Savage Stars

by Randolph Lalonde

  Della nodded and stepped closer. “I’ll take the first shift,” she volunteered.

  Spin looked at her, about to tell her she’d take it instead, but realized that someone had to talk to Boro’s brother, and she wouldn’t let anyone else take the blame for leaving Boro behind to be tortured. “All right.”

  “Which way is it?” Shamus said, shifting so he could pick his brother up, and to everyone’s surprise, he did so as if he was a bag of feathers.

  Della led him to Boro’s quarters, where Shamus laid him down and took his hand. “I’ll be back soon. I have to sit down with your crew, all right?”

  Boro, drowsy and dull-eyed, nodded.

  Shamus turned and looked at Della, then Nigel, Leland and Spin as he moved from the bedside to the hall. “That’s my world, there,” he said quietly, turning to Della. “Watch him, tell me if anything happens.”

  “I will, don’t worry,” Della said.

  “We can talk in the galley,” Spin said, knowing that if he was anything like Boro, he’d want to know everything. Aldo made his way past Mitch, who was dressed for travel, and joined the group going to the galley.

  Spin let everyone go on ahead as Mitchel met her in the hall. “I wish I could stay, but this is where I get off. Beta Bio is a major communications hub, and the British Alliance has offered me a paid consultant job in their command centre here. It’s the best access I’ll get to the government and communications. This isn’t goodbye, though, you’ll know where I am.”

  It didn’t take long for Spin to see that it was the best choice for him, considering where they were probably going. “We’ll keep in touch,” Spin said.

  “I can guess where you’re going, the chatter in the solar system is abuzz with expeditions to Geist. I’ll get as much information about people who might get in your way as I can and forward it to you.”

  “We’ll sync an encryption code before we disembark,” Spin said, giving him a brief hug. “Good luck.”

  Watching Mitch, the crewmember they called the Governor less and less as time went on, walk through the airlock, Spin hoped he would find what he needed to help the people he loved and once governed. He never forgot them or stopped talking about them when things got quiet, but he was far from home, and she wondered how much he could actually do. She had no doubt that they’d get whatever help he could offer with regards to the expedition to Geist, but she knew that he’d be splitting his attention between them and starting a new political rise in a new sector.

  “I’m Shamus,” Boro’s older brother told her as soon as she entered the galley, he was waiting by the door. Aldo looked like he was about to walk into a fight he was sure he was about to lose.

  “Spin,” she replied, accepting Shamus’ hand and shaking it. “I left your brother behind with the slavers who tortured him because the scans said he was dead. I’ll never live that down.”

  “I left him thruster side in prison, paying for a crime I put him up to,” Shamus said. “We’ll do our best to make up for our sins against him, aye?”

  Nigel was beside him, watching with interest, soaking in every word. “Uncle?”

  Shamus looked him up, down and yanked him into a bear hug. “God, you have the look of your mother. Good thing, your da’ looked like me, you got lucky.” He held him away at arms’ length and looked up. “And you got all the height in the family. Sorry I wasn’t there; I plan on changing that.”

  Shamus took a seat, Nigel to his left, and he looked around as everyone else settled in. “Now, who can tell me what they did to my brother?” he said, pointing towards Boro’s quarters. “Don’t spare me details.”

  “I’m Aldo, I saw everything, and I rescued him,” he said quietly.

  “Speak up, lad!” Shamus burst, slapping the table hard. “Start with what was done, who watched, and save who I have to kill for the end.”

  For the next two hours, Aldo explained what information Kort was after, what the torture was like, what information he gained, and then explained to Shamus and everyone there who Master Kort was along with what he was. The detail was greater than even Spin could have provided with regard to Kort’s cybernetic implants and favourite transgressions, which was impressive. Spin was always conscious of him, watching over her shoulder when she knew he was on the same estate.

  Shamus ‘Frost’ McFadden sat through it all silently, only stopping at one point to get himself a tall mug of cold water. Everyone watched as he took it all in, calm on the surface, but anyone who had seen someone who struggled with their temper from time to time could see it boiling beneath the surface.

