END of LINE: Humanities Last Stand - part 3

by John Short

  Jar, the Healer told me that there is a special marker in his blood that marks him as a Umin. So yes. He is somehow connected to both the Ancients and the humans. He's given me so much Jar, I cannot let him fall.”

  Pulling her close and wrapping her in his strong arms to give her a reassuring hug, Jarrieal softly told her. “We won't let that happen to him my beautiful little furball. He kept me alive during the worse of the battles we faced together and because of him I now have you!” then he leaned in and kissed her lips.

  Phillie melted into him before pulling back, “Stop that before we put on a show for the whole crew.” she giggled.

  No one heard from or saw Jon for another three full days. His walk from the Med Lab to the mess room had been exhausting and he'd spent the time in his stateroom either sleeping or planning his next moves. Looking over star charts he worked out what he thought was a good place to hide Leviathan away from the prying eyes of the media and any slipway ships running the outer rim. Then he checked with operations to see how long before all of the debris had been salvaged and they could safely move Leviathan. Finally he spoke with Phillie to ask about whether she had figured out a way to upgrade all of his ships with the new jump drives. She had assured him that she had mounted two of the spare jump drives to the Defiance and taken her out for several test runs. She could only jump tens of light cycles instead of the hundreds that Leviathan could, but that let her make any jump between the known systems in under an hour from Lexon II even to the most distant planets on the rim. Measuring the distance that Defiance could jump compared to the new shuttles they had found in Leviathan’s bays confirmed that the destroyer and the shuttles could jump the same distance. It was time for him to try another walk.

  With all the pride he could muster he strode onto the command bridge and called out, “REPORT!” The crew erupted in applause before the Commander got them settled and told Jon, “Leviathan is ready sir. She is yours to command.”

  “Very good Commander. By the way, if I have to be an Admiral, you have to be a Captain. Congratulations Captain.” Jon told the man while holding out his own Captain's insignia for him to wear.

  “Thank you sir.” the male responded. “Your course sir?” Jon handed the male his calculations and he relayed the coords to the Nav officer who plotted their course and then called out for coms to give the jump warning.

  “ALL HANDS PREPARE FOR JUMP IN...3..2..1 JUMP!”

  The forward screen turned glaringly white before darkening again and showing a different set of constellations. Wrenches was on Jon's com in seconds. “DAMN YOU BOSS!”

  Stifling a laugh Jon asked, “Something wrong Wrenches?”

  “Is something wrong Wrenches, he asks as pretty as a pink dress! Yes, I was lubing the Jump drives!” Phillie yelled. “Next time give a person more notice!”

  “I'm sorry Wrenches. How much time do you need?” he asked her.

  “Maybe 5 minutes would be nice when we are jumping from a stand still. Less if we're under attack. Did you forget that this boat hasn’t moved in over two hundred cycles? YUCK! Now I need an other bath!” she complained.

  “I'll send Jarrieal to your quarters right away.” Jon joked with her.

  “You do that. Wrenches out!” she angrily exclaimed. Jon broke into a laugh that was soon picked up on by the entire bridge crew. “I guess those two won't be available for the rest of the day.” He said out loud and the laughter got even more joyful. He was still hurting inside, but there was no reason for his own personal pain to spoil the whole crew's lighthearted laughter. “Here goes nothing, coms, connect me with Captain Jarrieal.”

  “Jackal here. What's up Butcher?”

  “I have been ordered to have you report to Captain Wrenches quarters on the double.” Jon told him.

  “On my way sir!” Jarrieal told him.

  “Maybe we should make that two days.” Jon told the command crew to their continued laughs and giggles. “Nav., where did we end up?”

  “According to the scans and the star charts, we are right where you wanted us to be. I can put it up on the table sir.” The command table that stood in the center of the control room suddenly came alive with a star chart of this area in space. It showed ten solar systems and the planets in orbit around their suns. It also showed the inner planets in orbit around their own suns. Also shown in red for inbound and blue for outbound streaks were the slipways. Sitting off to one side away from the charted star systems was the system where the Canari raid had been. Leviathan's location was shown in gold out far away from any of the charted stars of the slipways. It also had something that Jon had never seen before. Floating just above the table was a detailed holographic image of the display. The 3D image even showed the ships that traveled the slipways!

