“Don’t get all mushy on me but I think we should explore if we can’t use Avatar technology or maybe a robot body of sorts. I know Mothermachine had something like that to attend the festivities of Union Week on Pluribus.”
“You would allow that?”
“I am recommending it.”
“You are the best captain an AI can have.”
I smiled at that and said something similar in return and then watched the Golden and his nine duty officers come on the bridge. I actually laughed as I saw the little Holdian walking briskly behind the Golden.
Ship said, “Those two are almost inseparable, as you can see. The Holdian specialist is the duty engineer of that watch.”
The transfer went smoothly, and I noticed that the Golden did everything by the book. Even more so than most, and his transfer could have been recorded for Academy instructions.
He sat down on the command chair and was calling in the standard reports of all departments. My supervision was not needed, and since I had changed my own schedule to morning watch in order to be on the bridge when we reached Brhama Port, it would have been a wise decision to go to bed.
I was just about to turn off the field screen when Ship said, “OPS just reported a contact on the scanner horizon. Correction, there are two contacts now, and weapon energies are exchanged.”
My ready room was right behind the bridge, and it took me only a few moments to reach it. Just as I entered, Sobody called me over Intra-Ship.
As always, two Marines guarded the bridge access door and announced me. “Captain on the bridge.”
Sobody vacated the seat, and I said to him while I sat down, “Sorry to cut your first watch short, but I think you did fine, and you are on the permanent watch roster now.”
He bowed slightly and said, “Two contacts, Captain, and right in our path. Looks like pirate action.”
I put myself on ship-wide and said, “Ship, sound battle stations. Senior officers to the bridge.”
The light on the bridge changed from bright to red, and it took seconds for my team to reach their stations.
Narth, of course, was first, as he simply appeared and took his seat behind the OPS station. Seconds later, he gave me the first analysis. “Contact one emits energies consistent with a Bolgar Class armed trader and contact two energy signature is Kartanian and on file. It belongs to a known pirate ship called the Mighty Nine. The identity of the pirates themselves are not listed, but the ship and associated energy signature are on the Union wanted list for acts of piracy.”
Ship reported that all stations had signaled stations and that meant that every being aboard the ship had reached their battle station, fully.
I acknowledged and said, “Shaka, get us within one light minute. Mao, raise shields and arm weapons.”
On most Union ships, there would be little to do for the Science Officer, as all scanner and sensor resources were used by tactical and OPS, but not on the Tigershark. Shea allocated almost all sensors to her station and left only targeting and threat sensors with tactical. What made our system somewhat different was Shea’s intricate knowledge of the sensors and their capabilities, her incredible intellect paired with human emotion and intuition to correlate the scanner results with established knowledge. She worked in perfect synergy with Ship and the other departments.
Right now, she sent Hans the wide-spectrum images of the ships, and he used them to check with Union intel and law enforcement data banks. Ship used the energy output and energy signatures and calculated the energy technical capabilities of these potential opponents. She used a fine raster spectronomy to analyze shields and armor of the other ships, and Mao used this data to create a targeting logarithm that would allow him to disable, disarm, or destroy depending on my orders.
It all happened in mere heartbeats, and she said, “Captain, the Bolgar Class is registered to a small Union company that does trading business with several Free Space civilizations. According to their GalNet, mostly buying and selling declassified civilian goods. The company is suspected of also dealing with the Togar, according to an Intel report. Which is not against the law, as long as they don’t sell Mil-Tech.”
Mao reported, “The Mighty Nine is well armed with Kartanian Yukti ship-to-ship missiles and four faster-than-light directed-energy cannons, but nothing bigger than one megajoule per second. The Bolgar has three FTL DE turrets but only Class VIII. Both ships have standard shields. The Bolgar’s aft shields are about to collapse.”
Elfi followed right after Mao saying, “Captain, we are being hailed on Tachyon Radio, by the Mighty Nine.”
