Mutineer (Empire Rising Book 7)

by D. J. Holmes

  “Mama, Mama,” Sarah cried as she struggled to get away from her guardian. Her Mama had fallen over and she wanted to get to her side. “Mama’s hurt, Mama is hurt,” she said.

  “Shush Sarah,” her guardian whispered. “You need to be quiet Sarah.”

  Not listening, Sarah cried and called out for her Mama. As she looked towards the platform, the weird creature slithered up beside the man who had just hurt her mama. The way the creature moved reminded her of a snail. Just below its round bulbous head, six tentacle-like appendages protruded out, each with a pincer at its end. The rest of its body snaked down to the ground just like a snail. When it came into full view, Sarah was terrified. She had never seen anything as scary. The creature stopped and turn its head towards her. Opening its mouth, Sarah saw hundreds of razor sharp teeth. Suddenly the world around her went dark. Everyone else in the square froze. It was just Sarah and the terrifying creature on the platform. As it opened its mouth wider Sarah felt herself lift out of her guardian’s arms. Weightless, she floated towards the creature. As she got closer and closer the creature seemed to grow larger and larger until its mouth looked like it could swallow her whole. Just before she got close enough for the creature to chomp down on her, she screamed in utter terror…

  *

  In a cold sweat, Sarah jumped up in bed. It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, she said to herself as she took a series of deep breaths. Reaching over to her nightstand she picked up a damp cloth and wiped her forehead. Still shaking slightly, she swung her legs out of bed and sat up. Something must have woken me up, she thought. The dream normally ended with the crunching sound of her bones snapping as the monster bit into her. The thought sent a shiver through her spine.

  Glancing at her COM unit she saw she had a message from the bridge. Draxler was demanding she report for duty. She jumped as a voice blared out from the COM unit. “Sarah, where are you? Get your ass onto the bridge right now. Things are about to begin,” Draxler’s grating voice demanded.

  “I’m coming,” she said as she stood.

  Reluctantly, Sarah moved around her bed to open the only wardrobe in her room. She was still trembling from the dream but she was accustomed to that. It was a daily experience. Quickly, she selected some fresh clothes and set them out on her bed. Pausing, she looked at herself in her room’s small mirror. As always, the face looking back at her appeared strange. She had long dark hair and deep blue eyes. Along her right cheek a scar ran from her right eye almost down to her lip. With red lips and pale skin, she wondered for the thousandth time, just who am I?

  Apart from her dream, she had never seen another member of her species. There were twelve different alien species among the crew of Lady Luck, yet none of them were like her and none of them knew where she was from. Only in her dream had she ever seen others like herself and, try as hard as she might, she couldn’t figure out where the dream was from. Instinctively she knew it was real, she had really watched her mother get shot when she was a young child. Yet where it happened or when, or how she had come to be in this part of the galaxy, she had no idea. She didn’t even know the name of her species.

  Her earliest memories were of the slave markets of Kashal. There she had been sold to a rich alien matriarch who had taken Sarah back to her own world as a servant-slave. For a number of years Sarah had been taught how to help look after her mistress and meet her every need. Then, when travelling to another planet, her mistress’ ship had been attacked by pirates.

  Draxler had killed most of her mistress’ crew. Then he had taken her mistress hostage and demanded a ransom. After the ransom had been paid her mistress had been released but Draxler had kept Sarah. With one hand Sarah reached up and fondled the collar that fit snugly around her neck. She had worn the collar even on Kashal. She didn’t remember how she got it, but as she had grown, the collar had adapted to fit her perfectly. With the touch of a button her mistress had been able to send an intense wave of pain throughout her entire body from the collar. It had been made crystal clear to her that with another touch, the collar could kill her instantly.

  Draxler had taken advantage of Sarah’s predicament. He now held the control to her collar. Along with several other slaves on Lady Luck, Sarah now served Draxler as he cruised throughout the surrounding sectors of space, pirating and pillaging as much as he could.

  Initially, she had simply been a servant looking after Draxler’s needs. Then, after he had made her fly a flight simulation for fun, he had put her to work on Lady Luck’s bridge. Sarah didn’t understand it but Draxler seemed to think she was some sort of prodigy. Flying a spaceship just seemed natural to her, she couldn’t understand why so many of Draxler’s crew didn’t seem to be able to do what she did. Initially she had been fearful of flying Draxler’s ship, she had known that if she made just one wrong move he would have killed her. Quickly she had come to prefer flying to bringing Draxler food or looking after his clothes. At least flying, she was able to see more of the galaxy around her. She hoped that one day she might even be able to find her home planet. Then maybe I can find out what happened to my mother, she thought

  As a small wave of pain shot out from her collar Sarah jumped into action. Thoughts about herself disappeared. Draxler wasn’t happy. She donned her clothes and ran towards the bridge.

  Stepping onto the bridge, Sarah saw the rest of Draxler’s crew were already there. When Divar turned around to look at her, she gave him a small smile. He was the closest thing to herself she had ever met. His face and body were very similar to hers, though where she only had two arms, he had four, each one ending in hands that only had three fingers. He also had six eyes to her two and was completely covered in thick golden fur. Though their similarities had drawn Sarah to Divar, what really caused the bond between them was that he too had a collar around his neck. As a result, he was the only friend she had ever known.

