The Last Praetorian (The Redemption Trilogy)

by Mike Smith

  “I’ll be in C&C shortly,” Jon concluded shutting the communications channel. Shifting his gaze away from the viewport to his desk Jon touched a latch at the side, causing a section of desk to slide open, revealing a Valerian sword, his sword, the sword given to him by the now long dead Emperor.

  In the darkened office, the only illumination coming from the stars and the occasional emergency light, the sword seemed to glow with an inner blue flame, either reflecting the little light from the stars, or coming from somewhere inside the blade, Jon had no idea. He hesitated before reaching for the sword. He had not wielded this weapon since abandoning his oath to the Emperor, since he betrayed Sofia, since he turned his back on his old life. He did not feel worthy to possess such a weapon, but at the same time he could not part with it. The blade was part of him, part of his soul and he could no more abandon it than cut-off his right hand. So instead he had kept it close, but never touching it.

  However, now there were possible intruders on his station, in his home, threatening people, families that he loved… Shoving aside his own fears and inadequacies he reached out and grasped the hilt of the sword, pulling the blade free from the desk. As always when holding this blade, his blood seemed to sing with the song of battle. Casting one more glance over his shoulder, outside the viewport, still dark with the inkiness of space, Jon departed for C&C. With his blade still held firmly in his hand, the office door slid shut and sealing itself behind him.

  *****

  “Status report,” Jon demanded stepping into C&C, seeing it a hive of activity, fully staffed even though it was still late at night.

  “All departments confirm general quarters, Commander,” Lieutenant Patterson promptly responded. “As designated by the new internal security plan, reinforced security teams have been deployed around main engineering and all civilians have been sequestered in medical, again with a reinforced security team deployed. The rest of the station is now on lock-down.”

  Jon was secretly impressed, for a station of over 300 souls including families to go into complete lock-down in the time that it had taken him to get to C&C… Jon doubted that they could have done better in the Imperial Navy. Once again he was proud of his crew.

  At that moment the doors slid open to C&C, and with half a dozen officers simultaneously reaching for their side arms, Miranda stepped out into C&C.

  “You’re meant to be in your quarters,” Jon interjected angrily, as the officers in the C&C re-holstered their weapons.

  Miranda just shrugged nonchalantly. “Nobody ever told me where I was supposed to be during an emergency. Anyway I thought that I could help?” Motioning her over, towards the two most senior officers on duty, Jon told Patterson to continue with his status report.

  “With Engineering and Medical secure and the rest of the station on lock-down, the next stage of the plan involves deploying reinforced sweeper teams to secure the station, section by section.”

  Jon nodded his head in approval at the plan that he had signed off a few weeks before. “I want the teams sweeping the station, from medical and engineering towards docking bay fifteen. We are almost certain that one of those will be their target, if not both. Ensure that, as each section is cleared, that it is secured to ensure that no force can out-flank the sweeper teams,” Jon ordered.

  “I’ll let the sweeper teams know sir.”

  “Tell them I’ll meet them on-route.”

  “Sir?” Patterson exclaimed, aghast. “Would it not be better for you to remain in C&C, or at least wait here for one of the sweeper teams.”

  “I’m not wasting precious resources and time, better spent searching the station, babysitting me,” Jon said angrily. “Let them know that I am on my way.”

  “Yes sir,” Patterson replied in a resigned tone. Their commanding officer’s habit of placing himself in the firing line was well known throughout the station. The crew respected him even more for his attitude, knowing that he would never order them into a situation that he himself would not lead from the front.

  As Jon was heading towards the exit he noticed Miranda still following close behind. “Where do you think you are going?” he inquired crossly, frustrated with his crew’s habit of trying to wrap him in cotton wool, to ensure that he was not hurt.

  “I said that I wanted to help,” Miranda replied calmly. “It might be a waste of precious resources and time, better spent searching the station, babysitting you - for the sweeper teams,” Miranda replied throwing his earlier words back in his face. “However, as I am not part of any of the sweeper teams then it won’t hurt for me to watch your back.”

