Asteroid Return: An Arek Lancer Novella Page 5

  All of it in black.

  Lights blinked on some readouts across the exposed piping and conduit. The metal hull that I could feel against my back was cold. Just like I remembered.

  It actually wasn’t that bad. Of course we hadn’t left the space station yet. Had two couple hour hops to look forward to. It was going to be long and boring.

  I may not have been that uncomfortable but the Europan was.

  His seven foot long frame and width were too much for the small seats. He stretched out across the ship, parts on seats on either side of the hull. One of the other commandos helped him with the crash webbing. Once secure he shifted a bit and promptly fell asleep.

  The commando next to me caught me staring.

  “Ever seen one up close,” he asked me. His name was Derek Fortin.

  Bald, black eyes. About my height and size, a couple years younger.

  “Yeah,” I replied thinking of the time on Corric Station when my ship was almost stolen by a Europan and his human sister partners.

  “Took some getting used to,” Fortin said glancing over at the Europan. “When Treuto first started coming with us on missions but when we’re in a tight spot, glad to have him along.”

  I nodded remembering how strong and tough the race was. And those climbing claws they could unsteath were sharp. Europa, the largest moon of Jupiter in Earth’s Sol System, was a giant ball of ice. Hollow inside, the Europans lived in caves within the ice, using their claws to climb and tunnel.

  They cut through ice pretty easy. A human was a whole lot easier.

  The other three commandos were named Ryan Sweet, Mark Gilbert and Joe Carleton. None of them really talked or acknowledged me. Couldn’t blame them. I was the outsider and these Spec Ops squads were a pretty tight knit bunch.

  At least mine had been.

  I’d also been on a couple missions with tag-a-long consultants. They were never fun.

  “Feels like coming home,” I said trying to remind the soldiers that I used to be one of them.

  Nobody made a comment.

  At least I had tried.

  Harrow came into the hold from the cockpit where she had been talking with the pilots. She said down in the empty seat across from me, staring right at me. I smiled at her.

  “The Colonel said your rank was reinstated for the duration of this mission,” she said, loudly, so the others could hear. I saw one of the Europans eyes open and fixate on me. “So that means you outrank me but this is my mission.”

  I nodded.

  “It is,” I said getting that out of the way. I didn’t need Harrow worrying that I’d take over her mission. I had absolutely no desire for that. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  She looked at me for a minute before nodding.

  “We launch in five,” she told her squad.

  The Europan grunted and closed his eyes.

  *****

  I started out somewhat comfortable.

  That lasted about two minutes after we launched from the station.

  I could feel the vibrations of the freighter through the metal hull and up into my legs. Was this how new people felt on the Nomad’s Wind? Did they feel the vibrations and I was just used to it? I hoped not. My ship was a little beat-up, in need of constant repairs, but it was built better than that.

  Settling as best I could in the webbing, I closed my eyes. Besides Treuto, Fortin and Carleton had already fallen asleep. I used to be able to do that, but no longer. I’d gotten used to the limited comforts of the Wind. It felt like the height of luxury compared to this.

  I couldn’t see the stars, which was the thing that felt the most off to me. I always looked out the Wind’s view window everytime I left a station or exited atmosphere of a planet. I wanted that view. I craved it.

  Undoing the crash webbing I stood up. Harrow barely spared me a glance, the others watching with curiosity. I didn’t care. I moved over to the hatch that led to the cockpit, hit the open button and slid into the cramped space.

  Two stations were at the front, open space between them, about a foot or two of clear space to stand behind. Pilot on the left and co-pilot on the right. Both of them looked back at me, surprised and questioning.

  “Need to see that,” I said and pointed at the thin strip of view window that was at their sitting eye level so I had to crouch a little.

  The drop ship was inside the hold of the larger freighter so most of the view was blocked but the maintenance techs had put some windows into the cargo hold to allow the drop ship pilots to get a view of space, so they would have some idea of what they were flying into.

  Through the drop ship window and the other window I could see the black of space with the millions of tiny white dots that were the stars. Just like when in the Wind, I felt a sense of calm come over me. The pilots must have recognized one of their own because neither said anything, just turned back to their controls.

  I stayed like that for a couple more minutes before returning to the hold.

  *****

  Usually the soldiers didn’t spend this much time in the cramped confines of a Rock drop ship. The carrier would fly into the system, get close to the planet, and then soldiers would get into the drop ships. At the most they spent half an hour or so in the small holds.

  Before this trip the longest I’d been in one had been an hour.

  Interestingly enough, it had been the last time I’d gone to the same asteroid. That mission we had taken the drop ship to the asteroid, following the Tiat supply ship. Well waiting we had stayed in the carrier ship hidden at the edges of the system.

  Periodically each of us would unhook from the webbing, which we really didn’t need to wear for now, just to stretch and get some circulation back in cramped muscles. Treuto also moved a couple of times. When that happened, the rest of us had to crowd near the front so the Europan could rotate his body as he couldn’t stand up fully.

  He hooted and grunted each time.

