Art:Space Pirates/Tamar's Story
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Tamar's Story
Tamar In Space
by Cassis
The trouble with explaining scientific concepts to the average pirate was that the average pirate generally lacked the intelligence to comprehend the ideas being bandied about. It was not unlike attempting to explain multiplication to a small, dumb dog: in my case, the dog was the captain of the vessel, my current employer. It was enough to make me contemplate homicide.
And they wondered why I was a cynic.
“What you are requesting violates several laws of physics,” I bluntly stated as the furious Captain Afya paced the confines of the engineering room, my self-appointed planning room. The involuntary tightening of Afya’s jaw, and the clenching of her fist was reward enough: my employer, needless to say, was annoyed. “I might be the greatest engineer to grace the deck of the Apathy, but there’s only so much I can do to the engines which won’t threaten to blow us all up if something were to go wrong.”
For a moment Afya seemed ready to punch anything, the wall or my face included. Instead, after a moment, she turned away with a thick black scowl. “Blast it,” she snarled and seared the air with a half-dozen violent curses involving the United Planets and orifices, “Of course the navy had to pick now to practice maneuvers about Ganymede, it only makes sense that the universe is out to screw me over. And you’re certain that there’s no way to get more speed out of Apathy?”
“No reasonably safe way, unless you want to add to the circle of rubbish orbiting Jupiter in a spectacular explosion. This is assuming, of course, that the UP ships don’t blow us up first.”
“Blast it,” Afya repeated again. “Blasted maneuvers.”
“We could just…wait a bit, they’re only running for a month,” I suggested, knowing her response before she said it.
“No.”
I was unsurprised. Despite having served on this ship for two months, I had already heard the story of Afya’s dead first mate, and how he was found with his throat slit, presumably from asking questions. I had no fear, though: the woman barely knew how the engines worked. I had no doubt I’d be able to outwit her if it came down to violence, presumably with a trap involving a box, a stick, some string, and bait in the form of illegal arms.
“No, we can’t wait. I must be there in two week’s time.” She turned back towards me again. “Flint.”
By which she meant me. Tamar Flint: brilliant scientist, forward thinker, self-dubbed genius, and salvation for those pirates whose knowledge of technology was sadly lacking.
“Yes, o’ Captain?”
She ignored my wit. “Come up with some way of getting us past that naval fleet,” she ordered.
Which was easier said than done.
Ideally, with sufficient time and resources, I could devote myself to developing some ingenious system to slip the Apathy past the perimeter of the naval fleet with stealth and ease: I would, for wit’s sake, dub it some ironic name such as ‘Deus ex Machina.’
But I lacked that time. Captain Afya was adamant on us flying to Ganymede as soon as possible, irregardless of the naval fleet: I had my own reasons for wanting to venture to that desolate moon, and I knew finding another ship which was heading there would be a difficult task. Few ships had a need to venture to Jupiter, the garbage dump of the system, aside from junk collectors and the like. I had my pride.
I found myself contemplating mutiny. I also found myself contemplating the task at hand.
I always liked a challenge, and Afya’s need to get to Ganymede provided this. Mutiny was always an option, but this interested me enough to put it to one side. It was far more interesting than developing coursework for some forsaken university on Eris, or field studies whilst orbiting Uranus. And I was not completely without resources as the Apathy engaged in, among other things, copious arms dealing. There was at least one load of antique nuclear warheads from the last decade I could tap, let alone the other weapons of mass destruction Afya had on board. Not that I expected to fight our way through the naval fleet, mind, just that things were generally more interesting with high explosives.
My workspace was a tiny room, a refurbished maintenance closet appropriated by the last generation of temporary workers Afya had hired on. It was small, and had a vague smell whose source I had yet to pinpoint, but it was serviceable and had sufficient space for the tools that I carried with me from job to job. It was also large enough to pace in, which was good as I thought best while moving.
I paced.
