Smuggler's Dilemma Read online

  "We’re looking for two ships. I need something with some real teeth and a General Astral CA-12." I had no idea how to negotiate with a ship salesman, so I just put it out there on the table.

  "I see. What kind of budget do you have?" The four of us were seated at a clear glass table in his office. While he talked, Wally was gesturing, giving commands to his HUD. Three CA-12s emerged from the glowing, translucent blue table top, hovering in a line. They looked so lifelike that I couldn’t help myself and reached out to touch one. It jumped to the center of the table, and grew in size to half a meter long and perfectly proportioned.

  "Seven hundred thousand for both ships, fully functional," I said.

  He nodded and flicked one of the CAs off of the table. It tumbled and disappeared when it reached the edge. He lined up five smaller ships in front of the cutters. Two of them were the same arrowhead shaped darts that we’d come into contact with many times before. I wasn’t impressed with their armor. Sure, a dart was fast, but we’d been able to take them out every time.

  "Probably not the darts," I said.

  "Good. Tell me why, it will help the search," he said.

  "Too fragile. They’ve got speed, but missiles or even a good gunner takes 'em out too easily."

  He considered what I said and nodded appreciatively. "That’d be quite a gunner, but I get your point. I don’t get too many fighters in, so you’ll understand that they come at a hefty price." He swept his hand across the entire lineup of fighters and sent them tumbling. "You’ve really got to have a CA-12?"

  "Yes. Why?" I asked.

  "It’s killing your budget." He pushed the two remaining cutters off the board. "We’ll get back to those. Like I was saying, the fighters are going to be the hardest to find and eliminating the dart class causes some problems. Let’s be creative for a minute. Tell me why you need more than a dart. What are you kids getting into?" Ordinarily I’d have been offended by his use of the word kids, but he was such an odd character and he’d said it so earnestly that it didn’t bother me.

  "Loose Nuts is a shipping company, recently founded. The problem is we keep running into trouble and the equipment we’re sailing gets beat to crap."

  "You’re smuggling?" he asked, completely unabashed.

  "Not so far," I replied honestly.

  Ada was scandalized by my comment and she gave me a one word correction. "Liam."

  I looked at her and smiled. "Right. No, just problems with pirates."

  "And the CA-12 isn’t enough? Surprising, since that’s the point of a cutter. Long range and teeth enough to defend itself. That Chrysler Frigate you brought back, did you take that down with your CA-12?"

  I was shocked. How did he know about the frigate? I didn’t even know that it was a Chrysler make.

  "We got lucky and the CA-12 didn’t survive."

  "More than luck if you all made it back. That cutter isn't designed to take on warships. Let me take you out to the yard to look at something special. I don’t even want to put it on the table. You’ve got to see it in person."

  He had my attention. I knew I was being reeled in by a master salesman, but felt powerless. He’d shown aptitude, interest and even indirectly complimented me. I was trying to learn something from his salesmanship, but it was hard as I was the target of his not inconsiderable charm. I looked to Tabby and Ada for support, but they’d been drawn in too.

  "Alright. We’re game," I said.

  "Perfect." He stood up and his vac-suit’s hoodie deployed, face mask rising.

  Comm channel request from Wenton Waldorf, my AI requested as the three of us followed suit.

  "This way," he said. Wally placed a white top hat on his helmet and grabbed a long yellow cane. Past his desk, a door slid to the side revealing an airlock large enough to fit a dozen people. We cycled through the lock into a comfortable transport vehicle that resembled a large cab with plush cushioned chairs in rows facing forward. Wally perched himself on a stool at the head of the vehicle, centered in front of an expansive window.

  "Sometimes when people come to me asking for one thing, I get a flash of inspiration that I just have to share with them. Often that inspiration turns out to be the ramblings of a madman, but sometimes - once in a blue moon - that inspiration changes the course of history," he said, waving his hands dramatically still holding his bright yellow cane. The vehicle slowly pulled away from the office.

