The Asteroid (Patreon)

Captain Tinu stared out the portal, glancing to her strand only long enough to pick the engineering chief’s photo from her contact list. “Tell me we’re on schedule to get the trinity back online,” she grumbled. For the tenth time, she reached to pull a cigarette from the pocket in her shoulder holster, and for the tenth time, she forced her paw away. Smoking wasn’t permitted by the standard outage protocol and the seventeen hour—minimum—downtime was far too long to go between cigarette breaks. “I don’t like sitting here in lio territory, helpless, like a tufted caprin.”

“Not much we can do about that,” yarped the greying engineer. “This corridor is far too long a stretch to make without a maintenance cycle. And I’m not fond of doing one every six weeks instead of five as it is, even if it does mean one fewer time we’re stuck sitting idle while in the channel.”

“I’m not fond of it either,” she confided, lowering her voice. “Every gate ship headed through here … doing the exact same thing, stopping at the same places to refit, just so we all minimize how long it takes us to get to Sabaas gate.” The captain growled. “That’s the sort of plan an accountant makes, not a tactician.”

The engineer on her strand laughed another yarp. “Yeah well, Planetary Acquisitions employs at least ten times as many accountants as does tacticians, so that’s not much of a surprise. But to answer your original question, yes, we’re on schedule. Trinity should be back online in an hour.”

“Thanks, keep me informed,” she said as she closed the connection. Tinu noticed a reflection in portal glass and she spun to face the geroo padding up behind her.

“Um, Captain,” he said quietly, ducking his head submissively. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, you’re fine,” she gruffed, forcing her paw away from her holster for an eleventh time. “What do you need, um…” She struggled to recall his name for moment before giving up.

“Boosca,” he said, touching her paw. “Well, you see, it’s um…” He wrung his black and tan paws nervously. “Would you have a moment to step into the observatory? It would be easier to show than explain.”

“Sure,” she said, secretly thankful for something to take her mind from her cravings. She followed the little astronomer down the corridor, grinning to herself. Everyone always joked that it was the programmers who were the most introverted nerds aboard the ship, but that was because few of the crew had ever spent time with astronomers. They were far worse.

“We’ve been studying HR3-7910 almost non-stop since the shut-down,” Boosca explained.

A mousy little female who looked too young to be out of school glanced up from her screen. “It’s so close, we can practically touch it!” she squeaked.

Tinu looked up in alarm. “Close? How close?”

The male waved his paws. “Close in an astronomical sense, she means. We’ve never been this close to an interstellar object before. But even then we’d have to sit here for a week before it arrived—which would be incredible—but once the trinity is back online, we’ll be on our way.”

Reassured, the captain pointed at the nearest readout. “Iron? It’s an iron asteroid.”

“Yes!” squealed the mousy female. “We hypothesize that it’s from the core of a long-destroyed planet. Just imagine two planets slamming into one another so hard that a glob of molten core managed escape velocity!”

Tinu always loved the company of nerds. They could get so excited about things that weren’t the least bit exciting to anyone else. “Well, I’m glad you got the opportunity to study it. Capture all the data you can because we should be back underway in an hour—”

“The reason I asked you to come here is because of this…” said Boosca. He tapped on the screen and a red curve overlaid the image. “You see, it’s changing course.”

The captain stared and touched the screen with the pad of one of her fingers. “It’s in a gravity well? There should be a star here.”

Boosca nodded. “But there’s nothing there.”

“Then what’s pulling it off course? A black hole perhaps? Something that doesn’t radiate light?”

The astronomer shrugged his rounded shoulders and stared at the screen once more. “That would be logical, except that we’re so close! We’ve been sitting here for sixteen hours. If there were really a black hole right there, it would have had some impact our own trajectory—at least a little—but we’re still on course.”

The captain squinted at the other two. “Well, what’s that leave? Sensor failure?”

“We’ve checked the sensors repeatedly,” squeaked the little female. “They’re reading correct.”

“All that leaves is inertial boosters,” said Boosca, his ears hanging in a frown.

Tinu shook her head as if she had misheard. “Wait a second. You’re saying that someone put a rocket engine on that asteroid to change its course? To make it go where?”

Boosca looked over at the other astronomer a moment. She nodded, urging him on, so he eventually pinched the screen, zooming the display out a little ways.

The captain’s jaw hung open as her eyes followed the red line across the screen … straight through the center of the little green circle representing their ship.

The door to the corridor swung open but Tinu didn’t look up. She was too focused on the screen, wondering intently why anyone would steer an asteroid toward them.

Someone cleared their throat once and then again. “Captain?” whined a voice.

