by Randy Dyess
“Not today,” Agent Smith replied. “Have a seat, old friend.”
“Not today,” was the standard reply from Captain Zora. He smiled and extended his hand. “It's good to see you again. How long has it been—four years since you were lead agent and too good to mingle with the likes of Captain Zora and his crew?”
“I mingle with a lot worse than you and your crew in my new job as senior agent,” Smith chuckled. “Your group has nothing on the senators I deal with. They make you look like kids on the playground.”
“I don't doubt that,” Captain Zora replied as he reached over and grabbed his glass. “Too old and better times.”
“Too old and a lot better times,” Agent Smith said as he slammed back the glass of brandy and poured another.
The captain did a double-take. He had never seen Sabbas drink this much. Usually, the man only had a small sip when they were dealing—never a whole glass, let alone two. This is going to be interesting, he thought as he finished his own drink and poured himself another. “Now, what brings you out your big, comfy Senate office to this dirty, dustball of a planet with what has to be the best brandy I’ve ever tasted?”
“Can’t I just come out here to see an old friend or take a vacation?” Agent Smith joked.
Zora snorted out a little of his brandy. “Stop, you’re making me waste my drink, which probably cost more than my ship!”
“Let’s just say a few bottles went missing during the senator’s last shipment. He drinks this stuff like water. He has cases shipped in every week and he’ll never notice,” Agent Smith replied. “I have a job for you.”
“Oh, come to make your old friend rich?” Captain Zora smiled. He noticed, however, that the smile had vanished from Agent Smith’s face.
“No. I came to save your life and your family,” Agent Smith replied, serious. “There’s something going on and you need to listen up. The Senate Security Committee would like you to go on a little raid for them.”
“I’ve been on raids for you people before. What’s different about this one?”
“There's a heavily armed security vessel coming into Pegasus Prime. The senate would like you to destroy the vessel before it can land.”
“We’ve done this before. What’s going on, Sabbas? What are you not telling me?” Captain Zora said with a look on his face.
Agent Smith drained another glass of brandy before grabbing the bottle again. He studied the newly-filled glass for a moment before downing its contents. “There’s something going on in the rim sectors—something we can’t stop.”
“I’ve heard stories from a lot of scared freighter crews. I really didn’t believe them.”
“What have you heard?”
“That some fleet out there is raiding whole planets.”
Smith snorted. He was feeling the effects of the brandy, but he took another drink, anyway. “It’s worse than that. They’re not just raiding planets—they’re taking every living thing bigger than a cat. Billions of people have disappeared and we don’t exactly know why or how to stop it.”
Captain Zora paled at the news. He knew something was going on, but he couldn’t have guessed it was anything on this scale. “Whole planets? Are you serious? Is it slavers?”
“No,” Agent Smith replied, deadpan, “it’s an alien species. We don’t know where they come from or how they got here, but they have thousands of ships—some larger than small cities. They wipe out a planet’s defenses with some EMP weapon and then they land and capture everyone they see, including livestock. Some people make it through the raid, but not many.”
“Capture?”
“Yeah, when they’re gone, there are no bodies left behind. They wrap up everyone in a silk cocoon and take them.”
“Cocoon?” Captain Zora asked in disbelief.
“Franco, the aliens are three-meter tall spiders. We don’t know what’s controlling them, but billions of them land. We can’t stop it.”
“Why are you telling me this, Sabbas?”
“The security vessel you’re supposed to destroy landed after an attack on Candus and picked up some survivors. Senator Williams and his committee want those survivors and the crew of the ship silenced. They don’t want word of these attacks to get out and panic anyone in the core worlds. They’ve written off all rim planets in the hopes that the trillions who live there will provide enough of a buffer for us to figure something out.”
The two men sat there for a few minutes, thinking about everything that had been said. Captain Zora was the first to speak up. “What are the terms?”
“Five million credits.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. The senator wanted to make sure you would take the job and be able to get enough of your crew to follow you once you find out about the ship you’re attacking.”
“What? Are we going to have to take on the Titan?” Zora asked with a grin.
“Something worse,” Smith replied as he handed over a data chip. “There’s a small shipping company called Sullivan Shipping operating out of Pegasus Prime.”
“Related to Robert Sullivan?”
“One and the same.”
“There’s no way I’m going to attack anything that has to do with him. Do you think I’m crazy? No matter what I do, he will find out and be standing over my bed one morning. Besides having a man like him after me, aren’t they supposed to have some new class of super security vessel?”
“Yes… and that is the one you’re supposed to destroy.”
“And?”
“Once you look at the specs we have on the ship, you’ll understand. This ship could take on the Titan and the rest of the Terran Navy and come out on top. I’ve never seen specs like this before. Believe me when I tell you I don’t think there’s anything afloat with which to destroy this ship. You could line up a hundred attack craft and I still don’t think it would make a difference.”
