[Flash Fiction Friday] Desperate Measures

It wasn't the way that space was tumbling outside the viewport that really concerned Jonas. He was an experienced spacer. He knew what multi-axis tumbling meant. It meant that getting this boat back under some kind of control was going to be damned near impossible because the AI was dead or dying.

Plaintive beeping squirmed its way out of the audio panel. The sound of a mind in crisis, and by "crisis," he thought "slow death" might be a more honest assessment.

Absently, he stroked the lines of the panel and cooed "it'll be okay, baby," while thinking to himself we are fucked with Klang's cock. It's just what you did, comfort loved ones. The Indomitable Pressure-Tube (he was really, really drunk when he named her at that pirate haven was his only excuse) got him in and out of trouble on the reg, smuggling whatever goods someone wanted to slide under the radar in Canopus, Taurus, Centauri, and Lyran -- but fuck those Janus Collective guys because they were dicks.

The magnitude of their dickishness was spinning around outside. Three picket ships, not even warp-capable just puddle-jumpers really, with strapped-on old-school drone racks had come a' knock-knockin' on his door as he was just skirting the jump point on the edge of the system, asking to see his papers all nice-like.

"Really, gents. This is all very unnecessary." Like the slightly stressed tone. Totally unnecessary.

"In compliance with section sixteen point four oh eight of Janus Collective law, we are required to give at least cursory examination to all goods travelling through Janus Collective space as of date mark fifteen --"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it."

His fingers hovered over the ditch button like it would for any pirates. Drop the cargo, hit the jets, and they might fire a few poorly aimed shots as he high-tailed it out of there and called it a loss. Happened to everybody once in a while. Failure to complete. Sometimes you just can't keep it up.

He keyed the comms just the same. Might as well try to make it.

"Alright, gents. You come right on in and check out every lookee-loo. Maybe I can ..." was as far as Jonas got before the fourth ship, the one that was jump capable, popped out of netherspace behind him and he heard the soothing tones of Constable-Ranger Edgar J Waller Junior, late of Canopus but more recently having joined the constellation of "wants-Jonas-right-now-somehow" which sports only a few stars but very bright ones. Jonas could tell it was Junior because the fast-pursuit wave-rider he was in looked beat to seven shades of Hell by that last stunt in Lyra.

Junior's soothing, melodious tones ripped into the radio, "This is my collar, local-shit. Beat it. Jonas and his Tube are mine."

There was only one response to that. "You've been wanting to ride my tube since you met me, officer. You'd think you'd have had enough after that last run." Jonas imagined Junior turning beet red and jowly, growling out his response in fury and spittle, but instead all that dribbled out of the mic was a polite, clipped, almost Canadian, "Son, you're going to have to come home with me. It's your mom."

Jonas sighed, the kind of sigh and fetches up from your toes and blows out your nose.

"Look. The yokels don't need the theatrics -- dad. I need my cargo, my whole cargo, and it needs to go to Cabella. For money. So I'm just going to go after the yokels finish crawling through the framework in a couple hours. No muss, no fuss, nothing to write home about. Literally. You can tell mom thanks for the gift, but I'm stayin'."

It probably wasn't his fault. It wasn't! Bad timing, bad luck, bad everything. When the railgun round speared the reaction mass section of the local, there wasn't even an explosion. It ruptured such that the ship didn't even spin, just spewed hydrogen and water and bits in a beautiful, perfect ring that caught the light with rainbow refraction. Junior was a good shot, a great shot, and this was the moment Jonas knew he was going to pay through the nose for this.

"I said it's my collar," came the deceptively smooth and controlled voice of Junior across comms. "Now git." You didn't have to charge the capacitors on the guns minutes before firing them, that was old tech, but you could certainly intimidate the Hell out of someone by doing it. Junior was good at intimidation.

Jonas, on the other hand, was good at running like holy fuck when things went sideways, and this was moving wholly radial already. The slap-slap-slapping at the controls while screaming at the Tube was a good first start. "Indy, take my hand, we're getting out of here!" A metal gauntlet swallowed Jonas' fist as the control rig bit in, thrusters lighting up in pops to throw the ship desperately from between the poor local popo and his ridiculous father.

Drones take a moment to wake up once you shove them out of their boxy holes with a magnetic spring. They sputter and spun as the wee AI in each ran through a combat pre-flight and that's when they were really vulnerable. At the very moment that four were drifting through the inky void, back-lit by the amazing Janusary nebula, long, hard darts of iridium poked them good and hard in the guts.

