“Stop firing or I’ll hurt you real bad!” I yelled, having no idea if they’d even understand me.
The fire subsided as voices yelled on the other side of the door. I pushed the shield through the opening where the blast door was and into the bridge of the ship. There were screams and wallows from inside as my nanites went through poor schmucks who thought they could defend against the crew of the Tanaree.
“Stop! Please! We surrender!” a voice cried from inside the bridge. “Just don’t hurt my people!”
I looked over my shoulder at the three in my team. None of them seemed to be very pleased as they were damn warmongers. Eres hoped for glory, Vogron for blood, and Arthur just wanted something to do or have someone to get laid with.
I was glad their plans failed. With the cruiser’s crew surrendering within the first few minutes of the fight, we’d be out of there in no time. What confused me endlessly was that voice that claimed surrender. It sounded so familiar in a way.
We entered the bridge still somewhat on edge. It wasn’t the first time someone said they’d surrender only to attack us from behind our backs. I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that one time. I had enough of killing, and I only did as much because I needed to get back home.
I walked over the torn-out blast door and entered the bridge. As I did so, my heart skipped a beat. A human woman dressed in a strange dark-blue uniform with several stripes and medals adorning her left breast reluctantly welcomed us aboard the bridge. I looked around realizing the dead soldiers, the few living ones, and the rest of the crewmates were mostly human. They all wore a similar indigo-blue uniform with the markings DA.
“Take what you need, Bloodmancer, and leave us alone,” she said, trying to sound dignified, but her voice was shaky.
The other crew members were completely terrified, especially after my men entered the bridge. Well, calling them men was a bit over the top. They were killing machines in their own right, but yeah, they were mine in a way. At least I had their loyalty in a way. Even Vogron had come to see sense and joined us.
I turned to stare around the bridge and noticed the mess we’d made. Some of them hid behind chairs and tables, others cowered under their consoles all while the captain tried to preserve her dignity.
“Our reputation precedes us,” I finally said, trying to sound like I always did.
My voice wavered slightly as I was shocked and shaken by the fact this was a cruiser full of humans protected by Greth frigates. Even more so was the Brilliant Oyster’s crew that we had come by to say hello. Or something. The Tanaree had become quite famous, or infamous depending on how you looked at it during the last two years of piracy.
“Is the entire ship human?”
She nodded in answer.
“Almost fully. We have about a score of other species on board for—reasons.”
I had a million questions just from the top of my head, but I had to get things moving.
“How do your detrium reserves look like?”
“We’re stocked only for a five-system jump.”
“Five?” I blurted out. Mitto and his calculations, I thought. This was way below what we needed. I hoped for ten at least, fifty at best, but this was just ridiculous.
“Give my ship access to the cargo hold. We’ll extract your detrium and all equipment we find necessary. Don’t resist and nobody dies. Arthur, Vogron, you’re on extraction duty.”
“That’s not fair!” Vogron yelled.
“Don’t protest, as it’s your turn!” I yelled back. “I swear if I hear another moan I’ll—”
“All right!” he hissed, and I rolled my eyes before I turned back to stare at the captain. I did my best to flash her a smile, but she was not at all comfortable with any of it. I hadn’t seen a human in seven years, and I instinctively started creating a connection with this woman. A woman, I thought. A real-life human woman in front of me!
“So, you heard of me, Captain… McGill, is it? That’s oddly Earthern, isn’t it? What brings a McGill to the Partak Sector?”
She looked me in the eye but said nothing. Fine, I thought. I had ways of making people talk, even if she was too pretty to do so with her.
“All right, let’s turn it around then. If you don’t want to tell me who you are, then tell me what you heard about me and my very angry crew?”
She looked at her men but said nothing again.
“I—”
“You’re the captain as far as I can tell, so you’re responsible for the well-being of your crew, aren’t you?” I waited for several seconds, but she didn’t say anything. “Well then, speak or I’ll have my deranged Eres here eat one of your men alive.”
Fars looked at me in shock, but I just gave him the just-go-along-with-it wink. He stretched out his arms and roared like an animal, which almost made me chuckle.
“You’re the Bloodmancer, aren’t you? You’re the pirate responsible for the Xan massacre. You and your crew butchered uncountable ship crews, stole, and destroyed military and civilian vessels without a drop of mercy. You’re infamous for the way you treat your prisoners, and you feed on other races like an animal. That’s what I know.”
Her voice was calm when she spoke, and she even managed to keep a straight face. I had heard the stories a dozen times. Partak propaganda painted us as some insane group of psychopathic murderers, and to be honest, it didn’t bother me at all. Fear was one of our most powerful allies.
“It’s all true except that I don’t eat other species. Can’t say the rest of my crew is so civilized, though.”
“I can see as much,” she muttered as Fars licked his lips.
“Now, knowing all this, what do you think will happen if you don’t tell me what a cruiser full of humans is doing in Partak space, McGill?”
“Just tell him!” one of the soldiers cried out.
“Silence!” She raged at him suddenly. She kept her gaze on the poor man for several seconds. She wasn’t too experienced with authority I realized, otherwise her men would never speak out like that. Nor would she need to threaten them the way she just did. She just might break much sooner than I had thought.
