“Do you think they’ll shoot the hostages if we try something?” Marigold asked at last.
Morgan wasn’t sure, but before she could say that, Max spoke up.
“I don’t think so, Ma’am. Everything this lot has done has convinced me they’re trying to hide behind being privateers, in case of capture. They’re cowards, basically, and would rather go to jail – and deal with the headache of prisoners – than get a summary execution.”
“Excellent. Good to hear your voice, sergeant, though I will deny that if you repeat it to anyone later. Get your group in position by the hatch, we’ll toss in smoke and flash when you’re ready, make them think we’re moving, give you a distraction.”
“Understood, LT,” Max said. “One more thing. You have a visual on a man in a different style suit? He’s very pale skinned, should be sporting two black eyes.”
“Yeah. Looks like he’s giving orders, but isn’t actually in charge.”
“He represents whoever employed the ‘privateers.’ Best we take him alive.”
“Right,” Morgan added, pausing a moment. “Just in case, there is a pirate handcuffed in one of the crew quarters who boasted to me that Hillman is behind this.”
“Hillman? That seems unlikely,” Captain Rain interjected.
“Maybe, but the leader, the pale man, he is from Hillman.”
“Are you sure?” Marigold asked.
“Absolutely positive. We lived in the same village before I came to Parlon.”
“Highly improbable happening,” Marigold muttered.
“Yes, except it already happened, so the probability is now one,” Rain pointed out. “But that can wait. Take him alive if at all possible. The longer we hang here, tethered to the station, the greater likelihood the pirate vessel will come along and snatch us up, too. I need you off the station, and I need my mercenaries manning the weapons.”
“Sir, what about the miners?” Morgan asked. “We wouldn’t leave without them, would we?”
“Of course not,” Rain said immediately, “But we can’t offload the whole station in time, and during any fighting they’d be safer on the station anyway. Now, no more talk. Get it done.”
***
Morgan’s uplink was still tied into Marigold, but not the Captain, as the mercenary lieutenant counted down their maneuver.
“Flashbangs in ten seconds. Wait until follow-on smoke to start your move.”
She counted down the seconds.
“Flashbangs, now!”
The comm line went fuzzy for a moment as the automated software filtered out the damaging levels of noise, then stabilized, in the middle of Marigold speaking again.
“Five seconds for Smoke. Now! Flanking team, Go!”
The miner stationed at the controls slammed his fist down, harder than necessary, really, and the hatch sprang open. The men streamed forward, each taking the closest unoccupied bit of cover as he reached it.
Max, Morgan, and Linda were at the back, and as they ran, Morgan saw Max grab Linda’s hand and pull her along with him, stopping at a particularly wide crate that was nonetheless squat enough to allow Max to fire over it. Linda, for her part, was ducked down low, not exposing any part of her body.
Morgan was out of time to spare for them; she had to get behind her own cover, a much taller stack of crates. She’d have to peek around the side of them, but it would work.
The pirates were shouting, a jumbled mess of confused and conflicting orders, suggestions, and curses.
From the other side of the dense smoke, a loud horn sounded, probably to get their attention as prelude to Marigold giving her ultimatum about… now.
“Attention armed combatants. You are now surrounded. Surrender promptly and you will be treated according to the rules of war. Refuse, or harm your hostages in any way, and we will open fire.”
Morgan had never heard such a tone from Marigold before; she was almost convinced to surrender herself, and it wasn’t even directed to her.
Some of the pirates were already laying down their weapons, after glancing back and seeing the men behind them. Arms in the air, they just stood there.
Others seemed unconvinced.
And then Morgan spotted him in the crowd. Thirty-four. She’d almost missed his smug, arrogant face hidden behind all the bruises she’d given him.
Was his nose always that shape? she idly thought, the momentary levity at the idea of her having broken his nose freezing into unease as she saw he had a hostage held at gunpoint… and that the man looked quite a bit like Linda.
“No, damnit,” Thirty-Four was screaming, waving his other hand, also holding a pistol, at the pirates around him. “They’re bluffing, they won’t risk the hostages. All we have to do is hold out a bit longer.”
“Release the hostage,” Marigold ordered, still through the billowing smoke, but Thirty-Four didn’t seem to hear.
To Morgan’s right, she could hear Linda crying out in fear, then calling out for her Pa. Max had his rifle up, but he wasn’t firing, unable to use penetrator rounds with Linda’s Pa right there, and the smaller rounds in the secondary magazine too soft to puncture Thirty-Four’s skinsuit.
My pistol doesn’t have that problem, Morgan thought, leaning out and bringing up her pistol in a two-handed stance, braced against the crate. Disable, don’t kill, aim for a spot that won’t risk the hostage if it over-penetrates…
She’d dreamed about this moment for most of her life. Oh, not in this exact manner, but revenge against the Tinnys was something of which they all dreamed.
Now it was here, and she felt… nothing. No satisfaction, no anger, just determination to save ‘Pa’s’ life.
Morgan stopped breathing, focused herself, and squeezed the trigger.
Thirty-Four screamed, dropping both pistols – one from nerveless fingers as her bullet took him in the elbow, the other on reflex as he clutched at the wound with his uninjured hand.
