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Fan Fiction

The Engineer by Keiran Earl "DIE YOU FILTHY WASTE OF SCUM!" Maniacal glee filled his eyes as the tiny object streaked past the front of the ship. The heavy Intertrader made an uncharacteristically tight turn. The engine flared and a series of groans shuddered through the ship as it rolled and yawed harder to starboard than the inertial dampers were equipped to handle. The groans from the ship were met by groans from the pilot's chair as it strained under the increased gravitational stresses. There was a lot of pilot to support. Three rapidly changing numbers suddenly stopped flashing and changed from yellow to a solid green. Still leaning hard into the turn, the front of the ship briefly hummed and emitted a single short burst of brilliant red light. He loved that in the very fine dust that now filled every corner of flatspace, all energy weapons had a significant light castoff making them easily detectable as they sped along. It made everything so much more dramatic. He had tuned his viewscreen amplifier to specifically gain up the visible light spectrum on directed energy weapons so he could watch every detail of the destruction they wrought. He sat transfixed, leaning slightly forward out of his chair, fingers tightly clutching the armrests, staring at his viewscreen enjoying the sight as the beam connected with its target and turned it into little more than a sprinkling of dust. To him, it was magic. He loved every part of it. His hand fumbled around inside his bucket of Chycken Lite™ and pulled another nugget to the handy dipping tray inside without removing his attention from the last few moments of the carnage dispersing and melting away. He slammed a greasy finger on a button market "Target", eager to start another round of adrenaline. Another asteroid flashed up in his targeting scanners, this one larger and slower moving. He lifted his knee against the thruster control to turn the ship to follow. He could have engaged his tractor beam and tried to salvage some cargo to fill up his single empty hold, but it was a lot more fun to just blast away. He had been met with a rather questioning look when he had made his application to the Merchant's Guild, considering his rather inappropriate choice of equipment for that profession, but he didn't care what people thought. He was perfectly content to while away his days in deep flatspace without anyone around, occasionally putting in to a base to sell a morsel of crystals or ore and take care of a few other basic necessities. He wasn't interested in a profession as much as a cover. One hand reached out and selected an Apple ReTurnover from the automated food dispenser he had installed himself. It was something like an Autochef taken apart and reassembled inside out. Moments later, he was rewarded with a delightful aroma of baked apple pie and he eagerly tore the wrapper away to reveal his tasty pastry. The asteroid gracefully swung into the viewing area of his screen and his ship's targeting scanners again started to auto-track, showing three blinking yellow numbers rapidly changing as they worked hard to secure patterns of movement in speed, rotation and mass momentum. He had written the algorithms himself what seemed now like a lifetime before, back when he had been working at Rothspar's Advanced Weapon Research and Development Department. Mesmerized by the flashing yellow numbers, he thought back on his achievements at RAW R&D. * He had been Rothspar's smartest, most creative and most productive rookie engineer. He had worked on - and improved - virtually every single mainstream product. From re-working the metallurgy layering design in the heat dissipators inside the frugal low-end models to boosting efficiency of the power re-inverters for the beam refiners in the highly efficient models aimed at the higher end of the market by a stunning twelve percent. Twelve percent! It doesn't sound like much to the layman, but the difference it makes when applied in exponential expansions in extremely high power applications was extraordinary. It didn't sound like much to his managers either. They had said that twelve percent was really insignificant, but when he asked for an 'insignificant' twelve percent raise, they were naturally unwilling. Only a quick word from the sole engineer on the review committee had prevented his getting fired and had moved him to the committee member's own department. He still hadn't been given a raise though. At the time, working in the new department had been enough reward. The department was shrouded with secrecy and intrigue. So much so, that it didn't even have an official name. Even the employees in the sector were forbidden to use each other's names, using only numbers displayed on little ID cards bearing a picture that was blacked out. The excitement of working in such an elite group was matched only by the freedom that he had been given in his work. Of twenty-two years at Rothspar, twenty-one of them were spent in this department. Twenty one years with no name. And twenty-one years of pure, untethered creative outpouring. Short-wavelength beams, low-weight modifications, power boosting add-ons, power-miser phase recalculators, and at the height of it all, auto-tracking turret struts, which allowed even the dumbest turret operator to shoot with tremendous accuracy as the alignment of the entire turret body was subtly adjusted to intelligently anticipate moving targets. It was this development that had started the end of such idyllic life at Rothspar. After finishing the presentation of the modification to the same