  "Today, I’ve had one of those flashes of brilliance. Pragmatically, you’ve been asking for ships with which you are familiar – with possible improvements here and there. I applaud you for that. I believe, however, that I can take you - not just to the next level - but that I can transport you to an entirely new, unmatched level."

  I had to hand it to him. He might be full of crap, but he was totally committed to it. I certainly hoped he wasn’t going nutty on us.

  "Your problem is that you need to be able to sail cargo into hostile territory. You are smugglers - but you don’t know it."

  Ada gasped.

  "No, my pretty little friend! I don’t mean literal smugglers - although I don’t think our friend Mr. Hoffen has completely ruled this out. I mean figuratively. You have the smuggler's dilemma. If you can’t beat it, you need to be able to outrun it. In addition to this, you’ve got what I call Don Quixote syndrome."

  He looked at us expectantly. I had no earthly idea what he was saying, but I loved his enthusiasm. "Oh, come on! Surely one of you has read the classic story?"

  I shook my head negatively, but made a mental note to look up this Don Quixote later.

  Wally sighed and pushed on. He was trying to fill time. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate his waxing on eloquently, but a literary reference might have been a little much for this group.

  "You defend the defenseless. You come to the aid of the righteous. Am I right?"

  I shrugged, but he’d caught a nerve with Ada, who responded, "Yes. That’s right."

  "Thank you, Ms. Chen. And we’re here. Behind me is the starship HMS Hotspur. I’ve been holding onto her for several years, waiting for the right captain. And Mr. Hoffen, I believe that captain is you."

  I looked through the glass behind him and couldn’t see anything other than a dark space where something was blocking out the stars.

  "I assure you it’s there, my friends. The reason you’re having trouble seeing the ship is because of its light-absorptive armor."

  "You said starship. What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Tut-tut. All in good time, Mr. Hoffen. The HMS Hotspur is a sloop class starship, weighing in at three hundred metric tonnes. Named after an ancient sailing vessel, the Hotspur was constructed over a century ago when gate travel was extremely dangerous, but also highly profitable. Have you ever considered gate travel, Mr. Hoffen?" I wasn’t sure if he was asking a question or not, but he’d paused long enough that I recognized he was awaiting an answer.

  "Yes. We’re interested in gate travel."

  "Interesting. You didn’t mention that earlier, yet I knew this. We are simpatico, you and I, Mr. Hoffen." As if to emphasize the relationship, he gestured back and forth between us. I wasn't sure what to do with this, but it turned out he wasn't finished yet. "If I were in your position, I’d be looking at those gates jealously. At three hundred tonnes, she’s twice as long as the CA-12 and three times as heavy, yet with a maximum crew compliment of ten, and that’s if you hot bunk your crew. Any idea where all that weight shows up?"

  "Armor?" I asked. It was the only thing I could come up with.

  "Very good! And yes, almost entirely. She’s also equipped with three laser blaster turrets, two forward missile tubes and something you won’t find on most ships nowadays. Care to take a guess?" Wally stood up, pacing back and forth, unable to contain his excitement.

  "I can’t imagine," I said.

  "An aft-facing cannon - and I’m not talking about your basic namby-pamby plinker here. This thing is so big that it can only be fired once every thirty seconds."

&n
bsp; "Cargo?" I asked.

  "Six hundred cubic meters."

  I was impressed. "That’s more than twice the CA-12."

  Wally, not wanting to miss his moment, interjected, "All pressurized and easily accessed. There’ll be no hauling cargo through the air locks and into bunk rooms."

  "How much?" I asked.

  "Not yet, Mr. Hoffen. So far you’ve only heard about it. Before we talk price, you need to experience it."

  He gestured subtly and the transport moved forward. It wasn’t until we were ten meters from the side of the ship that I was able to make out any details. The color was a dark grey with a matte finish. I’d never seen anything like it. The armored glass bridge appeared smaller than Sterra’s Gift from the outside. Instead of taking up the entire ship's nose, it was five meters up from the sloped nose at the very top of the ship. I wondered why it sat so high, but there were a lot of possibilities.

