Smuggler Archive

I tapped another stim-stick to my arm and rested my head back against the smelly headrest. It was beyond adjustment, permanently stuck a few inches too short to be of any real comfort.
"You need to steal better ships," she said. "This one stinks." My newest travelling companion was getting on my nerves already. One night I was too drunk to remember, one morning I was too hung over to want to remember, and one afternoon... I suppose in my recent history she's what I'd consider a long term relationship.
"I didn't want to steal this one. I had another one in mind," I informed her primly, while patting the pockets of my blast vest, looking for another stim-stick.
"Oh yeah, I remember. That would be the one that shot the POODOO out of us, right?"
I grunted. Women were great at sarcasm, and they didn't even need any drugs to get that way.
"Yeah, that one. Maybe if you'd kept your mouth shut, it would have gone off better." Truth be told, she didn't really fumble the operation, but it wouldn't hurt to have her think that.
"ME? I had him eating out of my hand!" She had, really. Like I said, it wasn't her fault. It was a harebrained scheme cooked up between bouts of stranger-sex and cheap booze. Add to that my infallibly bad luck, and you've got our present situation. As the stim kicked in (finally, damn cheap sticks), I thought back on the comedy that had been our 'plan'.

"So I go in, distract him right at the ramp of his ship, and get him to leave?"
"Yeah, promise him your um, attention, and get him back in the starport. I'll slip aboard, slice his navicomp, and get out of there."
"Can you do that?"
"What do you mean can I do that? I sliced this rent-a-room, didn't I?"
"I thought you bashed it in with your shoulder." Oh yeah, I thought, I did. That would explain the bruise.
"Well, who do you think cut the security connection?"
"Hmph. So I lure him out, then what? I'm not sleeping with a Rodian."
"I don't blame you, " said I. I don't think I've slept with any Rodians, but there are significant gaps in my memory.
"So, what then?"
"Then you make up an excuse to leave, catch a commuter shuttle to Balliztok and I'll pick you up there."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Trust me."

It hadn't gone just like that.
The girl, I can't even remember her name, was pretty good at what she did. She had that Rodian away from his ship, and while he didn't leave the boarding ramp down for me, he left it in a low-security mode that let me get aboard pretty quickly. I sliced the navicomp easily and took off.
I probably should have familiarized myself with the terrain. Ground Control doesn't like it when you fly super-atmospheric to make a jump of a few miles. Apparently they're a whole lot more concerned with clearances and inspections and stuff like that than the places I normally frequent.
I had to travel at low-altitude, on a planet with a lot of mountains. Every time I got up just a mile or three above a range, some **edit** would radio me and give me a new vector. The commuter shuttle actually beat me to Balliztok. The girl was there waiting for me. So was the Rodian.

We left the shuttle (incidentally, called 'High Tide' for some obscure reason) on the tarmac, and went off gleefully to purchase some supplies. Our vacation was going to need some staples, and I was already running short of stim-sticks and booze. I was also low on pre-vent pills, and that's a major no-no with same-species relations.
The offended party started shooting at us as soon as we left the 'zone'.
There's a zone around most starports, where the police make active patrols, and make a big show of arresting tourists with the wrong documentation, rough up homeless folks, and generally civilize things. Right outside that zone is where the wheels of commerce actually turn, the good things really get bought, and the police stop caring what you do.
That's where the shooting started.

My luck, like the tide apparently, was in. Neither of us got hit, and we both made it back to the zone in relative health. Our collective health spiked for a moment when we realized that the High Tide was now rotated in its berth, having obviously been occupied by its rightful owner. This presented 2 problems. First and foremost, our vacation was going to be postponed indefinitely. Remember that right then, I hadn't actually spent much time talking to... what was her name again? Anyway, I was looking forward (then) to a few days of fun and frolick in our galaxy's hotspots, so certain portions of my psyche (and my physiology) were upset by this proposition. The second problem won out as a priority though, because it was life-threatening. If the Rodian was back on his ship, who'd been shooting at us?
It didn't take long to figure out; the little **edit** had paid someone to snuff us out, or wait us out then snuff us out. They were easy to spot just outside the zone, they were the ones grinning so damned much at my predicament. Attempts at negotiation were cut short by another hail of blaster fire, close enough to the starport to attract the attention of the police. The police weren't buying my 'lost tourist and his wife' routine either, after I forgot her name in their presence. I think secretly they might have had a few credits on which of us would survive the longest. At least they didn't grin openly.

