by Z D Dean
As he examined the closed hatch that separated him from the pirates, he scanned for some kind of locking mechanism or any booby traps. Ann informed him that it was an automatic door, a common safety precaution to prevent the spread of fire or excessive decompression in the event of damage. After holstering his sidearm and grabbing the rail carbine he had mounted on the front of his armor, he pressed his hand to the door control and watched it slide open soundlessly.
As quietly as he could, he stepped into the room and immediately to the right of the door. Certain military tactics could be applied to any situation, and he didn’t want to be caught in the fatal funnel if the pirates noticed him before he could engage them. After moving into the deep shadows to his right, he listened to the pirates threatening the barricaded crewmember and bicker amongst themselves about getting the door open. He knew his nanites were translating their speech word for word, but he was impressed by their colorful English curses. His mind must have fully integrated with the nanite language center because he was hearing idioms and colloquialisms that wouldn’t be possible without the speaker having experience in human culture.
When they weren’t arguing with each other about getting the door open, they were shouting threats at their intended victim. The pirates all looked male, and their verbal abuse suggested that the target was a female. Having heard enough, Zade laid his weapon’s sight on the pirate trying to get the door open. He had his back turned which meant he was dead before he knew what hit him. Zade artfully painted the outside of the hatch with the man’s face. The deafening signature from his rifle caused the other pirates to look around in confusion. Before they could gather themselves and identify the threat, he managed to end another’s miserable existence.
His ambush evened the numbers a little, but his luck didn’t hold. Before he could engage the next attacker, they had all scattered, finding cover. Without a clear sight on anything, a tense silence descended on the room. Knowing it wasn’t wise to take another shot from his original position, Zade pulled his weapon to his chest and began shuffling towards the end of the stack of crates he was using as cover. As soon as the muzzle of his rifle emerged around the side of the stack, a torrent of fire began peppering his position.
As his attackers ran dry, they began to reload and the roar of gunfire quieted. In the silence, he could hear the heavy footsteps of two pirates running across the open room, attempting to flank him. He leveled his weapon and stood. The brazen act caught the makeshift assault team off guard. They froze. Not wanting to stay exposed any longer than he had to, he chose to lace them up with a few rounds across their chests instead of taking the more time-consuming headshot. The screams from the injured men added to the confusion of the situation.
A fraction of a second before he could pull himself back into cover, a round slammed against the side of his helmet. If there was any doubt in his mind about his choice of armor upgrade, it was gone when the shield generators flared to life in hues of green. He watched the sliver of charge in his armor drop when the shields activated, and quickly dropped back behind cover. As he decided which end of the cover he wanted to assault from next, the wounded men stopped screaming. Shortly after they grew silent, two more clouds of energy came racing towards his helmet, and his charge indicator filled to almost ten percent. He estimated that the charge would shield him form four shots.
He realized the war of attrition he was waging against the pirates would only end when one side ran out of ammo, and he began blind firing over the tops of the crates. With the undisciplined nature of the pirates, it only took a couple of rounds to cause them to empty their mags. When the incoming fire stopped and he heard the men fumbling with their weapons, he made his move. A quick check showed his weapon at nearly full charge. He sprang from cover and sprinted towards his attackers. It was as brazen but luck was with him. He rounded the corner of the enemy’s hiding spot and immediately laced up three of the men before they could react. He didn’t even wait to see what the three he had shot were doing before he turned his attention to the last man.
Unlike the first three who were built fairly normally, the fourth was built like a middle linebacker from hell. When he stood, Zade took in the nine-foot-tall hulk that stood before him. He couldn’t identify the species of the pilot, but he came from one that practiced hand to hand combat. Clad a torn pair of pants and an old set of boots, the unnatural bulk of the man’s torso was left exposed. A spider web of scars crisscrossed his exposed flesh. Zade raised his weapon to fire. His heart stopped when he squeezed the trigger and nothing happened.
Sensing his opportunity, the man drew a wicked-looking knife from the sheath on his hip and charged forward. As Zade gave up ground to maintain distance between himself and the raging hulk, he considered drawing his battle axe. He was fairly confident he could beat the man with his armor and the longer melee weapon. At the last minute, he dropped his long gun, drew his pistol, and fired three rounds, at point-blank range, into the man’s face.
Never bring a knife to a gunfight, he joked to himself.
The brute was dead before he hit the ground.
With the fight over and his adrenaline beginning to wane, he quickly checked to make sure all threats had been neutralized. He hadn’t even noticed the influx of energy from the three men he had gunned down as they reloaded, but the energy from the large man filled his reserves to almost twenty-five percent.
Not sure what he would be facing when he opened the compartment, he cleared the bodies of the first two men he had killed. He pounded on the door as he notified the room’s occupant that the pirates had been dealt with and he wouldn’t hurt her. He heard someone moving around behind the closed hatch, but after a few minutes, the room remained sealed. He tried to open it himself but to no avail.
“Can you get this open?” he asked his AI.
