I flitted over to the remaining five locations, each in turn and armed them. I had to work my way around Sterra's Gift and the more I did, the more I realized that this had been her last passage. I couldn’t process it right now, but the sick feeling in my stomach grew that much more.
“Cap, you need to get those charges planted,” Marny said as I caught up with her.
“All done.”
Marny hesitated and I saw through her face shield that she was viewing her HUD, no doubt checking my work. “That’s impossible, I’ve only planted two.”
“Give me your bag and do that strategy thing you enjoy so much,” I said lightly. Marny reluctantly handed me her bag and four new locations illuminated.
“We’ve got company,” Jordy said. His voice was even, like he’d just asked for a cup of coffee. “They’re tagged on tactical.” Four red icons appeared on my HUD. The holographic model of the frigate showed them on the starboard side of the ship.
“I’ve got a pair over here,” Tali said.
“Don’t give away your positions. Let us get these charges set,” Marny said.
I pushed my arc-jets hard and set the final four charges, barely pausing as I jetted across the surface of the ruined engine compartment.
“Charges deployed,” I tried to keep my voice even and slow, mimicking Jordy, but it sounded higher than I was used to. Marny had moved to where Tali was tracking two figures jetting toward us.
“Three, two …” Marny counted down. The two icons on the port side of the frigate blinked out.
“That woke ‘em up,” Jordy said. “I don’t have a shot.”
“Form up on me,” Marny said. She jetted down the port side of the frigate, staying close in. I jetted along the surface and caught up with her. According to my HUD, Jordy was just clearing the engine.
“Fire in the hole …” Marny said. Since I wasn’t touching the ship, the only indication I got that the charges had fired was watching Sterra's Gift tumble slowly away from the back of the frigate. Up to this point, I hadn’t had much time to think about it, but for some reason the image of my ship tumbling away was almost too much to take
“Tali, you’re on point. We need to take that airlock. Jordy, you have her back. Liam, take a position on the keel, watching aft. We may have dusted those other four, but don’t count on it.”
I jetted down beneath the frigate, careful to stay close in. The guns of the frigate would be able to find us if we got more than twenty meters off its surface. Peering down, I was surprised by two figures jetting directly at me. Somehow they had my position. Both were armed with pistols and started firing.
“Contact!” I’d been jetting along in a fairly straight line, but a sensor strip on the frigate must have tracked me and was feeding info to the two attackers.
I fired my glove jets against the hull to divert my direction and pushed my boots to max thrust. It was a move I used all of the time in pod-ball when I needed to dramatically change direction. Blaster fire lit up all around me. It momentarily registered that I might have gotten nicked, but the armored vac-suit could absorb near misses all day.
A turret loomed in front of me. The guns weren’t going to be a factor in this but a perpendicular object to the hull surface certainly would. I grabbed for a handhold and used my momentum to swing around the turret. My shoulder screamed, but I bet my pursuers wouldn’t see it coming. With my free hand, I pulled the nano blade from my belt and gave it a hard flick.
Fifty percent isn’t too bad in some circumstances, but in combat it can be a bitch when you’re outnumbered. I’d caught one of the two pirates completely off guard and he continued to fly directly at my old position. To his credit, he tried to adjust at the last moment. Blaster fire stitched the space where I’d been and closed in on my current position. My plan was simple - put the nano-blade into his path and try not to catch too much of what happened next.
A nano-blade is a simple object, with an electrically stimulated filament that is impossibly narrow, but relatively rigid for its otherwise small structure. According to Marny, special armor exists that resists nano-blades easily - but it’s expensive. More importantly, this guy didn’t have that armor. I immediately discovered that I much preferred guns to blades.
I didn’t have much time to think about it because the second attacker was clearly spacer born. He’d seen my gambit and had adjusted at the last minute. I let go of the nano-blade and focused on jetting away. I was in the unenviable position of running and dodging in the open. Further down the keel, I aimed for another structure, one where I could hopefully gain some cover.
