Smuggler's Dilemma

  SMUGGLER'S DILEMMA

  JAMIE McFARLANE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover Artwork: Sviatoslav Gerasymchuk

  Copyright © 2015 Jamie McFarlane

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  SMUGGLER'S DILEMMA

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PUSKAR STELLAR

  REUNION

  HMS HOTSPUR

  CRAZY LIKE A FOX

  HOTSPUR DECK LAYOUTS

  BUYER'S REMORSE

  PACKING UP

  TAKE ME HOME

  PASSAGE TO VALHALLA

  TRADING 101

  TARGET PRACTICE

  LIFE FINDS A WAY

  FILBERT

  JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID

  CAT AND MOUSE

  INVASION

  BEACHHEAD

  HIDE 'N SEEK

  PEAS IN A POD

  WAR

  STAY IN THE MOMENT

  BEGINS WITH THE FIRST STEP

  CENSORED

  NEW BEGINNINGS

  LEVELING THE FIELD

  DROPPING IN ON A FRIEND

  DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

  PRIMED AND READY

  ALL DRESSED UP

  THE DEEP DARK

  PLAN B

  BLITZKRIEG

  END OF AN ERA

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CONTACT JAMIE

  PROLOGUE

  Tradition calls for spacers to celebrate a voyage’s mid-point. This crew was exhausted and beat up, but we'd managed to stay together and deliver the bad guys into custody. Those were all good reasons for a celebration.

  The downside? Our flagship, the General Astral Cutter, Sterra’s Gift, was completely wrecked. I'll admit it – mostly my fault. Ramming it into a frigate wasn't a choice most captains would make, but it was the only choice I had at the time. She'd never sail again and that fact alone was hard to accept. All the work we'd put into the ship… all of those hours scrubbing out the septic… all that investment… lay on the barge, not much more than broken pieces. In return, however, we’d captured a pirate frigate that was worth a small fortune.

  Destroying the frigate’s engines was great for capturing it, but it sure made moving it around difficult. In the end we finally just lashed it to one of the three loaded barges we were pushing back to Mars. We must have presented such a sight - two broken ships and a crap-tonne of ore.

  Mid-way between the Jeratorn space station and Mars, we cut the tug's engines and were gliding without power. Ada Chen, an extraordinary heavy-freight pilot, was sailing our tug, named after her deceased mother, Adela Chen. She’d just finished sliding the tug out from one end of the string of three barges and had successfully mated back onto the opposite side. We’d have our equatorial celebration before she fired the tug’s massive engines to decelerate us on our long approach to Mars.

  The spread of food Nick and Marny laid out in the frigate's mess hall, looked better than anyone had reason to expect given that our pantry on Sterra’s Gift had been destroyed by blaster fire.

  “Is that chocolate cake?” I’d only recently been introduced to real chocolate and I’d have to say I’m a big fan.

  "Aye, Cap. That it is," Marny’s cheerful voice reassured me from around the corner in the galley.

  "Are you sure you and Nick are solid? ‘Cause if you’re not, I might make a run at you myself," I said.

  Nick’s voice came from the same direction. "Hey, I heard that."

  "I’m just saying. Treat her right." Like he had any choice. Nick weighed in at fifty kilograms if dunked in hydraulic fluid, and was one-point-seven meters tall - small, even for a spacer. Marny, on the other hand, was taller and outweighed us both at ninety kilograms. The size disparity didn’t bother either of them.

  "Keep it down or I’ll tell Tabby," Nick entered the mess hall carrying a platter filled with thick, steaming slices of ham. His threat was good. Tabby was the jealous type and wouldn’t like to hear about me flirting. I understood, though, it was hard on both of us with her at the Naval Academy, but we were figuring it out. Marny followed with another platter of fresh bread, something we didn’t see very often.

  Ada had disembarked from the tug and was already seated at the table along with our two passengers, Tali Liszt and Jordy Kelti, former military special operators we’d hired for the voyage out to Jeratorn Station.

  I sat at the head of the table, reserved for the captain. I wasn’t currently the captain of anything, other than two broken ships that sat atop a load of ore. Technically, the only captain in attendance was Ada, who’d removed the colorful beads from the tight curls on her head and was sporting four centimeters of what she called a ‘fro.’ She was one of the most naturally beautiful women I’d ever met, but lacked any self-awareness of that fact, something I found refreshing.

  It seemed years ago when Captain Sterra had grabbed the attention of an entire table on the Kuznetsov by tapping the side of her glass with a fork. I tried the same, but since we didn’t have any actual glass or crystal on board, all I got was a dull clacking sound. It was hard to feel sorry for myself when I looked around the table. As a group, we’d been through harrowing experiences, each contributing value in their own unique and critical way. I felt like I needed to say something, though.

  "My dad was a man of few words. I’ve always believed it wasn’t that he didn’t have anything to say, rather he liked to make sure that when he said something, people understood it was important. One of the pieces of advice he gave me when I was younger was that ‘It is the people in your life who are important, not the things.’ Looking around this table, I can’t imagine any truer words spoken. I’m better for having known you all."

