Heart of Vengeance (Vigilante Book 1)

by Terry Mixon

  “Should we tell the passengers?” one of them asked.

  “No,” another—apparently the leader—replied. “The captain wants us to keep this under wraps unless we have to evacuate.”

  “Wonderful,” one of the others said dryly. “He’s the boss. Let’s do it.”

  The quartet headed off.

  Brad gave them a little time to move ahead and then followed. When he rounded the corner, he saw that he’d made a mistake. The men had passed out of sight in the complex of passages.

  He swore softly and picked a corridor at random. A minute later, he decided he’d gone down the wrong one.

  As he turned to head back, however, he heard a loud crash just around the corner ahead of him. One that he’d heard before: The heavy metal-on-metal sound of a cut airlock door falling to the deck.

  Before he could do more than turn, a man wearing a plain black vac-suit stepped around the corner, carrying an automatic shotgun.

  Brad jumped desperately to the side, his hand automatically going for his pistol. The man’s shotgun cracked and flechettes snapped through the air where Brad had stood a moment before.

  Relieved that he’d survived, he shot the man three times: twice in the chest and once in the head. The pirate grunted and fell backward to the deck.

  Running footsteps sounded around the corridor as Brad realized the man—he had to be a pirate—had been the point man for a boarding team.

  He rapidly holstered his pistol and grabbed the shotgun. He swung the weapon to his shoulder, exhaled, and held the trigger down as the pirates came around the corner, spraying the corridor with sharp metal.

  What the flechettes did to the three men was indescribable.

  Unfortunately, the rest of the boarding team—six more pirates—came surging around the corner behind them and opened fire at him. One of them had a Fleet auto-rifle—undoubtedly stolen—its high-speed rounds adding their own distinctive crack to the sound of the weapon firing.

  Brad had already thrown himself down and was now rolling under the wave of fire as he tried to reload the shotgun. He hit the wall and drew his pistol with his left hand, emptying the magazine down the hallway at the man with the auto-rifle. He wasn’t sure how many times he hit the man, but the pirate went down.

  He dropped his pistol to finish reloading the shotgun, then shoved himself away from the wall. Almost too late. A flechette from a shotgun blast sliced across his leg but didn’t do any major damage. He hoped.

  A three-round burst from his reloaded shotgun blew away the man who’d tried to kill him in a blast of gore.

  The next few moments were a bloody blur of crashing shotgun blasts. Brad took a hit in his left arm but managed to continue firing until his weapon locked open.

  Miraculously, there was only one pirate left. He was fumbling with a new magazine for his pistol.

  Brad surged to his feet, hurled the empty shotgun at the man, and drew his mono-blade. It activated with a hiss as he charged.

  The man almost managed to get his pistol reloaded in time. Almost.

  He took the man’s head off and stood there panting in the midst of the dead. Adrenaline was pumping through him, and he let his anger rise with it.

  Pirates.

  He wasn’t sure how he’d survived running into an entire squad of them, but there were pirates aboard the Rain, and the demon he’d kept leashed since waking up on Freedom didn’t leave him much choice as to what happened now: they died.

  Brad took a moment to make sure than none of his wounds was going to kill him, swallowing his gorge—and pride—enough to rip into one of the pirate’s suit pockets for emergency autobandages.

  Then he reclaimed his pistol and swapped the magazine for a full one.

  These guys had been a lot more reliant on firearms than professional pirates. Those bastards had an almost-religious abhorrence for guns. This team must be new to the business.

  Brad could work out what must have happened. The Rain was unarmed, so Captain Jaeger had allowed the pirates to close and board. He must’ve hoped to deal with them aboard the ship.

  Not a winning strategy, but the man hadn’t had a lot of choices. Still, he should’ve told the passengers what was happening and enlisted them to the defense.

  Well, the pirates were short one boarding team now, but that didn’t mean much. There’d be at least three ships—possibly more—attacking a vessel of this size. Each would send its own team. That many pirates would easily overrun Jaeger’s security people.

