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mickilennial
Mao Mao
Asura
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Master EffeX
Half Pint
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Sep
Eviledd1984
AlteredTundra
I will be posting this story on RoyalRoad.com under this account https://www.royalroad.com/profile/350380
‘Worse ways to die than this. Probably.’ Peter Zhao Wei thought as he floated between the stars. Alarms blared. Warnings flashed across his heads up display in blocky red letters. Precious oxygen was leaking out of a spider web fracture in his helmet’s glass. Three golf ball-sized holes in his torso exposed his insides to the vacuum of space. He could feel his organs collapsing under rapid depressurization. Everything that wasn’t crushed and torn out was frozen solid. All around him, a stream of viscera and blood spooled out like the stuffing torn from a doll.
Peter blinked, trying to ignore the ice cold fluid buildup around his eyes. He looked on through fogged glass at his home: Minsky Station. The only home he’d ever known was cracked in half, like God had descended from heaven and crushed it between fingers the size of mountains. Streams of debris exited its orbit in all directions. The station grew smaller and smaller as the seconds ticked by, shrinking away from him in the dark. Or maybe he was flying away from it, the momentum from exploding out of his cockpit carrying him away into the asteroid field of Hamlin’s Star.
‘We tried to protect her, pal,’ Peter thought, his gaze flicking away from the station to the giant hurtling out into space with him. His giant, forged of steel and hydraulics, was meant for tearing precious minerals out of space rocks. The Goliath was never a weapon. In hindsight, they didn’t have a chance against a light frigate of the Sol Union Navy. That ship was the only thing still intact in the entire system. Well, mostly intact. Even from here Peter could see the gargantuan tears in its hull from where Goliath had gotten its claws on it. ‘Least we went down swingin’.’
As his consciousness began to fade, all he could wonder was how it came to this. They had a hundred- a thousand opportunities to step back from the brink, to stop the violence before it could even begin. If they’d only spoken longer. Negotiated better. If they’d never opened the door to begin with. If that ship hadn’t jumped into their system, or stopped at their station.
If.
Minsky Station never slept. From end to end the station was three quarters of a mile long with a bulging center, shaped like a giant top spinning at a breezy one g. Several concentric rings rotated around Minsky counter clockwise.These were waygate rings. By injecting negative mass matter into localized quantum fluctuations, the rings form a stabilized wormhole connected to another waygate in the neighboring system. A network of connected rings ran throughout all of human settled space, allowing instantaneous travel across trillions of miles. Control of this network was what allowed the Federation of Orion-Cygnus to unite all of humanity across such vast distances.
Minksy was built nearly a century ago by a mining conglomerate called Vanderwick-Kriegwald-Stalgard out of Thedes. A bunch of imperial aristocrats with too much money and endless ambition saw the system, Hamlin’s Star, as an opportunity to cut off Earth’s own expansion into the frontier.
Ships flowed in and out of Minsky’s belly like bees from a hive. They took to the mineral rich asteroid field the system was known for to tear the rocks apart in search of treasures hidden within. Once their holds were full they flew back into the station and deposited their tons of gold, nickel and iron into the processing plants on sublevels eight through fifteen. There, technicians ensured the robotic drones and conveyor belts kept things moving at their regularly blistering pace. Moving too fast was barely fast enough these days. The quotas grew every quarter when the station managers promised their shareholders infinite, unstoppable growth, like a plague of locust tearing across space. Failure to meet those quotas only meant the labor force wasn’t pushed hard enough.
Living in space meant there was no such luxury as day and night to determine work hours. Instead, the crew lived by shifts: three alarms would sound every eight hours, waking a shift up for work, announcing the end of work for a shift, and sending the last shift for bed so they’d be rested for work come the next alarm. Everyone that lived on station was a VKS employee; even those with the bad luck to be born there. Children automatically adopted their parents’ contracts, though they were graciously allowed to renegotiate when they came of age. Anyone who wanted to leave could do so. If they could pay their own way off, anyway.
Second shift alarm boomed, and Peter Zhao Wei woke up with a sledgehammer pounding the inside of his skull. He sat up in a cot too small for his sizable frame. With a blink he activated his neurodeck. The VKS logo flashed behind his eyes for a few moments before transitioning to his home page. VKS was up twelve percent on the market. The Martian Rovers beat out the Russian Mishas eighteen to six in the fourth quarter. Sixty people were dead in Denver after a Dominionist bombing. Movie star Ollie Andromeda was having an affair.
Pete blink-clicked over to his bank account. His neurodeck consolidated his payments due and calculated his net income. He was down seven thousand Petramarks after last week’s accident. One of those morons in the Ziegler clan ignored his warnings and crawled into an unstable rat hole after a platinum ore deposit. He was lucky he only lost an arm. Ziegler’s antics knocked Peter right out of his six month window. Even if he took on overtime, he’d hit his income cap before his vacation date was up.
“Damn it.”
With a reluctant sigh he canceled the tickets off Minsky. Three seats on the Klepper all the way back to Thedes. His parents always talked about going back to the imperial homeworld to see the sights. Walk the halls of the royal palace, or take a shuttle up to the moon of Helia to pray before the Sacred Sword wielded by Karl von König himself in the first conquest. His mom had this dream of lying down in the grass and watching the sunset over the world of her grandmother’s birth. Peter had worked his ass off for half a decade to give her that today, the sixtieth anniversary of her baptism. The church considered sixty a hallowed number, and his mother took it very seriously. It would’ve been the perfect gift.
He stared at his mother’s message inbox. She’d be going to bed soon if she wasn’t sleeping already. His parents had always been strict about sticking to shift time. Staying up was bad for one’s health, they’d always say.
“Hey, mom, happy anniversary,” Peter started, only to sigh and drop his head into his hands. How was he supposed to break the news?
With a swipe of his eyes from left to right, he sent the message away and brought back his bank account. It took him a second to run the numbers. He couldn’t afford all three tickets, but one? One was doable. If he made it one way there’d even be some spending money left over. Put himself up in a hostel for a few weeks while he looked for work- good work. Not scrounging around for metal at the ass end of the galaxy. Peter could make a life for himself on Thedes. He could finally be free. How long would it take to earn enough marks to get his family off Minksy then? A year, maybe two.
‘Would they even last that long alone?’
Time slipped away from him for several minutes as he contemplated his options. A secondary alarm caused him to jolt up with a start. Should’ve left the room already. Being late for a shift would see his pay docked. Peter scrambled to dress himself and scarf down a bag of bacon, egg and pancake flavored protein cubes at the same time. He struggled to pull on the envirosuit he’d worn for longer than he could remember. Every patched hole was a memory of some close call or another. There was too much sentimental value wrapped up in its faded blue polymers to replace it; even if it was a size and a half too small now.
