📘The Star Pirate's Folly | 9: Launch
The comets Orpheus and Eurydice have traveled their tragically-fated path for thousands of years.
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Chapter 9: Launch
The bulbous hulk of the comet 17P/Orpheus silently plunged through space toward Lux, pulled in by the star’s massive gravity well. As it approached the warmth of the sun, veins of ice melted and boiled within Orpheus and on its surface. The heat intensified the closer it came to Lux, geysers shooting chunks of ice and rock into space around the comet, adding to the familiar cloud of moisture and gas that made up its coma and tail.
For an eternity, it had traveled roughly the same elongated elliptical orbit around the sun, frozen to its core at the edge of the system and thawed when it came back to Lux, always trailed by its pair Eurydice thousands of miles behind.
Only this time it brought passengers.
Warships bristling with weaponry latched on to the comet like parasitic insects, ghostly green gravity tethers extending from the noses of the ships to the rocky surface. They rode along in its wake through the empty void, shrouded from prying eyes by the misty halo of its coma. There were dozens, all varying in size and shape.
Three behemoth spacecraft carriers were the largest vessels, each capable of launching fighters and bombers. The massive ships required multiple tethers to keep them steady and prevent them from crushing smaller craft. All the ships were synchronized with each other to keep movement to a minimum and provide a healthy buffer between each.
One vessel broke off from the rest of the fleet and carefully crawled to the side of the comet. It was tiny compared to most of the other ships, but in contrast to the damaged nullsteel and patchwork repairs of the others this one looked brand new—complete with a cherry-red paint job. Behind the ship’s main cabin, twin oversized gravity generators were hooked up to an enormous tethering node.
The side of the ship was emblazoned with a company logo: Tuggernaut Asteroid Towing.
Bee strapped herself in to a seat that folded down from the wall behind Silver's pilot's chair. The quiet boy Gim took a seat across from her behind the other chair. Whatever happened next, her future lay with Bill Silver, who orchestrated the shuttle's ignition sequence.
Governor Glunt—Bee was sure it was him even if Silver refused to confirm it—sat opposite Silver looking queasy. The windows on the front of the craft were sealed shut with retractable blast proof metal, but cameras on the hull fed a projected display of the view outside, which gave the illusion that there was nothing between them and vacuum. Bee shivered at the unsettling thought.
“Tower, Wanderlust transport shuttle requests departure assistance from dock B46 to launching platform,” Silver said.
“Negative, shuttle. All traffic is halted prior to evasive maneuvers.” The male voice which replied over the speakers had a slow, drawling sort of confidence—the kind of soothing yet commanding voice she'd want to hear when everything else in the world was going wrong.
Bill stopped the ignition, but didn’t look surprised.
“I told you,” Glunt said. “Tower won't guide you out. We’re stuck.”
“Mmm-hm,” Bill grunted.
“So what are you doing?” Glunt asked.
“Looks like we’ll have to go out manually,” Bill said with a thrill of enthusiasm.
“Manual? We're synced up with Tower, you can't just—”
“Oh, I can't just, eh? Myra,” Silver called expectantly, taking pleasure in the Governor’s obvious discomfort.
“Yes, Bill?” came a reply over the speakers, this time a husky female voice.
“Give me a trajectory from here to Wanderlust, quick as you can.”
“Here you go,” Myra said, and a pale blue thread plotted a course for them onscreen.
“I’m shutting down our computer guidance in a moment, Myra. Tower will override you if you’re in control, so we’re going manual to get around it. Can you make sure that trajectory will stay up with you offline?”
“You should see it on your lens display now, Bill. But staying on course is your job without me.”
“Wonderful,” Bill said.
He said it just like Hargrove used to at the Midtown, and Bee was struck with the realization that she may never see her former mentor again. Or anyone from Surface, for that matter. She was finally on her way.
“I’m ready. See you shortly, Myra,” Bill said. “Shut down and power back on under manual control.”
“Don’t scratch my shuttle,” she replied.
They were plunged into darkness for half a second before the auxiliary power kicked in and lit the tiny room up crimson. After a few moments, the normal interior lights flickered back to life. But the former view on the glass was absent, leaving them all staring at the grey metal blast plates.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Glunt asked.
“Just watch me.” Silver retracted the blast plates.
As they slid back, Bee craned her neck around Bill’s seat to see the view with her own eyes. They were barreling along about two hundred miles above Surface, held close by the planet’s gravitational pull.
The sunlit Surface rolled beneath them, all blues and greens and swirling white clouds against the consuming starry blackness of space. Up above the incredible view of Surface—it was enough to make her forget to breathe—she could make out a blue-white smear in the distance that shone brightly at its center. The comet Orpheus on approach, she guessed.