  We came along the top spine of the ship and ran across one of the three turrets. It had three squat, meter-long barrels configured in a triangular shape.

  "The energy stores for the turrets are interlinked. In a crisis, one of the two main engines can be diverted to power the weaponry. While, of course this slows you down, sometimes you just want to lay it on heavily and the Hotspur will oblige you."

  We arrived at the airlock. One of the two main engines was tucked under a curved wing, which started at the top of the ship, curling down around the engine. It wasn’t something you saw in spaceships, since air-foils were only necessary for atmospheric ships. Nowadays that wasn’t important, as ship’s engines were more than powerful enough to overcome atmospheric entry.

  "What’s with the wings?" I asked.

  "Beautiful and functional," Wally responded. "She’s made for landing on high-g planets with thick atmospheres. Not only that, the armor surrounds the engines." He stabilized our shuttle and exhausted the atmosphere as the port airlock of the Hotspur opened. We followed Wally across and waited for him to cycle the doors.

  Lights flooded the ten meter high, six meter across and eight meter long cargo space. Fairly close to the airlock was a door in the forward bulkhead leading to the crew spaces. It seemed like a deficiency that the airlock was open to the entire cargo space. In my experience, that meant we wouldn’t be able to move between the living space and the mid-ship portside airlock when the hold wasn't pressurized. I started a mental checklist of issues. I would have loved to have had this much pressurized cargo space available on previous runs.

  "The aft cargo ramp allows for the largest loads to be rolled right in," Wally explained. "But this little gem also has a belly loader."

  "Belly loader?"

  "That’s not the technical term, mind you, but if you are so inclined, there’s a bottom loading trap door, complete with winches and tackles. Let’s you take on a load without actually touching down. You see it more with often with ships like this that have a military background."

  I nodded, not sure why I cared, but it did seem like a nice option.

  Wally led us forward through the tall bulkhead. "This is the berth deck. There are two cabins with bunks down here, so you can hold a total of eight if you’re hot bunking on twelve hour shifts. Down the hall is the galley and mess."

  I didn’t much care for hot bunking, or hot racking, as some called it. It was the idea that while one shift was working, their beds could be used by another shift. It felt like he was over stating the ship’s crew capacity by doubling up in this way.

  I poked my head into one of the bunk rooms. It hadn’t seen any attention in a number of years and had skeletal bunks and shelves for lockers. I suspected the bed frames were totally rotted through. It looked grim.

  "Head?" I asked. No ship was fully functional without a working head – something that I’d learned the hard way.

  "Second door, port side."

  I walked down the hallway two meters and on the wall a straight ladder went up into the ceiling. It would be a hard climb with my prosthetic foot - another note. Past the ladder was a second door and beyond that the hallway opened into a large empty room. I looked into the 'head.’ My mind immediately jumped back to the mess I’d dealt with when we’d taken over Sterra’s Gift. I hadn’t checked, but I hoped the small replicator had survived our encounter- more notes added.

  "What’s this open room," I asked. Wally didn’t answer, but my HUD lit up with a design that showed a long table with chairs around it on the starboard side and a galley built into the port side.

  "Not in great shape down here, is it?" I observed.

  "All cosmetics, my boy," Wally answered. "Everything you’re interested in is on the next deck. You go first." He gestured grandly toward the ladder.

  I obliged and climbed up through the hatch into a room that had armored glass windows on opposite sides. The windows followed the contour of the hull and rounded inward, toward the top. There was a lot of viewable glass. Under one window was a well-padded couch with a permanently attached table in front of it. Opposite the couch were two chairs that swiveled and slid over to workstations on the opposite wall. They were currently in position around the table.

  A doorway opened to the aft. To the fore were steps leading up a meter and a half. I walked past the table and up the steps. Just as I suspected, it was the cockpit, about the same size as the Adela Chen's, just wide enough to hold two pilot’s chairs and a number of vid-panel displays. I grabbed the overhead handle and slid down into the port-side chair, my hands coming to rest naturally on the control sticks. I was pleasantly surprised to see the wrap-around view available to the pilots. While seated at the highest point inside the ship, just beneath the spine, I had better than a hundred and eighty degrees of sight.

