Here Be Monsters - Chapter 18

     The shuttle was nearly out of fuel when they finally matched courses with the Kuài Bō, and came alongside to deliver Porter, now frothing mad at being handed over to a ship captained by a woman of Chinese ancestry, into the waiting hands of a pair of exo wearing Marines.  They were met by the ship's second in command after turning over their prisoner.
     "Gentlemen, my captain sends her compliments, and asks if you'd be willing to speak to her in person." Said Commander Piers Chang.  "I'm also allowed to offer you additional fuel for your shuttle ride back to your ship."  He added.
     "Commander, under those circumstances, I would hardly wish to be an ingrate.  By all means, lead the way."  Cameron replied, grinning like a schoolboy.
     The captain's conference room was located close to the bridge, and getting there took some time.  Cameron got the distinct impression that Dirk was humoring Commander Chang as he gave directions at each new intersection.  Cameron would have gotten lost in a minute, he never truly realized how significant the differences between civilian and military ships were.  Dirk eventually turned to the commander.
     "Commander, this ship is a Cormorant-class frigate, isn't it?"  He asked.
     "It is.  I have to admit, I wouldn't have expected you to know that."  Piers replied, impressed.
     "I served on the Shùnfēng in '74; tub was slow as lard, but tough as nails.  One of the best crews I ever served with, too."  Dirk said, a bit wistfully.
     Commander Chang looked at Dirk long and hard, as if he were trying to recall something.  The moment passed, and he simply said:  "You were lucky."
     Cameron was a fairly astute judge of people, and he knew there was a lot of information he didn't have, but an entire encyclopedia of conversation passed between Dirk and the Commander in those three words.  They arrived at their destination before he could ask about it.
     A small teapot and cups dominated the center of the table in the middle of the room, and Captain Zhao rose up to meet them.  She was dressed in the standard dark blue navy uniform jacket and trousers, with a white, banded collar shirt.  She reminded Cameron of Jinx, inasmuch as she was pure Chinese, but her face carried the lines of an experienced ship handler.  She exuded a quiet confidence that truly successful captains were known for.  He realized he was being narcissistic when he started to think that he was looking at a female version of himself.
     "Thank you for coming Captain Marshall, I must say that you're not what I normally think of when I hear the word 'privateer'."  She said, as she shook his hand, then turned to Dirk, after Cameron waved him forward.
     "You're welcome, Captain.  This is DJ Sinclair, my ship's gunner and weapons technician.  I'm afraid I had to leave my pilot behind, he was going to oversee the refueling you very generously offered."  Zhao and Dirk shook hands in a very orderly, efficient way, then took a single step back from one another.  Zhao looked at him quizzically.
     "Navy or Marines, Mr Sinclair?"  She asked.
     "Marines.  My last posting was in the 3rd of the 12th."  He replied with a grin.
     Zhao raised an eyebrow at him, then gestured to the chairs around the table, inviting them to sit.
     "I took the liberty of having tea prepared, it's the product of my grandfather's own plantation in the Xiāngshān area on Minotaur.  He brought seedlings from China and found a way to encourage them to grow.  I'm sort of the black sheep of the family, my siblings are all tea growers."  She told them, once they had seated themselves, then poured for each of them.
     "I wanted to ask you how you came up with the unorthodox idea of using a survey drone as a makeshift guided missile.  In my experience as a naval officer, it has the virtue of being unique."  She said, admiringly.
     "Actually, the idea was DJ's, here; he has a gift for unconventional thinking."  Cameron told her, taking a sip of his tea.
     Captain Zhao regarded Dirk with a critical eye, raising her tea to inhale the subtle aromas before taking a sip of her own.
     "Well then, Mr Sinclair, how about it?"  Zhao asked, her hand out, palm up, as a gesture of encouragement.
     Cameron sat back and listened, as Dirk explained to Captain Zhao how the separatists on Draconis had used similar methods.  They preprogrammed survey drones after rigging them up as improvised antipersonnel artillery.  The tactic had proven brutally effective at first, but since they were only any good against static targets, countering them had been relatively easy.  They had adapted by using converging fields of fire to pin down troops, then launching their drones.  It had resulted in a murderous back and forth to see who could build a better mousetrap. 
     "Figured we had nothing to lose, so..."  He trailed off with a shrug. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
     Captain Zhao laughed out loud, nearly spilling her tea, and looked at them both before trying to speak.
     "First off, I want you to know that I've spoken with our resident legal expert, he has assured me that your inventive use of a survey remote as a weapon system, under the circumstances, probably won't lead to formal charges.  That said, I am suggesting that you not make it a habit.  I trust that's clear?"  She told them, her tone now very serious.
     Cameron breathed a massive sigh of relief; he'd run a huge risk letting Dirk cobble together a remote controlled IED, but it looked like the gamble was going to pay off.  He hadn't been certain that would be the case.  The HIA didn't like having armed merchantmen in its space, and people who failed to realize that the HIA's Navy was a professional organization, fully capable of policing its own territory, soon learned otherwise.  Privateers were tolerated only so long as they didn't cause trouble, and a privateer with any sense never tried to take a prize without the Alliance Navy's approval.  All of which lead him to raise an important point.
     "Crystal clear, although I was hoping to have my own ship track down and retrieve our attackers' vessel, either as a prize or as salvage.  The standard interpretation of interstellar law allows us the right to a claim, but if the Navy wanted to take the ship for forensic examination or intelligence purposes, then I would be happy to take a fee for bringing it in."  He said, finishing with a sly grin.
     Captain Zhao answered him with a grin of her own.
     "Most privateers in your position usually just quote the law, and conveniently forget that the claim, to which they have a right, has to be signed off by a duly authorized government agent.  I thank you for not insulting my intelligence by pretending otherwise.  I assume your offer of retrieval for a fee is genuine?"  Zhao inquired.
     "Oh yes, I'm prepared to haul it all the way to Minotaur, if the money is right.  Ideally, I'd be allowed to file a salvage claim in admiralty court, but I have a job lined up, and I'd rather not have to spend a whole lot of time waiting for that decision to come down.  As a result, I'm willing to deal."  Cameron replied, fervently hoping that he wasn't going to get screwed on this.
