let out a guttural growl.
The captain’s laser was already in her hands. “Nix, do you have a weapon?”
“What? No! You said to bring outdoor clothes, not a gun.”
“Next time, bring a gun, too,” she said, aiming at the creature. The anthropoids fell somewhere on the evolutionary scale between apes and early protohumans. They were strong, fast, and aggressive. They had to be, to survive on Heinlein, which was home to all manner of dangerous, carnivorous species. It growled again, but didn’t approach. “Just keep your distance,” the captain said, even though the anthropoids didn’t use or understand language. “We can both walk away from this.” It was rare for them to venture this deep into the terraformed zone. While Heinlein’s native ecosystem was somewhat compatible with the imported Terran one, its native species wouldn’t eat Earth-native plants. This generally kept the whole food chain out of human-inhabited areas.
“Uh, Captain? There’s more of them.” A second anthropoid stepped onto the trail from the other side. This one carried a meter-long wooden club in its hand, made of a thick tree branch. Bolstered by the arrival of its troop mate, the first creature lunged forward, sprinting toward the captain at frightening speed. She barely had time to squeeze the trigger. The laser pulsed rapidly, emitting a loud crackling sound, the beam shimmering slightly as it ionized the air through which it traveled. The creature screeched as a messy wound opened on its chest. Pink and white fluids splashed, and the air stunk of ozone and burnt hair.
As its troop mate died, the second anthropoid charged, holding its club high over its head. “Look out!” Nickson shouted, lunging toward Captain Blackwood. He shoved her out of the way just as the beast swung the club, which wooshed to the ground with an earthy thud. The captain twisted around, shoved Nickson out of the way in turn, and fired her laser. Its pulses tore into the creature. The creature dropped its club and collapsed to the ground, bleeding into the dirt.
Heart pounding, Nickson watched as the captain ejected the power cell from her weapon and replaced it with a fresh one. A laser pistol powerful enough to be effective on large and dangerous animals quickly went through batteries, and generated a lot of waste heat on top of it. It had done its job, though: they were both still alive.
They didn’t linger at the scene. The spacers stepped past the bodies of the dead anthropoids and headed back down the trail. They were, technically speaking, a protected species. “It’s strange that they’re so close to the spaceport,” the captain said. “We need to report this to the wildlife service.”
“Yeah, well, let’s get out of here alive first.”
“Keep your eyes open. They tend to travel in groups, from troops of four or six to packs of dozens, if they’ve formed a large hunting or war party. Laser pistol or no, if we run into a large group they’ll rip us to pieces. Let’s pick up the pace.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Nickson said, speeding up to a jog. Together, the spacers moved down the trail as quickly as they could without falling. The path was long, rocky, uneven, and in places quite steep. For more than a kilometer they ran. A throaty roar echoed through the trees, driving home why they really didn’t want to risk falling.
“This is a hell of a first day!” Nickson said, struggling to keep up. He worked out occasionally, but running was never a thing he enjoyed doing. There were multiple roars and cries coming from the forest now, from both sides of the trail. They didn’t know for certain how many of them there were, but it sounded like a lot.
“I think it’s a war party!” Captain Blackwood said.
“A war party? What the hell is a war party?”
“Exactly what it sounds like, Nix!”
“Holy shit, we’re going to die.”
“We’re not dead yet. Keep moving! Cam!”
“What? Who’s Cam?”
“It’s my virtual assistant. Cam, I need you to start my car and bring it to me!” Her pace slowed just a little. They were both tired.
“Starting the car now,” Cam replied, its synthesized baritone voice loud enough for Nickson to hear. “However, you are not near a road. I cannot bring the car to you.”
“It’s an emergency and I don’t give a damn about bloody traffic regulations! Start the car, put it in off-road mode, and get it as close to me as you can without disabling it! I don’t care if it gets damaged as long as it drives!”
“I understand. Are you sure you want to do this? Your insurance may not cover damage to the vehicle if—”
The captain didn’t let Cam finish its standard disclaimer. “Yes, I’m sure, damn you! Now! Do it now!”
“Very well. I will get the car as close to you as I can. Please stand by. If there’s an emergency, I can contact the authorities for you.”
“Contact the wildlife service,” she said, picking up the pace again. “Just get the car up here.” The trailhead was still more than a kilometer away, and judging from the angry, bestial growls coming from the trees, they wouldn’t make it.
ROAAAR!
An anthropoid crashed through the bushes then, stepping onto the trail behind them. It held a large stone in its hands, above its head, and hurled it at the spacers. Nickson dodged to the left as the skipper dodged to the right. The stone impacted the dirt where they’d been standing with a loud thud. Taking a knee, the captain brought her heavy laser pistol to bear and shot the beast in the chest, the rapid-pulsing laser stitching a gory wound across the creature’s torso. Screeching in pain and gushing pink and white fluids, it turned and retreated into the trees.