  The faces I looked into around the table smiled back at me. Inspiring words, to be sure, but there was hot food on the table, so I declared, "Now, let’s eat!"

  After we’d eaten and drunk our fill - and even sung a little, Ada and Jordy headed back to the tug to resume our journey.

  "Do you think they’re a thing?" I asked Tali, who was the oldest in our crew and leader of her small group of ex-special forces.

  "Not sure. She’s not the type he generally goes for."

  "Pretty?"

  "No, that he likes. More like smart and confident. He’s a love 'em and leave 'em type."

  "Interesting. Think she’s in over her head?"

  "Not at all. We talked. I didn’t want any bad blood because of his commitment issues. She said he’s been a perfect gentleman and they just enjoy hanging out and talking."

  "Oh crap, he’s in trouble," I said.

  "That’s kind of what I thought," Tali said. "What are you all doing next? I hope you’re taking the Navy’s warning about laying low seriously." She didn't have any commitment to me from here on out. Her team had done just what we hired them to do and done it well.

  "I’m not sure," I said. "We're still trying to figure it out."

  Nick slid into a chair opposite Tali. "I’ve got an idea. We should tear down that pirate compound we took from t
he Red Houzi and bring the loot back. There’s got to be at least half a million still there, not to mention the stationary guns, warehouse and habitation domes."

  Tali interrupted, "I’ll leave you boys to it. This sounds interesting and all, but I’ve got an appointment to get beat up by your girlfriend." Tali and Marny regularly practiced their hand-to-hand combat skills together.

  Nick nodded with a smile but didn’t respond, focused on his current train of thought. "We should stop at home and visit. Mom’s been wanting to meet Marny."

  "We’ll need to take the tug," I was still thinking about that pirate outpost. "There’s no way we’ll have a ship big enough to carry the outpost defensive guns and the buildings. The buildings will pack up pretty good, but the cannons and their generators will take space."

  "We could rent a barge and run the tug out. It’d be a little sketchy if we ran into pirates, though," Nick was the most thoughtful person I knew. He needed time to work this out.

  "No way. I’m not going back without serious firepower. I don’t want to get trapped by Red Houzi again." Once we took the heavy station guns offline, we’d be vulnerable to whatever was in the neighborhood. I doubted Red Houzi would still hang around a base they’d lost control of, but I wasn’t willing to risk it either.

  "What are you thinking?" Nick asked.

  "We’ve got to replace Sterra’s Gift."

  "As long as we have the hull, we have the ability to replicate all of the parts. That was the deal we made with the Navy. All we need to do is find another General Astral CA-12 and we’re in business."

  "I was also thinking we should cut Ada in on the company," I said. "I can’t imagine a pilot I’d rather sail with. If we don’t keep her, she’ll just end up working for someone else and I don’t want to sail a tug forever."

  "A cut like we gave Marny?" Nick asked.

  "Yes, that and a salary, but she’d get a captain’s share if she’s running the ship."

  He nodded. "Sounds like we have a plan."

  PUSKAR STELLAR

  There were a half dozen shipyards near Puskar Stellar and Coolidge, the two cities where we spent the majority of our time. Like any large city on Mars, both had space elevators connected to large, public transportation terminals - in orbit and on the ground.

  Contrary to what you might expect, finding a shipyard that would let you drop off a couple of derelict ships is difficult. Both of our ships, Sterra’s Gift and the much larger frigate, had seen quite a bit of hostile action. None of the yards wanted to deal with anything that remotely looked like pirate activity. It took several hours to get someone from Mars Protectorate to acknowledge that we were indeed not pirates and had legal right to both craft.

  Once we worked through the security issues, a shipyard over Puskar Stellar became quite helpful. Yard-hand semi-autonomous robots easily plucked the derelicts from the barges and placed both hulls in their designated spaces. They even conveniently stretched a catwalk between the frigate and their small station.

  "I guess this is it." We’d called for a space taxi to take Tali and Jordy to the closest Puskar Stellar space station. From there, they’d catch the elevator down to the surface.

  "Look us up next time you’re in town. We’d like a rematch in the simulations." Tali’s grin was more than a little mischievous.

  Words couldn’t adequately express how grateful I was for Tali and Jordy’s help in getting us back alive, so I gave them each a heartfelt hug. If they found that weird they graciously kept it to themselves. Ada followed suit and I was surprised she didn’t linger when she hugged Jordy. Nick and Marny bade them farewell and we all waved as they pulled away in their taxi.

  "Let’s deliver that ore, eh?" I said to lighten the mood. We had three barges filled with a spec-load of ore. Two weeks ago, we’d locked in a price and the gain looked good. Unfortunately, Nick and I had given our personal shares to Tali and Jordy to incent them to come on our last trip. It had been a good call - we wouldn’t have survived otherwise.

  "You didn’t get many hours toward your master’s license on the way back," Ada poked at me as the four of us walked toward a shuttle.

  I was having none of that. "You and Jordy were getting along so well, I didn’t want to get in the way." Marny’s head swiveled toward Nick and I imagined her raised eyebrow.

  "What?" Ada sputtered. "No… no… he just gets motion sick."