     Technically, the Navy had the right to declare the outlaw vessel a military intelligence asset and order it towed into the naval station in orbit around Minotaur.  There it would be disassembled, painstakingly inspected, and then - in all likelihood - destroyed.  Their technicians would probably be able to find something that would identify either a manufacturer or a point of origin, and once they did, the Navy would drop on them like an anvil on a teacup.  Fast and hard, smashing everything to bits.
     "Well then Captain, I think that I can persuade the bean counters to expedite payment for your services.  The Minotaur naval station informed me that it wanted the craft that fired on your shuttle taken into custody.  Since your ship's already latched onto the wreckage thereof, I might just as well give you the contract.  What do you say?"  She asked with an urchin-like grin.
     Cameron answered with a grin of his own, stuck his hand out to shake hers, and said:  "I'd say you've got a deal, Captain Zhao."
     The Navy would make good on their contract, of that he was certain, but that still left the interviews with the USPF, although, with the Navy in his corner, that was less of a concern than it had been an hour ago.  He couldn't help but think that things were finally starting to look up.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 17

* This chapter contains language that is offensive.  It has been used because I genuinely believe that the attitudes represented by it will (should we ever leave our world to settle elsewhere) follow us into the future.  I wish it were otherwise. *

     The Jester's shuttle bay was crowded, everyone on board who had no pressing duties had decided to see them off.  The decision to take the shuttle instead of one of the smaller tugs was due to the fact that the entire well deck had been sealed off to preserve evidence.  That injunction had come from the USPF liaison on the ANS Harlan Jones, the other ship on station, a frigate of relatively new production compared to the one they would be going to.  Cameron hated leaving his ship, but Captain Zhao had insisted that he accompany his prisoner, and deliver his crew's depositions in person.  He had little choice, but decided to let Bao-Jian, his pilot, have a bit of fun flying the shuttle. 
     The Jester's shuttle was an old, military surplus Skipray Avionics SA-5F 'Titan', it was capable of independent transatmospheric flight from orbit to ground and back, without the need for boosters.  While it may have had limited cargo lifting capacity, it could carry almost a third of its own weight down from orbit, and still have power to maneuver in flight.  The Titans hadn't been of much interest to any of the major navies in the Known Sphere, although many of them had found use for deploying special forces units due to their speed, power, and durability.  Without a cargo to carry, and in deep space, the SA-5F was almost as nimble as an aerospace fighter, but had way more endurance.  Properly fitted out, a Titan could operate without support for as long as a week with only the most minimal crew on board.
     Cameron and Bao-Jian were occupied with the preflight check while Dirk strapped a heavily sedated Porter into a flight chair.  He made certain that the man's handcuffs were secure after locking his harness tight, because the last thing they needed was for him to start having a flailing temper tantrum.  He had made all kinds of threats, promises both dire and tempting, and offered every insult possible while he had been confined on the Jester, awaiting transfer to the Kuài Bō.
     Cameron kept an eye on Dirk.  Porter had made an ill-considered remark to him about what 'his people' would do to Alex when he was free to communicate with them.  It had taken three of them to pull Dirk out of the room, and Porter had ended up in the med bay again having his gunshot wound patched up a second time, as well as being treated for several new injuries, including an internally lacerated trachea.  Dirk had tried to squeeze his head off at the neck, one-handed.
     Cameron had never seen the man more enraged in his life, and he was forced to admit , in that moment, he'd been afraid of Dirk in a very unsettling way.  Dirk would have killed Porter, of that he was sure, but it was the cold silence that had made his actions so shocking.  He hadn't yelled or cursed at him, he'd just moved with absolutely frightening speed, and struck the man in such total silence, that everyone in the room had been slow to react.  Porter had been very quiet since, and Cameron could see the hatred in his eyes when Dirk came into view.
     Dirk had apologized to Cameron for his behavior, and suggested that he be left on Minotaur when they arrived.  Part of him was truly tempted to accept, but he forced himself to admit that he had considered just tossing Porter out an airlock, seconds before Dirk tried to pull his windpipe out.  He'd told him to wait for the USPF to decide on his case before making any commitment one way or another.  The fact was that he needed Dirk for their next job, and his latest impulsive behavior wasn't really the worst he'd ever seen.  It was a safe bet that Dirk carried some psychological baggage from his time on Draconis, and hadn't dealt with all of it yet.
     The preflight check completed, Cameron released the docking clamps and umbilicals, gave Bao-Jian a thumbs up, and tried to relax in his seat.  His pilot was grinning from ear to ear.
     "All passengers, please ensure that you, and your personal effects, have been secured for acceleration, and that you have reviewed the emergency safety procedures for this flight.  If you have any questions, well, its too late, dāizi.  Here we go!"  Said Bao-Jian, as the shuttle dropped out of its socket-like cradle on the belly of the ship, pushing the throttle hard once they were clear of the Jester's hull and lined up with their destination.
     Bao-Jian was refining his course data for the fastest approach to the ANS Kuài Bō, while Cameron kept an eye on their communications and radar.  By his estimate they would pull alongside in just over half an hour.  He decided that it would be courteous to notify the Kuài Bō that they were en route.
     "ANS Kuài Bō, this is Captain Cameron Marshall of the Jester, on an unlisted shuttle inbound per your instructions, to deliver one Zebadiah Porter to navy custody.  I estimate our total flight time at three seven minutes, do you confirm?"  He said over the shuttle's open channel.
     "Three seven minutes confirmed, Captain.  Maintain your current heading, there are other craft in the pattern.  Be advised, there is a refueling tanker and several tenders at 307 by 22 from your current position, and you will pass within 500K meters of their area of operation."  Came the Navy ship's reply.
     "Roger, Navy, we have them on sensors, and we'll keep an eye on them.  Marshall, out."  He and Bao-Jian shared an eye roll, as though they hadn't noticed the very large tanker off the shuttle's port bow.
     Cameron had originally purchased the shuttle because the price had been far less than he would have paid for a heavy lift cargo shuttle, but if he'd known what kind of a fuel hog it was he might have left it alone.  Skipray Avionics had built the F series with a view to surviving orbital insertions while under fire from ground based defensive systems, as a result, the SA-5F was equipped with military grade detection and countermeasures electronics.  Fuel economy had been pretty far down the list.  He couldn't have known then, how fortunate his purchase would be for him today.