“We’re free people, Bloodmancer. Do you see this?” She said pointing to the badge on her chest that said “DA.” “That’s the Dusk Ascendancy. We don’t belong to anyone, especially not the Ka.”
“How the hell did you break loose from the Federation?”
“We were never even a part of the Federation. We’re the descendants of two-generation ships that traveled toward what is now Aloi-controlled space hundreds of years ago.”
“Aloi space? You’re aligned with the Aloi?”
“The Aloi do not interfere with our colonies if that’s what you mean.” The weight of her words left me speechless. It couldn’t be true, as the Aloi wouldn’t let humans settle within their territory just from the kindness of their hearts. She was either making the whole story up or I had a big, screaming blind spot in my knowledge.
Mitto called me on my INAS just then.
“We’re extracting the detrium right now, Captain. There’s no ammo on board, but we have found two SIM drones; do you want those?”
“Strong interaction material drones? Why would they—grab the drones and prepare for departure, something stinks here. But first, download their database if you can.”
“On it, boss.”
I first looked to Fars and then back at Captain McGill.
“Why do you have SIM drones in your cargo bay, and you better not lie to me right now. I’m not in a good mood, missy.”
“SIM drones?”
Her confusion seemed sincere and I could swear she had no idea what I was talking about.
“Yes, SIM drones. Why do you have them in your cargo bay?”
“We’re carrying some Aloi equipment, but I don’t know what it is.”
I had to squeeze more out of her, but I had no time.
“Speak or this soldier dies,” I said, pointing my hand toward one of the cowering gu
ards. “Speak!”
“I don’t know! The Aloi made us take the equipment from the Greth! We were en route to Space Station Kovar where we were supposed to leave it for another ship! That’s all I know!”
I crossed my hands above my chest.
“There are so many questions I’d like to ask, but I’d need a month to get them out of you.”
Just as I said those words, I heard Mitto sending me a red-level message.
“Boss?”
“What now?”
“Incoming, Aloi fleet, thirty ships, six battlecruisers. Inbound in four minutes.”
“Captain, how do you explain the Aloi fleet coming our way?”
“Aloi fleet?” Fars jumped. “We got to get the hell out of here, Richard Stavos.”
I noticed the captain flinch when Fars said my full name. I bet she didn’t even know I was human in the first place. They mostly called me Bloodmancer and I guessed it was beneath them to paint me as a lowly human since I managed to screw them all over.
“You’re coming with me,” I said and pulled her hand, but she resisted.
“I’m not going anywhere! Do you want to destroy my career and my life?”
“Fine then, my lady. Fars, would you please?”
Fars shrugged and knocked the captain out with one relatively good-natured fist to the temple.
“Anything else?” he asked, but I shook my head.
“Mitto, get Arthur and Vogron on board and pick us up at the entrance point.”
It took less than three minutes for us to get back aboard the Tanaree. I jumped into the captain’s chair and asked for an analysis. We had an Aloi fleet coming in from all sides and I didn’t like it at all. Wasting ordnance wasn’t something I liked to do. At least they were spread quite thin.
“Find the weakest link in their formation. Prop up two drones and put them on projectile deflection. Pull out all the other guns and have them ready. We’re going in hot.”
As the Aloi fleet came in closer, we speeded for a point which was covered by four destroyers and one battleship. We already had fighters on our tail, so I kept Mitto on pilot duty while Fars, Vogron, and Arthur sat behind a manual target control each.
The Tanaree, or the Crimson Death as our fans liked to call it, speeded toward the battleship as it rained mass-driver rounds, missiles, and high-pulse beams toward the dozen or so fighters on our tail. I had created a very special interface for my captain’s chair, which allowed me to send in several batches of nanites into the ship’s computer system connecting with it on a neurological level.
While Mitto remained as the main pilot, I could still add subtle changes to the ship’s course whenever I wanted and, at the same time, have complete control over the drones and weapon systems. I was, however, so deeply entwined with the ship in those moments that my physical body was basically defenseless.
The giant Crusader-class battleship with its pyramidal shape came into view. First, it was but a black dot on a black background, but I had Mitto come very close to it so we would avoid any of the heavy rail guns or Justicar cannons that could burn even through our heavily defended hull.
The destroyers came after us, but they had to limit their fire so as not to hurt their own battleship. We had to create enough distance from the fleet so they wouldn’t be able to jam our light-speed generator.
“Mitto, take us toward the Crusader’s engines. We’ll have to slow it down.”
Mitto took a sharp turn, and as he did, a salvo of heavy fire from the destroyer missed us and hit the battleship, causing the giant shields on the Crusader to flicker and crackle. As we came about to the engines, we fired all of our weapons at once. We were too close for the shields to absorb all the fire within a very short period of time, so we littered the giant exhausts with explosions. One of the three enormous, detrium powered exhausts cracked under the pressure and just slightly nudged downward.
“That’s good enough for now. Mitto get us into open space and leave those destroyers in the dust.”
Half an hour later we were free of the Aloi fleet. We were too slick, too fast, and too smart for them to follow us, and for the first time that day, I felt my body and mind relax. I leaned into the captain’s chair and checked the status. Captain McGill was still unconscious, and I sent her to the infirmary while I went through our loot.