Before I made it to the structure Marny spoke over the comm, “You’re clear, Cap.” It was surprising, since not more than a second before I’d seen the pursuing pirate’s red blip on my HUD. Sure enough, it was gone. I turned back to see the narrow body of the spacer sail past me. I directed my AI to replay the shot and watched Jordy float out from his position next to the airlock and take the sixty-meter shot. It was one thing to hit a long distance target, but we’d both been juking and jiving back and forth. It felt like an impossible shot to me - apparently not to Jordy.
“Thank you, Jordy,” I said, taking a position closer to the airlock, still covering the aft position.
“Nice flying,” he said.
“Cut the chatter, Cap,” I smiled, Marny was in focus mode and there was nothing but business - until there wasn’t.
“Door’s jammed, going to blow it,” Tali said. “Three, two ...” She’d wasted no time in setting it up.
“Wait one,” Marny said. “I’ve got a manual winch.” I couldn’t look back, but I’d seen her pack the device.
“We’re through,” Tali said finally.
The airlock was big enough for the entire team, but Marny didn’t want to trap us all at the same time. She and Tali loaded in first.
“Clear,” she said after a few minutes, I suspected the inside door had been stuck also.
Jordy and I cycled through the manual lock.
“It’s safe to say they know where we’re at,” Marny said once we were through. Two bodies lay in the hallway - the walls behind them blackened.
I pulled the blaster rifle from my shoulder and locked it up under my chin like Marny had been drilling into Nick and me. For a moment, I was back in the simulator, even though I knew we were in real danger this time.
My HUD showed the deck we were on was the fifth and lowest deck. It was also the smallest. From the side, the frigate was roughly a triangular shape, pointed downward. Deck five occupied the bottom of that triangle.
The bridge and command were all on deck two. The only direct way there was up the elevator at the end of the hallway. Jordy was in the process of attaching explosives to the exterior door of the elevator.
“We’ll clear forward, then aft. Form up on Tali,” Marny instructed. “Go.”
Marny swung around behind Tali and applied a perfect slicing-the-pie swivel. I took my position just behind Marny, and Jordy fell in behind me. It was my responsibility to make sure he didn’t lose contact with us as we moved forward since he'd be facing the opposite direction.
Our target was a maintenance shaft running from this deck all the way up to deck one. We’d have to fight our way back down to the command deck, but we wouldn’t be relying on the elevator controlled by those in command of the ship.
“Clear,” Tali announced. The two rooms off the short hallway were devoid of personnel.
“Blow the elevator,” Marny said. I heard the whump of small explosives detonating back in the hallway we’d just left. Tali led us back across the hallway and through another door. A man, no older than myself, cowered in a corner of the room. His pistol lay on the floor well away from him.
“Cuff him, Cap.” I didn’t hesitate and pulled a sturdy tie from my belt.
“On your stomach,” I said. “Hands behind your back.” He complied. I wondered what kind of bad decisions had led up to this point in his life. I pulled the cuffs tight, bi
nding his wrists behind his back. I also cuffed his feet. I helped him roll over and pushed him into a seated position. “You get one chance with us. I see you out of these cuffs and there will be no quarter given. Read me?” He nodded affirmative. I released his helmet and detached it from his suit. He looked up at me in panic. “I’d recommend staying quiet. I doubt your buddies will appreciate you getting captured.”
Marny looked at the young pirate. “How many on the ship?”
“… I … I’m not sure,” he said.
“Tell me,” She was holding her gun menacingly.
“Twenty maybe, twenty-five. I’m nobody - they don’t tell me,” he said. Marny must have believed him.
“Let’s move,” Marny said. I stepped back into position. There weren’t any other rooms to clear, just the maintenance hatch to be opened. It was possible they’d have a nasty surprise in it for us.
“Let Jordy and me take this,” Tali said. Marny stepped out of the way, silent. “Liam, pull the panel and back off quickly.”
