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

by Ryk Brown

  As the master sergeant coasted toward his target, tiny squirts of thrust fired from ports on his forearms and calves, adjusting his body’s attitude in relation to the rapidly approaching hull of the Mystic Empress. Once his body was in the proper position for contact, another thruster in his chest fired, along with all four of his attitude thrusters on his limbs. A few seconds of thrust was all that was left in the system, but it was enough.

  Master Sergeant Anwar tensed his body, causing the assistive body suit under his Ghatazhak body armor to mimic his movement. Millions of fluid-filled cells within the fabric squeezed to pressurize themselves, the effect designed to strengthen and protect the wearer’s joints from the jolt of kinetic energy they were about to receive.

  The master sergeant’s hands and feet contacted the hull at the same time, resulting in an abrupt, yet solid, landing. He immediately stood upright against the vertical hull surface, testing the electromagnets in his boot soles, to ensure that they would hold properly. Satisfied with their performance, he turned to see the rest of his men landing around him. Once they were safely down, he pressed a button on his chest, and his chest-mounted thruster pack, and the thruster packs on his limbs, all disengaged, floating freely in the microgravity of space.

  The master sergeant scanned his men, waiting for the ‘okay’ sign from each of them before continuing. He looked up and from side to side. They were standing in a valley formed by two vertical fin-like structures. Along the vertical walls were two rows of windows, the lower row at his eye level. He made his way to the nearest window, peeking inside. On the other side was a modest passenger cabin. Two beds with nightstands, a dresser, a desk and chair, and a sofa with a coffee table. In the left corner were three doors-one to the bathroom, one to a closet, and one that presumably opened into a common corridor.

  The master sergeant was about to reach for the explosive charge in one of his belt pouches, when the door from the corridor opened, and a man and a woman came running into the room, hastily closing and locking the door behind them.

  The master sergeant leaned to the side, out of view of the passengers who had just entered the room. He turned to look at his men, and signaled them to check the other windows.

  The nearest man to him, Corporal Rossi, peeked in his window. He immediately leaned back out of view, signaling the room was a ‘no-go’.

  The same signals came from the next two men, Sergeant Vela and Corporal Rattan. Sergeant Morano, however, gave the ‘go’ sign.

  Master Sergeant Anwar and his men all moved toward Sergeant Morano, as he placed an explosive charge on the window.

  All five Ghatazhak leaned up against the wall on either side of the window. A moment later, there was a flash of light, and the window broke apart, spraying pieces of transparent aluminum out into space, and allowing the atmosphere within the room to escape.

  Sergeant Morano stepped up and peeked inside the room. Satisfied that it was clear, he grabbed the upper edge of the window, disengaged his mag boots, and pushed off gently. As his body floated upward, he tucked his feet up and inserted them through the blasted out window frame, catapulting himself smoothly through the opening and into the cabin.

  As he passed through inside, the ship’s gravity pulled the sergeant downward. He twisted his body and landed neatly, in a well-practiced fashion. Once inside, he immediately ran to the bathroom to check that the room was clear, as the next Ghatazhak catapulted himself through the open window and into the room.

  Less than a minute later, all five Ghatazhak soldiers were inside the Mystic Empress.

  * * *

  Sigmund Daschew glared at the bleeding captain of the Mystic Empress, lying on the floor before him. “Do you understand me, Captain?”

  Captain Rainey spit the blood from his mouth onto the floor, looking disdainfully at the leader of the men who had just taken his ship and killed all of his security officers.

  “Do you understand me?” Sigmund asked again, sounding impatient.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Sigmund looked away for a moment, taking a deep breath and sighing. Then he turned suddenly, drew his weapon and pointed it at the captain’s face at point-blank range. “You forgot the ‘sir’,” he said, his voice full of menace. A moment later, he abruptly removed the barrel of his weapon from the captain, pointing it toward the ceiling. “We’ll let it go, this time.” Sigmund leaned down a bit more, getting closer to the captain’s face. “But do not test me further, Captain. I’m not the most stable man around.” He smiled cruelly. “Ask anyone.”

  Captain Rainey watched as Sigmund rose from his squatting position, a satisfied smirk on his face.

  “Siggy!” one of his men called. “The Antilla!”

  “What about her?” Siggy asked as he holstered his weapon.

  “She’s gone!”

  “What?” Siggy stepped over to the helm station to join his subordinate. “Maybe she just maneuvered out of the way?”

  “She is not on the scope. Maybe she jumped?”

  Siggy looked at the bank of windows stretching from one side of the bridge to the other. “Open the shutters,” he instructed. “NOW!”

  One of his other men complied, and the protective shutters covering each of the windows began to lower in unison. Siggy’s eyes widened as the view outside the Mystic was revealed. “Bloody hell!” he yelled, turning back toward Captain Rainey. “You jumped the fucking ship!” he swore, punctuating it with an angry kick to the captain’s face. “Do you have our previous position?” he asked the man at the helm.

  “Yes.”

