Disconnect: 1st Renegade Tale in the Outfitters Universe

By A.A. Forringer

Arthur wanted to see the world, but when the Outfitter plucked him from his home in the Canadian Rockies his plans were changed. Instead of seeing the world he would see the universe, and not as a member of the Fleet fighting a war he wanted no part of. Slipping away one night he took a fast freighter and left the Fleet behind with plans to see everything. He would be a freighter captain landing on new worlds, seeing strange sites was his main goal, until he met Levimap, she would change all his plans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A.A. Forringer
• Release date: Jan 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311109064

A.A. Forringer

Retired Law Enforcement, country boy who has been around the world, here, there, everywhere.Favorite Quote: All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.”― T.K. Whipple

Book preview

Disconnect

1st Renegade Tale in the Outfitter's Universe

by. A.A. Forringer

Copyright 2015 A.A. Forringer

Published by A.A. Forringer at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to the following people.

To Mom and Dad for always giving me their best.

To Mike and Kevin for always having my back.

To Katelyn, may she one day be surrounded by fans.

To Tony M. the friendliest and most genuine man in all of Philadelphia.

Special Thanks to Graham Kennedy for the fantastic cover. You can find more of his awesome art at Graham Kennedy Illustration @ Facebook.com

Table of Contents

The Story

About A.A. Forringer

Other Books by A.A. Forringer

Connect with A.A. Forringer

1.

Hot.

Too hot.

Way too hot.

Arthur threw back the thin cover and put his feet down on the deck, and immediately picked his feet back up. The floor wasn’t that hot but it surprised him. He put his feet back down and quickly walked over to his chair and put on his shoes.

Door open. Arthur walked out the door, noting he was sweating profusely as he went. Arthur wiped his brow three times while walking to the bridge area, even though it was only a 20 meter walk. He slide himself into the pilot’s seat and started to check over the controls. He spun around and checked the environmental controls, gravity normal, pressure normal, atmospheric mixture normal, ah here it was temperature control. Arthur wiped his brow after looking it over quickly, the temperature was up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Although the thermostat was only set at 64 degrees.

What the hey was going on here. He uttered out loud. Arthur started to run a systems diagnostic program on the heating/cooling system on board, and came to the solution a few minutes later. The internal coolant pump was out of balance.

Nuts Arthur said in frustration, this was another problem he did not want to deal with, as if he did not have enough problems already.

He got up and walked back towards the tool locker to grab some tools. He pulled up the schematic of the area he had to work on and transferred it to a comm panel. Arthur had been using the comm panel a lot to do various repairs and upgrades to the ship. His ship, not the fleet’s, not someone else’s, but his.

Arthur was proud of what he had done so far, but every time he did something to improve and shape the ship the way he wanted it, it caused an overload or the power balance to be thrown off in another system, and with no one else to help him fix it he had to do all the work himself. Which was all right with him but it did slow him down. He wanted to get to the Trader’s Center in four months, but everything was taking him longer than he though, so it looked like it was going to take about six months.

Granted he knew that there were going to be problems, he had anticipated a lot of them, but every once in a while he had wished he had taken a few different steps, the biggest thing he wished he had taken a droid with him, at least one of the repair droids, he could use it to carry tools, and do other simple work, like removing access panels and such. He could always restore the voice to the ships computer but, it was a little to spooky to have a voice talking to him out of thin air, beside the thing was always talking and if there was one thing Arthur did not like was someone talking all the time.

He had been raised by his father in the Canadian Northwest, and it would be days between the times they talked to each other, especially if his father was in one of his dark moods. Even when they went into town to trade the furs his father had taken the past winter, they did not talk to many people. On those trips to town Arthur just grabbed all the electronics, science and travel books he could find, bought them with the money his father gave him for chopping wood. The only person Arthur talked to a great deal was the traveling trader, Mister Lewis, who came to their house in the woods about once a month in his pickup truck bringing in small amount of groceries that his father would call for and take away some of the wood Arthur had chopped. Arthur’s dad did not talk much during the visits, but Mr. Lewis talked enough for two people telling his stories of the world; traveling on the sea when he had been a merchant marine, and then his long days on the road while driving a truck on long hauls for a company in the United States. His father would come and go during the stories puttering around the house Mr. Lewis, would sip the moonshine made by his father and he would talk and talk but Arthur would listen to every world laying on the floor in front of the fire.