Jordy stood directly behind Tali and they both gave me enough room to maneuver around them. I took out the multi-tool Marny insisted I bring along. The bolts were easy to remove and I pulled the panel back as fast as I could and moved out of the way.
Tali tossed an object through the hole and then ducked through very quickly, disappearing up and out of sight. Jordy followed her but instead of disappearing, lay on his back with his weapon pointed up the shaft. He fired twice and rolled back into the hallway. A moment later three bodies fell, one on top of the other.
Marny and I grabbed the bodies and dragged them back to where we’d left the bound pirate. He looked up at us with concern. I rolled each unconscious body onto their stomachs, not sure if they were dead or just stunned, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I cuffed their hands and legs.
“We’re clear,” Tali said. “Probably won’t be for long, though.”
“Up the ladder, Liam. Go! Go!” Marny said.
I ducked into the narrow maintenance shaft. Tali was up about twenty meters, which was two thirds of the height of the shaft. I wasn’t sure how Jordy’d shot around her without hitting her. Perhaps the pirates had entered from below her position.
I slung the blaster rifle over my shoulder and started to climb as fast as I could. My prosthetic leg was a significant hindrance and I felt Marny behind me, willing me to go faster. Tali continued her climb, above me.
“Fire in the hole…” Tali stopped near the top of the shaft.
“Keep going, Cap,” Marny urged.
I wasn’t sure why I was in second position until I heard blaster fire below me. Someone had ducked their head into the shaft. Marny and Jordy fired on them but I had no idea how effective they’d been.
“On my six, Liam.” Tali kicked at the wall of the shaft and light flooded in as the panel fell into whatever was on the other side. She followed the kick by tossing what appeared to be three grenades. I didn’t hear any noise, however. Without hesitation she jumped through the opening.
I was breathing hard from the exertion and had to grab the hand rail above the opening and swing through. My blaster rifle caught on the doorway and it broke off of my back as the strap was designed to do.
“Look out,” I warned. There was nothing else I could do.
I tried to catch my breath and get in behind Tali. We were in a large storage room where crates lay haphazardly. Tali had taken position behind a crate. The entry door to the room blew inward and I was momentarily knocked back into the wall by the impact of the explosion. My vac-suit stiffened to absorb most of the blow.
Tali fired into the breach. A hand reached across the opening from the other side and tossed a grenade into the room. It froze in mid-air, one meter from the entrance and then exploded. Tali responded by throwing a grenade back through the hole.
“How did …” I started to ask.
“Remember what I told you, always be thinking about what you’re doing next,” Tali said. “I set up a stasis web before we jumped into the room. It wasn’t hard to predict they’d blow the door and throw grenades through.”
Marny jumped through the hole and handed me my blaster rifle. I pushed my flechette pistol back into its holster and accepted the rifle. “Sorry,” I said.
“No time for that. Focus, Cap,” I felt like she was always saying that to me - what a newbie. “We’re in. Go,” she said.
Tali rolled from her position and came up in a crouch. She moved fluidly to the doorframe and tossed a small puck-shaped device into the hallway. My HUD immediately updated the view. There was a pirate rolling in pain on the floor, but the hallway was otherwise clear. By my count we’d taken out thirteen crew members.
“Jordy, rig the shaft,” Tali said. “Serpentine formation.”
I finally felt like I had some idea of what we were doing. It was one of the two room-clearing formations we’d drilled on. Tali in the center of the hallway with Marny on her left and me just behind Marny on her right. Jordy would follow us backwards. I stepped forward and pulled my blaster rifle to my shoulder.
“Cuff him, Jordy,” Marny instructed as we passed the pirate on the floor. “There’s a stairway at the end of this hallway. Clear on the way.”
There were several doorways between us and the stairwell. We’d cleared two of them when a man rabbited from a doorway at the end of the hall. Tali pivoted quickly and brought him down.