Har-Hi pulled his folded helmet out of his collar, and it became rigid as soon as it was completely out. It covered his face to the chin with a yellow-tinted faceplate, obscuring his identity. He handed me my mask. “I assume we are going to talk first, right?”
I laced the mask tight and gave him a scolding look. “We always talk first. Elfi, open the channel as soon as Narth verifies the bridge image matches our ship’s disguise.”
She responded, “You’re on, Captain. Bridge image confirmed.”
A shaggy-looking creature appeared on our screen. It had an elongated somehow bean-shaped head with four pointed ears and a drop-shaped nose that extended over the most of the upper half of the head. It had four eyes and a small rigid mouth. The head and much of the exposed upper torso was covered in finger-long unkempt-looking, orange fur.
Narth informed me telepathically, “This is a Volting, and they are members of the Galactic Council. I can sense him pretty easily, and he is as wanted there as he is wanted by the Union.”
He squealed in a hoarse voice, “Who do you think you are, interrupting my business?”
I said to him, “My business is interrupting yours. So lower your shields and deactivate your weapons and we will make it fast and quick. We leave with your valuables, and you leave with your life. I assure you, you won’t like the alternative.”
Even though it was the first time I saw a Volting, I could tell by his reaction he did not expect me saying that. “Don’t mess with me, female. I am of the Sinister Alliance and have many friends.”
He couldn’t know that this was the wrong thing to say to me. I remembered the attack on the outpost as if it was yesterday and of course, the little Holdian commander. I responded, “Well, your friends aren’t here, but I am.”
Elfi signaled me that the other ship was hailing us now as well, and I had her put them on simultaneously. The screen split and a human captain became visible. He wore a corporate uniform in bright reds and blues, and I found it a tad too colorful. He had dark hair and bushy eyebrows that almost united above his wide nose. “I am willing to offer you 25,000 Polo coins if you help me escape this gangster who dared to fire upon us. I am a peaceful trader and have little of value aboard.”
Narth’s mental connection transferred an emotion I had never thought possible with him. My friend felt disgusted, and he sent me his thoughts. “Eric, he has the most disgusting and horrible freight. What I am sensing cannot be described.”
I wondered what Narth had seen and said to the human, “I make you the same offer as I made to your Volting playmate. Surrender, lower your shields, and prepare to be boarded and you might walk away from this.”
To Mao, I said, “Open gun ports and incapacitate them, Shaka, show them what a real helmsman can do.”
I moved my seat into battle mode, and our disguised ship shot like a rock shark between a group of Three Finners. Our Nul Froth Casters that were part of our disguise were quite functional, and those Nul graviton pulse weapons were second only to the latest Terran weapons and enormously powerful and especially damaging to shields.
It was a thrill ride I could equate to nothing else. Shaka was more than just good. It was as if he could predict when the other ships were firing and corrected the course with the speed of thought and evaded both ships’ barrage with apparent ease, while he never exceeded speeds that a Kartanian could not obtain. I was fairly
certain, however, that no Kartanian ship had such precise helm control systems reacting in nano-second delay to Shaka’s control commands.
The stars danced around me in a wild, erratic manner whenever Shaka changed course.
Mao, who of course had trained with Shaka, knew his friend’s style and adapted his gunnery to the flight pattern and none of his shots missed. His targeting sequence was on the spot, and he actually used manual intuitive fire control.
Our ship shuddered ever so slightly as all our turrets pointed to one side and gave the Mighty Nine a broadside.
Mao said, “Shaka, I am giving the Bolgar the same medicine; prepare to compensate for weapon recoil.”
Shaka responded, “I am using that drift into fire on purpose; no sense wasting perfectly good kinetic energy.”
I had to laugh. My friends were having fun, enjoying themselves doing what they did best.
Har-Hi said, “Captain, both ships are rendered inoperable, and their shields are down.”
It took a second to get my seat out of battle view and then I said, “Mao, pound them with tech stop and paralysator rays. Har-Hi and Hans, you take the Mighty Nine. TheOther, you are with me, we going to visit the Bolgar. Hans, I need twenty-five Marines and two Fenris stat.”