Things react in different ways when you core them out with a kinetic kill weapon. Some just go dead and blink out. None of the drones did that. Some blow right the Hell up and there's nothing you can do about that. Two decided that was the life for them and they vomited hot metal shards and weird propulsion liquids all over the flank of the Tube. "There goes reaction control" was all Jonas could mutter before the ship couldn't yaw to the left anymore.

Jonas thumbed the mic within the gauntlet. "Look, I don't think this is between us any more, Janusary-dudes, so I'm going to just leave, if you don't mind."

In response, two more drones finished their waking checks and came spiraling toward the Tube with ill intent, skimming down the lengths of her, over the wrecked port thrusters, and spun in a very elegant pirouette to unload a volley of simple high-explosive rounds into the aft.

The aft is where you keep your engine when you're not using it. Often even when you are. And no engine likes to be tickled under the chin with a flight of HE. It's always been a good strategy, though; throw off the engine calibration in a solid way but have almost no chance to rupture the hull and kill folks? These Janusaries might be dicks, but they're talented dicks, Jonas thought. He also thought he might not be going anywhere for a while, and the AI was grunting for attention.

Jonas went heads-up in the interface while he threw the ship hard to starboard with everything he had. The spinning was only a little nauseating. It was a lot nauseating, really, but Jonas wasn't going to give himself the satisfaction of admitting it to himself.

In the HUD, he could see it all. The three pickets slowly, ever so slowly, starting to spread out to fly around the Tube and get to the Canopan hunter-killer, long and sleek like an arrow-head made of eels. Fucking Canopan bio-tech. "Tube to pickets, Tube to pickets, I don't mean to tell you your business, but I might run if I were you. I fully intend to run being me, if you know what I'm saying."

Picket One, which is what the Indy had decided to call him on the HUD since the officer had only got so far as telling Jonas the reason for the stop and not his name quite yet, sent,

"Cargo vessel Indomitable Pressure-Tube." Was that a snicker? "Hold for boarding and search and do not aid your accomplice. Collective agents are in-bound to take you both into custody."

Eight more drones sprung out, shook off their sleep like faithful hounds, and burned ass toward the HK. The two that'd taken out his engine loafed indolently to his rear, watching him like hawks. Drones had a lot of animal about them, he decided.

"Not like you, good boy," he said as he patted the Tube in its guts. "Okay, maybe a lot like you." Indy whined back a bit, pained but still game for the chase. Not that there was going to be one.

The railgun rounds promised by the capacitance charge from Junior were as precise as the first. Reaction mass. Reaction mass. Thrust control from a lateral aspect. Drone rack. Drone rack. Drone rack.

Faster than it took to read the words on the display, Junior had defanged and disabled the Janusary pickets and the HK had Jonas at the pointy end of the spear.

Collective comm space was a mess.

"Unidentified Canopan hunter-killer disabled three pickets!"

"Video transmitted; send support!"

"No jump-capable support available within five light minutes, stand by officers."

"Goddamn it, get us something, anything!"

Jonas was done with all of it. There was no way he was going back with Junior, no way he was going to see mom. He gently untangled himself from the control rig as the holed drone rack on one of the pickets caught a volatile leak from a drone with a spark and blew spectacularly against the Tube, sending the thing tumbling and spinning all multi-axis evil. Indy whined and beeped plaintively, but without yaw control, without the legs on the port side, it was just a puppy pulped by a speeding ride.

The central cargo spire was hard to navigate in free spin, but he got there, with comms from Junior following him down the whole way. "Jonas Waller, Second in Line, your genetic seed is required for Canopan technological research, boy. Mother-host requires your acquiescence and will not accept a casual dismissal."

Jonas' hand found the release he was looking for and grinned. "Hey, dad. Tell mom 'fuck you' for me, eh?" And he pulled the switch.

Sixteen tonnes of perfectly legal sodium combined with sixteen tonnes of perfectly legal water to produce an absolute shit-tonne of hydrogen gas which mingled quite quickly with a few dumped tonnes of oxygen in the atmo system. There were already quite a few sparks and open flames playing around inside the port side hull.

Fuck going home, Jonas said, from the belly of the whale.

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Getting back on the bull by tackling Chuck Wendig's Friday Flash Fiction prompt, because I'm clearly self-destructive.

Today: Spaaaace Opera!

#FridayFlashFiction for Friday-type people.