Rogue Pilot Read online

  I tried to look in three directions at once to see who was shouting: I had no doubt that they were shouting about me. Of course, I tripped over something on the floor and fell over. This wasn’t a bad thing, as several shots occupied the personal space that I had just abandoned. Right ahead of me was a collection of large crates on a motorised delivery trolley. I flung myself at the trolley and rolled under part of it. More shots slammed into the floor around me, and ricocheted away.

  “Stop firing!” yelled the Cat. There was a note of panic in his voice that surprised me.

  Not everyone followed his order. The carefully targeted shots from behind me, which I presumed were from the highly trained and efficient Black Ops group, continued.

  “Stop!” screamed the Cat. “He’s gone to ground under a fuel cell consignment! Hit that and the whole spacestation will go up!”

  That did have an effect. The storm of firing stopped as if turned off at a tap. I used the opportunity to crawl out of my inadequate hiding spot and find a bit of space on the trolley. To my joy, the controls were within easy reach.

  “Frank,” called the Cat, “would you like to give up now we have you cornered?”

  I chose not to reply. I could not see behind me, down the corridor I had just left, and so had no idea how close the Black Ops troops might be. Instead I started up the delivery trolley. It shook and vibrated badly. It must have been damaged by the random shooting before the Cat realised what it held.

  “Frank, we can come to an arrangement.”

  Sure we could. One that left me dead. Gingerly I engaged the clutch, and the trolley wobbled violently. The stored fuel cells shifted on the platforms of the trolley and for a moment my heart stopped.

  “Give me back my money and you can go.”

  “Go where?” I shouted back. The trolley crawled slowly onwards.

  “To hell for all I care,” replied the Cat.

  “Let me think about it.” Like Grond, the Hammer of The Underworld, the trolley crawled on.

  “Well, think fast.”

  “Stop that trolley right now, Captain Russell.”

  This was a new voice, laden with authority. It expected, no it demanded instant obedience. Obedience to its orders from anyone it addressed. Naturally I ignored it, and opened the throttle of the delivery trolley a little further. The vibration became almost unbearable, and I could hear the fuel cells shifting about all around me. My Speedbird class Scoutship was getting much closer now.

  “Captain Russell, surrender to us and you will live.”

  “For how long?” I called back.

  “If you take him, do we get the bounty?” shouted the Cat, to a chorus of feline agreement.

  “What bounty?” replied the voice. It was richly laden with the tones of someone who was too rich to bother about mere money. And strangely, it was not coming from the dark corridor where the Black Ops unit was currently not firing at me. Just my luck.

  “Who are you?” the Cat asked. He was confused as he had been expecting to deal with a Black Ops Leader who would be more interested in Colonel Starker’s praise and approval than the bounty on my head, which he would not have received anyway.

  “My Name is not Important.”

  “Are you Slartibarfast?”

  “Who? No, I need no name for I am The Blessed of Zog.”

  Silence fell across the docks as this information was digested. Zog was the Mad God, whose missionaries went across the whole galaxy, spreading The Word of Zog. Have you heard about the Word? No? Then count your blessings. But if this was The Blessed of Zog, then he was very close to being the top bod in the whole organisation. In my wide experience of jetting around the galaxy as a scout pilot, I have reached the conclusion that religious fundamentalists are fundamentally deranged and best avoided. In fairness, I reached that conclusion after being captured by the Followers of Zog and invited to join their number. The entirely unintentional damage and destruction that seemed to happen around the time of my escape was quite coincidental in my view. Unfortunately, the Mad God and his Followers disagreed.

  The trolley continued its erratic progress, and I teased the controls delicately to adjust its course to pass a little closer to the entry hatch of my craft.

  “Why do you want him?” shouted the Cat.

  I was actually quite impressed. The Followers of Zog were many, and mostly driven mad by a combination of the rare and subtle drugs and the incessant chanting they indulged in. They were not lightly to be ignored, it was usually better to run away from them as quickly as possible. The Cat was showing undue courage in questioning The Blessed One.