The normal method Apathy used to pass through unfriendly territory was judicious bribery. However, given that this was a UP naval fleet, the thought of lubricating passage was ridiculous: among other ships posted about Ganymede, I had heard that the President Bartlet was featured there. If rumor was correct, the last time a ship attempted to bribe the captain of the Bartlet, he had accepted, the ship in question had been hunted down like dogs and all of the pirates on board were incarcerated on Pluto.
While I did not know Afya’s reasons for wanting to travel to Ganymede, I knew mine and it was quite illegal. It would be troublesome to attract their attention.
I continued pacing.
I found myself musing about a movie, of all things.
More specifically, I found myself remembering a scene that my students had rambled on about. It involved a climax in which the heroes had hid inside of a disguised cargo ship and thus snuck past enemy lines. These heroes ended a war in an instant, downing a thousand starships through guile and stealth. It was pure nonsense, but there was something behind the idea of deception. I knew that Apathy had a number of implements on board to disguise the host of barely-legal weapons that the ship boasted. There were methods that one could use to obscure troublesome markings, facilitate blending in and looking harmless.
The trouble lay in the fact that ships were factory-outfitted with a device whose purpose lay in broadcasting identifying frequencies as to better expedite swift identification of strange vessels. While it was relatively easy to disable said device, the sort of work which I could do in my sleep, it was a bit more trouble to override the frequency: have it broadcast that the ship in question was a Jovian garbage dump or a UP cargo ship on a mission of mercy. However, I knew that the Apathy had a device on board, a toy that I had fiddled with to kill some boredom, which could facilitate this deception. While it might involve a bit of work, I was confident in my abilities to get it working and for us to sail past the UP fleet with ease. It seemed the simplest and most efficient method of stealth, and it was sure to appeal to the minds of the rogues who staffed the Apathy.
After having scoured the Apathy from one end to the other, I couldn’t find half of the clever devices, let alone my ‘toy.’ Reduced such, I finally demanded of a crewmate the location of these electronics. In response to my question, the man, one Jax, cheerfully replied, “We sold it, mate!”
I could hardly believe it.
“You what?” I asked anyway.
“We sold that frequency jammer thing-a-majing you liked to play with. Bundled it with a couple of those chain guns, if I remember right. Ain’t much call for disguise anyway, yanno? Just sitting around collecting space dust.”
While I was willing to grant that point, it failed to ease my dismay. My plan had crumbled for the sake of the Apathy making a sale.
“Cheer up, doc, I’m sure you’ve got other things to fiddle with!”
I wanted to punch his face.
Once more I returned to my workroom, pacing from side to side. I found myself wondering if I would be on Apathy long enough to perhaps wear the steel floor down to a decisive rut, a trench which one could theoretically fill with water and convert into a moat: considering my activities for the past few months, I could see that eventuality happening quite quickly.
I had to get off of this ship soon. I was growing, horrors, settled.
More importantly, though, I had to come up with an answer to Afya’s problem. More importantly in the sense that as much as I wanted to kill the crew of the Apathy and wash my hands of this forsaken vessel, I doubted I’d have enough popular support to stage a mutiny and the only thing I could see which would be more tedious than the increasingly complicated problem would be sailing a vessel by myself. A headache, if nothing else.
Perhaps then was the option of disguise in another fashion, namely through ‘liberating’ a UP vessel complete with credentials and sailing past in that fashion. There were a number of targets which came to mind, much more which I sure I could come up with given a bit of time, and if there were one thing which the Apathy boasted, it was a healthy number of weapons. This had its own number of problems, and I was willing to accept that it was a futile thought which would only lead to me slipping to the darker side of the law. While I had no moral complications, having the UP placing me on their blacklist would make orchestrating my return to glory somewhat difficult.
But I had no better thoughts, and if I continued pacing the only thing I would accomplish would be wearing a large rut into the floor. I decided to inspect the weapons.
