Wheyey first chapter update in forever! Please comment it means a lot, and as always, ENJOY!

-8tickles

(Carter's POV)

This couldn't be good. I helped Alula to the cockpit, with Fitch and Olga following me.

"Get inside," demanded Curtis, and he shut the airlock as soon as we'd cleared the door.

"What's going on?" asked Fitch.

"See that ship?" Curtis asked, pointing to a little white speck in the distance. "There's three more just like it, I've got them on the monitors, and they're all around us. They're planning something."

"You're sure you're not being being paranoid again?"

"They're in a perfect tetrahedral and we're exactly in the middle," Curtis assured him. "I was in the navy for years, I know this stuff when I see it."

"Well what do you want to do about it?"

"I'm calculating a subspace jump right now, brought you all here in case things get ugly."

"Why here?" asked Alula.

"More shield strength and armor around the cockpit," I answered.

Curtis chuckled. "Actually there really isn't, it's because if there's a hull breach and there's people in parts of the ship that aren't sealed off by airlocks, everyone in that part of the ship dies. This is the smallest airlocked segment of the ship, so safety."

"But what happens if there's a hull breach in here?" I asked.

"What happens if there's a hull breach and you're not in here?" he countered.

"Well, I guess..."

"That's right, you'd be drifting helplessly in space because no one can fly the ship unless you're in the cockpit, which you wouldn't be able to get into because there'd be no air in here."

"So to answer my question, we're all here so that if there's a hull breach, we all die at once."

"More or less, yeah."

"Well," I said, "that's comforting."

"Wait," said Fitch, "where'd they all go?"

I looked at the screens, they'd all vanished. Curtis took a look and started running around the cockpit, flipping switches tapping screens and checking readouts.

"This is not good," he kept muttering. "Carter, take my chair, you're the only one on this ship that might have decent eyesight and the competence to work a gun. No offense Alula."

"Uh, offense taken!" she said.

"Would you rather keep them off of us Alula?" he asked.

"Fine..."

"Wait, what?" I was shocked. "You want me to…"

"Yes Carter, you got the top turret," he said. "Red button on the left arm for the turret camera, joystick on the right for aiming and firing. Trigger is for the laser, button on the side is the coilgun."

"What do I shoot at?" I asked, going to sit down in the chair. Mark was already in his chair looking at the turret's scope view.

"They've got shields," he said. "Plasma absorbs all light so you won't be able to see them, they'll be the darkest spot in space. Diverting power to plasma shield containment."

A massive metal plate began to close over the glass in the cockpit.

"If you hit these guys enough with the coilgun, you might be able to get them to start bleeding plasma. They start bleeding plasma, you can burn a hole straight through them with the laser."

I sat down and brought up the turret scope. "Are you sure we shouldn't wait for them to do something so that we know they're…"

The ship rocked to the side and the sounds of a series of impacts followed by metal being strained could be heard from somewhere further back in the ship. "Yes Carter, they're bad guys, start shooting!"

I held my finger down on the coilgun button, aiming for the nearest invisible ship. I wasn't sure if I was hitting anything, but I kept shooting. The ship took another jump to the side, and I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a little bit of distortion. I aimed for it. My shells began exploding against something, and a trail of plasma appeared behind them. I could faintly see a grey silhouette behind the plasma.

"I think I got one bleeding!" I said.

"Keep shooting then!" said Curtis. "We've gotta…"

Curtis was interrupted by another jolt of the ship, this time the lights flickered.

"Not good…" he mumbled.

"There's something under us!" shouted Mark. "It's not cloaked, but it's shields aren't going down. It's a gunship!"

I continued shooting at the ship that had begun bleeding, which was coming around for a pass on us. All of a sudden the gun stopped shooting. That probably wasn't good.

"Subspace calculations are only at 62%," groaned Curtis, "I gotta get us moving and recalibrate."

I could make out the entire grey ship. Just a little closer… I pulled the trigger and instantly the grey ship was separated in two unequal halves by a bright green beam, glowing orange where it had been split. It looked like I'd grazed the cockpit and it had depressurized.

"I got one!" I shouted.

"Nice shot!" Mark shouted back.

"I need my chair back," Curtis told me. I got up quickly and went to go stand at the back of the cockpit. "Olga do you think you could help me manually calculate the jump? We can do that faster than the computer will be able to."

"I'll try," she said, and made her way over to Curtis and took a look at the monitors.

