W.A.R.P. in Sector 3! - Part 2

The finale of a Science Fiction homage to a Thanksgiving Classic

Nov 27, 2025

This is second half of first commercial sale.

If you missed the first half, you can find it here.

I hope you enjoyed the first half on Tuesday, and most of you will have worked out why I’m dropping the second half on Thanksgiving Day ; )

Like I did with the the first half, I’m including 2 versions of my story.

There’s the lightly edited text version, AND an AI ‘reading’ that I thought turned out OK. I don’t believe that AI ‘readers’ are the best future for audiobooks, but they MAY be an option for those of us who are just starting out and can’t afford a good reader / voice actor. I’m looking forward to the point when I can replace this with a good human reader.

So please, read or listen as you may prefer, and if you want your own copy of the book to keep, pick up Space Cowboys by Raconteur Press.

Thanks,

Jesse A Barrett

W.A.R.P. in Sector 3! - Part 2

By Jesse A Barrett

Continuing from Part One

Their new course was set to take almost twice as long as the old one, but it avoided most ‘official’ entanglements. It also used almost twice as much fuel and ate into their profits on this run, but now Captain Rogers had a better idea of why some ‘simple farm supplies’ had such a high payday.

The problem was, their second to last jump point was monitored, and if they had shown up on the Patrol’s sensors it wouldn’t be too hard to work out an approximate systems entry vector and have something in their way. Unfortunately, anything else either put them in major traffic lanes where they would be noticed, or with jumps that were long enough to not be worth the risk. Azikiwe was good and their systems were solid, but ships still disappeared every year. This left them hoping that with all the data going into the official systems, the pieces wouldn’t be put together until afterwards. At which point, if there is no official evidence of the final hand off, it never happened.

Captain Rogers, Sarika, and Azikiwe were on the bridge. The Gunny was monitoring the loaders. Knowing those three, said monitoring probably involved a deck of cards. He’d report to the bridge in time for the jump. Les, well Les was physically chained to the primary controls for Cargo Bay One. It seems that he had to go to the head and didn’t believe that the captain was serious enough to follow through with his threat over a ‘quick pit stop’. The Gunny waited for him to finish before he hit him with the hand stunner, and he woke up a few minutes later with a mid-range hangover and his ankles shackled to a padeye normally used for harnesses in zero g. He was not pleased, but he had been warned, and the intercoms could be disabled from engineering.

“Jump in thirty seconds, Captain,” Sarika reported; her hands on the control yoke rather than just monitoring the autopilot. She counted the last ten seconds down, and then there was a brief moment of disorientation before the screen flickered into a new starscape.

“Nothin’ on passive, Captain,” Azikiwe reported. “Estimated time before full update ta’ planet, approximately six minutes. Transit time to planetary orbit, fourteen hours with current vectors.”

So far, there weren’t any sensor systems that were capable of FTL readings, so they had to wait for everything to catch up with their appearance.

It was a tense six minutes, but it didn’t appear that anything had been waiting in their path, and they didn’t show any unusual traffic, yet. That could change as they made their approach, but everyone took there not being a Patrol interdictor waiting for them to be a good sign.

“Let’s give it an hour on this approach and then seconds to duty stations and try to get some rest. I want our primaries at the controls as we make final approach to the planet,” Captain Rogers said. Then he activated the intercom. “Gunny.”

“Yes Captain?” that worthy responded quickly.

“Give it an hour and then send the bosun in to relieve Les. He can take a meal pack, two water bottles, and a fresh suit honey bag. Les does not leave that point until we make landfall, or the cargo is off my ship.”

“Understood, Captain.”

Captain Rogers then headed for his own stateroom to try and get some rest.

Ten hours later they swapped back. Technically it was early, but no one really wanted the seconds handling this planetary approach. The only thing reported on the changeover was a sensor blip that could have been a warp exit, but it was masked by the mass of one of the planet’s three satellites. Both the pilot and the nav reviewed the readings and neither were willing to say what it was definitively.

They were on final deceleration into orbit when Azikiwe suddenly spoke up from the primary sensors, with unusual formality.

“Sensors to Pilot; warp exit on our deceleration path!”
Sarika swore loudly in Hindi, and then slapped the main intercom. “Everyone strap in for high G maneuvering; 10 seconds!” she announced.

“Gunny, get rail and missile solutions on that ship, now.” The captain demanded.

“Definite warp entry readings behind satellite two, near where the blip was earlier. Signature appears to match the warp exit now on our path.”

Everyone was slammed sideways as the pilot’s countdown from ten reach zero. Several minutes of rapid maneuvers followed and they shot off on a new vector at more than a gravity’s acceleration higher than their inertial dampers could handle.

The communicator crackled to life.

“IS Dawn Trader, reduce acceleration and assume parking orbit at the following coordinates. Prepare to be boarded. You are suspected of carrying Prohibited Cargo.” Coordinates and vector information appeared on the incoming data channel.

