by Greg Dragon
What a mess I’ve allowed myself to be in, he thought, watching the door as he knelt with his auto-rifle raised and ready. “Ray, how’s it coming?”
“Patching her through now, Commander,” he said, and then Cleia’s melodious voice was on the comms, guiding Raileo on examining the equipment to see what had been done.
“Those people are in a peculiar state of cryogenic stasis. Frozen within their EVA suits,” she said quietly. “Possible cause is lengthy travel with a shortage on supplies. Life signs are normal, however, though there are several species represented that won’t do well once revived. It’s unorthodox, but a good solution for preservation in a ship that lacks enough proper cryogenic equipment. The subject that you are observing, Raileo, is a 52-year-old, Arisani female. The one next to her is Vestalian, and looks to be in his twenties, which is comparable based on lifespans. Perhaps this is the replacement crew for the ones that are operating the ship, currently?”
“Perhaps, Dr. Rai’to,” Cilas said, feeling a slight chill. “Though I disagree with your hypothesis on these being crew. Some have cuts and bruises on their face, so my guess is that they are cargo, stored to be bought and sold at a future station. That complicates this salvage. We can’t very well just clear, strip, and reduce her to debris.” He sighed audibly. “Ate, you there?” he said, connecting to her comms. “Go to my cabin and find the communicator. We need to alert the captain to what we just found, and request a rescue immediately from any Alliance ship in the sector.”
“Aye aye, Rend, I am on my way,” she said, though he could hear the hesitation in her voice, wanting to ask him why.
“Alright, we’ve lingered too long, let’s get moving,” he said. “With this important cargo occupying this space, there’s bound to be something waiting on the other side of that door.”
He checked the HUD for their readouts and saw that his were the only shields below 100%. Raileo’s heart rate had increased. Was the ice-cold sniper suddenly afraid? Or did it have to do with whatever private discussion was now happening between him and the doctor?
I’m going to have to talk to that man, he thought, already dreading the exchange. What was he to say? “Stop this thing between you and the Traxian?” As if that wouldn’t drive Raileo closer to her, or force him to call out the hypocrisy.
It made him miss the old crew, where all that mattered to them was the mission. Sure, some of the men disliked a brother or two, but that only came out during idle times, when they were impatiently waiting for an assignment.
This new crew, for all its talents, however, were more than Nighthawks, and it made his role difficult. They were friends, and lovers, with a new doctor that hailed from Sanctuary station, who had no Navy connection, outside of the young, rash, Raileo Lei.
“Are you good, brother?” Quentin said in his ear, and Cilas saw that they were waiting on his command.
“Yeah, I’m about to crack the lid on this bio-extraction unit,” he said, amused at his own joke. “Schtill is bound to fly out, so sound off when you’re ready.”
Both Nighthawks confirmed, so he activated the locking mechanism that screeched an alarm before the circular door spun counterclockwise and hissed before collapsing into itself. Cilas’s PAS shields were back to being fully charged, so he took up point and stepped out into another compartment.
The bio-extractor on a ship was a mechanism that collected the waste from the heads and broke it down into chemical properties. The reusable fluid and minerals were processed for a number of uses, none being consummation or contact with the organics in the crew, while the remaining, vile-smelling refuse was “extracted” out into space with the rest of the trash.
Cadet academy boomers often joked about the contents of a bio-extractor, so when Cilas pulled open the door, both Quentin and Raileo knew to expect a world of hurt. Expectations were met as a shot struck Cilas in the shoulder, spinning him out and away from the open portal.
Stunned, heart racing, and eyes moving about rapidly to assess his health, Nighthawks, and readouts, Cilas stood to the right of the doorway with his back against the bulkhead.
Shields were at 20%. Whatever had hit him had been enough to render his PAS nearly worthless. Quentin was on the other side of the door, and Raileo Lei was in the back, lying flat on his stomach, using a raised portion of the deck for cover.