One morning while he was laying in bed and the two men were saying good bye he heard Mr. Lewis tell his father something. Bob, your boy has the wanderlust. He did not hear his father respond, which meant he probably just shook his head. He has got it bad, I have seen that look in my own eyes when I was his age, he will never be happy till he has seen the world. Arthur had said the word over and over and had to go look up the definition himself, a strong and innate desire to rove or travel about. Yeah that was what he wanted to do, see the world, wanderlust.

But that had changed about a hundred or so years ago, and about a million or so miles away. When he had been snatched from his bed by the Outfitters just days before his eighteenth birthday.

Sure Arthur was glad to be away from the cabin in the woods, but he had his own plans for his life and it sure did not included being in some fleet to charge across the galaxy and save Earth. Not that he wanted the Earth destroyed, but he did not want to fight anyone either, he just wanted to see things. He wanted to travel and see the world. So after going through the training program for a few months he slipped out of his bunk and made for the supplemental ships that were available and not part of the fleet and took one. It was not stealing, as far as Arthur knew, the ships were there to be used by anyone who did not want to join the fleet, which matched Arthur to a T.

After doing a lot of research, and studying Arthur had made a very informed decision, he thought, he grabbed one of the fast smaller-sized cargo ships and took off.

That was about two months ago, and Arthur had been alone ever since. He had rigged the ship to run at his commands and his commands alone. He had talked to the ship for about three weeks, getting suggestions and such but then he had just about been driven crazy because it, the ship’s computer, talked all the time. When he got up in the morning, when he went to bed at night, and even when he was trying to eat. Finally Arthur had had enough, and shut the voice off, the computer tried to talk to him through the display screens at first but since Arthur stopped reading them and never responded to them, the computer had stopped that after a few days, now all the displays showed was the information he had asked for and that was it.

Arthur had reached the access panel indicated on the comm panel and removed it.

He laid his six foot two, two hundred pound frame down on the deck and wiggled into the access area.

It was hotter in here than anywhere else in the ship, Arthur worked as fast as he could, but the sweat was stinging his eyes, and making it hard to handle his tools. After about an hour he had the thing back in a balanced state, and crawled back out into the main hallway. After resting on the floor in the relatively cooler air for a few minutes and when he felt some of the sweat stop pouring out of him he got up grabbed his tools and made his way back to the main crew area.

Arthur threw his tool belt back into the alcove that housed the workshop, too drawn out to put it away where it belonged and walked over to the food replicator. This was one of the first things he had reprogrammed, even before taking off from planet Sanctuary.

He went to the slot in the wall and ordered water, cold. The machine hummed for a second and then produced a large glass of cold water. Which was Arthur’s size of large instead of those wimpy little glasses that it used to dispense.

Arthur took the glass over to the table and sat himself down on the cushioned seat, took a long sip of water and relaxed, and tried not to think of all the other things he had to do on the ship, instead he thought of the Trader’s Center.

From all that he read about it while back on Sanctuary the Trader’s Center was one of the few places on the Alarian frontier that allowed free trade, according to the Social/Economic study done by the Outfitters. In part because the Alarian clan that controlled the area also had a large network of spies and information gathering that was done at the Trader’s center. The other thing was the Trader’s Center was a large source of revenue for the Alarians due to the heavy taxation. But Arthur decided he could deal with the taxation, and as for the spies, well he did not know anything so he figured they could not get blood from a stone, as his father used to say.

Arthur leaned back and closed his eyes thinking of all the things he might see, and the places he might go as a trader. Heck he might even go back to Earth eventually, after the fleet had thwarted the Alarians, that is. Arthur was very confident that the fleet would win, the fleet was huge and they were training so hard when he left, he had no doubt they would win.

Woooooooo.

Huh Arthur said out loud.

Woooooo. The siren continued to wail.

