"A Mercenary Affair" by Warenwolf

[Warenwolf]

Having had a short vacation past week, I decided to write a short story to pass time. Having being burned on my last project (Unknown Heroes) I will restrict this story to maximum 10 - 20 pages. Anyway here is the first part of the "A Mercenary Affair”. I will stick to the canon of the game, except regarding the spaceship combat that is, in my opinion, extremely simplistic in X3.


Edit: Sorry for being late with posting entire story. Anyway here it is.




***


[Mercenaries, space combat]


A Mercenary Affair







Bobo knew that offer he had to offer Victoria was on the wrong side of the law and he was running a substantial risk if the human woman rejected it and reported him to the authorities. But he trusted in old proverb that poor people cannot have principles. He knew that the woman had arrived on station exactly two tazuras ago and already the rumor mill claimed she was an excellent pilot, the pilot that arrived to a dogfight outnumbered in both numbers and tonnage and still managed every time to leave the place alone and alive. A treasured quality here in Split Fire sector. And Bobo was just in need for such a pilot.
Victoria was the typical female mercenary, drifting from mercenary company to mercenary company, never feeling compelled to join any of the so-called “brotherhoods in the arms”. And now, rumors claimed, her credit line was in the red zone. If he played his cards right, she would agree to do this job for a price that he could afford. She had to – everyone with this kind of debt was bound to jump on every adventure that offered a way out. He made his way to the bar the woman was rumored to frequent. Bobo came in just in time to see a huge Argon man falling to the floor like sack of potatoes with streams of blood coming from his mouth. A woman with hair dyed pitch black, dressed in oversized combat suit that totally hid her female figure, stood above the man and sneered, “About the time you learned to take NO for an answer”
Bobo checked the picture from the file on his PDA. Yes, his memory was correct. The woman standing over the bleeding human was the one he was supposed to meet.

Victoria had just decked a guy that couldn’t get the hint that she was not interested in scum like him and was wiping away blood and pieces of skin from her knuckleduster when she noticed the approaching Argon, a very ugly example of the human race. First she thought that he was either yet another of those clumsy local barflies that hit on every female human or humanoid that walked in “their” watering hole or a friend of the fool that was laying on the floor when she noticed how the man glanced at the other patrons. No, this one means business, Victoria told herself. He is just checking the coast.
The human sat down beside her, signaled to the Teladi barman that he wanted to order and then said to her in low voice, dropping the usual social rules of initiating a conversation, “Rumor has it that you are low on credits”
“I doubt that you care much about my problems,” she said looking him in the eyes. Victoria wondered what the small time criminal wanted. He looked down at his drink, rotating the glass with his hand couple of times.
“Normally no – but I have a big job and I need another pilot for it”
“I thought that your gang had enough manpower…”
Bobo kept up the pretense of being the leader of a mercenary outfit but Victoria knew that he and his boys turned to piracy and smuggling whenever the opportunity offered itself. Which often happened as soon as there was no sector militia or police around.
Bobo grinned, revealing two rows of yellow teeth.
“This is big deal. My boys are good but we need an ace. Someone that shoots the opposition to peaces and flies her ship with one hand while she drinks the beer with another…”
“Cut the sweet talk Bobo. As you can see I am bit allergic to that kind of BS,” Victoria said pointing to the guy she had decked. The man was holding his hand on the bloodied mouth trying to stem the flood of the blood. By the look on his face, he still had not figured out what had happened.
Victoria continued, “Say whatever you have to say now – I plan on hitting the bed early today.”
Bobo shrugged, “Fair enough. You heard about Gal-For and Hoenecker Investments conflict?”
“Not really”
“Come on! It is all over the TH!”
“Bobo you got nine minutes left…”
“Ok, ok, chill lady! It is like this – Gal-For company and Hoenecker got both concessions for investments in the new Federal sectors. As it happens none of them are keen on sharing. The usual story… So there has been some shooting between them, of course in traditional proxy way, nothing direct... Anyway last wozura an old friend of mine that is some kind of top dog for some department in Hoenecker Investments contacted me. He gives 550.000 credits to my outfit if certain station goes down in one mazura time. I am willing to give you 80 grand if you join us. So what do you think?”
Victoria didn’t need much thinking on the matter. Eighty grand was good in merc line of work. Very good indeed for a woman that couldn’t barely pay her docking fees. She asked for more details and the ugly small Argon smiled, revealing the black and yellow teeth.