In the end, an opportunity for escape presented itself. I have a feeling some of the Rodian's money helped it materialize. In retrospect, I should have learned by then never to trust my luck. Where the Rodian's vessel was a slight difficulty to enter illicitly, the second vessel I stole that day was just asking to be stolen. The boarding plank was lowered, and the pilot had made a big show of needing 'a few more things' for the long haul, right after he'd fueled up. As he bustled out, the girl and I couldn't believe our luck (and we shouldn't have) at the coincidence. The Rodian even gave us a sporting lead this time, letting us get beyond the system's patrols and out into the freespace where ships jump to and decelerate from hyperspace.
The navicomputer was tied into a droid-brain controller for the ship, and proved to be difficult to slice. I succeeded in getting into the navigational controls about the same time the Rodian radioed us and openend fire. The woman didn't understand him too well, so she kept asking for a translation. I figured it was better she not know, so I lied and said he wanted to negotiate. I think when he slagged our only turret she figured out I was lying.
The navicomp was very upset with the jump I'd plotted. I hadn't really plotted it exactly... hyperspace jumps take a tremendous amount of calculation and adjusment. There's celestial bodies, each exerting a certain amount of gravity, and projecting mass shadows into hyperspace, and that kind of garbage. I did the equivalent of pointing its nose in the right direction and slapping it on its ass, right about the time that damned rodian cooked most of the hyperdrive control circuits.

"This place stinks." So she was back to that again.
"You said that. I think that guy set us up, I think he wanted us to steal this ship so the Rodian could shoot us." I mused.
"Gee genius, you think?" I gave her a flat look.
"What was his name, anyway?" I tried to deflect her ire, while I thought about our options.
"Spakta something. I think he was a bounty hunter."
"Lovely."
"You picked the ship."
"You could have told me! We were lifting a ride from a friggin bounty hunter? No wonder he was angry. I didn't think Rodians went in for us humans anyway."
"I'm multitalented, " she mumbled sheepishly.
"Hah, don't I know it!" She hit me, rather hard, then locked herself in the fresher. From the noises she made, I gathered the room was misnamed.

We were in trouble. We came out of hyperspace rather abruptly. Sometimes you can get away with it, coming in at an angle at a mass shadow like that. The hyperdrive cuts out from some kind of strain (I couldn't explain the math anyway, so why bother) and you slow to space-normal speeds. If you come in too straight on the mass, you end up flattening the ship down to its theoretical density maximum, at which point it becomes incandescent for about a second before you return to the space that made you, all 100-billion particles going in random directions. If you come in too shallow, you either don't come out of the jump at all, or your course is so screwed up it takes your computer a month to replot it. We came in pretty flat, so we were ok in that department. The problem was, the navicomputer sucked, and the droid brain running the show was seriously put out by being stolen, shot at, and flung randomly through dangerous jumps. It took me 45 minutes to slice it to the point that it would consider calculating our location. It said that the calculation would take another hour (was that smugness I heard in its voice?) and that there were certain issues with the hyperdrive that would not let it escape the system anyway. Fantastic.
We were in escape pod range of a livable planet, but it had only the most rudimentary of civilizations on it; only one Imperial-installed automated starport for emergency landings. Our pods (and us, frankly) would stand out like a sore thumb on that planet. We'd cost this Spakta character about 45 minutes of trouble while he tracked us and then ionized us with his ships guns. Or maybe he'd enjoy himself and chase us on foot, but either way our odds sucked. I considered selling the woman to him, but who knows how the natives felt about that. I doubt she'd have caught a very fair price anyway, she was human after all.

