“Fuck the easy route,” Jax said, not exactly to himself as they sat in the cockpit of the vessel, about to undock from the superliner.

Runstom gave him a look, but it wasn’t a look like he wondered what the hell Jax was muttering about. It was more of a look that said, It’s about damn time.

CHAPTER 13

It was probably a day, or a couple of days, maybe, before they reached Barnard-5. Xarp time was hard to gauge. They didn’t have the benefit of cryo-sleep, like an interstellar ship would, and they couldn’t do a whole lot of moving around. Jax wanted to bring up the point that this was why the gangbangers had Delirium-G on board, but it wouldn’t do him any good anyway; they bartered the whole supply away on the superliner. Eventually, countless hours into the trip, he started to mention it out loud anyway. Whether it would do any good or not, he needed something to gripe about to keep from losing his mind. Runstom mostly ignored him.

“What did you say?” Jax asked after they’d come out of Xarp speed and set a course for the moon orbiting the nearby planet.

“Huh? I didn’t say anything,” Runstom said groggily. “I thought you were talking.”

“Oh. I thought you said ‘approximate a yurt’.”

“What’s a yurt?” Runstom said, raising an eyebrow.

“How the hell should I know?”

“Approximate a yurt.”

“What?” Jax looked at Runstom, trying to focus on the other man’s face with intense concentration. It blurred in and out of focus elusively.

The whole cockpit turned red. “Warning,” said someone other than Runstom. Jax watched the other man’s lips not move. “Proximity alert.”

A rushing, screaming sound came out of nowhere with an alarming crescendo and the whole vessel shook. After a second or two the sound died out and a streak of white crossed the black of space visible through their front viewport.

“Warning,” mentioned an electronic voice. The red light of the cabin pulsed with each syllable. “Proximity alert.”

“What the fuck was that?” Jax tried to shake himself awake. “Was that another ship? What the hell were they doing?”

“Goddamn. Yeah, it was. I don’t know what they’re doing. Where’s that contact map, goddammit?” Runstom asked himself as he poked and prodded at some controls. The small holo-vision screen in the middle of a panel just below the viewport in front of them lit up with a series of concentric ovals on two axes. A pair of green arrows floated about on the screen.

“Looks like there’s two of them,” Jax said. The green arrows were on opposite ends of the holo-view. “Are they trying to circle us? Can the computer tell us who they are?”

“They’re friendly,” Runstom said, allowing himself to relax a little, which only made Jax more anxious, afraid that his partner was letting his guard down. “Don’t worry about it. If they were hostile, they’d be red.”

“Oh. Um. How does the – uh – contact map – know when another ship is hostile or not? I presume from your overwhelmingly calm demeanor that it knows sometime before they start shooting at you …”

“Yeah, you know.” Runstom talked through a yawn. “Drive signatures and stuff. The contact computer has a little database of the stuff that makes ships unique. Green means it’s a vessel your contact computer knows to be a friendly. Red is a known hostile. Yellow is a vessel it can’t identify.”

“Okay.” Jax tried to keep his breathing steady, but then he stopped breathing altogether. “Tell me you had this contact database reset back when we were docked with the superliner.”

“Huh? Why would—” Runstom bolted upright suddenly, straining against the seat restraints. “Oh, shit. We’re in a Space Waste ship! Green means friendly to Space Waste!”

Runstom grabbed for the throttle. Suddenly, a series of high pitched waves of sound could be heard all around them, and the cockpit shook violently.

“What the hell do we do?” Jax screamed over the ship’s steady stream of sudden warning messages.

“I gotta get us out of here,” Runstom yelled, yanking on the throttle. “They’re firing on us. They must recognize this ship as the one that was stolen during the prisoner-barge episode.”

“Can we Xarp away?”

“We’re too close to Barnard-5,” Runstom said, still trying to wrestle with the throttle. “You need as close to exactly zero Gs as possible to hit Xarp or you’ll rip yourself apart.”

“Primary thrusters are off-line,” stated the ship’s disembodied voice. The viewport showed the planet in the distance slowly moving from side to side.

“All I got left is stabilizers.” Exasperated, Runstom slapped the control stick away.

“Doesn’t this thing have any guns?” Jax said desperately.

“There’s an auto-turret.” Runstom flipped a switch. Nothing happened.

“Auto-turret inactive,” the computer said. “No hostile targets available.”

“Motherfucker, are you kidding me? The contact computer is still showing them as friendly!” He looked at Jax. “Activate the terminal in front of you! You have to tell that thing that those bastards are hostile!”

Jax fumbled with the controls at his station. A panel rolled over exposing a keyboard and one of the larger monitors lit up. It read “SYSTEM READY.”

“What do I do?”

Runstom was poking at other controls at his own station. “I’m patching you in to the central computer. You gotta talk to it. I don’t know how to reprogram it.”

“What the hell makes you think I do?”

“You’re a goddamn operator!” Runstom yelled. “They’re coming back around – do something, and do it fast!”

Jax looked at his screen in disbelief. He closed his eyes for a second, took a breath, and imagined himself caught in an unexpected rainstorm. He opened his eyes.

SYSTEM READY.

CONTACT COMPUTER MAINTENANCE MODE ACTIVATED. PLEASE ENTER COMMAND.

> HELP

AVAILABLE FUNCTIONS: LIST-CONTACTS, INSPECT-CONTACT, CONFIG-CONTACT, CONFIG-AUTO-TURRET, CONFIG-ZOOM

> LIST-CONTACTS

CURRENT CONTACTS:

1 -> COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4

2 -> COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4

> INSPECT-CONTACT(1)

COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4

BEARING: 195, -15

CONTACT-TYPE: FRIENDLY

CONDITION: NO DAMAGE

APPROXIMATE SIZE: 18 TONS

CREW: 4

WEAPONS: 4 FRONT-MOUNTED HEAVY LASERS, 2 SIDE-MOUNTED SPACE TORPEDO LAUNCHERS

DRIVE: SHORT-RANGE, WARP-CAPABLE

> CONFIG-CONTACT(1)

CHOOSE FROM MUTABLE PROPERTIES:

1 -> CONTACT-TYPE

> 1

ENTER NEW VALUE FOR PROPERTY “CONTACT-TYPE” [FRIENDLY]:

> HOSTILE

VERIFY ON CONTACT “COMBAT-CLASS VESSEL NEXUS MK 4” CHANGE PROPERTY “CONTACT-TYPE” FROM “FRIENDLY” TO “HOSTILE” [Y/N]:

> Y

Jax looked up from the screen and at the contact map. One of the arrows turned from green to red.

Runstom laughed heartily. “Yes! Do the other one!”

Jax tapped away at the keys, and a few seconds later both arrows were red.

“Arming the auto-turret,” Runstom said. He paused, looking at the contact map.

“What’s wrong?”

“One of them is coming back in close. The other one is hanging back, just slowly circling us. I think the one coming in close means to board us.”

“Really?” Jax’s brain seemed to experience some sort of traffic jam as it tried to imagine the possibilities of what might happen if gangbangers boarded the transport.

“Yeah,” Runstom said. He seemed to be thinking out loud. “The Space Wasters probably want to find out who it was that stole one of their stolen ships. Plus, it’s pretty valuable property to them – they probably want it back in one piece. That’s why the first shots were a very carefully placed barrage intended to take out the thrusters, so we couldn’t get away.”

Jax thought about this for a moment while they both watched the arrows on the contact map. “And they probably knew the contact computer wouldn’t fight back, since it’s one of their own ships.”