The Marilona

It opened immediately.

I was greeted by a man almost as tall as I was, if a fifth my weight. He was completely bald, his long features somewhat patrician despite Stempods ensuring that he looked no older than twenty-five. He wore a shipsuit very similar to the ones worn by the girls, though a shade darker and filled out in far less interesting ways. He was built of long, lean muscle, a tiny scar above one of his two large, dark brown eyes, bisecting an arched eyebrow. Noala stood behind him, looking somewhat abashed, a little timid, and very, very worried.

(Noala,) the man said, his voice surprisingly deep. (You seem to have made some interesting friends.)

(And you are about to have a very serious pirate problem,) I said. I had no doubt that at some point, there would be a very interesting explanation due from Noala and myself. Doing it right at that moment would have been a costly waste of time.

He contained his surprise pretty well, actually. It showed only as a slightly further raising of the already arched eyebrow.

(Well then, I suppose you'd better come with us.)

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(Our calculations tell us that we have six hours until they hit us.)

I floated near the center of the command deck, taking up rather a lot of space in a circle of men and women formed around the central command display. The stern looking man who had greeted me at A4, whose name I learned was Rothas, floated across from me, flanking the captain on one side, the XO flanking her on the other.

The captain was short by Lifer standards, which means she was still a hell of a lot taller than most women who grow up on Earth. She was still thin, but looked almost stocky compared to everyone else. She wore her dirty blonde hair cropped short, an almost identical style to mine, now that my Fleet cut had grown out a little. Her name was Jahanni, and her gray eyes were serious, giving the impression of efficient, cold competence.

(Are they close enough for a visual?) I asked.

The crew had done a fantastic job of getting the fuck over having not only a stranger, but an enormous, armed, Jovian stranger in their midst. They were professionals who took every aspect of their jobs seriously, and nothing in space is quite so serious as pirates.

(Yes, as well as a 3D scan,) responded the XO. He was average build for a Lifer, and had kept his appearance a bit older than most, which probably helped in his role as the go-between for the captain and the rest of the crew. He made a few gestures and the console put up a glowing, detailed scan of the approaching pirate vessel.

Pirate ships tend to be cobbled together from whatever they can get their hands on, so they don't really have classes, per se. That said, there are really only so many designs that work for what they want them to do, so unofficially, the have nicknames. It all depends on what they're supposed to accomplish.

Some of them are made to simply destroy a ship with a hard ram. They're used primarily around pirate outposts, and tend to have a real short range given that they're usually not much more than a set of engines bolted to an asteroid. They're incredibly effective when they hit, but they're heavy as fuck, so moving them takes a lot of propellant. We called those Hammers in Fleet.

Others are designed to disable a ship from a distance, take out engines and life support, then sidle up and pick the carcass clean after everybody is dead. Those are bigger, usually. They hold a lot of cargo, and they tend to have a lot of random looking equipment bolted to various parts. The most common design features are a long, stinger-style antenna that directs a controlled electromagnetic burst. They're expensive to operate, and they use a lot of power. We call those Vultures.

The one floating in the image in front of me was a haphazard assortment of hammered and welded compartments and crude tori from the stern and overworked engines to about two thirds of the way forward. From there to her bow, she was a gracefully tapering cone with a series of wicked-looking barbs. She was made to ram into a ship and lock herself in place, the cone having a series of airlocks starting at her tip and spaced every few meters all along its length. It was designed to punch directly through the hull and lodge there, the airlocks opening at whatever points were actually buried in a ship. The crew of the damned thing would then flood in and attempt to lay waste to everyone who tried to stop them. When everybody was either dead or subdued, they would go through everything looking for valuables while they drained the propellant tanks.

We called those Javelins, and they were the most common by a wide margin.

(Do you know her dimensions?) Javelins came in a variety of shapes and sizes, and knowing how big this one was would give me a decent idea of how many were aboard. You needed space and storage to keep people alive in space, no matter how much they'd been adapted to it.

