by Ryk Brown
The guards looked at each other, as they continued leading Nathan and Jessica down the corridor.
“How many security officers do you have on this bucket? Ten? Twenty?”
“Enough.”
“Do you really think it’s a good idea to have six of them here?” Jessica continued provoking them. “I mean, we’re unarmed, our hands are bound, and I’m a girl, for crying out loud.”
“You know, we can help you,” Nathan suggested.
“Right,” the guard replied, unconvinced.
Jessica turned to look over her left shoulder at the three men following them. “You’d better hope it isn’t the Dusahn boarding you,” she warned the men behind them.
“The who?”
“If it is, we’re all fuckin’ dead.”
“Eye’s forward, sweetie,” the guard behind them growled.
“Sweetie?” Jessica laughed. “Oh yeah, you’ll be one of the first to fall.”
“You’ve got to listen to us,” Nathan insisted. “We’re on your side.”
“Right,” the guard in front replied.
“Do you know who I am?”
Two of the Mystic’s security guards charged down the corridor toward the port forward docking clamp bay, but as they turned the corner, they were met with energy weapons fire. The first guard fell instantly, taking several shots to the face and chest. The second guard managed to return fire, but couldn’t get to cover in time, joining his partner on the deck in a sizzling mass, as four armed men jumped over them, charging past and continuing deeper into the Mystic.
“Team three! Report!” the guard’s comm-unit squawked.
Jessica looked at Nathan as the guards continued to lead them to the Mystic’s lockup in the lower decks of the ship.
“Team two is taking fire!”
“Dickers! Are you at lockup yet?”
“Negative, ETA one minute,” the lead guard replied over his comm-unit.
“Hurry it up! I’ve lost contact with team one! They’re supposed to be covering the port forward docking clamp bay!”
“Team eight is en route,” the guard replied. “We’ll be there in thirty seconds.” He turned to the guards behind Nathan and Jessica. “You guys got this?”
“Yeah, go!” one of the guards behind them replied.
Jessica exchanged glances with Nathan, as two of three guards in front of them took off running, disappearing around the next corner. She suddenly stopped in her tracks, and then fell backward, tucking and rolling, bringing both feet straight up as she came over into a handstand. Her feet drove into the hands of the stunned guard, knocking his energy rifle away.
At the same time, Nathan charged into the guard in front of him, just as the guard was turning around to see what the noise behind him was about. Nathan slammed into the guard, knocking him to the ground, following the guard to the floor and landing on top of him.
Still in a handstand, Jessica scissored her calves on either side of the stunned guard’s head, twisting him over and down with surprising force, as her assistive bodysuit kicked in to supplement her strength. The guard fell to his left, knocking into the guard to his side.
Nathan drove his foot into the guard’s face, as both of them scrambled to get up. The guard’s head snapped backward, slamming into the bulkhead and knocking him unconscious.
Jessica flipped back over, bouncing up to her feet, just as the third guard behind them took aim and fired. She twisted her body to the right, leaning slightly as she did so, allowing the bolt of low-power energy to bounce off her left shoulder, sending searing hot pain through her arm. She continued to spin back and around, using her own momentum to sweep with her leg, knocking the third guard over as he fired again.
Nathan was already up on his feet, and charging back toward one of the guards Jessica had taken down, who was scrambling for his dropped rifle. Instead, the guard found Nathan’s boot connecting firmly with his chin, knocking him back and twisting around.
Nathan picked up the man’s energy rifle and tried to fire at one of the other guards, but the weapon would not fire. The guard spotted Nathan, and charged for him. Nathan swung the rifle hard, aiming for the charging guard’s face, but the guard swung his arm upward, knocking the weapon up and away from his face. The guard drove his shoulder into Nathan’s torso, knocking him back against the bulkhead.
Slammed against the wall, Nathan brought his still-cuffed hands down onto the guard’s back as hard as he could, but the man had him trapped against the bulkhead and would not let go.
There was a sudden thud, and the man suddenly fell to the floor, releasing Nathan from his grasp. Nathan looked down at the guard, who was now unconscious. He then glanced over at Jessica, who was pulling a knife from one of the guard’s belt pouches.
“Hold up your hands,” she ordered as she approached.
Nathan held up his cuffed hands, and Jessica quickly cut his plastic restraints, freeing him.
Nathan took the knife from her and cut her restraints. “We need to get out of here.”
“Grab their weapons,” Jessica said.
“No good. They must be bio-locked.”
Jessica picked up a rifle and tried to fire it, but to no avail. Tossing the weapon aside, she picked up another one, but found it also would not fire for her. “Damn it!”
“Let’s go!” Nathan ordered, heading down the corridor.
Jessica searched the next guard, taking his comm-unit and his security badge.
