Story – Like Fish in a Barrel
“Wow…”
Anne Slaughter darted like a rat under the huge black bomber ship despite how high off the hangar floor the ship stood, and headed towards the lowered elevator that had dropped out of its underbelly. Next to it stood a man wearing full soldier kit looking more than a little exhausted and unsteady on his boots. Dismissing his obvious weariness, Anne noted that he wore a unique helmet that harkened back to the days of ancient Eastern cultures on old Earth; it looked like an Oni or demon mask she’d seen in a history vid in classes, with two white tusks coming out near the bottom, and two white horns coming out above the helmet’s visor. The man was either a decorated veteran or a collector, maybe even both. Anne looked the stranger up and down more carefully.
She’d heard about his offer to help new pilots via one of the comm boards. He seemed like a nice guy in his informative post, seeing that he was willing to let inexperienced pilots take a look inside any of his ships before he hangared them all for some down time. Anne had been quick to respond to his offer, and he’d even brought the ship she most wanted to see all the way from Grim Hex to the station she called home – Seraphim, circling around the low mass gas giant Crusader, in the Stanton system.
The ship was one of the United Empire of Earth or UEE’s oldest bombers, the Retaliator. Anne had seen one up close before but never decked out like this in red and black livery. Her last venture inside one had been brief and to the point. She found a seat in a turret and she belted her butt down, always wary of her strange ability to be thrown to the floor any time any ship took off and she wasn’t buckled in. Now though, there was a Retaliator at her disposal, one she could look over and appreciate all on her own time.
“Are you sure you don’t need to code special permissions or something for me to go in there? I mean, you’re not going to be with me, right?”
It was pretty risky going into a stranger’s ship, after all. Anything could happen. Anne was not completely green when it came to piloting but she was no decorated soldier. She didn’t want to offend the shipmaster offering to help her out, but she also didn’t want to fall into some elaborate trafficking trap either.
The man waved his hand dismissively and gestured to the waiting lift of the elevator. “No, it’s all good. You go ahead.”
He was smiling under his visor. Anne could hear it in his tired voice. She smiled back and stepped onto the pad of the lift eagerly.
“Why not take a few ERT bounties while you’re at it? Test out the missiles. Really get a feel for her.”
ERT bounties were ‘extremely high risk’ with targets that could be as big as a Hammerhead vehicle. With a Retaliator decked out like this one was, it would probably be possible to take on such a big ship, especially if the missiles had been improved to be more energy effective for how hard they hit. But could she do all that, even with as good a ship as this?
Anne bit her lip. She nodded once, uncertain if she was ready to actually do bounties right now. It wasn’t just the size of the ship, which greatly dwarfed her current Mirai Razor EX. It was also the steering, the engine power, the fire power. Everything about the Retaliator was immense to someone like her, and she was starting to feel very small as the elevator began to lift up and carry her away from the floor of the hangar.
The man below her waved, then meandered off, presumably to find a bunk somewhere and rest for a few days. He’d seen a lot, she had no doubt about that. He must have gone out into deep space and brought back great riches in mining ore and salvage. One day, Anne swore quietly to herself, she would be doing the same.
The ship’s interior was dimly lit but she quickly found her way to the cockpit and slowly sat herself down in the pilot’s seat. The ship’s controls were right at her knees’ level, easy to grasp. Her gloved hands moved carefully, fingers flexing warily before she finally took control. Then she lifted the ship gingerly off the hangar pad and guided it out of the station’s docking bay.
Crusader loomed ominously in the background as Anne drew the ship further and further away from Seraphim Station. She could barely breathe. Only hours ago she had been at the wheel of a CS Pisces ‘mini explorer’, the type of snub ship that came with the purchase of the much larger Anvil Carrack. She had a particular friend, a true veteran of the ‘verse who himself was quite the ship collector. And while he was fond of Anne and was happy to take her on various adventures, she tried her best to be formal with him and not drool over every ship he showed her.