Already the three days after she met Bobo, she started having doubts about the operation they were to embark on. The station Galtham, the target of the operation, was a small T class station in Midnight Star sector. The sector had the strategic value of a sand corn in a dessert, so the Argon Federation was not likely to sport any significant militia or navy presence in the system. A T class station was a cheap modular design with thin, non-armored, walls and few weak shielding generators - if Gal-For had even bothered to install them. In theory it was a huge, vulnerable target that the fifteen fighters could easily take down in matter of few heartbeats. Still, according to sparse intel received from Hoenecker, the station functioned as a hub for Gal-For company’s activities in the cluster and Victoria wondered if there wasn’t more to the station than the few grainy photos revealed. The intel Bobo’s contact had provided was extremely sketchy, just listing the target and info about it along with few grainy pictures that Victoria could have easily found herself on any public net. No details about defenses, internal to the station or external like laser towers. No info about fighter strength, crew strength and such. Still, Victoria had pulled off operations with less intel before so the lack of hard intel was relatively low on her worry list.
What really worried Victoria was the motley crew Bobo commanded. If the worse crowd of misfits existed, they weren’t to be found in the Known Universe – so much Victoria was fairly certain of. What most irked her was a woman that followed Goners’ preaching and bothered everyone else with them too, especially Victoria as she was the newest member of the group, “With all these evidence it must be clear that Earth exists, the paradise in Universe”
“Ok, good for you”
“You don’t believe it?” the woman asked, looking incredulously on Victoria.
“Yeah, there is probably some lost colony out there that thinks it is the cradle of humanity and calls itself Earth but come on! Look on the facts – a lost paradise where human race was supposedly from discovers space travel and art of building gates, engages in gigantic war against powerful machines that sound suspiciously like Xenon. Then to save the paradise they lure Xenon into this corner of Universe before disconnecting their gate. And then the fleet that served as the bait for Terraformers populates the rest of the Known Universe, conveniently forgetting most of their technology including how to build gates… And these superhumans that supposedly knew how to build gates were not technologically advanced enough to defeat Xenon that we Argons soundly defeated decade ago? Come on! This sound as something taken out from bad vid, which it probably is…”
“It had just happened like that, it is written in Book of Truth”
“Oh, really? Book of Truth says so? Well, then! I guess empirical evidence isn’t something you are fond of”
“It is called faith, Victoria”
“As long as you keep your faith to yourself…”
Of course, as good goner adept the woman did just the opposite…

During the group’s first joint training Victoria realized why Bobo was interested in hiring her. Calling the other pilots’ flying knowledge rudimentary was being extremely diplomatic. All of them overrated their abilities, which is not unusual for most pilots but this crowd was really bad. Most of them accelerated to the maximum speed in mock fights, sacrificing the maneuverability for the ability to close quickly as possible with the enemy. The resulting combat was sort of joisting fights and since few fighter were equipped with missiles this resulted in very inefficient combat. Which would be totally one sided, Victoria thought glumly, if they were being pitted against a minimally trained militia or the Gal-For company security detail.
Victoria learned quickly to hold at least 50 meters distance from the nearest ship – for her own safety. The other ships’ lateral thrusters behaved erratically since rest of the men considered maintenance to be equal with repair. In other words not single one of them preformed regular maintenance, instead waiting for some part to give up. Since lateral thrusters were out of sync on most of the ships, the mentioned ships did not perform evenly in all directions. The ships flown were all medium fighters, mostly elderly Busters, one Mako and one Pericles, all of them in miserable shape with hulls full of marks left by micrometeorites.
“I hope the Gal-For doesn’t rely on fighter wing protection,” she said to Bobo afterwards.
“Why is that?”
“Because those so-called pilots of yours aren’t even good enough for inertia shuttles pilots… I wonder if we would be better of if we stocked up on drones and left rest of men behind…”
“They will be useful when their time comes”
“As what? Missile catchers?”
“What can I do about it? Call the entire thing of?”
It was the right thing to do, Victoria thought. But she needed the Credits and she needed them badly so she instead diverted the conversation to the operation planning,
“We need to reconnoiter the defenses of the station properly”
“You don’t trust the Hoenecker data we received?”
“Let just say that it isn’t their bastu that is on line here…”
“You got a point. So…How do you suggest we do it?”
“Let ourselves be hired as escort to some merchant going that way and then we go planetside. The colony is new and small –everybody knows everybody, right?“
“Right,” Bobo agreed.
“So, if there is some fighter wing hidden somewhere or any other hidden defenses the locals would know. Supplies flying in unknown directions, the space station crews taking their R&R on the planet… After we gather the intel we need, we go shopping for necessary hardware”
“It is good plan, I’ll give you that, but we don’t have much time left. By the end of this mazura Galtham better be a ruin or we have a serious problem on our hands”
Victoria knew what he meant. The Hoenecker might find it convenient that the mercenaries disappear so to not be able to reveal companies intentions for some third party. They still might decide to do it after the mission is accomplished, Victoria thought, but she would cross that bridge when that time arrives.
“Better to rush the attack planning than to skimp on intel gathering…” she warned.
Bobo sighed and nodded in agreement.



