Cavaliers gambit, p.12
Cavalier's Gambit, page 12
part #1 of Cavalier's Gambit Series
“Fuck me,” Wayne whispered as he realized what’d happened. “It’s the Bloods.”
The white flashes were the transport ships being blasted out of the sky.
It was either an invasion or a battle.
Likely for Faesin III itself.
Which meant Wayne really didn’t want to be on Faesin III, because the planet was probably going to be devastated in the fighting.
That and Blood didn’t accept citizens of the core systems easily. A warrior society that would happily let Wayne’s house and land go to whoever could kill him first.
Okay… ah… all my cash is in the Mirkil credit union. I can get it anywhere in the union.
There’s nothing back home other than keepsakes and-and-ah… and stuff I can replace.
Stuff that I can get back.
As much as I don’t want to lose my parents’ stuff, they’d rather me not die here.
Right.
Get off the planet.
I’m likely the first to know and… and… the closest to the most likely place to get off planet. So, let’s figure out who’s leaving right now, and who’s most likely to get off planet.
Wayne turned and began rapidly scanning the warehouses and loading bays.
People were moving about fairly normally, though there were definitely those who were scrambling as well.
Realizing his best chance was actually the foreman he’d just spoken with, Wayne turned around and went back inside.
“Mr. Chavy!” Wayne shouted. “Mr. Chavy! I need to talk to you right away!”
“Huh?” called a voice from the back of the warehouse.
Wayne oriented on the voice and started moving that way quickly.
“Mr. Chavy, there’s an invasion going on right now. From the Blood of Dashi. Pretty sure that furlough of yours isn’t a furlough but this shit.
“Let’s get on the ship and get the hell out of here, right now,” Wayne suggested. “I’ll handle the manifest, loading, unloading, and loads. All of that shit. Don’t even have to pay me, just get me off this rock.
“You just get the pilot for it and get us the hell gone. That’d be best. Yeah?”
Reaching Mr. Chavy, Wayne saw the man was staring at a tablet in his hands. His eyes were wide behind the goggles. Then he looked up to Wayne.
“Fuck it. Get in the bay and make sure it’s all strapped down. It’s all still loose. Pilot is an auto model, so we’re good to go,” Mr. Chavy growled out and then rushed off toward the interspace shipping barge’s pilot doors. “We’ll get to my next port and go from there.”
Wayne nodded, grateful. This was likely the best opportunity to get out of here while the Mirkil fleet was still in the sky. By tomorrow, there was the distinct possibility they wouldn’t be here anymore.
Given that they’d been attempting to evacuate, he was betting on them not defending the planet conclusively. They would likely let it be captured, then launch a counter-offensive instead.
Wayne would apparently be leaving with everything currently strapped to Patchwork and little else.
Turning, Wayne ran back to the loading bay and went straight into the ship.
Not waiting or hesitating, he snatched up the straps from the side of the cargo bay. Holding it in his right fist, he piloted his Walker over to the other side of the bay.
He wasn’t going to have much time to make this work.
A boat like this only took three minutes to warm up.
He’d have to go for something that’d give him a maximum hold-down with minimal effort. He could adjust and change as he went.
Slamming the hook of the strap into a pulley, he yanked it tight. He’d pulled it all the way across at an angle. From bottom to top.
Snatching up another strap at the bottom, Wayne rushed back to the other side. Slatting that hook into the top slot again, he jerked it tight.
He didn’t think he had much time, but he wasn’t going to stop now. He’d be here in the bay, which meant anything loose could easily become a missile and crush him.
Taking another strap in hand, Wayne ran back to the other side and put it in the middle bracket, then repeated it going back the other way.
As he worked, he heard the engines whining and powering up.
The cargo bay door suddenly slammed shut while Wayne picked up another strap. He quickly tried to loop it through all the loading hoops on the boxes he could find.
Lurching to the side, then feeling the G’s push him down in his cockpit, he could feel the ship launching.
Given the way it’d moved, it felt like the autopilot had gassed the engine, partially stalled it on purpose, then shot straight up.
With a grunt, Wayne got the strap stuck through some more boxes, then clanked it into place in the hook. He pulled the strap once, then struggled to move over to an anchor-bay that held Load-Walkers.
One of the reasons he’d been hired for the job was the one assigned to the ship had been broken. Having his own Walker and taking loading contracts had been the ticket to the job.
Stumbling ahead, Wayne made it to the anchor and flung himself into it.
Gripping the struts, he wished he had a better haptic feedback for Patchwork’s hands. He only had a vague feeling that he was clenched onto the steel, but no idea if it was a light hold or heavy enough to strain the metal.
Not turning around, he instead engaged the anchor and pushed himself face forward against the wall.
If something did come his way, it would at least strike his cargo pod.
He could always buy new weapons; his life, and the cockpit really, were far more sensitive and expensive.
Fucking glad I got the cockpit sealed after all. If I end up in space, I’ve got a little bit of time to hope for a pickup.
Though… huh… who the hell would want to pick me up in this?
Wayne could feel the ship banking in a way that made the blood rush out of his head and right into his legs.