  Growling in frustration, unable to refute her logic, Jon opening the small arms locker in C&C, passing her a heavy pistol, barrel first, and followed by a few spare clips. “You know how to use this?”

  “David put me through a quick training course,” Miranda replied checking there was a round chambered and that the weapons safety was firmly on. “You are not taking a second gun?” Miranda asked in surprise, noticing that Jon’s hands were empty, as he was striding quickly from C&C.

  “I’ve got the only weapon I need,” Jon replied, patting the blade that Miranda only now noticed strapped at his waist.

  “You’re taking an overgrown knife to a gun-fight?” she asked incredulously.

  “It’s called a sword. In this case a Valerian sword,” Jon exclaimed rolling his eyes. “Look it up in the ships computer later.”

  “Sure,” Miranda groused. “Probably filed under Ancient Historical Weapons.”

  Jon could only grin; she was probably right.

  *****

  “So how many of them do you think there are?” Miranda asked nervously, peering around a corridor, checking in both directions before motioning Jon forward.

  Trying desperately to suppress a smile at the younger woman’s antics, obviously she had never been in combat outside of a ship before, he thought carefully about the question before replying. “Well, only one freighter docked, prior to the energy grid problems. I doubt that they could fit more than, oh, fifty people onto that ship,” he replied trying not to laugh as Miranda came to an abrupt halt.

  “Fifty?” she replied with an ashen face, picturing turning a corner and facing fifty armed men all with the intent to kill her.

  “Well that’s the worst case scenario. On the bright side there might be none.”

  “None?” Miranda echoed, a terrible thought suddenly occurring to her. “You don’t actually know if there are any intruders on the station do you? It could have just been a ship-board accident like the crew reported?”

  Jon nodded his head in agreement, that it was an equally plausible scenario. Thinking intently, Jon finally shook his head. He was not wrong. The intruders had made a fundamental mistake when cutting the power to his office, as they had lost their element of surprise.

  Meanwhile, shaking her head in disbelief, that she was skulking around the darkened station in the early morning, when she could instead be in her quarters, fast asleep…Unfortunately so engrossed in the injustice of the entire event, she stepped out into the next corridor without checking first…

  It was only the quick actions of Jon, drawing her back, against his chest, that saved her life. The energy bolts whipped through the air where she had been standing only seconds before!

  “Looks like I was right,” Jon whispered into her ear, glancing around the corner for barely a second. However, even that was long enough for a few more bolts to strike the corridor dangerously close to his head.

  Backing up a few meters to the nearest communication console, Jon put in the call to C&C. “Intruders spotted, level 3, Corridor 32J,” he reported concisely. “Looks like half a dozen, armed with energy pulse rifles and tactical combat armour.”

  “Understood Commander,” C&C replied. “I’ll have reinforcements converge on your location.”

  “Negative, we don’t know if there are any other teams on the station, continue the sweep as originally planned.”

&
nbsp; “Acknowledged.”

  “Come on, let’s see if we can cut them off at the next intersection,” Jon proposed.

  “Us?” she replied in a doubtful voice. “But there are only two of us and six of them,” she pointed out.

  “Yes, but isn’t that so much better odds than two of us and fifty of them.”

  Backtracking, Jon led Miranda through a number of winding corridors and through a number of rooms, until finally they arrived at a connecting door. Careful to stand far enough back not to activate the door sensor, Jon motioned for Miranda to keep quiet.

  Whispering to her quietly Jon explained the plan. “The Syndicate forces will probably pass along this corridor, as it’s the main throughway to engineering. We will wait for them to pass, when they do we’ll ambush them. We will have the element of surprise on our side, I’ll go first and distract them, and then you come.”

  “Perhaps we should wait,” Miranda suggested nervously. “From what you describe it sounds like these are Syndicate Enforcers. I have never met any but they have a reputation for being the Syndicate shock troops of choice when they need a mess cleared up, quickly. They have a fearsome reputation, even in the Syndicate.”

