Ep.#4 - Rebellion (The Frontiers Saga - Part 2: Rogue Castes)

by Ryk Brown

  “Attention! Attention! All passengers report to your designated escape pods!” the announcement blared over the loudspeakers in the corridors of the Mystic Empress. “Repeat! All passengers report to your designated escape pods!”

  “That can’t be good!” Jessica yelled, as she chased Nathan down the corridor and around the next corner.

  “There!” Nathan shouted, running up to a small hatch in the bulkhead at the end of the corridor. “Open it!”

  Jessica raced up and stuck the security badge into the slot on the hatch control panel. The hatch slid open, and she looked inside.

  The tunnel on the other side of the hatch was narrow, with no discernible floor or ceiling. It was poorly lit, and there were conduits, ducting, and pipes running on all sides. Even worse, it appeared to stretch on forever.

  Jessica sighed. “Zero G. Of course.”

  “At least it’s pressurized,” Nathan said, climbing through the hatch. He grabbed the first in an endless series of handholds ahead of him, pulling himself into the weightless environment of the starboard engineering crawl spaces.

  Jessica was next, leaning into the space and jumping in headfirst, pursuing Nathan. She pulled herself along, rung by rung, staying a few meters behind him just to be safe. “How far do you think it is?” she called ahead.

  “At least a few hundred meters,” he replied, pulling himself along ahead of her.

  “Great,” she said flatly. “At least there won’t be anyone shooting at us.”

  “We’re being overrun!” the security chief warned over the intercom, the sound of weapons fire echoing in the background.

  Captain Rainey could hear the weapons fire from inside the bridge as well. It had seemed so distant at first, but it was growing louder with each passing moment. At that moment, he realized he had no options left.

  “Give the order!” Captain Rainey barked. “Launch all escape pods. We are abandoning the ship!”

  “Comms!” Mister Sorgey ordered. “Issue the alert! Launch all escape pods! Abandon ship! Launch the automated distress comm-drone!”

  “Abandon the ship, launch the distress drone, aye!” the comms officer replied.

  “They’re away!” Vladimir announced, monitoring the Ghatazhak on the Seiiki’s sensors.

  “Contact is coming up fast on the Mystic’s port side!” Loki warned them.

  “Marcus! Do you see it?” Vladimir called over his comm-set.

  “I got it!” Marcus replied.

  “Don’t let it reach that hangar bay!” Vladimir ordered.

  “No problem!” Marcus replied.

  The sound of plasma cannons firing reverberated throughout the Seiiki and into her cockpit.

  “Bozhe,” Vladimir exclaimed. “Those things are louder than I thought!”

  “They’ve got shields!” Marcus reported as he continued to fire on the shuttle.

  “Oh shit!” Loki exclaimed. “And missiles! Two inbound! Impact in five seconds!”

  “Evasive!” Vladimir ordered, as the Seiiki went into a spiraling dive to starboard.

  “Three…”

  “No shit!” Josh exclaimed, as he twisted his flight controls to evade the incoming missiles.

  “Marcus!”

  “Two…”

  “I know! I know!”

  “One down!” Loki exclaimed, as one of the incoming missiles disappeared from his sensor screen. “Two down!”

  “I fucking love these guns!” Marcus declared over their comm-sets.

  “Bozhe!” Vladimir exclaimed again. “Who ever heard of shuttles with missiles!”

  “I don’t think they came from the shuttle!” Loki warned.

  “Josh! Move us back in behind the Mystic!” Vladimir ordered, realizing what Loki was saying.

  “What good is that going to do?” Josh replied, as he maneuvered the Seiiki back in behind the Mystic.

  “Those missiles were unguided,” Loki explained. “Line of sight targeting.”

  “As long as we keep the Mystic between us and that ship, they can’t fire more missiles at us.”

  “What’s to stop them from moving into a better firing position?”

  “They’re blocking the Mystic from jumping,” Vladimir explained. “They’ve been matching her turns, keeping her blocked, so she cannot jump back to Takara.”

  “Why the fuck would they want to do that?” Josh wondered. “The Dusahn are there!”

  “They don’t know that!” Loki reminded him.

  “Oh yeah,” Josh replied, embarrassed. “I guess in all the excitement, I forgot.”

  “Oh bozhe,” Vladimir said to himself.

  “What is it?” Master Sergeant Anwar asked.

  “Escape pods,” Vladimir replied. “Dozens of them.”

  Escape pods began launching from all along the port side of the Mystic Empress. From the top and sides of her forward section, her mid-section, and from the three rows of cabins aft of her command deck. As the pods launched, they burned their tiny engines, arcing away from the doomed luxury liner. Once clear of the Mystic, the pods began disappearing behind tiny blue-white jump flashes.

  “If the Mystic’s captain decided to launch the escape pods, that means he expects his ship to fall to the intruders.” Master Sergeant Anwar decided. He tapped his comm-set. “Ghatazhak, prepare for immediate deployment. Level three, interior attack.”

  Vladimir looked at the master sergeant. “What are you doing?”

