Writer’s Note: Drifters: Part One was published originally in Jump Point 5.1.
Helluva time for the a/c to cut out, Reynolds thought as he stared through the scuffed cockpit glass and cued the comm.
“You need to take a second and think real hard about what you’re doing here.” His fingers tapped anxiously on the flight stick, and he could already feel the sweat forming under his suit.
About five minutes ago, an EMP tripped his Retaliator, the Echo Calling, out of quantum. Five ships — a Freelancer and a bunch of fighters that looked patched together with tape, glue and bad intentions — waited in an attack pattern. The ambush had surprised him. They’d scouted this route for weeks to try and avoid this possibility. What had surprised the ambushers was that the Echo still had guns and shields. Nickels had finally gotten around to installing that backup power plant, so although Echo’s engines were affected by the EMP, they were more than equipped to mix it up. That little fact gave their attackers pause.
“Cap! Two more contacts, aft side, drifting thirty degrees down,” Nickels yelled from his terminal.
“Power down your weapons, disengage your cargo, and drift,” said the attacker’s spokesman over the comms. From the appearance of the cockpit in the background, he looked to be flying the beat-up Freelancer. Probably their leader . . . or the one wearing the communal balls for the week. Reynolds didn’t recognize him, but whoever this was knew everything important about the Echo, in particular what they were transporting.
“Listen to me,” Reynolds leaned into his camera. “Say you take us in a rush, you know who you’re stealing from. That kinda trouble? That doesn’t just go away.”
Spokesman hesitated. It was just a flicker where the façade of toughness dropped. Just a flicker, but Reynolds survived noticing things like that.
“Detach your cargo and leave.” The façade was back in full effect.
“Not gonna happen.” Reynolds glanced at his screens. Maybe a minute ’til the engines were back online. He flipped to the Echo’s internal communication network. “How we looking, people?”