No. 360

The light gunship, Flower, was drifting in the Uncharted Zone. Its crew was gathered in the mess hall for an emergency meeting.

“We haven’t seen any trace of pirates in two weeks. We’re lost,” said the First Officer.

“Space is a big place,” replied Captain Marlow calmly.

“With our sensors, we should have had them already,” countered Charles Conrad, the technology officer. “We know they hit New Sardis. We know they fled this way. They should have left a trail but there’s nothing.”

The Captain turned to a crewmember in the corner of the room. “Roberts, what’s our status for supplies?”

Marla Roberts looked up from her datapad. “We’ve got another week of fuel and possibly a week and a half of food, if we stretch it.”

“You see,” said the Captain to the crew. “We’ve got enough to search another three days. If we haven’t found our villains by then, we’ll turn for home.”

The crew grumbled about cutting close to the wire, but to return to base empty-handed was almost equally unappealing. The bounty would only be paid upon capture.

Though the compromise was distasteful, the vote was unanimous. The Flower would continue on and then limp back to port on fumes.

 

Roberts spent an uneasy night, awake in her bunk. The figures she’d given the Captain were true, but there was a critical piece of information she’d left out, so as not to frighten the others. Any fuel the Flower spent in combat would have to be made up from the captured pirates’ stores. She had taken a gamble that the pirates would have fuel on board to be captured.

Currently, the Flower had enough to explore and to return home, but not to fight.