     They had been under way for about ten minutes when he noticed an odd sensor reading on the screen in front of him.  He couldn't understand what he was seeing at first, and then the strident warbling tone of the threat warning radar filled the cockpit.  He felt as though his stomach had suddenly turned to lead, but he managed to keep his wits, and yelled out to Bao-Jian.
     "Bao!  We've got a missile locked onto us, range two eight zero klicks, and closing fast!  Put it to our stern, then push the throttle hard, and don't let up."  He told his pilot, and opened up a channel to the Kuài Bō.  "Kuài Bō, this is Marshall, we've just been fired upon and have a missile of unknown type homing in on us.  Please advise.  Over."
     The shuttle's long-range radar was now active, and Cameron was tracking a small craft shadowing them at just over 300 kilometers distance.  It had been running silent and had clearly been modified for stealth, because he was barely getting a fix on its position.  He could see that they were now on a rapidly converging flight path, which meant that their craft, whatever it was, probably had close in weapons, probably heavy machine guns or light autocannon.  If they had built up a higher base velocity, then overtaking the shuttle would have been easier, but someone over there had slipped up and gotten trigger happy.  That little bit of luck might be the only thing that kept them alive.
     "Marshall, this is Captain Zhao of the Kuài Bō, we have a firing solution on your inbound bogie, and are about to fire, please maintain your current heading and acceleration." There was a long pause, then:  "Firing in 3, 2, 1.  Now!"  The Kuài Bō fired a single antimissile laser into the incoming missile, and less than a second later, it's fuel detonated, taking the warhead with it.
     "Captain Marshall, I have ordered my ship to get underway, to help with the small craft trying to intercept you, but the Bō doesn't live up to its name, and we may not get there before your attackers.  We won't be able to get a good firing solution until we get within 300K meters; my ship doesn't have weapons much heavier than yours, just more of them."  She told him, in a tone that spoke of a profound regret.  She clearly wished to do more.
     "Captain Zhao, you've bought us some time, and I will definitely be first in line buying drinks if we make it out of this.  Thank you.  Marshall, out."  He said, and closed the connection.
     Unfortunately, that still left whoever was closing in to deal with, and they were coming in fast.  Whatever was coming at them, it was making up the distance with a serious advantage in base velocity.  Cameron knew that there was no way they would be able to get out of range, and he wondered if there was any chance they were going to live through this.  He was trying to come up with a plan when Dirk, who had been unusually quiet, spoke.
     "Captain, I have an idea.  We have a couple of survey remotes onboard, that you bought to enhance our search capability on this new job, right?"  He asked, hopefully.
     "Yeah, but what good are they?"  Cameron asked in return, somewhat confused.
     He listened as Dirk laid out his plan, then said:  "That has got to be the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life, but if we don't do something quick, we're fucked.  Go for it."
     Dirk unbuckled himself from his seat, made his way aft, and proceeded to put on a vacsuit from the storage locker next to the hatch leading to the shuttle's cargo bay.  He finished sealing the suit up, connected its systems to his cranial interface with the cable provided,  and locked the helmet in place.  The helmet had a clear faceplate that gave excellent visibility, and used a heads up display to provide the user with information.  Satisfied, he stepped into the cargo area to put his plan in motion.
     Cameron moved out of the copilot's seat, and sat next to Porter, who was now becoming aware of his surroundings as the effect of the sedation wore off.  He looked at Porter, but didn't say anything at first, as he wanted to ask as few questions as possible.  Porter looked miserable, and it was he who broke the silence.
     "I guess you don't get to turn me over to the Navy after all, do you?"  His question ended with a smug tone.
     "I'm assuming that our pursuers are associates of yours, and they were eavesdropping on our communications chatter, and therefore knew we had you in custody.  Which suggests that, as far as they're concerned, you're extremely disposable.  The thing is, we've planned a little surprise, and since you're going to end up in custody or dead anyway, you could help us out by telling me what you know."  He said, looking into Porter's eyes.
     Porter decided to take the opportunity to vent his spleen.
     "Forget it, faggot!  You, your chink lackey over there," he nodded at Bao-Jian, "and that whoring, godless, thug are going to burn, but I die saved!  My only regret is that I won't be alive to watch that fag nigger of yours crying when my people blow you away!"  He finished with a spray of spittle in Cameron's direction.
     He had assumed that Porter was from Jefferson, but he hadn't counted on his being a Paylenite.  Of all humanity's reactionary bigots, Paylenites had to be the worst, and their certainty regarding the moral rectitude of their beliefs was impervious to criticism.  The entire Paylenite community was probably less than a hundred thousand, but Cameron felt that was a hundred thousand too many.  Ezekiel Moses Paylen had been deported from Earth, along with his entire congregation, and a few others who held similar beliefs, to the only world that would take them:  Jefferson.  Paylen had managed to combine 19th century religious bigotry and biblically justified racism, with post-millennial fundamentalism, and a practically neolithic understanding of economics, then set out to put his vision of a perfect state into practice.  To say that it had not gone well would be an understatement, and nine years later his people had been starving when he pronounced that the growing and production of tobacco was not a sin, only its consumption, and the State of Paylen became the single largest producer, per capita, within a decade, and were second in volume to only Minotaur to this day.
     He wiped the spit off of his face and was about to say something pithy in return, but was interrupted by Dirk on the com.
     "Captain, I'm all set to go in here, bleed the air out of the cargo hold, then open the port side loading door."  He said, quickly.
     Cameron jumped back into the copilot's seat again, and did as instructed, waiting for Dirk to execute the first part of the plan.  Looking back at the navigation readout, they had little time to waste, their pursuers were gaining faster with each passing minute.
     "Remote One is away, close the door, I'm already in position at the aft airlock."  There was a pause.  "Chaff bomb away!"  He yelled.
     There was silence in the cockpit, then the radar went nuts.  The chaff bomb had detonated with excellent timing, a small, low velocity explosive charge from a kit used to cut airlocks open if they were damaged, had just spread hundreds of thousands of bits of aluminized mylar confetti across the volume of space directly between them and the craft in pursuit.  This meant they were, for all practical intents and purposes, invisible to radar and LIDAR.  It also meant they were blind to what was behind the wall of interference they'd just created.  Remote One would be their eyes as it drifted away to port.