Captain Zora looked down at the small data chip and back at Sabbas. He wanted to ask him if he was joking, but the look on the man’s face made him realize the senate intelligence agent was telling the truth. “That’s why your senator offered so much—because he thought we wouldn’t do it?”
“Yes. He never intended to pay you, anyway. There’s going to be ten agency ships hidden in orbit over Pegasus Prime, waiting for the attack to finish. If you are successful, they’ll attack your fleet and destroy you. If you aren’t successful, nobody would ever know you were there. You’re not supposed to walk out of this one alive, old friend.”
The captain looked at Sabbas and took another swallow of his brandy. Picking up the bottle, he turned it around and read the label. “So, this is it?”
“No. I have a plan,” Sabbas Wayne smiled and grabbed the bottle to refill both of their glasses.
“What does the great Agent Smith have up his sleeve to get me out of this and keep that assassin away from me?”
“Subcontract it out to some younger guys who weren’t around when Sullivan was active. They’ve probably heard the stories, but I bet they think they’re just some urban legends passed down from pirate to pirate.”
“Maybe. I still have a hard time believing them and I was there for most of them!”
“Give someone control of your ship and let them attack. You’ll be in orbit in an unregistered vessel with your family. If it goes well for those you hire, you’ll take credit for the victory and the five million. If not, your ship will be destroyed in the attack and the agency will think you’ve been taken care of. They might come after your family, but you can arrange it so it looks like they fled when you were killed.”
“Then what? Retire?”
“Well, it’s about time for you to retire, anyway,” Sabbas chuckled. “I’m sure you’ve put back something in case you lived to retirement age.”
“That would be a rare treat for someone in our line of work. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a pirate who retired—or a senate agent.”
“Just one,” Sabbas repl
ied, “and aren’t we all thankful that he did? I don’t think he would have liked what the senator is doing or the empire he’s built.”
Captain Zora raised his glass. “Amen. To the successful and hopefully permanent retirement of Robert Sullivan. May he never hear my name.”
“Franco,” Sabbas said, sliding over a second credit chip, “there’s enough on that one to keep you and your family comfortable for the rest of your lives. Move somewhere and start a small business with it, so you have something to pass down to your son.”
Zora nodded in appreciation of the gesture. “What about you?”
“I’ve done my job,” Sabbas chuckled. “I’ve got my own exit plan in the works. It helps that I have access to a large, unregistered agency slush fund. I think I’ll get a little luxury yacht and hide out until these monsters are finished with us—keep circling back around them until they leave us alone.”
“Sounds like a good plan. Maybe I’ll do the same with a little family freighter—travel and show my wife and son the sights of the galaxy.”
“Make sure you show them the sights of the far side of the galaxy. Get away from this side.”
“Yeah.”
“Franco, if you decide to settle down, do so on a wet planet. These things don’t like water and haven’t yet attacked a wet world. The only large groups of survivors on the planets they’ve attacked so far were near oceans or marshes.”
Captain Zora stood and shook hands with his old friend. “Thank you, Sabbas. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for this.”
Agent Smith didn’t reply but reached down for a full bottle of the brandy they’d been drinking. He handed it to Captain Zora. “Make sure it’s a wet planet,” he repeated as he turned around and headed for the door, knowing he would never see his old friend again.
*****
“It’s arranged,” Agent Smith reported as his ship left orbit over Juscora. He switched off the comm unit before hearing Senator Williams’ reply. It’s all arranged, he thought as he entered the coordinates for his FTL tunnel, and I’m going to arrange a few more things.
He opened a small cabinet under the console of his bridge and took out an unregistered, encrypted comm unit. He inserted a copy of the data chip he had given Captain Zora and composed a small message before attaching an unencrypted version in the data chip. There, it’s done. Let the senator worry about what happens next.
Sabbas smiled at the thought of what Robert Sullivan would do to Senator Williams if any harm came to a member of his family. The senator just didn’t understand who he was dealing with.
Chapter 4
Captain Franco Zora looked through the transparent metal bridge window on his new freighter, Greener Pastures, and took in the scene in front of him. It had taken him two messages and less than six hours to acquire his new ship, and he had already booked time at the Pervian shipyards to remodel the freighter into something he and his family could live comfortably in until this time of troubles was over.
Captain Zora could just make out the twelve small ships floating near the FTL endpoint he knew the Sullivan’s Pride would use to enter the Pegasus Prime system. “What a bunch of scum,” he said. “I hope these guys all buy it today.”
He had approached thirty different captains about taking part in this attack, and all but these twelve had refused—mostly because they had heard about the new security vessel and its capabilities. A few still remembered Robert Sullivan from when he worked for the Senate Intelligence Agency, however, and wanted nothing to do with anything named after a Sullivan.