“Is this safe? Shouldn’t we be wearing suits?” the Governor asked.
“We’re not going to crash.”
“What if something hits the window? I mean, all that debris…”
“This ship was built to deal with a little debris. The gravity field will protect us from anything substantial the comet spits out. Unless it’s firing bullets at us I think we’ll be fine.”
“You know what little pieces of rock zooming along at high speeds remind me of? Bullets.”
The view of the planet lurched as Silver gripped the ship’s wheel and eased them free of the station’s dock. He smirked and turned his head to look back at Bee. “You don’t get spacesick, do you?”
She made no reply, just leaned her head against the wall, closed her eyes, and clenched the muscles in her abdomen. Breathe in deep through the nose, out through the mouth, she told herself. Don’t think about where “up” is—just sit back, keep steady, and don’t puke.
Two fully suited pilots sat in the cabin of Tuggernaut #7, one a bald-headed young man laced with glowing neon tattoos and piercings, the other a lanky grizzle-bearded man. The Beard monitored the temperature gauges while Tattoos kept his eyes on a timer than counted down in red block numbers. Three minutes, twenty-two seconds.
“She ready to pull again, bud?” Tattoos asked.
“Nah, man. Still too hot,” the Beard said.
“Boss won’t like waiting, yo.”
“Too hot man, like it or not.”
“You tell him, then.”
The Beard shook his head. “Spine like a wet noodle, bud.”
“Freeze you, man. Dude ain’t level.”
“Careful who you trashin’ man. He don’t tolerate.”
The Beard flicked a switch on the console and a projected window of the bridge on Starhawk’s flagship appeared in front of them. Immediately upon seeing the two pilots, Starhawk, dressed in his elaborate golden battle suit, leaped to his feet from the captain’s chair. His ink-black hair was slicked back flat, and cutting sky-blue eyes stood out stark against pale skin.
“Report,” he snapped.
“Gravvy gens still cooling, Boss,” the Beard said. “Another thirty seconds, we good.”
“I need you to move that comet another two point three degrees toward Surface,” Starhawk said. “If you can’t do that we won’t make an optimal approach. Hell, we could miss altogether. You see how important this is? If we wait thirty seconds, we miss our window.”
The Beard exchanged glances with Tattoos.
“Boss, we get too hot and she gonna blow. Rock’s too big—”
“We’ve got a schedule to keep. You get me another two point three degrees at the end of that countdown or I send some grubs to execute you both. Best start 'em back up, boys.”
The display went dead.
Silver followed the blue thread of the navigational guide toward the orbital station’s launching platform where Wanderlust waited for them. It felt good to steer without correction from Myra. Sure, his wouldn’t be the most efficient flight possible, but there was nothing like being in full control of a ship with his own two hands.
Own two hands. Bill’s prosthetic twitched involuntarily as he shook his head.
The station was all white metal and soft curves—a relic from before the rebellion, designed and built by the planet’s first settlers. Glunt seemed to be content to bury his nose in watching news videos on his pad, while the girl sat in the back gaping over Silver’s shoulder at the view.
Before they left the dock, Silver had let Wanderlust know they were on the way back so the crew could prepare for immediate departure. Although with the hold on traffic, Silver wasn’t sure how they were going to launch from the station.
With any luck, the Captain would have taken care of that snag in the plan already; securing the launch was his job, and he seemed to have connections with nearly every officer of note in every port from the Core to the edge planets. Silver was sure the Captain was getting an earful from Tower back on Wanderlust.
That was the reason he requested departure before they left in the shuttle, broadcasting where they were headed—Tower would contact Wanderlust to find out what was happening, and the Captain could sort things out by going over Tower’s head to a station officer. There was no traffic anyway, clear lanes all the way to the launching platform just up ahead. The blue navigational thread led to an outline of Wanderlust at the base of a launch pod.
As they neared the platform, two sleek fighter drones deployed from some hidden perch and streaked toward them.
“Bill,” Glunt said. “Bill, what’s that?”
“What’s what?” Bee said from the back, leaning forward for a better view.
Gim took a glance and piped up, “Two Mark VI Interloper class defense drones.”
Silver slowed their approach and flicked on the comms, having left them off to prevent Tower from badgering him all the way to the platform. Apparently he didn’t like that. “Tower, Wanderlust transport shuttle approaching launching platform, please advise.”
The drones maintained course. Silence still from Tower.