The newly opened system cluster attracted many fortune seekers, despite the Khaak threat, and the mercenaries had no problem finding a job as escorts for a merchant freighter who sought to cash in on those fortune seekers. The Freighter transported mining equipment along with crates loaded with medium range missiles. The last detail caught Victoria’s attention. She wondered whether the missile cargo was intended for the Galtham station.
The trip was uneventful, right until they arrived in Midnight Star system. Two Scorpion medium fighters approached the convoy quickly, flying on straight course for the two freighters. The sensor aboard her ship tagged the two ships as potentially hostile which meant that the two pilots had turned off their ID-transponders. Split warriors initiates, seeking their first prey, not the regular pirates, Victoria guessed seeing how the two of them flew. What are they so far away from Split territories?
“The two of them are mine,” she said over the com to the others, turning her Mako towards the attackers. They were beyond the visual range of unaided human eye, 40 km away and quickly approaching. Victoria turned off her active scanners. Having entire convoy emitting behind her, she would be a hard target to track if not impossible for the two Scorpions’ sensors. She turned of the IDS, inertial dampeners, of her Mako, accelerated the ship for ten sezuras and then turned off her avionics and engine, flying on a ballistic course with minimal emissions.
The Mako medium fighter was tailor designed specifically to kill Split made Scorpion. Slightly larger and slower, it sported better maneuverability and extra shielding generator. In addition it had almost twice as powerful shield fields regenerator generator and a rapid-firing energy weapon configuration giving it a considerable edge in an energy weapons combat against fast moving targets.
Only after the Scorpions had closed to 15 km, the two ships sensors spotted her and soon her tactical sensor warned her of two missile launches. Not unnerved by incoming missiles, she gave the command for incoming missiles to be identified.
“Wasp 2AEK, IR seeker, swarm…” the tactical computer responded, summing up the essential details.
They had fired the two missiles from the maximum range of the Wasp missile, long before she entered the missiles’ no-escape zone. The two opponents were inexperienced in missile combat, confirming her suspicion that two pilots were Split. Split doctrine relegated the missile to secondary role in fighter combat.
She turned her Mako ninety degrees and fired her engines on full, forcing the two Wasp missile swarms to maneuver in horizontal plane. By now the missiles’ chemical engine was empty and the missiles were dependent on momentum to reach her. Only onboard fuel for lateral thrusters remained onboard the missiles and she counted that it would be depleted too in few moments. Over 20 sezura had passed since the launch and her tactical computer announced that missiles were now on purely ballistic course and no longer a threat to her.
“It is now my turn boys,” she told aloud to herself, rotating and turning the nose of her Mako towards the two Scorpions. She used electro-optical targeting system to lock on the one of the Scorpions so that the targeted Scorpion would not know that it had been targeted. She selected a Silkworm missile and fired. The range between the Scorpions and Mako had decreased to 5500 meter, well within Silkworm’s no-escape zone, and the missile traveled the distance in twenty sezuras. The Scorpion had enough time to deploy the countermeasures but for some reason it failed to do so, instead trying desperately to outmaneuver the missile in much the same way Victoria had done. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t enough and missile found its target, totally annihilating the weakly armored and shielded Split Scorpion. Victoria now fired a Mosquito on the other Scorpion. As she hoped the other pilot was too distraught by his friend’s death to check the type of incoming missile and the Scorpion laid a barrage of plasma fire towards the incoming missile. The scorpion had only enough energy in its weapon energy storage for few moments of continues fire for its six alpha high energy throwers. It was powerful punch but all of it was wasted on a cheap Mosquito missile, allowing the Mako to close down to 1000 meters range without needing to fear the fire from Scorpion’s AHEPTs that were now recharging.
And now since the scorpion’s sting was out of the play, Victoria closed in for the kill firing her rapid firing beta particle accelerator on the cockpit glass of the Scorpion. The other ship twisted away to avoid being hit and in doing so revealed his inexperience even more so. Instead of diving under and to side of the incoming Mako, not allowing Victoria time for precise barrage, the Scorpion pilot turned up and to side on the vertical plane. Victoria just turned the flight stick up and to right, keeping the Scorpion in the sights. The particle accelerators fire raked over the other ship’s belly, overloading the shield generator. Victoria adjusted her flight course a bit and pressed the fire button again. The result was immediate with the Scorpion disintegrating in the next moment. Probably from plasma containment failure, Victoria guessed.
She checked the sensors routinely once more to see if there were other threats, checking at same time the status report on avionics and weapons to see if everything was ok and only then did she respond to cheers coming over the com from the rest of the convoy, allowing a thin smile to come over her face.