(She's just over two hundred meters, breaching prow included. We're guessing her at a crew of up to fifteen,) answered Rothas. He was the ship's head of security, among other things.

(It's probably not a bad idea to triple that estimate,) I said quietly. There was a collective intake of breath. Marilona held a crew of sixty, an efficient and sustainable number on a ship designed for barging passengers and the occasional cargo across the solar system. They were experts in space travel, and understood instinctively how many people could comfortably live in how much ship space and for how long. They just didn't think of it in terms of piracy.

(If this is a long haul, roving crew, then fifteen is spot on. But if they're out here just to wait and make a smash and grab, which seems likely given the amount of cargo space they have, they will have packed themselves in there like sardines. They won't be concerned with living months or years in space. Just long enough to find a ship, take everything they can carry, and burn back to an outpost.)

(We have less than ten crew trained in shipboard combat,) Rothas said heavily. His eyes were hard, narrow jaw set. He was the kind of guy who viewed being overrun by pirates as a personal failure, and was probably going through every choice he'd made since becoming head of security, looking for a time when he could've trained more crew, been better prepared for this moment.

(That's more than most Pushers I've seen,) I said honestly. (Most ships this size have maybe five, sometimes none. A lot of ships view pirates as a thing they can do nothing about.)

(What CAN we do about these pirates?) The question came from a young man in the back, navigator or systems tech, maybe both, judging by his shipsuit.

(Prepare, use your knowledge of Marilona against them. They don't live here, you do. This is your home, and nobody in the Void knows it better than you do.)

I didn't need them to believe me all the way. I didn't even need them to believe me half way. I only needed them to believe me enough to have a little bit of hope, just enough to make them do their jobs, function, WORK through the next several hours.

There was a change in the room. Not overt, just a subtle shifting of posture, men and women floating more upright, not pulling into themselves. Big, round eyes narrowed a bit, stopped staring into the middle distance and started focusing on me, the captain, the display, or Rothas.

(Can you call up a schematic of the ship?) I requested. The XO didn't bother to respond, he just gestured again and the 3D scan was replaced by a perfect representation of the Marilona.

(Within the next few hours, we'll know where they're going to hit. They won't go for the tori. Pirates are a little crazy, and they do some things that the rest of us would never consider, but they aren't stupid. Hitting a tori could kill both of us, and they don't want that.) I reached out and zoomed the image in a bit, focusing on the stationary, non-spinning parts of the ship.

The crew section of the ship was toward the prow, three tori split into officers' quarters, crew quarters, and recreation trailed behind the command decks and systems operations cabins. The command decks and tori were connected by a twenty meter section, an axis like the one I had first met Noala in in most outward appearances. Inside, it was a hollow tube inside a hollow tube, with the intervening space packed full of electrical conduits, tubing, ductwork, and things more complicated that I didn't understand past knowing they existed.

A direct hit there could easily destroy the entire ship and them along with it. They wouldn't hit there.

The axis along which the passenger tori spun was a little thinner, and a bit less sturdy, not to mention having very little space into which they could spike the javelin without risking taking a nasty hit that could throw the maneuver completely off course. Really, there are only so many places that a pirate vessel can hit a ship like Marinola.

It had to be the thirty meter section between A4 and the archway that led to the passenger section. It was sturdy, it had windows, and most of the conduit work ran along the underside. They would hit there, and flood into the space handily provided by mankind's love of looking out of windows even in space.

(Here,) I said, circling the area with my finger. (This is where I'd place money that they'll hit. A4 will hold them off for a few minutes, the passenger area will provide little to no resistance. They'll be armed, and they'll have a tech who can just lock everybody in until they're ready to go cabin to cabin.)

(What about the group cabins and the barracks?) Noala had piped up from her spot just behind Rothas. I locked eyes with her, knowing that she wouldn't like what I was about to say.

(Chances are they'll lock those immediately and cut off life support at the first available opportunity. Dealing with groups isn't something they'll want to risk if they don't absolutely have to, and they know those poor bastards don't have the money to be carrying anything like voidsuits or O2 Thieves.)