They were both firing back through the door, and Cilas put the auto-rifle to his chest and tried a deep breath to calm his nerves.
“Arming a bomblet,” Quentin announced, bringing Cilas out of his daze to gesture for him to stop.
“They’re next to an exposed power supply,” Cilas said. “That’s why they chose that passageway, it connects to the engine room, and presents them with a natural dead man’s switch. Blow them up and the ship follows along with us, and with it being tethered to the Ursula, it may do enough to cripple her. No, we need to play this smart with precision shots and suppression. Ray, you’re quiet. What’s your situation?”
“I’m looking at a case of sealant next to that power supply, Commander. If I can hit one of those cans, it will explode and take the rest out with it. I’m thinking that will cause the ruckus we need,” the young man said.
“It could work, but if it doesn’t, I want you to go fully auto so that Q and I can move in on these thypes,” Cilas said. He looked over at Quentin, who seemed perched on the edge of action as he leaned towards the open doorway, fidgeting with his pulse-rifle and looking back at Raileo.
“Taking the shot,” Raileo announced, then fired a single round from the deck, where he was wedged behind a natural barrier and a fallen spacer in an EVA suit who had been clipped by one of the pirate’s shots and killed.
There was a loud, popping noise, and the far compartment filled with a cloud of smoke and flames. Quentin whooped and moved in, followed closely by Cilas, who had his rifle back over his shoulder and his sidearm raised with the supporting hand gripping a knife in the ESO fashion.
They were on top of the coughing defenders, dealing death liberally like hungry wolves within a roost. Their PAS’s suffered—these defenders could fight—and Cilas noticed that some wore old Alliance armor, which reflected their shots or absorbed them.
It was absolute chaos with flailing arms, blind fire, and angry screams and shouts inside that crowded passageway. Raileo Lei had come up to join his brothers against the five remaining defenders of the eight that had occupied the space.
One lay cut open and in a heap below the power supply that Cilas had warned them about, and the other two were dead from bullet wounds, one from Cilas’s close-range pistol shot, and the other from Quentin.
They cleared the passageway before noticing that several men had retreated back onto the bridge. They sealed the door, and a frustrated Quentin punched the panel when it wouldn’t respond to his commands.
“We can’t have them in there stalling us while maker knows what is incoming,” the big man shouted. Raileo shouldered his OKAGI “Widow Maker” and walked over to where he stood to try his hand at getting the door open.
While they worked on this, Cilas bent down to examine the men. Judging from their clothes, they were definitely pirates, dressed in a motley of armor and expensive fabric stolen from the Arisanis they had ravaged earlier. Their weapons were neither Alliance nor Geralos; they were kinetic pistols and rifles, meant for hunting animals or killing innocents that didn’t wear armor.
Cilas found this to be confusing being that earlier he had been shot with something that would have killed him if not for his personal shield generator.
“There’s a fusion cannon missing here, Nighthawks, be careful with that door. You saw what it did to me, and I was hoping that we got to the schtill who hit me. He’s bound to be in there setting up another ambush, and as soon as we get in, he will hit us.”
He looked around and his mask adjusted, clearing the smoke to give more detail to where they were. To the left of the door that Raileo was working on stood a large bay window out of
which he saw the Ursula looming, its bow and cockpit visible.
They were running out of time, and with so many lives at stake, he found himself petrified at making the wrong decision. “Ray,” he said, “how much longer will that take?”
“It’s going to be a bit, sir, and I suspect that they’re rigging it to explode as soon as it comes open. Our only advantage is our PAS, and the fact that we’re shielded from exposure. I say thirty minutes and we can punch through, but we’re bound to have a surprise waiting inside,” he said.
“Any thoughts Q?” Cilas said, looking over at the big man who was pacing impatiently in front of the door.
“Is there a vent? Maybe one of us could get around by crawling through that,” he suggested. “Or maybe going out to the hull, the way we did back on Rendron to shut down Aurora.”