The Galtham station was clearly visible from the cockpit glass of Victoria’s fighter. She used external cameras to get good v-recording of the station. She wondered why their employer had not done the same thing she was doing right now. Once again her instincts warned her that something was wrong here. As the ships they had escorted waited for their turn to enter the wharf, barely ten clicks from the station, she had clear view of the station. She wondered why Hoenecker company had not bothered to execute proper intel gathering mission. It was as they did not care for the success of the people they hired.
The wharf was also ideal for their needs. It rented out docking space to everyone and the mercenaries obtained easily the places that gave them view of their target. Victoria had heard about such structures but it was first time she observed one in real life. The structure provided solution for pilots who did not want to or could afford the rent of docking space and room aboard a station while at same time didn’t want their ships to drift unattended in space as they slept. One could easily wake up with Khaak cluster knocking on your door with kyon beams…
The wharf itself was extremely simple run operation. The center of the wharf was a small biodome from which tubes protruded in every direction. The tubes conducted oxygen, water, electronic and communication lines to the individual ships while at same times serving as anchor points for the mentioned ships. The biodome served also as flight control that assigned the ships their spaces. As long as pilots were connected to the anchoring points the money was automatically deducted from their accounts. It was simple, efficient and of course a Teladi invention.
Victoria studied the v-recordings of the station as her ship completed automatically the docking procedures. She spotted now what looked like four modified lasertowers. She run the images through Mako’s computer that compared the image with data it had gathered from military publications and news reports. It quickly came up with an answer. What she thought was four modified lasertowers, were actually FLAK-towers. This indicated two things:
1: Fighter attack with missiles, what initial plan envisioned, was out of question.
2: Since FLAKs were short range affairs and the commander of Galtham station knew that, Victoria assumed that FLAK-towers were backed up with long range missile batteries, possibly heavier hardware too.
She rubbed her temples. The chances for a successful operation were not good.

The convoy leader had invited Bobo and Victoria down on the planet’s surface to what passed as fancy restaurant on the wretched planet as thanks for their effort against two Split raiders. After weeks of breathing recycled air, sitting and sleeping in cramped cockpit, both of them accepted gladly the offer. The entire affair followed the usual script. There was toast, smiles and the usual non-consequential talk. The food tasted and probably was long past its expiration date, the drinks were watered out and speeches were long. Finally it was over and two mercenaries could stretch their legs, strolling through the colonial town. Bobo and Victoria quickly split. Bobo was in quest for a proper bar while Victoria was more interested in fact gathering.
The town was the usual collection of prefab houses, widely spaced apart. The streets were asphalted just few days ago but there was few hoovercars about. The settlers were the first way probably. All hoovercars were used for scouting missions.
It was the usual story – the people that were disgruntled with their lot on their homeworlds sought fortune on new planets. The moment they landed they sought to take over as much of potentially valuable resources as possible. If the planet was deemed financially attractive, the new waves of settlers arrived and the first arrivals emerged as new aristocracy. Provided that planet had any resources that were on demand on the market. The harsh reality was that most new colonies barely met their ends meet and colonial towns turned to ghost towns as most settlers moved on. Those that remained were the ones that had borrowed credits for their tickets or had no more credits to buy ticket elsewhere. Their only hope was that planet would become a frequented stop place on a trade line. Still success stories happened often enough and there were always enough settlers.
After half stazura search, Victoria found her place. The small bar serviced the pilots that piloted shuttles that transported goods between planet and the space. She joined a group of military buffs knowing that such people would be on look out for new and unusual hardware in the system. And since the warfare was considered the boys’ game, most of the military fanatics are always delighted to find a woman that shared their interest. So they talked her ears off. She carefully mentioned the orbital defense’s FLAK-towers and steered the conversation away from the newest Nova versions towards what really interested her.
“Yeah those FLAK-towers are awesome against Khaak but they got no chance against long range bombardment”
Victoria disagreed (she had been on receiving of FLAK fire) but she nodded, encouraging the armchair general to continue on speaking about his perceived weaknesses of the Flak systems.
After a while someone added a piece of interesting information, “The company are not entirely thrusting on static defenses. They got mercenaries hired as protection too.”
“Bah, mercs can’t measure up against the Navy”
“The Navy is patrolling core systems, Johnny. You do with what you got…”
“Yeah. And those two Caiman 4000K pocket cruisers mercs got are awesome”
“4000K!? Please, they are more around 2500K”
Victoria found this last information very interesting. With more frequent Xenon, pirate and Khaak raids, due to heavy restrictions on sale of corvettes to the public, more and more companies and rich merchants started converting regular freighters into warships in order to give themselves some measurement of heavy protection against raiders and pirates. This trend evolved soon in hobby with large following on net forums where competitions were held on who could send in the best proposal for configuration. The goal was to find the ultimate “bang for buck” configuration. Of course there were always those that posted configurations with cost over 100 millions of credits, disregarding the fact that for those kind of credits you could bribe the Navy to provide you with entire squadron for protection…
With endless number of configurations, soon the semiofficial system evolved where classifications of conversions were classified by cost of the conversion. So a “Caiman 2500K” meant that a Caiman freighter had been converted to a warship with equipment value of 2.5 million credits. Of course, Victoria couldn’t care less whether the pocket cruiser was 2250K or 2260K. The fact that Gal-For company had hired mercs and not just any mercs, but mercs with their own heavy-hitters, was telling. One did not hire mercs as guards for longer periods of time. They were just too expensive to have around for so long. It was far cheaper to divert couple of company’s older escort fighters to the system and then hire locals as pilots so that they act as local militia. Such things were tax-deductible and the Federation even gave subsidies to such projects. This was the way most of Sector Militia forces were formed outside the core systems of Argon Federation.
So when Gal-For opted for heavy cost option of hiring the Split merc force with two pocket cruisers it told Victoria that Galtham expected an attack in near future. The strange felling in her stomach that always warned her when fecal matter was about to hit the fan was there… She knew that Bobo would be hard to convince to call entire thing off. Victoria instincts told her that Bobo needed this job badly, perhaps even more than Victoria.