review committee that had voted to shut him down two decades previously, he was stunned to notice that they took the same stance towards his incredible breakthrough. "Doesn't really fit our market demographic." "Seriously, do we really need more accurate turrets? We don't want our customer base getting killed out there. It really is better when they survive and come back again to outfit another ship." "Maybe we can sell it with reduced shot payload, maybe less power output." "How about licensing it to reap a percentage of bounty?" "Most pilots like to do their own gunning. Who's going to want to be bragging about some infamous fiend they shot down, only to have that glory wiped out when someone points out the lack of real achievement? Sounds like a marketing dead-end to me." "Seriously, speaking of achievements, when is this guy going to come up with something really useful?" "Does he think we have an award for useless unmarketability or something?" He had been devastated. Six months had gone by where he had done nothing but sit in his office eating Apple ReTurnovers and drinking coffee while experimenting with some spare parts salvaged from a blown autochef unit. The day he got the compact food dispenser working was the day it all changed. What could be more useful than a device that could provide snacks and meals at the Autochef standard of quality, at the push of a button recombining Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules into carbohydrate strands fit for a king - and be small enough to fit into the pilot's cabin without taking up more than a smidgen of valuable space. It got him thinking. He hadn't even thought about why a department would be kept running for more than twenty years without any "really useful" productivity. He had checked through the company files, but there was nothing to be learned from them. The real shocker came when he checked the shipyard at the station he was working at. Every ship outfitted with turrets had been fitted or retrofitted with the autotracker struts. Complete market saturation in less than six months. So much for 'useless unmarketability'. No mention of it to him. No raise either. Twenty-one years in one payscale. The amount of money they had saved from his static wages was probably less than what they had made from a single sale to retrofit a vessel. Some of his modifications were nowhere to be seen, but the autotrack fiasco was all he needed. He had proof. He knew the agenda. It was time to make an agenda of his own. * He had chosen the Intertrader because it was a large ship, but with a rather unique weight distribution, it was possible to retool the thrusters to make it turn on a proverbial dime. He also liked the heavy carrying capacity and the two large cargo pods on either side of the cockpit. There was something extremely comforting about being nestled between two huge, heavy bulbs of armor. He had kept his basic equipment fairly light, but had added so much armor that there was only room for a single ton of cargo. He didn't mind. It was all going on Rothspar's company account labeled as a demonstration model and there wasn't anything else to use that space for. The guy who signed the expenditure report got a kick out of it, but let the extravagance pass. This R&D department really had a lot of freedom. A lot of cash flow too, apparently. * He had spent a month and a half working on the ship. He had left most of the systems fairly basic, spending most of his efforts on the propulsion systems and of course, the main gun. Rather than installing merely the best weapon he could find, he removed the entire weapon bay, replacing it with a very heavy turret mount. It still would never be able to provide 360 degree coverage as was possible on ships specifically designed to fit a turret, but even a forward facing gun was going to be pretty powerful. He had made sure of that by making everything in the turret supports strong enough to easily handle the weight of a main forward gun. His weapon of choice was now a combination of nearly every major modification he had developed in laser weaponry. Naturally, it was based on the most powerful gun Rothspar made. Even still, firepower had been increased by more than 350% per shot via custom phase modulations. Firing rate had nearly doubled and a tiny dedicated generator had been added to keep the power draw down even below that of a standard budget laser. To top it off, he installed a series of five high-output capacitors that would charge successively while the main gun was idle, providing up to five times the power availability on the first shot after more than 10 seconds of inactivity per capacitor. This was really going to be helpful when used in concert with the autotracker's lab test-proven 100% shot accuracy. * Everything had been perfect. He knew what the committee would say. He knew that the more amazing his work, the more they would try to make him feel that he had done nothing out of the ordinary and certainly nothing up to standard. In the review meeting after the flight display, they hadn't let him down. "What is this? A cargo ship dogfighter?" "What a joke. A ship like that is going to be a sitting duck. It's so slow." "A real dogfighter would be insulted by the mere thought of a gun that did everything for him. A great way to lose the thrill of the experience." "Did you see the ship specs? This thing is so armored it can only carry a single ton of cargo. That's less than a single tiny asteroid." "If that gun is so hot, why is the pilot hiding behind so much armor?" Agenda meets agenda. He piped up, "Actually, I thought this might have been the best