  “Get to your station,” Draxler roared when he saw Sarah standing at the entryway to the bridge.

  As Sarah moved into the bridge, he stood and moved towards her. Like Sarah, he had only two arms that came out of his bulbous body, though he moved on six legs, each long and thin, ending in a point. As he scuttled towards her Sarah felt a shiver run through her, though she had known him for years, there was something unnatural about the way Draxler moved.

  “This is our biggest target yet,” Draxler whispered into Sarah’s ear as she made her way towards the pilot station. “Mess this up and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. On the other hand, if it goes well, I’ll have earned enough to give you your freedom.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes, though she was careful to make sure Draxler didn’t see her. She knew his threats were very real. The collar around her neck could cause intense waves of agony for hours on end. Yet, his promises would never come true. Whatever it was that Draxler thought made her such a good pilot, she knew he hadn’t found anyone else like her. He would never let her go.

  Not for the first time she contemplated doing something to get Lady Luck disabled or even destroyed. If there were any armed ships in the convoy Draxler was about to attack, then it wouldn’t be too difficult. She could fly Lady Luck right into one of their laser beams. It would be easy. With an effort, she dismissed the thought. She knew that if he was faced with being captured Draxler would kill her and the rest of his slaves. She and Divar would be key witnesses, able to tell the Elders everything that Draxler had done.

  I have no choice, Sarah said to herself. Something she told herself before every battle. The galaxy has put me into this situation. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else flying his ship. I can only survive. My life is all that I have. I won’t throw it away.

  Chapter 2

  Stepping past Draxler, Sarah made a conscious effort not to rub up against him. Once she got to Lady Luck’s pilot station she threw herself into her chair. As she pulled down the interface helmet, relief washed over her. Being around Draxler and his cronies made her feel extremely uncomfortable. On many
occasions, she had seen first-hand just what they could do when they got upset. As the helmet began to read her brainwaves, the bridge disappeared. In its place, the helmet projected a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of space around Lady Luck directly into her brain.

  Many alien species simply couldn’t handle a direct neural interface. Often, they became extremely disorientated and within several seconds emptied whatever digestive tracts they had. In the worst-case scenarios, mental problems could develop from even just a few seconds of exposure to the interface. Some species’ brains just weren’t designed to be able to switch from seeing the world through a limited number of eyes to having a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of everything. Draxler had forced Sarah to put on an interface helmet as a punishment one day. Having only two eyes, he had thought her species would be especially susceptible to the disorientation. To his and Sarah’s surprise, she had adapted immediately to the interface helmet.

  Lady Luck’s previous pilot had been able to handle the helmet; however, it had always been a struggle and his reflexes were slowed because of it. Once Draxler realized just how natural it was for Sarah to use the interface helmet, he made her his pilot. Ever since, Sarah had been party to countless raids and attacks on innocent spacers. If it wasn’t for the same dream she had every night, Sarah was sure she would have other nightmares about some of the things she had seen and done.

  Dismissing such thoughts Sarah knew now wasn’t the time for self-reflection. She had done what she needed to do to survive. Looking beyond Lady Luck, Sarah used the ship’s sensors to peer into the space around the pirate ship. For more than half a light year in every direction there was nothing, simply the vast emptiness of space. The nearest system was a light-year away. With a thought, Sarah changed her view so that she could see a representation of the system. There were eight planets orbiting its star, none of them were inhabited. She switched back to the view of space around her ship. Sarah knew not many pilots could change views so easily, yet it was second nature to her.

  With another thought she brought up the sensor data on subspace around Lady Luck. For slower than light travel, Lady Luck used her impulse engines. The pirate ship could also create a Dyson Bubble around the ship that would allow her to accelerate beyond the speed of light. However, even using a Dyson Bubble, it would take weeks to travel to the nearest system. For real FTL travel Lady Luck would have to power up her jump drive. The jump drive tore a breach in normal space opening up a portal to subspace. Sarah knew very little about the science behind the jump drive and subspace. As it had been explained to her, subspace was something akin to a parallel dimension that ran alongside normal space. Its great advantage was that the distances between any two points in subspace were far less than in normal space. Therefore, a ship could enter subspace, travel through it to their destination and then exit subspace back into normal space. The speed at which a ship could travel through subspace was theoretically infinite. The only limiting factor was the thrust a ship’s impulse engines could create. Lady Luck, being an adapted freighter, had three additional fission reactors allowing her to funnel an immense amount of energy into her impulse engines. The result was that she could travel at almost a light year per hour in subspace. Draxler had adapted her so that she could make a quick getaway after an attack.

  The map of subspace around Lady Luck looked very different to normal space. Lady Luck was currently sitting in normal space at the very edge of the Tyrilla Storm. No one knew quite what the Tyrilla Storm was. However, its effects where readily apparent. Though it wasn’t visible in normal space, in subspace the Tyrilla Storm looked like a whirling maelstrom of gravitational eddies. No ship in history, not even an Elder ship, had entered into subspace within the Tyrilla Storm and survived. Every ship had exploded on contact.