His question was answered by the hatch sliding into its recess in the surrounding wall. He peered inside the quarters and announced himself a second time. The room was almost pitch black, but with his thermal overlay, he could see the silhouette of the occupant in red. She was huddled against the back wall of the room, clutching a flashlight to her chest.
“Everything is ok. I took care of the pirates. Are you hurt?” he asked as he turned on his headlamp to get a better view of the situation.
Between the darkness and the thermal overlay, he couldn’t see very many details. With his light source, he could see the feline woman more clearly. She wore a tattered jumpsuit and had blood flowing freely down the side of her face. Fearing she had been seriously wounded, he quickly closed the distance between them and attempted to render first aid. But, as he reached out to check her wound, she let out a primal hiss and lashed out at him. It was a sloppy strike, borne of desperation and fear, which he deftly caught before she could strike him again. He released her hand. He did not want to hurt her. Before he let go, he noticed that each of her digits terminated in razor-sharp, inch-long claw.
He didn’t want to hurt the woman and feared further confrontation if he stayed near her. As he released her hand, he stepped back. The woman began interspersing growls between her continued hissing. While keeping an eye on the woman, he checked the rest of the room to ensure they were alone.
“Why aren’t my nanites translating her language?” he asked Ann.
“They will when she starts speaking. She is in shock. The hissing is just that: hissing.”
“Samix, dock at one of the open shuttle bays and get down here with a first aid kit. Maybe your presence will help this situation,” he ordered through the comms as he took his helmet off.
The cat woman’s eyes never left him, but he could see them soften once she realized he wasn’t one of the unkempt pirates. Afraid to engage her again, he stood and propped himself against the wall, waiting for Samix to arrive. The thud of docking clamps engaging was followed by rapid footsteps outside the engine room. He turned to meet her amongst the carnage in the outer room.
“She is in here. I can’t
get her to talk or let me look at the head wound she has. See if she will interact with you. I’m going to strip these guys of anything useful then drag the bodies out of sight.”
She disappeared into the room while he moved to the nearest group of bodies. As he worked to strip them of anything useful, he grilled Ann on the forger. She filled him in on what she knew about the rare skillset. Although she had gained quite a bit of processing power from the first Groz ship they had encountered, she had gathered relatively little archived information pertaining to the ancient race. They would have to find an abandoned colony if he were to gain more information about the capabilities. Of the information she did have on the forgers, the bit he found most interesting was a rumor about them. Stories said that forgers could not only create and improve inanimate objects, but they could also modify living beings with the Rua.
The last body he had left to search was the last man he had killed. He quickly sheathed the blade he had been carrying and searched the man’s pockets, the contents of which went into a pouch on his gear. Just as he was finishing with the last body, Samix waved him over to the entrance of the engineering room.
“I got her patched up. It didn’t look too bad, just a cut on her scalp.”
“Has she said anything yet? Does she know why this happened?”
“Yes and no. They were mining for titanium when the pirates attacked. They took both the cargo and crew. She is really shaken up right now.
“Let’s get her back on Ann while we figure out how to proceed. This mission is giving me the creeps,” he said as he began picking up the pile of scavenged weapons to take back to his ship.
Samix headed back into the engineering bay to grab the miner while Zade headed to his ship. Once aboard, he headed straight to the armory to offload the arsenal he had collected. While he was cleaning, sorting, and stowing the weapons, Samix had shown the miner to a set of quarters where she could clean herself up.
After a quick trip to his room to freshen up, he met his pilot in the galley. After grabbing a cup of sloop, he sat across from her to try and figure out what their next move would be. Ann made her presence known by projecting herself from the ceiling at the end of the table.
“I think it’d be best to take her back down to the surface of the planet,” he said before either of the others could speak. “I don’t think she could pilot the mining craft by herself.”
“We need to take care of the other pirates, too,” Samix said boldly. “You saw the ship they attacked. They had no way to protect themselves.”
“Have you forgotten that we are a crew of two? We were lucky to even rescue that woman, and now you’re talking about assaulting a pirate base.”
Zade watched as her logical mind caught up to her passion to help people. When she spoke again, the fanaticism in her voice was slightly more tempered.
“I think we both know why they took the whole crew: to keep them as playthings or to sell them as slaves. We can’t just turn our backs on that.”
“Let’s take her back to the planet,” he said after a moment, even though he agreed with her. He just couldn’t find an angle that would make the mission successful. “Let’s take her back to the planet. Maybe they will be able to help us clear out the riffraff in the system.”
As he finished speaking, the cat woman walked into the galley. She had figured out how to work the shower. The grime and dried blood that had been caked in her short fur was gone. In a clean ship suit and with her wound rebandaged, she took a seat next to Samix.
“I am Mara. Thank you for saving me,” she directed her comment towards Zade. Her voice was not what he had expected after hearing her in the engine room. “What are you planning on doing with me?”
“That’s what we were just talking about,” he replied. “It’s a toss-up between taking you back to the planet or letting you pilot the mining ship back to the planet. Can you fly it by yourself?”