  I heard Ada and Tabby whispering, but couldn’t make out what was being said. Apparently, they’d made a decision about seating because Tabby slid into the starboard side pilot’s chair next to me.

  "What are you thinking?" Tabby asked.

  "It’s a hell of a view," I said.

  "Built almost a century and a half ago by the Brits," Wally said, having climbed up the stairs behind us.

  "I didn’t think the Brits were that active in space," I said. I also thought he’d originally said it was a century old.

  "Not as much today, but they had their time. This ship was a blockade runner. The Brits used it to transport supplies to their colonists on the other side of the Transloc Gates. Not much gets through this armor. Care to take it out for a test sail?"

  "Sure. If you’re okay with that," I said.

  "The only way to truly understand the soul of a ship is to sail her," he replied.

  After some gesturing on Wally’s part, the cockpit came alive and the screens showed all green statuses. I wasn’t getting my hopes up. No doubt he was only showing systems that were in good shape. The system map showed that Wally’s Bone Yard was arranged on a plane, with nothing above or below. The easiest exit was to elevate the ship above the plane, which Wally instructed the AI to do.

  A blue course appeared on the center console.

  "Mr. Hoffen, the helm is yours. If you could stay within the blue corridor."

  I didn’t have any real feel for the ship so I took it easy as we left the shipyard’s local space. I pushed forward on the stick that controlled thrust and appreciated how easily the ship accelerated. I’d expected a century and a half to be as hard on the engines as it had been on the interior, but this certainly wasn’t the case.

  "Surely you’ve got more in you than that," Wally chided.

  "Just getting my bearings." I was uncomfortable putting a ship I didn’t own through a full combat run.

  "Don’t be fooled by the rust. The Brits built her with an eye for longevity, the rest can be fixed with a little paint and pleather," he said. I wasn’t sure what pleather was, but I got his point.

  I pushed the stick down further and we accelerated smoothly. The gravity and inertial systems adjusted and I was again pleased with its performance, surprised t
hat this large of a ship responded as nimbly as - or possibly even more so - than Sterra’s Gift.

  "Mr. Hoffen, I implore you to take off the kid gloves. The Hotspur deserves to be run like the thoroughbred she is." I knew Wally was taunting me, but I didn’t need a lot of encouragement.

  Tabby looked at me and said, "Don’t get too crazy there, Buck Rogers."

  I winked at her and then warned, "Hold on to something."

  Combat controls, I commanded. My AI would now negotiate my commands to push the ship much closer to its limits. I pushed the stick down to about eighty-five percent wide open. The ship responded immediately, jumping forward and pressing my body back into the chair while the inertial systems caught up. We were accelerating much faster than Sterra’s Gift ever could. It was a rush. I couldn’t help myself and I jammed the thrust stick down to full. Frak, but this thing had some balls.

  I backed off and tipped the stick that controlled our pitch and yaw, then barrel rolled through a turn and slid the back end around so that we were headed back on the path we’d just taken. As we rolled through the turn I punched the thrust up to a hundred percent again. It didn’t take long to burn off the acceleration we’d gained heading away from the shipyard. I reduced our acceleration until we were gliding toward the yard relatively slowly.

  "Take a turn, Tabby?" I asked.

  "Sure. That okay?" she asked Wally.

  "Yes ma'am, but let me make a small adjustment," he said. Revoke control Hoffen. Initiate silent running. Grant Tabitha Masters pilot control.

  Tabby started working the controls and I noticed that we’d lost a significant amount of acceleration. The ship was still sailing smoothly, just not as performant as before.

  "What’s silent running?" I asked.

  "That’s part of being a blockade runner. The emissions from the engines and other systems have been reduced a hundred-fold under this mode. You’re still visible, but nothing like before."

  CRAZY LIKE A FOX

  "One point one million." We’d caught up with Nick and Marny, who had been working on the frigate.