by C. F. Harris
It's not that it was the first time I'd had that sort of reaction to combat. It's just that I was pretty sure the reaction was less about the fury of combat and more about the beautiful human warrior woman trying her best to do me grievous bodily harm.
I loved it!
But it had to end. I was leaking atmosphere and needed to get back to the ship sooner rather than later. Gorel, Rikar, and Korval would be able to lead this raid well enough without me.
So I pulled my hand up and slammed it into her faceplate. Once. Twice.
My faceplate had splintered because it was obvious that Derok in the quartermaster's room hadn’t been diligent with his job, but her faceplate cracked because she wasn't using a combat rig.
Why would the humans bother to reinforce the spacesuits of what amounted to a glorified interstellar repair crew?
The repeated hits and more pronounced cracking on her faceplate got her attention. She stilled. The meaning was clear.
I would regret destroying a creature as incredible as this, but I also wouldn't hesitate to introduce her to the cold harshness of space if she kept attacking while I was leaking atmosphere.
She went limp, and I was suddenly met with an interesting dilemma. I was out here with a human in my grips and atmosphere leaking rapidly from my suit. I needed to get back to the ship, but did I take this human or leave her floating out here?
Someone would be along to pick her up. Assuming her suit didn’t open to the vacuum in that time.
I growled. No. She’d fought well. I told myself that’s why I was doing this, and not that I was intrigued by what I saw on the other side of that faceplate.
“Gorel, Korval, Rikar, you have the raid,” I said. “I’ve taken too much damage. Losing atmosphere. Returning to the ship now.”
“Understood,” Gorel said.
I gripped the human woman by the arm and tried to pull her along, but she held in place. I pulled again, and raised my fist to strike her if she dared to defy me and…
She waved her hands frantically. Pointed back to the comm relay. Where I saw her companion still desperately clinging to the thing.
I growled and rolled my eyes. Pulled out my blaster. That got the human waving her arms again, but I took aim and fired. The shot landed on a section of lattice next to where the human was clinging.
I couldn’t be sure that the human down there was looking at me, but it seemed to get the message. It detached and floated free.
I smiled in satisfaction. It would seem that I had two humans in my clutches now.
I pulled the fighter around so she faced me. Both because it would make it easier to fly and because having her against me put pressure on the hole in my suit. I wrapped my arms around her, and I was more than a little surprised when she wrapped her legs around me and held on tight.
This human had some lower body strength. The sort of strength that brought things to mind that I didn’t need distracting me in the middle of combat damn it.
Still, that felt good. I pressed against her before I realized what I was doing. It was instinct, and that instinct was absolutely wrong!
That was the trouble with spending all my time in deep space. No time for the fairer sex, and the ones I did run into tended to be stronger and scarier than my crew.
That was saying something considering the crew I ran with.
I held on to her, enjoyed the touch even through our suits, and activated my thrusters. I aimed for one of the circular openings on the ship where I could see a second group of raiders readying to join the attack.
Good. At least I knew the attack would go well even as I was forced to sit this one out because of a stupid hole in my armor caused by stupidly thinking too little of a human who was a glorified repair tech working out in the middle of nowhere.
If this is how their glorified repair techs fared in combat then I could understand why our people were having so much trouble on the front lines dealing with humans who were actually trained in combat!
I looked to the human. Her cracked faceplate was up against mine. I couldn’t make out much through the webbing of cracked glass between the two of us, but I could barely make out her face.
Beautiful. Exotic. And potentially deadly. It was a dangerous combination.
It was a good thing there was a barrier between my groin and hers thanks to the armor I wore, because otherwise this whole situation would be even more awkward.
I concentrated on the ship ahead of me. It was time to get in there, throw this one in the brig, and then get back out to leading the raid after I’d changed into more acceptable armor and maybe given Dorel a piece of my mind while I was changing.
7
Rachel
“Oh yeah Rachel,” Kotomi groused. “This was a wonderful idea. Let’s attack one of the scary aliens who’s coming over to kill us.”
“Would you shut up?” I hissed.
I took in our surroundings. Okay. So this place didn’t smell nearly as much as I thought it would.
I guess it wasn’t entirely fair. Here I was thinking of nasty pirate ships with dripping corridors that looked like something straight out of ancient earth movies before they had any idea what space travel would actually look like.
I’d been out in space long enough to know that a clean ship was a happy ship, and it looked like whoever ran this ship was a very happy person indeed.
Not that I got to see much of it as our captors marched us through their ship.
“Why are they shirtless?” Kotomi whispered.
“Probably because they keep it so hot in here,” I said, tugging at my jumpsuit. “Plus all Vosk do that. Haven’t you seen the videos?”
“I thought those were propaganda,” she said, her eyes giving an appreciative look to one of our well-muscled Vosk captors. “Because damn.”
“Easy girl,” I said. “Concentrate on something else.”
