Sector 12 and the Art of Dying

By Joseph Kainz

Rab’s got a problem. Well, he’s got several. It’s not just that he’s living outside human space and that humanity’s defenses keep him there. It’s not that he’s a Ranger for the Frontier Corps, a more or less unsupported soldier with few resources and no backup. It’s not even that Sector 12 is filled with a multitude of alien races that don’t recognize his authority and so view him as a criminal or, worse, an enemy.

No, Rab can deal with all this. He’s dealt with it for a while. His real problems arrive when a group of Frontier Corps Marines gets blasted into Sector 12 during an unsuccessful attack. Rab is assigned the task of rescuing them, which is easier said than done given that someone almost immediately blows up his ship and tries to either kill or capture him for reasons unknown. That could be a problem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jan 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483445045

Book preview

there.

PROLOGUE

They say it’s cold in space. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never actually been.

Now before you get mad, I’m not fucking with you. It’s just that contemplating death makes me philosophical. Sure enough I’m a spacer but I’ve never actually experienced space. A sailor has been in the sea, (or at least in the sail.) The farmer has been in and on the dirt and farm.

A spacer is different though. We only experience space through our ships, through our suits, and these things are there explicitly in order to protect us from experiencing space directly. The spacer who directly experiences space is having his last (extremely brief) experience.

So I’ve never noticed that space is cold. In my experience it’s really quite warm. All the suits I’ve ever owned (or otherwise acquired) had trouble dumping heat fast enough. A ship is worse what with its myriad generators, reactors, engines, capacitors, processors and the like: all create heat as a byproduct. It’s hard to get rid of all that heat at once and ship designers tend to prioritize cooling the equipment over cooling the crew. That’s why my experience of space is of being hot, of continuously seeking the proper coolant balance that will allow your equipment to function properly while keeping you at least moderately comfortable.

Of course it doesn’t help if missile strikes have taken out over 30% of your external coolant ports, you’re running for your life at full emergency power and the ship you stole requisitioned had a shitty coolant system to begin with. What little was left of the coolant system was belching hot air right into my face at irregular intervals and for some reason the damned ship had five different alarm systems.

I had sort of gotten used to the low-toned regular beeping that signaled coolant system failure. It almost harmonized with the sporadic high-pitched triple beep that indicated I still hadn’t authenticated my access codes and the warning buzz telling me I hadn’t properly verified my flight calculations. The whooping sound that the damage panel gave off was driving me crazy though. That is when I could hear it over the missile lock warning. I swear that thing was a damned klaxon.

They had fired at least seven missiles now and the sensors on this crate were such shit that I had no idea how many had actually impacted. Fortunately I think the way the cargo pod fragmented after the second hit actually caused a few of the missiles to lose lock or detonate early. Still it was safe to assume they still had a mostly full magazine back there. Celeritas Drive was blown to hell and Midspace engines weren’t much better.

The damn ship’s weapons were turreted and the remote links to the cockpit either had never worked or were damaged. Not that those pea-shooters had been worth a damn in the first place of course. I couldn’t run, couldn’t fight and it was damn sure no one was coming to help me. The only help I was going to get was from myself. It was time to act, so I did.

The damage indicator panel exploded beautifully when I shot it. The coolant vent was more disappointing, it just sparked a couple of times before melting. The rest of the panels were somewhere in between. Overall I would rate the display as about a seventeen. Kind of a let-down if these were my last moments but you work with what you have, not what you want.

I left the communications panel for last. Long-range communications were out but I could still transmit locally using the hull (perforated as it was) as an antenna. Problem with trying to steal another man’s Potato is that he just might cook it until it explodes. Just to spite you.

I don’t know if they responded because I promptly shot that panel too, just because. Meh. About an eleven. Fuck this ship.

Artificial gravity was getting a bit wonky which made the run to the reactor room a little interesting. Sure when it cut out I could really launch myself but if I hit a plate that was still working it made for an abrupt and punishing landing. Somehow I made the trip with only a few bumps and bruises. There the reactor squatted in all its lack of majesty. It was a big black box. Engineers these days. No sense of aesthetics.

