“Ok,” you agree reluctantly. “The mission takes priority – let’s try and fool them.”
With that Betty sets his guns to their lowest power setting and opens fire on one of the escort fighters. Bright green plasma rounds cough from guns one and two and streak across the sky towards the first fighter. They explode with a green flash against the fighter’s shields.
Stunned at what had just happened, the pilot wildly jerks his craft up and down to avoid the incoming fire. From his actions you can tell he had no idea he was being fired upond. The three fighters turn in a tight arc.
“Those idiots just realised the Guhl is on our tails…what a bunch of daft wankers,” Betty growls.
Sure enough, you realise that the Juggernaut’s sensors detected the enemy long before the fighters did.
“I bet those assholes thought the fire came from the Guhl’s ships,” Betty continues with a grin, following the tight turn of the escorts.
“Now I’ll fire a couple of rounds at them, making sure I don’t hit them,” Betty says, firing a wild spray of rounds over the escorts as they approach the attacking Wasps.
Within seconds a wild fire fight breaks out. Random rounds streak across the sky and Betty fights his controls, trying to navigate the Juggernaut over, under of away from the cannon fire all around you. Being pulled back and forth in your chair, you get the idea that the wild manoeuvres of your ship must look something like an elephant trying to walk the tightrope.
You realize Betty was right. It saddens you to see the Wasps taking out your escort one by one. As the last ship of the Old Eart Alliance is blown from the sky, the Wasps quickly turn their attention to your prospector ship.
“Now we’ll see if the id-chip your grease-monkeys installed in my ship will fool these assholes,” Betty snarls, puffing a cloud of smoke.
The face of a mean-looking son-of-a-bitch flickers on the screen in front of you.
“Juggernaut, Juggernaut, this is Miras-Guhl Wasp – identify yourself,” you hear in your earpiece.
“Wasp, this is Juggernaut, thanks for saving our tails,” Betty says in a weak voice over the microphone. “We’re private miners on our way to Kepler for supplies when these bastards jumped us. It seems they wanted to use us for target practise…”
Without further warning, you see the Juggernaut’s computer registering a scan on your cargo hold.
“So much for inter-galactic space law,” you say referring to the Guhl’s disregard to ask for permission before scanning your ship. Betty looks at you sideways as if you are speaking an unknown language.
Punching buttons on an electronic box taped to the side of the communications console, Betty busies himself with something.
“Let’s see what the shit-f’r-brains-squad is saying,” he mumbles before hacking in to their closed communications system.
In your ear piece you can hear the Wasp pilots talking. “I’ve never see the Old Earth Alliance attack privates for no reason. I think they’re lying.”
“So what,” another responds. “Who gives a shit why they were firing on each other, at least we know they’re no O.E.A. and the scan confirmed that.”
“Yeah,” the third voice says. “But what do we do with them now?”
“I’d like to blow their asses out of the sky, but we don’t have time to mess around,” the first voice says. “The ninth fleet of the O.E.A. is falling and we need to report back to base…I’ll fire a tracking beacon and report it to Intelligence and that will be that.”
You see Betty is smiling. “The oldest trick in the book,” he says puffing his cigar again. “They think they can stick a tracker on our ass and ‘that will be that.’ Stupid bastards.”
“Get out of this sector and report to Kepler,” the Wasp pilot says again before the formation fires up their engines again, and flies off.
“So how do we disable the tracker,” you ask looking at Betty.
“Well, I happen to have a little gizmo that can do that as well,” he says getting up.
***
Half an hour later, you find yourself in the ship’s laboratory.
“And that is how it’s done,” Betty says very pleased with himself, dropping the tracker on the table. The tracker looks like a metallic disc the size of a saucer.
“Now we need to decide what next, Cappy,” Betty says looking at you.
“We can either attach this to a decoy and shoot it off in space while we keep on course towards the Destination, or we can keep it with us and fly to Kepler and drop it there. Just bear in mind that Kepler is crawling with the Guhl and we’d better have our balls strapped on tight if we’re going to stick our necks in there…”
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