     "Remote two is away!  Closing the airlock.  Airlock closed, Captain, you can air up the cargo bay again.  We should be getting telemetry from Remote One now."  Dirk informed them.
     The plan was simple enough:  Watch their attackers approach from Remote One, and use Remote Two to carry an IED straight at their enemy, now blinded by a rapidly expanding cloud of interference.  The IED was cobbled together using the bursting charges from a dozen, now empty, chaff dispensers, packed into a shallow plastic container taped to the nose of the survey remote, with a large box of assorted nuts and bolts, about five kilos in all, in front of that.  The small craft coming up behind them would come through the cloud of chaff within minutes.
     It worked exactly as planned.
     Remote Two was less than 250 meters away when the pursuing vessel punched through the cloud of rapidly dispersing chaff.  It detonated at just under one hundred, sending its five kilograms of shrapnel into their flight path.  The compound velocity of impact was about 7 kilometers per second, and later investigation by the Alliance Navy would show that nearly 80 percent of the projectiles had hit something.  Seven large bolts with nuts attached punched through the vessel's cockpit, killing the three men aboard, and causing catastrophic damage to the interior.  Its engine must have had a failsafe, because it cut out seconds after the crew compartment was opened to space. 
     Bao-Jian turned the shuttle over, and began decelerating on a vector to eventually match courses with the Kuài Bō.  Their full power flight from certain death had almost taken them beyond the shuttle's point of no return, and if they were going to make any kind of rendezvous under their own power, they had to start right away.  The only consolation was that the Kuài Bō was coming to meet them, which made it much more likely they would get back under their own steam.  With little more to do than sit back and make sure the shuttle didn't run into anything, Cameron sat back in his seat beside Bao-Jian and tried to relax.  Dirk, having returned to the flight deck, had a different opinion.
     "Hey, aren't we gonna check out the wreck?  We're privateer salvage operators, that's our prize drifting away, let's go get it."  He said, with almost juvenile enthusiasm.
     Cameron gave it some thought, but the truth was he wanted to get Porter out of his hair, and the only way to do that was to meet up with the Navy ship headed their way.  The Jester, however, was under no such constraints, and he used the shuttle's tight-beam laser communications to order Gandu to track down and recover their attacker's vessel.
     With any luck, he'd be able to claim it as a prize, and if that didn't pan out, then maybe the Navy would pay for the craft's recovery out of its own pockets.  Either way, there was a good chance they would be making money at the end of the day.  He was just as glad to have survived, but a payday made the living that much sweeter.
     Although, considering how many laws they'd just broken to stay alive, he'd also be just as happy not to end up in prison.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 16

     Zhao Su-yin had the dubious honor of being in command of the ANS Kuài Bō, which meant 'Swift Wave' in Minotauran Chinese.  The aging, and inappropriately named, tub was anything but swift, and, with a service history that predated her birth by at least a decade, was now only suitable for insystem patrol duty.  The Navy had even gone so far as to strip out the Bō's FTL drive, leaving her stranded permanently in this system.  Su-yin watched as a massive bulk freighter suddenly disappeared from her ship's sensors.  The Bō might be old, but she wasn't myopic, her sensor arrays were the latest generation available.  The Raytheon AN/SPS-233 was the most sensitive short range scan suite ever put into an Alliance Navy ship, it was even believed to be as good, or better, than the Darkaellan Imperium's latest short range sensors.
     Su-yin's brow furrowed slightly as her thoughts turned to the Darkaellan Imperial Navy's technological superiority.  Her resentment of their arrogant unwillingness to acknowledge that the Humanist Interstellar Alliance, which included all of the Terran solar system as well as Minotaur, New Detroit, Kinshasa, and Tai Sheng Kong (embarrassment though it might be), was in all other ways as advanced as they were, was a permanently inflamed canker.  The fact that the fastest ship in the Alliance's fleet was still no match for the Imperium's slowest, simply rubbed salt into that open wound, and she wished - not for the first time - that they could achieve parity with the DIN.
     She would reluctantly admit that the Imperium's officers respected interstellar law to the letter, and rarely flouted the regulations governing the transit of spacegoing vessels.  She was all too aware that on several occasions, naval commanders in other systems had found themselves on the receiving end of the DIN's belligerence, but she'd yet to experience it personally.  Not that being in the sights of a Darkaellan ship's advanced weapons systems was likely to happen, because, truth to tell, the Imperial Navy almost never deployed its ships in systems with well established, and functional, governments, and they never used transit loci.  Their preferred tactic was to come in above the elliptic, and as deep as their FTL drives would allow, then make a polar approach.  It was hard on ships, their drives, and it burned a lot of fuel, but it worked.  Alliance ships used transit loci, for the simple reason that it saved a huge amount of reactor mass, and increased the working life of a ship by decades.
     Ships came and went through the Minotaur-New Detroit locus that was her assigned patrol area, with enough regularity to warrant the presence of a tanker to service arriving ships that might be low on fuel.  They were expected to stay well clear of the emergence zone where most ships appeared, with little to no warning, except for a short, intense burst of neutrinos.  Six satellites were in place at cardinal points around the locus, each of which was capable of sensing neutrinos, as well as virtually all other forms of electromagnetic radiation.
     "Captain Zhao, I have an ENS at locus, sector 32G.  It's quite large, Captain, could be a military vessel in transit."  Her sensor officer called out crisply, from his station on the bridge.
     ENS was military jargon for Emergence Neutrino Spike, which was as close to the truth as one could get, without a couple of doctorates in high energy particle physics, to describing what happened when a ship popped out of FTL.  She quickly decided that prudence was today's watchword, and snapped out her orders in a clear, calm voice.
     "Bring the 233 on line, and start sweeping the area of the ENS.  Tactical:  Begin plotting probable courses for a ship emerging from the locus at sector 32G, and bring the main guns to bear on as many of them as possible.  Helm:  Bring us about to maximize Tactical's firing solution, but try to maintain an angle that will facilitate the need for a sudden pursuit; I realize that's asking a lot, but do your best."  The bridge came alive with a chorus of acknowledgements from her crew.