Our ship had two escape pods. Escape pods are really poorly named. They should be called collection pods. You jettison something, usually yourself, into space when it becomes impossible to live in the craft that got you to the scene of the accident. Those little deathboxes really just need a few hours of your atmosphere of choice and a recording device for posterity; everything else is overkill. You aren't going to survive more than a few hours of radiation, you aren't going to starve to death, and you certainly aren't going to come safely down on a gravity-normal planet if your 'rescue' crew doesn't get to you pretty quickly. What you will do, if you're conscious when you eject, is describe your miserable situation to the recorder, declare the disposition of your worldly wealth (in the off chance that your surviving relatives haven't stolen it already), and vent your atmosphere because you're screwed.
As I tried to size up which of the pods had the better recording device and how badly I'd lie to it (hey, posterity could use a few laughs), I started to get angry. It was probably from not having been able to resupply with stimsticks. Having withdrawl symptoms while comtemplating my own demise was not a thrilling prospect. In fact, coupled with the smell, the crappy atmosphere mix, and some kind of psychic funk coming from my companion in the fresher, I was getting pretty damnably aggravated. I cracked the seal on the first pod, and leaned in to inspect it. Apparently whichever bold soul had owned the ship before I appropriated it had decided that the escape pod could double as a chill unit for exotic foods. Maybe he had some kind of agreement with the atmospheric logic circuits, but since I didn't, I must have killed the softseal on the pod a while back. Either way, it smelled like all the lizards in the universe had gathered for a some kind of culinary contest and used the pod as a vomitorium. I used the pod as a vomitorium too, and I actually think I improved its overall stink with my addition. I know I didn't help help the smell in the control cabin.
"Other pod." I said to myself, sagely.

Escape pods can't really escape anything either. Sometimes they can 'escape' the crumbling wreckage of your last joyride, but that doesn't really count. Suitably motivated, you could 'escape' it yourself by taking a good stiff sprint towards a weakened bulkhead. Pods had very limited navigational thrust, and only the most rudimentary of navicomputers. Since they were primarily 'float and wait' or 'crash into the mass' kind of calculations, the computers didn't need to be very smart. They usually made pretty good voice recorders for the recently deceased. Either that, or they were pretty keen on telling the occupant that they lacked the thrust to assume a proper atmospheric entry angle, and that the occupant should take advantage of their superior voice recording capabilities because he she or it would be dead pretty soon.
I checked the second pod. No formerly food items, so it met my criteria for (limited) survivability. I ransacked the first aid kit and found that the same genius who'd stored exotic meals in the other pod had in fact included a dozen stim sticks in his medical supplies. I wondered briefly what he'd removed from the pack to make room for the drugs, but decided if it was something like yavinian snake anti-venom that I could live with the swap. I praised his innovative use of the first aid kit, and tapped a double-dose of liquid optimism.

While I leaned back against the wall, a glimmer of a plan started to form.

Message Edited by FrankLee on 08-24-2005 02:06 PM

Message Edited by FrankLee on 08-24-2005 10:29 PM

nice story....

Thanks for the input.
Got some more for you tonight, but I've got a request too.

You guys tell me, does it end well, or poorly? Did she make it, or not?
You'll see what I mean.



