Insuring against space piracy, Part 2
Neb stayed in the back of the shuttle, holding carefully to the railing as they rocked back and forth.
“Are you ready?” she heard Celeste ask.
“No,” she admitted.
“Well our pilot is just a minute away from the landing site, so grab your gun.”
Neb turned over to see the armory loaded to the brim with weapons. She gingerly grabbed one from the rack. It was the smallest one available. As she picked it up, the handle suddenly morphed and wrapped itself around her spacesuit, conforming its shape to fit her hand perfectly.
“Brace yourselves, we’re underneath the cargo ship now. We’ll be slowly flying up to the dock,” Castor announced.
“Neb, are you sure you want to go first?” her coworker asked.
“Huh?”
“Well you’re standing right at the door.”
“Oh, well I don’t want to do that.”
Neb walked as far away from the door as she could. In the forward compartment, the enormous shipped filled the large windows.
“Sending charge one now,” Castor announced as he pushed a button on the control panel.
A small beam of energy, almost imperceptible, struck a specific failure point on the ship.
“Confirmed structural damage. Sending charge two now.”
Castor repeated the same actions. Neb knew that she had to prepare for what was ahead.
“Confirmed structural damage. Dock doors should be opening now.”
Neb could see the destruction for herself. The doors were suddenly flung into space as the other ship’s dock depressurized. She hoped nobody was in that room.
“Preparing to land now. The rest of you need to get ready. If they haven’t spotted us by this point they will know we’re here now.”
Neb looked around at the dozen of them. It certainly was the craziest form of team bonding she could’ve dreamed of.
“Let’s go Neb. Stay close to my six,” Celeste asserted.
“Your six? What?”
“My back. Watch my back. Didn’t you read the employee manual?”
“Where was there anything about gun terminology?”
“In the glossary.”
“I was supposed to read that far?”
“If we just do this by the book, we should be fine. Just be careful.”
“I’ll try,” Neb quipped softly.
She checked one more time that her helmet was on properly as the shuttle door opened. There was a brief hiss as the air escaped. Then they were on their own.
She hopped off, struggling to maneuver in the thick suit.
Celeste was trudging towards the service hallway. She tapped on the button to open the door but there was no response. She hit the button a second time, harder.
“The damned thing won’t open,” she exclaimed over their interlink.
“It might be an automatic safety feature when the ship detected the loss of air in this room. Let me try to override that,” Castor announced.
A few seconds later and the door opened. Celeste and the others pushed their way in.
“I got the ship computer to accept a makeshift air chamber in the hallway. Let me close the door now and reset the hall. Once I’m done you should be able to take off the suits.”
Neb placed her hand on her helmet, ready to get out of it when she suddenly heard someone let out a shout of pain. She turned to see a person in an old, grimy looking uniform with a lasergun in their hand.
“Cassie!”
Celeste bent down to check on their coworker as the pirate raised the gun and pointed it at her.
“No!” Neb shouted out while knowing she couldn’t move fast enough to save her friend.
Yet the gun in her hand was able to sense her danger and reacted with superhuman speed. It thrust her hand up with excessive force until it was lined up with the pirate. Then it fired a beam of light, striking with deadly aim at their helmet.
The room was still pressurizing, so when the helmet was cracked open the pirate suddenly collapsed on the ground gasping for air. Their gun landed on the floor and was scattered to the side.
“Okay everyone, you should be fine now,” Castor reported.
Neb immediately took off her helmet to see the situation without the solar guard obscuring her view. Celeste was applying pressure to Cassie’s wound while the pirate was now unconscious. Their bright red painted lips had turned an eerie shade of purple.
“Neb, let them alone,” Celeste advised.
“I just want to see…”
“Grab their gun and let’s go. We don’t have time to waste.”
The story continues, with an early victory for Neb and the smart gun she’s holding. Humans have relatively slow reaction times. The old western stories of duels depended on being able to shoot a gun a microsecond faster than the other guy. Yet a machine would in theory be able to do this a lot better by reacting to biological signals before they can get parsed into muscle contractions.
There is probably room for one final chapter to wrap up this story.