The ship shuddered and Arthur was thrown out of the chair towards the bridge. Arthur sprang to his feet disregarding the spilled water on the floor and on his pants. Arthur reached the cockpit in two seconds and realized what had happened, the ship was no longer in hyperspace. Arthur slide himself into the pilot’s chair and again started pulling up the displays on the current status of the ship.

It took a minute to determine what had happened but he got the answers he needed. There had been a large gravometric fluctuation in his flight path that was unpredicted and thus the hyperspace bubble around the ship had been disrupted. Arthur recalled what he could about gravometric anomalies. They were caused by collapsing stars, or comets or other things that were not necessarily recorded in any stellar cartography. Arthur was already in action as he pulled up the star charts for this particular area. There was a solar system in front of him that might be the cause of it, but his hyperdrive flight path did not take him anywhere really near the system.

He really did not understand, but decided to be careful, so he slowed the ship to half maximum thruster speed and become very curious. The first thing to do was to get information on the solar system, and that required the computer. Arthur hated to do it, but he knew it would be quicker and easier than using the keyboard. He keyed up the proper sequence and reactivated the voice mode of the computer.

Hello, Arthur. The nasally southern twanged voice of the computer said, sounding annoyingly cheerful.

Arthur rolled his eyes and replied Hello, computer.

Oh please, Arthur don’t be so impersonal, you can call me Solomon, that is my name you know

This was the other large regret Arthur had about striking out from the fleet, the computer. He had picked the first ship that he had come across that fit his needs, able to handle a fair amount of cargo, fast, and able to be handled by one person. But the one thing he did not pay that much attention to was the personality of the ship’s computer. This positornic brain was rated highest in three areas friendly, informative, and helpful. By the time Arthur discovered this the computer had been activated too long, to do any major changes to it. After studying the problem extensively Arthur had given up after realizing how long and expensive a process it was to change the personality of a positornic brain after it had developed its own patterns.

OK, Solomon, I have a problem.

Are you referring to the ship suddenly being thrown out hyperdrive, exactly five minutes and thirty-three seconds ago.

"You know about that? Arthur asked with a bit of surprise.

Of course, Arthur, you may have turned off my speech capabilities but, you did not turn off my sensors, either internal or external.

I see, OK, so what threw us out of hyperdrive?

There was a pause longer than normal. That Captain Arthur, was due to an explosion of a ship in our direct flight path.

Well that would explain it, sort of Arthur thought. But it would have to be a very large explosion. Is there anything left of the ship, Solomon

No sir, except for a few stray pieces of hull, the ship is almost totally obliterated, it appears from the residue in the area that the ship was carrying a large amount of the substance Permanor, which is a solid fuel used in moving large stellar bodies, such as asteroids for the purposes of mining.

Do you know what caused the explosion, Solomon? Arthur said not really expecting an answer at this point.

Yes, sir.

Surprised and annoyed Arthur asked OK, so what caused the explosion?

A shot form the main blaster of the ship currently located in the solar system behind the moon of the second planet in this solar system.

What ship, where, has it seen us yet, go to battle conditions, and why didn’t you tell me about that first off? Arthur panicked and immediately started shutting down various systems on the ships and trying to get the weapons systems charged up all at the same time, and flubbing most of the startup and shut down protocols in his haste.

Well, sir, to answer your questions sequentially, it is a Alarian raider ship, located behind the moon of the second planet, battle condition is not able to be set at this time due to your current activation of the shield generators but power not being routed to them in the proper sequence, and I did not tell you about it because you did not ask. Solomon was starting to sound like his feelings had been hurt and I remember before you shut off my voice before, you stated you only wanted me to answer questions that you asked, so I was just following....

Never mind that right now, Solomon, OK, I’m sorry, here you do this. Arthur said, stopping his frustrated attempts to route energy to the defensive cannons on the ship.

Apology accepted, the weapons systems are now operational and the shields are now on line, Arthur, is there any thing I can do for you, are you hungry, according to my records you have not eaten in exactly twelve hours and fifteen minutes, I could prepare a nice steak......

Not right now, Solomon, I’m a little worried about that ship. Arthur replied, trying not to upset him but trying to control his panic at the same time, Could you tell me Solomon, has the other ship seen us yet.