As I bypassed the safeties I reconsidered. Actually this ship was really fucking old, so the ‘these days’ truism didn’t apply. Which one did? ‘They just don’t make ‘em like they used to?’ Nope. ‘Back in the day?’ No. Now that I thought about it there really wasn’t a saying that meant ‘things used to be shit, they’re shit now and they’ll probably be shit in the future.’ If I survived I was going to have to come up with one. And as long as I was dreaming maybe I should get myself a pony too.

There, ready to go. Just to be certain I put a round into each of the cooling reservoirs. The coolant for the reactor was toxic but I didn’t stick around long enough to die from that. I had a much more interesting death planned.

The escape pod launch felt like I was being kicked everywhere at once. Hard. And when I say everywhere I mean everywhere. It hurt. A lot. So as you can imagine I was swearing up a storm when the reactor blew. That hurt a lot more, and then I died.

CHAPTER

1

Okay so I took a look at a couple Manuals of Style that I recently downloaded and they say I’m doing this wrong. Apparently you’re supposed to start at the beginning, not the middle or end. Who knew? Sorry about that. I’ll start over.

Before there was anything there was nothing. Just sitting there. No matter, no energy, no anything. Just nothing. Then apparently the nothing exploded and the explosion created everything.

Hmm. I don’t really know who’s going to read this. I’d better be inclusive. Conversely, maybe before there was anything there was this eternal being who created everything out of nothing. This eternal being brought all creation into existence out of love so that things and people could exist and partake in how awesome the being was.

Ehhh… I’d better be more inclusive. So the universe floats on the back of this giant turtle right? That giant turtle stands on top of another giant turtle, who stands atop yet another gargantuan reptile, who stands upon… actually I’m getting a bit bored now, and it occurs to me this is going to take a really long time if I start at the actual beginning. Long story short, it’s turtles all the way down.

Let’s skip ahead to a different beginning. When the Defensive Alliance of Planets was formed (which I’m going to call DAP from now on because then I can call a citizen Dapper. Heh. You can’t use that by the way, I’m going to trademark it.) Anyway when the DAP was formed they realized that the limitations of Celeritas Drive meant that it would be difficult for them to invoke their mutual defense treaty in any sort of meaningful timeframe.

After all if it takes months for your fleet and troops to arrive (to say nothing of mobilization time) some serious damage may have been caused in the meantime. As a result the DAP is not truly a unified political entity and each system is responsible for local defense until reinforcements can arrive. That worked pretty well for a while, but threats kept coming in one after another, usually from the same direction.

When deep space explorers reported finding the Terminus Rifts the Dapper Officers (see what I did there?) of the various militaries realized there was an opportunity. Each Dapper Planet (heh) committed to support a new organization, one that would be subordinate to but also relatively autonomous from the DAP. Thus the Frontier Corps was born (really boring name by the way. I’ve got nothing to jazz it up with. There just isn’t anything to work with.)

The Dapper Officers and Dapper Politicians (see? Much better than Frontier Corps) saw very clearly that, as a partially independent military, the Frontier Corps could potentially be a real threat to their freedom, especially since they would be stationed at the far off Terminus Rifts. (Now there’s only about eight months travel in Frontier Space until you hit Dapper Space, but back then Dapper Space didn’t extend as far and ships were slower.) The Frontier Corps needed to be powerful and relatively autonomous or they wouldn’t be able to protect the Dapper Planets. At the same time if they were given too much leeway they might eventually become a rival political unit and decide to conquer Dapper Space. As a compromise Dapper Planets committed to send Frontier Corps personnel, powerful weapons, sophisticated tech and their most valuable scientific breakthroughs. There are two key limitations though.

Aside from courier ships no Frontier Corps ship is capable of long-range FTL. Whether brought in by Dapper Ships or built locally the vast majority of Frontier Corps ships sacrifice range for combat power. This isn’t a liability because no Frontier Corps personnel are permitted to ever return to Dapper Space (again excluding couriers.) Volunteering for the Frontier Corps is volunteering to live in Frontier Space for the rest of your life.