He wanted to curse, say something, or respond, but instead, he blacked out.
Slowly the world came back to him, though he felt like his thoughts were wild.
Uncorralled and uncontrollable.
Confused and frittering about randomly.
Only to be submerged into nothing as soon as they started to congeal.
Vaguely, he realized that the autopilot was dodging things. Putting the ship in extreme G’s that only it could handle in order to get away.
The thought was obliterated in another high G maneuver that left Wayne feeling a lot like a puddle of human goo at the bottom of his cockpit.
A groan escaped his lips even as it felt like his guts were pooling in his feet.
The sensation went on and on.
Maneuver after maneuver, with Wayne feeling sickened and constantly wondering what was going on.
After a time that felt almost infinite, with only brief pauses in between where he felt human, Wayne came back to himself.
Though it was slow.
Slow and sickening.
His head was pounding, his heart beat oddly, and his body was actually trembling. Nothing felt right, but he didn’t miss the fact that there was a weightlessness to his body as well.
They’d managed to break orbit and beat out whatever the hell was going on around the planet. They’d escaped Faesin III and were somewhere in the inner-space of the House of Mirkil.
“Hey,” moaned Wayne. “How we doin’, Mr. Chavy?”
There was no response.
He wasn’t sure that the communication line was even open, so that wasn’t exactly a surprise. There was the distinct possibility the comms line was closed and Mr. Chavy couldn’t hear him anyway.
Getting ahold of his thoughts, Wayne put his feet to the ground, then turned around slowly.
There was definitely a lack of resistance to his movements. His bulk and the weight of the Walker didn’t matter anymore.
Reaching out, he toggled on one of the few systems he’d had installed into Patchwork.
Or more accurately, Wayne had connected the wires since Patchwork had come with the system.
With a whine, the feet of the Walker magnetized and pressed tight to the deck-plates. So long as one foot remained on the ground, the other would turn off the electro-magnets holding it down when attempting to lift it.
Orienting himself on the comm panel, Wayne began making his way over that way. He noted as he passed that the load had all been secured enough that it didn’t shoot around the bay wildly, though most had lifted up from their original positions.
A number of them looked like they’d strained against the straps he’d put on at some point, given the slack they held.
Reaching the comm panel, Wayne hesitated. He didn’t want to pop his cockpit seal just in case the bay wasn’t pressurized. It most certainly wasn’t heated, so it’d likely be very cold if there wasn’t enough insulation in the hull.
Given it was probably a no-frills model, he’d bet on it being quite cold already.
Reaching the panel, Wayne mentally controlled a single finger and guided it up to carefully push down on the comm panel’s transmit button.
Patchwork’s unfeeling and quite large digit crushed it.
The electrical component of the panel shorted out, the lights winked out, and the broken corner floated away.
“Fuck,” hissed Wayne, then looked at the door to the main cabin of the ship. That’d be his only way to talk to Mr. Chavy unless the man reached out to him first.
Even then, he wouldn’t be able to respond.
Then the whole ship jolted to one side again.
Which, since they were in space, was probably a really bad thing.
Chapter 11
Wayne started making his way to the door that’d lead him out of the cargo bay. Patchwork, thankfully, was a godsend in this regard as, regardless of what was happening, the magnetic feet kept Wayne moving smoothly.
Then the cargo bay exploded.
The side of it detonated outward with a flash of light and was explosively decompressed in the same instant.
It left Wayne standing there, staring down at the planet of his birth below him. The white and blue skies along with the open plains filled with food.
That was, of course, one of the reasons Faesin III existed. It was a breadbasket world that fed most of the Mirkil house and its systems.
“Shit,” Wayne mumbled, realizing he was actually being subjected to space at the moment. Patchwork and its sealed canopy seemed to be fine.
The work Wayne had done had been enough in the end.
Otherwise, he’d be dying right now.
Several large ships were moving across the open blackness of space. The sun was seemingly unable to reflect off of black hulls that had no external lights whatsoever. Painted with a color that seemed to absorb all light entirely. Their thin profiles that seemed to vanish when they turned, only to reappear a second later, shimmered as they moved rapidly.
Heavy missiles were launched in a full salvo in a direction away from the planet.
Other ships were letting loose with heavy laser cannons, the type that were only ever seen on massive ships with power supplies rivaling that of a planet.
Kinetic rounds had been fired from elsewhere and were passing through space on their way toward the ships firing missiles. Wayne could only see them as they were backlit by the lasers that were firing off.
It was a full-fledged space battle unfolding in front of him.
Smaller ships darted by at extreme speeds and vanished as quickly as they’d come. Given his limited understanding of physics, Wayne couldn’t help himself when he considered how difficult fighting in space would be.
The extreme costs of propulsion and energy alone to get up to high enough speeds to not get immediately blown up would be astronomical.
There also was no friction in space, which meant the only type of “brake” one would have, was to flip the ship around and fire the propulsion in the opposite direction.
“Fuck all that,” whispered Wayne, trying to concern himself with his own survival. The economics of space dogfighting came down to hit and run tactics, but that wasn’t where he needed to focus.
