Kaspar's Box

"Don't be vulgar, Alpha. Beta, on me. Let's flush the bastard."

The squadron's ships peeled off in precise order and dived on the hapless ship below as if they were somehow connected together or at least piloted by master machines with split-second timing.

The old tramp didn't wait for them to bracket him with strafing fire; he powered up and gunned it, barely missing tearing his bottom out on the tops of the mountains.

For an old commercial vessel he was surprisingly fast and agile, but no match for the military fighters. They caught up with the fleeing tramp ship before it could even fully clear the planetary gravity well and took up a formation at speeds matching their quarry so that they essentially surrounded it.

"All right, up to you," the squadron leader called on a wide frequency spread. "Either you cut your engines and follow us or we'll shoot some holes in you. We'll try not to kill you but in space you never really know, do you? Your choice."

"I'm thinking it over," responded a man's sour voice on one of the standard emergency frequencies. The voice was raw and raspy, an old man's voice with a lot of experience in its tone.

The squadron leader shifted to the same frequency and the tactical sounds faded into a more standard open radio back and forth. It was more like they were next to each other and speaking normally. "What's to decide? Is refusing to pay your just taxes worth dying for?"

"Taxes be damned! You're blackmailers and extortionists. I'd pay to be protected from the likes of you! Ah, you're just a bunch of brainwashed drones. Why the hell am I explaining it? Bottom line is I got nothin' here worth stealin' 'cept my ship, and that ain't worth all that much, even in spare parts and fuel rods. Cargo's empty. I was on my way out, not in. You take my ship I'm no better off than if I was dead, and you don't get much by takin' it. So just who or what are you protectin' me from 'cept maybe starvation?"

"We've heard all this before," the leader told him. "Just cut power and our mother ship will take you aboard. You can make your arguments there. I have nothing to do with the case, I just bring in who I'm told to bring in. Now, we know that there's more than just you aboard. Even if you wanted to commit suicide, is it fair to take others with you?"

The old man thought for a moment. "Maybe. If their choice is dyin' or joinin' the likes of you."

"We don't conscript. Don't need to."

"Then you don't know much about your own operations," the old captain responded, sounding weary and resigned. "You live in a hive like some ancient insects, but you got to renew the gene pool now and then." He paused a moment, then sighed. "Okay, pull me in. I don't like doin' it to the others, but at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowin' that at least I'm gonna be your problem for a while."

The destroyer monitoring the engagement now moved in as the old tramp ship cut power and just drifted, defenseless against all the naval might arrayed against it. Tractor beams fixed on the old ship like a spider spinning a web to ensure that the fly did not escape, and, when secure, the prey was reeled in by the tractor lines until it could be mechanically grappled by arms extending beneath the destroyer.

The old freighter held together well; whoever had fixed it up had known what they were doing, and it had clearly been expertly maintained as well. The fleet, of course, had its entire maintenance and dry-dock sections fully automated, but these people out here in the old colonies were lucky to keep anything running at all, let alone maintaining equipment to service the fruits of their scavenging.

The fighters waited until the target was safely secured and then went in for their own predetermined berths, landing automatically. The pilots sat and waited for pressurization, then their canopies slid back and they got out and jumped down to the deck below. The artificial gravity in the berths was kept low to facilitate their ingress and egress, as their trainers called it.