“Looking to pick a fight, Flint?” quipped the quartermaster as he pointed out the guns. While numerous and powerful, they were hardly sufficient for the Apathy to slice its way through the massed UP fleet and make its way to Ganymede through violence. It was something I was hardly surprised about, but had hoped otherwise.
Dolt. “Yes, of course I am. I’m hoping to wage a war, overthrow the UP and usher in the era of Flint.”
“Viva la revolution,” he quipped, clapping a broad hand on my shoulder. It didn’t do much for my mood.
I always loathed the thought of growing rooted, of becoming far more accustomed to a place than was good for a man. However, I had to begrudgingly acknowledge that there were certain charms to the Apathy and its crew: it had been relatively simple for me to impress upon the savages who called themselves pirates my vast genius which had single-handedly eased life on Apathy, and it had been simple for me to teach them that the few needs I still held were to be met without fail. Because of this, the Apathy coffee machine was in top order and there was always a small stash of beans fresh from the farm colonies on Titan. I also educated the dolts on board that I required solitude when I was working, that I needed silence. I imparted this latter lesson through harsh words and the occasional projectile shaped in the form of a lobbed astro-wrench.
They had learned quickly, to their credit, and with a minimum of cursing. I had earned my place on the Apathy after one of my many ingenious fixes had saved the Apathy from certain UP-derived disaster, and had earned the right to lob an astro-wrench at crewmates who bothered me at the most annoying possible times. It was my one silver lining on this increasingly dark cloud. The only person who dared bother me in my domain was Afya, but I suspected that the woman lacked the common sense granted to any other animal.
I heard noise from outside my workroom, the same nitwit from before. “Oy, doc, I got yer coffee here. I’ll…I’ll leave your coffee here, if you don’t mi—”
I had enough of idiocy for the day. “Bring it in like a civilized man and leave it on my desk. Now.”
“You won’t be throwing no wrenches, doc, right?”
“Just do it.”
Jax did so, with the slightest of wary glances shot in my direction. I found it absurd, until I realized that I had been playing with an astro-wrench: I put it down, the man visibly calmed. The smell of the coffee, dark and black like I preferred it, calmed me, soothed me. It braced me and kept me from mauling the man as he asked, “So, doc, figured out your plan yet?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Best work faster, doc, we’re leaving for Ganymede shortly, and the Captain, she doesn’t take well to deserters.”
I wheeled on the hapless fool, shouting before I could restrain myself, “Blast it, man, this is harder than it looks!”
I felt oddly satisfied to see Jax jump at my shout, emitting a presumably involuntary sound of fright. It was…empowering. “Bugger me, doc, sorry for asking. You don’t have no ideas, though?”
“None rational, at least,” I growled as I stomped across the room towards the coffee. I took one satisfying gulp of the drink before I continued. “I’m running out of ideas which work. At this point I’m reduced to nonsense, and I’m afraid that if I don’t produce a proper idea our idiot boss will keelhaul me on principle.”
“Nothing from you would be nonsense.”
“Oh, come now, friend. I can’t disguise nor bribe nor resort to any logical methods. The only route left, unless you want to court certain disaster with brute force, would be diversion, but what am I supposed to suggest? I don’t know…get a blasted merry-go-round or two, I’m sure there’s some floating in Jupiter’s junk ring, outfit it with explosives, and launch it at the fleet. While they’re trying to figure out why there’s a sudden array of painted wooden horses pinging against their hulls like tiny meteors we can coast in through that same junk ring and hope they won’t notice because they’re that befuddled.”
Jax and I stared at each other for one long moment.
It took some work to talk Captain Afya into the idea, to convince her that it was a stroke of genius opposed to insanity. Once we did so, it was easy enough to arrange, to find a couple of merry-go-rounds and to outfit them with the antique nuclear bombs sitting in Apathy’s hold.
And as we coasted on low power to Ganymede, all involved, from the boatswain to Captain Afya herself, had to admit that it was oddly satisfying to watch the painted wooden horses ping against the hulls of the UP fleet, like a hundred thousand shooting stars.