This really isn’t a problem because the Frontier Corps built The Wall (another name showing no imagination whatsoever. The founding members of the Frontier Corps may have been strategic and logistical geniuses but they sucked at naming things.) It’s not really a wall of course, but a series of space borne fortresses, minefields, turrets and other nasty things that form a barrier linking the Terminus Rifts.

Anything that wants to get to Dapper Space either has to go through The Wall and then through all of Frontier Space behind it; or else try to go around the Terminus Rifts. Good luck with that one. Dapper Scientists (I swear this works with everything) still haven’t finished charting the edges of those things and there’s no way I’ve ever heard of to detect the exact position of a rift except hitting one with your Celeritas Drive active. Kiss that expensive drive good-bye.

How does this relate to our story you may ask? Well I’m glad you did. Frontier Space is a lot like Dapper Space only with more space and freedom and less security and amenities. Frontier Corps stays manned by offering incentives to those who serve. Forty years on The Wall and you can retire to your own little patch of land on one of the planets in Frontier Space. Lots of places to choose from, many of them quite nice from what I hear. Just find a spot no one else has claimed yet, turn in your digital chit and it belongs to you. Lots of folks in Dapper Space and Frontier Space who find the idea attractive.

Some folks though found even that a bit too constraining and those types of folk settled on the other side of The Wall. The bad side. In Dapper Space they call that side The Great Unknown. In Frontier Space I’ve heard that most folk call it The Other Side (starting to see a pattern here with their naming conventions?) Frontier Corps personnel charmingly call it The Kill Zone. And of course the various humans and aliens who live here call it by hundreds if not thousands of different names. Me, I call it a lot of things (most of which are not fit to repeat here,) so let’s just say I call it home.

Dad was a mechanic, Mommy was a prospector and both did a fair amount of salvage on the side. I was born and raised on a series of shitty but cheap ships. It wasn’t a bad life. Out here there’s always some new rock to pull valuable minerals out of, some planet-forming device or satellite or space station or ship that needs repair, some horrible accident or battle to exploit salvage. Our lifestyle didn’t give us a lot to fall back on though, so when Dad got sick we had to bury him in space long before we were near a doctor. And of course no one came to the funeral when I put Mommy next to Dad after her sonic scanner caused a new type of crystal to explode in her face.

Wasn’t a lot here for me. Could have just carried on after Dad and Mommy but I wanted something different and as it turns out the Frontier Corps had an offer for us Outsiders, both human and a few select aliens. Sixty years’ service and they’d give us the same deal as the others, let us into Frontier Space with full citizenship and a plot of land to call our own. Sounded pretty good so I signed up, went to the Gauntlet to be trained.

You know actually it occurs to me that I may be still be starting at the wrong beginning. This is still going to take really long if I don’t cut things down a bit. Okay long story slightly shorter: went to the Gauntlet, no place on The Wall for me but they made me another offer. Go back to The Other Side, The Kill Zone. Serve as a Ranger. Advance Frontier Corps interests in the region, keep the peace, gather intelligence, ward off small threats, warn of big ones. Survive sixty years of that and they’d let me into Frontier Space. So that’s me.

Now onto the proper beginning. When exactly did this particular mess start? I guess if we’re going to go with when it started for me I would say the ball truly started rolling when my ship blew up.

Now don’t get mad. I’m not just starting over again. I’m not talking about when the ship I pilfered borrowed exploded, but when my actual (quasi-legally owned) ship blew up. I was on Pntsc. Seriously look it up, that’s the official spelling. I can’t pronounce it either but it was named by Rollies and they’ve got substantially more vocal chords and the like to work with than I do. So anyway I was on Pntsc conducting my assigned investigation as ordered. Things weren’t going real well. The locals weren’t talkative except for one group of Rollies and I couldn’t understand what they were talking about.

Don’t get me wrong my Star was working fine and it had a full upload of… Rollese I guess… not really sure what their jibber jabber is called. It was just that the Rollies kept talking about some Elucidated Boulder. They were just going on and on about it. Now Rollies are hard to understand in the best of times but I persevered… which made me feel really really stupid when I finally figured out they were all plastered out of their minds (and Rollies have five of those. Must have been one hell of a buzz.)