The captain gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, her ears laid back. “I’m busy,” she growled.

“It’s important,” said the voice.

Tinu looked up through slitted eyes. A tan male stood in the doorway, his head leaning over at an uncomfortable angle, a blaster pistol pressed hard to his temple. “Someone wants to see you,” he whispered.

A huge feline ducked low and stepped through the doorway. He shoved the tan male into the room and shut the door behind him. “Everyone away from your keyboards,” he said in choppy geroo.

Boosca raised his palms to shoulder height and the mousy female screamed. The invader didn’t hesitate. He pointed his pistol at her and in a silent flash of bright purple light, the screaming stopped.

The geroo slid slowly backward, off her stool and to the deck below.

“No!” shouted the captain. Tinu scrambled across the deck to kneel beside the fallen female. She felt for a pulse in the astronomer’s neck and was not surprised to find it absent. The weapon had left a smoldering hole through the crewman’s forehead.

Tinu turned back to the intruder and glared. Sandy pelted and broad-shouldered, his black mane ran down his back in a thick braid that ended even with his tail. “Don’t move,” said the lio. “I won’t warn you a second time.”

Ignoring his words, she stood slowly up to face him on her paws. His ears frowned but he did not fire. After a long pause, she glanced down to the hostage he had pushed ahead of him. “Are you okay, son?” she asked.

The tan male nodded from where he cowered. “I’m all right, but he shot several others on the way here.”

“Silence,” hissed the lio.

“So,” Tinu said, “I suppose your people are the ones pushing the asteroid to its new heading. The trinity will be back online in an hour. We’ll be long gone by the time it gets here.”

“No, you won’t,” growled the lio. “You’ll leave your trinity offline.”

“Heh,” she chuckled without mirth. “Why? So you can slam it into us? That’s ridiculous. You know we’re an unarmed slave ship. You could conquer us with a handheld…”

The lio raised his arm so he was sighting the pistol directly between her eyes. “You were saying?” he asked. He waited several seconds for her to respond. When she didn’t, he lowered the gun slightly. “Your ship is now property of the lio empire. Follow my instructions and you will be rewarded. Resist and we will kill as many as we need to to take control of it ourselves.”

Tinu ground her teeth. “Why would the lio need a slave ship? I thought your empire doesn’t even keep slaves.”

“We don’t,” he said defensively. “But we’ll gladly use you to stage a glorious attack on Krakuntec Prime.”

The captain said nothing. Waited.

“You will leave the trinity offline and use only inertial thrusters to adjust your ship’s orientation. Then, when the asteroid is almost here, you will switch the trinity back on. The asteroid’s trajectory will take it just past your ship’s outer hull and into the gate.”

“To slam directly into Krakuntec, just on the other side,” she finished for him.

“Ideally we can aim it off the coast of a major city to maximize damage,” he explained. “If we re-enable the trinity at the last possible moment, even their automated security measures won’t have time to shut it back down before the asteroid has passed through.”

“And then what?” asked Captain Tinu. “Suppose we cooperate and help you kill a zillion krakun. The company’s never gonna’ turn our sister gate back on, and without our sister gate, our gate is useless.” She took a deep breath, seething with anger. “Without the gate, the trinity stays offline forever and this ship becomes an aluminum can filled to the brim with frozen corpses.”

“If we have to take control of your ship,” he threatened, “then yeah, that’s precisely what will happen. But that’s your choice. If you cooperate, we’ll take you off this ship. You can live out your days on one of our colony worlds as free geroo.”

Tinu yarped a loud laugh. “Yeah, right! And I suppose you’re cruising around in a ship that so big, it’s got room to transfer ten thousand geroo?”

He shook his head. “I never said the whole crew.”

Tinu’s stomach dropped in a free-fall. It had sounded too good to be true. “How… How many?”

“We have room for ninety-three.” He frowned and added, “Estimated. If you’re all in torpor.”

“N-ninety three?” she stammered. “You’re going to kill almost ten thousand innocent geroo just to attack Krakuntec.”

“This strike is crucial to the war effort. It could kill hundreds of millions of the enemy, but civilian losses are inevitable,” sighed the lio with a frown. “For every krakun on Krakuntec, there’s a hundred slaves of various races. If it makes you feel any better, you losses will be trivial in comparison—”

“It most certainly does not make me feel better—”

“You can rescue ninety-three, or you can rescue no one,” he explained. “Those are your only options. We’d rather scuttle your ship and try again when another gate ship comes through the corridor rather than let you report our plan back to your masters. So, what’s it gonna be?”