“Standard Shipyards Number 8472,” Kotomi muttered, inspecting our surroundings.
“That would seem to be the case,” I growled.
I shivered. That Vosk had been impressive enough when he was tooling through space in that body armor, but that’d been nothing to seeing him once he was out of it.
Tall. Broad shouldered. Muscular in all the right places, with some muscles that didn’t exist on the meathead grunt soldiers I saw working out on some of the stations we stopped at for rest or repair.
There was also the faint gold hue to their body that seemed to sparkle ever so slightly as the light caught it just so.
An ache started just behind my belly button, moving down as I looked at my alien captor. I shook my head. Concentrated on the ship around us. I didn’t need to think about that alien or think ridiculous things like how it wouldn’t be all that bad being a slave if I was working for him.
“Get it together Rachel,” I muttered.
“What was that?” Kotomi asked.
“Just checking out the specs on our new home away from home,” I said.
The whole layout was familiar, of course. Standard Shipyards stuff all looked similar considering their whole schtick was, well, standardizing hulls. This was a Standard hull tricked out with Standard equipment if I’d ever seen it.
It was convenient that there was one corporation that had come to dominate the shipbuilding business in this part of the galaxy.
Sure a few holdout militaries from other species were forever bitching about how they’d never use Standard hulls because of the worry that we’d build failsafes in the things to make safety or weapons systems fail in the middle of combat, but other than those few holdouts Standard dominated this part of the galaxy when it came to selling commercial and military stuff.
Besides, most species who’d switched to Standard had long ago figured out that for Terran corporations the almighty Standard Galactic Credit ruled supreme, regardless of who one chunk of the Terran Alliance might be at war with at any given time.
Though it was surprising to see Vosk raiders in a Standard hull con
sidering the Vosk were one of those species that bitched endlessly about not using Standard stuff. Maybe the whole pirate thing gave them some leeway.
“Think we can get out of here?” Kotomi whispered.
“I doubt it,” I said. “I mean it’s not like there’d be anything ridiculous like a ceiling panel that opened up and let us escape or something once we get to the brig.”
“Right,” she growled.
I looked to our guards. They weren’t nearly as impressive as the one who took me captive, not to mention the blue markings on their bodies weren’t nearly as intricate, but they were what I had to work with right now.
“So you boys missed the combat?” I asked in fairly passable Standard. No point in letting on that I also knew Vosk. Know thy enemy and all that.
I wasn’t sure if the glares I got from them were because they couldn’t speak Standard, or if they were pissed off that they were stuck on guard duty instead of taking part in a glorious raid against an unarmed repair frigate.
“You guys are great conversationalists, you know that?” I asked.
One of them brandished something I was pretty sure was a weapon. That was the thing about weapons. There was no standardized manufacturer for that sort of thing, at least not on the scale of Standard Shipyards, but they all tended to look the same despite a much wider variety of small arms manufactories out there in the galaxy.
I stared at the weapon in his hand and arched an eyebrow.
“Really? You’re going to threaten me? Come on. I know you guys probably understand me, and I know you’re interested in taking prisoners or we wouldn’t be having this chat, so don’t insult me.”
“Is it really a good idea to insult the aliens guarding us?” Kotomi growled.
“I’ve only started to antagonize these golden motherfuckers,” I said, though I said that bit in Terran and not Standard.
“In here,” the gruff one who’d threatened me with the weapon said.
They pushed us into a cargo hold that didn’t have much cargo in it. Like they’d been planning for a raid to fill the place up.
I turned on our captors. “So y’all can speak Standard Galactic. Care to tell me what the hell you think you’re doing attacking a human ship in the middle of human space? You’re going to get blown out of the void for this, y’know.”
If they were perturbed by my threat they didn’t show it. That was… worrying. The very real threat of the Aegis Fleet coming down on them like a supermassive black hole devouring a star usually terrified aliens.
“Do we get any food or anything?” I asked. “Maybe my one phone call?”
They hit me with blank looks. Okay then. Clearly they weren’t as interested in ancient earth entertainment as I was.
Their loss. I really wouldn’t have minded something to eat though. I’d been out there on the array for a good while, and I hadn’t bothered with a snack before I went out.
“You’ll stay here and you won’t cause any trouble,” the gruff one said. “Or else you’ll find out that not everyone on this ship is as eager to take prisoners as you might think.”
That got the gruff one a dangerous look from the other one. It also gave me something to think about.
Was there something going on with this crew? Just what I needed. Captured by pirates, and on top of that they were fighting with each other.
Our chances of survival seemed to be getting lower and lower, and I figured it would be best to go over to a quiet corner of our makeshift prison and mind my own damn business away from the crazy aliens and their dangerous weapons.
So I walked to the other end of the cargo hold. The gruff one left, but they weren't stupid. The other one, the one that’d seemed a little more friendly, if glowering a little less than the first one could be considered friendly, stayed behind.
“Pretty boring cargo hold they have here,” Kotomi said.