Blast it all, I got lucky. That was supposed to hit him in the shoulder.
His hostage dropped down, out of sight, and like a spell being broken in some cheesy fantasy story, all the pirates looked at each other and dropped their weapons, arms raised in the air.
It was over.
Mostly.
Chapter 33
Combat in space is… well, I’m going to be perfectly honest here, it is terrifying, for the lowliest deck scrubber on up through the Admiral. When you send in ground troops the danger is unevenly distributed; often the leaders above the lowest ranks aren’t in direct danger at all. In space everyone shares the risk equally, and incoming railshot will kill anyone in its path, or everyone on the ship. Historically weapons technology has outpaced armor’s capabilities, and while that is somewhat reversed with modern skinsuit and exosuit designs, that is still true of ships. A ship’s armored cap can take some few hits, but very little can stand up to railshot impacting with a force best described in comparative terms to nuclear explosions.
- Admiral Harold Ramsay, Imperial Navy of Kord, retired.
IN THE aftermath of the showdown, Morgan found herself pulled in a half-dozen different directions at once, most of which weren’t places she much cared to go, at the moment.
Linda was, quite naturally, swept up in her reunion with her father, and as best Morgan could tell, Max was pulled along for the ride. He had left the rifle Morgan had given him on the crate, so she walked over and slung it onto her back by the strap.
That was the last thing she was able to choose to do for a bit, as Morgan then had to try and deal with the freed miners, the mercenaries, their new prisoners, try and help Marigold in freeing the rest of the miners and the last two ladies from STEVE’s crew, and try and get back on STEVE to get some clothes, blast it.
Thirty-four, at least, she ordered taken for immediate treatment, followed by isolation until he could be interrogated, and Marigold hit on the idea of leaving the rest of the pirates in the same rooms they’d held the miners in. Letting the miners do the guarding, as w
ell, would help get STEVE’s mercs freed up to man the weapons.
Finally, finally, Morgan was able to slip away from the back and forth between Marigold, the mining officer whose name she had never even gotten, and everyone else trying to chime in.
Once back on STEVE, she slipped through some of the less-used corridors until she reached the seldom-used ladders connecting STEVE’s floors together. She had to pause at each landing to open the hatch above her and close the one below, but that was worth it to simply have some time alone.
From there, it was a simple matter to slip, unseen, to her quarters. Almost everyone was at their stations, after all.
Securing the rifle in a locking cabinet, she then proceeded to put the pistol magazines in their normal storage space. The pistol itself she left out, placing it within easy reach of her bunk and bathroom on a table, then her uplink and spanner beside it.
Everything else she had on, she dumped directly into the trash bin for later incineration. She’d think over it again later, but right now she was considering pulling anything else close to that shade of orange from her wardrobe and burning them, too.
Morgan shivered a bit, and not from the cold. In fact, the ship was noticeably warmer than it had been when she’d left.
In all the fighting, I’d almost forgotten that STEVE still isn’t fully functional, and we’ve got a chunk of the radiators retracted while we’re docked.
Morgan then indulged herself with a long, long, hot shower. She stayed in even after the water had turned lukewarm (with things as they were it would never get truly cold) and kept on scrubbing everything. She probably used up a third of a bottle of her body wash, and only a bit less of her shampoo.
Eventually she forced herself out, not because of the water or its temperature, but because her sense of duty was nagging at her, the need to know what was going on and how she could help.
She didn’t think they’d undocked yet; even in the shower she’d have felt the thrusters pushing them away from the station, but what were they doing?
Bypassing her uplink for the moment, including ignoring the blinking message alert, she got herself dressed in one of her best uniforms, finally easing the sense of vulnerability that had been ever-present at the back of her mind as she slipped on the leggings and undershirt. Now that she was out of the shower, her desire to get back out there to work was waning a bit, and she wasted some time fiddling with the placement of the nameplate on the dress’ right breast before pulling on the clothing.
Oddly, now that she was fully dressed, aside from her shoes, she felt naked again without her pistol. Her thigh holster was close at hand, though, so that was easily remedied.
She was just about to the point of admitting she couldn’t delay any longer and checking her uplink, when there was a knock at her quarter’s hatch.
Morgan did not respond immediately, instead walking over and pulling up the camera feed to check who it was.
Recognizing Gertrude, she moved to open the hatch. Morgan was initially surprised it was her — she’d assumed Gertrude was down in engineering — but that gave way to recognition that of course the captain knew how close the two of them were. If he was worried about her, Gertrude was the perfect choice to send.
Before Morgan could say anything, Gertrude swept her up in a hug, literally pulling her off her feet into the embrace of the taller woman.
She couldn’t even return the hug; her arms were pinned to her sides.
“G, G, I’m okay,” Morgan managed to get out, patting at Gertrude’s sides where her arms could reach. Even then, Gertrude held her there for ten seconds or so before putting her back down, squeezing her tight once more, and then stepping back.
Morgan could see tears on Gertrude’s face, but she was also smiling.
“Can’t you leave just one little adventure to someone else?” Gertrude said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Just one? Maybe consider what all this does to my poor heart?”