  Jon looked at the nervous young woman sympathetically, remembering his own first time into combat. Impulsively he learned forward slightly, the two were already standing very close so as to be heard and kissed her gently, softly on her lips.

  “You’ll be fine,” he whispered reassuringly. “Just follow my lead.” Then he took a stride forward, sliding through the door before it was half open, straight into the middle of the Syndicate shock troops.

  There was a moment of stunned disbelief from the Syndicate troops, as if this ghost in white had suddenly risen from the ground and appeared in their midst. However, that instant, was a heartbeat too long for two of the troopers as in a blink of an eye, Jon had his sword in hand, and within a thin mist of blood one of the troopers was dying with his throat slit open, the other, staring in disbelief at the stump where his wrist ended, where only moments before his hand had been.

  The group disintegrated into complete chaos. With screams of pain, cries of anger and fright the group tried to bring their weapons to bear on the threat that had suddenly appeared in their midst. However, in the close confines of the corridor it was a futile task as they all held long-barrelled weapons. The few that managed to get their weapons to bear in time held off firing in fear of hitting colleagues. Most did not even have the chance to get their weapons raised, as again and again the sword rose and fell. Each time another Syndicate soldier fell, never to rise again.

  In desperation one of the troopers depressed the firing stud on his weapon in the hope of hitting anything, however with a deft touch from his free hand Jon casually brushed the weapon aside, meanwhile sliding his own blade through the tactical armour, like a hot knife through butter; the blade barely felt any resistance passing through the armour into the still beating heart.

  The sergeant, upon seeing his squad being cut to pieces made the most rational decision of all. Dropping his rifle and reaching for his combat knife, he took advantage of their attacker’s turned back to snake a powerful arm around his throat.

  The only remaining syndicate soldier seeing a lull in the attack took a step back and brought his rifle to bear on the now immobilised enemy. However, before he could depress the firing stud a loud crack resounded along the corridor, first one, then two more in quick succession. The soldiers face disappeared in a cloud of red mist as the heavy shells tore into his head, with two more shells hitting him squarely in the chest, throwing him back down the corridor.

  The sergeant, seeing the only remaining member of his squad die, took advantage of what few seconds he had left, as the swordsman was unable to bring his own weapon to bear. As he raised his knife in preparation for the deadly blow he was astonished to simultaneously see the blade leave the swordsman hand and rise up in the air. In a flash the swordsman caught the blade in his other hand, reversing the grip and suddenly the tip of the blade was pointing back down, accelerating back towards him!

  In desperation he shoved the razor sharp knife between the swordsman’s rib’s angling up towards his heart. The impact of the sword hitting his chest, and a further three shells simultaneously piercing his back stopped the knife barely centimetres from its final destination.

  “Jon!” screamed Miranda, desperately trying to push-off the heavy body of the syndicate soldier. Staring in horror at the hilt of the knife sticking out from his back, with a quickly spreading red patch, radiating out from the knife, consuming Jon’s immaculate white uniform. Gently rolling him over, trying not to jar the knife, but fearing to remove it, she looked into his eyes.

  “Told you that everything would be fine,” Jon quipped. The effect only slightly spoilt by the blood beginning to froth from his mouth. Jon could feel the weight on his chest, knowing that the knife had pierced one of his lungs, and he was slowly drowning.

  “I’ll get help,” Miranda said frantically but by then Jon’s eyes had already drifted shut.

  *****

  Sometime later Miranda reappeared in C&C, having little idea where else to go. The thought of being alone, in her dark quarters, was too terrifying to contemplate.

  Paul looked up in concern at the sight of Miranda, her hands still covered in blood, Jon’s he assumed, as looking over the younger woman carefully he could not see any other injuries.

  “How is Jon?” he asked worriedly. He had just arrived in the C&C when Miranda’s frantic call for help had arrived.

