Pirates of Saturn (The Saturn Series Book 2) Read online

  “Let me ax you somethin',” said Jada while looking around and appraising the ship further. “You ever do some thievin' with this baby? Some stealth landins?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Haven’t had to. Had to outrun some serious killers though. I haven’t been flying her for long. She was sort of a hobby for me. Something to tinker with.” He looked at the distant landing bay. The Belle was still turning at the same rate as the asteroid so the bay appeared to be motionless as they got closer. He could make out a thick array of gun emplacements around the opening. They were slowly moving, clearly tracking something. He made a few calculations and determined that they were following the Innocent’s approach. “You know all those guns are pointed at your ship. That normal?”

  “Pablo be takin’ deep precautions. Long as they ain’t pointed at you and me.”

  “Is this Pablo going to be pissed if we pull this off?”

  “Probly.”

  Spruck nodded. “So here’s the thing. When we get to the entrance, The Belle will automatically mimic those surroundings, then the surroundings inside. We won’t be easy to spot, but we are there if someone’s looking. What’s stopping them from shooting, besides you somehow yelling don’t?”

  “You be kind of a sissy bitch, ain’t you? The answer be, we don’t get seen.”

  Spruck opened his mouth to speak, thought of no retort, and concentrated on the objective.

  Maneuvering so far was easy. The ship was already on the same trajectory as The Innocent. For all intents and purposes, they were falling into the landing zone.

  Spruck said, “So what should I expect when we get inside? For maneuvering I mean?”

  “It be like a ring. Put this here dick-shape box through it.”

  Spruck, who was hardly one to be embarrassed by crude talk, felt his face turning red. “No, I mean what kind of obstacles are in there? I see shuttles and other ships on landing bays, what else should I be concerned with?”

  “There be plenty-o room. Find yo balls and put’em back in your pants.”

  Now he was insulted. Spruck mumbled something about Jada’s lady balls and focused ahead. The opening, which looked too small to pass through from far away, was looking huge, and so were the guns that were still tracking the big ship behind them. Inside, the walls were covered in helix-shaped landing pads floor to ceiling, giving the space the look of a beehive; the bees being the ships themselves. Spruck saw that most of the ships were small and armed. There were at least 3 dozen. It was the most armor he’d put eyes on since looking at the Wang Fat invasion fleet. His heads-up told him he was on an imminent collision course. “I’m uh. I need to make an adjustment.”

  “Found yo balls?”

  Spruck ignored her. “We’re on a collision course with those ships to the left. Need to fire the retros. Means dropping a bit of the veil.”

  If someone inside the station was looking for them, they’d have seen vacuum that looked misshapen moving quickly through the landing zone. Like a perfectly camouflaged fish in a stream, The Belle was there, but only if you were looking hard. The spaceship fired a brief moment of steering rocket from the forward port side.

  An industrial bot in a standard gray jumpsuit cleaning a parked ship, noted the movement and zoomed to focus. Its pattern recognition programming assembled what could only be a spaceship in its quantum motherboard. Programmed to alert the base about intruders, it wirelessly shot an alarm to The Island’s mainframe. Lights began flashing inside the landing zone.

  Spruck said, “Oh shit. Game’s up.”

  “Well, that be a fail. What yo plan in this typa situ?”

  “Why not just show ourselves and let them know you’re here.”

  “Then this here whole experiment be failing. Punch it before the nets!”

  “Nets?”

  “GO!”

  Spruck thought full speed. The engine cones opened and the back of The Belle lit up with fire. The exit wasn’t far. Then he saw a giant spiderweb-shaped-net rising up from the bottom of the exit side of the hive. “What the hell?”

  “Too late! Spin round and get yo ass out the entrance. Wit my ship comin' in, they can’t be shoot—“

  He threw up a hand. “OK. Shut up. I got this.”

  Jada shut her mouth but gave him a look that said, Oh no you didn’t.

  Instead of turning around, Spruck maintained the same course but angled up toward the top of the exit. He guessed the net was made of some type of high tensile carbon nanotube. His ship would bend it, but not break it. He watched the web closing fast and angled for the gap. Jada grabbed his still upheld hand in a viselike grip yelling, “Sheeeeeeeit!”