These twelve captains manning the ships in front of him were the worse of the lot. Each one wouldn’t hesitant for a second before slitting their mother’s throat for a few credits, let alone three-hundred-thousand. The amount Captain Zora had dangled in front of them had them salivating at the chance to take on the Sullivan’s Pride.
Zora looked over the small fleet once more. There she is, he thought. He had sweetened the deal with Captain Benedict to lead the raid by letting him take control over Zora’s old ship, The Black Pearl. Benedict had been leery of Captain Zora’s offer and his hesitation had influenced the other captains. That all changed the moment Zora had handed over the command codes to The Black Pearl, though, and the rest of the captains had fallen in line.
Now, all Captain Zora had to do was watch and wait for the Sullivan’s Pride to exit the FTL endpoint. He would either take credit for the attack, if it was successful, and collect his bonus from the Senate before disappearing, or flee the moment the attack failed.
Over the last twenty hours, he had done everything he could to prepare his family for what was about to happen. His wife hadn’t understood until he told her about the attacks happening all over the outer-rim. She and their children had been packing and preparing to flee as soon as he sent the signal.
Turning up the volume on his comm unit, he could hear the scum joking with each other—or he hoped they were joking, anyway. If they had done half the things they said over the comm channels, they deserved to die. What a bunch of idiots, he thought. Don’t they know this channel is open and unsecure? They’re broadcasting to everyone and giving details about their raids. He smiled at the thought of what Robert Sullivan would do to them when he heard the conversations. Any lucky enough to escape the Sullivan’s Pride or the agency ships wouldn’t escape him. No matter what happened today, though, he would send the signal to his wife and flee—it was time to start a new life.
Captain Zora was just finishing sending the emergency signal to his wife when he heard Captain Benedict interrupt the joking and say, “FTL endpoint forming up. Fire up your drives and be prepared for the first run on my command.” No more than twenty seconds later, the Sullivan Security vessel started its exit. All pirates knew they had less than ninety seconds after a ship exited an FTL tunnel before its system came back online; if they were to succeed against this ship, they had to act now.
Well, they may be a bunch of scum, but they sure know their stuff, Zora thought as the twelve ships immediately moved into their attack formation and started their run.
“Time to earn our keep. We do this right and we’ll have plenty of credits to party all year,” Benedict shouted over the comm channel. “Let’s go!”
Captain Zora stood to earn a small fortune if this group succeeded in destroying the Sullivan’s Pride, but he just couldn’t bring himself to hope for the pirates to win. Keeping in line with his earlier decision, Zora turned toward the Sullivan’s Pride and whispered, “Good luck,” before entering the commands to form his own FTL endpoint and leave this part of human space for good.
*****
“Exiting FTL tunnel in five seconds,” the ship's AI announced over the ship-wide comm channel. For some reason, Dakota was nervous about exiting this FTL tunnel. She had made thousands of exits in the past, but with the events occurring in the rim sectors as of late, she was nervous.
“Exiting FTL tunnel in four seconds,” the ship's AI announced.
“I want green status in under ninety seconds,” Dakota said to her bridge crew.
“Exiting FTL tunnel in three seconds.”
“We’ll do our best,” Skip responded. “Everyone knows we have more online today than we did before all of this started happening.”
“Make it happen, people,” Dakota said.
“Exiting FTL tunnel in two seconds.”
“Aye, Captain,” the bridge crew shouted back.
“Exiting FTL tunnel.”
The Sullivan’s Pride’s bridge crew could feel the ship slipping out of the FTL tunnel and into their bubble. All eyes were glued to the countdown clock. They knew they would have ninety seconds, and they were ready to get everything back online as soon as the clock hit zero.
“Get ready to report your status. I want a full sweep of the system as soon as we come out of our bubble,” Dakota commanded. “If there are any of those things in orbit, I want to know immediately!”
“Aye, Captain,” the tec
hnical officer replied. He had already programmed the sweep pattern into his systems. Now, the only thing left was waiting for the bubble to clear.
“Exiting the bubble,” the ship’s AI said. Not more than two seconds later, the battle stations lights started flashing and the warning klaxon sounded.
“Turn that off!” Dakota shouted.
“What was that?” Owen asked as the Sullivan’s Pride shook. “Ships usually don’t react to shedding their bubble.”
“Captain,” the tactical officer shouted, “we’re being attacked! My scan shows at least a dozen small freighters making an attack run. I don’t see any indication that spider ships are in the system.”
“Pirates? Here?” Owen asked.
The ship shook again as the pirate ships made a second run at the Sullivan’s Pride. “Get my weapons up!”
“There haven’t been pirates in the Pegasus Prime system in decades. Why now?” Owen asked.