  There were many other smaller subspace storms spread throughout the known galaxy that likewise prevented ships from traversing that area of sub space. However, none were comparable to the Tyrilla Storm. Though it couldn’t be detected in normal space, it spanned a length of over a thousand light years in subspace and its height completely dissected the Milky Way galaxy. At its widest, the storm spanned over forty light years, yet its narrowest was far less.

  The Tyrilla Storm cut off the Elder Homeworlds from almost one third of the planets they oversaw in the Orion Arm of the galaxy. To circumnavigate the Tyrilla Storm would take a ship up to a month in subspace. To travel through the storm at its narrowest point in normal space took only a couple of weeks. It could have been quicker using a Dyson bubble to exceed the speed of light in normal space but for some unknown reason, the Tyrilla storm interfered with the bubble as well. As a result, the four narrowest points in the storm between the rest of Elder space and the Orion arm of the galaxy were heavily used by ships from the hundreds of planets the Elder Empire controlled. Normally they were patrolled by Elder frigates but Draxler had obtained some information suggesting one of the frigates had been recalled back to the Elder Homeworlds.

  In normal space, it looked like Lady Luck was in the middle of nowhere. However, on the map of subspace she was sitting within the Tyrilla Storm, right on the edge of where ships coming from the Elder Homeworlds would appear as they travelled through the storm. Exactly where Draxler wanted her to be.

  “I’m detecting something,” one of Draxler’s cronies reported from his position at Lady Luck’s sensor station.

  Sarah saw what the pirate was talking about. There were a number of faint contacts about eight light hours away from the pirate ship.

  “What do you make of them?” Draxler demanded.

  “I can’t be sure yet,” she replied. “It certainly looks like a convoy but I can’t determine what type of ships they are.”

  “Update me as soon as you do,” Draxler demanded.

  Sarah was left to herself as she studied the contacts as they became clearer and clearer on Lady Luck’s sensors. “It looks like six freighters,” she said as soon as she was confident in her information. “Two of them fall into the super heavy class, the other four are light freighters.”

  “Perfect,” Draxler said. Sarah could hear the lust in his voice. Capturing even one of the light freighters would bring in enough credits to keep Draxler and his crew happy for months. A super heavy freighter could set him up for life. This was why they were here. Draxler had been making a name for himself in the nearby sectors. This would put him on another level.

  Sarah fell back into silence. The convoy of freighters was heading directly towards Lady Luck. Powered down and in normal space, Lady Luck was almost impossible for the freighters to detect. An Elder ship, or a warship from one of their Protector Worlds, would detect Lady Luck once they got close enough. As the freighters wouldn’t have such sophisticated sensors they were effectively blind.

  “We’re going to become famous,” Draxler said. “No one has attacked a convoy within ten light-years of the Tyrilla Storm. Lady Luck is going to go down in history.”

  Sarah tried to drown out the laughter and shouts of jubilation coming from the other pirates. She felt filthy being a part of what they were doing. She cared nothing for going down in history. It was true, she hated the Elders. Yet, the likelihood that any Elders would be on those freighters was very slim. Likely they were ships from some Tier Three colony or even a Protector World. Their deaths would be meaningless.

  Before meeting Divar, Sarah would have been very happy to kill someone from a Protector World. However, after hearing his story she now realized they too were little more than slaves to the Elders. Yes, no doubt many of their leaders were willing servants of the Elders, nevertheless, the people themselves were no better off than many of the other colonies directly controlled by the Elders.

  Divar had been a weapons officer on a patrol frigate from his homeworld of Xenos. Xenos was a Protector World. They had begun life as a Tier Two colony but after many centuries of faithful service to the Elders they had been promoted to a Tier three and then to a Protector World. Protector
Worlds were given a great degree of self-autonomy. They were also tasked with overseeing other Tier One and Two colonies that were nearby. Being allowed to construct their own war fleet to keep their neighboring colonies in check, Protector Worlds were hated by many of the citizens of Tier One and Tier two colonies. Divar had been captured by Draxler after he and two other pirate ships had attacked a convoy from Xenos. Recognizing Divar’s skill as a weapons expert, Draxler had enslaved him. Sarah was sorry Divar had lost his home and his family, but she was at least happy that she had one friend on board Lady Luck.

  “We’ll be in weapons range of the first freighter in five minutes,” Divar said.

  “You know what to do pilot?” Draxler said in a threatening tone.

  “Yes,” Sarah replied dutifully. “Once Divar takes out the first freighter’s engines I’ll get us into range of the rest of the convoy as quickly as possible.”

  “Good,” Draxler snarled. “I don’t want more than two of those freighters getting away from us understood?”

  “Clearly,” Sarah replied, though she had to grind her teeth together to sound obedient.

  “Firing on target one,” Divar said.

  Two x-ray laser beams drilled into the first freighter. Through her interface helmet Sarah could see the explosions. The freighter’s sensor profile diminished as her reactors were destroyed. Seconds later she fell out of formation as she began to drift through space, powerless.