(What do we do for those people?) Her voice was small, scared less for herself than for the few hundred people under her care, people she didn't even know and likely would never meet. Her above all others, I needed to have hope.

I drew my shoulders back, straightening myself, letting my full size come to bear on her and those around me and held her gaze, unwavering and firm.

(Stop them.)

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Six hours is not much time to prepare for a fight, really. That said, it can feel like forever.

The trick was to try and keep everyone busy, find something for ever single person to do. The captain understood that, and set everyone to work.

Comms spent the intervening time sending out distress signals and updates on every bandwidth the Marinola could tune to. Systems techs rerouted power and life support in every way they could think of to keep anything from suddenly stopping when we were hit. Engineering and navigation ran calculations and prepared programs to try to keep us on course with as little expenditure of propellant as possible. Rothas gathered his trained combatants and we went about giving a crash course in zero gee combat to the rest of the crew, and coming up with a plan.

It was simple, really. Five of them were to sit behind A4, ready to defend against any and all comers should they breach it, taking full advantage of the natural chokepoint it provided. Five more would be arranged behind hastily constructed barricades in the passenger archway.

Rothas and I were to take up positions at either end, ready to attack as they came out of the javelin. Even if they didn't kill us, we wouldn't stop them for long. There was just too much space for them to get around us. Everybody would have a fight on their hands.

If and when they got past the chokepoints, we would fight our way after them. Rothas and his five took the responsibility for the crew section, me and my five the passenger side.

Whoever was piloting the Javelin knew what they were doing. they matched our velocity perfectly, picking their angle of approach and ramming speed with an expertise born of practice. I was willing to bet that many, many ships had fallen prey to this particular Javelin since the first time that helmsman had tried his hand at this game.

It was almost graceful, the deceptively slow approach, the shape of the Javelin looming larger and larger through the windows, slowly blocking out the stars until it filled our view. I pressed my O2 Thief in place, having taken the time to shave in the intervening six hours, and felt the seal smoothly fix itself to my skin. I tapped a hidden panel on the left forearm of my combat suit, and the material flowed and stretched, rushing up my neck and over my cheeks, covering my head completely. the material over my eyes was opaque from the outside, but crystal clear to me, giving me a completely unobstructed view. The same thing happened with my hands, the material forming itself into perfectly fitting gloves.

The impact was exactly what I'd expected.

When two ships hit each other, it sucks. It is not gentle, and it is not quiet. Even with the programs that Nav and Engineering had come up with doing their jobs wonderfully, the force of the impact was enough to bring bulkheads rushing to meet us, slapping us around with enough force to stun anybody not prepared for it. That alone sent two of our ten down for a few seconds.

If I'd had to guess in that moment, I would've said that fully three quarters of the passengers sustained some sort of injury. We'd told them, calmly and efficiently, that we were going to be attacked, asked them to stay in their cabins, sealed off the passenger compartment from the rest of the ship. We'd had to stop all the tori, so they were all sitting in their cabins, floating, worrying, until suddenly being flung against a bulkhead.

I didn't have time to think about them just then, or Noala, who had taken to her quick course in shipboard killing like a fish to water but couldn't hope to be fully prepared for this, so I didn't. My mind was occupied with catching myself easily against the bulkhead, finding a handhold, and locking my eyes on the point of entry as the atmosphere rushed out into the Void.

They'd hit almost perfectly. The largest airlock was at the tip, and they'd managed to place it almost dead center of the passageway, with two smaller airlocks just barely peeking past the bulkhead and into our ship. It locked itself in place instantly, the barbs extending and pushing back with a snapping motion that would've been incredibly loud if there was any air left to carry the sound.

I aimed myself and gathered my legs against handholds, knowing that inside pirates were slapping quick-release harnesses and shooting toward the airlocks even as they tagged opening consoles. I drew my combat knife, and using judgement born of long experience, launched myself as hard as I could at the nearest airlock a split second before it slammed open, and I hit the first of the pirates before he even got through.

