Sea Rover Flight Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  About The Author

  Sea Rover Flight

  By

  C.P. MacDonald

  Copyright © 2020 C.P. MacDonald

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means,

  Including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author,

  Except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  P.O. Box 314

  Paris, Tn 38242

  U.S.A.

  www.cpmacdonaldauthor.com

  Notice:

  The Sea Rover Saga was originally published as

  The Atlantean Conflict series.

  All books were completely rewritten to relaunch as

  The Sea Rover Saga series.

  Chapter 1

  In a fluid, well-practiced motion, Calin Aku drew his blaster from his thigh holster and pressed the gun barrel between the eyes of a dust-covered miner. The bright neon bar lights reflected into a rainbow of prismatic colors from the chrome of his cybernetic arm, a stark contrast to his foul mood.

  “That ain’t your beer,” he growled in warning, the irritation in his voice cutting through the noise of the bar like a laser.

  The inebriated miner wobbled and stared cross-eyed at the barrel pressed into his forehead. Carefully, he placed Calin’s beer mug back onto the bar and backed away quickly. In his haste to get away, the drunk tripped over a bar stool behind him and tumbled to the floor.

  A few patrons of the decrepit bar scrambled to help the miner off the floor, cautiously shooting Calin guarded looks. Dismissing the drunk from his mind, Calin focused his attention on the room full of rowdy lunar miners, but his brief altercation had gone unnoticed in the noisy and crowded bar. He holstered his gun and took a slow sip of his beer, suppressing a gag as the poor excuse of a beer hit his tongue. The drink was as crude as the bar he was in. This… tavern, if anyone was inclined to call it that, was a mismatched collection of various cargo containers and spaceship parts, welded together and patched to form an airtight structure of sorts. Crammed into the side of a crater on the dark side of the Moon, it was the unofficial social hub for an illegal mining operation dug deep into the lunar crust.

  Calin furiously rubbed his nose. The air, clouded with thick smoke and Moon dust, reeked of overworked bodies. The jerry-rigged air scrubbers that hung in the corners of the room whined with a metallic high-pitched squeal with their efforts to keep the CO2 below lethal levels. A sound that set his nerves on edge.

  “Making friends as usual, I see.” a sarcastic voice said from behind him. Dean, his crewmate and the Engineer of their ship The Sea Rover, chuckled at his own wit and lifted the fallen bar stool off the floor to sit beside him.

  Calin tapped the counter to get the barkeep’s attention and motioned for two more beers. “That’s me, Mr. Friendly,” he said with a casual shrug.

  Dean held his mug up to the light and examined the dirty glass with a worried expression before taking a sip. The Engineer shuddered at the first taste of the brew, then shrugged and downed half the mug with a few swallows.

  Calin raised an impressed eyebrow at Dean’s lack of taste buds. The Engineer, with his eyes glued to the zero-g volleyball tournament displayed on the vid-screen above the bar, wiped the froth from his lips on his jacket sleeve before asking, “Is she finished yet?”

  Calin turned and peered into a darkened corner of the room to watch a short, small-framed woman wag a finger in the tattooed and pierced face of a large miner towering over her. With a worried sigh, he replied, “I think she’s still warming up.”

  The “she” they were referring to was Neomi Otani, the Captain of the Sea Rover, and their boss. If there was a Smuggling Queen, it was Neomi. With a legendary hot temper and cold-as-space bitch attitude, she had been smuggling goods and services across the Solar System longer than any other smuggler. And now, he noticed, it looked like she was directing her famous temper at the Mining Supervisor. After all the years he had worked for her, Calin knew it was a dangerous sign the contract negotiations were not going well.