  When Aldo finished telling the story of their escape, Shamus simply said; “Thank you,” before turning to Spin and asking a pointed question she didn’t see coming. “Can you find out how many of your people want to come back to the fringe with me, Lass? You’re welcome too if you’ll leave this ship behind, I’m sure we have the tech to fix you up. I’ll be with Boro while you mull it over.”

  Twenty-Five

  Spin was certainly lovely, he could see why his brother was attracted to her. She didn't seem like the kind of person Shamus would get involved with though. Spin seemed like she was over-educated sort. Sure, she wore clothes like a spacer, carried a weapon like she was used to it being there, but the way she listened to people, watched everyone in a room, weighing them, assessing, he didn't see a spacer. When he heard her approaching from behind as he reached his brother's door, he wasn't surprised.

  Here it came; the impassioned plea for whatever cause she was fighting for or the reason why she doubted that any promise he made would be upheld. He turned, surprising her by staring Spin right in the eye. "I know what you're about to say, lass; you've already figured out the solution to your problems. You've designed some heist and you're the smartest one here, so whatever plan you have is best and we should all follow you. Maybe into certain danger, maybe into some kind of sticky legal situation, or to some spot where no one else has figured on looking. I'm only going to say it once; the rig I brought here and my relations are out. I'm taking them back with me."

  "Is it safe?" Spin asked, tucking the top of her hair back into a neat ponytail. "Where you're taking them, is it safer than this sector?"

  Lie, damn you! Lie quick, lie well! He thought to himself harshly as he realized that Spin already read the flash of surprise and doubt on his face. As he watched her turn away he scrambled to find the shortest explanation he could for the situation in the Haven System. Short and clear, that would be best.

  "It’s even more dangerous there," Spin said, shaking her head, turning away. "But somehow that's the best place for Boro? For Nigel?"

  Nigel was stepping into the hallway as she said his name. He looked uncertain, torn. "The Haven System is in trouble, aye," Shamus said. "But that won't last long. The British Alliance, a million Nafalli who are all calling their kin, and a few other key allies are there and our military is growing by the minute. We have technology and training that makes our enemies look like they're bringing cannon and muskets to bear."

  "Do you have the numbers for the fight?" Spin asked, looking something up on an interface that was printed on her skin.

  He knew she was looking the Haven System up on the Stellarnet or some other network. Word of their embattled, outnumbered status was most likely spreading. "Don't bother looking it up," Shamus said, throwing his hands up and leaning against the hallway. "You'll find we're outnumbered, there aren't many people in that sector who think we have much of a future. All our doubters are wrong, and that means something coming from me. I'm not too proud to admit that I've been the first to run when things start looking dark."

  "Is that why you're here instead of in the Haven System?" Spin's expression grew more serious, direr as she reviewed a few holographic headlines about Haven Fleet's situation.

  "I'm answering my brother's call," Shamus said. "He wanted help, said he was in a spot, so I'm here to get him and a few others out of it. It'll take a week to get back, so I've go
t to go as soon as I can. Whatever you're seeing there about Haven isn't taking all the facts into account, you understand. We have secrets that'll save our arses; I serve among heroes."

  "I've met heroes. Every one of them is dead or proved false. How about we give this a night and we'll see what Boro says when his head is clearer?" Spin asked, an eyebrow cocked. "All I know is that I'm not going. I need to get my own cure and get it out there for everyone else. As for your people fixing me; I think you're going to waste a week or more of my time shuttling me sectors away into a war zone only to discover that you can't help, and then I'll have to find my way back here. I've met people like you before; you'll say anything to get what you want. I'm not falling for it."

  It wasn't the first time someone had said those very words to Shamus; 'You'll say anything to get what you want,' and it frustrated him to no end to hear them again, especially when he offered nothing but the truth. He watched Spin start walking away. His comm vibrated. "What?"

  "Hey, it's Hal," his pilot and only crewmember said.

  "I know who it is, what's going on?"