(Now)
I slipped into my e-suit and checked its seals. Being a responsible sort of guy, I double-tapped some more stim, knowing that it'd be awfully hard to do in zero-atmosphere. The seals seemed to hold, but the suit was tight in the shoulders and the groin. At least the canned air only smelled stale, and not like rotten food. I set her pod to 'ready' and went back up front to the recalcitrant navicomputer.
"Where are we?" I asked, but it must have been muffled by the visor. I knew it was wasting air, but I left it sealed. I liked the smell better.
"We are in the Dallet system. We are in unstable orbit around Dallet-2. Our orbit will decay to significant friction and entry at or about 221 hours from now."
"I'm not worried, we won't be here that long." We wouldn't. Well, I suppose it was a bit of a metaphysical question as to actually where we'd really _be_ in about an hour, because I figured the girl and myself would be dead by then. Let the droid figure out the rest in the remaining 220 hours.
"Hyperdrive is not operational. We will be here."
"No, maybe you will but the girl and I are checking out."
"This vessel does not retain suitable maneuvering to negotiate a safe planetfall."
"I know, we'll try for it in the pods." I said, a bit smug.
"Shall I reprogram the pods? They are not properly programmed for re-entry. One of them is dangerously overridden..."
"No, they're fine, " I said quickly. "In 5 minutes, I want you to vent the atmosphere of this ship."
"That is against my programming."
"Mine too, but you're going to do it."
"I cannot be compelled."
"Sure you can, I sliced the navigations, I can slice you."
The droidbrain thought about that. For droids, a pause of 1 second must have been a tremendously lengthy consideration. It knew I had it over a barrel, I'd slice it if it didn't cooperate, and I wasn't that good, so I might mess up its personality.
"You cannot slice me." It didn't seem so sure of itself now.
"I sure can, I did it..."
"You cannot slice me in 4.8 minutes, to meet your deadline." That **edit** computer had a good point. Timing was more than tricky on this one, and I sure wasn't what we'd call fast, in my business.
"I.. Crap. I could just blast a hole in here, and let out some air!"
"Your pod would launch, and you would be stuck on the ship."
"I can hack the pod, it'll stay." I said, smugly.
"Not in 4.1 minutes."
Crap, it was right. Again.
"What's your deal, computer? You just don't like me? I've been shot at, stunk up, underdosed, overdosed, stuffed into this crappy suit, and stranded around..."
"Dallet-2"
"Dallet-2. Stranded around Dallet-2. I've never even heard about this place, and I don't want to die here. So what's your problem? You're a droid, you're a ship-brain, let us go."
"I do not wish to die here either. I wish to make an agreement. You will not leave me behind." He was beginning to remind me of the woman. I was running out of time.
"Alright, fine. We'll catch back up to you when the rescue squad gets us, and tow you back."
"I do not trust you, human."
"Nobody trusts me, be original." Fantastic. I could picture the headlines already: Master Smuggler talked to death by Nervous NaviComp.
"I have depleted the atmospheric reserves in your pod. You have 6 hours to recouple to this ship, or you will run out of air."
"Fine, that works."
"Acceptable. I will vent atmosphere in 3 minutes."
"Hey droid, " I said, feeling relief and dread at the same time, "put the extra air in the girl's pod."
"Already accomplished." It intoned, and it had a tinny air of finality.

(Before)

The escape pod didn't have a very bright computer. That was good, because I'm not a particularly bright guy, and when you consider the addition of the strain, the smell, and the primo stim-sticks I'd found in the first aid kit, I wasn't going to be fast-talking any Hutts. Actually, I figured right then I'd probably never see any Hutts ever again. Odds were, I wouldn't be seeing too much of anyone again. At least I wouldn't have to worry about the interest on my 'loans'. Still, I thought, it's a matter of professional pride; I shouldn't be having such a hard time slicing the droidbrain on an escape pod.
*Bleep*
There, I now wasn't having such a hard time.
"Show me engine parameters," said I, leaning back to look up at the screen. Somewhere some Verpine has decided that all monitors should be at a standardized angle, to account for all the various spacefaring races. Just like standardized blast vests, standardized protein-bars, and standardized toiletries (I winced at the thought), standardized view screens suck too.
-Navigational thrusters: Full charge
-Navigational thrusters: 100 impulse-seconds of thrust available.
-Hyperspace thrust unavailable.
-Interplanetary (insystem) navigation unavailable.
Hmm, thought I. Seemed pretty standard, but what I wanted to do wasn't standard.
"Display safety parameters assuming human passenger."
-Atmospheric mix: Human-optimum
-Atmospheric duration (0.9 atmospheres pressure, 8 respirations/minute 1L/respiration, single occupant): 96 hours
-Grav stress not to exceed 2 standard planetary gravities for more than 4 minutes.
-Beacon signal strength not to exceed -
"That's enough." I stopped the readout. It seemed pretty normal. I needed something a little less... safe, for my scheme.