  With a sigh of frustration, Calin tossed down the last of his beer and motioned for Dean to follow him. Together, they worked their way through the crowd of ragged miners toward Neomi. Calin kept an eye on his boss and a hand on his blaster. He couldn’t hear what the supervisor was saying, but judging by how he waved his arms in the air and pounded a fist into his palm, he was not happy with Neomi’s terms. As Calin got closer, he could see the large miner’s few remaining teeth gnashing as he yelled in frustration at the Captain. Calin’s grip tightened on his blaster as one of the supervisor’s bodyguards stepped closer to Neomi, a blaster rifle slung across his chest.

  When he got closer, he heard his boss bark, “You better sit your big ass back down in that chair, boy!”, her agitated voice now cutting through the noise of the crowd with ease. The Captain glared up at the supervisor with her fists planted on her hips and an amused glint in her eyes. Calin knew that even someone three times her size would not intimidate her. And despite the tense situation, her attitude was more akin of a mother dealing with a petulant child and not the manager of a highly lucrative, if illegal, mining operation.

  “Did you think, even for a second, that you could strong-arm me? Screw me over? Without me and my ship, your ore will sit in that tunnel and go nowhere. And I will make damn sure no one else will haul it either.” Neomi stood her ground and twisted her neck to look up at the miner. Calin chuckled at the differences in their sizes. At almost two meters tall himself, even he had to look up at the mining boss.

  The bulky miner continued to glare down at Neomi, his nostrils flaring as his fists opened and closed repeatedly. Calin was worried the boss would lose his struggle to control his temper and swat Neomi like a fly. The miner’s guard stepped up beside his boss, his finger tight on the trigger of his rifle. In response, Calin edged closer to Neomi, his metal right arm still resting on his blaster, ready to snap it up in a blink. Dean moved past the Captain to flank the mining leader and his guard.

  It always made Calin jumpy when negotiations got touchy, but he had to admire Captain Neomi’s stubbornness, because she never backed down on her terms or accepted a bad contract. Officially, he held the position of her pilot aboard the Sea Rover. But he seemed to spend more time protecting the Captain’s arse than flying it. He couldn’t complain though, she had taken him on board and given him a job when no one else would.

  He couldn’t help but snort silently to himself, considering his current occupation. Back in the day when he flew surface patrols for the Planetary Patrol Division, there wasn’t a smuggler or pirate he couldn’t catch. Some of which had worked for Neomi, but the PPD never could lay their hands on the Captain herself. During his service, he really believed he was doing the right thing. It was his duty to uphold the law, protect the citizens of the Moon, and catch the bad guys. It wasn’t until after his... incident did he understand that some of those “criminals” he had put in prison were regular folk. People who only wanted real freedom in their lives. The freedom to go where they wanted and do what they wanted. To live life on their terms, with no government committee to dictate what they could say, where they lived, or worked.

  All of this was before the accident, before he had lost his arm. After that, to the PPD, a one-armed space jockey was useless. So he had received a medical discharge and got kicked out the door without even a ‘thank you for your service’.

  But oddly enough, his career
of catching smugglers, even members of her own crew, had brought him to the attention of Captain Neomi. So when she heard he had been released from the PPD, she reached out to him and offered him a job. She even supplied him with a cybernetic arm so he could fly again. Over the past ten years of working for her, he had more than worked off the cost of the arm and could have moved on to other jobs. A pilot with his skill level was always in outrageous demand in many sectors of the Solar System, legit jobs or otherwise. But he stayed on as her pilot, and as her occasional bodyguard, because she had earned his respect. And her ship was a genuine joy to fly. Almost every day was a new adventure aboard the Sea Rover.

  The deep voice of the mine boss boomed through the bar, interrupting his memories. “Damn, woman. You really are the cold pirate they say you are,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

  “Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, if we are finished insulting each other, let’s make a deal. I’m sure we both have other things we would rather be doing. Do you want the mining equipment I brought as trade or not?” Neomi asked with a raised eyebrow. A slight smile crossed her lips, “I’ll even throw in an extra blasting barrel as a bonus.”

