The Spiteful (Trapped.4)

As the airlock cycled, I heard an uncharacteristic hiss behind me. I turned- and the Constellation robot simply stared at me, sensors whirring.

“What are you doing?” I asked. Barrett certainly didn’t order him to follow me. So it must have been automated. Or perhaps he was sentient after all…

“I am equipped with self-defense weaponry.” It said. “I will be assisting against this pirate raid.”

“Good.” I said. Any warm body- for a given definition of ‘warm’ between the pirates and the mining crew was a bonus.

The firmware immediately connected my radio to the other sets across the base. From the other outpost habs, I could see more miners cycling in and out. Some of them were stacking crates of equipment and maintenance parts, or larger machinery up to create barricades.

“Robot, hide behind those crates. They see a type-A like you, they’ll shoot it first.” I said. The bipedal bots were an old design, but a standard one, and extremely well-refined.

As the robot surprisingly obeyed my command, I made my way over to Benning. He gave me a nod.

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“We, uh, don’t have much of one yet. Some guys are saying fight, other people are saying surrender.”

“To the Crimson Fleet?” I asked. He realized what I meant, and frowned.

The Crimson Scar was originally a crime syndicate. Their leader was arrested and put into a supermax prison, complete with a military space station in geosynchronous orbit. Eventually, he caused a riot, stole some shuttles from the UC, and took over the station.

The problem was, it was a full military installation. Fully equipped with a suite of turrets, a small squadron of military-grade ships, and entire cargo bays full of resources. With that foothold- one that lasted to this day- the Crimson Scar became the Crimson Fleet. Independent spacers, pirates, and scum of all sorts could join up, trade contraband, and generally make the universe worse for everyone.

Since then, they’ve been a stain on the settled systems… and they weren’t the sort to let people walk away, if they could avoid it. When they’re involved, it’s usually either death, membership, or worse. 

“I like my organs inside my body,” I said, and turned to the group who were all looking at me. They were carrying lasers like I was, but unlike me, it didn’t seem like they knew how to make them work as weapons. 

I really didn’t want to talk to people. I sucked with people. It hadn’t even been a week since I was in a cave-in, and now all these miners were looking at me like I was going to save them.

…

Damn it.

“Alright, whoever’s got a mining laser. We’ll have to mess with some configurations.”

These mining lasers, like the radios, were good work. They used a complex sensor suite to sense what they were cutting through, and would automatically set themselves to the exact specifications needed to cut through rock without messing with anything else. Sometimes even switch to sonic resonators when something was particularly light or temperature sensitive.

That was a problem for us. Mostly since, well, they would cut through the suits, detect the flesh or fabric underneath, trip a bunch of safety measures, then dump an error message on the user. The pirates would be burned, but they’d live. And that wasn’t the goal.

While I was explaining how to turn off those safety measures, Barrett- in his suit- and Lee came out of the hab, suited up. Barrett wasn’t armed, but Lin cradled a small pistol in her hand. I vaguely recalled she used to be military, back in the day.

“- and then confirm the warning message.” I finished. “Remember. Two things. First, these will have a much stronger kick than you’re used to. Second, after this is over, none of these things should be used at all until Izzy or I have taken a look.”

The guys- Benning, Courtney, even Heller- gave me a nod. Izzy frowned, but helped Calvert configure his laser.

“How’s it going, Vasco?” Barrett asked the robot, casually. 

“Ship approaching landing site.” The robot- whose name was apparently Vasco- beeped. “Visual confirmed.”

I glanced up, and saw the small shape punching through Vectera’s thin atmosphere. It was barely a spec on the horizon, but it was getting swiftly bigger as reverse thrusters slowed it down.

I could see the calculations in my head. Insertion from orbital velocity, the high-powered thrusters burning hydrogen as it slowed down. It would land right on our heads.

“We’ve got three minutes,” I said. “This shit definitely isn’t in our contracts! If you want to run… Go now. If not… Hide behind something, and be ready to fire.”

“Hey, now, I’m sure there’s a way we can solve this peacefully.” Barrett said. I glanced at Lin, and Lin shrugged.

