Hunted: Chapter 1

The Chase Begins

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The Firethorn rocked as another salvo of energy slammed into the starboard side. Sasha clawed for the bulkhead, the engine control panel blinking red as steam and smoke rose from both reactors. Z3 beeped and booped scanning the port side engine.

'Says the one that floats,' Sasha spat back at the floating rotund droid. 'What's wrong with it? What's wrong with it?'

'Boop zzt twooo beep groooo.'

'That bad, huh? Hey, Mae!' Sasha yelled into the comm on the door. 'Think you can evade the next salvo.'

'I evaded the last ten! You only know when we get hit! Keep those engines running and we'll get out of this yet,' Mae screeched.

'Would you two knock it off,' Raun broke in. 'Hard enough to get a hit without you two bickering.'

'Well if you'd score a hit we wouldn't be in this mess!' Sasha retorted. She found her micro-spanner and opened the hatch on the side of the port engine. A plume of smoke engulfed her and she dove inside, laying flat on the hatch. Reaching for the valve she called back, 'Light, Z3, light!' A cone of intense light beamed into the smoke doing little to illuminate the inside of the engine. Pistons rose and fell with lightning speed while globes of steel glowed red with heat. A deep thrumming came from further inside with a pale blue light throbbing in time to the light. Sasha found the nut and tightened but the pistons fired faster and the smoke turned to steam. 'Not that way,' she loosened the nut until the steam turned to smoke and then vanished.

'Why have I lost speed on the port engine?' Mae shrieked.

'Cause otherwise it'll pop!' Sasha bellowed. Her voice boomed inside the engine. She hoistered herself back, dripping with sweat and grime and turned to the starboard drive rumbling with an excess of power. 'Why isn't power going anywhere.'

'Beep yoo da fooo. Boop bong tsg tsg,' Z3 spun and floated towards the starboard engine.

'Oh easy for you to say.'

'You talkin' to the droid again, Sash?' Raun asked.

'Would be rude to ignore him.'

'Don't tell me you know what it's saying. I know you're mad but you're not that mad.'

'Course I know what it's saying, I built it!'

'Keep the comm clear unless it's an emergency,' Padoan's stilted voice cut them both off.

'Sure thing, captain,' Raun said. The laser turret screaming in the background. 'Woohoo I hit one.'

Now hit the other one, Sasha wanted to say. Z3 scanned the starboard engine. Every light on the control panel blinked red or orange while the Lightdrive faded from crystal white to a dull yellow. 'That isn't good.' She banged on the translucent metal behind the control panel hoping to dislodge something into place. 'Z3, check the Lightdrive instead.'

The floating droid dipped close to the deck and floated underneath the control panel and began to beep and bop. The starboard engine hissed. The hatch burst open and gush of steam billowed out filling the engine room. Condensation trickled down the bulkhead and a trickle of water crawled along the open hatch.

Sasha found her torch and peered inside the engine, the steam scalding her face and drenching her greying hair. 'Another hit and one of these engines is going to pop, Mae. Get us out of here!'

'I can't the Lightdrive isn't responding, besides this hunter's too close. I'd just end up pulling him with us. Give me speed, Sasha!'

Sasha grumbled and crawled inside the starboard engine, the cooling conduits had burst and were pouring coolant all over the inside of the engine, most of it immediately turning to steam. The engineer scrambled out of the engine to grab her welding torch and dove back in. She lowered the goggle, covered in muck and dripping wet, over her eyes and began sealing the breaches with scraps of metal. 'Z3! What's wrong with the Lightdrive?'

'Dooooo, beeepo kweeeee baap booo.'

'That bad, huh?' She craned her neck back as the welding torch flared molten white. Steam plumed around her but the first leak was patched. 'No faster-than-light for us then. We'll need to find a station nearby.' Sasha clambered deeper into the warren of pipes, cables, and pistons until she was balanced atop a tank that vibrated beneath her boots, the rubber soles bubbling from the heat. Three leaks later and the worst of the problem was abated.

'Whatever you did worked, Sasha. Raun I'm going to hold steady for a second, make sure you get a good shot,' the comms rattled with Mae's volume.

A silence followed as the engines groaned and the ship doubled in speed. Raun cheered, 'Got 'em!'

'Get us out of here, Mae,' Captain Padoan called.

'Lightdrive's offline,' Mae reported.

'FTL is impossible until we get into a dockyard,' Sasha backed out of the starboard engine dripping with sweat and coolant. She leaned against the bulkhead, head resting on her forearm. Z3 bobbed beside her.

'We're in the middle of hostile territory! Get it working!' Mae screamed.