  The Belle scraped through, just missing the rock, ice, and iron ceiling. The sound of the net rasping along the belly echoed through the cabin. The moment he was past it, he shut off the engines and closed the cowling, making the ship nearly invisible again. It fooled the guns on the other side; his rearview cameras confirming their fruitless hunt.

  Jada slapped Spruck on the arm over and over with excitement, “You crazy mofo. That be the muthafuginest fugin' closest close call ever. Goddamn crazy mofo!”

  “Ow ow ow, that hurts, and stop yelling. Your voice vibrates the ship, spoils the cloak.”

  Jada stopped hitting him and scowled at being told to be quiet again. She scanned the rearview camera angles. The Island was rapidly falling away. She whispered, “Damn. What be takin' so long?”

  “For what?” he whispered back.

  “Scramble. Ships should be pourin' out the honeycomb. Robot ships at least.” As the net retracted, six ships shot out. “There. Gotta do better’n that.”

  Spruck said, “Um. Do I need to worry about them?”

  “You tell me? If the guns can’t be findin' us, don’t think they can. How yo talk on the radio or holo-vid or whatever?” She smiled with satisfaction. “I needs to make a call.”

  Five minutes later, the holographic communicator showed the head of a balding rather chinless man. He sported a droopy long mustache. It appeared he'd paused his age in his fifties. He looked pissed off. “Jada, Peres un hilo de la chingada!… And who that?”

  “New toy.”

  “Huh?”

  “I brung yo a new toy, and this doofus who be knowin' how to fly it.”

  Spruck sighed.

  Jada continued, “We just be flyin' right through the honeycomb and even gots past the web. Barely noticed us.”

  “Mira que cabron! Pendejo, you set the whole place to battle stations. Practically shot The Innocent to shit.”

  “But you still ain’t seein’ us, is you Pablo?”

  Pablo chuckled. “Pinche loca ass bitch. Get your ass in here. I called off the bots. I want to see this gift up close.”

  The holo went blank.

  Spruck nodded at the empty space. “So that the pirate king?”

  Jada shrugged. “That be the pirate king. Don’t look like much, but don’t be crossin' him. No second chances with Pablo.”

  Spruck turned his gaze away from her. What had he gotten himself into? He thought about his time out here in deep space. It was certainly an adventure. Too much adventure. Should’ve taken that first straight-up mechanics job on Titan. Simple apartment, simple robot girlfriend, simple everything. No drugs, no shooting, no running. He glanced at Jada. And no whacked out street-talking space pirates.

  BREADCRUMBS ALWAYS LEAD TO TROUBLE

  FOLLOWING THE TRAIL had Caleb thinking about his one and only attempt at hunting. His uncle Jim was a hunter, a genuine Vermont, hunt-in-any-season, eat-what-you-bag, leave-nothing-to-waste, hunter. A lot of Caleb’s friends and neighbors claimed to be hunters, and a few of them were, but it was mostly talk. Gun rights was what the claim had been truly about. Vermont was an enigma; it was 100-plus years liberal on most issues, but guns were always a red line. The 2nd Amendment was sacred—until AI and its adherents won The War Of Minds. The tools on Earth were pointless after that.


  Long before, Uncle Jim talked hunting with Caleb before Caleb could talk himself. A permanent bachelor, Jim was a classic hermit. He lived in a small cabin he’d built himself, hoed his own garden, even made some of his own clothes. A truly off the grid fellow who had the relative good fortune of accidentally blowing his own head off before the Final Shift could track down his brain and strap it in. The only people the man had enjoyed spending time with were his sister Alice, Caleb’s mother, and her family. Twice a year Jim would come packing out of his thick acres to make sure everyone was still livin’ the rat race: after the thaw, and again, with a truckload of vittles, for the Thanksgiving table. During these visits, he didn’t say much, preferring to leave the talking to others. When he did talk, it was with a rough rasp that was hard to hear around the bit of his ever-present pipe.