     The Kuài Bō's crew was at full readiness, when the incoming ship winked into existence less than 5000 kilometers from their position.  Su-yin watched the monitor in front of her command chair, and stared at the information being relayed from the Tactical station in surprise.  The ship wasn't military at all; from the looks of things, it was an old New Halifax Industries salvage ship, probably as old as, or maybe older than, her own ship.  She pulled up the ship's IFF transponder data, and let out a silent whistle as she checked the listing of the ship's various modifications, which included fairly heavy defensive armaments for a civilian vessel.
     "Tactical, I think we can stand down for now, but keep the guns hot."  She turned to her second in command, and addressed him personally.  "Piers, these people have a ship registered as a privateer, and they have an FTL drive with an ENS that puts them in the same class as an Imperial ship of the line, what am I missing?"
     Piers Chang, who had served in the Navy almost as long as his captain had been alive, grinned impishly at her, and said:  "That'd be the Jester, sir.  Her captain, Cameron Marshall, was a company man who went privateer about five, ten years ago maybe.  Way I heard, he cheated the Imperium out of a top of the line, military FTL drive."

     "Cheated?  The Imperium?  I have got to meet this man.  He sounds like -"  She was cut off by her communications officer.
     "Captain, I've just received a message from the Jester.  They're requesting permission to transfer a crewman into our custody, detained for willful destruction of property, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, and smuggling proscribed substances.  They also requested that we notify the local USPF office on their behalf."  The comms officer reported.
     "I may just get to meet Captain Marshall after all, Piers.  It would seem as though the crew of the Jester have had an eventful transit, and need our help."  She said, with a note satisfaction.
     "Indeed, sir.  So it would seem."  Commented Piers, standing at his captain's side.
     Su-yin leaned back in her chair and smiled.  It was going to be an interesting day after all.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 15

     Dirk had left the Captain's office, Gandu in tow , and they were halfway to his quarters before he said anything.
     "So, XO, on a scale of one to ten, how fucked am I?"  He asked Gandu.
     Gandu gave every appearance of considering the question for some time before answering.
     "In my expert opinion, based on my long service and friendship with the Captain, I would say that the scale you are on isn't limited to just double digits."  The XO answered, smiling.
     Dirk said the only thing he could think of that was appropriate to the situation.
     "Ah, crap."
     They made it the rest of the way to Dirk's quarters in silence.  He went to his footlocker and keyed in the code that unlocked it, he removed his ballistic armor shirt and pistol case, and, after removing his uniform jacket, put the former on.  The armor he wore could easily be dismissed as an ordinary T-shirt at a distance, but a close inspection would reveal otherwise.  Its latticework of thin hexagonal metaceramic plates were bonded to a shirt woven of carbon nanofiber cored metaplast threads, and it would stop most light small arms fire.  Not without a lot of bruising, of course, and if someone were to use high velocity armor piercing ammunition, then it would be like wearing a shirt made of cheese covered in hard candy, but it was better than nothing.
     He opened the flat black Pelican case in which he kept his personal sidearm, and quickly inspected it for function before locking the slide back to ensure that the action was clear of obstructions.  He set the weapon down and grabbed the custom made cross-draw holster, and fastened it to his belt just over his left hip.  He loaded two of the eight round magazines, placed one in the carrier attached to the back of the holster, grabbed his pistol from where he had set it down and inserted the other in place, ramming it home with the heel of his hand.  He pressed the release for the slide, chambering the first round, reset the safety, and holstered his pistol.  The whole process took less than a minute, and he did it with such incredible economy of movement, that Dirk knew that he could do it blind.
     "Looks like you have done that before.  What sort of handgun is that?  I don't recognize the make."  Commented Gandu from the doorway where he was waiting.
     "I'd be surprised if you did.  It's a little war trophy from my days on Draconis, a Hollis Mk21, 11mm semiautomatic.  The basic design dates back to the year 1911, before the First World War, as I recall, and various manufacturers have been making them for over 250 years."  He explained, as they left the room to go look for Porter.
     They used the terminal in Gandu's quarters to track Porter's location by pinging his ship's com badge, and were surprised to discover that his badge wasn't responding.  Dirk was about to try scrolling through the ship's internal camera network when they got a call from the Captain.
     "Gandu, Dirk; Otto just got the case open, and it looks like Porter is a seed courier.  Be careful, this guy is carrying enough to get him locked up for a very long time, and given where he's likely coming from, he's just as unlikely to listen to reason.  Understood?"  He said over the com in Gandu's quarters.
     Dirk was about to ask for clarification on the subject of what his point of origin had to do with anything, when Gandu answered the Captain with a simple, "Yes, sir."  Dirk looked at the XO in a way that asked a question without saying a word.
     "What the Captain meant," he said, "is that Porter is probably acting as a courier for one of the seed producers on Jefferson, and transporting to growers on Minotaur."
     Dirk was still confused about why any of that was relevant to taking Porter into custody, but he was a master of compartmentalization, so he moved on to the problem of finding him first.  He decided to go with his original idea of tracking his movements on the security cameras.  He found the camera with the best view of the corridor outside of Porter's room, and simply watched the the footage at high speed, in reverse.  Once he saw him walking backwards into his quarters, he paused and then programmed the security system to track his movements, replaying from that point on.  Dirk sped the footage up where it was obviously unnecessary to watch what was going on, like eating in the mess, or at his duty stations for instance.  He paid close attention to his movements between those, however, looking for any sign of unusual behavior.  It wasn't until after his shift had ended that things got interesting; Porter went from his work area to the ship's lower decks, where he really had no business being, and he appeared to be heading to the well deck.  The  cameras showed him entering through the bulkhead door and going in, but as soon as he entered, the security system changed to the cameras in the well deck area, and they showed nothing but static.
     "Looks like Mr. Porter has found a way to disable the ship's security cameras in that area."  Said Dirk, somewhat unnecessarily, and noted the time stamp on the screen.  "He went in there just five minutes ago, XO, if we hurry, we can intercept him on his way out of the bay."
     He didn't wait for Gandu, and was on the move before he'd even finished speaking.  He ran flat out for the stairwell instead of waiting for the lift, and went down, taking them two at a time, jumping the last three at once.  He could hear Gandu following behind, but even if he hadn't, he would have still kept going at the breakneck pace he had set already.  He ran straight down the main access corridor that ran along the ventral spine of the ship's frame from just below the main hold of the ship to the well deck, and shuttle bay beyond.