  Before the agitated supervisor could propose a counter-offer, an alarm blared through the rustic bar. Red lights flashed across the room, illuminating the crowd of workers and their confused, dirty faces. Their confusion changed quickly to fear as the unmistakable sound of blasters thumped against the outer wall. Above the clamoring noise of the crowd, a voice yelled, “PPD! Raid!”

  The vid-screens in the corners of the room switched from the tournament to the exterior security cameras. Outside, spread across the floor of the crater, sat a wing of PPD troop carriers with surface patrol ships hovering above. Squads of heavily armed soldiers, clad in battle gear, streamed out of the carriers to take up offensive positions outside the entrance to the mine.

  Chapter 2

  The mine boss lunged forward, a pistol in his hand pointed at Neomi’s head. "You privateer bitch! You snitched us out!” The miner’s guard snapped up his rifle and attempted to cover Calin and Dean at the same time. Dean moved forward to step in front of the Captain, and Calin used the chaotic crowd to cover his movement for a clear line of fire.

  Captain Neomi crossed her arms and shook her head at the mine boss, “If there’s a snitch, it’s in your organization, not mine.”

  Calin could see the paranoia crawl across the supervisor’s face. The miner’s eyes flared as his finger tightened on the trigger.

  With a glance at the security feed of the advancing PPD troops outside, Calin interrupted, “We don’t have time for this.” In a blur, his cybernetic arm snatched the blaster out of his holster and squeezed off two rapid shots. The bolts hit the mine boss in the chest, center mass, and punched effortlessly through the heavy mining spacesuit. Dean, without hesitation, grabbed a chair and smashed it over the head of the guard. As the Engineer of the Sea Rover, Dean didn’t like to carry a weapon, not that he could hit anything with it if he tried. Meanwhile, the loud, bright flashes of Calin’s blaster only increased the frantic rush of the crowd toward the rear airlock.

  As the mining boss toppled to the floor, Calin grabbed Captain Neomi by the arm and nudged her toward the back of the bar. “Party’s over Boss, time to go!” he urged.

  At the airlock, they each raised their helmets out of their spacesuit collars and sealed their suits. The crush of the crowd pushed them through the airlock force field into the dusty main mine shaft behind the bar. The mining operation maintained enough atmosphere to keep the temperature of the tunnels above freezing, but not enough pressure to breathe without an oxygen mask or helmet. The operators were well aware no one would complain about the working conditions in an illegal mine. The workers’ main concerns were getting paid and supporting their families. To make a respectable living was extremely difficult on the Moon. Quality jobs were in short supply, and even the regulated jobs barely paid a living wage. Unless you were the owner of a legit mining company, or catered to the constant flow of tourists, survival on the Moon was a daily struggle.

  “Damn it, Calin! Did you have to kill him?” Neomi snapped over their private suit comms, jerking her arm out of his grip.

  “Sorry Cap’n, I was aiming for his gun, but this damn prosthetic glitched out again,” he apologized and raised up his metal arm.

  “Bend down here so I can smack that glitchy brain of yours.” Neomi exhaled in frustration before she continued, “Remind me to look into an upgrade, if we get out of this mess. Killing my clients is bad for business.” She turned to study a map of the mine on the wall of the tunnel. “Right now we need to find a way to the Sea Rover.”

  Dean pointed to the southern tunnel on the map, “That should get us closest to the ship.” He scanned the map with his suit and offered, “I’ll lead the way.”

  “Just a minute,” said the Captain before she turned to the remaining miners crowded in the tunnel around them. She switched her suit comm to a public channel and waved her arms for their attention. “If you don’t have a ride off this rock, you can come with us. I”m not saying it will be comfy, but I’ll try to squeeze as many as I can aboard my ship.”

