The Dream Factory

Intelligent Life

'I know you're there. I know you're there, my friend.' I punched a few buttons on the console and the image blew up into a fuzzy blur of coagulated pixels. 'He thinks he can hide in the asteroids does he, but we're too sharp for him, aren't we, Shackleton?'

Shackleton, sitting in the Co-pilots seat barely acknowledged me. His gaze fixed on the tumbling rocks as they slewed passed in a hypnotic, slow motion ballet choreographed by the will of god over countless millennia.

The shape on the display was long and thin. Running counter clockwise against the circular motion of the asteroid belt, it had to be a ship. It could have been there for days, sitting just far off enough to track us until we came out the other side. Even Shackleton, with his sharp eyesight hadn't seen it.

I went down with Shackleton and we had some breakfast. It would be some time before we broke free of the belt when no doubt our escort would change course and come over to us. Out here you don't see other ships, so a little R&R and perhaps a few free tax free trades were a fringe benefit. It was space etiquette.

About lunch time after four days of dodging the craggy pumice monoliths, we emerged. Shackleton and I were back in our seats as the mass of spinning rocks dissipated and we left the mottled world of twisting shadows and arrived in the dazzlingly sunlight of free space. We turned in our seats and watched for our doppelganger. Far off with a glint of reflective metal off its cold hull, it materialised. I checked the screen, it had turned toward us. Shackleton's bright eyes danced across the flurry of stars and fixed on the imposter.

'Well can you see him clearly yet? Friend or foe, what do you think?'

Shackleton darted a look at me and then returned his fixed gaze to the object.

Two hours later I knew what it was. The long angular frontage, the double swept back engine exhausts, an array of weapon launchers punched into her side, her international markings replaced by a strange set geometric patterns. 'Shackleton, were in trouble. That's an Excelsior cruiser modified for extra speed and with auxiliary armament, a lot of it. And those markings, they are ... well they're not human.'

Shackleton looked at me blankly.

'It's an alien pirate ship, Shackleton and they're coming for us.'

If Shackleton was worried he didn't show it. He should have been shaken to the bone but he didn't show it. Nothing fazed Shackleton, that's why it was so good to have him in the co-pilot's seat.

We raced down to Blaise and Solomon. We didn't have much time. They we're already in their lifeboats. Standard practice in case of emergency on cargo ships. I just had time to write a brief note to each of them before I set their Merck machines to Awaken. The process would take twenty four hours, the cruiser would be on us by then and they would be taken without a fight. This way at least they stood a chance. Not much of a chance but it was better than nothing.

Back in my seat, breathing heavily, I double checked the evacuation procedure. Panic is infectious they say. Now Shackleton looked worried. I could see him darting sideways looks at me from deep under his puzzled brow. The alien ship was close enough now to read our life signs. Close enough for me to see the blackened, patched and bruised hull. A vivid testament to old encounters, belligerent subjugations and tortuous deaths, tattooed into its skin. I wondered what the crew were. A ragtag collective of oddities better suited to a museum of the bizarre than a commanding a re-commissioned battleship in deep space. I'd find out soon enough.

I pressed the emergency override and punched in the codes and we watched as both lifeboats fired and tore away from the ship like two tiny wasps leaving a smoking nest. We turned our attention to the closing cruiser. Nothing. I'd feared it would send out two Pursuit's to grab them but they were probably concentrating on us, the bigger prize.

And I'd make sure they didn't get too much of that. Automatically, having sensed the passing of the asteroids, our solar sails deployed, the polished surface of their filigree underside taking on the lustrous glow of a new born flower. There was a pause like the breath a swimmer takes just before they duck beneath water. Then the floor juddered as the auxiliary engine, enlivened by the new influx of power, fired up and a little sense of urgency ebbed into our lumbering behemoth. I quickly grasped the controls and turned us away from the looming menace to buy as much time as I could.

Next to the black box. Shackleton waited in the cockpit while I grabbed it and set the distress signal. Then I attached three hundred meters of chord and lowered it down the venting tunnels into the radioactive field of our back up nuclear generator and tied it off. The crew of the boarding ship would assume I'd dropped it down there to make sure they couldn't retrieve it and turn it off, but anyone from the mining company would know our little trick and be able to fish it out. The ship was carrying two hundred million tons of black ore. It would take weeks to unload and a fully armed escort ship would get here before then.

That only left one thing.

Out here the only thing rarer than coming across another ship, is coming across one with intelligent life on it. If you can capture an alien race form then you have a tradable commodity, to be bought and sold, for geneticists to play with, to experiment with to see what make them tick, to look for the cracks in their make-up, to understand the very essence of what they are. Everyone does it if the chance arises, which it rarely does. Wars have started for less so you need to be very careful about picking the low hanging fruit of a passing ship. Out here is perfect ambush territory, ducking in and out of the belt. Hard to spot and hard to be captured should you encounter something more predatory that you. Unless you were a lumbering mining freighter of course then you'd always be on the receiving end. The point is you should always make sure you are not on the receiving end.

We sat in silence watching their final approach. I rested an old laser cannon on my lap, a remnant of my three years' service in the Frontier Force. That was long ago and I was too rusty for the fight but I couldn't tell Shackleton that we had no chance.

Without even the pleasantry of a warning shot over our bows they introduced themselves by sliding up our keel in a side swipe of screaming metal. We lurched sideway as they hit as and ran up our hull, ploughing through the web of fragile sails as they came alongside and matched our speed. Without our sails the engines dulled and died, leaving nothing but the gentle ticking of the life support systems, the steady heartbeat of our old matriarch waiting for its final moment. Far off I could make out the bang as an outer door was ripped off. Soon the pattering of feet told me they were in the galley.

I rolled one of my two thunderclaps through the door. The bang sent a shockwave so violent I was forced back in the rolling blast of heat. Then I swung round the cabin door, sent a flurry of rounds into the smoke filled room and slammed and locked the door.

Silence. In that moment I thought I'd done it. Stopped them all.

 When the response came it was so furious that it lifted the door clear off its hinges and flung me backward across the floor and slammed my head into the console. I slipped down to the floor, the iron taste of wet blood trickling down my throat into my mouth. With one hand I wiped the stinging tears from my eyes and turned to find Shackleton crouching under the control panel.

Then something struck me. A ship the size of the ship pinned to our side should have been able to retrieve both lifeboats without any problem; we were a dirty, slow, freighter carrying ore. Why pass on the lifeboats.

'Oh crap.' I shouted, pushing two cartridges into the breach of my cannon. 'You haven't come for me. You've come for my dog, haven't you?'