by Randy Dyess
“Weapons ready!”
“Fire all weapons at the pirate ships!” Dakota commanded as the ship shook again.
“No damage,” Skip said. “They’re scoring hits, but our shields and armor are too strong.”
“Firing now,” the weapons officer announced.
Dakota could feel their weapons firing. “Five pirate ships down,” the tactical officer reported.
“Firing second round,” the weapons officer said as the Sullivan’s Pride shook once more.
“Five more pirate ships destroyed. The remaining two are trying to break off and run.” “Should we let them go?” Owen asked.
“No. Fire again,” Dakota replied.
“Firing again,” the weapons officer announced.
“All pirate ships destroyed, Captain.”
“No damage to the Pride. Their ships weren't strong enough,” Skip added.
“Understood. Get us back online and headed into port,” Dakota told the bridge crew.
“Aye, Captain,” Skip responded.
Owen looked up at his sister with surprise. “I think someone is trying to send us a message to keep quiet about what we’ve found.”
“The Senate or Candus?” Dakota responded.
“Probably the Senate. Let’s have Robert’s people look into this.”
“Agreed.” Dakota went back to her duties to land her ship. “Go down and check on our passengers—make sure everybody's okay and ready to leave.”
“What do I tell them about the exit?”
“Tell them we had a little hiccup coming out of the FTL bubble—don’t say anything about the attack. I doubt that any of them besides the sergeant major would know the difference.”
“Understood,” Owen responded as he stood to leave the bridge.
“Skip, make sure nothing is written or said about this attack. Put it in the log as a flux coming out of the bubble.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Get us down,” Dakota commanded her bridge crew once more.
*****
Finally, Owen thought as he felt the Sullivan’s Pride powering down after landing in front of the Sullivan’s Shipping hangar. Let’s get this over with. “If everyone would follow me, we’ll get you back on land,” he said to the small group of survivors in front of him. While they all looked like they wanted off the ship, most of them had nowhere to go. “Don’t worry about anything—we’ll find your rooms and outfit you with more clothes. Take a day or two and then let us know what you want to do.” The small group cheered. It had been a rough few days for them and they were exhausted.
Dakota finished the landing checklist while looking at the main viewer in front of her. A thick ring of Robert’s security team surrounded the hangar and her father, Richard, and Robert was waiting for her. A large aircar was waiting to take the Candus survivors away.
“Skip?”
“Captain?”
“Finish up the landing procedures. I’m going down to talk to my dad and brother. Tell the crew they have the week off and remind them not to say a word about what has happened over the last few days. I’m not sure where this is going, and I don’t want to make any of them a target—especially not you and Emily.”
“Aye, Captain,” Skip responded. He had overheard Owen and Dakota talking about the possibility that the attack had been ordered by the Senate. He knew they wouldn’t balk at killing everyone on this ship and their families if they thought someone was talking about the attack and the survivors.
Dakota reached over and switched on the ship-wide channel. “Owen, meet me in the conference room once our passengers are settled. There’s an aircar to the left of the hangar—get them all on it and headed to their rooms.”
Dakota switched off the comm and looked at Skip. “This is going to be interesting,” she said with a smile.
*****
A few minutes later, the Sullivan’s Pride’s cargo door opened. Normally, Dakota was one of the last off the ship, but this time, she was first. As soon as she made it down the ramp, she headed directly toward her father and brother and gave each a big hug, which was also unheard of for Dakota.
Robert tentatively returned her hug. “You haven’t hugged us in over a decade.”
“I needed it after what I just saw,” Dakota responded.
“Let’s take this somewhere else,” Richard said. “Where’s Owen?”
“He’s handling the survivors and getting them on the bus. I assume you have handlers assigned?”
“Yes,” Robert responded. “They all know not to ask questions or let the survivors talk to anyone. We’ve put them up in the company hotel.”
“Good,” Dakota said as she turned and headed for the hangar door.
Once the small group of Sullivan family members was in the conference room, Robert switched on a variety of scramblers. No one outside of their family would know what was going on. “Cheyenne, are you on an encrypted channel?” Robert asked. She was in a private laboratory, unable to make it to the meeting in person.
“Of course,” she replied. “New encryption system—no one will be able to crack it.”
“Before I start,” Dakota announced, “I’m sending a new copy of all our data to Cheyenne and her people. Hopefully, they’ll be able to use it to make sense of all of this.”
“Thank you,” Cheyenne responded. “I have everyone standing by. We’ve already made some observations based on the data you sent.”
Dakota nodded and began to describe the events from the time they’d entered orbit over Candus to the pirate attack as they entered orbit over Pegasus Prime.
“That attack was ordered by Senator Williams,” Robert said.
“How do you know?” Richard asked.
“I got a data dump from an old friend,” he replied. “He gave us the Senate’s data on us and their plans.”
“What do you think will happen now?” Owen asked.
“After the Senate hears that their attack failed, they’ll find a new way to silence us.”