A third alarm buzzed. Okay, now he was really late. Every second he wasn’t in the hangar there were marks being deducted from his account. Peter practically broke his door down as he stumbled out into the hallway at a dead sprint. A crowd of first shift laborers parted before him as two hundred and sixty pounds of pudge and muscle bounded down the corridor.
“Sorry, guys! ‘Scuse me! Sorry!” He yelled, only to be met with curses and obscenities galore.
Peter reached the hangar in record time.
The hangar was the largest open space Peter knew. Well, except space, but that didn’t count. It was huge. There were dozens of mechanics working already and they looked like ants crawling along the surface of a tree. Not that’d ever seen ants outside that documentary he’d watched last night about a species of bullet ant that went extinct on earth a few hundred years ago. Nuclear war wasn’t great for anyone, he supposed.
Those not-ants were crawling along gantries to get at the dozen vehicles hanging from the ceiling and clamped to the floor. The station practically had a little fleet of its own: transport shuttles, survey drones, core crawlers. Those were all just the support staff, really- the infrastructure that allowed the real heavy hitters to do their work: the exoframes. Two mechanized giants stood shoulder to shoulder in the hangar bay, their hundred ton forms supported by a dozen different clamps on the walls, ceiling and floor. Hydraulic fluid was being pumped into valves on the lower back through large, expanding tubes. Canisters of MAL-176 fuel cells were being loaded into the exoframe’s reactor while emptied cells were dumped into hazardous waste bins.
Both exoframes were ancient tech by any measure. Even with constant upkeep and part replacement, they were both several generations behind the newest models. A safety board would likely bar them from use as anything but museum pieces. There weren’t many safety boards in the frontier.
The one to the left was a General Motors Rhino-class industrial exoframe. They were produced en masse by the largest vehicle producer in the North American Republic and sold across settled space. A rhino could be modified to do practically any job: from heavy extraction and orbital construction to security. Plenty of would-be rebellions built their guerrilla forces off the backs of armed Rhinos.
This one was his. He’d insisted to the mechanics they keep the horn broken; it gave the big guy character. It was tall, rounded out in the torso and bottom heavy. He felt no small amount of kinship with the big, awkward machine.
“Mornin’, pal.” Peter called to his machine as he climbed the service ladder up to the cockpit.
“Good to see you, Pete!” Gus, one of the techs up on the gantry, yelled back. “Goliath’s ready for the trip out.”
Peter answered Gus with a wave before crawling inside the opened cockpit, falling into the torn leather seat he called his own. It was a tight fit. Barely enough leg room. Still stunk like the sweat of the first shift’s pilot, he realized with distaste. He pulled a spray bottle out of the underseat storage compartment and applied a generous application of deodorizing spray to the air around him. Better.
The startup checklist took twenty minutes. Gus was on the comm talking him through it, just like he had a thousand times before.
Flight sticks were good. Drillers stuck a bit on startup, but reached acceptable oscillation speed after thirty seconds or so. Cranial plug fit into the implant in the base of his neck snuggly and didn’t fry his brain when they turned it on, so that was good. Once Peter was plugged in, he felt a jolt of sensation run through his entire body. His hands became Goliath’s hands. His legs thrummed with the power to leap a tall building in a single bound- though the exoframe had never entered an atmosphere as far as he was aware.
Direct neurological interface technology was older than he was. It allowed the user of a particular device to control it, by some measure, with their thoughts. Old models like the Goliath still required manual flight controls to do the heavy lifting- a full interface was expensive. Too expensive for a rust bucket like this, and any additional utility it might allow wasn’t necessary for asteroid mining.
“Think we’re wasted enough time draggin’ our feet here, Gus. Let’s launch.”
“Aye aye, captain. Clamps are released. You’re good to launch.”
The Goliath lumbered forward through the hangar like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. The ground shook beneath a hundred tons of old metal as it crossed the hangar to one of the airlocks. Everything shook as the doors pried themselves open, a rush of pressurized air blowing out. It took another five minutes for the air to cycle and the doors to shut. A red light in the corner warned him-- and anyone unlucky enough to still be inside- that they were moments from being blasted into the vacuum of space. Peter’s eyes flickered down to his gauges to ensure everything was working in fine order one last time.
“Goliath to control, ready to fly from the nest on six.”
“This is control, opening six. Good hunting out there, Pete.”
The airlock doors crept open, the blackness of the void beyond was revealed. Goliath took three, long strides and jumped out of the station into the vast nothing. Jet thrusters on its back and legs exploded to life, carrying the giant exoframe away from Minsky as it accelerated toward the asteroid field. To its right, another pair of doors opened and a hauler ship exited to follow close behind. Anything the Goliath dug up would be picked up by the hauler’s crew of miners in EVA powered suits and prospecting drones.
“Could you fly any slower? I’d like to get this done before I keel over and die.” Another voice crackled to life on his comm. Fran Ziegler was old enough to be his great grandmother, and she sounded like she’d eaten three packs of cigarettes a day since primary school. Fran was also one of the best pilots Peter had ever known. She was captaining the Hercules Mulligan, a mining hauler nearly as old as she was. Half her crew were her own grandchildren, nieces and nephews. The Ziegler clan was an odd one, but they were some of the best in the business.
“You got it, Franny. I’m slowin’ down. Wouldn’t want to upset your frail sensibilities.” Pete called back, grinning from ear to ear.
“Bite me, drecksack.”
They worked for six hours. The first step was deploying survey drones. They swept the asteroid field in grid formation, each drone claiming two hundred thousand miles of territory. The largest asteroids usually had the best yields, but they were rare: you could fly half a million miles in a straight line and only find half a dozen asteroids over five hundred thousand tons heavy. Small but dense rocks meant metals like platinum. Searching for radiation spikes was just as important: MAL-176 was the rarest substance in the universe, but it was also the blood that powered the body of mankind. Without it, there were no jump drives, no fusion reactors. Peter would never forget a conversation he had with Laton Camcross, a logistics supervisor: if all the MAL in known space disappeared for just a single minute, civilization would collapse before it popped back into existence.