  “Maneuver in behind the Mystic,” Master Sergeant Anwar instructed Josh. “Directly astern and above her, about one hundred meters. Match her course and speed, and then spin us around to point your stern at her.”

  “What are you going to do?” Vladimir asked again.

  “Plan C,” the master sergeant replied, as he turned to climb back down the ladder.

  “What is plan C?” Vladimir asked.

  “Let me figure that one out,” the master sergeant replied as he moved to the top of the ladder. “Just get me on that ship.”

  “Oh bozhe,” Vladimir exclaimed, as the master sergeant dropped down the ladder. He turned to look at Josh and Loki, both of whom were staring over their shoulders at Vladimir. “You heard him!”

  Master Sergeant Anwar raised his suit collar, attaching it to the underside of his tactical combat helmet. His visor display lit up, and his suit status showed that he had pressure.

  “One minute!” Loki called over their helmet comms.

  Anwar turned to his men. “Ready?”

  One by one, all four of his men nodded that they were ready to go.

  The master sergeant went to the cargo bay door controls at the back of the Seiiki’s cargo bay. “Depress the bay,” he instructed.

  “Rapid depress, in progress,” Loki replied.

  Red warning lights began to flash in the cargo bay, warning that the bay was in the depressurization process.

  “Thirty seconds!” Loki updated.

  “Pitching over,” Josh announced.

  “Ghatazhak! Stand ready!” Anwar ordered.

  “Depress complete!”

  Anwar punched the door control, and the rear cargo door lowered from the top down.

  “Fifteen seconds!”

  Master Sergeant Anwar moved to the back of the cargo bay, lining up with his men, as the cargo bay door lowered into a position level with the cargo bay’s deck.

  “Five seconds!” Loki warned.

  Anwar crouched, ready to run.

  “Three……two……one……GO!”

  Master Sergeant Anwar was first, running across the cargo bay, out across the ramp, and jumping off into space toward the massive luxury liner only three hundred meters ahead of them.

  The other four Ghatazh
ak were close behind, also running out and jumping into space in smooth, fluid motions. The group of five soldiers, clad in matte black battle armor, sailed through the vacuum of space toward the Mystic Empress. Behind them, the Seiiki fired her thrusters, reducing their speed in relation to the Mystic, to ensure they did not interfere with the Ghatazhak as they traversed the distance to the Mystic.

  “We need to get into clear space!” Captain Rainey insisted. “Helm! Jump us out of the cloud, now!”

  “Our jump line isn’t clear!” the helmsman warned.

  “They’ll move!” Captain Rainey insisted. “Jump us… NOW!”

  “Jumping!”

  Jessica nearly crashed into Nathan as he grabbed an overhead railing and held tight, his legs swinging forward under him.

  “What the hell?” she blurted out, grabbing onto him to stop her forward drift as well.

  “The sign,” Nathan said, pointing.

  “I don’t read Takaran.”

  “Seven years in the Pentaurus sector, and you don’t read the language of the dominant culture?”

  “I can speak it enough to get by, but I never learned to read it.” Jessica grabbed a side rail to steady herself. “Besides, most of my work has been outside the Pentaurus sector.” She looked at the sign. “Gravity?”

  “Yup.” Nathan pulled himself along, taking care to keep his feet under him. Just as the sign indicated, as soon as there was a normal deck beneath him, he began to feel the pull of its artificial gravity. Another meter, and he was in about the same gravity as the rest of the ship, which was similar to the Seiiki.

  Jessica pulled herself in behind him, her feet also settling onto the deck so she could walk normally.

  “Energy banks to the right and left,” Nathan pointed out. “And we already passed her starboard ZPEDs.” Nathan spotted a door at the end of the catwalk. “That’s got to be it,” he said, picking up his pace.

  Another minute, and they found themselves at the entrance to another compartment. On the hatch was a sign that read ‘Starboard Jump Field Generators’. “Try your card.”

  Jessica stepped up and inserted the security badge she had taken from one of the guards during their escape only minutes ago. Like before, the light on the control mechanism turned green, and the hatch unlocked.

  Nathan pulled the hatch open and stepped inside. Overhead lighting panels flickered to life automatically as he entered the compartment.

  Compared to the maze of mechanicals they had spent the last few minutes floating through, this room was completely different. It was all white, and quite clean. There were four jump field generators, each of them at least five meters square. The odd thing was, there was enough empty space in the room to accommodate at least a few more.

  Nathan walked up to the nearest field generator, activating the status display screen over its keypad.

  “Why is there so much room in here?” Jessica wondered.

  “The Mystic used to be an interplanetary luxury liner, used solely within the Takar system. When they added the jump drive, they gutted most of her propellant storage. This entire room used to be a propellant tank. My guess is they decided it was easier to use it as a room to hold the field generators. They probably felt the extra room might be utilized for future upgrades.”

  “How do you know all this?” Jessica wondered.

  “Josh,” Nathan said, as he cycled through various status screens on the jump field generator. “He loves to read to pass the time. Especially about the history of ships in the Pentaurus sector.”

  “I always thought of him more as a vid-play type,” Jessica commented.