As you can imagine I was pretty pissed and tired as I headed back to my ship. The UV shielding spray I had used that morning was making my skin crawl and there was something wrong with my rebreather which made it feel like I had the hiccups. I was really looking forward getting back to my ship, removing my protective gear and taking a long shower. Unlike my previous ship this one had a pretty nice water recycling system so the showers felt great (by which I mean they didn’t make my skin burn afterwards.) I still miss that shower.

Anyway because I was tired, at first I just stared like an idiot when the missile came streaking into view from the left and slammed into my ship. That turned out to be a big mistake because when my ship blew, it blew big. The massive fireball felt like it was burning out my retinas.

I did the natural thing and fell to the ground screaming and cursing and clutching my face. After a while the pain died down and I cautiously cracked my eyelids open. Everything was flickering purple and orange but it looked like I wasn’t blind, which was a mixed blessing because it let me see the merrily burning rubble where my shower ship had been a minute ago.

When I finally calmed down I took stock of my current situation. Well someone was trying to kill me again and they wanted me dead so badly they didn’t even want to steal my ship. That meant it likely was someone a little higher up the food chain than I usually dealt with. They had at the very least a missile launch facility at their disposal, which meant a base, personnel, resources.

I went over what was available on my own person. I had a few INTPADs for all my data storage needs, my MDC (Mobile Data Core, in case you call it something else,) a long piece of wire for some reason, my rebreather, a can of UV shielding spray, my sidearm with a couple of reloads and a half-eaten sandwich (squirb actually. Not my favorite which is probably why I hadn’t finished it. Although now that I think about it I can’t really remember that specifically. I’m usually pretty good about eating everything I make for myself. Weird.)

Anyway my first thought was a series of expletives. My first productive and coherent thought was that I needed to finish my business on dear old Pntsc and get the fuck off-planet. I scrolled through my MDC looking for outstanding warrants until I found one that would be useful.

Ireca, an Othosian. Not so alien that we couldn’t understand each other and Othosians’ preferred atmosphere was similar enough to humans’ that his home wouldn’t be an overly hazardous environment for me. I wouldn’t be able to breathe of course but my rebreather’s back-up tank was still mostly full. (I was very glad I had made a deliberate habit of topping it off every time I used it.)

The warrant was for smuggling, which in ye olde Kill Zone does not precisely mean contraband (since there’s no real unifying government and hence no unified ban on trading certain items.) It meant Ireca had been transporting things that most good people thought he shouldn’t be (even if there were places where such trade was not, strictly speaking, illegal,) and this in turn meant that he might be able to help me out in a couple different ways.

It took me a while to find his place. It was wedged in between a food dispensary and a grub farm in one of the seedier parts of the spaceport. The middle of town isn’t my favorite place for a confrontation but you work with what you get. The door screamed all kinds of danger so I started looking for another way in. No windows, no other doors. Guess Othosians don’t like natural light, not that he would have gotten much in these narrow streets.

Finally I spotted an atmo intake on the roof. Not ideal but it would do. I climbed up on some garbage and got a hand on the roof allowing me to pull myself up. Luckily the buildings were short in that neighborhood. Once up there I took a look at the intake. Not nearly big enough for me to fit down but it might let me get tricky.

I took a careful look around the area and waited until no one was around, then I held onto the roof with one hand and lowered my head and arm over the side until I could pound on the door. As soon as I was done I pulled myself back up and I was quickly glad I had been so cautious.

The sound of capacitors charging behind the door was immediately audible. He had something nasty pointed out that direction. I heard him open the door carefully and look out right about the time I finished stuffing the remains of my sandwich into the intake. The fan stopped for a second then started making an awful squishing and sloshing sound. I counted to four and then dropped off the side of the roof.

As I’d hoped the distraction of the fan had his focus in the opposite direction, although that didn’t mean I wasn’t seen. Now I don’t want to tell you something you already know but I have very little idea who my target audience is so pardon me if I over-explain some things. Othosians are… I’m not really sure what the term is. Quinto-symmetric?

They have five legs, five arms, five eyes, five ears… you see where I’m going with this. They literally face five directions at once and have an arm and a leg in each of those directions too. A lot of people see that and assume you can’t sneak up on an Othosian, and they’re mostly right. The thing is they can only focus on about three adjacent eyes at a time, the others just monitor for motion and such. They react very fast since all they have to do is switch which eyes they’re focusing on, and their impressive depth triangulation makes them extraordinary long range shots.