Once a decent prospect was found, the next step was extraction. The Goliath would match the object’s orbit and latch onto its body with massive, titanium-weave cables to keep it from flying away when they started tearing it apart. Large drilling claws mounted to the exoframe were used to open up seams so that smaller, more delicate work could be done to pull the minerals out of stone. Workers with EVA suits and heavy tools would handle the most valuable finds, while the Goliath’s suite of robots would take out the bulk of material. Most of Peter’s job was staring at screens and sending mental commands to the crab drones using the cranial plug. It was meticulous work, but it required his full attention. Moving too quickly could risk damaging the fragile structure of the asteroid. Even a small cut in the wrong spot could cause catastrophic collapse in just minutes. The miners inside could be crushed beneath tens of thousands of tons of space rocks before they even knew they were in danger. If any of her kin were hurt, Franny would crawl out of her ship and beat Peter to death with a grav-pick personally.
A light started beeping on the dashboard. Pete sent the drone cams away with a flick of his fingers and pulled up the warning. ‘Incoming jump?’ He read, puzzled. Pick up wasn’t scheduled until the end of the month. Who else would want to come to this garbage heap of a system?
The waygate rings around Minksy Station broke dock and floated off its fat, round form. They began to rotate faster and faster until looking at them burned his eyes. Once they reached a measurable fraction of the speed of light, a bright flash of crimson energy filled the space between the rings.
Reality warped like iron under a smith’s hammer as the Meshuda jumped into the system. A wave of steam washed off the ship’s back as it vented the excess heat created by an active jump drive. Its shell glowed bright orange for several minutes as it flew through the void. Even with its thrusters burning hard to stop, it still covered a few million miles of space before it slowed enough to be visible to the naked eye as anything but a bright smear. The amount of energy necessary to teleport from one system to another dwarfed the heat at the center of a star. Even one tiny miscalculation in a ship’s design could see it turned to slag after one too many jumps in a row. The Meshuda was built to last, however. From bow to stern it was one hundred and fifty six feet long, putting it squarely in the smallest class of vessel to have its own jump drive. Two large engines stretch out on wings on either side of its boxy body, thicker on the rear and thinning out at its bow.
Peter’s eyes went wide as the ship’s name popped up on his HUD. The Meshuda was a light frigate designated SUN: Sol Union Navy. What in Helia’s name was an earth military boat doing way out here? This was Thedian territory.
“Goliath to Hercules Mulligan, are you readin’ this?”
“I’m not blind, boy, not yet. Already sending telemetry data back home. What do those soilsucking dogs want with us?”
Peter gulped. He called back his crab drones and began inputting the commands necessary to drop anchor on the asteroid and bail. “Maybe a bad jump. Maybe an emergency. They’re Federation too, they have every right to be here.” Even as the words spilled from his mouth, he knew they were wrong. It wasn’t illegal for them to be here, no. But there wasn’t any good reason for it, either. He had a terrible feeling knotting up on his guts that he couldn’t shake.
“I’m not getting any channels opened between the station and the ship yet. Bah, I’m calling them myself.” Fran growled. She was hitting her controls loud enough that he could hear her punching buttons through the open channel.
“Bad idea.” He warned, despite patching in with her to listen. Wasn’t like he could stop her anyway. Might as well learn what this was all about.
“Franscesa Ziegler of the Hercules Mulligan calling the Meshuda. This asteroid belt is the legal property of VKS Heavy Industries. Do not approach or you will be reported for trespassing. State your purpose.” That cranky old woman’s voice rose with a clear authority she only used for when she found her grandkids’s hands in the proverbial cookie jar. It wasn’t exactly her place to be making threats, but he wasn’t about to step in and stop her. The woman knew her business. He doubted she would do anything that would upset the station chief.
To the Meshuda’s credit, they responded immediately. “Mayday, mayday, this is Vice Captain Alexi Sablin, acting captain of the SUN Meshuda,” the man who called himself captain responded. His voice was hoarse, and his words seemed strangely drawn out, like speaking was difficult for him. He sounded young, too. Maybe mid-twenties, early thirties at the latest.
“My ship is in distress. We suffered significant damage and loss of life to a pirate attack in the Meridian system. We require immediate assistance.”
Peter’s eyes widened. Meridian was only a few systems over, and he had no idea pirates were operating so close to Minsky. Accessing his neurodeck, he scrolled through every company communique and news report he could find on their corner of space. Like many systems in the region, Meridian was another VKS Industries prospect. They had some small foothold on a single planet there. Nothing about pirates, however. There was an article about Sol Union military exercises in this sector, though…
“Ain’t no pirates in Meridian,” Fran protested, even as the Meshuda continued to steam ahead toward the station.
It was difficult to get a visual from this distance. Peter could’ve mistaken it for a smudge on his cockpit’s canopy. Goliath’s camera feed popped up as a box in the corner of his vision, sensing his need before he even asked. The zoomed in image showed him what he’d been wondering about: whether or not the Meshuda was actually damaged or not.
He was no soldier. He had no way of knowing if a hull breach was from a railgun spike or a collision with space debris; they were there, though. At least three different sections of the Meshuda had tears in the hull where emergency coagulating foam was preventing her atmosphere from venting into space. Scorch marks marred much of the body. Several panels were bent at odd angles, cables and wires dangerously exposed.
“Please, we’ve been out here for months. We only just brought our jump drive back online a few hours ago. We’ve been trying to ration our food, but the water recycler…”
“They need help, Fran.” He said, knowing Sablin would hear him as well. The man’s face visibly brightened.
“I’ve created an inventory of the supplies we need to return to the nearest Union port,” Sablin said quickly, leaning forward on the view screen to type away at a keyboard. A file popped up on the Goliath’s display. Opening it, Peter scanned through the request: food, fuel, and a long list of materials for a shipborne fabricator.
“I’ll forward this to station management,” the food and repair materials wouldn’t be a problem, he believed, but the fuel was another matter.
“I’m contacting them now.” The vice captain nodded. “Can you escort us to the station? Our sensor array was struck and we’re flying blinder than I would like right now.”
Peter returned the nod. The asteroid field wasn’t particularly dense but it wasn’t worth the risk. “I’ll lead ya in, pal.”
The connection dropped as Meshuda's captain called the station directly. Goliath detached from the asteroid in front of it, retracting its cables back into the back-mounted spools. Crab drones leapt back into their cradles on the exoframe’s midsection. The Zieglar miners kept to their work.
Another call came in. It was Fran Zieglar. “What hell do you think you’re doing? “ She snapped. “I’m not missing another quota so you can help a baby bird get back to its nest.”
Peter closed his eyes and sighed. “We’re obligated to provide aid. It's the law, n’ its just the right thing to do.”
“Law only matters when it helps them. You think they’d stop their pretty little boat to refuel our hauler?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Dumb Bastard.” Zieglar clicked her tongue and cut the call.
Heat filled his cheeks as Pete took flight, guiding the Meshuda through the asteroid field toward the station. The old crone had the gall to complain about meeting quota after her crew screwed him out of a shuttle ticket?