  “I think he picked up the habit during all those long, cold-coast recons back in the day.”

  “Can you shut it down?” Jessica wondered.

  “I think…” Nathan suddenly stopped. “Uh oh.”

  “What?”

  “This thing is about to fire.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “We’re about to jump.”

  “Can you stop it?”

  Nathan began frantically searching for the control page. “There’s got to be a way.”

  The jump field generator began to spin up, its humming becoming more intense with each passing second.

  “Nathan, if this ships jumps back to Takara…”

  “I know! I know!” Nathan looked at her. “I can’t stop it,” he admitted, stepping back. He looked at the next jump field generator over, noting that it was spinning up to fire as well.

  “Is it safe for us to be in here?”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan replied, as he tensed up his body and closed his eyes.

  “Oh fuck,” Jessica exclaimed, as she did the same.

  “The Mystic is powering up her jump drive!” Vladimir warned urgently. “Pull back!”

  “What?” Loki exclaimed.

  Josh, not wasting any time, immediately lit up the Seiiki’s main engines, as she was already traveling stern first, slowly closing on the luxury liner after deploying the Ghatazhak. He jammed the ship’s main throttle all the way forward, and the ship began to rumble as both main propulsion nacelles began to generate maximum thrust.

  Vladimir watched his sensor display in horror. Non-military ships did not have the quick-jump execution systems that were common in military vessels, and in smaller vessels that did not require energy banks to supplement their instant energy source. It took nearly ten seconds for the Mystic to bring her reactors to full power to execute her jump.

  “Are they going to make it?” Loki asked.

  Vladimir quickly did the math in his head. The Ghatazhak did not show up on his sensors. Their suits were fairly stealthy to begin with, and the cloud made it nearly impossible to track them, once they were more than a few hundred meters away. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted.

  Vladimir stood, looking out the back window of the Seiiki’s cramped cockpit, just as the blue-white light from the Mystic’s jump flash spilled through.

  The Mystic Empress’s helmsman opened his eyes, a full second after pressing the button to initiate the jump. He had expected to see his ship coming apart, having struck the vessel blocking their jump line. But they were still intact. “Jump complete!” he exclaimed in joyous disbelief. “Oh my God, we’re still in one piece!” He laughed again. “They must’ve moved to save their own ass!”

  “Lockout the jump drive!” Captain Rainey ordered, not taking a moment to celebrate. “Command authorization only!”

  “Locking out the jump drive,” the helmsman replied, snapping back to reality to carry out the captain’s order.

  The sound of weapons fire grew louder, and several thuds could be heard against the locked entrance to the Mystic’s bridge, as plasma bolts slammed into the hatch itself.

  “Gentlemen!” the captain bellowed. “Prepare to defend yourselves!”

  Captain Rainey rose from his seat, drawing his sidearm as the entrance to the bridge suddenly blew open with a tremendous explosion. His communications officer was immediately killed, decapitated by a red-hot piece of metal that sliced through him and drove itself into the comms-panel, sending sparks everywhere.

  Bolts of red-orange plasma energy, dialed down to avoid damaging the critical control systems on the bridge, spilled into the compartment from the entrance, as the invaders blasted in.

  “Lock out the jump drive!” Captain Rainey barked as he opened fire on the charging intruders.

  “Aye…” The officer of the deck never finished his reply, cut short as a bolt of plasma energy slammed into his back, burning a massive hole through his chest.

  Captain Rainey continued to return fire, along with three of his bridge crew, as he tried to make his way to his first officer. But a lesser blast glanced off his left shoulder, sending him s
pinning to the deck.

  Two more bolts slammed into his officers, killing one and wounding the other. A few more weapons blasts and it was over.

  Captain Rainey lay on his back, staring at the overhead. Smoke wafted through the air, and the smell of blown circuits, and burning flesh filled his nostrils as he struggled to take a full breath through the searing pain in his shoulder. Someone grabbed the weapon from his hand, and then kicked him several times in the side. Another man drove the butt of his rifle into the captain’s face, sending two of his teeth flying.

  “Enough!” a voice called. An older voice. The captain could hear footfalls, as someone walked toward him. “Pick him up.”

  Captain Rainey felt himself being roughly pulled to his feet by two men. He could barely hold his head up, as his neck and shoulder were both screaming with pain. A hand grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, bringing the captain’s eyes onto the older man standing in front of him.

  “You must be Captain Rainey,” the older man said. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sigmund Daschew,” the old man said, smiling. “My friends call my ‘Siggy’. But you? You must call me ‘sir’.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It took every iota of Master Sergeant Deno Anwar’s Ghatazhak training to keep his pulse rate and breathing under control as he coasted through space on his approach to the Mystic Empress’s hull. Less than a minute ago, as he and his four men slid in between the port and center cabin wings that protruded aft from the upper superstructure of the cruise ship, the Mystic’s jump field emitters had engulfed the ship in blue-white light. They passed through the field of light only a second or two before the Mystic’s jump drive dumped the additional energy into the fields that were needed to initiate the jump. Two seconds later, and they would not have survived.