Bobo shook his head, “So what!? Those mercs are there because Gal-For and Hoenecker had been at each other throats for some time now. Don’t you watch TH!?”
The rest of the mercenaries watched silently the exchange.
Victoria sighed and tried again “Ok, let us assume they are not here because of us. Probably you are right about that. We still have to go through them”
“For crying out loud! They are not even in the system!!!”
“You saw the Orca TL that was docked to Galtham station. It can be full of fighters and who knows what”
“Yeah, Split using a Boron produced ship! Listen lady – we both need this one. We just have to be triple careful of how we go in”
Victoria nodded in agreement. There was no real choice about the mission…
“So how do we go in? Any suggestions?” Bobo asked around.
Victoria checked herself just before she was about to roll her eyes. Bobo’s underlings were hardly the source of inspiration.
A kid of perhaps nineteen years suggested, “We could accelerate a freighter to huge speeds, load it up with all our missiles and then let it hit the Galtham. It would be like giant torpedo!”
“Yeah stupe, and how much time would it take us to go out to a point from where a freighter could be accelerated to a speed that defenses couldn’t track? Mazura or two? We got three tazuras kid…”
The boy looked like sad puppy, trying to make himself as small as possible.
“Besides they had already set up a seeker minefield net,” Victoria added.
Seeker minefields were basically the ordinary missiles drifting in space with modified communication hardware. As soon as a missile’s sensors picked up a potential threat they sent the information to a central node that was basically the size of small missile. The central node calculated the type of threat and decided which missile or missiles would be appropriate to deal with the target and activated them. The missiles because of their smaller size and relatively efficient chemical thrusters could accelerate faster than most targets and easily intercept them. Those new “mines” were extremely simple and because of no need to cluster them together as with passive old mines, the minefield could for first time be so large that mine was for first time an efficient weapon in the space warfare. Argon Federation rapidly deployed such minefields in strategic sectors precisely to counter deep space bombardment the boy had suggested. Deep Space Fleet was instead redeployed with ordinary system forces to guard against the Khaak marauding forces.
“Those Flak-towers worry me,” Victoria said.
“Makesss frontal attack with oursss fightersss not economical,” the group’s only Teladi mercenary added.
Victoria envisioned the Galtham station. The fighters they got would be more than enough to gut the station if shields were down. T series of modular stations were not designed to operate in hostile space – missile hit or two and internal structure would collapse just as soda can do when crushed. But when does a station turn off the shield field projectors? The answer came to her in a flash - during an evacuation…
“Perhaps the kid’s plan has some merit,” she said to the rest of the group.