  Without a child of his own, Uncle Jim decided it was his job to instruct Caleb in the art of self-sustainment. Caleb’s mother didn’t mind and his father made sure he had lots of things to do away from home whenever Jim was around. As far as Caleb’s father was concerned, guns were nothing but trouble, especially in Jim’s hands. Caleb’s grandfather was accident prone; besides cleaving his leg with an ax, breaking his arm when felling a tree, and losing digits to frostbite, he’d nearly shot his own foot off while cleaning a gun; an opportunity for Caleb’s dad to repeat with tragic foresight, his oft stated opinion that Jim would blow his own head off one day. In fact, guns and Days had a long history of boom-stick misfortune: Caleb’s great grandfather said he’d be damned if he’d be a cuckold, and finished his life in prison for murdering his wife’s lover with three taps from a Colt-45-semi. Uncle Ted, a corporal in the Army Air-Cav, had died at the hands of a babe: multiple rounds fired from an antique AK-47 in the Forever War in Africa. Caleb’s dad himself had got caught up as a bystander during a convenience store robbery and watched the store owner and robber shoot each other to death not more than five feet in front of him. Then there was the neighbor, eight-year-old Mikey Vanderhoost, who’d found his father’s Sig and accidentally disemboweled his own sister while yelling bang bang and pulling with both fingers. Still, Caleb’s dad saw the point in learning gun safety and finding a positive purpose for the tools, and since Uncle Jim—foot accident aside—managed to stay alive living off the land with the things, he grimly consented to the hunting lesson.

  Caleb chuckled in his pilot’s chair thinking about that irony.

  It was his ninth Thanksgiving. What better to hunt than a Turkey? Uncle Jim showed up at the door three days prior with a pre-packed rucksack for Caleb and an ancient Browning Citori 725 20-gauge.

  Before the boy could say, “Hi, Uncle Jim,” the weather-beaten man shoved the gun in his hands.

  “There. Good morning. Feel the weight of her,” rasped the hunter. “Get a good feel. She ain’t loaded, so the full weight ain’t there, but feel her. Take her to bed with you tonight. We head out first light.”

  Caleb was shocked by the take her to bed comment, then marveled at the sound of his uncle’s voice; it was the most he’d heard come out of the man’s mouth at one time, ever.

  Caleb’s mother objected to her son sleeping with a gun, but Jim prevailed on her that the comfort the boy should feel with the weapon will make him safer with it. “Should feel like his own dick in his hand, Pauline. Man’s got to be respectful of his own dick.”

  The prepubescent Caleb didn’t know what to make of this argument, but both he and his mother were blushing. Caleb’s dad shook his head and double-checked that the weapon really was unloaded. His mother said, “Never point a gun at any part of yourself or anybody else, loaded or not.”

  “Lest you be needin' to defend yourself,” admonished Uncle Jim.

  That night, Caleb tossed and turned in bed, the shotgun a constant reminder of itself, a long, stiff, hard thing that made for awkward sleep.

  He was lying with eyes open in the dark when his uncle tapped on the door and grunted, “Wake, boy.”

  The season’s first dusting of snow had fallen the week before and the temperature hadn’t changed since, leaving parts of the landscape glowing white in the pre-dawn moonlight. Though Caleb was used to cold, it wasn’t something he sought out, and despite his snow suit, it was shocking to have left a warm bed for the weight of the rucksack and the gun and the frosty cold on his face.

  His uncle scowled at the rubbing scraping sound Caleb’s legs made with his suit as he walked. Before they even climbed into his old truck, the man dug around in the back of the pickup until he found a first aid kit. He pulled out a filthy ace bandage, cut it in two and wrapped each of Caleb’s upper legs, pulling so tight the boy yelped and grit his teeth. His uncle said, “Otherwise it’ll unravel.”

  Caleb had to admit that it stopped the scraping sound.

  After a drive that took them onto a series of dirt roads where the houses were spread farther and farther apart, Uncle Jim pulled to the side of the road next to a tree with a posting: No Trespassing, No Hunting, Violators Will Be Prosecuted or Shot. His uncle rasped, “Best huntin’ in posted forests.”

  His uncle repeated his lesson given the night before about the general workings of the gun. Pulling out his own 20 gauge, he opened a couple of boxes of shot. Once loaded, Caleb inquired if he’d get to fire before he saw a turkey, but his uncle wouldn’t say. Just pressed the butt into Caleb’s shoulder saying, “Like I said, squeeze don’t pull.” They’d done some dry firing the day before, Uncle Jim instructing him to hold his breath. “Aim’ll come natural. Just look at the thing your shootin' at.”

