OT: Fanfic

[JAFisher44]

Indeed.

Kiran's vessel was built to be crewed by a minimum of three people. Kiran was able to bypass this little limitation by the use of DNI or direct neural interface. Kiran's head was a mess of the most advanced computer technology available. He could interface with almost any computer system he came across. Some, like the central core of his ship were quite nice to work with.

When interfaced, his ship was like an extension of his own body. It's sensor arrays were his senses, its thrusters his legs. It was not unlike flying through empty space. Likely this would all be over as soon as he made orbit.

Granted, a little disorderly conduct and a few murders probably wouldn't warrant a cap ship, but the orbital guard was likely tracking his position right now and dispatching several cutters to intercept him. For certain, the cutters would not be able to match his craft for speed or acceleration. The down side of this is that it is on account of the mass of all the weapons and ammunition they were pushing that he wasn't.

So, if Kiran wanted to live, and he most certainly did, all he had to do, was somehow not be where all those cutters tracked him to. This of course was not as easy as it sounds. Kiran's only chance wasn't much of a chance at all, and if any of the officers on any of those cutters was worth the pay of a recruit deckhand they would see through his ruse in no time flat.

Still, he had to try. The plan started with a freighter he had been tracking since he took off. It's escape vector was near enough to his that if he pulled off the fanciest flying of his life he could probably ghost it without dying.

Of course he was being actively tracked by those cutters. This meant that he would have to somehow convince them that he was maintaining his current trajectory. Hopefully they were lazy. Hopefully they were ignoring the really expensive batteries of sensors at their disposal. Hopefully they were just tracking the huge beacon of his thrust.

It only took about five minutes of fevered work to configure a drone to mimic the important sensor readings of his thrust. Unfortunately there was no way that it could mimic any of the other things it would need to if those damn officers were doing their jobs right.

The timing went off perfect, and Kiran cut his thrust in perfect timing with the launch of the drone. It continued at the same speed and trajectory he had occupied only seconds before. Now in free fall, his ship howled and screamed as he tried his best to maneuver toward the freighter screaming up below him.

Kiran's ship was not, by any stretch of the imagination, aerodynamic. It was not meant to glide in an atmosphere. Any sort of maneuverability it usually had was acheived through brute force thrust. Right now, he could certainly not afford any of that, it would draw too much attention. For now all he had was air brakes and a computer that could do really good physics calculations. He hoped they didn't notice the god awful turbulence he was kicking up.

Now he had to take a chance, there was no way he could actually intercept the freighter without using thrust. Hopefully the drone had moved far enough away for them not to notice. A few long seconds of hard burn and now Kiran was moving parallel to a freighter twenty times his size, about a meter apart. This was too close for most sensors to distinguish. Of course it would be all for nothing if anybody did their job right at any point. Now all he could do was wait and see how things played out.

Slowly, Kiran edged his ship closer to his newfound travel partner and winced as the magnetic grapels attached with a loud clang. Undoubtedly someone on the freighter noticed that, and now they would be running diagnostics. It wouldn't take them long to find out that they were pulling a significant extra mass. By now, if everything went right the cutters would be watching a drone burn by where they expected Kiran's ship. Klaxons would be sounding. Calls would be going out to orbital control, sensor logs would be parsed. If everything worked. If not cutters would be waiting for the freighter as it left the atmosphere. Even so it would only take minutes for them to find where he had gone to. Hopefully it would be long enough for him to get out of weapons range.

Kiran felt things smooth out as the freighter cleared the atmosphere. He listened carefully to the commercial band hoping for the impossible.

"Merchant Vessel," His computer translated the feed "Alter your trajectory to the following course and prepare for inspection."

The string of profanity that followed probably had a stronger heat signature than Kiran's ship at full burn. Kiran tried to figure his odds against four cutters, which is what his sensors told him he was up against.

"What does it matter?" he muttered to himself. At this point his only choice was to run and hope for the best. No way he could fight them. He would have to hope that his armor held out.

Mentally he keyed a sequence he was loathe to use, and groaned as about 30 gravities of thrust overloaded his inertial dampers. At max acceleration it would take about a minute for him to move out of range of the guns that would, undoubtedly, do their best to end him. Awareness faded to black as the horrible force of acceleration pulled the blood from his brain.

'Well, at least I won't feel the end.' the thought flitted through his mind just before he blacked out.

[JAFisher44]

Adam Scrambled up and over the pulverized concrete wall. With a good head start he could probably evade a centaur indefinitely. Adam did not have a good head start, and he was carrying a young girl and leading, practically dragging, her mother by the hand. He could hear the centaur and its hunting beast, it sounded like it was about a click behind them.