Har-Hi shook his head as we both rushed to the IST. “There is no sense stopping you, or is there?”
Everything in me urged me to rush and board that ship, but I’d made Har-Hi my XO and he had a point. I stopped and sighed, “You are right. I will remain aboard.”
He laughed, already at the door. “Just kidding, Captain; I wanted to be at the door first. Stopping you from getting into the thick of the fray would be cruel.”
I actually cursed him and said, “Shea, you have the Conn.”
Running behind him, I yelled, “What a fine friend I’ve got!”
I almost caught up with him at the Battle-Dresser at the deployment deck as he said, “You don’t know how much I respect you for actually heeding my objection, Captain.”
“You are the XO, after all.”
He launched himself into space, his boot thrusters glowing bright white before he even made it past the forcefield curtain and he said via Command Channel, “Whoever calls object secure first wins.”
“What’s the wager?”
“If I win, we keep the pool temperature at a cozy 38, and if you win, I prance around in high heel boots for an entire hour.”
“I thought you hated swimming?”
“I am getting used to it, as it seems you’ve completely lost your fear of space.”
“I didn’t lose it; I simply don’t find the time lately to feel it.”
“All you need is a fight at the other side, and you’d cross hell to get there. I am slowly getting used to water and swimming, but I tell you, jumping in a pool that is kept at only four degrees is anything but fun. Only afterward was I told that the temperature is at such a freezing temperature because my captain took a swim an hour before.”
I could see the freighter now with my own eyes as the strong lights of our suits revealed details of its hull. There weren’t enough photons out here to reflect and see the ship on its own. “You better get an appointment with Cateria then, because walking in these heels isn’t as easy as it looks. I am almost there.”
“You forget I have Hans with me, and I am already halfway there!”
Once again, I flew through deep space toward a hostile ship, accompanied by Elite Marines and two Fenris robots. Har-Hi was right; I was no longer as afraid of space as I was before.
Har-Hi and I had stopped our banter as we had to concentrate on the job at hand. Right next to me was TheOther, who looked truly frightening in his modified Gilgamesh suit. Without my special sensor optics, he would have been completely invisible as the suit’s adaptive camouflage had taken on the darkness of space itself.
TheOther was the first to reach the Bolgar ship. Bolgar was not a species, but an old Union company that manufactured civilian spacecraft for about two hundred years but went out of business for some reason.
Still, there were many Bolgar ships out there, and they had a reputation for being solid and reliable. The ship was about 350 meters long and had the simple shape of a dull cone with a base radius of 80 meters. Six ISAH pods attached to its aft.
The Gilgamesh suit augmented the titanic strength of the Y’All to an almost unimaginable level. It became evident as he didn’t use any tools to rip the strong airlock door out of its socket.
My suit computronic reported communication activity from within the Bolgar and reported that there were still functional energy sources and energy shields within the ship. Apparently, our tech stop rays didn’t do the trick. Tech stop was very effective against unshielded electronic equipment but completely ineffective against shields. It was not completely unexpected, as many ships, especially of Union origin, had internal shields to protect key components and areas. This, of course, would also mean the paralysator rays did not incapacitate everyone aboard. I tuned into the communication channel of the civilian Union trader and heard screams of panic.
Someone in that ship screamed into his audio sensor. “Y’All! We are attacked by the Y’All!”
I went in right after TheOther, arm cannons ready and with two Marines at my flank, while the rest breached the ship in small teams on different spots as per my orders. These two Elite Marines were like living shadows. There was nothing to fight. However, we simply followed the path of destruction our Y’All friend had left behind, bulkheads crumbled and torn like paper, a man in some sort of battle armor cut in half.
TheOther was a whirlwind of doom, and he marched unstoppable shrugging off a few sporadic blaster beams. He held a TKU mini cannon, normally used as a direct fire artillery piece mounted on landing tanks or battle walkers with his lower arms, while he held a brand new QGP Rifle in the upper left and a weird and truly massive power sword of weird shape in his upper right fist. With it, he cut down a few of the ship’s crew who dared to resist.