Cilas thought about what he was suggesting, then switched his comms to private and called up Helga. “Ate, are you listening in?” he whispered.
“We’re here,” she said, “and we can see movement through the windows of their bridge. Sunny has locked in surveillance to see if he can make out what is happening over there.”
“Their shields are down, correct?” he said and she confirmed, making him stop and rub at the back of his neck, conflicted with his decision. “Tell you what, scan the bridge for any lifeforms that look trapped, bound, placed in stasis, or duress. I want to know if there’s only bad guys on that bridge, and if there’s any civilians present, I want you back on these comms immediately.”
“Orders received loud and clear, Commander. Please stand by while I have Zan run some scans.”
She clicked off and Cilas walked over to touch Raileo’s shoulder.
“Leave that alone; we’re leaving. I’m about to have Ate lase the bridge and suck them out. Once it’s cleared we’re going to enter it from the outside, access the console, and activate blast shields to plug up the exposure. We’ve done all we can to investigate, and we don’t have time to salvage or thype around anymore.”
“We’re leaving her stranded?” Quentin said, gesturing about him to indicate the vessel.
“No choice now that they’re likely calling in reinforcements. We’ll spare the time to get the prisoners onto the Ursula; at least that should be easy since they’re all in EVA suits. Then pull what we can from the console, star maps, correspondence records, whatever, and then we’ll reduce this schtill to stardust and be out of the system, double time.”
“What about the meet-up that’s supposed to happen with the Arisanis to get their people?” Quentin said.
“It was a setup, Q,” Cilas said quietly as he walked back to the compartment with the prisoners hanging unconsciously against the bulkhead. “I will speak to the captain, but as far as I am concerned, we were set up by someone on A’wfa Terracydes. That will be our next stop, to not only drop off our passengers but to get some answers on what happened here. The captain will understand my decision to pursue this perceived threat. And if we can find who did it, we can pull out more answers on this whole pirate situation.”
“Rend, you there?” Helga said in his ear, and he confirmed with a grunt before stopping and waiting to hear what she’d found on the bridge. “I have three Vestalian traitors, armed, and one is performing surgery on that door panel, likely to be rigging it to do something nasty upon entry. They don’t seem right, Cilas… they seem robotic, if that makes sense.”
“Blow out the window,” Cilas said, not bothering to concern himself with the behavior that Helga reported. “Time to move,” he announced and started moving towards the far door, leading them away from the bridge. “Good work, Nighthawks. We cleared her properly, but you cannot predict the actions of desperate men. These thypes are selling our people to the enemy, and have made it a point to attack us to try and slow us down. Time to take the offensive, what do you say?”
“Let’s go,” Quentin shouted, drowning out Raileo’s response, which came off like a grunt of exasperated readiness. An alarm blared as the ship shook from the Ursula’s cannon fire, which on Cilas’s command had shredded the reinforced pressure-glass on the bridge.
The Nighthawks were moving, switching to rockets to navigate the ladderwells and passageways to get out of the ship. No one spoke; they were all of a single mind to mount a speedy rescue before getting back onboard the Ursula.
As always, things did not end up the way they planned, but Cilas was sure he had made the right decision.
Still, something inside him made him wonder if this was true.
11
In the cycle that followed the Nighthawk’s return to Ursula, it was all hands on deck for not only bringing onboard the surviving captives, but to reconfigure the dock to house some of the more stable Vestalians from medbay. There was only so much space, and the beds had been taken up by the wounded from the satellite rescue. Additional stations had to be made from crates, portable feeding tanks, and replacement chair cushions.
Helga was impressed by their guests, who she assumed would complain now that their space had become more crowded, but the Vestalians pitched in where they could to get the dock prepared, some even stopping to thank her for everything she’d done. The rescue effort was led by Dr. Rai’to, with assistance by Quentin and Helga, who was making an effort to be nicer to their new Traxian crewmember.