Morgan chuckled, reaching up to hug Gertrude about the neck and give her a kiss on the cheek.
“I’m sorry I worried you. At least this time I’m fine.”
As she pulled back, Morgan was surprised to see Gertrude frowning a bit.
“Are you, though? Physically you look fine, but… well.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Morgan admitted.
“The violence?”
“That was… that was easier actually, which is worrying in its own way. I won’t say I want a boring life, since I still want to see more of the galaxy and all that, but a bit less heart-pounding excitement would be nice. I…” Morgan trailed off as her uplink chimed, another priority comm request.
“Oh, bother. I let myself be distracted,” Gertrude said, though from her tone Morgan didn’t think Gertrude meant a word of it. “Captain wants you on the bridge, if you’re up to it. He said something about undocking soon, that there was an approaching ship on the sensors? I thought the pirates were dealt with, what is going on?”
“Right, of course you don’t have the whole story.” Moran snorted. “The captain doesn’t even have all of it yet. Come on then, I’ll fill you in on what I can on the way.”
“Wait, shouldn’t you get your skinsuit?” Gertrude asked, cocking her head to the side a bit as she turned to look over Morgan. “Why’d you change into that uniform anyway?”
“Yeah, about that…” Morgan started to say, then shook her head. “I’ll explain that on the way too.”
“I’m going to be upset by this, aren’t I?” Gertrude said with another frown.
“I’ll explain on the way,” Morgan repeated, pausing only long enough to gather up her uplink, a single spare magazine that went into her dress pocket, and her shoes. As Morgan headed out, toward the lift, Gertrude came up next to her and held on to one arm with both her hands.
Guess she’s in full-on mother mode. Hard to blame her, though hopefully she’ll relax a bit before we get to the bridge. Hard to be taken seriously when you’re being mothered by someone you outrank.
“Anyway, when we got over to the station there was a guide waiting to take us to the bridge…”
***
“…And so that ship headed this way belongs to the pirates?” Gertrude asked as they walked out onto the bridge.
“Looks like,” the captain said from his position standing at the back of the bridge before Morgan could answer. “They aren’t answering any of our messages, or even reacting to our in-depth scans. Missing a message or two, possible I suppose. Ignoring all the alarms going off as we bounce enough scans off them to count the divots in their forward armor… that has to be intentional.”
“They aren’t jamming us?” Morgan asked, moving over to one of the observations spots with a good view of the main holo, and a railing to hold onto if things got bumpy.
“They are, not that it matters right now. There isn’t anyone close enough we want to send a message to that would be able to respond in time, except for them, of course. This close, we’re using a tight beam communication laser, which they aren’t able to jam.”
“I imagine from their point of view, it doesn’t do any good to jam communications if it also means they can’t demand everyone surrender,” Morgan mused aloud. “Why haven’t they demanded it, though?”
“Probably trying to make us afraid before contacting us,” the captain replied. “They think they hold all the cards. We’ll just need to show them they’re wrong.” Rain turned to face the bulk of the room, striding over to stand between his chair and the main holo. “All stations, this is the captain. STEVE’s full complement is back on board, and the miners are safe, for the moment. We will undock from the station in thirty seconds. At that time we will rig for combat, and retract all radiators. Things might get a bit stuffy in here, but I know you all can handle it.” The captain paused as a nervous chuckle went up around the bridge. He then very pointedly shut off the comm line. “My next orders are… weighty. There is no doubt the ship approaching is piratical. We will stil
l wait for them to openly state their intentions before acting, but I will not allow them the opportunity to fire upon us. That means I will not give them the chance to surrender before we fire. That… might have consequences later. I weighed my options and decided I can live with that, because it also means you will all be here to deal with breaking in a new captain.”
“Sir, we can…” one of the techs started to say, but Rain shook his head.
“This is my decision; none of you were consented or consulted. The consequences be upon my head.”
“How long until estimated weapons range?” Morgan asked, turning to the tactical station.
The reply was interrupted as another person on the bridge called out.
“Docking clamps releasing now. Thrusters will fire in five seconds.”
Everyone braced as they shuddered free of the station, the distance slowly opening up until they could safely use the main engines.
“If we assume they have modern weapons, we’ll be in accurate range in five minutes. With their current approach, we’ll have accurate fire in… six,” the mercenary at tactical answered.
“A word, captain?” Morgan asked, indicating his ready room with her chin.
“Very well, Lieutenant.” He turned to face the bridge, adding a couple orders for them. “Tactical, get our weapons online, but don’t target them until I order. The longer they take to realize we’re armed, the better. Comms, let me know the moment they contact us. Do not answer any hail until I am here. Suoh, thank you, now get back to DCC. For anything else, Kerry, you have the conn.”
Morgan let him take the lead as they moved into his ready room, trying to keep the frown off her face.
Once they were both inside and the hatch closed behind them the captain slumped down on the couch opposite his desk, rather than his customary chair behind it.
“I assume you take umbrage with my orders?”
“I don’t think I’m familiar with that word, sir,” Morgan said. “If you mean disagree with, not especially, but I am confused as to the theatrics.”
Running Black Page 28