  “What are the chances of anyone finding us out here who doesn't know where to look?”

  “Someone could always stumble on us by getting lost, but I think we're safe enough and considering how fast this ship can move, all they'd see is a glimpse before we'd be somewhere else anyway.” his Nav officer told him.

  “If they are really lost, they'd be calling for help. We could send the shuttles to bring them where they're going.” the coms officer volunteered.

  “OK, I'm going aft for a while. Have all shuttle crews meet me in the pilot's ready room.” Jon told the bridge crew. Then he stood to walk out but before he left he motioned to a crewman standing at the door. “Follow me crewman.” he ordered. Once outside the bridge Jon sat in his wheelchair and began to roll himself aft. “I'll need you to take this chair back to the ready room for me please.” he told the crewman. Then he went straight down to where the Dragon Ships were berthed.

  Before turning the hanger lights on Jon asked the young male, “Ever seen a Dragon Ship?”

  “No sir.” he replied. Then Jon rolled into the bay which turned the lights on and the kid's mouth suddenly dropped open. “By the Goddess, they're beautiful! I sure wish I could fly one of those.”

  “Captain Phillmma is working on getting them to fly for anybody. Right now you'll have to settle for one of the others in the forward bays. Have you started training on those yet?”

  “Yes sir. Captain Jarrieal says I'll be ready to fly solo in another month.”

  “You listen to what he's teaching you. He knows what he's doing better than most.” Jon assured the kid.” He's the one I trusted to fly me around when my legs wouldn't let me fly myself.”

  “He never mentioned that sir. If the others knew about that, I think they would have more respect for him. He comes off as a bit of a jerk, sir.”

  “Yeah, that's why I like him so much. He makes me look like a saint.” Jon laughed as he stood up from the wheelchair. “Here, take this back up front, leave it in the ready room please.” Jon walked over to the Dragon Ship that carried his family's house colors and climbed in. Shutting the hatch behind himself, he began the process of using only his mind to start the engines. Then just as Phillie had shown him, he used his mind alone to open the outer doors and fly the fierce attack shuttle out of the bay. Once on the outside, Jon again used his mind to close the hanger bay before turning the ship to move it forward to what he had started calling the lesser attack shuttle bay doors. He'd be flying this Dragon Ship from now on whenever he was on a combat mission. While it was smaller than the other attack birds, it had more powerful weapons and better shielding. Not that the other shuttles onboard Leviathan were weak. All of them were far more powerful than even Defiance; he just liked the idea of having a ship no one else could fly.

  The News vids had turned his good humored call sign into some kind of a badge of heroism. Jon never wanted to be a hero. His actions that day had not been heroic. All he'd done was stay alive despite almost being killed. The only person he'd saved that day was himself. Many of the men in his unit, not to mention his close friend had died. So he changed his call sign from Butcher to Dragon.

  Pulling along side the forward bays Jon tried the mind trick to open the hange
r bay and found that it did not seem to work at the regular bays the way it did at the rear. So he commed over to have the doors opened and was told that the landing bay was not yet clear of personnel.

  Then on a private channel he received, “Damn it Jon Connell, are you trying to be annoying today?” Phillie asked.

  “Phillie? Are you in the forward landing bays?”

  “Yes, Jon.”

  “I thought you were going to go take a bath? I sent Jarrieal to help. How is that annoying?”

  “Because I wanted to test the showers in the forward bays... and we well.. just give us a minute.” Phillie told him. Jon sat quietly in his shuttle slowly shaking his head as he held it up with his fingertips trying desperately not to laugh. He was not able to prevent an ever so very small grin on his lips. “Try it now Boss” Phillie suggested privately and again Jon sent the mental command for the bay doors to open. This time it worked and the lights from the bay slowly became brighter and brighter in the darkness of space. Jon flew the shuttle inside, ordered the doors closed and settled the ship onto its landing struts before mentally ordering the engines to shut down and the hatch to open. From there it was just a few short steps over to the ready room where he had asked the pilots to meet him.