  “He’s still in surgery,” Miranda replied listlessly. “The doctor said that he would call when he had any news.”

  “Jon’s a fighter, he will pull through,” Paul reassured her confidently. Who he was reassuring, Miranda or himself, he was not sure.

  “Did we get all of them?”

  “It looks like they split into two groups. You intercepted one; the other made it to Engineering but was cut down by Gunny with a squad of Security and Marines. They were a tough bunch, all fought to the death, although we offered them plenty of opportunities to surrender…”

  “Sir,” a voice from operations interrupted him. “The Santa Maria is pulling away from the station.”

  “Damn,” Paul replied. He had completely forgotten about the freighter between consolidating reports from the various sweeper teams, Gunny and David’s security team. “Bring the station weapons on-line,” he ordered. It was time to finish this.

  “What if they have hostages on-board?” the weapons officer made the good point.

  “Unlikely,” Miranda interjected. “That was a Syndicate Enforcer squad, they don’t take any prisoners. They don’t want anybody left alive to identify them.”

  “Station weapons on-line, sir,” the weapons officer replied.

  “I know Captain Anderson from the war, he would die before he would allow anybody to take his ship. Fire!” Paul ordered.

  Surrounding Terra Nova was a small asteroid belt; this was not unusual for similar sized stations. It was far cheaper to accelerate asteroids towards the location of any new installation, and then mine and refine the alloys from the asteroids than to ship the refined materials across the system. Hence there was nothing unusual about the size or positioning of the asteroids around Terra Nova… except for their contents. After extracting all the materials from the cores, after the construction of the station, several small fusion reactors were placed in certain asteroids. These fed powerful particle lasers than had been installed at the same time. Combined with the manoeuvring jets from redundant shuttles, this allowed the station to re-orientate the lasers on the asteroids, at will.

  Hence as the Santa Maria tried to desperately escape the station, the nearest asteroid began to slowly re-orientate itself and track the fleeing freighter. When the freighter came within range, a beam of light, brighter than any sun, shot out from the asteroid, striking the freighter amidships. The hull quickly began to crumple under the onslaug
ht; finally the hull failed completely triggering the collapse of the ship’s own fusion reactor. A few moments later there was no trace of a freighter having ever existed.

  The officers in the C&C watched mournfully as the light from the freighter’s fusion reactor slowly disappeared.

  “That’s it,” Paul announced to the C&C staff. “As of now the station is closed for emergency repairs. Re-route any incoming ships to alternative destinations. If any other ship declares an emergency you contact one of the senior staff for instructions. Any other ships that fail to respond to the warnings…” Paul left the instruction unsaid; the destruction of the Santa Maria clearly demonstrated the station’s ability to defend itself from any further attacks.

  Standing up to leave, Paul needed to check the status of the various departments and to check on Jon. That thought reminded him that he had completely forgotten that Jon was still in surgery. Looking at Miranda, who was still staring vacantly at the view-screen, a thought occurred to Paul. Something that would take the young woman’s mind off the past few hours, help him and fulfil an earlier plan of Jon’s. “Miranda, please come with me,” Paul instructed the young woman gently, motioning to one of the offices just off C&C.

  Once inside, with the door firmly closed, Paul shooed Miranda in the direction of the small washroom attached to the office. “Why don’t you get cleaned up a little bit, then we can talk?” he suggested softly.

  A few minutes later Miranda returned, taking a seat across the table from Paul. While Paul would not describe her as clean, at least she had washed most of Jon’s blood from her hands. Deciding to get straight to the point Paul explained. “While I am sure that Jon will pull through the surgery, he will be out of action for sometime, certainly he will not be running the station in the short-term.”

  “I assume that you will take-over while he is… recovering,” Miranda replied, hating it that they already seemed to be talking about Jon in the past tense.

  “Normally,” Paul replied. “But I am more of an administrator, not a leader. Before the attack and Jon’s injury we agreed that you would takeover temporary running of Vanguard, Terra Nova and our other company assets.”