  “Then turn us around and jump us back, but take care not to jump in too close to the Antilla,” Siggy instructed.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Siggy turned around and squatted back down next to Captain Rainey, pulling out his weapon and grabbing the captain’s collar. He yanked the captain up off the deck, once again putting his weapon up to the captain’s head. “While there may indeed be a reward for you, in comparison to the one for your ship, it is but a pittance. Therefore, you are not worth keeping alive.” Siggy put the weapon into the captain’s mouth, and moved his finger to the trigger. “Make peace with whatever god you worship, Corinairan.”

  “Siggy! Wait!” the man at the helm warned.

  “What is it?” Siggy exclaimed, annoyed at the interruption.

  “The jump drive is locked out.”

  Siggy’s head slumped as he sighed. He cocked his head slightly to the left, nodding several times, before opening his eyes and looking at the captain again. “Do not think your god has prevented your death,” he said, pulling the barrel of his weapon back out of the captain’s mouth. “If anything, he has made it more painful.”

  * * *

  “I’m not finding them,” Vladimir said, as he studied his sensor display.

  “Do you think they made it?” Loki asked.

  “Stop asking me that,” Vladimir snapped. “I do not know.”

  “Are you picking up any bodies? Pieces of armor…”

  “The only thing I can see in this cloud is that other ship, and it is turning toward us,” Vladimir warned him.

  “I’m on it,” Josh replied, starting his first evasive maneuver.

  “We have to go find them,” Loki said.

  “We can’t see more than twenty thousand kilometers in this cloud,” Vladimir reminded Loki. “If they jumped to another location in the cloud before jumping clear of the cloud, then we will not see their jump flashes.”

  “They would’ve jumped out of the cloud,” Loki insisted.

  “How do you know?” Vladimir asked.

  “Uh, guys?” Josh said.

  “Why would they stay inside the cloud?” Loki argued. “They can’t see anything; help won’t be able to find them…”

  �
�Assuming it was the captain of the Mystic who executed the jump, and not the hijackers,” Vladimir countered.

  “Guys?” Josh repeated.

  “If the hijackers jumped the ship, wouldn’t that other ship jump with them to follow?” Loki challenged. “I mean, why did they move out of the Mystic’s way and allow her to jump?”

  “Maybe to save themselves?”

  “GUYS!” Josh yelled.

  “What?” Vladimir exclaimed.

  “That ship is closing fast. Do you want to gamble on outrunning her, or do you want me to jump?”

  “The fact that the other ship is chasing us means the hijackers did not initiate the jump,” Loki surmised.

  “Unless they want to prevent us from following the Mystic,” Vladimir argued.

  “Fuck this,” Josh said. “I’m setting a course back to the Aurora, via Big Blue.”

  “Wait,” Loki began to protest.

  “No, he’s right,” Vladimir interrupted. “If we are going to find the Mystic, we need help. Help with real weapons.”

  Josh turned and looked at Loki, then back at Vladimir. “We have about ninety seconds before that ship is in missile range.”

  “Get us out of here,” Vladimir decided. “Take us back to the Aurora, via your evasion algorithm.”

  “Do we need the whole algorithm?” Loki wondered. “It’s not the Dusahn chasing us.”

  “We still don’t know that for sure,” Vladimir reminded him. “Better to be safe.”

  “But it will take us nearly twenty hours if we do,” Loki pointed out. “Do they have that kind of time?”

  Vladimir thought for a moment, torn between wanting to help his friends, and wanting to protect the few ships the Karuzari had left. “I cannot risk exposing the fleet’s position to the Dusahn,” he decided, though it pained him greatly to do so.

  “The fleet can move to a new location,” Loki urged. “Let them spend the time executing the algorithm, after they send help to find the Mystic.”

  “Gospadee!” Vladimir exclaimed. “I was just supposed to be here to fix the ship!”

  “The captain left you in command, Vlad,” Josh reminded him.

  “It’s your call,” Loki added.

  “Da.” Vladimir sighed.

  “No rush, big guy,” Josh said. “But that ship’s gonna have range on us in twenty seconds.”

  “Jump us back to the Aurora,” Vladimir ordered. “But take us directly to the blue-giant first, then directly to the Aurora. If we are followed, at least that may buy them some time to get underway before being discovered.”

  * * *

  “I was sure we were going to get fried,” Nathan admitted, as he stood there looking at Jessica.

  “Why would you think that?” Jessica wondered.

  “Hey, you tensed up too,” he reminded her.

  “Only because you did.”

  “These things put out a considerable amount of radiological and electromagnetic energy when they fire. Especially if they’re not shielded adequately. That’s why they’re required to be installed a certain distance away from passengers.”

  “Seriously?”

  “When we decided to start carrying passengers, we had to move ours half a meter further outboard just to meet regs. It took us a week to move each of them…half a meter.”

  “And here I thought you were some kind of rogue, outlaw, smuggler captain.”

  “Oh, we bent a few rules,” Nathan admitted as he worked. “Some of them quite regularly. But I tried to run my ship legit whenever possible… For all the good it did me.” Nathan stopped shuffling through pages on the display screen, studying the contents of one. “This is it. This is the shutdown screen, but it’s locked.”

  “Can’t we just unplug the damned thing?”