  “He committed a sacrilege against Zog. For that there must be a penalty. He must join with us, become one with us, to be cleansed of his sin.”

  “What had you in mind?” asked the Cat.

  “A ritual cleansing start with a ritual flaying of his skin,” The Blessed of Zog replied, in a conversational tone.

  “I thought you said he was going to live?” asked the Cat.

  “And so he will. For a surprising length of time. Our Chief of Rituals trained under Colonel Starker.”

  My hand opened the throttle wider. A purely involuntary action, of course.

  “Colonel Starker wants him,” shouted a new voice. This was clearly the Black Ops leader, who did not want his prize stolen from him at this point. “His claim has precedence!”

  “Not over the Rights of Zog!” replied The Blessed of Zog distainfully. “He is a God. Your Colonel Starker is not.”

  That was a worthwhile discussion point, as Starker’s men worshipped their Colonel and were prepared to lay down their lives for him.

  “I have a suggestion?” shouted the Cat.

  I was still unsure where the Cat was hiding, but was sure he must have some cover or the Black Ops troops would have disposed of him and the other Cats already.

  “I’m listening,” called the Black Ops leader.

  That was bad. If the Cats and Starker’s men joined forces, the Blessed of Zog might not be able to hold them off, and there would be a concerted group after me. The Speedbird was now very close. One of the packing cases had a huge splinter in it. I tore the strip of plastic away, and used it to jam the throttle of the trolley.

  “Let’s play cards for him. Winner takes the Bounty, losers get the body.”

  “Gambling is an Abomination Unto Zog!”

  “But you aren’t really going to play, are you?” The Cat was at his most purr-swasive. “That means you will get Frank. As long as I get my money and either of you have his body to play with, I don’t care.”

  “Zog and his Word demand your obedience!” replied the Blessed of Zog, after a bare moment of thought. “Open fire.”

  The firing started again. This time however, none of the shots were coming close to me. The Black Ops unit joined in indiscriminately, and I paused to wonder if I still had those shares in the Company that supplied small arms across the galaxy. Their sales were about to rise substantially. The rate of fire dropped, then stopped entirely.

  “You have heard The Word of Zog!” boomed The Blessed of Zog.

  “The Word! The Word! Everyone is talking about the Word!” chanted Zog’s other followers. I could see them spreading cautiously out of the far entrance to this space dock. As no one shot at them, I presumed that the Cats had withdrawn both their offer and themselves.

  This, then, was my chance. I rammed the trolley throttle wide open and hoped the shred of hard plastic would hold it. I leapt from the delivery trolley, and as I did so the fuel cells began to wobble about, creating cries of alarm from both the Followers of Zog and the Black Ops unit who were still out of sight. I ran like mad for the air lock door that led to the entry hatch of the Speedbird. As soon as it was open, I dived inside and shut it behind me.

  I could not now hear what was going on, but I felt the whole space station shake as the trolley finally shed its load of fuel cells. Time to be going. I keyed the entry hatch and almost cried with relief when I hal
f fell inside my own ship, and sealed the hatch.

  The entry hatch of the Speedbird was a smallish affair, with storage areas on all the walls. In one corner a spiral staircase led up to the rest of the ship. I climbed the stairs as fast as I could, and ran across what the original designer had once hopefully called ‘a spacious and well-planned living area’ to the flight deck. Neither spacious nor particularly well-planned, this contained little more than the flight console and computers and a delapidated pilot’s chair. I opened the comms channels, and lit up the engines. The dock departure sequence was automated, and as soon as I had initiated that I turned on the vidscreens and looked outside.

