Void All The Way Down (2014) by Stephen Hunt

Author:Stephen Hunt [Hunt, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi
Publisher: Green Nebula
Published: 2014-09-23T07:00:00+00:00

***

Lights flickered back on across the ship’s bridge as the systems shifted from their hyperspace setting and returned to normal space operating mode. The captain of the Doubtful Quasar, who went by the nickname of Steel-arm Bowen, looked down at his cyborg arm – fidgeting with a mechanical life of its own as his all-too human flesh adjusted to a new set of physics. Steel-arm spat across the deck, reaching down to the side of his command chair and pulled out a hypo of oozing green pick-me-up to accelerate his body’s natural recovery processes. Ahhh, that’s better. Outside the ship, the bloody red disc of Abracadabra’s sun winked at them through transparent armour, the world they were meant to be arriving at a small black disk silhouetted against the star’s light.

Bowen checked the distance of the world – at least five day’s travel on a sub-light drive burn. That was what you got from shipping with cheap navigators – the crab-like kaggen hovering malevolently in his chair and swearing at his controls, blaming his twisting hologram warp translation controls for not jumping in closer to the destination planet. If we weren’t seventy parsecs from the nearest planet I could pick up a fresh navigator, I’d toss the incompetent dog out of our airlock. Their kag was a half-mad heretic, thrown out of the church for various unpalatable beliefs. Bowen’s last kaggen had been much more effective at his job, but then poor old Keltat had died when a freighter the Doubtful Quasar had chased turned out to be far better armed than their informant’s tip-off indicated. Keltat died in that action, as had the informant when Bowen returned to the rat-shizzle’s system. Still, nobody said the life of a pirate was an easy one. Although it had to be said, Bowen’s career choice had transitioned into relatively trouble-free pillaging since his deal with that scumbag Pitor Skeeg. Hyperfast fed him details of where the corporation’s competitors were travelling, and the Doubtful Quasar waited in ambush for a sure thing to fly into range of her guns. Damn, but how Bowen loved a sure thing.

‘Tell me we’ve at least kept our lock on the Gravity Rose?’ barked Bowen.

‘We have her,’ said the navigator, sounding irritated at being questioned. ‘I told you I located their hyperspace ejection point. It was exactly where the tracking signal disappeared.’

Bowen grunted. The kag had got that much right at least; but what did he want, a shiny medal pinned on his carapace in recognition of his virtuoso scouting skills? ‘Where’s the Gravity Rose anchored?’

‘She’s in orbit around that crimson-coloured world. Odd-looking astrometry on the real estate, too. Appears like a gas giant, but scans like a rock. Never heard of a transponder able to broadcast hidden from that far out before . . . finding the ship at this range, it’s a miracle.’

‘The alliance isn’t in the miracle business,’ said Bowen. And the alliance’s corporate stooges paid a lot better than God, too. Bonus one – taking Lana’s ship.

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