He was tall, as tall as I was, but built like a Lifer. Long, thin, deceptively strong limbs cased in homemade armor that he'd cobbled together from hammered bits of bulkhead tried to lever him through the opening, little talismans of bone and asteroid rock floating at the ends of short woven cord.

I drove my blade through his chest plate, crunching through armor and bone hard enough to send the tip erupting through his back. In void combat, you can't hear the sounds that a human body makes when you damage it, but you can feel the crunching and grinding of bone, see the globes of blood spin crazily away. As I hit him, I rotated, planting my feet at either side of the airlock and reaching through, grabbing hold of the surprised pirate behind him with my free hand, gathering a meaty handful of armor, suit, and whatever flesh was unfortunate enough to be caught up in there.

I yanked him forward, his head meeting the edge of the airlock from chin up, pulling as hard as I could. His neck snapped as I hauled him through, casting him behind me and out of the way as I planted a foot in the chest of the first and pulled my blade free, kicking him back into the Javelin in the process. I hooked my free hand under the top lip of the airlock and ripped myself down and forward, rebounding off the floor and through, slamming hard into the next pirate set to come through.

They had crammed themselves into the space, a narrow, cylindrical passageway that wasn't wide enough for me to have stood my full height in had there been any gravity and nobody inside. As it was, there was no gravity, and it was packed with pirates trying to flow into Marinola.

Close combat on a ship is mostly about grappling, finding openings, and causing as much damage to your opponent as you can without him or her doing the same to you. In most cases, a knife is a good weapon, and will serve you well. Guns don't work in vacuum, and energy weapons are expensive to purchase and maintain. In very, very close quarters, everything becomes a weapon.

I grabbed the nearest pirate by the throat, my fingers overlapping each other around his long, thin neck, and quickly squeezed as hard as I could, a motion not unlike trying to catch a pencil before it falls through your loose fist. Lifers have strong bones, built to withstand a lot of pressure from the extraordinary gee forces that acceleration on a ship can inflict. They are born and bred with a skeletal structure that won't buckle under a heavy weight pressing down on it.

They are not designed to deal overly well with a force trying to separate them, however. Connective tissue does a fine job of keeping a neck in one piece when it has the force of, say, a body pulling against it. But add just a little bit more, say the force of a ham sized fist suddenly and angrily clenching, forcing the extra space of a pinky and part of a ring finger that are almost as thick as your own wrist between shoulder and jawline, and suddenly it isn't doing so well.

The vertebrae spread instantly with the quick, snapping squeeze, the spinal column inside doing it's best to stretch, failing to do so without serious damage. Bruising and swelling all along his cervical spinal column formed before I'd even let go, pressing against nerves that he desperately needed to move his limbs, control his breathing, his heartbeat. He wasn't dead yet when I let go, but he didn't matter anymore.

As I let go of him, the pirate I had shoved backwards upon entering bounced back at me, a long, curved knife flashing in her hands. She was rootstock, or near enough that it was hard to tell the difference. Chances were she had lived her whole life on ships or outposts, though, and she was perfectly at home in the lack of gravity, a sleek, lightly armored pressure suit keeping the oxygen in her blood from trying to shoot out.

I stomped one foot down and kicked her in the chest with the other, my height keeping her from getting close enough to use the knife on anything overly important while also letting me jam myself in place to keep from pushing myself backward at the same time. She slammed into the backs of the pirates scrambling out of the opposite airlock, the bulk of the rest having already pushed out through the biggest one in the center of the passageway.

I reached across and slapped a command console on the opposite wall, grinning under my O2 Thief when it slammed all three airlocks closed, trapping her and five others in with me. She rebounded quickly, coming in high, and I snapped my free hand out, catching her knife hand and yanking hard, still anchored by my foot and shoulders, wedged into the narrow cylinder. She spun with my pull, her body rotating to the side a bit as I yanked her onto the blade of my knife, burying it up to the handle in her side.