All scanners, indicate that it has not, but it will be able to in approximately five minutes when it finishes its orbit around the small moon.

Arthur nodded and started to amass the information that was on the displays and came up with a quick plan.

2.

It had been three days since the ship had been pulled out of hyperdrive and Arthur had collected a lot of information since then. He had dove behind the third planet as the Alarian raider class ship had come from around the moon and stayed on the opposite side of it as the other ship made its orbits around the moon. During that time he and Solomon had become a surprising good team, playing the cat and mouse game with the Raider. First they had set up some very good passive sensors that only transmitted in a quick burst and only when the Alarian was on the other side of the moon. The sensors were placed in geosynchronous  orbits and on the surface of the moon as well. Then Arthur had Solomon brief him on everything he knew about Alarian raiders.

The ship was a raider, designed to outrun, outgun, and capture smugglers, and legitimate cargo ships alike. This particular ship they learned from their surveillance was the 'Marcucsian Warrior', named for someone’s home world Arthur theorized, was actually a privateer. It was had a licensed issued from the Alarian clan in this sector to prey on ships, ships that were operating without permits sold by the same Alarian clan, who claimed this particular area of space, even though they had no colonies or outposts in this area.

But this ship had run into too much of a good thing apparently. They had been going about their tasks, stopping ships, checking permits and selling them for a portion of their cargo, and that is when things had gone wrong. Their last legitimate stop was a Marchinan freighter, carrying a load of Slavvin spice. Slavvin spice was a famous narcotic, very potent and very expensive and used to cure a variety of illnesses and could also be used to create quite a high, if all the information the Outfitters had put in his computer banks were correct. The Alarians on the raider had thought they had been very lucky, because the Marchinan freighter had let its permit lapse. So the Alarians had taken most of the spice shipment into their own cargo hold. That was a mistake, one that had caused the current situation, at least that was the theory. It was a mistake that Arthur was planning on taking advantage of for his own profit.

Arthur had been sleeping in his command chair, in case anything changed and was rewarded with a burst of information every three hours when the raider went around the moon again.

What do we have in this batch Solomon, Arthur asked hoping that the computer’s predictions of the raider were coming true, and the situation would be over soon.

"Well sir, these latest reports indicate that the disturbance on the raider is almost over, there are at present, according to the transmissions emitting from the personnel on the ship only, three personnel left, and they all appear to be wounded in some fashion.

"Solomon, you are incredible, let me see the raw data, and then start making calculations for us to come alongside the raider.

Yes sir, raw data being displayed now. Solomon answered with a certain amount of smugness in his voice, that in Arthur’s opinion well deserved.

After much research and using Sol as a sounding board he had come up with a theory that matched the situation and explained what was happening.

They crew obviously had not known all that much about the spice or they would have been more careful. They had placed it into their general storage area, just like it had been in the Marchinan hold. But they had not adjusted conditions, the Marchinan hold had been exactly forty degrees cooler than the raider’s hold. At the higher temperature in the raider’s hold the spice had begun to release fumes, which had not been vented properly and had slowly leaked into the rest of the ship.

That is when the problems started. The fumes in their minute portion started to have some physical and physiological effects, inability to sleep, paranoia, delusions violent emotional outbursts and the prolonged exposure had lead to a logical conclusion in the already violent Alarian raiders/privateers culture; mutiny.

It had started with a knife fight, then a general restriction to quarters as ordered by the Captain, and then the outright attack on the freighter carrying the Permanor. Then the ships crew had turned on each other in a general melee and started killing each other off. That had started three days ago, with the crew of thirty- five being reduced to three, according to Solomon’s count, the ship was also badly damaged during the infighting.

All this information came from intra-ship transmissions that were emitting from the ship, Solomon had hypothesized this after analyzing the power of the transmissions and the fact that the personnel on board called each other by their first names and taunted each other, as relations on both sides of the mutiny broke down and the sides broke down from two to four and then to eight and finally down to everyman for himself.