It took twenty minutes to navigate the asteroids and return to Minsky’s stationary orbit around Hamlin’s Star. A handful of other ships had spilled out of the hangar bays to loiter in space around the station. All the mining boats save Zieglar’s were returning from their work early as well, perhaps drawn in by the curiosity of their new guest. Dozens of messages and comm lines were flying across the system. Pete scanned the public feeds for any information on how negotiations were proceeding between administration and the naval vessel, but he could find little that was helpful. There was plenty of wild speculation and fearmongering, however. One particular employee was live streaming a political screed. Peter pulled it up against his better judgment.
“...Earther thugs will never destroy our way of life. We are the sons and daughters of the emperor, saved in the light of Her Grace, Saint Helia, whose sacred sword will one day pierce the heart of earth’s decadence. Democracy has no place in a civilized, godly society-”
Peter quickly switched it off. Helianite zealots were rare this far from the homeworld, but he knew each and every one of them on Minsky because they never shut up about it. Guys like Markus were the reason Pete stopped attending temple, much to his mother’s chagrin.
After a few more minutes of tense silence, he decided to give Sablin another call. To Pete’s surprise, the vice captain picked up immediately.
“What’s the hold up? Why haven’t you docked?” Peter asked.
“They won’t let us. The bastards won’t let us in!” Alexi nearly screamed. His face was red, veins bulging from his neck and forehead. His eyes were blood red. He looked exhausted, distraught, angry.
“What? Why?!” Peter nearly choked. He figured there must’ve been some kind of complication, a snag in the process that was holding them up.
“I don’t know why! Ask them!” Sablin did scream, this time, and then hung up.
He was quick to put in a connection request to the administration. It took another few minutes for the automated secretary to finally connect him to a comms officer. By then, the Meshuda was beginning to maneuver.
“Hey, this is Peter. Peter Zhao Wei, pilot of the Goliath.” He introduced himself quickly, stumbling over his words. “I was the one who made first contact with the frigate and escorted them in. They just told me you’re denying them their legally obligated refuge?” He asked, stressing the words ‘legally obligated,’ as if management had somehow glossed over the most important rule of space travel: always help a ship in distress.
“Hello, Mr. Wei. I’m Comms Officer Adebayo. Senior Station Manager Yaeger and Liaison Officer Ditka have already explained the situation to Captain Sablin.” The woman on the other end spoke with calm, practiced professionalism, sure to respect the various titles of all the very important people that were currently screaming at each other over their computer screens.
“Please, enlighten me. Nobody’s told me anything, ma’am.”
After a pause, she began to summarize. “Yaeger offered to ship an aid package to the Meshuda. Sablin has refused, claiming his ship is in too immediate a danger to remain in space and that it must dock.”
“Then why the hell are they not docked yet?”
“...Manager Yaeger believes their claim is untrue. Detailed scans of their ship show no signs of such critical damage.”
Peter balked. “Yeah, I’m sure those scans are real ‘detailed’ after, what, twenty minutes of lookin’? N’ no camera is goin’ to be able to tell ‘ya if a reactor chamber is cracked or if their life support is failin’.”
“Liason Ditka wishes to send an inspection team but Sablin has denied him access. He claims they carry sensitive materials that civilians can’t access.”
Frustration boiled up in his gut as he mulled over her words, the reality of the situation finally sinking in. The politics of it all. The petty fighting over terms while people were in real, physical harm’s way. It all seemed so pointless.
“Give me a second. Don’t hang up.” Peter put the administrator on hold and shot a connection over to Sablin, again. “Hey, asshole, what do you think you’re doing?”
Sablin paused, blinking. There was a heat behind his eyes that was only momentarily dulled by the unexpected faux pas. He was a decorated officer of the Sol Union Navy. A lifelong spacer with a pedigree as long as his arm. No one had called him anything but ‘sir’ to his face since boot camp. “Explain yourself,” he demanded.
“Just let them board your ship!”
He shook his head. “We are in more dire need than a few cargo crates on a drone can abate. My crew has been trapped on this ship for months with little food, dirty water and untreated medical emergencies. My captain is dead. I will not have a handful of upstart rock merchants stop me from taking care of my people.”
The conviction in Alexi Sablin’s voice was hard as steel. His battleworn frigate moved closer to the station, barreling past the mining haulers attempting to physically block his passage. For all the captain’s certainty, the hangar bay doors were still closed and sealed to him.
“Don’t be stupid!” Peter barked, but his warning went unheard as Sablin hung up the call. Peter could only watch in horror as one of the mining vessels released its laser cannons from their mounts and began powering them up. The Meshuda responded by unlocking its own, far more intimidating hardpoints: torpedo tubes, autocannons, and railguns. Enough firepower to crack a mountain in half.
Later, Peter Zhao Wei wouldn’t recall who fired the first salvo. It didn’t matter. Once torpedoes kissed cold vacuum and lasers raked the sides of hulls, all bets were off. History wouldn’t remember the people that died here, not really. No one would write about Comms Officer Adebayo begging everyone to hold fire across every channel, even as a fireball consumed the bridge around her. There would be no docu-vids about the Hercules Mulligan and the family of stupidly brave miners that dragged an asteroid across the system and slammed it into the side of the Meshuda before they were turned to nuclear ash. Fran Zieglar died with a mad cackle in her throat and blood in her eyes.
No one would remember him.
Goliath lurched forward. Its thrusters burned at maximum volume, building the exoframe’s momentum until it was practically a missile aimed directly at the Meshuda. Didn’t matter to Pete who started shooting. All he knew was that the frigate had the biggest guns, and was doing the most damage. Inertia tore him back into his seat. Black dots filled his vision as he built up speed. He visualized in his mind the Goliath- a mighty machine of steel and hydraulics and power- throwing a wild haymaker at the Meshuda. The exoframe lifted an arm as they came into range, cannon fire tearing into its central body and separating the torso from its legs. The cockpit canopy shattered, something sharp piercing it too close to Peter’s face for his liking.
Despite it all, he delivered that punch before he went. And it was a damned good one.
Claws made for digging out stone dug into the reinforced hull, tearing off a chunk a few meters across and flinging it back into space.
The Meshuda whirled on its axis, maneuvering thrusters flaring so the frigate could come around to face the Goliath. It delivered a salvo of railgun fire at point blank range that tore the suit apart. Its armored body shattered in a dozen different places, and the neurospike in Peter’s neck exploded from the feedback, sending blood shooting from his ears and out of his nose.
The canopy gave way, and Peter found himself floating between the stars.