Her friend had been out on an EVA when he’d gotten himself stuck in an odd warp of energy around another ship he had docked at the station. While he was out of the Pisces, Anne had been able to slide into the pilot’s seat without permission and look around. Everything in the Pisces felt tight compared to the Retaliator she sat in now. The steering had been so sensitive that as soon as she touched the throttle, the little ship had felt like it shot forward like a bullet. She’d tried to realign it to where her friend had left it, pointing the tiny nose of the scouting vessel back at the larger ship docked to the station’s side, but then the entire Pisces had rolled on the spot, turning Anne’s world upside down instantly. It was just that sensitive of a ship, and no matter how much her friend told her that it was fine she had tested the controls, the woman had felt awful for not being able to control such a tiny little ship.
The Retaliator was a much more obedient beast. Anne maneuvered it so that she was looking towards the planet, Crusader’s hues of white and pink and peach seeming almost too brilliant against the blackness of space. She smiled and looked from side to side, examining the power indicators and other feeds that the two monitors on the HUD displayed.
“Someday, girl,” she said quietly to herself in the otherwise empty cockpit, “someday we’re going to be the one collecting ships and showing them off to newbies.”
Anne nodded, her smile widening. Then she tapped a blinking indicator on a screen to her right and down by her thigh. The small monitor there came to life, and she could see someone talking. It looked like someone from the company that ran Seraphim, R&R. The Rs stood for ‘rest’ and ‘relaxation’, and the company apparently prided itself on offering both to space-worn travelers and soldiers alike. Anne definitely thought they needed to improve their game and take better care of their businesses if they were going to say such lofty things about themselves.
For some reason, Anne couldn’t hear the voice of the man looking at her from the monitor. He was smiling though, so whatever he was saying couldn’t have been too bad, she decided. She shrugged. Maybe it was a standard security scan. She was still close to the station after all, she hadn’t dared yet to go very far with the Retaliator.
“Yet,” she grinned as she gripped the two flight control sticks in her hands and gave them a gentle squeeze. The ship responded but oddly enough, it flailed slightly to one side. A warning light flashed on one of the monitors, and Anne saw that the ship was reporting a minor torque imbalance. It would be difficult to fly very quickly if she suddenly had to, especially if she wanted to practice maneuvering and landing. Those were skills she desperately needed to learn.
Anne had big plans. She was going to salvage up enough UEC to buy her own Reclaimer, a massive salvaging ship meant for dangerous asteroid belts and the darkness of deep space. She was going to buy a super massive capital ship called the 890 Jump, which reportedly came with a hot tub. And she was going to buy an expensive gown that sparkled like the stars, and the most costly martini mix and spirits in the ‘verse. And then when people needed help, but not too serious of help of course, Anne would come down in her 890j and say in the voice of a benevolent lounge singer, “Where do you want me to drop you, dahling?”
Suddenly Anne was startled out of her reverie by the blare of a warning siren in the cockpit and the jolt of a tractor beam locking onto the Retaliator. She instinctively pushed the controls forward but the ship didn’t move. And then she realized it was actually being drawn backwards, towards the station.
“What the dung?”
The woman quickly unbuckled herself and hopped out of the pilot’s chair, leaning forward and pressing herself against the thick angled glass of the Retaliator’s windshield. She looked side to side until she could finally see the approaching station, and the security tractor beams that had gripped the tail of the ship she had wanted to drive so badly. The blue beams were drawing her back towards a single security pad, guiding the ship down to land remotely. Just before it touched down, Anne turned to exit the cockpit but was thrown hard to the ground by a rush of gravity as the ship landed. Her helmet knocked a sharp surface on the way down, saving her from a dangerous blow to the head but rendering her unconscious instantly as its force twisted her neck.
When Anne next opened her eyes, she held her breathe instinctively. It was a spacer habit she’d grown up with; if you found yourself unconscious, if you found yourself in suspicious circumstances after drinking or imbibing something, if you just weren’t sure of what was going on, you held your breath. Just in case you had somehow forgotten to put on a helmet the last time you had control of your senses. Not that Anne ever forgot her helmet of course, that most sarcastic voice in the back of her groggy brain chided her.