“What?” she asked, a look of thorough confusion painting her strange catlike face. “You are not going to conscript me to your crew? I am a good mechanic. Even if I don’t know this technology, I am a fast learner. All I ask is that you use me for my mechanical skills.”
As she spoke, she motioned with her head and hands to the ship around them.
“We are not going to conscript you to service,” Samix said, trying to alleviate Mara’s panic. “For your mechanical skills or otherwise. That isn’t how we work and that’s not why we helped you. We were in your system for a separate reason when we got the emergency transmission.”
“But that is the Baast way. When you save a person’s life, they are indebted to you for the years that they would not have had without your intervention.”
“That may be the Baast way, but we’re not Baast, and that is not our way,” Zade said, hoping to end the line of thinking. “My pilot here thinks we should remove the pirate threat from your system. If you can provide any help with that, I would consider us even.”
Mara seemed almost insulted by his statement but launched into an explanation of the current situation in the system. The Baast had bought the system from the Unity, after which they began colonizing it. With the abundance of asteroids, mining was used to provide the Baast worlds with resources. There was a small contingent of security forces, but after years of fighting off the pirates, they had been rendered impotent. With both stars shining, the habitable area on the surface of the planet was small. Only the upper echelons of the mining companies could afford to live on the surface. Everyone else was put on mining ships and sent to work the belt.
“There are even rumors that the pirates and ownership of the companies are working together,” Mara said after finishing her monologue.
“It looks like, even without the pirates, these people are being exploited,” Zade said to Samix. “Seems like that alone warrants some investigation.”
“So, what’s the plan then?” she asked, a grin on her blue face.
Chapter 6
“Who do we need to talk to so that we can land?” he asked Mara.
“We need to talk to the miner’s union. They take all reports on pirate attacks.”
Mara accompanied the meager crew to the command deck of the ship. She would be doing the talking with the controller on the planet to secure a landing place. While Samix prepared the ship for take-off, Ann situated Mara in one of the empty workstations. Having been born on the planet they were flying to and never traveled outside of the asteroid field, Mara had never seen any ship that was not built by the Baast. As she started to relax, she scanned the room, wonder in her eyes.
Strapped in his command seat, Zade looked out the window absently. He was concerned about having to take on the pirates without the help of anyone else. The way Mara had described the planet didn’t bode well for finding help. He fully expected that he would have to find some kind of ruse to get himself on the pirate station.
A communication from flight control interrupted his musing about the pirate problem. Mara answered the call, informing the individual on the line that she was on the ship that rescued her and it needed to land. The controller seemed hesitant at first but eventually gave the ship clearance to land at one of the dedicated pads next to the union building.
Even after hearing that there were no longer any defense forces to defend the planet, Zade was still surprised that there were no armed guards to meet them once they landed. Instead, there was one elderly, overweight Baast that reeked of bureaucrat. The three on the ship rode the lift down to ground level after shutdown procedures. Both Zade and Samix wore their complete set of armor while Mara wore only the black under suit.
“Another ship lost, then?” the man said, addressing Mara and failing to even acknowledge the others.
The fact that the man only seemed to care about the ship made Zade’s skin crawl.
“The ship is not lost, only the crew. I secured it before I left, but we need a crew to fly it. The three of us cannot do it alone,” she responded.
“Yo
u stupid bitch. You left a JPMB ship in the belt, unmanned, where the pirates could take it? You should have conscripted these two to get it back here,” the man scolded Mara.
“Listen up, you stupid fuck,” Zade interrupted. The mere sight of the useless bureaucrat set the wrong mood for him. The man’s concern about the ship over the lost crew and the way he was talking to Mara was too much for him to stay quiet. “You are the reason the ship was taken. You sent a bunch of miners into pirate-infested space without security. This is your fault.”
“Who do you think you are, speaking to me that way? Do you realize who I am?” his pompous tone broke what was left of Zade’s self-control.
He began stalking towards the fat, old cat person, trying to decide which weapon he was going to use to kill the man. Initially, he thought to drop him on the spot with his rifle but decided instead to go with a more personal approach. He hadn’t had a chance to clean himself up so, his blood-caked armor made him a menacing presence. He watched the man’s eyes as he slowly drew his knife, happy to see the smugness replaced with fear.
“Back on my planet, we have animals that look just like you. Their pelts make great floor coverings,” he said as he spun the knife in his hand.
The implication caused the man to stumble backward.
Spineless, just like every other bureaucrat with an undeserved sense of self-worth.
Before he could close with the man and follow through on his threat, he felt a hand on his chest. He looked down to see the multi-lensed face of Samix’s helmet looking back at him.
“This is not the way we should handle this. We need a more tactful approach. Let me handle this,” she said through the comms.
She had been groomed to deal with these kinds of situations. As a member of a ruling class, she had a talent for diplomacy. Zade was a proud man, but not too proud to admit his weaknesses.