If you can get one looking the wrong way though, and get really close? They have some weaknesses. I stepped right past the barrel of the very nice bio-disruptor he was carrying and punched him in two of his eyes. He didn’t like that very much so I kept doing it. The guy was actually carrying four guns, his disruptor rifle in two arms and a pistol in each of his remaining three arms.

Othosians really like guns. They’re great shots and they can switch targets and directions so quickly they can almost provide three hundred sixty degree coverage for themselves. All those arms make reloading on the fly a snap too. The thing is because they’re so good with guns sometimes they rely on them too much.

I just kept punching him and punching him. The battering was sufficient to keep him stunned and off-balance. His instinct was to hold onto his guns because he equated them with safety but that clearly wasn’t working out too well for him. He finally dropped his guns and tried to grapple me but it was too late. The three eyes facing me were swollen and he was already getting woozy. Eventually I must have hit a sensitive spot or something because he passed out.

When he woke up my Star had already ripped through his entire data drive. It was going to take me quite a bit longer to properly sort through all that data but I had seen enough to drive my questions. I made sure to keep my weapon both trained on him and painfully obvious. Othosians didn’t really go in for clothes or furniture so I didn’t have anything to restrain him with or to. Still at that short a range even I would be hard-pressed to miss and he seemed to realize that.

I kept my questions short and to the point. Who else knows about the cans?

Ireca tried to play it coy. What? I don’t speak human.

I showed him my Star and all his limbs twitched at once. A good sign usually.

You see this Star? Can’t be duplicated, no one out here has this exact kind of tech. Can’t be copied because you can’t penetrate its shell with scanners. Can’t be opened or it self-destructs. Can’t be stolen because if I die or someone tries to remove it… boom.

But here it is right on my wrist and that means a couple things. First it means I’m a Frontier Corps Ranger. Second it means that you can understand me because it’s translating.

I gestured at his MDC. "Third it means I’ve taken all your poorly encrypted data like you were broadcasting it in the clear. Now as a corollary to these points I’d like to make a few more. One, our records show you were already warned about smuggling. Two, the Ranger who warned you didn’t know the half of what you were up to, but now I do. Three, tell me who else knows about the cans or I’ll blow your fucking head off!"

Ireca seemed slightly uncomfortable for some reason. You can’t do that! You don’t have jurisdiction here! Rangers are supposed to be about law!

He looked like he was thinking about trying to jump me so I shot him in the leg. One of the legs. Um… I’m not really sure how to designate which leg I shot him in. I suppose it doesn’t matter. That leg is gone now anyway.

He didn’t like that and what with the yelling and screaming I got the sense he really wasn’t paying attention to me anymore, which was good because he was no longer considering jumping me. It was bad though because he wasn’t answering my question. I got his attention back by shooting near him again. That got him to quiet down a bit. They don’t always believe that you will shoot them at first. Once you’ve shown that you will they tend to listen better.

Rangers are about justice. Law is for civilized places, not this hell-hole. Now I am going to deliver justice to someone and you have quite a few voices crying out for that someone to be you, don’t you?

A rhetorical question I know, and probably a bit over-dramatic but I was still mad about some of the things I’d seen while perusing his data. And also secondarily about the fact that I wasn’t going to get a shower.

The only chance you have is telling me something that helps me find someone I want to bring to justice more than you. So one last time. Who else knows about the cans?

I’ve noticed that when you shoot someone they either become much more or much less helpful. There’s not much of a middle ground there for some reason. Ireca fell into the first category.

I’m not sure alright? I received word through a private contact at one of the Sapient Resources guilds: Erreechachastreis. My contact told me the guild was paying top dollar for the cans provided the contents were intact. My contact said he was passing the information to me as a favor but that usually means the guild is just putting the word out quietly to professionals. Erreechachastreis has probably told all their business associates that they can trust.