Moving to the exposed side of the hull, Wayne leaned out and rotated left, then right. There was nothing to be seen other than the fact that the engines for the ship were still on. He could see the blue triangles blaring out the back of it.
Except that something didn’t seem right as far as he could tell, the ship wasn’t moving despite the fact that the propulsion systems were on full.
Then Wayne bent down and looked around the bottom of the ship. There was nothing toward the back, but toward the front, he found his answer.
The ship had smashed into something and was now not going anywhere. It didn’t make sense to Wayne at all.
It was as if they’d been a baseball thrown and caught perfectly in a glove’s netting. Instead of the netting though, it was a ship they were snug up against, and a cargo bay entry.
There were a number of markings running down the side of the ship that’d caught them that marked it out as a Blood of Dashi vessel.
Since there was paint at all, that was.
Mirkil system ships were all in that unseen black color without any markings at all, after all. The fact that this had paint that wasn’t black set it apart.
“Right. Well. I guess… uh…” Wayne’s words died away as his brain struggled to figure out what to do.
Standing up, he reached behind himself and disconnected his cargo pod. Slowly, he turned around and found the cargo pod floating there in front of himself.
Wayne quickly unlocked it, opened it, and grabbed Yuna out of it. He took the ammo pods as well and got everything stuck into place.
He fired up Yuna and selected armor-piercing as the starting ammo.
There was a clatter as the ammo fed itself from the upper part of the arm he’d loaded it into and down into the weapon.
Closing the pod, Wayne shoved it off toward the back of the ship and then moved back to the hole.
Clanking over the edge, Wayne walked out of the cargo bay, around the side, and onto the bottom of the ship.
Wayne snorted as he clunked and clanked toward the Dashi ship.
The large cargo bay that ran along the side of it didn’t have any windows, but Wayne could see where it’d open.
It was a hatch, it seemed.
Reaching the Dashi ship, Wayne hesitatingly lifted a foot up and stuck it to the other ship. With a thump, it settled into place on the surface.
“Goodie,” Wayne said and then shifted to the Dashi ship with both feet.
If he did everything right, he’d have a few hours of oxygen to work with. Providing everything held together.
“Well, let’s go see if the cockpit has steel-glass. Pretty sure Yuna’s armor-piercing rounds can punch through,” muttered Wayne as he began thumping his way to the front of the ship. “If it doesn’t… well… I’ll just start firing down the mid-line of the ship. Swiss cheese ’em.
“This thing looks like an unarmed interceptor or something.”
Wayne glanced over to the ship he’d broken orbit on and saw the cockpit not too far away. Walking along the side of the Dashi ship, then to the top of it, Wayne got a view of the pilot’s seat.
Mr. Chavy was sitting there. His face in his hands and not looking at anything.
“Well, at least he’s alive.”
Wayne walked further and finally reached the end of the Dashi ship.
There was indeed a cockpit that had what was likely steel-glass across the front of it. The front of the ship was flattened to a degree which meant Wayne could walk right up to it.
He noted as he went by that there were a number of brightly glowing propulsion systems. Likely pushing in opposite force to Mr. Chavy’s ship since it was still at full throttle.
Walking down along the side of the nose of the ship and avoiding the jets, since Wayne couldn’t think of another name to give them, he slowly eased up to the front of the ship.
Once there, he finally got a good view of what was going on inside of the Dashi ship.
There were several people with guns pointed at him as soon as he laid eyes on the people inside.
All of them were in what looked to be some type of uniform, though none of them had space sealed helmets on.
All of their faces had a type of covering on it as well.
Wayne grinned, then laughed.
They were all holding hand-held kinetic rifles. The likes of which would puncture the steel-glass of their cockpit, but then probably fail. That or just strike the steel-glass Wayne had installed on Patchwork.
It’d been rated well above small arms from rifles, thankfully.
Giggling, Wayne put the tip of Yuna to the cockpit. Centered it on the pilot in the pilot’s seat, then smiled.
As if realizing what was going on, all the people in the cockpit let their weapons fall to their sides. They stared at Wayne with somewhat wide eyes.
He could see them through the face coverings of their outfits.
Wayne slowly nodded his head while smiling.
He was considering pulling the trigger anyway. Then he could force part of Patchwork into the cockpit and see about steering the ship out of this situation.
The pilot in the seat held his hands up slowly.
Sitting there, Wayne realized he had no way to order the pilot to do what he wanted. To get him to release Mr. Chavy and the ship.
Realizing there was only one way to do this, and there was no guarantee to it, Wayne pointed at the pilot. Then pointed at the ship he’d been on with Mr. Chavy.
He made a shooing motion, as if dismissing the ship.
The first step was to get the ship ready so that he and Mr. Chavy could get away. Once things were prepped, he’d just shuffle back over and they’d be on their way.
Nodding their head, the pilot reached out and tapped at his console. Their fingers tapped across several buttons, then they flicked a switch.
Wayne looked to the side, toward Mr. Chavy, to see what was happening.
He and the other man locked eyes then.
At some point, he’d lifted his head from his hands and noticed Wayne. Standing there on the enemy ship.