ship any of you have ever seen. It's got all my best stuff." "Surely you must be kidding. I've seen Daggers that could blow this away." "And they were discontinued just last month." "All your best stuff? This doesn't even have a proper main gun! The basics are your bottom line." "Every time you come to us you put forward something even more wasteful and useless. You had better think seriously about your future here. We have been very generous in letting you stay on this long." One year previously, that would have been a crushing blow. He cast his eyes downwards and put on a sullen face. "But… the ship… it's not that slow… firepower…." "Not slow? Look at it! It's a slug!" "It's a slug carrying two lead weights." "I wouldn't give you ten dollars for that heap." "There's no way the fine Rothspar name is ever going to be associated with that ship." He stood up and slowly walked out of the room, not saying another word. * His attitude was a little different when he talked to the equipment requisitions clerk who had approved his purchase. Shaking his head he said, "Can you believe that! They thought it was such crap it wasn't worth ten lousy credits!" Having never attended a committee meeting before, the clerk was stunned at what he had just heard on the playback. "Wow. I guess the demonstration went pretty rough." "Well, let's just say that their disappointment was pretty evident when they saw that the ship actually didn't even shoot straight with the main gun." "Ouch." "Now I've got the personal responsibility to make sure that the ship never gets associated with the Rothspar Company name… Quietly of course." He pushed a form in front of the clerk's nose bearing big, bold letters reading, "Sold for Scrap" with a price below of Ten Dollars. "It's just a formality you know. In actual fact, no money even needs to change hands. The ship will be 'processed' internally by me personally." The clerk, still with a look of incredulity widening his eyes, slid his thumb across a panel at the bottom of the form. It was that easy. His little brainchild had now become his little brainchild. * His trance was broken when the yellow flashing numbers switched to green, indicating a clean lock. Placing the bucket of Chycken in his lap and putting the Apple ReTurnover in his left hand, he casually reached forward and pulled a somewhat sticky trigger release. He grinned triumphantly. The asteroid exploded into a myriad tiny, useless fragments. * He had a pretty good radar. It wasn't the best one out there, but it had never let him down before and it certainly had never done that before. He wiped the radar display with his hand, making sure the red light that had very briefly shown up hadn't just been a white light beaming through a spot of stray Chycken Sauce. He stared at his radar in anticipation as the sensor bar made another complete round. Just as he figured, it was nothing. He was alone in the asteroids. Shoving another mouthful of apple flavored dessert into his mouth with his left hand, he again mashed the well-worn and rather greasy "Target" button on his rather less-than-immaculate console. His ears were met with a sound he had never encountered before. It sounded like an error code. His eyes jumped to his scanner readout. It was blank. He remembered the curiosity that the Merchant's Guild Branch Manager had shown towards the equipment on his ship's spec sheet. He had been very surprised to see the Predator IV in use on a vessel listed on an application form for a mining and trading position. The reasoning was quite simple. The Predator IV was the best scanner out there. And while it provided absolutely no cargo-related information, it reported great detail about the armament of other vessels. You could never be too careful about safety. Especially at the helm of this ship. The Predator was the best of the best, but it wasn't doing anything now. It should have at least provided some kind of readout on a nearby asteroid or something. Was it broken? He flipped a release switch underneath the main console and lifted the interface panel up. His eyes expertly traced several strands of wire through the darkness, but found nothing amiss. Returning the panel to the closed position, he ran a quick diagnostic on the scanner unit. It came up clean. Another messy manipulation of the scanner panel brought up the nearest asteroid. That was as it should be, but an uneasy feeling started to creep through his thoughts. The Predator IV was the best of the best, but it wasn't perfect. He had read the technical manual. There were ways it could be wrong; ways it could be fooled. He absent-mindedly took another bite of his Apple Returnover, causing the sweet contents to spill a little bit on the fingers of his left hand. Another disturbing sound played through the cockpit. Something had hit his shields. That wasn't all that uncommon in an asteroid field, but his radar showed no nearby asteroids. And he had been watching. Suddenly, a symphony of extremely disturbing sounds assaulted his ears. There was somebody out there and they weren't trying to make friends. Shields were flaring under a barrage of very fast gunning. A missile lock brought up his red alert and his computer beeped a report of being scanned. The apple pastry gently completed a back flip next to the tractor beam readout. The bucket of Chycken rolled onto the floor, spilling nuggets and sauce where it landed. Two greasy, sticky hands flailed at the controls of the ship. He was pretty expert at blowing asteroids out of flatspace, but had never fought a real live opponent before. One hand slapped down on the countermeasures button, while