  Brad had seen one ship fall to pirates. He wasn’t going to let it happen to another one, even if his left arm didn’t quite want to work and his leg hurt. He could still walk and still shoot. It would have to be enough.

  He stripped a bandolier of shotgun shells off a dead pirate and slung it over his shoulder. A pair of grenades on the bottom of the belt slapped against his hip.

  He reloaded his new shotgun and hung it so he could access it quickly. He picked up the Fleet auto-rifle, which became his new best friend. The dead man had only a few additional magazines for it, but they might make the difference in a fight like this.

  Brad retraced the path the pirates had used to get there. Less than ten meters down the winding corridor, he reached a sharp corner and paused, glancing around it.

  A single pirate stood just outside the ship's breached airlock. As Brad watched, someone moved inside the ship behind him.

  For a few seconds, he hesitated. He’d never opened a fight. Never intentionally shot a man who didn’t know he was coming.

  But this man was a pirate who’d come to kidnap Rain’s passengers. He brought the auto-rifle up and shot the pirate. The heavy recoil of the weapon punished his shoulder, but the slug brought the man down right away.

  Shocked shouts from inside the ship marked at least two additional pirates. Brad pulled the pin from one of the grenades and lobbed it into the ship.

  He threw himself against the bulkhead a few seconds before it exploded, sending sharp crystal fragments spewing into the pirate ship and back into the liner’s corridor.

  Thankfully, none of them hit him. He made a mental note to be a little more careful with grenades in the future.

  Brad went in, rifle at the ready. It proved unnecessary. Neither of the pirates had been more than a meter from the grenade. It would take a forensic team to work out which bits were whose, and he drew on his anger to keep his stomach under control. He heard no other movement on the ship, but he had no idea how large it was.

  He was about to find out when the sound from a blood-soaked commlink headset lying on the deck distracted him. It was a miracle the damned thing still worked.

  Brad picked it up, ignoring the gore, and seated the earbud in mid-sentence.

  “…guarding the ships,” the voice spat from the earphone. “We’ve sealed the passenger decks to keep the prizes unhurt, and the crew seems to have dug in around the bridge. Get your lazy asses off those hunks of metal and get down here to help us!”

  Brad caught two responses to the pirate leader’s orders. So. There were only two other ships.

  He activated the microphone. “Roger,” he said quickly, mimicking the other responses and hoping they didn’t notice that he wasn’t one of the men left to guard this ship.

  Only silence answered him, which he presumed to mean he’d succeeded. Wiping the controls off as best he could, he attached the com to his right wrist. Monitoring their communications might give him an inside track on their plans.

  He slung the rifle over his shoulder and reseated the bandolier. His other hand rested on the handle of his mono-blade for a moment before he turned back towards the boarding lock.

  A few minutes later, Brad saw just what the pirate leader had meant by sealing the passenger decks. Someone had cut open the access panel next to a door, manually closed it, and welded the hatch shut. Brad’s planned route to the bridge went through there, so he needed a new plan.

  He used his wrist-comp to bring up a deck plan of Louisian
a Rain. A moment’s study showed him an alternate route that didn’t enter the passenger decks. He set out on it at a run. He didn’t know how long the crew could hold out, and he was almost certainly running short on time.

  Just as he was getting close to the bridge, he heard rapid footsteps ahead. Odds were good they belonged to another team of pirates.

  He swore softly and listened. There were three or four of them, he thought. When they’d almost reached his position, he took a deep breath and leaned out, leading with the barrel of his rifle.

  Three pirates, anonymous in their black vac-suits, froze at the sight of him. Two carried shotguns, the third carried an automatic grenade launcher—the heaviest weapon any sane person would risk aboard a spaceship. They really were new to this business—or they had seriously meant business.

  His first burst of fire cut down the closest shotgun-carrier, and his next took out the second. Not before he managed to raise his weapon and fire, unfortunately.