  Calin frowned in disapproval at her generosity and expressed his concern over their private channel. “Captain, that many bodies will slow us down. We need to get out of here, and fast! We didn’t come here on a rescue mission!” He could see her head shake in disapproval inside her helmet, “I’m not leaving them to the PPD. These workers are only here to do a job, and to get paid. Like us. Illegal mine or not, they don’t deserve what the PPD will do to them.” She stared him right in the eye fiercely, “And you know more than most. Now round them up.”

  He reluctantly nodded his head in agreement. Judging by the firepower outside, the PPD weren’t interested in taking prisoners. This was an eradicate and clean-up operation. Any ‘lucky’ survivors would be sentenced to The Deep, the government controlled deep crust mine here on the dark side of the Moon. Although a state-run mine, it made the illegal mine he was currently escaping through look like a vacation resort. Most lunar mining operations, both legal and illegal, were digging for Ilmenite. A rare mineral high in titanium and oxygen, both precious resources here on the Moon because of the difficult process to extract them. His face soured when he realized how much Ilmenite the PPD’s ill-timed raid would cost them. Once things calmed down, the Captain was going to be pissed.

  With a quick glance back through the airlock force field, Calin confirmed the bar was empty of miners before he fired a blaster bolt into the control panel of the airlock. With an eye-dazzling shower of sparks, the force field failed, triggering the safety backup system. A heavy metal hatch slammed down to seal the archway. “That ought to slow down the PPD a little,” he said with a grin.

  Following Neomi’s orders, Calin used the public channel and directed the crowd to head down the southern tunnel with them, with Dean leading the way. Calin monitored the tunnel behind them, expecting the PPD to come swarming down the tunnel after them at any minute. He clenched his jaw. This crowd was slowing them down even more than he predicted. But he knew not to press the issue. Even now Neomi had an arm wrapped around a particularly old miner, helping him shamble down the tunnel. She would leave no one behind. Sometimes he didn’t know what to think about the Captain. At times she was as cold and heartless as a space rock. But other times she was one of the most caring people he had ever met. In a relentless, nagging mother kind of way. A truth his cybernetic arm reminded him of every day.

  At the head of the crowd, Dean used a map of the mine displayed above his suit bracer to lead the way through the spider-web of tunnels. Some of the tunnels connected to enormous caverns dug out of the side of the crater outside, creating useful loading bays for ships and storage areas, and all out of view of the orbiting spy satellites. He had landed the Sea Rover in one of these caverns, but getting back to it safely and unseen was a major issue with the PPD camped across the crater
floor. Calin knew it would be only a matter of minutes before the tunnels overflowed with troops. It was Dean’s job to find a fast way through the maze of mines to the Sea Rover.

  They had only traveled a few hundred meters when, even in the thin atmosphere of the mine, everyone felt the pressure wave of an explosion and felt a low rumble travel along the tunnel floor. Calin spun and aimed his blaster down the tunnel behind them. Shit! He thought, the PPD didn’t waste any time, they must have blown out the airlock’s metal hatch already.

  “Hold up!” Neomi commanded with a raised hand. She motioned for two miners to join her at a hover cart parked against the side of the passage. Even through the glare on her helmet, Calin could see a mischievous grin light up her face as she examined the self-driving cart. She ordered the two miners to hand over their mining lasers. Dean came jogging back, bounding in the low gravity, and exchanged a confused look with Calin. The mining lasers the Captain was fiddling with were handheld lasers connected to a power core worn as a backpack by the miners. Unless you pointed the business end at someone willing to stand still for a few seconds, the mining lasers were not considered dangerous.

  Ignoring everyone’s confused chatter over the public comm channel, Neomi placed the lasers and their power packs in the back of the cart. Calin watched in surprise as she popped off a panel on the power core and deftly pulled out a wiring harness, disconnecting some wires and rewiring others to different circuit boards. With a pleased nod to herself, she went to the front of the hover cart and entered the bar as its destination from the navigation display.

  With a tap on the Engage button, the cart rose off the floor and silently floated down the tunnel. Neomi turned to the crowd with a smile and motioned for everyone to continue forward quickly.