  Walking to the front of the room and standing behind a podium Jon addressed the men seated in the room. “Hello everyone. I trust you have all had a chance to try out the new shuttles and their jump drives while I was in the tube.” He looked around and saw the group nodding in the affirmative. “Well I hope to put that experience to good use. As soon as I can get the rest of my cargo ships out here, we'll begin in the cargo business with those four ships. Leviathan and Defiance will become the security arm and will both be flying the “Stars and Stripes” clearly seen on the bow of Leviathan. Defiance is having them painted on her own bow as I speak to you. The next time she flies, she'll be under her own colors. Defiance will pick up some extra credits making selective runs that require a faster more powerful ship. Phillie has located a store of the outer hull armor used on Leviathan and is attaching it to her now. When she leaves to fly on her own again, she'll be faster, stronger and have more powerful weapons than any other ships currently flying. She will also be able to jump much like Leviathan does, just not have the same range. She will be able to jump with the shuttles though, so you shuttle crews won’t have to worry about being left all alone in the middle of a battle. Once we've located more qualified pilots, I'll be stationing attack shuttles and fighters on her. Our buyer at the military surplus yards is purchasing those now where our main ships came from under the name of “Stars and Stripes Security”. They will be transported here on the Mars, which is due to arrive later this week via a normal slip drive. We also have a full compliment of fighters and shuttles onboard Leviathan to help round out our fighting capabilities.

  So where does that leave us and our plans for dealing with the pirates? As the pilots of my flight teams can tell you, we had a very successful tactic during our time out here for dealing with pirates. First we located their targets by the distress coms being sent out. Then we slipped in behind the pirate ship, took out the drives, landed on their backs and sent in our grub troops to capture the pirates for hearings on the planets nearest to where we captured them.” Several of the pilots again nodded in the affirmative. “That won't work for us now. We are a private security organization not a Peacekeeper Force. We don't have the authority to arrest anyone nor can we legally transport him or her for trial. What we can do, is hold a court right here in space. Try them ourselves and execute them. All nice and legal. Our Captain is already contacting Lexon Security to register us as a legal start-up security company working for BBITFTLCo. In case anyone is wondering, BBITFTLCo. is my own creation. When I split off the big FTL ships from the smaller system shuttles that only fly Haven space, I renamed them to reflect my, our branch of the company. That's right I said our company because from now on once those ships start making regular rim runs, everyone who works for us will own a share in both the cargo and the security side of the business.” Suddenly the gathered pilots and crews broke into cheers and applause, and not only them because Jon had broadcast his message across the entire ship for all to hear. If sound could be carried in space, the people three planets away would have heard the yells and clapping going on at that moment aboard Leviathan. Cutting out the ship wide com Jon brought the pilots back to order.

  “OK, here is our battle plan. Right now we have three grub groups. That's sixty warriors. We also have three flight teams that have experience at this kind of operation. That's a fraction of the available attack shuttles. We are going to go for an over abundance of force. I want every shuttle pilot flying on every mission. The three ships carrying the grubs will go directly in for a landing while the rest go for the drives and the guns. I'll be checking each ship we attack for the kinetic weapons we found the pirates installing at Canari. Captured data says they are called rail guns. The ship sits out in space away from a planet and pounds the surface using heavy metal alloy poles. We already know that they have them installed on at least four more ships. Three of those ships are Destroyers the same as Defiance. That's why we managed to get one put on her, because pirates are basically stupid people and they were expecting a Destroyer when we came along. Our own Science teams have been going over that thing with an eye for every detail they can learn.

  I'm not trying to build a bigger fleet by stealing pirate ships. Most of them are not in good shape and Wrenches will end up bald if I keep bringing home messed up ships for her to fix.” Jon smiled at his furry friend who had just entered the room with Jarrieal which was why Jon had mentioned her ending up bald if he brought home more pirate ships. “We know that the Destroyer class vessels are fairly new acquisitions, so maybe those will be worth saving even if just for parts for Defiance. Still SOP will be jump in, attack, capture, trial, execution, disposal, jump out. QUESTIONS?”