Forcefield curtains collapsed as he simply marched into them, the aggressive ParaDim shields of his suit interrupting their field cohesion and closed air locks he cut, ripped, and stomped into twisted metal holes.
I reached the ship’s bridge without firing a single shot.
One of the Marines at my side turned out to be Pure and while he very rarely talked, he was compelled to express his amazement. “Beasts of Tarnak, can you imagine an army of these?”
The other Marine, a Perthanian giant, also with two arm pairs was less impressed. “I’ve seen Perthanian platoons in action. There isn’t all that much difference, I would imagine, and yet an entire army of us was defeated in the Battle of Gabthrt in 4319 by a Union Marines Battalion led by Admiral Stahl.”
I elbowed him in the side as I stepped on the ship’s bridge. “There isn’t much that impresses you Perthanians, now is there, Lt. Hrrtew?”
“Oh, there is, Captain, there is. You should see what happens if our Security Chief really lets loose.”
TheOther said, “The captain fought two of us in hand to hand combat and won.”
The Pertharian almost dropped his gun. “Captain, consider me impressed.”
“It didn’t exactly win and… now let’s get on with the business at hand.” While I said that, I wondered what it would look like if Hans fought without holding back? I looked around the bridge. It was a standard Union bridge layout like it was done half a century ago, with all the duty stations behind a bridge dividing chest-high barrier and only the helmsman having his station before that barrier and behind armored viewports. It was all well-maintained from the looks of it. There was even a civilian GalNet terminal. The bridge crew was hiding behind the barrier. I counted six humans and two Togar. Narth popped out of thin air right next to me, in his Alvor’s Cove dust mantle disguise and held out his hand. The captain of the ship started floating.
Narth explained his sudden appearance to me, “He was about to destroy his cargo. I could not let t
his happen before you all seen what he is shipping to Togar markets. It is the first time I feel disgust so strong I have the impulse to kill.”
I was quite surprised by his statement but a stomach-turning suspicion spread from the bottom of my gut, as I knew what the Togar liked to buy.
Narth nodded, “Yes, Captain, your notion is quite correct.”
Har-Hi’s voice came on the command channel and said, “Pirate ship secure, we won!”
I said to him, “Acknowledged, strip the valuables, secure anyone alive in stasis boxes, and have Shea look into their files.”
The ship’s master came floating toward me, and he looked back between Narth and TheOther, obviously not sure who he had to fear more. He said to me, “Are you Black Velvet, the pirate?”
His helmet peeled away from his face like the skin of a fruit. The tough material of his armor ripped like tissue paper and Narth answered for me. “You are in the presence of Captain Black Velvet, and it is not me you need to fear and not the Y’All, but her.”
I said, “What is your cargo?”
His eyes shifted, and his mouth became a thin line. “Nothing you pirates would be interested in.”
One of my Marines came onto the bridge; even through the faceplate of his helmet, I saw his pale white face and an expression of shock. “Captain, the vessel is secure, but you better not go inside the vessel’s main cargo hold. It is the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”
What was the freight consisting of that shocked an elite Marine and a Narth?
I said to TheOther, “Hold him and make sure they don’t touch anything. Have Cirruit come over and disable any self-destruct mechanisms.” To the Marine, I said, “Show me!”
We used the ship’s functioning ship elevator, and it took us down to the cargo hold level of this armed freighter. As we approached the cargo bay access doors, two more Marines came out, and both looked as pale and disgusted as the one with me.
Moments later, I stepped through the door and stopped in my tracks. The cargo hold was laid out like a freezer meat locker. There were rows of long steel racks from the floor to the ceiling. On steel hooks hanging packed in transparent plastic were human bodies. Headless, arms and legs tied to the body, like hams in a butcher shop.
Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 7 Page 93