  The interstellar bar consisted of three wide rings around a central hub. I had been docked at the middle of the three rings. The lowest contained the space stations vital maintenance and life-support services. The upper ring offered a number of services I wasn’t interested in exploring, and the space bar occupied the centre ring. Or had. The Speedbird rocked in the succession of blasts as the exploding fuel cells tore the docking area apart, and unbalanced the whole facility. As I watched, an entire section of The Dogs’ Bollocks Bar separated from the rest of the ring, and collapsed. How I hoped that Colonel Rosto had been in that section.

  The comms channels were full of shouting pilots. I quickly scanned across them, stopping when I heard the soft, sibilant tones of the Cat.

  “Frank is flying a Speedbird. Open all scanners. Find him. This isn’t about the money now, I want revenge!”

  Ships were leaving the stricken space station at all angles and vectors now, and I tried to hide amongst them. The proximity alert warning was screaming, and I could not find a way to shut it off while avoiding the mob.

  “I see him. I see him.” This unidentified Cat’s voice was without mercy or compassion.

  “Then shoot.” That was The Cat.

  I increased speed, and activated all the defence screens.

  “There are too many others obstructing a shot.”

  That was good news. The bad news was that the crowd was thinning out and so I was more exposed. I had preprogrammed my next destination into the navcomm, and so I began the acceleration to VH, the speed at which I could transition to hyperspace and escape.

  “Blast them out of the way!” ordered the Cat.

  The port vidscreen lit up with flashes. I turned down the volume on the comms channels as the invective and complaints (and screams) flooded the airwaves. However, the Cats were not getting things their own way. Others were fighting back.

  “Our ship is damaged, badly. This litter will not survive.”

  “Hold on. We are coming, we are coming. Captain Frank Eric Russell, you will be listening. I will be coming for you. Do not bother to sleep Frank, for after we meet again you will sleep for ever.”

  The Cat closed down that channel. I twisted the dial, and found the Cats conversing amongst themselves in their strange language. The Speedbird finally hit VH and I closed the switch that initiated the transition to hyperspace. The universe blurred around me and I fled across the galaxy.

  The things I have to do to get a drink.

  Chapter two

  The star system’s sun blazed behind me as the Speedbird drove down towards the dark side of the planet. As I lost height and computed the vectors for a safe approach to the atmosphere, I kept one eye on the vidscreens for any approaching traffic, particularly any official looking spaceships.

  The entire point of interstellar trade is to enrich all who engage in it, rewarding them for the awful risks and dangers they cheerfully face in order to make some money. Isn’t it sad that officialdom seems to want to deprive those of us who undertake this work of our rewards, and often our liberty and lives as well. General Transportation, occasionally called smuggling by those of a less generous disposition, should be considered a boon to all. Not a crime.

  Now a lot of the time I am able to land freely and openly as I have papers that will pass at least an average inspection by Customs. That doesn’t mean that the cargo would pass an inspection, but that’s a different question, of course. If the paperwork looks right, a lot of the time the bone-idle average Customs Inspector isn’t interested in anything else. This time there would be no papers, no inspections and a very dangerous cargo. The most dangerous cargo in the universe: a political dissident making a clandestine escape.

  Politics is something I try to avoid. Every politician I have ever met has left me singularly unimpressed. And dissidents even more so: they usually bring violence and uncertainty to their worlds – which make the authorities so much more alert to innocent smugglers like me. So why was I now taking this terrible risk? Simple answer. I had run out of money. The last trade deal I had entered had fallen through and I had been left with an expensive load of computers and peripherals in a warehouse that were rapidly going past their sell-by date as the hardware and software became obsolete even to the penny pinching local government regimes. I was out of cash, and the ship’s stores of fuel and food were depleting.

  I have no idea if this particular dissident was a good man, a bad man, or as average as the rest of us. What I was very clear about was that I was to be paid a very large sum of money for transporting one man away from this world and to land him safely on another. I was desperate enough to take the risk, which is probably why and how most of these missions happen, I suppose.