“This was bullshit, Mitto. All this for what? Just enough detrium to prolong our agony for another week?” Vogron yelled into the air. I wasn’t too occupied with the question of fuel, or not as occupied as I should have been. What bothered me were the two SIM drones we found. When we hijacked the Tanaree we had four drones, but we had lost one to a small Jareet fleet that ambushed us six months ago.
“Mitto, is the drone count now back in order.”
“Yes, boss. Four out of four drones are accounted for. We have locked the new drone into its tube and it’s ready for use. We now have one spare drone in the cargo but—”
He stopped as the ship shuddered slightly, but only for several seconds.
“Mitto? What happened?”
“It’s gone, the drone is gone.”
“Gone where? Did we lose it? Do we have a breach in our cargo?”
“No breach detected.”
“How could you not realize the drone is gone? It has its own signature; you’d know if it had left the ship.”
“It didn’t, boss. The signature—it’s still there but—I have no idea.”
“No idea what? What the hell are you talking about?” I snapped and glared at the ceiling.
“It’s all over the place. It’s as if someone took it apart and fed it into the systems and hull. I can’t—I’m not familiar with what the hell is going on.”
“So the drone spread itself around the ship or what?”
“If we were about to use analogies, I’d prefer saying that the Tanaree just ate the drone.”
13
It is, however, perfectly reasonable to assume that the vast majority of generation ships that left Earth during the great Freedom Rush have been forever lost to us. If we, however, do stumble upon a society that has managed to develop itself despite incalculable threats, that managed to grow or even create an interstellar society, we should be very wary of them. Who knows what centuries of isolation may have produced, what strange culture may have developed, and what dangerous agendas had been resolved to be important? I’m against the integration of such societies until ample proof of their benevolence has been provided.
Astra Consul Miriam Gadish Okada of the Ziyou Sector
“Fars, would you bring Captain McGill to the brig before Arthur does something stupid? Please?” I said staring down the horny Templar who was drooling over our new guest.
Arthur waved me away begrudgingly and removed himself from the bridge while murmuring something unintelligible.
“You’re playing a dangerous game not sharing the spoils of war with your men,” Vogron warned as he was unstrapping his weaponry. He wasn’t much better than Arthur when it came to sending lustful stares in McGill’s direction.
“Humans are not spoils of war, Jareet. I told you we take no slaves.”
“Take no slaves, kill no innocents, rape no one, and don’t destroy too much. This is not a charity ship! Your compassion will bring us nowhere.
“I don’t want to have this conversation again, Vogron. There’s plenty of killing and other deranged things you do during raids that I ignore, but I won’t have it on my ship.”
In the last two years, I found myself losing control several times during the battle. My lust for more power was making me blind to the atrocities my teammates and I have been committing. No more, I told myself. I’d either stick to my mission and do something good in this world, or I’d fly this ship into a star. It’s been hard to curb my powers in the last few months since I made the decision, like getting off a hard drug, but I knew I could do it as long as I kept my mind on getting back to the Federation.
I took the elevator to the docking
area and Vogron followed me. The issue of the disintegrated drone was still a mystery to all of us. I checked the four SIM drones in their tubes and there was no change in their status. I looked at the spot where the fifth drone was just an hour ago, but there was absolutely no evidence it had ever been there. There wasn’t even a dust pattern where it had touched the ground. Nothing.
“Mitto, show me the camera feed from the docking area.”
I had already seen it several times and it wasn’t very helpful. Still, I wanted to check if I had missed something. The feed showed the drone standing in the docking area. As time passed, nothing happened for several minutes, nothing but a blinding white light that flashed like mad, dropping from the ceiling and flooding the cameras, blinding them. When the light subsided, the drone was gone.
“Is there anything in the specifications of the ship that could explain this?”
“No, boss. I checked and rechecked 435 times.”
“And the signature of the drone, you said it is spread across the whole ship?”
“Across the hull, to be more specific. It seems as if the SI material of the drone is now a part of our hull. Somehow. Strange that there was no increase in mass nor density of the hull. There’s only a trace on a quantum level.”
“Can you run a simulation, Mitto?” There was something I wanted to test that may shed some light on this thing.
“Simulate what would happen if we were hit by a Pavlov railgun. Full frontal, maximum damage.”
“Calculating.”
I stood there alone with Vogron in the docking bay, waiting for Mitto to do his work. There was an uncomfortable silence between us, but it was nothing new. Vogron and I weren’t seeing eye to eye on most things and never would. He was proud and thought of himself as upper aristocracy, not an ordinary man or soldier.
Eventually, we managed to agree on a common cause, which was stopping the Aloi from integrating the Partak Sector. He kept close to me because he was a fugitive. I kept him close because I knew the Jareet would never listen to me as seriously as they would listen to, though at this point, a disgraced but still rather powerful Jareet General. Vogron respected strength as much as cunning, so it took a couple of missions in the last two years to finally have him stop questioning my authority, but other than that, he was still the same prick he had been since we met.
Redeemer: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 2) Page 14
