Crates - a dozen of them; too big to move by hand, but there was a mechanical lift in the corner. The cargo contained the electronics required to set up a solar farm with a high conversion rate. A newly colonised planet would pay good credits for such a heist, and with a discount, they wouldn’t look too closely at the serial numbers.
A click, and fourteen more lives slid into his pistol. After a mere glance, the empty magazine was zipped into a spare pocket of his pants. Specks of red dotted his white singlet but he paid it no mind.
It took time, but eventually the cargo was nearing on being transferred and the spacer would be able to leave the freighter for the comfort of his own ship. The thought of tranquillity and a fat pay check had taken his attention; but not for long.
Klaxons and sirens burst through the silence. Lights flashed an obtrusive red and the spacer gone pirate added his cuss words to the piercing wail of the alarm. Someone had broken through his jamming field and managed to get the emergency distress beacon out. Not only that, but they had placed a magnetic lock on his ship. He wasn’t going anywhere until he disabled it.
The pistol was once again out of the worn leather holster and the eyes, a shining blue, had once again gone blank and dull; the eyes of a man who had been driven to a position of no other choice. He slinked into the corridor towards the poop, putting the klaxons and noise out of his mind, and focusing on everything else. Ears and mind straining to filter to the noise that was different.
It was that which saved him. A slight noise, a scuff of boot of metal floor, warned him. Like a psychic pronouncing extrasensory perception, the spacer turned and slapped away the oncoming blade with an out-turned left hand. The wiry freighter came at him again, this time with his right fist clenched in a wild haymaker.
With the same movement, the spacer slapped the hand away once again. Raising the pistol, he fired, once to the leg then raised and fired again right into the freighter’s face. It was a direct hit, and as the spacer tried to clear the ringing from his ears, he again stumbled towards the poop leaving behind an awful mess.
Post
Thu Dec 27, 2012 7:08 am
#1
Cargo
“The impact of space activities is nothing less than the galvanizing of hope and imagination for human life continuum into a future of infinite possibility.”