  Brad ducked back but took another hit in this leg, two inches above the first one. Worse, the auto-rifle took a flechette in the receiver. He could actually see it buried in the metal. He dropped the useless weapon and went for his mono-blade.

  The grenadier had also opted for his blade. Smart. A grenade at this range was suicide.

  Brad danced backward, parrying two rapid slashes with flicks of his own weapon. Then he saw the pirate reach for his comset controls.

  Needing to end this before the man warned his comrades, he parried a third slash, allowing the momentum of the blades bouncing off one other to spin him around as he dropped to one knee. The pirate’s weapon blocked high while Brad slashed him in two at the waist in an explosion of gore.

  Brad breathed heavily, leaning against the bulkhead as he let his wounded leg and arm recover from the strains he’d just put on them. He scanned the bodies and his eye came to rest on the grenade launcher haphazardly dropped against the wall.

  His anger had faded into a strange calm now, and a cold smile spread across his face at the sight of the launcher. The pirates had brought the weapon to break the crew’s resistance, but that could work both ways. He picked it up and continued on his way.

  Brad knew when he was nearing the bridge. The gunshots and whine of mono-blades colliding made that perfectly clear. The noises got louder as he approached the last corner, and he hefted the grenade launcher.

  He’d never fired one before, but the controls were brutally simple. After his brief visit into the interior of the ship he’d grenaded, he had a sickeningly accurate idea of what its effects would be—but no part of him was going to argue that the pirates didn’t deserve it!

  He braced himself for a heavy kick and stepped around the corner.

  The bridge’s blast door was half closed, providing an impromptu barrier against the pirate attack. A small heap of vac-suited bodies—most showing the distinct damage of mono-blade strikes—showed the pirates had made at least one attempt to rush the door.

  The fight had reduced itself to mostly pure gunfire now as the pirates took cover behind various uprooted tables and couches and did their best to soften up the defenses for another charge.

  One of the pirates turned, possibly to see if their reinforcements were there, and saw Brad. As the woman opened her mouth to shout a warning, Brad lifted the launcher and fired.

  He racked the slide, jacking in another grenade before the first one detonated, and kept firing. He was outside the grenades’ lethal blast radius, but the clumps of horrified pirates definitely were not.

  Brad emptied the launcher’s five-round magazine in about as many seconds, walking the explosions down the corridor, toward the blast door. He probably wasn’t accurate, but he was firing grenades.

  Once the launcher clicked empty, he tossed it aside and hefted his shotgun.

  A dark shadow appeared through the smoke, and Brad blew the pirate away. He waited for more to rush his position, but none came.

  The ventilation and fire-prevention systems finally activated, rapidly clearing the smoke. Perhaps three pirates remained on their feet amidst the shattered debris of their makeshift blockade. All three turned toward Brad, raising their weapons.

  Multiple shots rang out, so close together as to sound like one, and all three pirates dropped. No shots came near Brad, but he pointed the shotgun away from the defenders and spread his hands wide anyway.

  Captain Jaeger stepped through the gap between the frozen halves of the blast door, pistols in both hands. He walked up to Brad, examined him closely, and then holstered his guns.

  He offered his hand as members of his crew raced past them. Probably on their way to engineering and the pirate ships to corral any survivors before they escaped or caused any more mischief.

  “Mr. Madrid,” the man said softly. “Thank you.”

  Brad took Jaeger’s hand. “My pleasure. I happen to dislike pirates a great deal.”

  A startled grin, probably brought on as much by combat fatigue as anything else, crossed the man’s face. “Lucky for us.”

  He surveyed the corridor, now splattered with gore. “Very lucky for us, indeed.”

  The captain turned his attention back to Brad, just in time in catch the young man as blood loss caught up with him and he wavered on his feet.

  “And luckily for you,” he murmured, “we have a fantastic doctor.”