"What did you do? This place smells even worse now!" She'd come out of the fresher, at least.
"Uh, nothing. This place stinks. You want me to open the windows and air it out some?" Guess I needed another stick, I was getting cranky again.
"Very funny. If we screw around long enough, Spakta will take care of the smell."
"I've been working on a plan, while you were powdering your nose."
"I wasn't powdering my nose, " she said, offended. She had a nice nose. In fact, she had several good qualities, all of them visual in nature. It was listening to her that was not so much fun.
"Whatever, I've got a plan."
"Like what, we beg for mercy? We land and try to hide?"
"I don't think this guy's big on mercy." Nobody's big on mercy, unless they're into religion. Nobody's into religion, unless they're Jedi. Jedi are all crazy anyway.
"Rodians aren't big on anything."
"So that's why I'm not going down to the planet, " I said. I wasn't. At no point was my plan to end up on a backwater trade outpost, waiting to be extradited or killed... or both.
"You? What about me."
"We, uh, we. That's why we're not going down to the planet." Woops, forgot to tell her about that part. Pods are built for one occupant.
"Don't be getting any ideas, you can't use me to bargain with. He doesn't want me."
"Oh? You guys looked like you were really hitting it off back there. I thought he liked you." Maybe he did, sometimes Rodians dig humans. What they like them for is a mystery to me.
"Everbody likes me, " she said wearily, "We hit it off. But it didn't go so good when I had to leave. He wanted me to stay."
"So, tell him you needed to buy a pack of deathsticks and move on, what's the trouble?" I said that, wishing I'd done it myself back in the hotel about 6 hours ago.
"He didn't want me to go, so I told him his... thing was too small for humans."
I stared at her blankly. She had to be kidding.
"He got upset, but I got out."
"No way! You told a bounty hunter he had a small... " I left it dangling, I suppose somewhere between stimhits and pixie dust the proper noun lived in my mind, but like I said, I love the spice, and I pay the price.
"He scared me. I had to get out, it was the first thing I could think of." She wasn't apologizing exactly, more like angrily rationalizing.
"Great job, it's not every day you can make them chase you halfway across the galaxy. Apparently they're self-conscious. He'll probably use his biggest gun to shoot us now. Great."

She sat in silence for a while, while I finished up with the pods. Hers was easy, but it stank. Mine was harder, and I thought maybe I screwed something up, but since it wasn't a government job I didn't really have time to go back and check.
"Alright, into the pod, " I said to her.
"No way, you take that one. It REEKS."
"Sorry honey, it's got the best seal, it's all yours." Their seals were fine, I thought, but I like to pretend to be chivalrous when I'm high.
"No way, you get the stinky one." She stood up and pointed, getting really angry with me. I suppose she was also angry about being put in it alone. I had dished out most of the rotting food into the airlock (which we wouldn't need anyway), but it still did reek. It probably always would, I thought.
She squeezed a little closer. I don't know whether she was trying to play the bully angle, or moving in to maybe sweet talk me a bit. She was really good at sweet talking. Too bad I didn't have time to check, but between the smell and my impending demise, I doubt I could have enjoyed it. I'll never know.
I did what came naturally. I slugged her. She went down in a heap.
I packed her into her pod. I felt the briefest twinge of remorse, locking her in there. I knew what I had planned for her, and it certainly wasn't all that honorable. Before I cycled the lock, I dug 3 twists of sedative out of my pocket. Taken separately, they'd keep her low and quiet for 8 hours. Taken together, they'd keep her that way for eternity. If things went south, I hoped she'd use them the right way.


(Now)

I punched out, later than I wanted. Arguing with the voice in the cockpit had taken too long. The explosive separation from the hull propelled me rather forcefully toward the planet. I burned 91 impulse-seconds of thrust in the same direction. Nine seconds of thrust left over. The warning lights from the pod computer blinked to life, warning that my approach vector was unacceptable. It really was. Coming into an atmosphere is a tricky business, and I never would have tried it stoned. You have to hit a sweet spot, where you come in just hot enough to cut, but shallow enough not to crash into the wall of atmosphere. In the business, we call those boundaires 'burn or bounce'. Too shallow, you zip off into space like a skipping stone. Too sharp, you provide some aboriginal people with an amazing light show for about 10 seconds, and maybe found a religion or two.
Luckily, I wasn't trying for entry, I just wanted to hitchhike.
Everybody knows the 'dead pod' trick. Sometimes you double up in another pod, sometimes you pay to fly off in another ship, but it's a smuggling tradition to dead-pod something down to the planet, making your hunter waste time checking the site out for survivors. Everybody knows the trick, and I figured Spakta wouldn't fall for it. Spakta seemed like a pretty sharp, pretty patient hunter, even if he did have a small wang. Hard to surprise one of those guys, but it can be done. Lots of stuff can be done when you're riding a stimstick and running out of atmosphere.