the other jammed on the thrusters, pulling the ship into a hard turn. He couldn't see the ship on radar or scanners, but what was really disturbing him was that as he spun the ship around, he couldn't see anything on his viewscreen either. Fortunately, the missile had been taken care of, but his shields were still dropping fast. It was time to go gun to gun, but he couldn't see his target. His fingers pulled on the firing trigger, but the shots sailed wildly off into nowhere. With nothing to lock on to, his autotracker was worse than useless. It was firing at asteroids on the fringes of his radar range. He jerked his ship around in another circle, firing recklessly. Then it happened. The last asteroid on his tracker range shattered. With nothing to track, the main gun shut down. Frantic yanking on the controls did nothing. He could feel his heart rate climbing into his ears. He remembered bitterly the words of one committee member, "A ship like that is going to be a sitting duck." His own thoughts rebutted, "But this ship is far from a sitting duck. It's not slow like you wanted me to think you believed. The armor is still untouched and it is piloted by an engineer. The best damned engineer in flatspace!" Spurred to action by anger, he savagely lifted the control panel, reaching underneath and making two small adjustments. Slamming the panel back down, he squinted at the now brilliantly multicolored display on the main viewscreen. No more hiding! He pushed the ship hard into turn after turn, searching for his assailant. "There you are you little…" Greasy hands clenched tightly on the trigger for the gun. Nothing happened. He couldn't believe his eyes. He could plainly see a very faint outline of a ship well within his gunsights. But his ship couldn't see it quite so plainly. Smashing his hand repeatedly on the "Target" button was having no effect. He knew what to do. He jumped out of his chair and dropped to his knees, pulling a floor grate up. Reaching his hand inside, he found a small controller node and yanked two wires out. He twisted the ends together and slammed the grate back down. He jumped back to his feet and violently grasped his chair armrest to pull himself up, but he didn't quite make it. His foot had slipped on some Chycken Sauce. His hands flailed and grasped, but slipped off of every surface they met. He went down, knocking his head hard against the floor of his cockpit. * The acrid smell of smoke from electrical fires jolted him back to consciousness. It sounded like someone was knocking on his hull. *plink* *plink* *plink* Three rounds bounced off his unshielded ship. That was a bad sound. Still a little disoriented, he climbed very carefully into his pilot's chair, trying to assess his situation. His ship was a mess. All the technology in flatspace can't help much if the pilot is out cold on the floor in his own squalor. Every system was damaged. His armor was ruined and his gun was quiet and still. His generator was still online, but it was busy working on recharging his shields. His hand moved to the radio and he sent a standard request for ship identification. There was no response. He didn't know why, but the ship was sitting motionless in the viewfinder in front of him, gently massaging away the shields that kept returning. His radio beeped to life. "Surrender or die." A bounty hunter? He repeated his request for ship identification. Still no response. His eyes panned across the controls of his wounded ship. Nope, still not entirely a sitting duck. In a dangerous move, he called off his shields, seeing if he could coax a little energy to build up in his main gun. Remembering that he had managed to put the gun on manual control, he grinned with new confidence, knowing that not even an extremely robust vessel would be able to withstand a direct hit from his fully charged laser. He counted the seconds… 6 7 8 Another message crackled through the radio. "Surrender or die." 15 16 He knew that if he could allow it to power up for just 30 seconds, he could still be victorious. He checked his forward armor, regretting it instantly. Ignorance is bliss. 21 22 He tried to guess how heavy the ship was and if it seemed like there was an active shield. 28 29 He was only going to get one shot at this. Apprehensively, he squeezed the trigger, cursing his favorite battle slogan under his breath, "Die you filthy waste of scum…" As the viewfinder sparked and violently overloaded from the excessive spectral shift and gain-up, his eyes widened in shock. The shot sailed well off the side of the ship, following the path of the last shot the ship had targeted for. *plink* *plink* *plink* The radio was silent. There were no more chances. His enemy's guns quickly tore through the last of the protective armor eschewing further restraint. Lost eyes stared up into the black depths of nothing through the lifeless viewscreen. The optical correction electronics were dead, leaving it about as effective as a simple piece of glass. There was nothing to see, but he stared anyways, unexpectedly seeing something for the first time. Sad defeated eyes underscored with heavy bags. Greasy hair flecked with grey and brown from the Chycken Sauce. Filthy clothes housing a behemoth of uselessness. Mouth slightly open, covered with crumbs and smeared with apple filling and Wild Tang Chycken Dippen Sauce. He couldn't even remember his own name. As the sounds of his ship falling apart rolled unheeded past his ears, he made eye contact with the miserable specter reflected in the viewscreen of this once immensely powerful ship and repeated his mantra, "Die, you filthy waste of scum..."