Two marooned spacers find an ancient derelict ship that just wants to be loved.
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At faster-than-light speeds, the stars seen through the viewport looked like rainbow confetti streamers falling sideways.
The two-person crew of the freighter Saturn's Heart sat in the small cockpit in companionable silence, watching the red-shifted starlight stream past, eating their lunchtime rations. June Harding, Navigator First Class, sat in the pilot's seat, and Will Foucault, Mechanic First Class, in the co-pilot's, drinking slightly burnt coffee.
They met at the training academy and became fast friends. They were eventually assigned as crew together due to how well they got along, which was very important on long, deep space runs.
"Anything to report from the last watch?" Will asked.
"Not much. We passed an old wreck about three hours ago", June replied, looking down at her logs, " at oh nine forty-eight, ship time."
"How old?" asked Will, curiosity piqued.
"Couldn't say; the debris field was just on the edge of our scanning range as we passed and their transponder was dead. I filed a report on the FTL transmitter, but haven't heard back from Control yet."
Will's brow furrowed. " That's the second unmarked wreck we've encountered in many weeks. It's unusual to see one in the hyperspace lanes, let alone two." He paused, thinking momentarily, "When did we receive the last reply from Control?" Will's unease began unsettling June.
"A week and a half." June's voice was darkened with apprehension. June set aside her meal and swung her chair to face the navigation terminal. "Checking our position with the Galactic Positioning System now." She grimaced in confusion. "Says we are still on course for the Brazo system. Let me do a manual position check against the current star field."
"Damn it!" June exploded. "We're about four days off course. Someone's spoofed the local GPS beacons." Neither of them needed to say it was a commonly used tactic that pirates used to isolate vulnerable ships.
"Give me ten minutes to calculate a new course off our manual position readings. Damn it, I hate doing it by hand. The computers are always faster!" said June, irritation flaring through her typically level demeanor.
Will had been holding his breath, staring at the sensor scopes while June worked through laying out a new course.
"We have contacts," Will announced grimly. "Three of them, no transponders. They must have been trailing us, waiting for us to come out of hyperspace." Turning to June, "How long until you have our new course?"
The easygoing banter had been replaced by grim professionalism. The freighter was lightly armed and no match for a corvette, let alone three. And they both knew that pirates didn't take male prisoners, and women who were captured ended up wishing they shared the men's fate.
"A few more minutes," June said as she worked the figures furiously.
"They'll close the gap in two; we won't have time to jump." Will scanned the local star chart in hopes of sparking a plan. "There!" He exclaimed. "Make for that nebula. It'll hide our signature and give us time to calculate a new jump. I'll run down to the hold and dump the cargo. With any luck, they take the bait, and we can slip away."
June nodded her agreement and pulled the ship around, firing the sub-light engines to full power in hopes of making it to the nebula.
Will ran down the short hallway to the ladder to the second deck and cargo hold. In quick succession, he disengaged the mag-lock on each container. "How are we doing?" he called into his wrist comm to his partner.
"Five minutes to the nebula, three until we're in range of their weapons," June responded.
Will engaged the atmospheric force barrier and then hit the button to open the heavy exterior bay doors. He silently counted to twenty as the bay doors slowly swung to full open.
Running up the steps and sealing the interior door separating the cargo hold from the living quarters, he called out over his comms, "Ready. Begin evasive maneuvers."
June began weaving the ship back and forth, no longer flying in a straight line, trying to confuse the pirates targeting computers.
Feeling the ship maneuvering hard, Will killed the force field from the remote terminal, forcefully decompressing the cargo bay, and ejected the cargo like pellets from a shotgun. "Cargo away," he called into the comms as he raced back to the cockpit.
The pirates began pummeling them with their long-range lasers, hoping to take out their engines, but June made a challenging target as she juked, dodging their first salvo. As the chase continued, the jettisoned cargo provided temporary cover from most of the incoming fire.
"They're still not within range of our rear cannons," Will reported. "And it looks like they are ignoring the cargo. Damn!"
The pirate ships were closing the distance fast and swiftly flew past the cargo obstacles. The 'Saturn's Heart' began shaking as the pirate's laser blasts finally started to hit their target.