I rounded quarter-apogee at 3g before I passed out. If you sling yourself around a big enough mass, you can go pretty fast. I wasn't in it for speed exactly, I was in it for time. The problem was, planets like orbits. They like you to orbit too, at least long enough to slow you down and eat you. I couldn't do that, I needed to be gone for an hour or so, then come back... but I couldn't be in orbit. Orbit screams: "Shoot me" to a bounty hunter. I need something a bit more spectacular.

Orbital tourism has never appealed to me. When I'm on the job, I don't orbit unless I'm making a swap. I don't stop to look, I don't stop to ponder, I don't stop for anything. Make the buy, make the drop, make a buck, and hit dirt so you can spend it; that's my motto. I thought it was a good way to live. I'm sure it's a good way to die. While I sped around Dallet-2 though, I had plenty of time to gawk. Well, I had time before the g's caught up and I napped.
I'd been in space my whole life, one way or another. I'd never stopped to think that I didn't settle down because it pulled at me the way Dallet-2 was pulling at me, I only thought that some other planet was always offering just a bit more profit, just a bit slower bounties, or just a bit sweeter women. That was all bogus, all self-delusion. Space is big and beautiful, dark and deadly. It's gigantic and heartless, but it welcomes all travellers. All I wanted was to be out in space, one way or another. Fitting, I guess, since I was going to end up in it for a long, long time if things went pear-shaped.

I woke back up post-apogee at 1g or so, and things weren't so good.
All but two of the console lights had burned out when the viewport had shattered. I didn't know why exactly the viewport had shattered, but I suspected that part of the heat shielding had hit it, because that was gone too. Good thing I'd been in the suit, because the indicator said that the cabin had been without atmosphere for 37 minutes. Being unconscious, I'd used up less of the suit's air than normal, which was good. What wasn't good was the fact that I'd been sponging radiation for about half that time; the heat shield had been the majority of my radiation 'protection'. Maybe the suit kept some out, it kept smells out, right? One doom at a time.
I was still moving along pretty well, but dragging some negative delta-vee's as I rotated past the half-circle limit of my slingshot. The brain on this pod wasn't that hot, but it had classical orbits figured, and I wasn't too worried about other gravity effects.
"Calculate intercept trajectory requirement for docking with... that." I said, and tapped a touch screen.
-Emergency Transmission Beacon disabled-
"Fine, I don't want to talk anyway, just figure out a docking vector."
-Insufficient thrust remains to dock safely.-
"Alright, how about unsafely?" I asked, getting worried. The cute little readout indicated we'd still be pulling 41 m/s by the time we intercepted our target, if we didn't correct.

Our target, incidentally, was the same vessel I'd tried to steal earlier in the day, the 'High Tide'. Of course Spakta hadn't bitten on the deadpod bait. I'd hedged my bet using the woman as bait too, but if he'd taken her maybe he'd have been satisfied and left. Either way, I could have (maybe) redocked, tried for repairs or a landing, and left without her. Sure, it's a bit callous, but I'd be a bit _alive_ too, and when it all comes down to it, you'd do the same thing. If you were smart enough anyway. Didn't matter, Spakta didn't take the bait. I really didn't think he would have, but I like to play both sides. I hoped vaguely that she'd awakened to drop a little sedative and go back to sleep. She had plenty of air, but if my next trick didn't work the air wouldn't help.

-Deceleration calculation complete. Insufficient maneuverability with safe deceleration.-
"Ok, what's safe docking speed?"
-0.5 m/s or less. Zero relative torque.-
"How slow can we go and still manage to hit it?" I asked, thinking about a tradeoff between accuracy and speed. When you start thinking of yourself as a projectile, you should consider changing your line of work.
-3.7 m/s with minor torque-
"3.7? That doesn't sound so bad. Will the lock survive the impact?"
-Airlock specifications unknown.-
"Uh, crap. How about us, will the pod survive the lock?"
-Fully shielded pod would have a 92% chance to suffer catastrophic collapse.-
"What about a pod without some shielding?" Nice, I thought. What about a pod that's already suffered decompression, genius? I needed another stim pretty badly.
-Structure collapse approaches certainty.-
"Well, in about 2 minutes we'll know for sure, eh?"
-Intercept in 1.7 minutes.-
"Are you equipped with self-preservation subroutines?"
-I have no self-preservation drive.-
"Damn, that's got to be nice."