Initially Arthur was just going to wait until the ship could not follow him, and leave the system, but then an idea started to develop in the back of his brain. The ship was going to crash into the moon due to its erratic orbit, and no one would ever know what happened, so why not make a profit from it. Arthur’s plan was to match orbits with the raider, board it, strip it down and then let it crash into the moon after he detached.

It was a good plan, at least it had been a day ago, but now looking at the raw data, Arthur realized he might have to board the ship while some of the crew was still alive. If he did not board on the next rotation, the raider might not make it around for another pass.

Solomon, get ready to put the plan into action, on the next rotation, we are going to come from underneath and board.

Arthur according to my calculations there is a good possibility that the three crew members are still alive and very willing, and in fact ready and wanting a fight.

Arthur knew all of this, and was not looking forward to having to fight anyone, but it was either do that or have pass on what was in the cargo hold, and he did not want to do that. It would be much better in the long run to arrive at the Trader’s Center with something in his cargo hold, than to try to start from nothing.

Arthur got up from his seat and stretched, "I know Solomon, but that is my decision, and I’ll be ready for them when I board, you just remember your part of the operation and it will go all right.

Two hours later, Arthur had almost everything ready. He was armed fairly well, with a large blaster rifle, on wide shot. Two energy pistols, fully charged and on their highest setting. One large knife, and a variety of throwing stars also as many grenades as he could fit on his belt. Along with his weapons he had on two Commlink, one to keep in contact with Solomon and the other to hook up to the other ship as soon as he could so Solomon could raid the data banks, and take control of the ship if he was able. Along with all this he was wearing protective body armor, and a breathing mask to avoid the fumes he knew to be in the ship. The last thing Arthur had was a backpack mounted cutting torch, this final piece of equipment was heavy but would be invaluable in cutting through anything, locks, jammed doors, and blocked passageways.

Arthur looked at his comm panel and went over the instructions to Solomon one more time, hoping he had not forgotten anything. As smart as Solomon seemed to be he was still pretty new and could not always be counted upon, in Arthur’s opinion, to act quickly and decisively and never on his own initiative.

All the training that Arthur had received back on Sanctuary had boiled down to one clear phase, the ships they were given and everything else for that matter, were only tools, the men manning those tools were still in charge, and ultimately it was their lives were the ones on the line, not the computers. Computers could be duplicated, even rebuilt but a person’s life once gone from the body could never be brought back.

Arthur double checked the orders to Solomon one last time. Maintain communication with him at all times, warn him of the positions of all the personnel on the ship, keep the personnel from making any type of communications off the ship, and raid the computer and take control of the ship as fast as possible. Of course Solomon was in charge of the docking procedure, and keeping his long range scanners up and running and looking for trouble on the horizon, whatever the horizon was in space exactly.

The clock in the corner of the comm panel, was set in countdown mode, Arthur checked it. Ten minutes to boarding. Arthur ran down through his gear one more time, to avoid being thinking how nervous he really was.

Solomon Arthur called out, sort of hoping the computer wouldn’t answer and he could call off the boarding.

Yes, Arthur?

Are you ready to dock the ships?

Yes I am, are you sure you don’t want to pilot the ship for this maneuver? Solomon asked.

No, you are probably going to do better at it than I would, besides I have to many other things to do right now, so I think for both of our safety, you had better do this one, besides I want to board that ship as soon as possible.

You are right again, Arthur. The ship has just came around the moon, I’m leaving the surface now.

Arthur felt the slight acceleration upwards, and checked the progress on the nearest wall mounted comm panel located near the upper airlock. The screen was split into four areas for this operation. The largest one showed the ship’s relative position to the moon, and the raider ship; the second one was the view directly overhead and would show the actual clamping, and the airlocks connecting; and the third was the position of the crew members on the ship, with the color marking the relative life signs of each, blue for dead ones, orange for wounded and red for vibrant health. The fourth view would show the various power emissions coming from the ship, weapons, engines, communications and life support. The last display would not be fully functional until they docked, because Arthur did not want to use the active scanners until the last possible moment, to give any Alarian still manning the sensors as little warning as possible.

Arthur watched the three displays with intensity, and occasionally muttered comments to Solomon. Solomon for once was not talkative, which surprised Arthur. He knew the computer could do two hundred and a million things at