     Dirk was within five meters of the well deck entrance, when the door began to slide open revealing Porter on the other side, weapon in hand, looking incredibly pissed off.  Dirk didn't hesitate once the weapon came into view, he spun around, grabbed Gandu by the lapel of his uniform jacket, and shoved him to the side of the corridor.  The momentary confusion on Porter's part, gave Dirk the precious fractions of a second that he needed.  As his hand darted to the holster on his hip, he could see more clearly that Porter was holding a smartlinked flechette pistol in his left hand, and bringing it up to fire.  Dirk was aware of how dangerous such weapons could be, after all, the Marine Corps issued a rifle that fired a similar type of ammunition, and flechettes were typically, innately, armor piercing.  The awareness of these facts was just background noise, and he focused on the man in front of him.  His entire body was responding to the threat of violence with all of the smooth certainty of hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of practice, and his cybernetically enhanced reflexes allowed him to get his own weapon into position before Porter.
     His vision was focused on the front sight of his gun as he pulled the trigger, sending a 13.5 gram, 11mm bullet screaming downrange at just over 290 meters per second.  The report of his shot, in the close confines of the corridor, was deafening, and his ears stung from the auditory assault.
     He had fired one-handed out of expediency, throwing his aim off, and his shot struck Porter across the edge of his ribcage, inflicting more pain than actual injury, but forcing him back nonetheless.  This also had the peripheral effect of throwing his aim wide, sending a full auto stream of hypervelocity darts into the opposite wall of the corridor from where he had thrown Gandu.  Porter must have had his hand on the door's controls, because it closed a second after his machine pistol stopped firing.
     His com badge was beeping at him with increasing urgency, and he saw the Captain's ID on the unit's small screen.  He answered, for no other reason than because he needed to talk to him anyway.
     "Captain, you need to lock the well deck access hatch leading to the shuttle bay, and open the one in front of me, before he can get dug in."  He said, very calmly, hoping he wasn't going to say different.
     "And let the two of you do more damage?  Not a chance.  Right now, he's contained, and I plan on keeping it that way."  The Captain told him firmly.
     Dirk knew that there were all kinds of ways for someone with a little imagination, and a lot of motivation, to make life miserably exciting with the contents of the well deck to play with.  He couldn't imagine a more motivated person on the ship than Porter, and he hoped that the man's imagination was limited to mentally undressing his attractive coworkers.  He attempted once more, to make the Captain understand, but his explanatory appeal was cut off before he could finish.
     "Dirk, I'm not in the habit of repeating myself, so do as you're told, and make sure that he stays locked behind that door.  Once we exit FTL, I intend to let the Alliance Navy deal with him."  He told Dirk brusquely.
     Dirk knew that there was nothing he could say, so he settled for a reply of, "Yes, sir!" and moved back down the corridor to the Crypt.  He was about to creatively interpret his instructions, and he opened the storage locker next to his personal exosuit, removed his weapon, and began undressing.  He was confronted by Gandu as he was putting on the skintight biofeedback suit that was worn under the exo itself.
     "What do you think you are doing?"  He asked, as Dirk finished sealing the suit, and stretched to ensure that it wasn't binding anywhere.
     "I'm preparing for the inevitable, Mr. Mkaba."  Dirk said, enthusiastically.  He knew that his manner of addressing the XO was technically proper, but he only used it when he wanted to make it clear that he thought you were being an ass.  "When Porter figures out that he's trapped, he is going to want out, and the area he's in gives him all to toys he needs to do some real damage getting there.  I was told to keep the door locked, and him in, and I will do just that, but I will not stand here unsuited, waiting to see if he decides to hull the ship, with nothing but my clothes on."  His tone was sarcastically chipper, but it served the purpose of driving the point home.
    He checked all of his exo's systems, and plugged the suit's neural droud into his cranial interface before he stepped into its warm embrace.  It automatically sensed that he was climbing in, and began to settle itself around him, in accordance with the specific parameters which Dirk had set, for everything from resistance feedback, internal temperature, air pressure and oxygen levels.  The suit's helmet had a fully enclosed face shield with a stereoscopic VR display fed by twelve microcameras mounted on the helmet's exterior, fully protecting his head in its metaceramic shell, and he felt it molding itself to the contours of his head as he leaned forward.  He felt the spinal and shoulder plates, which carried the suit's powerpack, settle across his back and lock into position.  Dirk performed a quick range of motion test, more out of habit than necessity, and used one of the equipment anchors on the left pectoral plate to attach his holstered pistol, then marched back into the corridor outside of the well deck. 
     Dirk used his exo's communications uplink to access the Jester's primary systems network, opened his cranial interface's military override protocols, which he had paid a hefty sum to keep active after his discharge from the Marine Corps, and forced the door to the well deck open.  He turned to Gandu, who had been yelling at him to stop what he was doing, and said: "I'm going to drag this ass-clown out of there, before he gets it in his head to do anything that puts this crate at serious risk.  You and the Captain can have me court martialed if I live."
     He sealed the door behind him, stared into the dimly lit bay, and turned on his exo's advanced LIDAR array.  A full three dimensional map of the well deck sprang into view, giving Dirk a clear map of the area.  He quickly activated his helmet cameras' thermal vision mode, looking for recent signs of heat on every surface within his field of view, and made out faint spots with a fractionally higher temperature than the surfaces on which he saw them.  He realized that he was seeing blood drops that had fallen on the floor, and he paused to push the gain on his suit's infrared cameras to the max.  The floor became a sudden riot of multicolored spots, which he assumed were a result of the grazing shot he'd inflicted on Porter, and he decided to follow the trail.  The thermal image led him around Mule-1 to the port side of the deck where there was a first aid kit; he could see that the kit was missing, and that more blood had fallen in the area.
     "Dirk, you Gung Ho son of a bitch, I told you not to go in there, that I wanted the Navy to handle Porter.  What the fuck do you think you're doing?"  Came the angry voice of the Captain over his suit's comlink.