“Come on!” Nathan urged, pausing at the corner to wait for her.
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” she replied, running after him.
“We’ve lost contact with teams one and two, and teams seven, eight, and nine!” the security chief reported over the intercoms on the Mystic’s bridge. “Both forward docking clamp bays have been breached, and the intruders are inside the ship. I believe they are headed for the shuttle bays!”
“Two more contacts!” the sensor officer reported. “They’re coming from that ship in front of us!”
“Jump plot calculated,” the helmsman reported.
“Hard to starboard; ten degrees down! Get me a clear jump line!” Captain Rainey ordered.
“Hard to starboard, ten down, aye!” the helmsman complied smartly.
“Captain!” the Mystic’s chief of security called over the intercom. “The Seiiki’s captain and first officer have escaped! I have contact with teams seven, eight, and nine again. Recommend teams seven and eight to the hangar bay!”
“Make it happen!” the captain replied.
“Sir, if we lose the shuttle bays…” the first officer started.
“Their men will come pouring in,” the captain finished for him. Captain Rainey sighed. “Chief of the watch, break out the sidearms and seal the bridge. No one enters without my express permission.”
Eight men, dressed in various unmatched pieces of military uniforms and body armor, and carrying heavy assault rifles, converged on the Mystic Empress’s port shuttle bay. The six Mystic security guards who had taken positions to defend the bay had been waiting for them, and reduced the attacker’s forces by half in the first few seconds of battle. But their low-energy stunners were no match for the high-powered plasma weapons carried by the intruders. The weapons of the security guards were designed to dissipate on contact with anything other than human tissue. With little of the intruders bodies exposed, it took several direct hits for the stunners to have any significant effect.
The reverse was true for the plasma weapons. They blasted through, or melted, just about everything they struck and the men wielding them cared little about the destruction they caused.
In less than a minute, six of the Mystic’s men lay dead in the corridors, and the intruders controlled the port hangar bay.
Jessica and Nathan ran down the corridor, traversing the bowels of the Mystic, as they sought safe refuge. Weapons fire echoed in the distance, Jessica coming to an abrupt halt.
“What is it?” Nathan asked, stopping beside her.
Jessica listened, trying to determine the direction of the sounds. “Those are plasma rifles. Heavy assault type. Either Palean or Takaran issue.”
“How can you tell?”
“That screech as they fire. The older ones don’t redirect the heat from the muzzle, so the air around the discharge is superheated.”
“So?”
“So these guys are either crazy, or they’re being paid really well. Those guns will blow the shit out of this ship. The Mystic’s security forces won’t stand a chance against that kind of firepower. This battle will be over shortly.”
“Who the fuck are these guys?” Nathan wondered.
Jessica paced back and forth, thinking frantically. “Why do you hijack a cruise ship? To loot it? To kidnap someone for ransom?”
“To turn it over to the Dusahn for a reward?”
“Have the Dusahn offered a reward?” Jessica wondered. “We didn’t hear anything about that.”
“Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened,” Nathan replied. “We’ve got to do something, Jess.”
“We’re not armed, Nathan,” Jessica replied. “And this suit of mine isn’t going to stop a blast from one of those plasma rifles.”
“They’ll go for the hangar bays first, so they can get reinforcements on board at will. They’ll also go for the bridge, and engineering.”
“Maybe we can get to engineering before them,” Nathan suggested.
“Doubtful, and even if we did, what then?”
“We need to buy time until help arrives. Vlad will see what’s going on.”
“I’ve only got five men on the Seiiki,” Jessica reminded him. “To take a ship this size, you’d need at least thirty or forty men.”
“We have to disable their jump drive,” Nathan said. “If the captain thinks he is losing the ship, protocols dictate he jumps the ship back to Takara.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a licensed ship captain,” Nathan reminded her. “Or at least, I was. I know the rules Captain Rainey is expected to follow. If he jumps the ship, it’ll be crawling with Dusahn troops minutes after arrival.”
“But if they take engineering, which they most certainly will try to do…”
“Jump field generators aren’t in engineering, Jess. Not on passenger ships. People are afraid of the damned things. On ships like this, they’re installed as far away from the passenger spaces as possible. Probably in her outboard nacelles, just like on the Seiiki.” Nathan thought for a moment. “We need to find a terminal, something where I can look up the schematics of the ship.”
The interior door to the port shuttle bay opened and twenty men dressed in a mixture of quasi-military clothing, carrying a variety of weapons, entered the corridor. Following them was an older and more nicely dressed man, a rather ornate looking weapon slung on his hip. The man paused after stepping through the door, as a member of the boarding team came up to him.
“We have secured both bays, and teams are headed for the bridge and engineering. We should be in position shortly.”
“Excellent,” the older man replied. “Tell them to wait until their reinforcements join them. The other shuttle will be landing shortly. What about the passengers?”