The woman's hand slipped out of his and he cursed as she slid back down the hill of rubble. He bounded back down to the fallen woman and hefted her into a fireman's carry, holding her arms and legs in one hand, and supported the girl with his other arm as she clung desperately to his neck.

Burdened like this he would never avoid his pursuers. He cast about for a good hiding place. Hopefully his charges would be safe and, more importantly, quiet.

There, down the wall a way, Adam spied a large crack in the wall. Quickly he approached the cubby. "Hide in here." He set the woman down on her feet and pushed her into the crack. "Keep her quiet." He squeezed her hand reassuringly. "I'll be back."

Tears streamed down the woman's face, and he could smell the fear coming off of her, but she shook her head and huddled deep into the shadows of the impromptu hiding place.

Adam knew he didn't have much time. He could hear the centaur's beast nearing. Adam scrambled up the wall above the crack and crouched, waiting.

The beast was about 3 meters long and about half that to its shoulder. Its limbs terminated in long claws and its mouth was ringed with needle sharp teeth. It looked like some psycho killer lizard, only with fur and none of the lethargy of a cold blooded animal. The beast had a ridiculously good sense of smell, probably better than Adam's, and was heading right for the crack. Adam had planned for this.

Leaping from a perch 6 meters in the air probably isn't a good idea for most normal people. Adam was not a normal person. Adam looked like a Greek god, if you imagine a Greek god that stands 210 centimeters and is covered from head to toe with scars. Adam was the first phase 3 super-soldier bio-engineered to fight the centaurs over 300 earth standard years ago.

Adam didn't waste any effort on some sort of battle-cry or scream or anything like that. So, by the time the beast noticed him it was too late to dodge. He grabbed a great fist full of the animals thick fur and plunged his knife into its thick hide and muscle.

Its scream of pain ripped into the air, and it exploded into a frenzy of thrashing limbs and tail. Adam locked a vice grip onto his foe and plunged his knife into the beast over and over. Not stabbing randomly, each wound damaged vital organs, and severed muscles and tendons. In just a few short seconds the beast lie dying and bleeding on the ground.

Adam didn't waste any time, the centaur wouldn't be far behind. As soon as the beast started to fall, he leapt to the ready. Pain exploded through his left shoulder, the crack of a firearm resounded from the concrete around him. As fast as it came the pain was gone. Adam's right arm snapped like a whip and suddenly his knife stood buried to the hilt in the centaur's abdomen.

The centaur are so called due to their resemblance to the mythical beast. The don't look like a human torso on a horse, but they are four legged, with a short torso and two manipulating limbs and a head of sorts. Their skin is thick and gray. They are very strong, and they are primarily responsible for the near-extinction of the human race.

The centaur reached down and pulled the knife free, tossing it to the side. A costly mistake. Probably this thing had never faced a super before, just normal humans. By the time it looked up from its wound Adam had cleared the distance between them and had it by its gun arm. Adam snapped its arm in 3 places with quick precise moves, twisted its, now very malleable, arm and discharged the gun into the centaur's head. It dropped like a sack.

Having bought some more time, Adam rushed back to the crack. The woman was pale and shaking. The girl clung to her franticly. Adam took the woman's hand again and lifted her into his arms, cradling both the mother and daughter in his protective embrace. Carrying both of them he couldn't move as well as he would have liked in enemy territory, but he managed to evade further pursuit. Before too long he was in his lander powering up for liftoff.

He stepped back into the passenger compartment and looked down at the monitor panels of the docs that held his new passengers. Malnutrition, no surprise there. Shock, cuts and bruises, but they would be ok. Another success. Now, program the launch and into his own doc for his new bullet wound.

[dogscoff]

Nice. I like "humans as the underdogs" stories=-)

[JAFisher44]

Well, you should like this story then, in my little universe there are 1000 registered free humans, the minimum legal amount, maybe half that living free and under the radar, and a couple hundred thousand slaves here and there. other than that we are gone. Earth is a stripped and dead planet, its atmosphere choked with industrial waste and its surface blasted bare.

[dmm]

You mean "maximum", don't you? As in, there is some law that forbids more than 1000 free humans?

Anyway, good story threads. It'll be interesting to see how you weave them.

[JAFisher44]

No, I meant maximum, Galactic law states that any race has the right to continue freely. If one sentient species attacks another, it is bound by law to leave at least 1000 free members of that race alive and free. The rest may be enslaved, killed, or whatever, but law requires that the last 1000 be left to their own devices.