Cilas and Quentin took on the complicated part of the job, which was to gain access to the bridge and regain some atmosphere by sealing off the busted windows. Malfunctioning power made this difficult, and eventually the Nighthawks had to give up. Out of desperation, they grabbed the control box from the cockpit just in case the Ursula’s system could find a way to hack into it. If successful, they could learn the history of the ship and what purpose it served before the pirates.
Removing the box took the better part of three hours and had everyone on pins and needles, worried for their lives. With the generator ruptured from the earlier torpedo, the ship was showing signs of an unstable power core.
Helga couldn’t build a jump drive or explain in detail how the technology worked, but she, like most pilots of her quality, knew that an unstable core was death, which was precisely why she’d ordered Zan to strike at it. Her assisting Cleia Rai’to was a way to prevent herself from being on the comms pleading with Cilas to come back.
Taking the ship’s control box would have taken an hour at most with an engineer or pilot that knew ships the way she did, but her command was on Ursula, and arguing with Cilas would have only delayed the effort further. When the time eclipsed the three-hour mark, she got on her comms and then clicked it off quickly after thinking better of it. That was when Raileo had come onto the bridge and urged her to oversee the efforts going on down on the dock.
“It could use a woman’s touch,” he had said, teasing her in that subtle way he would do whenever she was ready to explode with rage.
She had turned from the cockpit, ready to tear into him with a gibe of her own, but that big childish grin of his had been enough to melt the ice from her mood. Grasping his shoulder, she returned the smile, which caused him to blush and back down. His reaction made her laugh and together they went down to the dock, where she took the reins in coordinating the berths.
Thank you, Ray, she had thought to herself when Cilas reported that they had gotten what they needed, and were ready to come back onboard. Five hours later and they were untethered from the derelict and plotting a jump to Arisani space, just out of tracking distance from A’wfa Terracydes station. This was Cilas’s direct order. They were to make the jump away from this system, and wait for his talk with Captain Retzo Sho.
His plan was to take Sundown to that station and shake down their people to learn who the pirate’s mole was. If the captain didn’t like this, they would coordinate a rescue, which would be instant, considering their proximity to A’wfa Terracydes, and limit the chances of another attempt at sabotage.
Zan confirmed the jump coordinates and turned in her seat to stare at Helga, awaiting her app
roval to initiate the countdown. Ursula’s sultry voice came over the intercom, warning all passengers to find a jump station and snap on their restraints, just in case of an emergency. It was a well-intentioned request but futile considering the number of passengers was well beyond the corvette’s optimum capacity.
“This is Lieutenant Helga Ate,” she said, cutting off the intercom. “Just a point of clarification for our Arisani guests on the dock. We don’t have enough stations, as you can see, so I must ask that you go to your berths, lay down and strap yourselves in. Medbay crew, please make sure that all occupants are restrained and the atmosphere regulator is on blue. Tutt, Dr. Rai’to, awaiting your ‘all clear’ before activating this jump.”
“This is Tutt, Ate, we’re all good to go down here,” came Quentin’s voice after several long minutes of waiting.
“Lieutenant, the medbay is a go,” Cleia Rai’to announced over comms, and Helga finally looked over at her synthetic pilot to give her the nod of approval. They immediately accelerated to supercruise speed, though the Ursula’s advanced atmosphere regulator kept the passengers clueless. Jumps could cause panic in people who didn’t spend their lives on a vessel, so Helga activated blast shields as they moved out of range of the disabled junker.
They jumped to light speed after the appropriate warning, which Helga kept hidden from the crew to reduce the chance of panic. The window before her went from speckled to a distorted funnel of thin, laser-like lines, and then it darkened to blackness, as they slipped past the restrictions of time and space to emerge in another area of the galaxy at the predetermined vector outlined by the Ursula’s system.
As expected, the massive red form of the planet Arisani appeared when reality adjusted in front of her. Helga kept the system on mute and relied on Zan to relay to her the status of the ship.