  I had never learned the Europan language. The species couldn’t speak Tradelan and most other species couldn’t speak Europan but could learn to understand it. Communication was key during missions. I wondered how it was handled between Harrow and the Europan.

  It was a couple hours later, I’d lost track, when the hatch slid open and the co-pilot stuck his head into the hold.

  “Just hit system,” he said and the hatch slid closed again.

  Harrow readjusted her crash webbing, tightening it. The others followed her lead, LaPlante helping Treuto. I did the same.

  Once settled we waited. For what I didn’t know.

  It was about an hour when the ship started to shake.

  The hatch slid open again.

  “Contact,” the co-pilot said.

  He kept the hatch open so we could hear what was coming through the comm connection with the freighter carrying us. It was one way. We could hear the freighter, they couldn’t hear or connect with us. A hard wire line, not broadcast. No signal to intercept.

  “Approaching ships identified as Tiat patrol ships. Three XTs.”

  The Expeditionary Forces knew what the Tiat called their various ships, what the names and classifications were, but it was of course in the Tiat’s own language. Our guys had just started giving them nicknames. XTs were the common fighters, called that because of the distinctive shape. The ship had a long and thin body, just wide enough for the pilot, that ended in a point at the front. In the rear it widened out with two engines mounted on either side of the body. That created the ‘T’ shape. The ‘X’ came from the four wings. Two coming off at angles from the top and another two at similar angles from the bottom. When one of them was coming towards you it looked like the letter X. From above it looked like a T.

  Never said the nicknames were clever.

  “Hailing.”

  We waited in silence. Couldn’t hear anything as the freighter’s co-pilot has disconnected the link to communicate with the Tiat patrol ships. He was probably being asked why a Kry freighter was
so far out in the middle of nowhere. The Kry ship was a good choice.

  There were not many planets in the galaxy that considered themselves allies of the Tiat. And the Tiat were fine with that. They had their Empire, the largest in the known galaxy. The strongest too if being honest. It had taken the combined might of the Thesans and Terrans to hold off the Tiat in the Third Galactic War and then it was just barely. The list of planets that did not deal directly with the Tiat was pretty long. Much shorter were the ones that would deal with the Tiat. The Kry was one of those.

  Kry were business people first before anything else. They did not care about the war or which side was “right” since really no side was. They just wanted to turn a profit. So they did business with the Tiat.

  Seeing a Kry ship in Tiat space wasn’t unusual. Seeing one coming in from this direction was.

  “Let’s hope they buy the cover story,” Harrow said quietly.

  I wanted to make a sarcastic comment but it really wasn’t the time. My old unit, it would have been a race to see which one of us made a comment first. But this wasn’t my unit and I didn’t know the dynamics of the squad.

  “Hope you’re all strapped in,” the co-pilots voice came back. “Going to get bumpy.”

  Guess that meant the Tiat hadn’t bought the story.

  Probably thought the Kry were smugglers.

  Or just didn’t want intruders in this system.

  Either way this mission had just hit its first snag.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Part of me was worried that this was the end, for the mission and myself.

  But I’d been in enough of these tight spots to know that there was always a way out. Any mission, pretty much every second was walking along that thin line between failure and success. This was no different.

  The mission planners back on Rewe Station would have thought about this scenario and come up with a way to make it work.

  We just had to survive long enough for it to work.

  It was a bumpy ride.

  The freighter lurched back and forth, up and down, as the pilot kept the ship moving erratically. The only way to avoid laser lock. I don’t know much about ship to ship combat in the void of space. I was a ground pounder even though I was a decent enough pilot now. I’d never flown a combat ship but I knew the basics.

  The vidshows liked to show space combat as ships swooping and diving, barrel rolling around the enemy. It really wasn’t like that. Mostly it was boring.

  But from inside the hold of the drop ship, I had no idea what was happening and it was frustrating.

  The movements of the freighter were not that violent considering how much the ship was moving. The inertial compensators were working overtime. We were still being thrown around but not as bad as it could have been. I felt bad for Treuto and the way he was forced to sit. The lurching would be worse on him. He’d feel every movement. Glancing at the Europan, he didn’t appear bothered.

  When we arrived in the system, the goal was to get as close to the asteroid belt as the pilot could and then launch the drop ship. We had to hope that the pilot was still heading in that direction. To the pursuing Tiat, it would make sense. Under constant barrage, there wouldn’t be an opportunity for the ship to hop into wild space. The navcom wouldn’t be able to make the calculations. The only option would be to head in-system and find a way to hold off the Tiat long enough for the navcom to compensate for the erratic movements and plot a hop.

  That would bring us closer to the asteroid belt.

  The race was on and we would probably lose.

  Starfighters have the advantage of freighters in speed and maneuverability. They may not move like in the vids, but they can still move better than bulky freighters. Three of the Tiat XTs and sooner, rather than later, one of them was bound to make a direct hit.

  “Get ready,” the freighter’s co-pilots voice said over the link.

  Ready for what? I hadn’t been briefed on the insertion scenario, how we would get from the freighter to the asteroid belt, but I had an idea. I’d run quite a few missions like this back in the day.

