Steal the Demon: A Science-Fiction Novella by Robert Roth (free novels to read txt) 📕

hit enough of them to leave a mess of tumbling containers, each the size of a transport shuttle, in her wake.

Kimiko launched another of her ship’s drones, setting it to cruise in a random pattern around the floating cargo. Then she lit up her drive again, pushing it back up to a quarter thrust as she skimmed her ship along the underside of the mega-hauler. She cut the drive as they curved back up over the top of the other ship, watching her pursuers slowly weaving through the constellation of cargo containers Paradox had created as they searched for her. With a couple of taps on her maneuvering thrusters, she pointed her ship toward one of them, lining up a shot ahead of the heavy along their current vector. As the interceptor passed behind one of the containers, the targeting icon lit up green, and she fired her coil gun. The slug breached the cargo container then slammed into the heavy, dumping its kinetic energy into the ship’s space frame in a spectacular explosion.

“Splash five.” The other nearby heavy flipped and began to point its sensors in her direction. Kimiko reconnected with the drone, then set it on a new course out of the wreckage toward open space. The Al-Zamani fighter took the bait, lighting up its drives in an attempt to pursue. Kimiko was ready for it, firing the second coil gun barrel when her targeting icon went green. “Splash six,” she said with a smirk.

But Kimiko didn’t stick around to gloat, flipping the ship around and lighting up her own drives. There were still two other Al-Zamani ships out there somewhere, so she couldn’t afford to get careless. As she cruised away from the mega-hauler, she saw that it was slowing its forward progress. The crew had undoubtedly noticed all of the action happening around it, as they’d released their own heavy drones in an attempt to recover the lost cargo. Seeing that right after her own little drone trap maneuver gave her the beginnings of a new idea.

She pitched the ship high and cruised up over Davida’s orbital plane, scanning her display for a specific type of vessel. Most of the passenger ships, especially the smaller personal craft and inter-Belt shuttles, were already well away from the Station. Their smaller profiles meant they could use their main drives closer in. Then she spotted what she was looking for, glancing at the call-out tag for confirmation.

“Paradox, can you verify for me that Sierra Tango Seven Victor X-ray is an auto-hauler with no crew aboard?”

“One moment,” he replied. “Confirmed. There is no personnel aboard the System Transways freighter Seven Victor X-ray, nor is there any AI present. It’s just a big robot.”

“Perfect,” she mumbled with a grin. “Now we just need to find those last two heavies.” As if in response, two familiar icons popped up on opposite ends of her display. Their course vectors showed them rapidly converging on her relative position. “Damn, they look like they’re in a hurry.”

Kimiko increased her drive power to a quarter thrust, building up speed as she approached the auto-hauler. Unlike its mega-hauler cousins, which could support crews more easily on shorter hops, auto-haulers were essentially giant, ceramic-composite boxes with a robot mind and a set of massive engines that cruised between all points near and far throughout the system on a preprogrammed course. They were under almost constant thrust, except for the flip and burn halfway through each leg of their trip. Because there was no one aboard, Kimiko didn’t have to feel guilty about blowing it up. It was one thing to defend herself against the trigger-happy missile jockeys Al-Zamani sent after her. But she didn’t want to take her anti-Confederation grudge out on some poor joes just trying to spin up a living out in the cold and black.

“Paradox,” she said, punching a set of numbers into her virtual keypad, “prep a drone for a quick burn, pointing at these coordinates and screaming all the way there.”

“Right away,” he responded. “I assume you have a plan?”

“Of course I do. Now do what I ask, please, and don’t bother the Captain while she’s flying.”

“My apologies.”

With a thought, Kimiko had the ship controller plot the convergence of her course vector with those of the incoming interceptors. Her plan was all about timing. She trimmed back her thrust just so, until their convergence point was right where she wanted it to be, then readied the coil guns.

“The drone is ready,” Paradox announced.

“Stellar. Prep the ship for silent running on my mark.”

“Prepping now.”

Collision avoidance alarms began to blare, which Kimiko silenced with a thought. As they rapidly drew closer to the auto-hauler, it started to fire off frantic, automated distress messages, which Kimiko ignored. Pressing herself down into her pilot’s seat, she held the ship’s course steady, despite every instinct inside her screaming to change course, change course. The Al-Zamani interceptors, finally catching on that something wasn’t right, started to boost their own speed, but it was already too late.

Ten kms. Five kms. Now.

Kimiko fired both coil guns in succession. The auto-hauler immediately erupted in a fiery inferno, its bulky form disintegrating into a raging mass of red-hot debris and cargo.

“Crash stop,” she called out as she fired the retro thrusters at full power. “Launch the drone.”

If someone were watching through a nearby viewscreen, they would’ve seen the ship suddenly enveloped in its own blazing hot exhaust before it plunged into the swiftly dissipating explosion of the auto-hauler. Kimiko was thrown hard against her seat straps, but the grav-gens still kept her from experiencing the worst of the sudden deceleration.

“The drone is away,” Paradox informed her.

“All quiet. Make us disappear,” Kimiko announced as she slapped the emergency cutoff switch, killing the power to the ship’s engines, while Paradox shut down all but the ship’s essential systems. Kimiko felt herself float up against the safety straps as the grav-gens shut down. Except for the latent heat from the drive cones, the ship was giving