She let her breath out slowly and gratefully realized she was indeed safe, wearing her helmet, all her gear, everything she would need in a vacuum. Anne sat up and looked around. She’d seen this type of setting before; the walls were steel but painted rusty orange and red, the bed was barely covered in a very thin mattress, no blanket, and there was someone else snoring in a bunk near her own. She was suddenly even more thankful for her helmet because now that she knew where she was, she knew the air would smell like mineral dust and old man farts.
Anne…was in jail!
“What the dung,” she said, repeating the last thing she had thought of just before she fell. Her head and neck ached slightly but what was more concerning was the crack in her visor’s glass. She wasn’t in danger where she was, but she would need a new helmet before going off-station again.
The woman carefully stood up, waiting to see if she was going to be dizzy or sick to her stomach. When neither symptom of a concussion showed up, she tiptoed her way to the hatch nearby and exited the sleeping pod. All around her were the unhewn faces of rock walls, precariously placed scaffolding, and a low yellow-orange lighting that would make even the most sober and conscious citizen wary of every step. Anne began to make her way around the pods on this level of the scaffold, then went down flight after flight of metal stairs until she was at the administrative level of the underground prison.
Prison. She’d been here once before, though she couldn’t remember why. Getting time in jail was pretty easy, after all. Prison time was almost like having a second job, for some spacers; Anne was pretty sure it was a way for the UEE to get certain tasks done that nobody would normally sign up for. Nobody wanted to work in the mines, but if laws became tighter and tighter, and if the consequences of even the most minor of infractions meant time in the mines, the mines would indeed be worked.
“But what am I doing here?” Anne asked the comm station once she got to the central shaft of the mine. All around it were benches and tables for prisoners to ‘relax’ between their tasks. Some people could end up here for a very long time, especially if they were convicted of high crimes like piracy and murder. Anne was not that sort of criminal.
“Congratulations! You are free to go!” An emotionless automatic voice read out the words flashing on the screen.
“What? But I just…” Anne was about to complain about having just arrived at the jail, but then she thought better of it and mentally thanked the stars for her getting out quickly. Chances were that whatever infraction she had committed hadn’t been all that severe, but it was still a good idea to get out of jail as soon as possible.
An automaton-sounding male voice crackled over the static of the speakers in the prison. Only a few heads turned to listen, or to notice Anne as she almost sprinted past the tables towards the inmate processing centre.
“One of our guests is now leaving, returning to life on the surface! Please join your hands in applause and in the hopes that they improve their life skills and make better choices…yadda yadda yadda…”
The heavy doors of the prison’s lift closed behind Anne with a solid, life-affirming thud. The elevator to the surface couldn’t move fast enough for the woman as she fidgeted from side to side in the small space, waiting to arrive above. And then she was finally back amongst the living, free and clear from prison and back to being a citizen of the ‘verse.
“Now to find out what in the pitambu happened to me!”
It took a few minutes and some clicks for Anne to be able to deep dive into her records once she was at a public comm back on Seraphim Station, but at last she was able to figure out what had caused her to wind up unconscious in prison. According to the UEE records, she had stolen the Retaliator she’d taken as a loaner, and had been reported as a thief by its owner.
“But…but why would he do that to me?” she asked, though the answer was coming to her just as a little red light blinked in the corner of the comm’s monitor. Anne tapped it, already knowing what it meant.
She had a crime stat. That meant she had been reported as a criminal, had been arrested and had been given time in jail to pay off her ‘debt to society’ and to rehabilitate her from her erroneous life choices.
“I didn’t steal it,” she whispered softly as she chewed her bottom lip. “He said I could…I even asked if we needed to set up…permissions…”
Anne groaned and put a gloved hand to her visor. Of course she had suggested he needed to code in permissions. Because that’s how it was done, right? Before people piloted other people’s ships, they needed to be given permission. But this guy hadn’t given Anne permission. He’d said it was fine and she’d happily hopped up onto the elevator and let the man disappear into the shadows of the hangar while she ‘stole’ his ship. And then to top it off, she had sat in range of Seraphim Station, blissfully ignorant that inside, that same man was reporting his ship as stolen and telling some administrator that she was actually a thief and not a guest.