“Damnit, they are maneuvering, adjust,” the transmission was cut, apparently a bit later than the speaker intended.

Captain Rogers slammed the intercom switch.

“Les, depressurize the cargo bay now, and prepare to jettison.”

“Nnnnuuurrrrrgggggggg, *grunt* *clank* roger captain. Deconpress … fuuuuuuu *metallic clinking sounds, rapidly fade into hissing silence*”

Several seconds crawl by.

“Cargo Bay One reporting, we have decompressed to vacuum and are standing by on the catapults” Les gasped over the ship’s radio. “Please try to refrain from high G maneuvering without warning, if at all possible. Out.”

‘Say what you may about Les’ judgment sometimes, he is more than competent other than that,’ Captain Rogers thought.

“Gunny, recalculate the missiles for a zero energy drop in two minutes. Activation and intercept about here, if the activation code is received.” The captain marked a point on the most likely intercept vector. “Drop a second set here, timed for final atmospheric approach. Get the details on that from Azikiwe. Continue updating the railgun and let me know if it looks like they will get into ion cannon range. That little guy we have concealed doesn’t have much, but it may come in handy.”

“Roger, captain,” the gunny replied.

The first waypoint came and went and there was no reason to light off the missiles they had dropped. With nothing more than some compressed air launching them, it was unlikely that they would be detected unless and until they went active. If they didn’t, twenty-four hours after a preset deadline they would either head for a hot reentry or detonate.

They were just starting to feel some atmospheric friction when they learned that the Patrol gunners also knew their job. The ship rocked as one of the two active impulse drives went offline, along with about half of the ship’s power and an unknown number of systems.
“Multiple Ion cannon hits, captain!” Azikiwe cried. “Starboard impulse drive out, starboard warp nacelles out, reactor one offline.”

“IS Dawn Trader you have been ordered into parking orbit. Comply or be destroyed.”

“Gunny, light the candles,” captain Rogers ordered. “Sarika, ass to the planet, I want best speed to minimum jump distance. Az, gimme something safe near that trajectory and feed the updates to Sarika. I don’t want a micro-jump like the Patrol used to drop in ahead of us. Those are too dangerous without way more time or computing power than we have. I want a solid jump, inside of ¾ range that we can then use to bounce away from.

“Les, dump the birds and high g maneuvering warning.”

There was no answer on the ship’s comms.

In Cargo Bay One, Les was slicing through the padeye with a pocket cutter. He knew the captain meant it about chaining someone to the board, he just hadn’t planned on it being him. Next to him, the primary controls for the bay were still sparking as various capacitors discharged and the lights in the bay flickered uncomfortably. Whatever had hit them had made a real mess of the systems. Fortunately, the catapults were intended for use in combat drops, and were both heavily shielded and contained redundant systems. Unfortunately, the secondary controls were next to the main bay doors, far out of reach of his current position.

Since the chain was stretched tight and in contact with his suit, he heard a faint *PING* as the padeye broke loose, and he staggered across the hold. He’d partially dislocated a knee on one of the maneuvers, so an irregular stagger was all he could manage. Somehow, he got to the controls, slapped the emergency launch code, and got himself secured before the next set of maneuvers reminded him that they could pull more g’s than they could compensate.

“IS Dawn Trader this is your last warning. Assume parking orbit and prepare to be boarded or we will be forced to ….”

*Indistinct voice in the background*

“What do you mean ‘incoming missiles’? From the ship? What vector?!? Evasive,” again, the transmission cut off suddenly.

The main viewscreens on the bridge of IS Dawn Trader tracked from planet back to stars and suddenly everyone was forced into their acceleration chairs.

“The patrol interceptor is veering away from ta’ planet. Should throw off the vectoring on ta’ missiles and let ta’ noseys outmaneuver th’ candles or take them out if their PD is any good,” As reported.

“Correcting to jump vector, we will reach it thirty seconds before we reach the calculated jump point,” Sarika reported. “Time to jump at max acceleration, twelve minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Minor corrections for the duration.”

In cargo bay one, Les was strapped to the auxiliary controls and held in place by about an extra grav of acceleration. He watched the monitors as the cargo boxes tumbled toward the planet, the emergency tracking and stabilization systems on some still functional and transmitting as others tumbled on their almost impossibly accurate trajectory to the Cincinnatus colony. The durable plasteel cases mostly survived reentry to slam into the colony at terminal velocity, destroying anything they hit even close to. The crates with the TK500M’s had more redundant systems and a surprising number actually made the surface, blowing apart as emergency protocols engaged and freeing their violent and agitated cargo to wreak havoc in the burning ruins created by their support equipment. At maximum range on the ship sensors, and far too close on the repeaters still active on a few of the crates, Les watched as their erstwhile cargo created carnage wherever they landed.