We began moving. The ship was hit again, this time the lights went out for a few seconds before red emergency lights kicked in.

"Shields are down!" shouted Mark. "They're lowering theirs and trying to…"

"We don't need a commentary," interrupted Curtis.

"But…"

"Quiet, please," Olga urged. She continued tapping away at screens. "Almost… There. Keep our velocity constant and that should…"

She was cut off by the jolt of a large impact below us.

"What was that?" she asked.

"The gunship, it's docking!" shouted Mark. "They're trying to board!"

Curtis slammed his fist against a monitor. "Scrape them off! Energy weapons only, I'm taking control of the airlock. Fire when I tell you!" Curtis hit a few buttons on his chair. "Now!" he shouted. I watched on Mark's screen as the tube that connected the boarding ship to ours was severed cleanly, leaving very little of the connecting tube attached to our ship. They were hard to make out, but I saw a few bodies floating out of the tube as it began to separate from our ship, and noticed the glint of metal weapons against the blackness of space. Curtis threw a small sort of lever forward on the left side of his chair and I knew we were about to jump.

"And that," he said, "that is exactly why I'll never fly a ship without guns on it."

After a minute or two, the large metal shield over the glass began to retract, and immediately felt like we were in a completely different place, the most noticeable difference being that there were little white specs everywhere. They didn't shine like the stars did, but they did reflect light, and they seemed much closer.

"Where are we?" asked Alula.

"Kuiper belt," answered Curtis, who was digging through the cockpit looking for something.

"Why here?" she persisted.

Curtis chuckled. "Cause no one ever comes out here."

"And why is that?"

Curtis pulled out a box. "Ah, here we go. Carter, you're not such a bad shot, catch." He tossed me a small metallic object. I began to bobble it, and only then did I recognize that it was a gun. I was shocked, but I was able to keep it from hitting the floor.

"What the…" I started. "Is this thing loaded? And the safety is off!"

"Oh come on," teased Curtis. "Live a little." He handed a gun to Mark and took one for himself, then gave us oxygen masks. "You guys are following me, we're going to make sure none of them boarded. Olga, Fitch, I'll want a damage report when I get back."

I followed Mark and Curtis reluctantly as Curtis brought us through the door. The lights were still out in the lab, so Curtis showed us how to use the flashlights in our guns. We walked the platform around the lab, and I stayed closer to the wall than to the railing. When we reached the other side, Curtis checked the monitor on the door to the next room.

"Leaking gases in here, masks on," Curtis told us. We obeyed.

As soon as the door opened I heard someone wheezing. Curtis pointed the flashlight at the person making the noise, a man in a full black outfit about ten feet away, keeled over with his gun on the ground at his side. He hardly reacted. Curtis walked over and kicked the gun away.

"Get a mask for him," Curtis said, pointing somewhere to Mark. "I'll patch that leak, you keep an eye on him Carter. If he does anything funny… You know what to do."

I stood there for a minute pointing my gun at him until Mark came back with a mask. Curtis came back too shortly after.

"We should be able to filter this out when the vents are running again," he said. "Help me drag this guy to the lab."

We carried him through the door and by some miracle we were able to get him down the ladder and onto the scan table, where he was restrained. We put the mask on him and I did a basic vital scan using the reserve power, which indicated that he was still alive and would recover. We left him there and returned to the cockpit.

"Status report?" asked Curtis almost as soon as he walked through the door.

"As far as systems go we're not too bad off," Fitch stated. "Shields are on the recharge, should be another few hours, and subspace drive is on cooldown, but otherwise nothing major. We'll see what we can do about the power."

"A couple of leaks here and there, but again, nothing too major," said Olga. "The most difficult thing to fix here is the coilgun Carter jammed."

"Alright," Curtis said, even though he seemed distant. "Olga, Fitch, Mark, I want you to restore everything as soon as you can. Alula, Carter, grab oxygen masks and head to the cargo area. I want a full inventory, I don't know how long we're going to be stuck on reserve power."

"What about you Curtis?" asked Fitch.

"We've got a single boarder, but he's restrained now," Curtis said. "These guys had much better equipment than us but we held them with guns designed to break up rocks into chunks our shields can absorb. They could have obliterated us, but they didn't. They wanted something we had. Typical pirate move would be to blast a few holes in the side of a ship and depressurize the whole thing, but they didn't do that either. Whatever they wanted was delicate. And our new friend is going to tell me exactly what it is."

Woo! Hopefully next chap will be soon :)