Bypass Gemini

Chapter 16

“I wonder what kind of ships hitmen fly these days.” Karter mused aloud, “Ma, bring it up on the display panel when we get a visual.”

Lex, for the moment convinced that his unpredictable associate was not an immediate threat to his life, approached the panel. As he did, Karter continued.

“In the old days they used to use converted cargo haulers for everything,” he reminisced, “Just lop off the cargo portion and you ended up with these zippy little boxes with power to spare for all sorts of add-ons. Plus, they could sell the stolen cargo. It was actually really efficient. I’ve always been a big fan of the sort of solutions people come up with when they have limited resources like that. I mean, I used to-”

“Visual established.”

The image jumped onto the screen, Lex’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Karter raised an eyebrow.

“Huh,” Karter said, thoughtfully, “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“Is that what I think it is?” Lex asked.

“Do you think it is a VectorCorp Asteroid Wrecker?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s what you think it is.”

VectorCorp, it was generally agreed, was too powerful. They controlled virtually all of the communications, and virtually all of the transportation, in the colonized galaxy. Couple this with the fact that their employee count was larger than the population of most individual countries and their annual profits exceeded the combined GDP of many planets, and it became clear that in the not altogether unlikely event that they were to militarize, the resulting war probably wouldn’t last very long. Realizing this, a large coalition of governments got together and decided that, if VC wanted transit and transmission rights for their sectors, then they would have to sign an agreement limiting allowable combat vessels to nothing larger or better equipped than an armored personnel carrier or anti-pirate scout ship. At the time, avoiding those sectors would have been financially devastating, so VectorCorp reluctantly agreed.

A few years later, the Asteroid Wrecker was unveiled. Those trade routes, the very same ones for which they’d paid top dollar for transit rights, needed to be kept clear after all. That meant that VC had to be prepared to quickly deal with any rogue piece of space rock that might wander into their vicinity. Thus, they created a vessel with a particle cannon that could bore a hole through a mile and a half of solid iron. Asteroids tend to be found in fields of smaller debris, so to shrug that off, they gave the ship high density ballistic plating and a deflection shield powerful enough to protect a large city. Occasionally the best course of action is to push an asteroid out of the way, so it came equipped with remotely operated, high capacity payload rockets. They were essentially missiles without a warhead. And naturally, in order to facilitate controlled demolition, they kept a ready stockpile of high yield, directional shape charges. They were essentially warheads without a missile. The removal of an asteroid often required specialized vehicles, so an internal, fortified hangar large enough for a small fleet of one-man vehicles was included in the design. Manning the ship was between two and five hundred VectorCorp employees, each with specialized training in deep space, hazardous environments, and demolitions. Independently, every feature and function of the Asteroid Wrecker was entirely sensible for its stated purpose. Taken as a whole, the vessel was a utility vehicle that could go toe to toe with a warship.

And now there was one approaching.

“Can that make it through the, uh, the moat, or whatever?”

“Oh yeah.”

“So what are we going to do!?”

“I’m going to go eat some burritos and make sure Solby took a squirt. You’re on your own.”