  I wasn't finished, so I pushed. "So you’re saying there’s nothing going on between you two?"

  She gave a little smirk and asked, "Jealous?"

  Just in the nick of time the shuttle showed up to ferry us out to the waiting Adela Chen. Hopefully, my raised face-shield hid a rising blush and if I was lucky, the burning in my cheeks would dissipate before we boarded.

  "You want to sail her, Liam?" Ada asked.

  "I would. Nick, you and Marny are welcome to watch. There’s a ledge right behind the stairs that isn’t too uncomfortable, especially if I turn down the gravity." I followed Ada up the ladder into the cockpit. It was compact with two comfortable chairs sitting side by side. Like most tugs, the cockpit rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, allowing the captain a clear view forward or backwards depending on whether the ship was accelerating or decelerating.

  Display Adela Chen pre-sail checklist, I commanded my AI (Artificial Intelligence). We punched through the items and I wasn’t surprised to see all greens. Ada was an extremely precise captain and would have made sure things were ready to go before she disembarked to meet us in the shipyard.

  "I show we’re clear," she said. "I’ve set a course in to the refinery for you. Navigation Plan Alpha."

  I reviewed the plan and ordered, Engage Plan Alpha. With Ada, a master pilot on board, I was within my legal right to take the flight sticks and manually sail the tug and its nine hundred meter long string of barges to the refinery. There were some captains who would do it, too, but the risk was too high. With my whole company aboard and a delivery to make, I preferred to allow the ship’s AI handle the navigation.

  It was a relief to finally release the barge string above the refinery. We waited for the customary inspection that would record our delivery. A small fleet of robots flitted about the surface of the barges and our wait was short.

  Seven point five oh oh two kilo tonnes are accepted, the AI informed me. Good news. We’d contracted for exactly seven-point-five kilo-tonnes and the extra four hundred kilograms would go straight to the bottom line.

  "Liam, you want me to find us a place to stay tonight? Ada, you need a room?" Nick asked.

  "I’ll probably go home," she answered. Her father's apartment was nearby and whenever she was here, she stayed with him.

  "I see a suite with three bedrooms. Ada, you sure you don’t want to at least hang out for one night?" Nick asked. "It’s going to be 0200 local time when we get down there."

  She thought about it for a minute then agreed. "Sure, that makes sense. No reason to wake up Dad."

  The hotel Nick found in Puskar Stellar wasn’t anywhere near as nice as the resort we’d stayed at in Coolidge. The beds, however, were comfortable. I’d brought my civvies along (clothing that didn’t immediately brand me as a spacer) and threw them on the room’s only chair. The hotel had a funny smell, like too much cleanser had been used, but I was worn out and fell asleep easily.

  After I awoke, I sauntered out to the common room of the suite. Nick and Ada were seated on one of the two couches talking.

  "Marny’s still sleeping?" I asked, surprised.

  "No, she took off about an hour ago. Wanted to get a run in," Nick explained. "Should be back shortly."

  "You all get anything to eat yet?"

  "We’re waiting on you and Marny. Thought we’d go out. Ada knows some good restaurants."

  I nodded. I was starving. But first, I needed to at least start the conversation. "Ada, I’m glad you’re here. We’d like to talk to you about a business proposition."

  "Sure, what’s on your mind?"

  "
We’d like you to join our company. Full captain’s share and some other perks."

  Ada looked at the both of us in turn. "Are you serious? Why would you do that?"

  "You’re an excellent pilot, good in a pinch, people like you and we trust you," I’d anticipated her question and had the answer ready to go.

  "That’s flattering. What’s the catch?" she asked. "You said there’s more."

  The door opened and Marny walked in, dressed in what I’d come to know as her running suit. Her well-defined, heavy, Earth-borne muscles showed the result of a strenuous workout and I had to be careful not to stare. It was incredible to me that she could be so powerfully built and still so attractive.

  "You guys up for lunch?" Marny asked cheerfully. She winked at me when she saw me staring. "I just need a quick shower."

  "Yup. We were just pitching Ada on the company," Nick said. He was staring too. That woman had grabbed his attention the first time he met her and he'd never gotten over it.

  "Save it for lunch, I want to hear the rest." Marny reappeared five minutes later in her standard tight jeans and loose top.

  "Let’s eat. I’m starving," I said.

  Ada had a restaurant she wanted to introduce us to and directed the cab to its location.

  The Southern Garden’s interior was brightly lit with high ceilings and white painted woodwork. Dark green vines had been encouraged to grow up the thick beams that appeared to hold up the roof and colorful flowers adorned each of the tables.

  "It’s one of my favorite places when I’m in this part of town," Ada said. "Everything on the menu is freshly made here in the restaurant." Her excitement was contagious. I had no idea what to order as I was generally satisfied with meal bars, but I looked over the menu nonetheless.

  "Okay, spill. What other perks could you possibly offer me?" Ada asked conspiratorially, looking quickly from Marny to Nick and then to me with a slight grin.

  A waiter appeared with water, coffee and fresh juice. I chose what Ada ordered and waited for him to leave. Ada looked back to me expectantly.