“What are we going to do about it?” Cheyenne asked.
“Nothing,” Robert replied. “The Senate thinks in two directions: they either kill you or buy you. They’ve tried to kill us and it didn’t work, so we can expect the bribe to come next. It may already be in Dad’s comm queue.”
“We do have a string of new mining and shipping route applications on hold,” Richard responded as he turned on his private comm unit. “I just received a meeting invite from Senator Williams. He wants to discuss how the Senate can help us move our applications further along.”
“How nice of him,” Dakota joked. “What’s the plan?”
“I’ll accept the meeting with the good ol’ senator.”
“It’ll probably be at his house. I’ll send Carlos along. I doubt the senator will try anything, now that he understands just how armed the Pride is,” Robert said.
“What can we expect from him?” Dakota asked. She had never been into the political side of the business and didn’t know about the insider dealings going on between corporations and the government.
“They’ll approve our applications,” Robert responded. “The offer will be for new shipping lanes and mining contracts in the areas they think the spiders are going to attack. That way, they lose nothing in the long run.”
“I think we should take him up on it,” Owen said. “Put a clause in the agreement about them providing us with Senate-backed loans to get us started. Senator Williams will understand.”
“Won’t that tie up our money and put us in debt?” Cheyenne asked.
“No. He’ll know we won’t pay back the loans. They’ll sit on the books for a while and then disappear,” Owen responded.
“What makes you think that?” Dakota asked.
“One of my friends in college went through something like this with the Senate. They gave him ‘loans’ after a senator’s son wrecked his aircar. Nothing was ever written or said about how he would repay it.”
“Okay, s
o we take their money. Then what?” Richard said.
“Use the money to increase the size of our security fleet. We’re going to need all the ships we can come up with to fight off this invasion. The Terran Navy is useless and I doubt the Senate will ever approve them for taking on the spider fleet—too many sons of the wealthy are acting as fleet officers and would risk the ships in a battle.”
Richard thought for a moment before saying, “I agree. Let’s see what we can get out of them.”
Robert nodded. “We might as well get something out of this and use it to survive the fight we know is coming.”
“Agreed,” Dakota said.
“Me too,” Owen replied.
“I agree with the contracts and money,” Cheyenne said, “but I think we need to do something else with the money.”
“What do you have in mind?” Richard asked.
“My people have gone over the data Dakota sent us. Sera figured out the spiders’ attack pattern,” Cheyenne said before sending a map of the rim sectors to the main screen in the conference room. “This shows a clear line of attacks. We should be able to tell where the next attack will take place and firm up the line.”
“Looks like Chaovis is next,” Dakota said.
“Yes, but that’s not what I want to concentrate on,” Cheyenne replied. “See all the green dots just outside of the outer-rim sectors? They’re space stations of some type, and the spiders are leaving them alone. The only four that have been attacked were near the FTL endpoints we think the spiders are using to make final jumps out of our sectors.”
“Why wouldn’t they just make a jump from the rim sectors directly?” Owen asked. “From the power output we recorded being used to create the endpoint near Candus, they could jump all over the galaxy.”
“Probably, but Sera theorizes that all of their ships can’t travel the same speed in the tunnel. She thinks they have to make short jumps to allow the fleet to catch up with each other and reform for the next jump. She’s done the math and we think the tunnel would collapse if the fleet started drifting too far away from each other.”
“Theorized?” Richard asked.
“Yes. We’ve never tried to make two ships go into the same endpoint,” Dakota answered. “No one really knows what would happen.”
“Exactly,” Cheyenne replied.
“So, this means two things,” Dakota said. “The first is that the spiders are going to have to establish a secure FTL endpoint near every sector they are going to raid.”
“Correct,” Cheyenne said. “This tells us which sectors are next. Also, we think we should closely monitor all stations and mining asteroids on the rim of the sectors the spiders haven’t invaded. It might give us enough warning time to do something. What that something is, however, I don’t know.”
“You said two things,” Richard reminded. “What’s the second?”
“That, if the theory holds up, they’ll make a short jump out of our sectors and into theirs. This may give us a way to track them if we can put a tracker on one of their ships.”
“Interesting,” Richard said. “Is that why you brought it up, Cheyenne?”
“No. I think we should go with the pattern that they don’t attack space stations or wet planets. Look at the map,” she said before going on. “The pink dots are stations that have been abandoned or are available for sale. We should purchase as many as we can in areas away from the spider’s endpoints and attack paths, as well as near agriculture worlds that have already been raided.”
“The reason?” Owen asked.
“To use them as sanctuaries and start moving our operations off planets that may be raided. I’m packing up my lab to move to a station we already own—I think we’ll be more secure there and can use one of the uninhabited planets nearby as a testing ground for new weapons.”
“I wondered why you bought that thing,” Richard chuckled.
“If we’re able to purchase all the stations on your map, how many people can we save?” Dakota asked.