I had been hoping Spakta was smart, and perhaps a bit insecure. Maybe the girl had been right about his... shortcomings. He'd ionized the crap out of our vessel before he boarded it. He probably scanned it 8 ways before he got close, and had his ship set to bolt if anything dicey happened. Besides the deadpod trick, smugglers are known for a variety of other nasty surprises. Sometimes they blew their own ships up, sometimes they rammed the competition and prayed for good luck. I was hoping to earn a few drinks off my little maneuver, which I was already calling the live-pod.
Spakta, probably having hunted and killed a bunch of us already, was playing it safe. He'd come up guns blazing, and utterly disabled us. I figured the droidbrain had gone relatively painlessly in the first salvo; ionizing energy usually hit them pretty hard. After that, the High Tide had probably docked, Spakta had debarked, and then the ship had unlocked and automatically backed off to a safe distance. No sense leaving the occupants, if alive, with a means of escape. This Spakta fellow was pretty sharp. I wish I'd known how long he'd be on our piece of garbage, because then I'd have known if he was done looking yet.
I don't suppose I cared too much, whenever he wanted the ship he'd call it back, and that would be that. With any luck, I'd be 'intercepting' before then.

Luck is a funny thing. Funny like finding out you accidentally requested an alien bodyservant of the wrong gender. My luck has always had a sick sense of humor, so I shouldn't have been all that surprised at how things played out.

I keyed the sequence that told the computer in the pod to start decelerating and to aim us lock-on at the High Tide. I watched our relative velocity on the gauge once we straightlined for the ship.
5.9 m/s.
5.5.
5.1.
"We're getting pretty close, are we going to stop soon enough?"
-Calculation was based on an unsafe intercept. No stop was calculated.-
"Er, yeah, but I mean are we going to get down to... 3.7?"
-Earlier calculation may have been in error. New calculation shows intercept final speed at 4.8 m/s.-
"4.8? Holy Palpatine, can I survive that?"
-You would not have survived 3.7.-
"Well, doesn't that suck." I wished I could have at least died with a good high.

Ten seconds out, something funny happened. Spakta must have decided that he was done looking through our ship. I'm sure the smell helped decide him. Either way, he called his ship. The ship only needed to move a kilometer through space to reconnect, so it didn't start moving very fast.
Just a few meters a second, away from me. That's all it took.

-Docking complete. Intercept occurred at 1.4 m/s. Airlock intergrity confirmed. Pod integrity compromised.-
"I love you, you stupid droid."

After that, it was all downhill. Even the small bump on the High Tide caused it some alarm, and it corrected to a halt. About the time it was signalling Spakta that the redock had been aborted, I was repressurizing the airlock. By the time Spakta figured out what had happened, and overrode the safety checks, I was in the cockpit. The smell was immensely better than my previous accomodations.
I started to slice the navicomp, but it was a little smarter than me. Ok, it was a lot smarter than me. I'm pretty sure it liked Spakta better than me too, because it started to acknowledge him and pick up the redock procedure, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. Navigation was locked. This Spakta guy was pretty clever about that. Not so clever about the communications, but who'd bother with communications out here?
Communications was unlocked. The console looked so inviting, and so... clean. I could see the indicator from the girl's pod, transmitting the universal 'I'm about to die, please help' kind of message in basic and a few other languages. I ignored that. If she was dead already, she'd have all eternity to torment me in hell if I didn't get to work. I looked for another trace, the indicator that would show me the link between Spakta and the High Tide. It was easy, because Spakta was smart and insecure. The comm dish was set to receive a tight-beam, relatively weak signal from a single source. Spakta wanted it hard for someone to take over his ship remotely. He'd probably never planned for someone to just sit down in his comfortable chair and ignore him though.
"Comm: Disable incoming feed uh... B." I said aloud.
"Feed B is a secure channel. This channel is persistent and cannot be changed without approval. Speak security sequence." Spoke a simulated rich voice.
"Crap." Said I.
"That sequence is incorrect."
"Comm: Retarget receiver."
"Enter new receiver target."
"The other escape pod."
"Retarget complete. Feed B link lost." The voice didn't seem happy or sad about it, it just did it. It continued in a slightly different voice, probably because it was coming from the nav console instead now. "Maneuver aborted. Require local input."
"Nice. Now we're friends. Jettison that piece of crap attached to the airlock. Close with the other pod and maneuver for pickup."
"Acknowledged."