“Standard Shipyards #4759 if I don’t miss my guess,” I said.
“Yup. Or a variant. Looks like they’ve made some mods,” she said.
There were a few obvious mods. Mostly in form way of giant turrets facing the exit and a couple of extra shield generators. Like they were prepared for someone to be unhappy about stuff being pulled into this cargo hold.
“Whoever designed this one must’ve been a fan of the classics,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Kotomi asked, coming up beside me. It’s not like she had anyone else to talk with.
“I always thought #4759 looked a lot like the cargo holds from the Enterprise-D in Star Trek the Next Generation,” I said.
“You spend entirely too much time watching ancient earth shows,” Kotomi said with a roll of her eyes.
“Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time an ancient history buff worked some of the classics into their designs,” I said.
“Whatever,” Kotomi said. “I’m not in the mood right now, so if you’ll just shut up I’ll be over here in the opposite corner feeling sorry for myself.”
“You do you,” I said.
I went to work inspecting one of the control panels on the far end of the cargo hold to see if whoever put us in here had been clever enough to lock me out. I could have some fun with a Standard Shipyards build, some of those aliens were right to be wary of humans bearing gifts, or at the very least humans who spent their free time learning all the fun exploits in these things.
The doors to the cargo hold opened. The doors facing into the ship. Not the doors facing the vacuum of space. Which would’ve been bad since we’d been stripped out of our suits.
I turned and frowned. None other than Dirk and Captain Arnold were shoved through the door. Followed by about a dozen other crew from the ship.
I could’ve done without talking to Dirk, so I went back to tapping away at the control board in the hopes they hadn’t patched the thing. I might be able to instigate a resonance cascade polarity reversal overflow in the isolinear chips or something that would give me access.
It was a long shot, but right now I’d take long shots over the other odds I was facing.
Also? It totally helped me to drown out the sound of Captain Arnold on the other side of the cargo hold begging for his life with one of the guards as more of our captured crew streamed in.
Poor guy. It’s not like he was designed for combat. He was out here in the middle of the void because it paid well enough to keep his ship running. Not because he wanted to mix it up with Vosk raiders.
I went back to work. There were still a few more tricks I could try, and it wasn’t over until it was over.
I tried not to think about what “it’s over” might mean in this case.
8
Vrath
I looked over the live view of humans being packed into their zero-G suits for transportation over to our ship.
It was going to be a pain trying to keep all of them like this. We couldn’t get rid of them fast enough as far as I was concerned.
We also had no choice though. We’d be stripping their ship down to its support struts and then towing those struts to a salvage yard where we could sell them for scrap.
Assuming we had enough time. I hadn’t counted on taking this many prisoners. If we stayed around here much longer then we might find ourselves forced to use them as a bargaining chip to get out of here.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Vlox said.
I sighed. I was inclined to agree with him.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” I said. “But we’re going to go through with this. We’re not killing humans in the middle of human territory. Too dangerous.”
It was dangerous, but that wasn’t the real reason why we weren’t killing them. There were some out there who would do it without thinking. Some of my brothers and sisters back home came to mind. I wasn’t one of them, though.
“We’ll hold them captive as insurance and repatriate them at the first neutral station we can find on the way out of here,” I growled.
Vlox hit me with a look of pure d
isgust. What was with him lately? It was as though since going on this job he’d become a different person, and I didn’t like it.
“Do you have a problem with that?” I asked.
He didn’t challenge me. Not outright. Of course he wouldn’t. I could see the challenge behind his eyes, but he’d never followed through.
Which was another reason why it was so odd to see that challenge here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe looking at all those potential credits in the human crew had him thinking of a challenge. I casually stretched my shoulders to remind him of the damage I could do if he decided to challenge me.
“There are alternatives,” Vlox finally said. “Ways we could turn this into profit we could never imagine.”
Others in the command center were watching now. Some looking at me as though they were wondering if I was going to tolerate this. Others looking at Vlox as though they were thinking about all the credits being deposited into their accounts when this excursion was finished.
“Go on,” I said, my voice low and full of the threat of what I might do to him if he was actually suggesting selling the humans as slaves.
He looked down and away. Good. He knew he was still my subordinate, even if he did seem to be chafing at that position.
It was high time I reevaluated some of the crew positions when we got back to a safe port. Now wasn’t the time though. The last thing I needed was to deal with this out here in the middle of enemy space.
“You know what I’m suggesting,” Vlox said. “A full crew of humans? Some of them could fetch quite the price on the right markets.”
I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a deep breath. Then I took a few more. It was only the sound of some of the crew moving past me that brought me back to the unfortunate reality surrounding me.
This whole thing was turning into a problem the likes of which I’d never seen before in my long and illustrious career.
I didn’t like problems. Problems were the kind of thing that happened to people in our business right before they were retired. Usually forcibly and against their will at the end of a plasma rifle barrel.