Prologue: Peter
Minsky Station
CR-2003113081 (‘Hamlin’s Star’), Hyades Star Cluster
Minsky Station
CR-2003113081 (‘Hamlin’s Star’), Hyades Star Cluster
‘Worse ways to die than this. Probably.’ Peter Zhao Wei thought as he floated between the stars. Alarms blared. Warnings flashed across his heads up display in blocky red letters. Precious oxygen was leaking out of a spider web fracture in his helmet’s glass. Three golf ball-sized holes in his torso exposed his insides to the vacuum of space. He could feel his organs collapsing under rapid depressurization. Everything that wasn’t crushed and torn out was frozen solid. All around him, a stream of viscera and blood spooled out like the stuffing torn from a doll.
Peter blinked, trying to ignore the ice cold fluid buildup around his eyes. He looked on through fogged glass at his home: Minsky Station. The only home he’d ever known was cracked in half, like God had descended from heaven and crushed it between fingers the size of mountains. Streams of debris exited its orbit in all directions. The station grew smaller and smaller as the seconds ticked by, shrinking away from him in the dark. Or maybe he was flying away from it, the momentum from exploding out of his cockpit carrying him away into the asteroid field of Hamlin’s Star.
‘We tried to protect her, pal,’ Peter thought, his gaze flicking away from the station to the giant hurtling out into space with him. His giant, forged of steel and hydraulics, was meant for tearing precious minerals out of space rocks. The Goliath was never a weapon. In hindsight, they didn’t have a chance against a light frigate of the Sol Union Navy. That ship was the only thing still intact in the entire system. Well, mostly intact. Even from here Peter could see the gargantuan tears in its hull from where Goliath had gotten its claws on it. ‘Least we went down swingin’.’
As his consciousness began to fade, all he could wonder was how it came to this. They had a hundred- a thousand opportunities to step back from the brink, to stop the violence before it could even begin. If they’d only spoken longer. Negotiated better. If they’d never opened the door to begin with. If that ship hadn’t jumped into their system, or stopped at their station.
If.
Earlier
Minsky Station never slept. From end to end the station was three quarters of a mile long with a bulging center, shaped like a giant top spinning at a breezy one g. Several concentric rings rotated around Minsky counter clockwise.These were waygate rings. By injecting negative mass matter into localized quantum fluctuations, the rings form a stabilized wormhole connected to another waygate in the neighboring system. A network of connected rings ran throughout all of human settled space, allowing instantaneous travel across trillions of miles. Control of this network was what allowed the Federation of Orion-Cygnus to unite all of humanity across such vast distances.
Minksy was built nearly a century ago by a mining conglomerate called Vanderwick-Kriegwald-Stalgard out of Thedes. A bunch of imperial aristocrats with too much money and endless ambition saw the system, Hamlin’s Star, as an opportunity to cut off Earth’s own expansion into the frontier.
Ships flowed in and out of Minsky’s belly like bees from a hive. They took to the mineral rich asteroid field the system was known for to tear the rocks apart in search of treasures hidden within. Once their holds were full they flew back into the station and deposited their tons of gold, nickel and iron into the processing plants on sublevels eight through fifteen. There, technicians ensured the robotic drones and conveyor belts kept things moving at their regularly blistering pace. Moving too fast was barely fast enough these days. The quotas grew every quarter when the station managers promised their shareholders infinite, unstoppable growth, like a plague of locust tearing across space. Failure to meet those quotas only meant the labor force wasn’t pushed hard enough.
Living in space meant there was no such luxury as day and night to determine work hours. Instead, the crew lived by shifts: three alarms would sound every eight hours, waking a shift up for work, announcing the end of work for a shift, and sending the last shift for bed so they’d be rested for work come the next alarm. Everyone that lived on station was a VKS employee; even those with the bad luck to be born there. Children automatically adopted their parents’ contracts, though they were graciously allowed to renegotiate when they came of age. Anyone who wanted to leave could do so. If they could pay their own way off, anyway.
Second shift alarm boomed, and Peter Zhao Wei woke up with a sledgehammer pounding the inside of his skull. He sat up in a cot too small for his sizable frame. With a blink he activated his neurodeck. The VKS logo flashed behind his eyes for a few moments before transitioning to his home page. VKS was up twelve percent on the market. The Martian Rovers beat out the Russian Mishas eighteen to six in the fourth quarter. Sixty people were dead in Denver after a Dominionist bombing. Movie star Ollie Andromeda was having an affair.
Pete blink-clicked over to his bank account. His neurodeck consolidated his payments due and calculated his net income. He was down seven thousand Petramarks after last week’s accident. One of those morons in the Ziegler clan ignored his warnings and crawled into an unstable rat hole after a platinum ore deposit. He was lucky he only lost an arm. Ziegler’s antics knocked Peter right out of his six month window. Even if he took on overtime, he’d hit his income cap before his vacation date was up.
“Damn it.”
With a reluctant sigh he canceled the tickets off Minsky. Three seats on the Klepper all the way back to Thedes. His parents always talked about going back to the imperial homeworld to see the sights. Walk the halls of the royal palace, or take a shuttle up to the moon of Helia to pray before the Sacred Sword wielded by Karl von König himself in the first conquest. His mom had this dream of lying down in the grass and watching the sunset over the world of her grandmother’s birth. Peter had worked his ass off for half a decade to give her that today, the sixtieth anniversary of her baptism. The church considered sixty a hallowed number, and his mother took it very seriously. It would’ve been the perfect gift.
He stared at his mother’s message inbox. She’d be going to bed soon if she wasn’t sleeping already. His parents had always been strict about sticking to shift time. Staying up was bad for one’s health, they’d always say.
“Hey, mom, happy anniversary,” Peter started, only to sigh and drop his head into his hands. How was he supposed to break the news?
With a swipe of his eyes from left to right, he sent the message away and brought back his bank account. It took him a second to run the numbers. He couldn’t afford all three tickets, but one? One was doable. If he made it one way there’d even be some spending money left over. Put himself up in a hostel for a few weeks while he looked for work- good work. Not scrounging around for metal at the ass end of the galaxy. Peter could make a life for himself on Thedes. He could finally be free. How long would it take to earn enough marks to get his family off Minksy then? A year, maybe two.
‘Would they even last that long alone?’
Time slipped away from him for several minutes as he contemplated his options. A secondary alarm caused him to jolt up with a start. Should’ve left the room already. Being late for a shift would see his pay docked. Peter scrambled to dress himself and scarf down a bag of bacon, egg and pancake flavored protein cubes at the same time. He struggled to pull on the envirosuit he’d worn for longer than he could remember. Every patched hole was a memory of some close call or another. There was too much sentimental value wrapped up in its faded blue polymers to replace it; even if it was a size and a half too small now.