     "Actually, Captain, you said not to let him out, and I don't plan to.  Porter's wounded - badly - from the amount of blood he's lost, and when I'm done with him, I'll be happy to let the Navy clean up."  Dirk replied, coldly, then continued, "but if we let him dig in and improvise a few weapons, then the Navy'll put a Marine combat team aboard.  Believe me when I tell you, that's not what you want, they'll get Porter out using as much force as they can, whether it's justified or not.  I should know, I was on an MCT for two years."
     He didn't wait for permission, instead he crept over to where the first aid kit had been removed, and saw that a much fresher trail led between Mule-1 and Mule-2.  He came around the stern of Mule-1, and saw Porter, a portable plasma saw in his hands, about to swing.  Dirk jumped back out of pure instinct, temporarily blinded as the saw's 'edge' overwhelmed his suit's thermal imaging, and he landed on his back.
     The arcing blue-white edge of the saw left a 25cm long, glowing line of super hot metaceramic, devoid of paint, down his suit's left arm.  Porter obviously didn't have much experience with one, because when he failed to connect, the weight nearly dragged it out of his hands.  Dirk reached up to jerk his pistol out, and put an end to this once and for all, but grabbed nothing but air.  His sudden impact had knocked it out of its holster, coming to rest next to one of the docking struts under Mule-1.
     "Die, you unbelieving whoreson!"  He heard as he jumped to his feet.
     Porter had recovered his balance, and raised the plasma saw over his head to take another swing screaming curses as he came.  Dirk did the only thing he could think of at the time:  He rushed Porter with his suit's strength augmentation redlined.
     Dirk brought his left arm up as hard as possible, meeting his opponent's coming down with the edge of his hand; the suit was capable of augmenting his strength by twenty percent under normal circumstances, but redlined, it brought him up a full third.  The result was like having a steel cricket bat hitting Porter mid forearm, at something like 75 kilometers per hour.  Porter, arm clearly broken, let go of the plasma saw, and it fell to the deck, inert.  He would have wailed in pain, but Dirk's right leg came up, slamming the top of his knee into Porter's ribs, robbing him of breath.  There was no conscious thought about what he was doing, years of training having taken over, and the fingers of his right hand stiffened straight out and he would have rammed them into - and probably through - Porter's neck, but he heard the Captain's clear, commanding voice say "NO!  Stand down, Dirk!"
     The world that he had shut out while he was fighting came rushing back, and he became aware that there were other people in the well deck with him.  He realized that he had the front of Porter's work coveralls in his left hand, and he let go, allowing him to slump to the floor moaning.  Looking down at his exo's left arm gave him a chill, the plasma saw had only grazed his arm, burning away the paint along its path in a 20mm wide stripe, and exposing the metaceramic underneath.  He also saw Porter's blood smeared on his suit, and wanted nothing more than to hose it down, but he knew that the USPF would likely want it left as is.  They would also want to ask him about the incident, probably at length, over and over again.  The Captain was probably not feeling particularly charitable towards him right now either, meaning that he could kiss any shore leave goodbye, and that was going to really piss Alex off.  He suddenly realized that someone was talking to him.
     "Sorry, what was that again?"  He asked, generally, while looking around to see who was speaking.
     "I asked if you were alright,"  said the Captain, "and if you could come to the Crypt, we need to get your exosuit quarantined, as well as your official statement for the Navy and USPF."
     He was considering asking Ujio Morishita, the ship's doctor, to check him for a brain first.  He had jumped into the line of fire again, without thinking of the consequences beyond the emergency at hand, and this time there would be a public record.  He was beginning to think that his grandfather had been right all those years ago, that maybe he was a man with serious impulse control issues, who only lived for the fast rush of adrenaline that came with risking his life.  He caught himself before his mind got too far down that particular rabbit hole.
     "Aye aye, Captain.  If at all possible, sir, I'd like for Chief Engineer Brostowski to stand as my advocate, until the USPF decides whether a judicial hearing is required.  Oh, and you'll need to send someone to retrieve my pistol, last I saw, it was under the portside strut of Mule-1."  He said, as he made his way out of the well deck, giving Jinx and the Doc more room to tend to Porter's injuries.
     "No problem, Guns, but let's get as much as we can on the record while it's still fresh.  You know as well as I do, that the authorities are going to want it all in triplicate."  The Captain said, sounding less like he was going to skin Dirk alive than he had before.
     "Yes, sir.  I'm on the way."  He replied without further comment, and made his way to the Crypt, wondering just how much trouble he had caused for himself.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 14

     Cameron had pressed the admittance button on the com panel outside the door to Dirk's quarters twice before giving up.  He used the Jester's command network to ping Dirk's com badge, and wasn't terribly surprised to see that he was in Alex's room.  For the life of him, he had no idea what the two of them saw in one another, but he was hardly in a position to pass judgment, considering how his marriage had worked out.  He and Jayne had had enough in common, but in the end it hadn't mattered, and the divorce was one of those things he had tried to put behind him.  Thankfully, they hadn't had children to complicate the process, but he had doted on Alex when she was a child.  She had proven, more than once, that she was her own woman, and he had learned to adapt, regardless of the fact that she was just barely out of her teens.  He had nurtured a paternal attitude where she was concerned when she had first come on board, and he had been forced to accept that she wasn't going to be dependent on him early on.
     He pressed the admittance button next to Alex's door for an obnoxiously long time, just to be certain the two of them got the message.  He was about to press it again when the door slid partway open and Alex's face, wet hair plastered to her forehead, looked out at him.
     "Oh for Christ's sake, Captain, I was in the shower!  What the hell?"  She said, clearly not pleased.
     "I need Dirk out here now, 'Lexi, its important."  He told her simply.
     "Then why couldn't you just use the com?  It's not like - Oh, fuck it - DIRK!  Get your ass out here!"  She yelled over her shoulder in frustration, and disappeared from view.
     Cameron didn't have long to wait before the inquisitive looking face of his ship's gunner appeared in the doorway.
     "Get your shit together DJ, we have a serious problem, and I need you.  Now.  My office, five minutes."  He told him, and turned back up the corridor, headed to the office behind the bridge.
