4:30 a.m. local time, May 5th, 2673; Near the Star of Stellar Alpha Four

Travelling between the stars had been routine for the past several hundred years. Faster than light travel radically changed the size of mankind's territory. Travel between the stars was still slow, taking months and years to travel from the Sol system out to the farthest regions of habitation. Man had found several primitive sentient species, but nothing to slow down the expansion.

The farther out the colonies went the less and less control the home world had over the people. Pirates began to roam the shipping lanes, forcing local governments to field their own navies. Inevitably nations were formed, and clashes occurred.

While the transition points between systems were well known, pirate attacks were infrequent. They were even more infrequent close to major systems. Stellar Alpha Four was only one jump away from Clearwater, an outpost for the Terrace Republic.

The SSC Uncle Bob was not looking for trouble. She was a vacuum container ship, loaded down with containers ten deep attached to the spine of her ship. The vacuum container ship was a direct descendant of the container ships that plied their trade on the oceans of Earth. The containers were exposed to the vacuum of space and were easier to load and unload than the pressurized container ships. This also made easier targets for pirates.

The first notification the captain of the ship had of trouble was the impact of the weapons on the hull. The ship was running in economy mode, with the radar shut off. The running lights and navigational beacon were still running, informing other ships that they were in the area.

The first shots were not in vital areas, but it did wake up the ship, as crew members answered the klaxon call to report to the bridge. It did not take long for the ship's small crew of only fifteen people to get to their stations on the 800,000 ton ship.

"What's going on?" Were the first words out of the captain's mouth when he got onto the bridge.

"We're being attacked!"

"I can see that, but by who?"

"Looks like pirates."

The captain held his temper, wishing for the thousandth time that he had found a better job after leaving the Navy.

"Have they tried to contact us yet?" The question as interrupted by another impact on the hull. The captain swore, "Start evasive maneuvers, and turn on the radio!"

"But sir that will change our jump time to Clearwater and ruin our schedule."

"Don't give me those buts, we're under attack. And we can't meet our schedule if we're dead. Helm! Turn off that auto pilot and decrease deceleration by twenty-five percent. We'll make it up later." The ship was currently decelerating at half a G to get into position to jump to the Clearwater system. The cut in deceleration was enough to cause the next shots from the fighters to miss.

"Activate the radar and open a communications channel. Use the standard emergency frequency."

"We have a message coming in from the pirates…."

"There's four heavy fighter sized and shuttle sized ships within ten thousand kilometers of us sir…"

The information was coming to the captain finally, and he could start making decisions. "Bring up the message. And I want any cameras we have pointing at those fighters. I want to know what they are."

The message started to come in, "Gooooood Morning Uncle Bob, glad you finally woke up."

"Open communications to them." The captain ordered.

"Already did sir!" The answer was overly eager.

The captain held back a sigh, "Gooooood Morning to you too, whoever you are. Why are you firing on my ship?"

"We're the independent SA-4 cargo inspectors, here to check your manifest and look for smuggled goods."

"Smuggled goods? I've never heard of the independent SA-4 cargo inspectors before. You wouldn't happen to be pirates, would you?"

"Of course, we're pirates. Now increase your deceleration and send over your manifest or we'll take it from your shattered hull."

The captain felt the ship start to slow down, and his eyes shot to the pilot and he increased the output on the engine. The captain quickly moved over to the throttle and slammed it down.

"What are you doing Uncle Bob?"

"We seemed to have a malfunction, the sudden increase in the engine fuel caused a misfire." The lack of deceleration caused the people on the bridge to start floating. The captain's hand was still heavy on the pilot's hand, keeping the throttle at zero percent. The ship's speed stayed constant as it approached the transition to the Clearwater system.

The crew members felt more impacts of weapons on their hull. The ship did not carry armor except for the standard micro-meteor armor along the nose of the ship. The 16,000 containers the ship carried provided some protection along the main spine of the ship and along the engines, but all they did was slow down the railgun shots.

"You will decelerate at full and surrender your ship!" The pirate ordered, with a few more thumps against the hull of the ship.

The captain pulled his hand from the helmsman's hand. "Start deceleration. Bring it up slowly. Five percent every ten seconds." The captain's tone was quiet enough not to be picked up by the channel, there was steel in his voice. He watched the helmsman closely, making sure that he did as he was told.

"As I said we had a misfire, we're bringing the engines back now." The captain's voice changing back to what it was when the communications started. He walked over to the navigation center and checked the time before the transition to Clearwater.

The projected time was less than planned but slowly increased as the ship's speed decreased. The captain moved over to the engineering station and spoke into the woman's ear. "Disable the safety on engine three. Ramp to one hundred percent for half a second then cut the power completely to that engine."

The third engine on the ship suddenly went to one hundred percent, ignoring proper ramp rates. Alarms flashed over the bridge warning of unsafe conditions and the potential for explosion. The sudden unbalanced thrust caused the ship to jolt in a new direction.

The jolting and shuddering along the spine of the ship was quickly replaced when the engine was shut off, slowly correcting the course of the ship.

"What the hell are you doing out there!" The captain yelled for the pirates, "We just lost our third engine!"

"We didn't do anything Bob." Confusion riddled the pirates voice, buying some time for the ship to move closer to the transition point.

"Pull back on engine four to compensate!" The captain's order slowed down the unbalanced flight of the ship. The other engines were still increasing in power to slow the ship, but with two engines disabled the deceleration less than before the pirates attacked.