'No can do, don't have the parts or the ability. Whole ship needs powering down, left to cool, before work can happen. Besides the sublight engines need work too. We need a dock, or at least a station.'

A string of expletives and insults crackled from the comms speaker before Padoan muted the cockpit. 'There's a mining outpost not far from here. At the edge of the system.'

'Who runs it?'

'Qing Corporation,' Padoan said matter-of-factly.

The crew groaned.

'It's that or search every gas giant in this damn system for a moon that isn't the size of a pebble and hope for an outpost,' Padoan set aside his calm demeanour.

Raun chimed in, 'I've worked with Qing in the past, will see what I can do.'

Padoan waited a few seconds for someone to speak. No-one did. 'Right, Mae I've sent you the coordinates. Try not to destroy my ship getting there.'

'Sure thing, Captain.'

The engines roared with an electronic throbbing and a high pitched whine. 'Cool it, Mae. A few thousand clicks faster and we'll be finished.'

Mae didn't respond but the engines didn't throb any louder either.

Hours passed before the asteroid cluster came into view, trapped in orbit around a failed second star for the unnamed system. 'Qing mining station, this is Firethorn requesting docking rights, please respond.'

Silence.

Mae repeated her request.

Silence.

'That's odd, there's no lights coming from the station,' Sasha pointed over Mae's shoulder. 'Look it's dark, all of it. There's the viewtower that you're contacting, but no-one's home.'

Mae slapped Sasha's hand out of the way, 'Get your greased mitt out of my face.' She slowed the Firethorn to an almost dead stop outside the hangar bay.

Padoan hummed to himself peering out of the cockpit. 'Well, certainly looks like no-one's home.'

'Maybe they went to the loo?' Raun said. 'Try 'em again.'

Mae shrugged and repeated the request.

Silence.

'Take us in. If someone appears we can explain,' Padoan said.

Mae guided the Firethorn into the hangar mined into the side of the largest asteroid. A dozen more had been pulled close and connected via walkways and lifts. 'Seems the bulk of the station is inside the asteroid. What would they be mining out here?'

'Various fuels I imagine, or it's a weapons research facility. Top secret stuff,' Raun pondered.

'You know much about it?'

'I was an expendable asset, told the bare minimum I needed to know, but I saw more than most could even imagine. Plenty of places to hide illegal or dodgy stuff across the galaxy.'

'What if our hunters come back?' Sasha said.

Padoan didn't have an answer.

Mae landed the Firethorn in the unlit hangar. Small transport ships were clustered to one side, most likely used for inter-asteroid travel while to the other side was a massive hauler with half its hull ripped off. Either they desperately needed the material or the hauler was in for repair. The lights from the Firethorn illuminated the Qing Corporation's crane logo emblazoned on the back wall of the hangar, the bird's wings spread wide and its head peering upwards within a golden circle.

'Something feels off here,' Raun said.

'You don't say?' Mae muttered. 'How long will this take, Sasha?'

'If they have the parts and tools I need then six hours. If not then we'll have to teardown the transports and hauler to see what they've got.'

'Raun, unlock the armoury for us. I need a gun,' Mae shut down the Firethorn and leapt out of seat. 'Come on, arm me.'

Raun glanced at Padoan.

Padoan nodded, 'We should be armed. Something's not right here.'

'Well one of you can stick with me while I hunt down the parts I need,' Sasha peered out of the cockpit window into the dusty gloom. 'Mae, how do I switch on the lights.'

Mae leaned over and flicked a dozen switches. Light erupted from every side of the ship, illuminating the hangar.

'Thanks. Z3, you know what we need.'

'Bzzot.'

'Great, let's head out.'

'There's no way you understand that thing,' Raun said, heading towards the armoury at the back of the ship. He pressed his thumb to the lock on one of the cabinets and it clicked open. Raun checked over three lasrifles and handed them to Padoan, Mae, and kept the third for himself. 'You sure you don't want something?' he pinned Sasha down with a glare.

'Fine, something small.'

Raun unhooked a pistol from the door, 'Here. Easy to use.'

'That's what you think.'

'You use tools more complicated than this,' Raun locked the cabinet and the four headed for the exit.

Padoan led them outside and once down the ramp turned to survey his ship. The hull was a mess of carbon scoring and crumbled panels. Smoke rose from the engine exhausts in thick black clumps. 'Mae, Raun, gonna need you to help with the hull plating while Sasha fixes the engines.'

Raun whistled as he gawped up at the ship. 'How the hell did we survive that... did our shields fail?'

'Not that I'm aware,' Mae said. 'Must have been using heavy munitions. What do you need, captain?'