Baard Dalsborg job was not the most exiting one. In fact it was rather boring. He worked as chief sensor technician at Galtham sensor array operations room. His exalted position was just the empty words since he was only a boss over one sole data analyzing computer. As matter of fact he was hardly needed. The computer would process the incoming data, sending it to the relevant human operators throughout the station, mostly to flight control. Now and then some part would need replacement and then Baard would consult his manual, interpreting the warning message and then replace the necessary part. A monkey in EVA suit could do the same job but the unions put stop to cyb-primate work research centuries ago. Today, due to grand opening of the station’s holographic entertainment center, Baard was alone in the room and more bored than usual. Suddenly a warning sound came from the workstation belonging to the signal officer. Baard glanced toward the signal officer’s workstation. The huge computer was signaling more and more intensely that something was wrong. Baard decided to ignore it, returning his eyes to his TH-Games magazine. Then, the alarm signal went audio.
“You bloody piece of…” Baard muttered while he walked over to signal officer’s workstation. And then he saw the sensor feed to the screen. Baard’s voice was gone and he shook from fear like a twig in a Seizewell tornado. He run towards the alarm master control board, pressed the appropriate code and pressed the big red button.
Metallic female voice sounded from announcing system throughout the station, “Warning! This is NOT a drill. Space object on collision course. Impact in nine mizuras and six sezuras. Please calmly walk towards nearest emergency exit”
Of course, the people onboard Galtham station went crazy.




If Baard had been brighter than a cyb-monkey he would have noticed that although the space object the sensors were reporting, an asteroid, was traveling fast, it was nowhere near the speeds space bodies of such type achieved. In fact, “the asteroid” was a modified laser drone. The Bobo’s had spent what was left of their advance money in an emitter that could mimic gravidar feedback.
The evacuation of Galtham was a chaos. Eventually the shield field projector was turned off so that all escape pod launchers could be used.

Ten clicks away, Bobo’s motley gang of fifteen mercenaries unhooked from their docking bays and accelerated towards the Galtham station.

“This is Galtham tactical to unknown fighters. Stand back or be fired upon. Over.”
“This is Fire Lady to Galtham tactical,” Victoria signaled, “we are slowing down. You sure you don’t want assistance? Over”
“No, Fire Lady we got everything under control. Over and out.”
During the brief conversation the fifteen fighters had approached to three clicks distance to nearest Flak-tower. All of them launched missile each on four towers and then went evasive. Since Flak-towers were not directly controlled by human operator, the response was instant and automatic. Four of Bobo’s fighters found themselves in a metal storm of shrapnel that tore them apart. One more was damaged.
“Somebody pick up Falknar and everyone else launch the Dragonfly barrage,” Bobo sounded over the com.
The ten remaining fighters launched a swarm of dumbfire Dragonfly missiles with shape charge warheads. The Galtham station, having no interior protection against catastrophic decompression, burst apart after first few impacts. The central piece was only remaining one. Well, now I can add mass murder to my CV, Victoria thought with sour taste in her mouth.
Before she could give it more thought, the Orca TL started unloading fighters and two pocket cruisers. The Orca was Split mercs mother ship…
Victoria immediately brought up to her HUD optical feed of the pocket cruisers. She immediately recognized the configuration. They were often used configuration for escort of fast going convoys. The caiman conversion had single quad MD turret on the top of the ship in addition to the two missile pods, one on each side with total over 72 missiles of every conceivable type. But its real strength was in engine change which usually doubled the engine output. The Caiman pocket cruisers could easily keep up with Victoria’s Mako.
Victoria was an expert fighter by every right. And unlike the common misconception about ace fighters that they could win a fight even when faced with superior force, reality was that the ace become an ace because he or she had sense to get one’s vulnerable posterior in safety when pitched against a superior force. Victoria sensed that this was one of those moments.
She opened the channel to Bogo’s Falcon, “B this is V. I am satisfied with payment I already received for mission. You can keep the remaining forty grand”
And with that Victoria sat course towards the Teladi territories.

