{"id":5911,"date":"2017-03-30T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T05:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jackofharts.com\/?p=5911"},"modified":"2017-03-30T06:00:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T11:00:22","slug":"the-gemini-affair-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/?p=5911","title":{"rendered":"The Gemini Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jackofharts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/An-Atlas-to-Time-Space-and-Bonfires.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-5905\" src=\"http:\/\/jackofharts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/An-Atlas-to-Time-Space-and-Bonfires-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/An-Atlas-to-Time-Space-and-Bonfires-203x300.jpg 203w, https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/An-Atlas-to-Time-Space-and-Bonfires.jpg 651w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Alarms came to life around him, loud enough to wake the dead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cContact! Contact!\u201d Engines growled and Jack felt a momentary press of gravity before the inertial compensators synced with the acceleration. They needed work too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree ships behind us.\u201d Betty brought them up on the holographic display on the bridge\u2019s forward bulkhead. \u201cTarget One is a standard freighter, ten thousand kilometers away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d Jack asked in shock. When Betty started measuring distances in kilometers, they were far too close. And ten thousand kilometers was like tanks at ten paces. <em>Nobody<\/em> had a good day when ships had disagreements at <em>that<\/em> range.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTarget Two and Three are three lightseconds out, with deflection grids online,\u201d Betty continued to report, ignoring his question. \u201cI have no visual on them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jack shook his head. \u201cWhat are they doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Betty said with a straight face. \u201cMaybe <em>smuggling<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jack sighed as the charge went home. \u201cTouch\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTarget One is attempting a targeting lock!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet us out of here!\u201d Jack zoomed the display in on the offending ship. Their new enemy looked like one of a dozen tramp freighter classes in use throughout the Terran Sector at first glance, primary ship core surrounded by cargo pods. A large hyperdrive surrounded by standard reaction drives dominated the rear of the ship.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEngaging electronic warfare and performing evasive maneuvers,\u201d Betty shouted.<\/p>\n<p><em>Vagabond<\/em> began to move back and forth around Jack, the inertial compensators not completely able to mask Betty\u2019s evasive maneuvers. He was really glad he didn\u2019t get sick on roller coasters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDeflection grid coming online. Hyperdrive charging.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jack relaxed back into his seat and waited. Freighter weapons couldn\u2019t break through their grid before they could accelerate out of range. Then the ship jerked, metal and composites screamed in pain, and he felt their engines die as the hammer of a god tore through them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Gemini Affair is a short story written for An Atlas to Time, Space, and Bonfires.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a kickstarter for it right now in case your interested in seeing some a couple dozen stories by different authors.\u00a0 And this one, of course.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/1776452973\/an-atlas-to-time-space-and-bonfires-a-sci-fi-antho-0\" target=\"_blank\">An Atlas to Time, Space, and Bonfires Kickstarter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Alarms came to life around him, loud enough to wake the dead. \u201cContact! Contact!\u201d Engines growled and Jack felt a momentary press of gravity before the inertial compensators synced with the acceleration. They needed work too. \u201cThree ships behind[&hellip;]<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/?p=5911\">&darr; Read the rest of this entry&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diaries","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-medron-pryde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5912,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5911\/revisions\/5912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}