"Uncle Bob I suggest you get your engines back online and start decelerating properly!" The pirate sounded pissed, the intercept wasn't going as well as it should.

"Roger-dodger Mr. independent cargo inspector. We'll go down and get them working, it'll probably take 30 minutes. Uncle Bob out!" The captain looked over to the man at the communications station and ran his finger along his throat, telling him to kill the communications with the pirate.

The captain waited to make sure the channel was closed before he sighed, "That should have given us a couple of minutes." He looked over at the man at the communications station, "If they ask for me, say I'm down in engineering." He turned to the engineer, "How long will it take to get the third engine back online?"

"Well captain." The engineer said, "I have to re-enable the safeties, and then go through a cold start. The engine needs to cycle first, and cool down. That sudden jolt of power may have damaged thing."

The captain sighed, "How long?"

"At least an hour."

"And if you didn't do it properly?"

"At least ten minutes, but we'll have to spend time in dry dock getting it properly inspected."

Another sigh erupted from the captain's mouth. There was going to be hell to pay when he spoke to the company. There was going to be inquests and review boards and committees and expense justifications and… and… and… Only if they survived this.

"Get that set up, but leave the last stage for now." The captain walked back to the sensors station. They had the four pirates on radar, but there were no other ships within light seconds. They were getting closer and closer to the system's star and the radiation and gasses from the solar winds were limiting the effectiveness of the radar systems.

"Are we tracking them with the cameras yet?" He asked the sensor operator.

"Yes sir, here they are." The woman at the console switched to a view of the camera. The camera did not have the optical zoom to get a very good picture of the pirates.

"Looks like junkers. A mix between fighters and container shuttles." He mused as he looked at them. "They have missiles from the looks of it."

Five minutes passed as the captain heard the communications officer try to delay the pirates. 'If we get out of this, that man needs to get an acting class,' he thought to himself.

A few more minutes passed, then the pirates started to move towards the ship. The captain yelled out, "Quickly turn to port, up twenty-five degrees!"

The pirates were past the stern of the decelerating ship. The sudden maneuver of the ship caused the initial shots from the pirate’s rail guns to miss. From the frame of reference of the cargo vessel the pirates increased their engines and closed the distance to the ship, the next shots would not miss.

"Get engine three back online. Helm go to zero power!"

The change in the engine output on the cargo ship caused the four pirates to overshoot their target, but damage was still done to the ship by their railguns. The pirates were aiming to kill.

The four pirates flipped over almost immediately and shot the first round of missiles at the Uncle Bob.

The captain swore, "Helm full down, engines one and three to full power!" There was no way that the ship was going to avoid the missiles. The captain's hope was that they would impact on the containers and not the spine of the ship.

He was mostly right, three of the four hit the containers, causing thousands of twenty-foot containers to float into space. The fourth missile still hit the ship, causing a rupture in the hull. The missile caused a breach in one of the Helium-3 fuel tanks. The escaping gas pushed the ship suddenly to the side.

"Keep the turn going helm! Point us towards Clearwater." The ship continued its slow turn pointing towards the star.

"Jettison two hundred containers on the side the pirates are on." The containers were enough to obscure the enemy line of fire long enough for the ship to complete its turn towards the system's star.

They were not perfectly in line with the Clearwater system's star, but they were close. The engagement with the pirates was approaching the seventy-five-minute mark.

"We're still too far away from the star!" The helmsman screamed in his panic.

A blast tore through the ship as another missile found its way through the containers shielding the ship.

"Engine two is on fire!"

"Shut it down. Spool up the curve drive!"

"But we're still too far away!"

"Quiet! Spool up that damn curve drive, and prepare to transition." The captain looked at the sensors, and the damage to the ship. They probably could not survive another missile strike. "Dump the back quarter of the cargo decks!" Most of the remaining containers were jettisoned giving the ship a little bit more protection as the steel boxes floated into space.

The ship entered the most dangerous portion of its trip while under attack. The Uncle Bob had to keep its trajectory perfectly in line with the star. Gravity caused space to curve to its will. Large, massive bodies like stars caused space to curve more than smaller bodies like the Uncle Bob. The curve drive used the curves in space caused by two stars to effectively cut the corner in the distance between the two systems.

The closer the Uncle Bob got to the star the more space was curved by gravity, and the shorter the distance the vessel would have to travel when it transitioned to faster than light travel. The closer the ship was to the line between the two stars the better the transition. The captain of the Uncle Bob was ordering the transition early, and out of the optimal trajectory.

"Make the transition!"

The helmsman reached for the switch as another explosion went through the ship.

* * *

The leader of the pirates swore over the channel shared with the other three junkers in his group. "They made the jump!"

"My missile got through. I'm seeing H-3 in the area, they probably won't make it to Clearwater."

"Probably won't cut it. We need to report this. The admiral won't like it. Ship Four, call in for our rendezvous."

There was a pause in the communications while the lead pilot swore again under his breath. He hated these junkers with a passion. Some of them had missiles, some of them better guns and cameras, and only four had the communications equipment to talk to the heavy shuttle that could load the four junkers.

"Rendezvous in twelve-point-two hours sir, at transition for Stellar Alpha Three."

"Fine. Two and three start scanning the containers. See if any of them are food. We leave in two hours."