     By the time he arrived at what he liked to think of as his sanctuary from the burdens of commanding a ship, Gandu and Rollie were already waiting for him just outside the door.  They looked odd standing next to one another; Gandu was tall, muscular, and extremely dark, his family were originally from Eastern Africa, but they had emigrated en-masse to the planet Kinshasa to escape the poverty, famine, and rampant ethnic cleansing that had been typical in that part of the world during the Devastation.  Rollie, on the other hand, was short, wire thin, and had a complexion so pale that he'd once been mistaken for a corpse, after passing out from one drink too many.  He was, without a doubt, one of the most antisocial people Cameron had ever met, but he was as good a ship's bosun as he could ask for.  Their shared professionalism and commitment to the ship was, in fact, the only area where the two of them shared any common ground.
     He opened the door to his office and waved them in, following behind, and seating himself behind the handmade desk of Darkaellan wirewood.  The desk was probably the most valuable thing he owned, other than the Jester, and he had gotten a few offers to buy it over the years, some of them quite generous.  Its design and styling were fairly functional, it was the material from which it was constructed that made it so desirable.  Wirewood got its name from the cable-like structure of the wood, when stained and polished a certain way, it looked like the surface was made up of hundreds of scales.  He thanked the Saints for the good fortune that had led him to the ship on that salvage claim every time he sat behind it.  How the previous owner had gotten it was up for debate, but since he had died trying to save his crew, it was doubtful any explanation would be forthcoming.
     The door chime rang the solitary, soft note that indicated someone was outside the door, and he used his link to the ship's command network to open the door, and seeing Dirk there, said "Come!"
     Dirk walked into the office like a soldier on report, back straight, chest out, and chin up, staring at a spot just above Cameron's head.
     "You wanted to see me, Captain?"  He asked, in a crisp voice.
     "DJ, I've just been informed by Rollie here, of something that needs to be addressed right away, and -"  He was unable to finish, because Dirk suddenly started talking rapidly.
     "Look, I can explain:  I only bought those SPC lines from Powers because she was the only game in town."  He interrupted, completely misunderstanding the nature of the meeting's agenda.  "If I hadn't, we'd have had to spend double, or more, buying factory new in hard cash, and, as it is, we got what we did at a fire sale price, and she's none the wiser."
     Rollie had his face buried in the palm of his hand, while Gandu sat beside him with a look of incomprehension on his face.  Cameron, having been unable to get a word in edgewise, had begun to process what he had just heard, and his face was transitioning from confusion to understanding, and ended up at cold anger.
     "Let me make this clear, Sinclair, we are going to have a more detailed conversation regarding your dealings with my ex-wife, but right now I have other matters to attend to."  He said in a voice edged in iron.  "Now, shut up, and watch."
     He displayed the images and visual recordings that Rollie had made in the well deck of the new spacer, a man named Zebadiah Porter, and the case that he had stashed in the well deck storage locker.  They watched in silence until the last recording had ended, and Cameron froze the last image of the locked case, with the lock clearly visible.
     "I checked with Otto, our new cybersecurity tech, and he tells me that he can probably crack that case eventually; scary as it may seem, I believe him."  Cameron told them.  He got three shocked glances from the others, since it was a common article of faith that hacking a Daemon Recognition Program was the next best thing to impossible.  Their encryption was based on a direct neural imprint of a person's brain, and, in theory, should be as unique as a fingerprint, and incapable of replication.
     "So, what do you want to do about this guy?  It's pretty clear he's up to something, after all; he wouldn't be hiding whatever's in that case if it was legit, right?."  Dirk asked, looking at Cameron.
     "We're due to arrive at the Minotaur locus in just a little under two hours, and I want to know what Porter is smuggling on my ship; so you're going to grab your sidearm, and go with Gandu to escort him here.  While you two are doing that, Rollie's going to bring the case here, and I'll get Otto to work his technical juju on it."  The Captain said for the benefit of all.  "Get to work."
     Cameron remained silent as the three of them filed out of his office, and he gave serious thought to calling them off, but finally decided to stay the course.  He sent a private message to Otto, via his ship's com badge, asking him to come to the office.  He didn't think that confronting people who thought that they could transport contraband on his ship, was one of those things that would ever get easier for him.  It had happened several times before, and every time had been unpleasant, but it had to be done.  It was one thing to keep a small quantity of some illicit drug, purely for recreational purposes, in one's own possession.  Sneaking something aboard, and hiding it on his ship put everyone at risk, and that wasn't something he was prepared to tolerate.
     He had waited until now to act on the information Rollie had brought to him, some two and a half weeks ago, because he couldn't take the risk that Porter might do something desperate and stupid while they were in FTL transit.  Once they transited the locus into the system, there would be a lot of help close by if he needed it.
     Minotaur's economic and political importance, as the capital world of the Humanist Interstellar Alliance, was significant enough to guarantee that every known approach vector into the system was heavily monitored, and patrolled regularly.  The transit locus between New Detroit and Minotaur was easily one of the busiest anywhere, and the sheer volume of shipping that moved through it, meant that there were always at least two Alliance Navy destroyers on patrol duty.  Navy ships patrolling a locus would be carrying Marines specially trained for boarding actions, and if Cameron needed help with Porter, he was fairly certain it wouldn't be long in coming.  He had never had to call on the Navy for help before, and he'd just as soon not start now, but if it became necessary, he wouldn't hesitate for a second.
     Otto showed up with commendable speed, arriving at the Captain's office in less than five minutes.  Rollie showed up, case in hand, a few minutes later, and placed it on the corner of the desk closest to Otto.  There was a quick glance from him in Cameron's direction, and he got a permissive nod in return.  Cameron watched as Otto took the same featureless black box he had used to circumvent the Jester's primary systems firewall the first day he had come on board, and ran a thin cable from it to the interface port behind his ear.  A moment later he took another cable from his hip pocket, and connected his black box to the DRP lock, using what had to be a custom built socket for the task.  His eyes took on that heavily glazed look that Cameron now recognized as a sign that Otto was interfaced through his black box to a digital network.
     It took three minutes and forty seven point two seconds for Otto to crack a lock that its manufacturer claimed was the next best thing to uncrackable.  Cameron pulled the case around and opened it to look inside.  What he saw didn't ease his concerns in the least.
     The case contained four hermetically sealed vials, that appeared to be filled with tiny brown grains like sand.
     Porter was smuggling tobacco seeds.