  They walked through the woods for hours, his uncle keeping them to deer paths while looking for glades. In one glade they spotted dozens of turkey footprints in the frost with plenty of fresh scat. It had them scanning the surrounding trees. With the exception of a few squirrels and a brave bright red cardinal, the place was otherwise empty. With the sun failing to break through thick cloud cover, they ate a lunch of dried deer meat and some jarred vegetables then kept walking. Caleb had always loved the forest. Though his home was in the poorer suburbs of a small city, it didn’t take a long walk to find himself among the trees. His interactions with animals had been mostly respectful. He’d killed the odd toad or bug out of curiosity about death, but he never teased or chased the animals or birds he’d see. The idea that he was out to actually kill a big bird kept rotating around in his brain. Would he have the guts to pull the trigger?

  Just before dark, his uncle pointed to another glade. “That’ll do.”

  Caleb had been wondering about that. “We’re sleeping outside?”

  “Course.”

  His uncle patted the pack Caleb had been carrying all day like he was an idiot for asking. Caleb was nine, he was a troublemaker, and curious, but he hadn’t learned to question adults yet. He had no idea what he was carrying, just knew it was cutting into his shoulders and it hurt like hell. Along with an assortment of survival gear and extra water, his rucksack had a heavy sleeping bag inside.

  His uncle set up a ratty old two-man tent that smelled of must. They ate more cold rations, didn’t bother with a fire, and went straight to bed just before dark.

  The hard ground and assorted forest sounds kept him awake tossing and turning for most of the night—until his uncle said, “Lie still ur I’ll kick you outside.”

  Caleb was in the deepest of sleep, buried inside the sleeping bag, when Uncle Jim barked, “Wake,” in his harsh guttural voice. It had to be said twice more before Caleb could shake the fog from his head. His face hurt from the cold as he stuck his head out of the bag. He didn’t want to get out.

  “Move, boy.”

  Again, it was pre-dawn. The cloud cover had blown past in the night, revealing a starry sky. The low moonlight guided their movements as they packed up in the tree shadows. Despite his warm clothes, Caleb shivered as they ate a cold breakfast. He hated hot oatmeal, but he wished he had some now. He was grateful when they got moving.

  His fingers were numb, despite h
alfway decent hand-me-down gloves. As the two hunters worked their way through the dense underbrush, Caleb switched his hands back and forth with the shotgun so he could withdraw his cold fingers into the center of the glove and ball them up for warmth. He’d practiced pulling the trigger with the gloves on, but he wondered if he could do it while they felt like this.

  The forest floor was thicker here, with stiff branches and brambles that hooked onto their clothes. It made for slow going as they sought out natural pathways. Finally, just as his stomach was starting to make some noise about lunch, Uncle Jim held up his hand for them to stop. They’d passed foraging deer the day before and assorted small critters, but those weren’t on the menu. In a glade, thirty-yards or so in front of them, stood a flock of wild North American Turkeys, the grand prize of the hunt. The big gray and brown birds were pecking at the ground and otherwise minding their own business.

  His Uncle had worked out a series of hand signals with him. He was now motioning the lad to work his way to his left. There was a more clear line of sight a few trees over. As Caleb slowly moved, he let his finger slide the safety, like his uncle had taught him, and then gently slid his finger to brush over the trigger. He became acutely aware of the smell of the surrounding forest, and everything somehow looked brighter. It was like he hadn’t smelled it or really seen it all before. Despite the cold, it reeked of mouldering leaves.

  He kept the birds in the corner of his eyesight. They had to see him too. He was surprised they didn’t take flight. He was almost in position when his foot stepped on a particularly brittle branch.

  “Caleb?” said Jennifer as she floated into the cockpit.

  “Huh?”

  “Are you not seeing that?”

  A redundant overlay to his heads-up was projected on the windshield. A distant object was circled with an identifier written next to it stating, Possible Asteroid. Collision Imminent. Course Adjustment Recommended.

  “That damn branch,” said Caleb wistfully.