  One person raised his hand. “Sir, what if when we get there the pirates have already killed the cargo ship's crew. What do we do with the ship and its cargo after we take out the pirates?”

  “Actually that's a good question. Captain Jarrieal, would you tell our young male what we did under those circumstances?”

  “Certainly sir. In the case of the cargo vessel's crew all being killed, the cargo is to be taken onboard the nearest vessel capable of transporting it to its assigned destination and delivered with all due haste.”

  “Thank you Captain.” Jon said, and then to the group he said, “I'm going to amend that. Leviathan's bays are large enough to carry most cargo ships out here. In the event of a dead crew, I think we will load the entire ship with its cargo in our bay and deliver the ship and its cargo in one piece. That way we might just earn ourselves a few new customers. I know TransCo. has lost a few ships out here and so have the other carriers. I've got to have more info before I help TransCo. very often though. Something about that bunch doesn't sit right with me. Everything we did when I took Defiance was legal, but they fired our cook because he followed the law. While I'm more than grateful to have him as our cook, he used to be one of TransCo's. executive board members. Something is wrong there, I just don't know what yet. So, now any more questions?” Jon waited for several seconds before calling out, “First wave, lets go get some stick time. Second and Third waves, dismissed. Jarrieal, you're first pilot now. I'm going out alone in a dragon ship, call sign is Dragon. Time to let the Butcher die. He draws too much attention in the news.”

  During their third hour of patrolling space around Leviathan a distress call was heard and the coords were relayed directly to each of the shuttles. The call came from within range of the shuttles' jump drives and mere seconds behind the call, the shuttles jumped in behind an unarmed cargo vessel that was being attacked by a much smaller Cutter class ship. Jon moved his Dragon Ship to the front of the Cutter and turned to face it head to head. When the Cutter opened fire only to have its plasma bolts reflected off of the ridge around
the face of the Dragon that is Jon's shuttle, he opened fire with his own highly charged plasma cannon which ripped a large hole in the pirate craft exposing the inside of the ship to the vacuum of space. Jon prepared to fire again when he saw his grub troops opening a hatch and entering the ship through its only air lock. Instead of destroying the ship, Jon decided to just cripple it. He aligned his shots carefully to destroy the small ship's weapons and as he destroyed one after another he was finally given the all clear signal. That meant that his team had captured the ship and have the pirates under control.

  Jon next contacted the cargo vessel, “Dragon to the cargo vessel, are your systems intact? Can you continue to your destination?” Jon commed.

  “Dragon, this is the cargo vessel Fayie. Our engines are off line. Life support still functional. We're not sure if the engines can be can be fixed this far out.”

  “What is your destination?” Jon asked.

  “We were headed for Favor 3. That's still a six day slip from here. We received a distress call and dropped from the slip to offer aid when they jumped us.”

  “Understood. Let me take care of these vermin and I'll help you get to your destination.” Jon switched over to his grub team's COM channel, “Dragon to grub team, what have you got over there?”

  “Just a bunch of scum and some crates of booze Admiral. Nothing worth much. We've disabled the ship's weapons that you didn't shoot out already and the engines. She won't be going anywhere or shooting at anything.”

  “Have you held a trial?”

  “Yes sir and found them all guilty of piracy. We have copies of their data banks to prove the truth.”

  “Very well. Secure them someplace in that ship then return to your shuttles please. I'll carry out the sentence.” Jon moved his ship to better watch his men exit the pirate ship and return to their shuttles. Once the men had transferred and the shuttles had moved away, he took aim at the pirate vessel and blasted it in half. Then he blasted huge holes in the two halves so that the entire ship was opened to space. No one still on that ship, even if they got into a pressure suit before he blew their ship to bits, would survive for long. Then he made a long range com to Leviathan. “Lev, we're going to be needing you here, we have a disabled ship that needs to be taken for a ride.”