The Bobo’s part time mercenaries, part time pirates, were no match against veteran Split pilots. The half of his crew panicked and began running while other half attacked the Split mercenaries. The resulting fight was less than pathetic. More one sided affair was probably not recorded in the history books of the Known Universe. The veteran Split mercs flying their Mambas easily dispatched the anti-talents of Bobo’s group. Most of the Bobo’s group flew Buzzards and older Falcons, considerably slower spacecrafts than fast Mambas. Those that fled took only little longer to destroy than those that tried to put up a fight.
Victoria in her relatively fast version of Mako fighter did have a slight edge on Mamba regarding the speed and she did have a chance to get away as long as she did not get entangled with Split mercenaries’ interceptors. Two Scorpions gained on her. Their speed characteristics revealed that this was a variant with much lower maneuverability then her Mako. She made a ninety degrees turn and fired two Wasp swarm missiles on the Scorpions. The missiles would separate in eight hard to hit smaller missiles that together could overwhelm the weak Scorpions’ shields. The two interceptors had no other chance except to turn and run away. Victoria knew that she wouldn’t score hits on them but at least they were neutralized.
The nine Mambas continued pursuit but she knew that she had distance advantage on them that would only increase. The only chance Split mercs had, was to score a missile hit on her. Split warriors rarely used missiles so she only had to fear a missile barrage from the pocket cruisers. But Victoria still had few tricks remaining. Knowing that Split never had managed to develop an efficient electro optical lock on system, she dropped a highly illegal powerful CM drone that was towed behind her by wire. She extended the wire to 500 meters and turned it on. The drone was part of payment from her last operation. It could confuse both radars and gravidars, hindering the tactical computer onboard enemy fighters to obtain lock on their targets. In case the jamming emitter was locked on and fired on, the CM drone was equipped with a mini turret with an AIRE laser for self-defense against missiles. The drawback of the system was that Victoria’s sensors were blind to what was happening in area of 120 degrees behind the ship. The drone was equipped with a camera that transmitted its signal through wire by which the drone was towed. Victoria linked the camera feed to one of the monitors on her HUD. To her satisfaction Split mercs were stopping their chase. She was going to get away. Wait, Victoria told herself, isn’t that pocket cruiser gaining on her?
She swore a curse that would make a dock worker blush. The pocket cruiser had probably chemical thrusters.
She considered her options. The gate was close. Once on the other side she could ambush the pocket cruiser. She calculated that the pocket cruiser captain would turn off the chemical thruster once the ship approached the gate. He had to – you exited gate as a barely moving object. If chemical thrusters were on the g-forces would tore the ship apart. The captain would have to turn the chemical thruster to lowest settings or perhaps even turn it off and then gradually accelerate once on the other side. She asked the onboard computer to calculate the time it would take the pocket cruiser to reach the gate. Noting the estimate computer gave her, Victoria picked up the CM drone and entered the gate.





“Mr. Boffard Bols, known as Bobo, right?” The man in suit asked the slightly overweight man on the other side of the table. The man had surrendered barely ten mizuras ago to Split mercenaries and had been immediately brought to the Gal-For Orca TL’s brig. Bobo looked miserable with his stained pilot suit torn and charred. Blood was dripping from his nose but Bobo did not seem to notice it. Finally he muttered a silent yes.
“We have much to talk about. It may sound as cliché but if you help us, we may help you…”
Bobo did not lift his eyes from the table. He gave a nod.





Victoria had the feeling as if she was falling in a dream and then she was pulled back into the reality. She remembered. Gate had transported her from Midnight Sun to Belt of Aguilar. A pocket cruiser was…actually still is chasing me, she thought, still dizzy from the gate travel.
The computer announced the system which the ship had entered. The Belt of Aguilar system seemed infested by Khaak clusters but none of them were close enough to pose a threat to her. She placed her ship quickly right on the top of the gate. A quick glance on missile storage status told her that she had four Silkworms and three Dragonfly missiles left. She wondered which to opt for. Silkworm was five times more expansive but its warhead was also almost two and half times more devastating than that of a Dragonfly. The question was whether the captain of the pocket cruiser decided to come in with his shields on or off. If he suspected an ambush the shields would be on and chemical thruster rocket off. In that case the Dragonfly missiles would be barely enough to deplete one of the shields pocket cruiser sported while Silkworms would have stripped the pocket cruiser of its shields without problems.
If on the other hand he suspected that Victoria was still running, he would keep his chemical thrusters rocket on low setting to avoid the complicated and long startup of a chemical rocket which would cost him more time. In the end it boiled down to whether Victoria, with her 40 thousand on bank account that had been Bobo’s advance payment, was willing to use 20 thousand worth of missiles to play it safe.
As the computer announced that it was only ten sezuras left to estimated time of arrival of the pocket cruiser, Victoria choose the Dragonfly missiles and set them in auto launch in nine mizuras. When the count was down to two sezuras, she pressed in the fire trigger on her flight stick and the particle accelerator cannons played up just as the gate signaled incoming arrival.
The pocket cruiser blinked into the existence in front of the gate, just outside the maelstrom. And Victoria’s particle accelerator cannons burned the unshielded hull.
Next moment great flash blinded her and the pocket cruiser accelerated without control and direction. One of the Dragonfly missiles had hit the chemical thrust rocket igniting the fuel, causing the explosion that blasted away rear part of the pocket cruiser and blinded temporarily Victoria. The remaining fuel accelerated the rest of the ship in wild, uncontrolled direction, leaving behind trail of metal parts. Finally the plasma containment field collapsed in one of the pocket cruiser’s two engines and then there was nothing left of the pocket cruiser.