“They have retreated to their cabins, as expected.”
“We must disable their escape pod systems,” the older man told them. “If the Dusahn are not willing to pay for this ship, there are many noble houses that will pay for the return of their loved ones.”
“Have you decided what to do about the Seiiki?”
“Once we have complete control of this ship, we will deal with the Seiiki.”
“That ship is armed now,” the man reminded his boss.
“I don’t care. I have a score to settle with Tuplo and his band of idiots. That man cost me a small fortune, and I intend to get my revenge.”
“Wait!” Nathan yelled, stopping as he noticed something at the end of a cross-corridor. “Down there!”
“What?” Jessica asked.
“A schematic display!”
Jessica quickly walked the few steps back to Nathan, looking down the corridor in the direction he was pointing. “Where?”
“That door, at the end of the corridor.”
Jessica squinted. “You can read that?”
“You can’t?”
“No one can!”
“I’m telling you, that’s what it is,” Nathan insisted, heading down the corridor toward the door in question. Nathan ran down the side corridor, with Jessica hot on his heels. “You see!” He touched the display, and began scrolling through the pages, zooming in on occasion and then scrolling out even further.
Jessica watched, trying to take in everything as the pages whizzed past their eyes. “Jesus, Nathan, slow down.”
“I’ve got it.”
“You’ve got what?” Jessica wondered.
“The jump drive field generators. I know how to get to them.”
“From that?” Jessica looked at the screen. “It’s all in Takaran!”
“They’re in the nacelles, just as I thought. But we’ll have to get into the crawl spaces to get to them.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Deck eight, section twenty-seven. Junction one one seven.”
“What?”
“Trust me,” Nathan said, turning and heading off.
“Why not?” she said, following him.
Captain Rainey watched from the Mystic’s bridge as his helmsman tried in vain to maneuver around the ship that was blocking their jump line.
“Captain!” the communications officer called. “I’ve lost contact with engineering!”
“Security, Captain! Status of engineering?”
“None of the teams defending engineering are answering, sir!” the security chief answered over the intercom. “Myself, and my last eight men are trying to hold the command deck!”
Captain Rainey looked at his first officer. “Chief Markum, can you hold?”
“Negative, sir. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Mister Sorgey, sound the alert. All passengers to the escape pods.”
Mister Sorgey said nothing at first, his mouth agape. No Takaran ship had ever fallen to pirates, at least not in the last three hundred years.
“Mister Sorgey,” the captain repeated.
“Aye, sir. All passengers to the escape pods.”
Terig Espan ran down the empty corridor, coming to a stop outside his cabin door, quickly placing his palm on the scanner pad beside the door. “Come on, come on!” he complained frantically, looking up and down the corridor as he waited for the device to unlock the door. Finally, the indicator light on the pad turned green, and the door unlocked.
Terig pushed the door open and ran inside, letting the door close behind him.
“Oh my God!” his wife exclaimed, running and throwing her arms around him. “I was so worried! What’s going on out there?”
“I don’t know,” Terig replied, kissing her quickly. “There were shots fired. Lots of them. People were running around like crazy.”
“Why didn’t you come straight here?”
“I tried,” he said defensively. “I had to take a detour to stay away from the fighting.”
“What fighting?”
“I think the ship has been boarded…by…by pirates.”
“What?”
The yellow warning light flashing over the door suddenly turned red, and an alert tone sounded. “Attention! Attention! A
ll passengers report to your designated escape pods! Repeat! All passengers report to your designated escape pods!”
“Oh, God,” his wife gasped, her hands coming up to cover her mouth in fear. She looked at her husband.
“Honey, we’ll be fine,” he assured her. “The escape pod will jump us back to Takara, and they’ll pick us up, safe and sound.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he lied, hoping to put her at ease. He put his arm around her and led her toward the door.
“I should grab my things…” his wife began.
“There is no time,” Terig insisted. “We have to go…now.”
“There’s another shuttle headed for the Mystic’s starboard side,” Loki reported.
“Those shuttles are big enough to hold at least twenty men,” Josh told Vladimir. He turned to look over his shoulder. “We gotta do something.”
Vladimir hesitated for a moment.
“He’s right, Vlad. There’s no way the Mystic can defend against that many intruders.”
“Maneuver us around to starboard to intercept that shuttle,” Vladimir ordered.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Josh replied happily, turning around and grabbing his flight controls.
Vladimir tapped his comm-set. “Marcus, Dalen, we’re coming around to the Mystic’s starboard side to intercept a shuttle. Try to disable it, but do not hit the Mystic.”
“Disable?” Marcus laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Okay, okay!” Vladimir conceded. “Destroy it. Just don’t hit the Mystic. Things are already complicated enough right now.”