  "Well, I scanned the station and a few ships that looked interesting; you know, to get a feel for the place. I thought it would be okay because several parts of the station were scanning us pretty hard. I even got a message from some woman who demanded we drop our scanning shields so her corporation could get a look, and I told her; 'no way, lady! No one's getting a peek under the hood. Besides, we don't have scanning shields, and I'm not peeling a layer of hull plating back so you can peek.' I think that might have pissed her people off, because now there's a couple small craft getting set to land on the Convoy King along the dorsal side. I think they want to dig into that ship so they can use its airlock to get to the Sector Jumper."

  Spin moved to Shamus' side, and he showed her a scan of a small octagonal craft drifting towards her ship. "That thing's going to latch onto our emergency airlock," Spin said, opening a channel on her communicator to the bridge. "Sharon! Get us out of here!"

  "Mooring clamps are still engaged, it'll take a minute for me to pay our docking fees and get the station to let us go," came her response.

  "We have boarders incoming, alert the station's law enforcement," Spin said, drawing her sidearm and pulling her containment hood up. Nigel and Aldo did the same, only Aldo didn't have a sidearm of his own.

  "Leland, seal medical," Spin ordered. "We have boarders coming in through the rearmost compartment."

  "Hey, boss, what do you want me to do?" Hal asked through Shamus' communicator.

  "Stay put, keep the hatch closed. If you see any of those boarders on the Convoy King's hull, or on your hull, make 'em disappear."

  "Gotcha, monitoring. Do you want me to use any smart missiles?"

  "That might be too close to the King," Shamus said. "If you can think of something that won't blow a hole in this can or damage the station, go for it."

  "Aye-aye," Hal said, closing the link.

  "This is not a can," Nigel said, making sure his sidearm was properly loaded.

  "Sorry, this nice, new looking hauler you've got here," Shamus said. "Didn't mean to offend." He activated his heavy armour and stood still as the slats of metal spread from the jacket and boots they hid in, covering his entire body with heavy encounter armour. He drew his sidearm and set it so it wouldn't punch through the hull and activated the smart ammunition system.

  "Holy shit!" Nigel said, tapping his uncle's metal covered shoulder.

  "Aye - only about a centimetre thick and it's got the power of an old earth power suit and then some. Haven Fleet has all the best toys."

  "Funny, I saw something a lot like that on the Concourse," Spin said as she followed Shamus down the hall. He hoped he could fake some grace in the powerful suit. He and Hal wore theirs whenever they had a chance so they could get more comfortable with them along the way, but the trip didn't take as long as either one of them expected, so Shamus only had basic training. The new heads' up display was a little confounding at times, trying to layer different imaging systems on top of each other so he could see more, but without customization it sometimes had the opposite effect.

  They entered the rearmost compartment and Shamus managed to activate the shields on the armour. "Stay behind me," he said.

  A pair of soldiers in unmarked white armour emerged from the emergency airlock in the floor right in front of the main engineering room. Another airlock opened on the starboard side and an alert warned Shamus that there were suppression grenades in the hallway. He fired once and a smart round pulsed through the air, curving to hit a web grenade, but there were three more.

  Shamus expanded his energy shield, and stopped them, but they exploded, creating a wall of tough plastic webbing between him, Spin and Nigel and the attackers.

  "They're already where they want to be! The engineering room and the hatch leading to your ship!" Nigel said.

  "Saints alive! You're right!" Shamus said as he struggled to find the command to set his sidearm to cut through the wall of plastic strands. "I'd have never noticed if you didn't point it out for me."

  "Boro never said you were sarcastic," Nigel said, firing at the plastic webbing several times and not making much of a difference. Spin did the same.

  "Does that suit have a hull cutter or something?" she asked.

  "I'm…" Shamus started, then stopped as he found the eye gesture control to unlock a nanoblade from the hip of the suit. He grabbed the hilt and started cutting.

  "Out of the way," said Dori.