  Chapter Six

  The several hours it took to clear the ship of the corpses, weapons, and other debris left behind by the pirates, Brad spent in the infirmary, getting several holes in his skin sewn shut and slathered with regeneration gel.

  That was fine by him. While he had no objections to killing pirates, he didn’t feel quite up to stripping and spacing the corpses.

  Once the ship was cleared, the crew turned their attention to opening up the passenger sections. They rejected Brad’s more-than-half-drugged suggestion to use one of the pirates’ plasma cutters and chose to remove the welds in a slower, less destructive manner. That took an additional three hours.

  By the time that was done, he’d rejoined the crew’s security detail to make certain the access went smoothly. Being sewn up wasn’t exactly relaxing and he was absolutely shattered.

  Not as much as the rest of the passengers, he suspected. The pirates had cut all the com lines, so the crew couldn’t even tell them the fighting was over.

  When they opened the first door, they found a dozen passengers waiting for them, holding a motley collection of mono-blades, pistols, and long-bladed knives. To Brad’s amused approval, Doug Chenk appeared to be in charge of defending this entrance.

  The passengers relaxed at the sight of the crew uniforms. A female security officer stepped forward to address them. “All right, people, I know you want to know what happened, but we’re still busy dealing with it. Return to your quarters and wait for the captain’s announcement. He should be coming on as soon as we have the coms working again.”

  The crowd began dispersing and the security officer turned to Brad. “Thank you, Mr. Madrid,” she said quietly. “You’ve done more than anyone had any right to expect.”

  She turned, gesturing the rest of her team away. “We can handle the repairs, and it looks like the pirates are done for. You can head back to your own quarters. The captain will most likely want to talk to you in the morning, but we’re done for now.”

  “I was more than happy to help, but some sleep does sound good right about now.” With that, he nodded and headed into the passenger deck.

  Once he reached his cabin, he sealed the door behind him and dropped onto his bed with a sigh of relief. The ship’s junior doctor had bandaged his various wounds, but he’d been too busy dealing with major casualties to do more.

  Brad willed himself to undo his boots, but fell asleep before his tired body could obey.

  For a moment after he woke, Brad couldn’t figure out what had dragged him from his slumber. Then the door chime sounded again.

  He groaned, stood while rubbing s
leep from his eyes, and staggered to the door. “Yes?” he blearily asked the uniformed security guard standing in the corridor.

  “Captain Jaeger wants to see you,” the man said apologetically, his tone suggesting that more of Brad’s anger at being awoken had leaked out than he meant.

  Brad blinked away sleep, forcing himself to calm once more. “What time is it?”

  “Seventeen hundred hours.”

  He’d been asleep for nearly twelve hours. Despite the events of the previous day, it had been dreamless sleep with none of the nightmares he’d expected.

  “All right. I’ll be a minute.”

  The guard nodded and Brad headed back into his cabin. He stripped out of his blood-soaked clothing and threw himself into the shower. A few minutes later, dressed in a fresh set of clothes, he felt much more human. He strapped his weapons belt on and opened the door once again.

  The security man was leaning against the wall on the opposite of the corridor. When Brad exited, he straightened and gestured for Brad to precede him. “This way, please.”

  He followed the man through the ship. Here and there, techs had access panels open, repairing circuits damaged by everything from stray bullets to power surges. Most of them waved when they recognized him now.

  When they reached the captain’s office, the guard stopped. “He’s waiting for you, Mr. Madrid”

  “Thank you.” He took a deep breath and then pressed the admittance chime.

  The door slid open and Brad stepped inside to find Jaeger rising from his desk. “Come in, come in. Have a seat.”

  Brad sat. The top of Jaeger’s desk had acquired several neat piles of data chips and readers, as well as one not-so-neat pile of hardcopy.

  Jaeger gestured at the hardcopy. “I’m busy going over the salvage paperwork we’re going to file on those pirate ships. It doesn’t help that, as far as we can tell, they never officially registered them so there are no records of them anywhere.”