“Be my guest, talk them up.” I rolled my eyes, and slumped behind one of the crates. I looked up at him. “Once they shoot you, they’ll probably be distracted enough for us to get the drop on them.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” He said. I could hear the engines coming closer, and just crouched behind the crates as best I could. I didn’t want them to know I was there, if at all possible.

Behind me, I could just picture it. The whine of the landing gear, the pistons clunking. The hiss as the landing bay equalized the pressure.

My heart started beating faster and faster as I heard the landing bay’s doors slide open. The clomp of suits stepping out. My hemet indicated a new radio connection, and-

“Hey, gentlemen,” Barrett said, hands up. “Why don’t we-”

In a blur of movement, Vasco suddenly stood up. The robot shoved Barret aside as the gunfire started. Bullets sent up puffs of dust, sparking off the crates. Even with the thin atmosphere, even through a helmet, the sound was loud. Barrett landed on me before I could cringe too much, and the man scrambled to try and get up, but I just I pushed him aside. The robot stood, proud and tall, as bullets pinged off of its plating. I couldn’t be sure if it was just tough plating, or if these were the sort of under-pressured rounds used for intra-ship or intra-station combat. 

I thought quickly. I didn’t know what kind of weapons the pirates had, or anything, but they were firearms, right? They’d have to reload eventually. I waited, carefully, as the robot took the bulk of the shots. The armor was dented and broken, the casing around its wires hanging loose.

But the gunshots ebbed, mostly, and the robot was still standing.

“Now!” Someone yelled.

It wasn’t me. It wasn’t even Barrett, who was shooting me a stupid grin from our place behind the crates.

It was Lin. Let alone the fact that she was our supervisor, the closest thing we had to a boss on the dig, The authority in her voice couldn’t be denied. I saw her, standing tall, her pistol in her hands as she fired repeatedly.

I wheeled up, lifting the heavy mining laser with my legs, and slammed the bulky thing down onto the crate I’d been hiding behind.

A half-dozen pirates were standing out there, reloading their weapons as they marched down the landing ramp, deadly looking automatic weapons in their hands. They were wearing heavily customized spacesuits, civilian-grade, except it looked like they’d plated the things with plates of metal. Steel and titanium, even some hull plating.

I put my weight on the laser- I knew, with the configurations we’d set, there’d be a kick- and pulled the trigger.

There was a short whine as the laser started to spool up. In that second, one of the pirates, the one in the heaviest armor and biggest gun, looked me in the eyes.

He looked like a normal person. No sneering, no scars. Not like some pirate. Not like some monster.

The mining laser finally kicked, and a beam of scintillating heat exploded out of it. My aim wasn’t dead-center, but it was close enough. It ripped through the pirate’s suit like it was butter. He barely seemed to notice he was injured until he was on the ground- his legs no longer supporting his body anymore.

I tried not to think about it- I just kept holding down the trigger, and angled the laser toward the next.

The rest of the miners seemed to have worse luck than me. Some of them didn’t handle the kick properly- they were used to the carefully managed power-levels of the lasers with their limiters on. Calvert dropped his, for example, and others had missed with the initial stream. But with a good half-dozen criss-crossing mining lasers, when the pirates weren’t expecting it was more than enough to end the fight almost immediately. The last few pirates turned to run back up the ramp. One yelled something, muffled by the thin atmosphere, but the ship’s pilot clearly heard him. The thrusters started to fire up, and before the pirates were even all the way up the ramp, the ship started to lift off.

One of the pirates stumbled and fell, his gun sliding off the ramp as he let go of it. In a blur of movement I hadn’t even seen the start of, Vasco landed on the ramp with an impact that had the entire ship listing, the automatic take-off sequence disturbed by the tilt.

The robot didn’t stay there long. It simply grabbed the fallen pirate with one of his arms, the servos hissing, and then threw itself backward, landing on the ground again.

As the ship tore off into the atmosphere again, the robot turned around, holding the pirate up by the pack on his back.

“I have requisitioned a captive.” It told Barrett.

“It’s called kidnapping, if it’s a person,” Barrett chuckled, getting to his feet. “So, shall we figure out what they wanted?"