“Nix, let’s go! I think they’re trying to encircle us!” They turned and took off back down the trail. Coming to a switchback, the captain led Nickson off the trail, and together they cut through the thick underbrush and slid down a steep embankment. Covered in mud, they landed back on the trail, on a lower level of the switchback, and kept going.
Nickson was beginning to wonder if she hadn’t warded the marauding anthropoids off. Their roars and cries had stopped. There was something very primal and utterly terrifying about being hunted. It was all he could do to remain calm and keep pushing on, toward the captain’s vehicle.
“There it is!” she said. A hundred meters or so down the trail, on the far side of a thick, fallen tree, was her car. The hydrogen engine was quietly running, waiting for them. The vehicle had good ground clearance and decent off-road capability, something that came in handy in the terraformed zones of Heinlein. In many areas, the roads weren’t paved. In some areas, they could scarcely be called “roads” in the first place. “Come on!” They sped up to a flat-out run, a desperate final dash to the vehicle. Behind them, they heard something crash through the brush, followed by heavy footsteps. They were being chased. Nickson had never run so hard in his life.
They didn’t get far. The captain cried out in pain as a thrown tree branch caught her in the backs of her legs, causing her to stumble and fall. She landed facedown in the dirt, grinding the palms of her hands into the rocky trail, and lost her laser.
“Captain!” Nickson said, sliding to a stop. He turned and ran to her just as she was pushing herself up. A hulking anthropoid, this one larger and darker in color than the others, loomed over them. It had another tree branch in its massive, three-digit hand. “Get away from her!” He punched the creature in the face as hard as he could. Pain shot through his hand as it connected with its bony jaw. The anthropoid backhanded Nickson, sending him flying. The wind was knocked out of him as he hit the ground.
Turning back to the Captain Blackwood, it raised its crude weapon as she scrambled to get away. She tried to protect her face with her arms as it swung.
CRACK!
She cried out in agony as the bones in her forearm snapped. The beast roared, long and guttural, its spittle hitting her face as she crawled desperately backward, trying to get away.
Struggling to sit up, Nickson’s hand touched something solid. It was the captain’s laser! As the anthropoid hefted its club again, this time for the killing blow, he picked up the weapon, pointed it, and held the trigger down. In a flash, it was over. The heavy laser’s rapidly pulsing beam ripped the anthropoid open. It didn’t even shriek in pain like the others had; it just fell over backward, bleeding, dead before it hit the ground. The air stunk of the putrid odor of the creature’s internals, burnt flesh, and singed hair.
Both spacers sat there for a moment, breathing heavily, not saying anything. They listened carefully for the telltale sounds of more of the creatures moving through the brush, but only sound of the wind sighing through the hybrid evergreens and the quiet hum of the car’s hydrogen engine could be heard.
“Captain!” Nickson said, getting to his feet. He ran to her and helped her up. She cradled her injured arm against her body. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Nix, thanks to you. Help me to the car, would you?” The door automatically opened as they approached. Nickson aided her as she took off her pack off, trying not to further injure her broken arm, and tossed it in the back. He eased her into the passenger’s seat before climbing into the driver’s seat himself. “Get us out of here, if you please.”
Nickson cautiously drove down the trail, trying not to damage the vehicle on the uneven terrain. Cam, her virtual assistant, spoke up again, its voice resonating over the car’s sound system. “You appear to be injured, Catherine. Do you wish me to call for a medical response?”
“No. It’s not critical, just a broken arm. Send a message to the wildlife service. Tell them we made it out, but killed several of the anthropoids in self-defense.”
“Message sent.”
“Good. Call Harlan.”
“Calling Harlan,” Cam repeated.
“Harlan is my flight surgeon,” she explained. He answered the call after a few seconds, his image appearing on a small, transparent display on the dashboard.
“Captain, good to see you. What can I do for you?”
As Nickson drove, the captain carefully raised her broken arm so that the doctor could see it. It was already bruising up. “Would you mind if I stopped by? I’m afraid it’s broken.”
“I’m afraid it is, too,” he said, leaning in closer to the screen. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll live. I’ve about had my fill of dirtside life for the time being, though. Be a dear and have a drink ready when I get there, would you?”
“I’ll have some brandy waiting for you, Captain. We’ll get that arm put back together.”
“Very good. Oh, Harlan? This is Nickson Armitage, our new executive officer.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Nickson said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Good to meet you, sir,” the doctor said.
“Nickson here saved my life today. I think hiring him was a good choice. I’ll have him drive me to your place. See you soon.” The call ended, and the captain looked over at Nickson. “I meant that, Nix. Thank you.”
“I meant it, too: hell of a first day.”