During the next tazura, Victoria took her ship through the Belt of Aguilar, dodging the Khaak clusters and Argon Navy patrols. She entered Grand Exchange sector, Teladi Company territory, exactly three wozuras after she had been hired by Bobo in Split Fire.
Watching the news in the pilot bar on Grand Exchange Trading station, she managed to piece together the real story behind Bobo’s ill-fated operation. Bobo had been captured and was all over the TH and news services admitting that Hoenecker had hired him to attack the Gal-For station Galtham. Of course he piled all responsibility on Victoria, the “Fire Lady” of Split Fire, portraying her as the leader of the gang. He, of course, was a minor player, a naive man, who did not know what he was into until it was too late to pull out He was happy that all of Galtham crew managed to evacuate before station was destroyed. Victoria had to admit that he looked sincere. Next the TH showed a picture of woman with pitch dark hair with sinister, almost demonic look in her eyes. Victoria suppressed a chuckle. She was a red haired, brown colored, middle aged woman whose paper showed that she had been just discharged honorably from 2. Squadron of Aladna Hill’s Sector Militia. Reserve office in Federal Navy until age of 50. Gal-For would have hard time tracking her. Not that they would try too hard, she suspected. Federal Attorney Office was now after Hoenecker Investments with arrests warrants issued for entire board of directors.
It was after all what Gal-For had planned from the start. They approached the most inept gang of mercs they could find and pretended that they were Hoenecker Investments. Then they tasked them with attacking the deceptively lightly defended Galtham station. The plan was probably for Bobo’s mercenaries to be slaughtered by Flak-towers and then the panicked survivors would have been rounded up by Split mercenaries hired by Gal-For. To make sure that Bobo wouldn’t be scared or alerted to the foul play by the presence of Split mercenaries, the Split hid in the Orca TL which probably had been rerouted to the system for the occasion. Should have asked myself what a TL was doing in the system, Victoria thought.
Of course, Victoria could never be sure that this was the way everything happened and her deductions would never hold in court, not that she planed to come near one in near future. She held no grudge against Gal-For. She played the game, they played a game too and she lost but this was the way world functioned. Next time it would be Victoria who would be doing the cheating. Her mind already on other things, she started searching the BBS for new jobs.



THE END
***

[Warenwolf]

Sorry for being late with posting entire story. Anyway after writing this story I kind of warmed up to the idea about writing short stories that a reader can be done with in one or two hours. The other benefit, to me, is that writing short stories does not interfere too much with real life.



Anyway I thought about giving you a taste of story I am working on right now. Drop me a line or two if you like the idea.
It is about big time trader captain who, when trouble with Khaak erupts, finds himself (and his prized "Metal Beauty") drafted into the war effort. The history is full of small man that prove themselves big heroes. Well, in case of Paul Olhand, hero is the same as being dead fool. So when he is drafted, he does everything to get himself and his "Metal Beauty" out of the trouble. Of course, the Argon Navy is not run by fools. They recognise Paul for what he is and they send aboard a MP officer along with four soldiers to make sure that Paul carries out his order to fly the Metal Beauty to a military shipyard where the ship is supposed to be refitted for war and Paul is being reassigned to proper Navy unit. However certain complications happen on this voyage - Paul, Federations least loyal citizen, will be the wrong man at wrong time at wrong place...



[Fleet action, anti-hero]


(short sample)


The Fleet of Misfits

Of all the citizens of the Argon Federation, there was no man or woman less willing to sacrifice themselves or their credits for Federation than the skipper of the “Metal Beauty”, Paul Olhand. Having grown up in the independent space, he had no patriotic feeling or love towards the Federation. His only love and lust in his life were credits. Paul did many sacrifices in name of credits. He became citizen of the Federation he held in contempt because the taxes were lower for Federation citizens if one did deals in Argon space, which Paul frequently did. He even became part of Argon Militia reserve. Again – because of the lower taxes and increased profit margins.
When Khaak attacked, Paul did not worry. Instead he saw the opportunity. The military would be in need of transporters for their logistics and Paul with his contacts and his ownership of an Elephant TL would be the prime candidate for juiciest deals. However the things did not work out the way Paul planed…
First, he received the message that he had been mobilized. He did not even know what the word meant but as he read the rest of the message he got the picture. The Federation had figured out that Paul would be the prime candidate as cannon fodder. As if that was not enough his “Metal Beauty” was to be mobilized too. As an escort carrier. Another word Paul did know meaning of. Finally, to add salt to the injury, Federation’s sadists had decided that Paul himself would turn over his TL at Light of Heart to be refitted to war duty.
This was not the way things supposed to work. Paul sent complains to the Navy, War committee and they all kept sending his messages back with sterner and sterner warnings of what would happen if he disobeyed.

[parameter]

Nice work Warewolf. Your mercenary affair was able to arouse emotions, thoughts etc.. I think the other short story you are working on, F o M,will be just as good. Makes a change to have an anti-hero thrust into the limelight.

[Snowship]

Nice little story there Warenwolf, can't wait til the next one