  The trio looked behind them. She stood at the top of the three steps leading down into the rearmost section of the ship dressed in a space suit, holding a heavy beam rifle. "That'll do it," Shamus chuckled, stepping aside and reducing the width of his energy shield until it only covered him.

  "Get ready to fight," Spin said, slipping to the side and aiming her pistol.

  Dori activated the hull cutter, sending a beam of white and yellow light into the plastic webbing. It melted quickly, and she cut a hole with a steady, precise touch, a lopsided smile on her face. A few bolts of energy were fired through the enlarging hole from the enemy boarders, but she kept going, unflinching.

  Shamus locked onto one of the boarders trying to bust through the inner hatch leading to the Sector Jumper and fired three shots. The first knocked him sideways, the other two cut him in half with an explosion of hot viscera against the ceiling and bulkheads. He targeted another and was about to fire when he dropped a portable shield the size of his fist onto the deck between them. The suit told him it would take over a minute to burn through it using his sidearm, but he could possibly burn it out with his shield.

  A warning popped up on his display and before he could react, several shots caught him in the chest, reducing his shield to a quarter charge. He looked to his right and saw that Nigel and Spin were knocked off their feet by the blast. They were already recovering, and Dori was taking cover, but he could see how much damage the fight was doing to the ship around him. Covers were warped, several pieces of deck plating at his feet were shredded, and the wall behind him was trashed all the way down to the inner hull.

  Shamus spotted something on his heads' up display; SIMPLE MODE and activated it. "To hell with all these new controls," he said, focusing his shield forward and rushing the hole in the plastic webbing. It was just large enough, and he came through firing, trying to blast through the shield keeping him from the enemy. They had the inner hatch leading to the Sector Jumper open, but he was sure they wouldn't get into the ship. The advanced hull material would almost certainly stand up to anything they could carry with them.

  Absorbing several more hits with his shields, he made it to the portable energy shield and was just about to touch it with his own, absorbing and shorting it out, when one of the enemy shouted; "Hey! Stop right there or I'll turn this ship into a wreck!"

  Shamus' heart sank when he saw what the bastard in the unmarked armour held up. It was a burst grenade that would send dozens of
small explosive charges in all directions. He had the door to engineering wide open, and he held the football sized bomb in that direction. "You're dead if you let that go," Shamus growled. "Leave and you'll live to steal another day."

  "We're not stealing, you idiot," the soldier replied. "We're here under the authority of the Losamo Corporation. You stole a ship from us, remember? We're lawfully taking the one you came in as restitution. Stand back and let us have our legal compensation and no more damage will be done to this Convoy King model transport."

  He remembered; it was over twenty years before, the third ship he stole. It was a simple, barely armed medium range transport. He ended up selling it for a few hundred plat in a neighbouring system. "I have credits, I can pay you back and we can call this even," he said.

  "Inflation over twenty-three years at thirty-nine-point nine percent compounded makes that pretty unlikely," the armoured asshole replied. "We'll take your ship, thanks."

  Holding his sidearm low, he set it to lock on to the cluster grenade and the soldier holding it. If he disabled their shield then fired his pre-set shots right away, the ship would probably survive the blast and be repairable. As long as the cluster bomb didn't go off in engineering, it would be salvageable.

  "Don't do it!" Nigel called out from behind.

  Shamus half turned to look at him, his shields grazed the portable energy barrier cutting him off from the soldiers, recharging his own and burning theirs out. It was a mistake! He wasn't ready to fire at the grenade, he was just looking over his shoulder as a reflex!

  He turned back in time to see the soldier shrug like the arse he was as he threw the cluster bomb through the door leading to engineering. Shamus took fire from the three friends he had in the hallway but managed to get a shot off on the bomb. It struck, piercing its main body, setting the centre off and sending bouncing red grenades into the engineering room. They burst like popcorn, blasting consoles apart, sending shrapnel further into the room to do damage to sensitive devices and flash-melting equipment deeper inside. The components in that room were not combat hardened, not even against a light firefight, so he could only cringe at the incredible damage that was occurring as his ears filled with the sounds of small explosions.