“They’re still coming, Bill,” Glunt said. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“Shuttle Wanderlust, please continue current approach to complete docking with host ship at Pod Fourteen,” Tower drawled, and Silver thought he could detect a faint note of displeasure in the AI’s voice, perhaps grudging acceptance that they had broken the rules and gotten away with it. “Emergency drones deployed for approach assistance.”
The drones finally slowed, then spun a sharp one-eighty and began flashing their rear emergency lights. Silver followed them in, swooping down along the rows of gargantuan launching pods. The platform was devoid of queued ships, but almost every pod was filled; they must have been making the final launches before the station shifted its orbit.
Several launched as they passed by, the interior of the massive hollow pods priming with a green glow and then pulsing brilliantly from the base, pushing the ships forward to incredible speeds as the pod shot them off into the void.
Pod Fourteen loomed ahead, Wanderlust already loaded and ready to launch. The two drones broke off and returned to their previous positions, leaving Silver to slowly nestle the shuttle into Wanderlust’s open docking bay. Home sweet home.
Inside the roaring-loud confines of Tuggernaut #7, the Beard watched in horror as the gravity generators' temperature dials crept into the red. The gigantic tethering node on the back of the ship blasted a continuous thrumming rope of mint-green energy into a stable portion of the comet, altering its trajectory by a fraction of a degree at a time.
The countdown read one minute.
Particles of rock, ice, and dust constantly pinged off the ship's new paint job, and Tuggernaut's bright red skin was scored with tiny pockmarks and scars. The ship shuddered as one of the grav generators hiccupped, throwing it off balance.
The Beard sprang into action, his fingers flinging desperate commands into the ship’s computer; he vented heat from the near-molten generators, spewing blackened cooling gel into space, and rerouted coolant from the engines to replace it.
The green rope of energy momentarily flickered and faded, but crackled back to life when the generator came online. Tuggernaut corrected its position as though nothing had happened, and the familiar steady rumbling of the generators resumed.
“Close one, bud,” breathed Tattoos over his suit's comms.
The Beard shrugged. “Matter of time.”
“C'mon man, we ain't dead yet. You got this.”
Another weak lift of the shoulders. As if in response, a violent quaking began to jar them in their seats. The temperature gauges soared to critical levels.
The reality of the situation sunk in when Tattoos saw his more experienced partner’s helpless indifference, and he sat back heavy in his seat.
“Never thought I was gonna die in this thing,” he said. “My first big boost.”
“First and last. Sorry, bud. I tried, but—”
“Nah, man,” Tattoos said, waving away the apology. “Just always figured I'd end up getting vented back on Optima or shanked on some prison cube or something, y'know?”
Tattoos pulled a flask from a pouch on his suit and waggled it at his partner. The Beard cracked a grin, and they both unclasped their helmets and tossed them behind the seats.
The ink-stenciled young man unscrewed the cap and offered the Beard the first drink, who accepted with a grateful bow of his head. He swirled the liquid inside the thin flask and smelled the sweet sharp bite of lotus.
The countdown read thirty seconds.
The faint jade glow of the gravity tether flashed bright for a moment, sputtered, then finally surged with power as one of the generators overloaded. The tether’s snaking stream flooded with excess energy, yanked hard on the comet, overpowered the ship’s brakes, and dragged the whole craft savagely into Orpheus. Tuggernaut #7 rocketed into the comet with stunning speed and smashed against the unflinching mountainous terrain, crushed instantly. A shower of ejecta exploded from the impact site—chunks of shiny red steel sparkled when the sunlight caught them.
As Orpheus twisted and spun along its new trajectory its ancient bones shifted into unfamiliar new positions. Onward the comet rolled through space toward the sun, gaining heat, spewing more gas and debris as it went.
Craggy black peaks which had stood for millennia fractured from the pent up primordial fury of geysers beneath, ejecting great chunks of packed dust and ice into the comet’s misty coma. Behind Orpheus stretched two tails thousands of miles long, one a radiant cloak of gaseous particles billowing in the stellar wind, the other a sweeping trail of broken ice and rock.
Its unwelcome cargo detached their proboscis-like tethers from its skin and vanished within moments into the empty blackness behind, the whole swarm moving as one. The parasites had introduced an element of chaos to its eternal circuit, and instead of following its previous well-traveled path it careened along a tighter orbit toward the distant star Lux.
The blue-green planet Surface, once a far-off speck, grew in size and brightness with each moment as the rogue comet rushed on. Faster, faster Orpheus plunged to the center of the system, an unchained force of nature barreling along nearly perpendicular to the neat circular orbit of Surface. Orpheus was a minefield on the loose.
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