A third alarm buzzed. Okay, now he was really late. Every second he wasn’t in the hangar there were marks being deducted from his account. Peter practically broke his door down as he stumbled out into the hallway at a dead sprint. A crowd of first shift laborers parted before him as two hundred and sixty pounds of pudge and muscle bounded down the corridor.
“Sorry, guys! ‘Scuse me! Sorry!” He yelled, only to be met with curses and obscenities galore.
Peter reached the hangar in record time.
The hangar was the largest open space Peter knew. Well, except space, but that didn’t count. It was huge. There were dozens of mechanics working already and they looked like ants crawling along the surface of a tree. Not that’d ever seen ants outside that documentary he’d watched last night about a species of bullet ant that went extinct on earth a few hundred years ago. Nuclear war wasn’t great for anyone, he supposed.
Those not-ants were crawling along gantries to get at the dozen vehicles hanging from the ceiling and clamped to the floor. The station practically had a little fleet of its own: transport shuttles, survey drones, core crawlers. Those were all just the support staff, really- the infrastructure that allowed the real heavy hitters to do their work: the exoframes. Two mechanized giants stood shoulder to shoulder in the hangar bay, their hundred ton forms supported by a dozen different clamps on the walls, ceiling and floor. Hydraulic fluid was being pumped into valves on the lower back through large, expanding tubes. Canisters of MAL-176 fuel cells were being loaded into the exoframe’s reactor while emptied cells were dumped into hazardous waste bins.
Both exoframes were ancient tech by any measure. Even with constant upkeep and part replacement, they were both several generations behind the newest models. A safety board would likely bar them from use as anything but museum pieces. There weren’t many safety boards in the frontier.
The one to the left was a General Motors Rhino-class industrial exoframe. They were produced en masse by the largest vehicle producer in the North American Republic and sold across settled space. A rhino could be modified to do practically any job: from heavy extraction and orbital construction to security. Plenty of would-be rebellions built their guerrilla forces off the backs of armed Rhinos.
This one was his. He’d insisted to the mechanics they keep the horn broken; it gave the big guy character. It was tall, rounded out in the torso and bottom heavy. He felt no small amount of kinship with the big, awkward machine.
“Mornin’, pal.” Peter called to his machine as he climbed the service ladder up to the cockpit.
“Good to see you, Pete!” Gus, one of the techs up on the gantry, yelled back. “Goliath’s ready for the trip out.”
Peter answered Gus with a wave before crawling inside the opened cockpit, falling into the torn leather seat he called his own. It was a tight fit. Barely enough leg room. Still stunk like the sweat of the first shift’s pilot, he realized with distaste. He pulled a spray bottle out of the underseat storage compartment and applied a generous application of deodorizing spray to the air around him. Better.
The startup checklist took twenty minutes. Gus was on the comm talking him through it, just like he had a thousand times before.
Flight sticks were good. Drillers stuck a bit on startup, but reached acceptable oscillation speed after thirty seconds or so. Cranial plug fit into the implant in the base of his neck snuggly and didn’t fry his brain when they turned it on, so that was good. Once Peter was plugged in, he felt a jolt of sensation run through his entire body. His hands became Goliath’s hands. His legs thrummed with the power to leap a tall building in a single bound- though the exoframe had never entered an atmosphere as far as he was aware.
Direct neurological interface technology was older than he was. It allowed the user of a particular device to control it, by some measure, with their thoughts. Old models like the Goliath still required manual flight controls to do the heavy lifting- a full interface was expensive. Too expensive for a rust bucket like this, and any additional utility it might allow wasn’t necessary for asteroid mining.
“Think we’re wasted enough time draggin’ our feet here, Gus. Let’s launch.”
“Aye aye, captain. Clamps are released. You’re good to launch.”
The Goliath lumbered forward through the hangar like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. The ground shook beneath a hundred tons of old metal as it crossed the hangar to one of the airlocks. Everything shook as the doors pried themselves open, a rush of pressurized air blowing out. It took another five minutes for the air to cycle and the doors to shut. A red light in the corner warned him-- and anyone unlucky enough to still be inside- that they were moments from being blasted into the vacuum of space. Peter’s eyes flickered down to his gauges to ensure everything was working in fine order one last time.
“Goliath to control, ready to fly from the nest on six.”
“This is control, opening six. Good hunting out there, Pete.”
The airlock doors crept open, the blackness of the void beyond was revealed. Goliath took three, long strides and jumped out of the station into the vast nothing. Jet thrusters on its back and legs exploded to life, carrying the giant exoframe away from Minsky as it accelerated toward the asteroid field. To its right, another pair of doors opened and a hauler ship exited to follow close behind. Anything the Goliath dug up would be picked up by the hauler’s crew of miners in EVA powered suits and prospecting drones.
“Could you fly any slower? I’d like to get this done before I keel over and die.” Another voice crackled to life on his comm. Fran Ziegler was old enough to be his great grandmother, and she sounded like she’d eaten three packs of cigarettes a day since primary school. Fran was also one of the best pilots Peter had ever known. She was captaining the Hercules Mulligan, a mining hauler nearly as old as she was. Half her crew were her own grandchildren, nieces and nephews. The Ziegler clan was an odd one, but they were some of the best in the business.
“You got it, Franny. I’m slowin’ down. Wouldn’t want to upset your frail sensibilities.” Pete called back, grinning from ear to ear.
“Bite me, drecksack.”
They worked for six hours. The first step was deploying survey drones. They swept the asteroid field in grid formation, each drone claiming two hundred thousand miles of territory. The largest asteroids usually had the best yields, but they were rare: you could fly half a million miles in a straight line and only find half a dozen asteroids over five hundred thousand tons heavy. Small but dense rocks meant metals like platinum. Searching for radiation spikes was just as important: MAL-176 was the rarest substance in the universe, but it was also the blood that powered the body of mankind. Without it, there were no jump drives, no fusion reactors. Peter would never forget a conversation he had with Laton Camcross, a logistics supervisor: if all the MAL in known space disappeared for just a single minute, civilization would collapse before it popped back into existence.