  The Speedbird made short work of entering the atmosphere, and once we emerged from the ‘Dead Zone’, the GPS started shouting inane and occasionally insane observations on my course. This was a relief in a way, as it showed that it was working correctly. As an experienced pilot, I would not normally have one of the things on board my ship, much less actually plug it in and allow myself to be directed by it. However, the Customers were so security conscious that I was not even allowed to know the exact landing ground for the pick up before I had set off on the mission. I had been able to set the course for a particular area of the planet, but the GPS was to guide me in. Hopefully.

  The pickup point was to be on the dark side of the planet. However, it isn’t that easy to slow a hurtling spaceship down fast enough to stay in the shadows – or at least, not without significant risk to the safety of the pilot’s internal organs from the deceleration - so I had to accept the element of risk. Scooting across the dayside, I could see a number of military installations, and tracking stations, and missile sites, and other seriously scary places.

  The GPS calmed down and began issuing sensible instructions. I contemplated smacking the thing on the side of the flight console, since there was a serious risk that it must be malfunctioning, but finally thought better of it and input the course corrections advised. These too seemed inane and contradictory, before I understood that it had been programmed to make my course seem to erratic to plot and anticipate.

  The defence computer system warnings stayed silent. It did not seem that I was being tracked, and that worried me. Surely, on this heavily militarised planet, someone somewhere should be watching for unexpected incursions into the airspace? Or was I just being paranoid? Either way I was now committed; and probably should have been committed for taking on this mission, I thought.

  Leaving daylight side and returning to darkness brought me a shred of illusory safety. In practice, anyone tracking me would not be using a Mark 1 eyeball, but a sophisticated radar and thermal imaging system. Maybe I should cultivate cool thoughts to confuse the thermal tracking?

  “Descend now converting to approach path!” instructed the GPS.

  I looked at the vidscreen. Below there was only darkness. There were some scattered lights, but these were few and far between. Wherever the dissident was hiding, he had chosen an isolated location. I suppose it made sense, but personally I have always preferred to hide in a crowd, wherever possible. Clearly that doesn’t work if the crowd is the wrong galactic species, or are wearing the wrong uniforms, but otherwise the principle is sound.

  The descent path followed a wide spiral, and I looked
with growing interest at the apparent focal point. This was a wide clearing in an otherwise dense patch of forest. Aha, I thought: my passenger had chosen to hide in a forest and wait for me to arrive before revealing himself. For a wanted man, this was not a bad strategy, and as a wanted man myself, I could understand his reasoning.

  The Speedbird had dropped to a mere hundred feet and I was preparing a landing sequence, when the GPS started issuing new instructions. I should not have been surprised. I was now below radar tracking height, so anyone who had been following me down would not have the real landing site.

  On the other hand, flying an interstellar space craft slowly across a tree strewn landscape at only one hundred feet above ground level is not a pastime for the faint hearted. My Speedbird was no longer as young as she had been, and even when young had not been designed for this. The hull was making some alarming complaints, so I increased the power to reach a more comfortable airspeed.

  “Reduce airspeed now,” snarled the GPS in its most aggressive tone.

  I ignored it. We were approaching the edge of the forest, and I really, really wanted to be clear of the trees, especially as the rear view vidscreen revealed that my progress was marked by a trail of smouldering and even burning tree tops, set alight by the exhaust from the jets that were keeping the Speedbird airborne.

  “Reduce airspeed, lower landing gear and set down one kilometer directly ahead,” intoned the GPS.

  I peered anxiously at the forward vidscreen. Ahead was an isolated farm. Various animals capered around, quite clearly disturbed by the sound of the approaching spaceship. I did not want to land on any one of them if I could help it. However, the GPS started shouting at me, so I obediently reduced thrust, dropped the landing gear and picked a spot that looked, well, just like every other spot on the field behind the farmhouse.

  Gently the Speedbird touched down. With a sigh of relief, I cut all the power. The ship trembled, and a small vibration ran through the hull as she settled firmly onto the ground. Now what?