I was less than pleased to hear that. If one guild knew it was likely some of their competitors did too. I wanted to punch something but I nobly restrained myself. Ireca was being helpful after all. I was about to tell him so when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I had left the door open a bit in order to allow the atmosphere from outside to mix with the domicile gasses. This allowed my rebreather to siphon off some oxygen and conserve what was in my tank. Who knew when I’d be able to replace the tank now?

My prudence paid off in spades when the movement I’d seen turned out to be probable hostiles moving carefully on my position. The light was right to let me see some silhouettes and that they were carrying some pretty big guns. Unlikely they were here for Ireca. I counted at least eight and that seemed like a lot for a piece of shit smuggler, even a heavily armed Othosian.

But if they were there for me this was becoming odd. How could they possibly have found me so fast? Were they the same guys who had blown up my ship, here to finish the job? That didn’t make sense. If they had spent the time (and resources) to put a missile into my ship they likely did so in the belief I was onboard. No way had anyone combed through all that wreckage yet.

Well it didn’t matter at the moment. I could worry about it after I fixed this problem. Now I punched Ireca again. I’d figured out where the pressure point I had hit earlier was so now I struck it again. He folded over into the wall and I made my move.

My blow wasn’t hard enough to knock him out for long and he woke up just in time to be conscious when the hostiles to opened fire on his house. I’d generously left him his weapons and he responded to the attack with vigor. I could hear him firing four different weapons in turn and screaming obscenities that I instructed my Star not to translate.

By the sound of it the hostiles were firing bio-electric disruptors and that was interesting for a couple reasons. First, it meant they wanted me alive. Although I like being alive I wasn’t too thrilled about this revelation for obvious reasons. Second, it meant that possibly they were the same group who had blown up my ship. They might have done so to strand me on-planet, might have had me under surveillance and waited for me to get somewhere they could pen me in.

The third reason was my favorite though. Bio-electric disrupters are fantastic weapons if you want to capture someone alive. They slightly overload a body’s bio-electric field and gently waft the victim into unconsciousness. They’re so precisely calibrated that mishaps or side-effects are exceedingly rare. They have a couple of limitations of course. Range isn’t great and you need a clear shot since they don’t penetrate many kinds of cover. They also need to be calibrated by species.

The hostiles clearly hadn’t anticipated encountering an Othosian and their shots were just pissing Ireca off. In fairness to him he had been having something of a rough day. The sound of the firefight was intense but I couldn’t leave just yet so I tried to nap through bits of it. I wasn’t having the best day either.

Finally the hostiles got a bit angry themselves and switched weapons. Particle weapons by the sound of it. Nasty. Ireca stopped firing shortly after that and then the hostiles stopped as well, presumably moving in to check the house. Time to get ready.

Now I really don’t know much about the hostiles. I’m sure they were reasonably competent men and women (and I use those latter terms lightly.) The thing is they knew they were hunting a Ranger and Rangers are supposed to be professionals. So I can’t blame them for taking the search of the house a bit lightly. After all who would be stupid enough to stay there? Surely a Ranger would have found a way out by now. They didn’t really expect to find anything, so they were a bit casual.

And no one really expects you to hide in a storage chest. That would just be dumb. The guy who opened it was really surprised to see me judging by the expression on his face. I’m guessing he was also surprised when I shot him but I’m not quite certain because he no longer had an expression after that. Or a face for that matter.

Frontier Corps trains us for short and long-ranged ambushes. By their standards I was basically in the hostiles’ pockets. The house wasn’t very big so there were only three of them searching it. Presumably the rest were looking for me outside. I shot the second one when he came to investigate the weapon discharge. The third knew something was wrong and he put a couple rounds through the wall at about chest height. They were good shots but I was crawling on my belly and they went clear over me. I peeked around the door jamb and turned that guy into toast.

Damn, now I’m hungry. Anyway the ones outside were in an expanding search pattern looking for me instead of a containment formation. This greatly inhibited their ability to react quickly to a disturbance in the house. I stepped over Ireca’s corpse and took off into the night.

It occurs to me that you might not be thinking too highly of me due to my actions regarding Ireca. He was just a smuggler after all. Now I don’t particularly care if you don’t like me. In fact I figure you can divide most sapient life into two categories: those who don’t