Once a decent prospect was found, the next step was extraction. The Goliath would match the object’s orbit and latch onto its body with massive, titanium-weave cables to keep it from flying away when they started tearing it apart. Large drilling claws mounted to the exoframe were used to open up seams so that smaller, more delicate work could be done to pull the minerals out of stone. Workers with EVA suits and heavy tools would handle the most valuable finds, while the Goliath’s suite of robots would take out the bulk of material. Most of Peter’s job was staring at screens and sending mental commands to the crab drones using the cranial plug. It was meticulous work, but it required his full attention. Moving too quickly could risk damaging the fragile structure of the asteroid. Even a small cut in the wrong spot could cause catastrophic collapse in just minutes. The miners inside could be crushed beneath tens of thousands of tons of space rocks before they even knew they were in danger. If any of her kin were hurt, Franny would crawl out of her ship and beat Peter to death with a grav-pick personally.
A light started beeping on the dashboard. Pete sent the drone cams away with a flick of his fingers and pulled up the warning. ‘Incoming jump?’ He read, puzzled. Pick up wasn’t scheduled until the end of the month. Who else would want to come to this garbage heap of a system?
The waygate rings around Minksy Station broke dock and floated off its fat, round form. They began to rotate faster and faster until looking at them burned his eyes. Once they reached a measurable fraction of the speed of light, a bright flash of crimson energy filled the space between the rings.
Reality warped like iron under a smith’s hammer as the Meshuda jumped into the system. A wave of steam washed off the ship’s back as it vented the excess heat created by an active jump drive. Its shell glowed bright orange for several minutes as it flew through the void. Even with its thrusters burning hard to stop, it still covered a few million miles of space before it slowed enough to be visible to the naked eye as anything but a bright smear. The amount of energy necessary to teleport from one system to another dwarfed the heat at the center of a star. Even one tiny miscalculation in a ship’s design could see it turned to slag after one too many jumps in a row. The Meshuda was built to last, however. From bow to stern it was one hundred and fifty six feet long, putting it squarely in the smallest class of vessel to have its own jump drive. Two large engines stretch out on wings on either side of its boxy body, thicker on the rear and thinning out at its bow.
Peter’s eyes went wide as the ship’s name popped up on his HUD. The Meshuda was a light frigate designated SUN: Sol Union Navy. What in Helia’s name was an earth military boat doing way out here? This was Thedian territory.
“Goliath to Hercules Mulligan, are you readin’ this?”
“I’m not blind, boy, not yet. Already sending telemetry data back home. What do those soilsucking dogs want with us?”
Peter gulped. He called back his crab drones and began inputting the commands necessary to drop anchor on the asteroid and bail. “Maybe a bad jump. Maybe an emergency. They’re Federation too, they have every right to be here.” Even as the words spilled from his mouth, he knew they were wrong. It wasn’t illegal for them to be here, no. But there wasn’t any good reason for it, either. He had a terrible feeling knotting up on his guts that he couldn’t shake.
“I’m not getting any channels opened between the station and the ship yet. Bah, I’m calling them myself.” Fran growled. She was hitting her controls loud enough that he could hear her punching buttons through the open channel.
“Bad idea.” He warned, despite patching in with her to listen. Wasn’t like he could stop her anyway. Might as well learn what this was all about.
“Franscesa Ziegler of the Hercules Mulligan calling the Meshuda. This asteroid belt is the legal property of VKS Heavy Industries. Do not approach or you will be reported for trespassing. State your purpose.” That cranky old woman’s voice rose with a clear authority she only used for when she found her grandkids’s hands in the proverbial cookie jar. It wasn’t exactly her place to be making threats, but he wasn’t about to step in and stop her. The woman knew her business. He doubted she would do anything that would upset the station chief.
To the Meshuda’s credit, they responded immediately. “Mayday, mayday, this is Vice Captain Alexi Sablin, acting captain of the SUN Meshuda,” the man who called himself captain responded. His voice was hoarse, and his words seemed strangely drawn out, like speaking was difficult for him. He sounded young, too. Maybe mid-twenties, early thirties at the latest.
“My ship is in distress. We suffered significant damage and loss of life to a pirate attack in the Meridian system. We require immediate assistance.”
Peter’s eyes widened. Meridian was only a few systems over, and he had no idea pirates were operating so close to Minsky. Accessing his neurodeck, he scrolled through every company communique and news report he could find on their corner of space. Like many systems in the region, Meridian was another VKS Industries prospect. They had some small foothold on a single planet there. Nothing about pirates, however. There was an article about Sol Union military exercises in this sector, though…
“Ain’t no pirates in Meridian,” Fran protested, even as the Meshuda continued to steam ahead toward the station.
It was difficult to get a visual from this distance. Peter could’ve mistaken it for a smudge on his cockpit’s canopy. Goliath’s camera feed popped up as a box in the corner of his vision, sensing his need before he even asked. The zoomed in image showed him what he’d been wondering about: whether or not the Meshuda was actually damaged or not.
He was no soldier. He had no way of knowing if a hull breach was from a railgun spike or a collision with space debris; they were there, though. At least three different sections of the Meshuda had tears in the hull where emergency coagulating foam was preventing her atmosphere from venting into space. Scorch marks marred much of the body. Several panels were bent at odd angles, cables and wires dangerously exposed.
“Please, we’ve been out here for months. We only just brought our jump drive back online a few hours ago. We’ve been trying to ration our food, but the water recycler…”
“They need help, Fran.” He said, knowing Sablin would hear him as well. The man’s face visibly brightened.
“I’ve created an inventory of the supplies we need to return to the nearest Union port,” Sablin said quickly, leaning forward on the view screen to type away at a keyboard. A file popped up on the Goliath’s display. Opening it, Peter scanned through the request: food, fuel, and a long list of materials for a shipborne fabricator.
“I’ll forward this to station management,” the food and repair materials wouldn’t be a problem, he believed, but the fuel was another matter.
“I’m contacting them now.” The vice captain nodded. “Can you escort us to the station? Our sensor array was struck and we’re flying blinder than I would like right now.”
Peter returned the nod. The asteroid field wasn’t particularly dense but it wasn’t worth the risk. “I’ll lead ya in, pal.”
The connection dropped as Meshuda's captain called the station directly. Goliath detached from the asteroid in front of it, retracting its cables back into the back-mounted spools. Crab drones leapt back into their cradles on the exoframe’s midsection. The Zieglar miners kept to their work.
Another call came in. It was Fran Zieglar. “What hell do you think you’re doing? “ She snapped. “I’m not missing another quota so you can help a baby bird get back to its nest.”
Peter closed his eyes and sighed. “We’re obligated to provide aid. It's the law, n’ its just the right thing to do.”
“Law only matters when it helps them. You think they’d stop their pretty little boat to refuel our hauler?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Dumb Bastard.” Zieglar clicked her tongue and cut the call.
Heat filled his cheeks as Pete took flight, guiding the Meshuda through the asteroid field toward the station. The old crone had the gall to complain about meeting quota after her crew screwed him out of a shuttle ticket?