  The trick was older than I was. Probably older than Colonel Jessups.

  “Do we really think the Tiat will fall for this,” I asked no one, just said it outloud.

  Next to me Fortin laughed.

  “I said the same thing,” he remarked.

  “Stow it,” Harrow said.

  I would have shrugged if I could have in the crash webbing.

  We all felt the sharp turn the freighter took, pushing us against the webbing that fought to hold us still. The pilot had shifted to take a parallel course to the belt. The ship bucked even more now. Besides the side to side movement, there was a pushing as the gravity of the asteroids themselves acted against the ship. Singularly there wasn’t that much gravity to an asteroid, nowhere near enough to push a ship. But a belt was different. So many together generated quite a lot of gravity. Especially around the edges of the belt.

  “Good luck,” the co-pilots voice said.

  “You too,” our co-pilot replied and the door between us slid shut.

  I grabbed the webbing with both hands, crossing over my body, and braced myself.

  There was an audible sound, a whooshing as the air was sucked out of the ship and into the void. A cracking of metal with multiple small explosions. We only heard it because of the atmosphere that remained in the freighter, just enough to bounce sound.

  I felt the drop ship falling backwards any noise lost to the void.

  Picturing what was happening in my mind, I saw the front half of the freighter falling away as the rear half with us in it continued. The engines were on our end, so the thrusters would push as forward until they ran out of fuel or fell apart. The cockpit in the front half would spin and spin, unable to stop.

  Had the pilots just commited suicide?

  The drop ship shook and the vibrations changed. I could feel the ship’s metal floor almost throbbing in time with the engines as they powered up. We were pushed back in our seats, pushed to the side away from the front, as the drop ship burst out of the shell of the freighter.

  With the hatch closed we couldn’t see anything but had to hope the pilots were quickly getting us into the asteroid belt.

  The freighter had been detonated, probably exploding in time with a blast from an XT laser. Make the Tiat think the ship had been destroyed. Explosions, set by the techs back on station, would have ripped the ship in half. They would have been placed where they would have done the least damage to the cargo hold, with the drop ship, or the cockpit but also where they would split the ship and expose the hold to space so we could escape.

  I knew we had entered the asteroid belt when the shaking of the drop ship increased. The entire structure vibrated as well as the ship itself being pushed and pulled by the asteroids. Well they weren’t comfortable, drop ship had very strong thrusters. They needed them in order to power through storms, thick air and other obstacles on the various planets.

  An asteroid belt’s messed up gravity shouldn’t have been a problem.

  Had the previous trip been this bad? I couldn’t remember. Or had I purposely blocked it from memory?

  *****

  Twenty minutes later we got through the belt and to the other side into relatively clear space.

  We had to hope that the Tiat had bought the ruse, thinking the freighter had been destroyed. An old trick but as Jessups was fond of saying, the reason they were classics was because they worked so often. The XTs couldn’t fly through the belt, not as easily as we had. There had been some close ones. We could feel the many times smaller asteroids had hit the hull of the ship. The sound had been a deep boom with each one, the hull echoing with the impacts. Thankfully the ship’s armor was thick and held up.

  The star fighters would have been destroyed by any of those smaller impacts.

  Belts had earned the name because of their shape. They resembled a belt wrapped around nothing but more space or a planet or moon.
There was a width to them, they didn’t go over the top or bottom.

  The Tiat ships could have flown over the belt and into the clear space we now occupied.

  So we had to move fast. The rocks themselves would protect us from scanners. But only until a Tiat ship was in a position where it’s scanners went over or under the asteroids at just the right angle. And there probably would be Tiat patrols in this area as well.

  Or maybe not.

  The mission planners, who I had always thought needed to actual go on missions sometimes, had figured the Tiat wouldn’t patrol inside the belt as no one was expected in system and no one should know they were operating out of the belt.

  I wondered if anyone had tried to point out that the entrance we made would put the Tiat on alert and probably have them run patrols to be safe. I mean that’s what I would have done if I was them.

  The tough part was going to be finding the rock before the Tiat inevitably found us.

  Again.

  The hatch to the cockpit slid open and the co-pilot looked my way.

  “Captain Lancer,” he said. “You’re up.”

  With a sign I unhooked my crash webbing. I stood up a little shakily, getting the feeling back in my legs. Using the handles mounted to the top of the hold I walked the short distance into the cockpit. No handles inside, I had to hold onto the back of the co-pilot’s seat to stay steady. We were still being thrown around a bit by the asteroids gravity and the pilot was continuing the erratic movements to confuse any possible sensors even though the mission planners said there wouldn’t be any.

  “You got the coordinates,” I asked and the co-pilot nodded.

  He pointed at a screen and I leaned over his shoulder to look. Only a couple thousand kilometers away. We’d lucked out and gotten pretty close even accounting for the movement of that point over the years.

  Jessups had wanted me along on the mission because I was the only person alive that knew how to get to the rock. That was true. But they would have still been able to do the mission without me. Just more difficult.