“A few hundred thousand. It’s not many in the grand scheme of things, but it’s enough for all of our employees, their families, and other essential personnel.”
“What would the Senate say if we start purchasing stations before they approve our contracts?” Owen asked.
“They’ll probably think we are doing something stupid by purchasing the stations before we have a license to mine,” Richard responded.
“We don’t need a mining license,” Cheyenne interrupted. “Our original incorporation license allows us to have cargo holding warehouses for cargo speculation. We can use that to justify our actions.”
“Cargo speculation?” Robert asked.
“A cargo speculation company is authorized to buy cargo at current prices and hold it until the price goes up before selling. We can tell them we’re buying the stations for that purpose. This also gives us a license to arm the stations, attach security vessels to them, and create a security team at each station.”
“That’ll work,” Robert responded.
“My team also researched the ownership of each station. Most of them are owned by the Senate, due to abandonment clauses or bankruptcies. I’m sure Dad can include the transfer of each of the stations to us for a small fee in our deal with Senator Williams.”
“He would agree to that as part of our bribe—sorry, contract,” Richard said. “We’ll bring it up in the discussion. Owen, you’re in charge of this project. Work with Dakota and Robert on the security, and come up with a plan to make this work. Also, work with Cheyenne and whoever she wants to include on the weapons. Plan to start moving people to the stations as soon as Williams gives us the green light—I don’t care if the approval is formalized or not.”
“We should also plan on moving our people out of the spider’s attack path and transfer them with their families here until we have the stations ready,” Cheyenne said.
“Agreed. Owen, add that to your list,” Richard said.
“Two more things,” Cheyenne said. “Robert, do you know of anyone who could go to the raided planets and negotiate food, ore, and basic material contracts with the people left there?”
“I assume you mean black market-type of contracts?” Robert asked.
“Yes,” Richard replied. “Something the Senate or any other corporation would never get wind of.”
“I think I know someone. In fact, it’s the same someone who sent us the data dump. He may want a new job in the future.”
“Good,” Richard said. “Cheyenne, what was the other thing?”
“We should pull all of our construction bots off current projects and send enough of them to the stations to get them refurbished and use the rest to help increase the number of security vessels we are building.”
“Do it. Build as many as you can before we’re shut down or have to evacuate the shipyards,” Richard told everyone.
“Cheyenne,” Robert said, “have your people look at the specs I sent you. There are some interesting schematics in there that just might help us. I’d like your take on them.”
“I’ll have a team look into them right now,” Cheyenne responded before disconnecting the line.
“Let’s get to work,” Richard said as he got up from his seat. “See me later about the survivors—we’ll see if we can work them into our plans. They shouldn’t have to go back to working for Candus Corp after what they’ve been through.”
Chapter 5
Michael Lee lay on the bed in his hotel room, staring at the ceiling. His world had been turned inside out during the last few days. He had no home to go back to, no business or way to earn a living, his partner was dead, and the spiders had taken the one person he loved. He was a man without any clue of what he was going to do next. When Robert Sullivan knocked on his door, Michael was relieved to have someone to talk to.
“I heard you used to run a dojo back on Candus,” Robert said as he walked into the room. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll have a little workout.”
He had never been much for small talk.
“Sure, I could use a workout. It has been a stressful few days.”
Robert nodded at the young man as he led the way out. “Our gym is next door.”
The two were silent for a few minutes. “So, what do you do here?” Michael broke the silence. “I know your family owns the company, but what is your job?”
“I command a small security team used to rescue hostages or take down troublesome pirate bases. We’re mostly land-based, but we have been known to raid a few ships if we think there are hostages present.”
“Does that happen often? I mean, do pirates take hostages? I know there’s a lot of piracy out there, but I thought they were more like independent traders than actual pirates.”
“They are both kinds, but they take hostages more than you would think. It’s usually easy money for them,” Robert said as the two reached the street. “It's a rough world out there—the more that corporations clamp down in the name of profits, the more pirates spring up. You can't really blame them; they’re like you, having lost everything with no other way to support themselves. Most are just trying to make a living without selling their souls to a corporation.
“We go in, recover the hostages, and hint that the pirates should go somewhere else to do their business. Well, except for a few who I’m happy to throw out an airlock. I’m okay with them taking a corporate executive or senator hostage now and then, but not children—children are off-limits. If you’re the type to take children, my team doesn’t give you a second chance.”
Michael thought about what Robert had said as they walked down the street. “I can see your point, but aren’t you cutting a fine line there?”
“Yes, but this whole world is a fine line. There are few times that there is an absolute right or wrong. Most of us live somewhere in between. Take you: if we didn’t come along and pick you up, what would you have done—scavenge from the buildings in Candus City? Would you have joined a pirate crew, if one of their ships landed? We both know Candus Corporation wouldn’t have helped you, even if you were one of their employees. How would you have survived on an empty planet that has been quarantined against any normal business operations?”