  “It’s tied directly into the ship’s reactors,” Nathan explained. “If we just pull the plug, we’ll likely short the entire thing out.”

  “So what?”

  “So, we were hoping to use this ship, remember? It’s not worth much to us if it can’t jump.”

  “And it won’t be worth much to the Dusahn, either,” Jessica pointed out.

  “Assuming the Dusahn get their hands on it.”

  “Isn’t that where we just jumped?” Jessica reminded him.

  “We don’t know that,” Nathan said. “And until we do, we should act as if there is still a chance to get out of this alive, and with this ship.”

  “Good point,” Jessica agreed. She turned away, and began pacing around the clean, white compartment, looking around for ideas. “These are backups, right?” she asked, pointing to the other two jump field generators.

  “Yes.”

  “They don’t look like they’re powered up to me.”

  Nathan stopped what he was doing and turned around to look at the other two jump field generators. Curious, he walked toward the nearest one. He tapped the display screen. “You’re right.”

  “Does that help?”

  “It does,” Nathan said. “We can disable the active field generators by pulling their control cards, but doing so will damage them. We can disable these two without damaging them.”

  “Which means, if we manage to get control of the ship, we’ll still be able to jump it.”

  “Precisely,” Nathan replied. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to open these things up so we can get to the control cards.”

  * * *

  “Pick him up,” Siggy instructed his men.

  Two men grabbed Captain Rainey by the arms and yanked him to his feet.

  “Over there,” Siggy ordered, pointing at the helm.

  The two men shoved the captain toward the helm station, nearly knocking him over in the process.

  Captain Rainey fell against the helm station, grabbing hold of it to keep from falling.

  “Don’t make me ask,” Siggy warned in disgust.

  “What do you intend to do with my ship?” Captain Rainey barely sputtered through the blood and spittle that filled his mouth.

  “It is not your ship,” Siggy corrected. “It belongs to a bunch of rich Takaran bastards…or at least, it did. Now it belongs to me.”

  “What do you intend to do with it?” Captain Rainey asked again.

  “What I intend to do with my ship is none of your concern. In fact, your only concern should be how to keep yourself alive. Now unlock the jump drive.”

  Captain Rainey took a deep breath, straightening up as best he could, despite the pain from his beating. “I will not.”

  One of Siggy’s men roughly punched the Captain in his right flank, causing the Captain to keel over and fall to the deck again.

  “Not until you guarantee the safety of my crew,” the captain groaned from the deck.

  “The only thing I will guarantee is that you will witness the slow and painful death of each of them, if you do not unlock the jump drive.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Captain Rainey challenged him.

  Siggy just looked irritated. He looked at his man who had first identified that the Mystic’s jump drive was locked. “Are you sure you can fly this ship?”

  “Yes,” his man replied.

  Without another word, Siggy drew his weapon and shot the Mystic’s helmsman, standing next to Mister Sorgey, the only other surviving member of the Mystic’s bridge crew. The energy blast struck the helmsman square in the face, instantly burning though tissue and bone, dropping him into a smoldering heap next to the Mystic’s horrified first officer.

  “You bastard!” Captain Rainey screamed, lunging up from the floor at Siggy, going for the man’s throat.

  Siggy’s men grabbed Captain Rainey, pulling him off and beating him mercilessly.

  Siggy shook himself of
f, rubbing his throat where Captain Rainey’s hands had grasped him. He straightened his jacket, then finally turned toward the two men who were continuously beating on the Mystic’s defenseless captain. “That’s enough,” Siggy said. He watched for a few more moments as his men beat the captain, then realized the captain had gone limp. “That’s enough!” he repeated, louder this time.

  The two men let go of Captain Rainey’s limp body, letting him drop to the deck.

  “Please tell me he is not dead,” Siggy said, sounding annoyed again.

  One of them bent down to check. “He is still breathing, but he is unconscious.”

  “Wonderful.” Siggy turned to look at Mister Sorgey. “I don’t suppose you have the code to unlock the jump drive.”

  “No,” Mister Sorgey replied. “Only the captain has them.”

  Siggy stared at him for several moments. “I’m not sure I believe you, but it matters not. Once your captain awakes, your torture will begin.”

  Mister Sorgey glanced at the guard on his right, as Siggy turned away. In a quick motion, the first officer grabbed the barrel of the guard’s energy rifle, pushing it upward as he drove his fist into the man’s throat. He spun the man around in front of him, reaching around and grabbing the handle of the man’s weapon as he did so.

  Siggy’s other men reacted immediately, turning to fire on the first officer. Their shots found the body of their cohort instead, killing the man instantly.

  Mister Sorgey managed to squeeze off a series of shots from the dead man’s weapon, before he could no longer support the man’s body weight. Unfortunately, he was unable to wrangle the weapon from his death grip, and he was left without a shield, and defenseless.

  The next four shots found Mister Sorgey- two in the chest, one in the shoulder, and the last in the head. What had been a valiant attempt to overpower his captors and save his captain and his ship had ended in defeat, leaving the brave first officer smoldering atop the fallen guard.

  Siggy sighed. “How many of his crew have we captured?”

  “I do not know,” the nearest of his men admitted.