'I'll be searching for engine parts,' Sasha waved behind her heading towards what looked to be the storehouse for the hangar. All the doors leading deeper into the station were open, some of the blast doors wedged with girders. 'Weird.'

'Brrrhp bip,' Z3 chimed.

'You're right,' Sasha hurried to the storehouse and avoided looking at the darkness beyond the blast doors. The storehouse was a one-story structure in the corner of the hangar, the door wedged open with a tool cabinet. Her torched revealed a thick layer of dust, half drunk cups of some dark drink, and a handful of discarded overhauls bearing the Qing crane on the back and chest pocket. 'You take the left, I'll take the right,' Sasha instructed Z3. She began on the centre aisle of shelves, sifting through converters, cabling, nuts, bolts, belts, couplings, static generators, solar panels, mini-reactors, and a host more stuff that she could sell if not use outright. 'Gonna have to file off serial numbers and logos,' she flipped a solar panel the length of her arm over and found the Qing crane in muddied gold on the back. 'What Padoan doesn't know can't hurt him.'

A half hour later Sasha emerged with a trolley of parts and cables and wheeled them up the ramp and into the engine room of the Firethorn. Smoke had ceased gushing from the exhaust. 'You need all that?' Mae shouted after her. 'We're gonna be here till Ribald's Eve!'

Sasha ignored the question and set to work disassembling the Lightdrive. Three of the thirteen mini-reactors were cooked and sputtering sparks. 'Thank you Qing for your donation, make sure to claim it on your tax report.' The dust laden reactors slotted into place. Sasha replaced a dozen smaller parts that had burned out in the chase before setting to work on the conventional engines.

Three hours later and the port side was repaired, the trolley of parts only a quarter used up. Sasha set the parts for the starboard engine aside before stashing the rest, serial numbers filed off, logos seared, in her tool cabinet.

Sasha pushed the trolley down the ramp with a triumphant whistle. 'How's the hull?'

'Back in shape if not condition,' Mae said.

'Plating on the other ships is paper thin, useless for anything but short haul,' Raun muttered.

'We should head off, I don't want to be here any longer than needed,' Padoan said. 'We can rest in the next system.'

'Which is?' Mae asked. She was crouched over a hull plate on the topside, welder flaring white.

Padoan scratched his chin, 'Good question. Not sure where we are. Finish that and we'll find out.'

Sasha ditched the trolley, pushing it toward the storehouse. It drifted sideways and slowed to a stop a quarter of the distance. 'That'll do.' She followed Padoan and the others back aboard. She headed to the engine room out of instinct and passed her workshop. A figure caught her eye. Her breath caught in her throat as she reached for her pistol and stepped backwards, pistol ready. The figure appeared in her vision, still and metallic. 'Z3, scan it.'

'Bzztt boop,' the droid hovered inside, spun, glided up and down around the bipedal droid. 'Groooo dipp bruuu.'

'What do you mean de-activated? It wasn't there before so how did it get in?' Sasha lowered the pistol and entered her workshop. Tools and parts lay strewn across the workbench. Spent casings for Z3 were piled up to one side, either prototypes or damaged. Various sensor parts sat in boxes, unused. While the magnetic wall for storing her tools was practically empty, with all the tools scattered around the room or slung from her belt. She prodded the bipedal droid in the arm.

No response.

The droid was rusted in parts, had fingers missing on one hand, with only one working eye, and laser damage down one leg. Six foot tall, two eyes, two arms, two legs, and a pointless mouth that Sasha assumed lit up when speaking. Humanoid droids weren't uncommon across the galaxy but their uses weren't on mining stations out in the middle of nowhere. Cables hung out the back of it and there was a deep dent on one side of the vaguely hexagonal head.

'Alright,' Padoan sighed over the comms. 'Firethorn coming back online.' A familiar thrum vibrated through the ship. 'Engines, good. Navigation, good. Hull, okay. Shields, erratic. Weapons, online. Oxygen recyclers, need filter change. Water recycling, fifty percent efficiency, boil before drinking. Alright, all looks good. We will be leaving the creatively named E-117G2 System for the nearby system of Hosgrith. A few hours at most. Strap in and ready yourselves for a few weeks of laying low.'

Sasha waited for the ship to take off and engage the Lightspeed Drive. Laying low meant boredom and a droid to fix was the perfect distraction. 'Captain, got a situation down in the workshop.'

'On my way,' Padoan said languidly.

Padoan arrived, dark circles around his eyes. 'Where'd he come from?'

'The station, I guess, but it's powered down and severely damaged.'

'Think you can fix him?'

'Should be able too.'

'Do it.'

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