“Well damn,” she said, looking up to the bright lights of the station’s common space. “What a set up.”
The comm next to her still held her record, and from the corner of her eye, she saw the red blinking head in a reticle that signaled a crime stat level. Anne closed the record and stomped off towards the Admin Office, where the Security panels were stored. Once there, she keyed in her personal code and scrolled to see what fines she had to pay to rid herself of that awful blinking red crime stat. Nothing came up.
“That’s not right. That…that doesn’t make sense. It should be here.”
But there was no mention of a fine at all. Anne didn’t owe anyone money for hijacking the ship, something she hadn’t done anyway. Lost in thought, Anne wandered to another nearby comm station. There it was. The blinking red crime stat icon. And now it was giving her another message, one much more awful than any she had seen so far.
There was a bounty on her head.
Anne’s eyes went wide. “Are you kidding me right now?”
The next few moments of Anne’s precious life were spent looking fervently over her shoulder as she made her way to the Habitats level of Seraphim Station. She slunk into her sleeping pod and undressed only down to her white undersuit, keeping her helmet on the pillow next to her head – just in case. Even as her eyes grew heavy, she pondered what could be going on.
The man was clearly in control of the situation the whole time. It was an elaborate set up by a rather shady character. He posed as a collector of ships and a benevolent mentor to all who sought to improve others’ knowledge of space faring and piloting. He offered people the chance to drive one of his big ships, scoffing at the idea of them needing permissions. Who needs those, right? Especially when those permissions would prevent him from reporting the person as a hijacker or thief. Then, once the ship was off the pad and the person was happily flying their dreams around, that jerk reported them to Security and had them arrested. And then, as if putting them in jail wasn’t reward enough for someone so twisted of nature, he put out a bounty on their heads.
But why? Why go so far?
Suddenly Anne was wide awake. She grabbed her helmet and got out of bed, dashing out of her sleeping pod and going back into the common areas of the station. At the first comm she could find, she pulled up the bounty that had been put on her. The name was unfamiliar to her but the uniqueness of it, the slightly Earth-culture flare it had.
“It’s him!”
What a scam. First he convinced people to fly his ships, then he told them they wouldn’t need any special permissions, that everything would be fine. But the ships he let them drive were slightly damaged, probably discretely so as to not be noticeable upon quick inspection. Then the man reported the naïve newbies as thieves, allowing local Security forces to come and apprehend them and impound the ship, effectively returning it to the man at his leisure. And then, to increase his own reputation as a bounty hunter, he put out and then collected a bounty on the heads of those he had misled.
The bounty was small, insignificant really. It’d only last a day. Maybe only a few hours. He would have had to be watching her. Waiting for her to exit the station after her little misadventure beneath the surface of the moon of Aberdeen. Once she was away from the armistice zone of the station, he could have pounced on her, collected the bounty and the reputation and points that came with it.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel, whatever fish were. The saying was an old one her flight deck teacher used to say. Something about small aquatic animals people bragged about hunting; but if they were in a barrel, they were an easy kill, no skill required. And what this guy had done showed Anne he definitely had no skill. He was betting his bounty hunter reputation on tricking novice pilots. He was a leech.
Unfortunately for this guy, Anne was not a spacer. She wasn’t a dirt-dweller either, hanging out planet-side or mining on moons and asteroids. Anne was a station rat. She stuck close to home, and kept to the quieter and less populated, more shady stations in the ‘verse. She wasn’t easy to find, and in fact was quite certain she hadn’t yet found herself for that matter.
She shook her head and slunk back home, climbing into her bunk and pouting as she drew the one thin blanket she had up over her head.
“I will have a 890j one day,” she whispered, stroking the top of her cracked helmet. “But not today.”