It took twenty minutes to navigate the asteroids and return to Minsky’s stationary orbit around Hamlin’s Star. A handful of other ships had spilled out of the hangar bays to loiter in space around the station. All the mining boats save Zieglar’s were returning from their work early as well, perhaps drawn in by the curiosity of their new guest. Dozens of messages and comm lines were flying across the system. Pete scanned the public feeds for any information on how negotiations were proceeding between administration and the naval vessel, but he could find little that was helpful. There was plenty of wild speculation and fearmongering, however. One particular employee was live streaming a political screed. Peter pulled it up against his better judgment.
“...Earther thugs will never destroy our way of life. We are the sons and daughters of the emperor, saved in the light of Her Grace, Saint Helia, whose sacred sword will one day pierce the heart of earth’s decadence. Democracy has no place in a civilized, godly society-”
Peter quickly switched it off. Helianite zealots were rare this far from the homeworld, but he knew each and every one of them on Minsky because they never shut up about it. Guys like Markus were the reason Pete stopped attending temple, much to his mother’s chagrin.
After a few more minutes of tense silence, he decided to give Sablin another call. To Pete’s surprise, the vice captain picked up immediately.
“What’s the hold up? Why haven’t you docked?” Peter asked.
“They won’t let us. The bastards won’t let us in!” Alexi nearly screamed. His face was red, veins bulging from his neck and forehead. His eyes were blood red. He looked exhausted, distraught, angry.
“What? Why?!” Peter nearly choked. He figured there must’ve been some kind of complication, a snag in the process that was holding them up.
“I don’t know why! Ask them!” Sablin did scream, this time, and then hung up.
He was quick to put in a connection request to the administration. It took another few minutes for the automated secretary to finally connect him to a comms officer. By then, the Meshuda was beginning to maneuver.
“Hey, this is Peter. Peter Zhao Wei, pilot of the Goliath.” He introduced himself quickly, stumbling over his words. “I was the one who made first contact with the frigate and escorted them in. They just told me you’re denying them their legally obligated refuge?” He asked, stressing the words ‘legally obligated,’ as if management had somehow glossed over the most important rule of space travel: always help a ship in distress.
“Hello, Mr. Wei. I’m Comms Officer Adebayo. Senior Station Manager Yaeger and Liaison Officer Ditka have already explained the situation to Captain Sablin.” The woman on the other end spoke with calm, practiced professionalism, sure to respect the various titles of all the very important people that were currently screaming at each other over their computer screens.
“Please, enlighten me. Nobody’s told me anything, ma’am.”
After a pause, she began to summarize. “Yaeger offered to ship an aid package to the Meshuda. Sablin has refused, claiming his ship is in too immediate a danger to remain in space and that it must dock.”
“Then why the hell are they not docked yet?”
“...Manager Yaeger believes their claim is untrue. Detailed scans of their ship show no signs of such critical damage.”
Peter balked. “Yeah, I’m sure those scans are real ‘detailed’ after, what, twenty minutes of lookin’? N’ no camera is goin’ to be able to tell ‘ya if a reactor chamber is cracked or if their life support is failin’.”
“Liason Ditka wishes to send an inspection team but Sablin has denied him access. He claims they carry sensitive materials that civilians can’t access.”
Frustration boiled up in his gut as he mulled over her words, the reality of the situation finally sinking in. The politics of it all. The petty fighting over terms while people were in real, physical harm’s way. It all seemed so pointless.
“Give me a second. Don’t hang up.” Peter put the administrator on hold and shot a connection over to Sablin, again. “Hey, asshole, what do you think you’re doing?”
Sablin paused, blinking. There was a heat behind his eyes that was only momentarily dulled by the unexpected faux pas. He was a decorated officer of the Sol Union Navy. A lifelong spacer with a pedigree as long as his arm. No one had called him anything but ‘sir’ to his face since boot camp. “Explain yourself,” he demanded.
“Just let them board your ship!”
He shook his head. “We are in more dire need than a few cargo crates on a drone can abate. My crew has been trapped on this ship for months with little food, dirty water and untreated medical emergencies. My captain is dead. I will not have a handful of upstart rock merchants stop me from taking care of my people.”
The conviction in Alexi Sablin’s voice was hard as steel. His battleworn frigate moved closer to the station, barreling past the mining haulers attempting to physically block his passage. For all the captain’s certainty, the hangar bay doors were still closed and sealed to him.
“Don’t be stupid!” Peter barked, but his warning went unheard as Sablin hung up the call. Peter could only watch in horror as one of the mining vessels released its laser cannons from their mounts and began powering them up. The Meshuda responded by unlocking its own, far more intimidating hardpoints: torpedo tubes, autocannons, and railguns. Enough firepower to crack a mountain in half.
Later, Peter Zhao Wei wouldn’t recall who fired the first salvo. It didn’t matter. Once torpedoes kissed cold vacuum and lasers raked the sides of hulls, all bets were off. History wouldn’t remember the people that died here, not really. No one would write about Comms Officer Adebayo begging everyone to hold fire across every channel, even as a fireball consumed the bridge around her. There would be no docu-vids about the Hercules Mulligan and the family of stupidly brave miners that dragged an asteroid across the system and slammed it into the side of the Meshuda before they were turned to nuclear ash. Fran Zieglar died with a mad cackle in her throat and blood in her eyes.
No one would remember him.
Goliath lurched forward. Its thrusters burned at maximum volume, building the exoframe’s momentum until it was practically a missile aimed directly at the Meshuda. Didn’t matter to Pete who started shooting. All he knew was that the frigate had the biggest guns, and was doing the most damage. Inertia tore him back into his seat. Black dots filled his vision as he built up speed. He visualized in his mind the Goliath- a mighty machine of steel and hydraulics and power- throwing a wild haymaker at the Meshuda. The exoframe lifted an arm as they came into range, cannon fire tearing into its central body and separating the torso from its legs. The cockpit canopy shattered, something sharp piercing it too close to Peter’s face for his liking.
Despite it all, he delivered that punch before he went. And it was a damned good one.
Claws made for digging out stone dug into the reinforced hull, tearing off a chunk a few meters across and flinging it back into space.
The Meshuda whirled on its axis, maneuvering thrusters flaring so the frigate could come around to face the Goliath. It delivered a salvo of railgun fire at point blank range that tore the suit apart. Its armored body shattered in a dozen different places, and the neurospike in Peter’s neck exploded from the feedback, sending blood shooting from his ears and out of his nose.
The canopy gave way, and Peter found himself floating between the stars.