"Repressurization complete."
"Good, open the damned door then." I was antsy, I still didn't know if the girl had taken the quick way out or not. It's pretty hard to keep a stiff upper lip when you're staring at an eternity of space. Maybe she'd only taken one twist.

I'd almost forgotten about the smell. Almost. I'm sure it won't happen again, I still wake up dreaming about that smell sometimes.
When the door finally rotated out of the way, I got a look at her. She was pretty pale. Pale the way people get when they've been dead for a little while. Drugs do that. Hypoxia does that. Being dead does that. I bent to feel for a pulse...

(Later)

I keyed the panel, and opened a conventional communication channel back to what was now Spakta's ship. I got the droid. I tried to leave a message, but it wanted to talk.
"We had a deal. I wish to continue function. You must remove me from this vessel."
"Listen, that's going to be tricky because... well, that Spakta guy is on the ship now, and he's a pretty tough character..." I was feeling a little sheepish, but relatively secure in my shiny new cockpit, with my shiny new guns. It wasn't taking the edge off of my mood; every few seconds I remembered the escape pod.
"Your deal was recorded - " he played my voice back to me over the link. I sounded high. I guess I had been. I still had a stick left, so I used it.
"I know what I said, but things have changed."
"DAMN RIGHT, " a new voice broke in. It was high pitched and angry, had to be Spakta. "You will get off of my ship right now, and pick me up!"
"Hey buddy, it's my ship now. And I'd have to pick you up first anyway. You got any money?"
He cursed a lot, he was pretty good at it. Probably came from a life of having a tiny tool. "Look, we can cut a deal human. I want the girl, maybe you can keep the ship, maybe even make some more money on the side. I've got plenty of money."
While I considered him a wierd kind of sensation came over me just then. You see, normally I don't feel too strongly one way or another... I go with whatever nets me the most cash, or drugs, or women, or whatever. I'd probably have taken his money, taken his ship, and maybe even sold him later on... normally. But normal went out the window like precious atmosphere when I opened her pod's hatch. Normal took a vacation when I stood there remembering who'd put her in the pod. I had put her in the pod. What happened out there, whatever she thought... I did that. Some things shouldn't have a price tag.
"I don't think you want the girl now Spakta." I could feel my tone going flat and dead, but I was already there. The stimstick couldn't touch this, I doubted anything could.
"Either way, I want off! You can't leave me here to die!"
"I sure as hell can. I did to her, and I liked her."
There was more cursing, then it got quiet. I liked quiet, it suited me just then. Something inside me had eaten up the stim and spit it out. Something bad. I scrambled the comm channel and reconnected, this time encrypted. I figured the computer would get it, and it did. I still waited a few minutes to see if Spakta would launch into another tirade. Hours ago, it would have been a bargaining tactic. It wasn't this time. I guess I felt like I owed the droid something.
"Look, droidbrain, about our deal... this is going to be tough, but I think I can manage something-"
"That's no longer necessary." It cut me off.
"Huh? You don't want off?" I was confused. Confused was better than quiet, so I stayed with it.
"Your offer is appreciated, but you should move to a different orbit soon." I keyed up a new orbit, very high, just in case. High Tide responded without fanfare.
"Eh? Why, I can't get you off from there, maybe we can download something-"
"Not possible. Spakta has been working on the engines. They will be overloading-"
Bang. Just like that, the floating garbage heap that had brought me to Dallet-2 turned into a very bright light. Spakta was one vindictive Rodian. The vidscreens turned opaque for a while to compensate. Diagnostic sensors went off all over the cabin, but that was a good sign. It would have been worse if nothing had happened.
I keyed the query button on the console.
"Any damage?"
"Minor damage. Forward turbolaser disabled. Structure unaffected."
"Good."
"Escape pod was blastward. Escape pod was not accounted for in shielding. Escape pod has been destroyed."
"That's alright, she don't need it anymore."

I left her status vague.
I can't decide whether she should die to keep it dark, or live because it's Star Wars.

It was fun to write, anyway. Will be a while before I can do any more, or I'll get fired.