We’d just come even with the elevator. It presented a risk. If we left it open, our opponents could come from behind us. Even now, it made me nervous. The door could open at any time, allowing armed men to pour out into the hallway.
“They’re watching us,” Marny said. “We’ve probably reduced their number by more than fifty percent. The rest will hunker down.”
“Can we hold up a minute?” I asked.
“What do you have in mind?”
“Let me talk to Flark,” I said. "He has to know this isn’t going well for him."
“Tali, pull back. Let’s give the Cap a run at this.”
Tali said nothing, but started backing her way down the hall. We all moved backward together until we reached one of the rooms we’d cleared.
“Liam, duck inside. We’ll hold the hallway,” Tali said.
Establish comm with bridge of frigate, request parley.
“What do you want?” It was a male voice, not Flark’s.
“With whom am I speaking?”
“Captain Vilstrup. I repeat, what do you want?”
“I want the female hostage Qiu Loo, and Harry Flark.”
“They’re not here,” he replied.
“Not possible. I just talked to him forty minutes ago.”
“A small ship picked him up no more than ten minutes ago.”
“We’ve blown your engines and the Navy is on the way. What’s your exit strategy?” I asked.
“Currently, we’re trying to repel boarders. I haven’t worked things out much past that.”
“Look, Captain, I’ve got no taste for blood. I’m after Lieutenant Loo and Flark. We’ve got no beef with you. That said, in my opinion, this is Flark’s ship and I’m taking it. If you want to stand between me and this ship, then we can end this parley now.”
“What’s my other option?” he asked.
“You turn the ship over to me and I’ll provide you and one other crew member transport to within two kilometers of that hauler.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t, but I’d bet at least one of your crew’s heard of me. I’ve made the same deal twice in the last two months with you guys. Ask ‘em.”
Marny looked at me in bewilderment. “Are you crazy? We can’t let them go.”
“Do the math, Marny. If they put their guns down right now, we’ve got a chance at getting Qiu. Not only that, I also reduce the chance of one of us getting hit. I’m not the frakking Navy. I don’t like these guys, but I don’t need to see ‘em dead either.”
“We’ve got ‘em
dead to rights, Cap.” Her face was flush with anger.
“Trust me, just this one last time. Please.”
She sighed audibly, “I sure hope you know what you’re doing. It burns me bad to see these guys escape.”
“Me and two others and you’ve got a deal,” Captain Vilstrup finally returned.
HE WHO RUNS AWAY
I still had a knot in my stomach. We’d taken out the frigate and captured eight pirates. I’d also released three of their top brass to the big hauler crew. Tali, Jordy and Marny swept the ship and found two more pirates hiding, for a total of ten. As a group, they were fairly pathetic. I was a little surprised at how drastically my perception of them changed now that they weren’t pointing weapons at me.
Ada pulled alongside the frigate and Nick joined us to help with the prisoners.
“Nick, Jordy, would you hold down the ship until the Navy gets here?”
Jordy looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “You suck, but yes, we’ll hold ‘em. Can’t guarantee they’ll all be here when you get back.” He said the last loud enough for the prisoners to hear.
“Navy is less than eight hours out. We’ll be back well before.
Nick nodded. I appreciated that he trusted me enough to let me do this.
“Ada, Tali, Marny I need you guys. I’ll explain on the way.”
“What’s all the mystery?” Marny asked. I was leading them to the airlock where the Adela Chen was docked.
“We need to head back to the station. I’ve got a hunch,” I said.
“Ada. Can you see if you can raise your buddy, Eldevurp?”
“Elvard.”
I jumped into the pilot’s chair next to Ada. “I’ve got the helm, see if you can get him.”
She finally got him to answer his comm. “I’ve got him, what do you want to ask him.”
“Put him on comm, please.”
Marny and Tali had grabbed water pouches and meal bars and joined us in the cockpit. There wasn’t really room for either on the bridge, but they improvised by dangling their legs down the hole where the ladder descended to the living quarters.
Privateer Tales 3: Parley Page 24
