E-mail Matt Jarpe at m.jarpe@comcast.net
Web design & programming by David Louis Edelman.
By Matthew Jarpe
Originally published August 2004 by Asimov's Science Fiction. Copyright © 2004 by Matthew Jarpe.
“We’ve got company,” Breitman said. She pointed at the 3D display, the now familiar radar signature coming up from behind. “A hundred and ten klicks, coming in fast and right up our tailpipe.”
“Gotcha.” Randy said. “Say goodbye to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Bye-bye, Massacre. We’ll miss you, and your insanely large complement of weaponry.”
“Bye,” Breitman said quietly as the Damager fired thrusters and moved off at an angle to their path. “It was good working with you.”
It had taken hours of frustrating backing-and-filling to get the smaller ship lined up just right. The misaligned lateral thrusters did work as attitudinals, after a fashion. But it took a steady hand and the patience of a monk to steer the ship in the right direction. The whole plan hinged on the pirate taking one particular approach vector. Since it had taken the same approach on the two previous attacks, it was a worthwhile gamble. It had paid off. Their attacker was right where they wanted him to be.
“Well,” Randy said, “I’m going to go ahead and suit up. No sense waiting until the last minute.”
“No,” Breitman told him. “I’m suiting up. Your suit has no armor.”
“You catch a direct hit and you’ll be just as slagged as me. It’s my plan, and I’m going out.”
“I know how to use the weapons,” Breitman countered.
“So do I. And this is my ship, so I’m the captain, so my orders are for you to stay inside and fire the particle-beam while I go out and fire the cannon.”
Breitman laughed. “What kind of a Martian are you? Captain. What a crock! The cannon is mine. I’m firing it. End of story.” She headed to where her suit was strapped against the wall. “And, yes, I’m just as vulnerable to a direct hit, but I’m at least protected against flack from near misses.” She started putting her suit on. “And besides, you’re better at driving this tub of shit than I am.” She stopped before putting on her helmet. “And furthermore . . .”
Randy waved her off. “Okay, you win. Just go. Don’t get yourself killed out there. Try to do me that favor, at least.”
The pirate took the bait. Randy had guessed that they didn’t know how badly the Damager was hurt, and it was natural that any survivors would take the least damaged ship and make a run for it.
He had also guessed something else about the pirates. They were not pirates at all. They were not after the powdered vat protein in the hold of the Rattle and Hum. Before attacking him, they had hit a homesteader transport. That was a good way to stock up on the cheapest crap you could get at a scrapheap. These guys were not out to make money, they had another agenda. Religious fanatics, maybe? Political terrorists? He couldn’t guess what that agenda was, but he’d seen enough crazy shit in his life that nothing much surprised him anymore. One thing he did know: they would not let the Texas Chainsaw Massacre escape with anyone alive on board.
Randy and Breitman maintained radio silence. They had to keep up the illusion that the Rattle and Hum was the abandoned ship and the Massacre was running for dear life. It was the only way they could get the enemy in range at the right angle.
The particle-beam could shut down a fusion drive for a couple of seconds by collapsing the magnetic field that squeezed the fuel together. The cannon could put oxygenated explosive into the deuterium tank, but only if the engines were shut down. It was a cute trick that everyone knew about, so nobody ever let a hostile ship get into position to do it.
But the pirate could not reach the fast-running Massacre without matching vectors. Their engines were nearly equal and the Massacre had a head start. And the pirate was invisible, after all. It could afford to be sloppy. It could ignore the dead ship behind it to chase the live one that was getting away.
As soon as the enemy’s engines were lined up right, Randy hit the firing stud on his new, powerful weapon. The lights in the ship went out. The computer went out. The power drain had shut down everything. He didn’t know what had happened next.
He scrambled in the dark for the bypass circuit panel. He barked his shin on the workbench, then cracked his forehead into the edge of a hatch before finding it. As he reached for the cold-start switch, he heard the pop-fizz of melted metal striking the outer hull. They were shooting back.
He hit the switch and launched himself back into the main module. The ship was still dark. It would take a few minutes for the power plant to kick back in. He silently cursed himself for skimping on emergency lighting. “If it’s that big an emergency,” he had reasoned, “I don’t want to see what’s happening.” Idiot.
He fumbled into his suit, then cursed again when he realized that the airlock wasn’t going to work without power. He activated his suit radio.
“Breitman, what’s going on?”
“Can’t talk,” said her modulated man’s voice. “Half a ship, coming right at us. Brace for impact.”
There was no way to brace for the impact between two ships. Or one ship and a half of a ship. The walls slapped him around for almost a minute. If he hadn’t suited up, he’d be a smear of red jelly on the inside of the habitat module. As it was, there was a lot of red smearing the inside of his suit, but he was more or less in one piece. When he tried to stabilize his trajectory with one foot, he revised that assessment. Two pieces. Definitely something not attached down there. The pain welled up in him and made him nauseated, but he managed to counter his brain’s request to his stomach for reverse gears and his breakfast stayed down.
By the time he recovered, he realized that the power had come back on. The next thing he realized was that the habitat had maintained integrity. There was no hiss of air escaping, and his suit telltales said there was still pressure outside. The damage had occurred somewhere else on the ship then.
She was out there. He activated his suit radio. “Breitman, are you okay?” Randy quickly cycled through the airlock, trying to keep from using his right foot for anything. Only static came in over his radio.
With dread, he exited the airlock. Chaos ruled the void around him. Twisted metal tumbled everywhere. It was hard to see more than a few meters in any direction. Randy crawled hand-over-hand down the ship. He came to the cargo hold.
To call the damage a hole was to overstate the integrity of the surrounding metal. There wasn’t much left. Shipping containers were torn open. The void, ever hungry, sucked up the pure nutrition pouring out of the canisters. The entire engine superstructure was gone. That had been Cal’s post, where she had waited for her shot at the pirate’s engines.
She had hit it. That much was clear. Most of the tormented steel in the area belonged to the enemy. The biggest piece left intact would make a nice doghouse. Cal’s last act as a Damager had more than lived up to her title. She had destroyed the pirate, but at the cost of her own life.
Randy started crawling back, avoiding the sharper bits of metal. A particularly shiny bit was on a collision course and he dodged, but his broken ankle snagged in the rungs of the ladder and he gasped. The thing hit him full-force, then instead of bouncing off, it grabbed his shoulder and held on.
Breitman pulled her helmet against his. “My radio’s out,” she said, her voice, her real voice, sounding distant through the insulated helmets. “We did it, Martian! I about shit myself when he turned around and ran at us, but then he must have lost control. It came down to a question of mass, and you had it all over on him there. Thanks to the powdered chicken broth.”
“I’m glad you made it, Cal . . . Ms. Breitman.”
“Cal,” she said. “We’ve got a long trip ahead of us. Let’s switch to first names. Looks like you lost most of your cargo. You got good insurance?”
“My family doesn’t believe in insurance,” Randy said. “They say it’s gambling, and when you gamble, the house always wins. To a true Martian insurance is for the timid, something to give them peace of mind. And you can’t eat peace of mind.”
The helped each other over to the airlock. The twisted metal was thinning out now, carried away by the momentum granted to it by the attacking ship that spawned it.
Cal put her helmet against his again. “That’s too bad,” she said. “This is going to cost you.”
“I said my family didn’t believe in insurance. That doesn’t mean I don’t. I guess I’m not a true Martian afterall.” Randy looked back over the scene of destruction, then put his hand on Cal’s shoulder. “There are a lot of thing you can’t eat, and they’re not all useless!”