Naero assessed the fleet’s damages.
They’d been lucky. Heavy damage here and there to ships and cargo, but they’d lost only a handful of fighters.
Whereas the helpless freighters had seen half of their ships destroyed outright…all of them stuffed with miners. An appalling loss on a human scale.
And the danger wasn’t over yet.
“Situation critical!” The Botaru Second called out from the surviving freighters.
“The captain’s dead...took a direct hit on the bridge. We’re on fire. We’ve lost power...dead and wounded everywhere. We still have almost two thousand people in our holds. Please, help us!”
Naero cursed.
It was normally illegal for small freighters like them to cram so many people on board. But the Corps set their own risk management regs pretty low, or simply ignored them, using freighters like slave ships. Even freeze ships were more humane.
At least people didn’t suffer or starve along the way.
From the looks of its scans, another freighter named The Shago wasn’t doing much better. But at least it wasn’t burning.
“Second of The Botaru,” Aunt Sleak said. “Get as many of your people into your escape pods as you can. We’ll try to put out your fires. You must evacuate your ship in case it explodes.”
“We only have enough pods for the crew. We’ll put as many children in them as we can. Please hurry.”
Naero was already out of her chair and heading toward her rescue transport. Jan ran up behind her.
“Seven,” he said. “I hit seven of those bastards. I got two kills, N!”
Dromon and Shinai had the most rescue teams.
Naero knew they’d be sent out to assist the freighters.
“Jan, we have to–”
“All rescue teams,” Aunt Sleak ordered, “board your transports and proceed to dock with The Botaru and assist survivors. Shinai, jettison cargo from holds one and eight into tow balls for Dromon and Slipper to pick up.
“Prepare to receive casualties and survivors. Medical teams, take your positions. Ardala and Nevada, help the fighters guard our butts. Good work, people, but it’s not over yet.”
“Can do,” Captain Maradi piped in from her command on board The Ardala.
“This is Captain Otanja from The Nevada,” another female voice said. “Long-range scans picking up a very large warship, probably a Triaxian Guardian Class battleship, intercepting at top speed.”
“A jump late and credit short,” Aunt Sleak said. “Give them our situation, Nevada.”
The Nevada had the best long range sensors and com array.
“Make sure they don’t fire on us by accident and ask questions later,” aunt Sleak added. “We’re gonna be busy for a while. This is going to be ugly, people. Those freighters are crammed with workers and they took some heavy fire.”
The rescue teams launched quickly.
The old bulk freighters only had three or four access points.
Robotic hoses doused The Botaru’s fires in expanding retardant foam and hull sealant.
At least she didn’t explode, for the moment.
Jan brought up the internal schematics of the freighters, while Naero helped another crew named Mrin attach one of the emergency docking ports with its pressurized flex tunnel. Survivors could pass down it onto an inflated cushion in the shuttle’s hold. They could pack it full with up to two hundred people.
When the seals opened, hot smoky air flooded the shuttle, mingled with the stench of blood, scorched flesh, hair, and human waste.
Screams and cries for help filled the air like something out of one of Naero’s nightmares.
Naero sealed her helmet, gloves, and boots on her togs, clambered through the tunnel, and pushed off into the zero-G, decompressed cabin.
Jan, Mrin, Saemar, and Gallan backed her up.
Several dead and mangled Botaru crew and passengers floated about.
When they opened the doors to the main hold, they found its grav field still up. Several hundred panic-stricken miners rushed them.
“Repulse!” Naero yelled. They lifted their stunners and sent a mild subdual wave into the mob to stop them in their tracks and disorient them.
She hated to do it, but there were only five of them. They’d get trampled otherwise.
“Halt, remain calm,” she shouted through her suit amplifier. “We’ll get you out. Follow our instructions in an orderly manner. No rushing, pushing, or trampling.”
“Get us out of here!” the leader of a large gang of men said. “This ship could blow any minute. We’re on fire. Get out of the way!”
He and several of his friends made the mistake of rushing Naero and her team–crushing and trampling the weak and the injured to do so.
“Take them down!” Naero cried.
The next stun blast dropped the ringleader and about two dozen of his friends in their tracks.
“They go last; shove them to one side,” she told the others. “Now, move toward us, people. Slowly and quickly. Queue up. Get the children and those who can still walk out first. A medical team is waiting.”
The workers shuffled into the rescue chutes, terror and trauma written all over their faces.
Naero never felt so sorry for landers as she did these miners. They were virtual slaves, economic refugees shuffled about at the whim of the Corps.
Men, women, children, elderly; partial and whole families. Kids cried out for parents. Parents called out to kids. Scores of workers didn’t move, and probably never would.
Blood and human waste contamination everywhere. A scene from hell.
Another rescue team joined them to take over.
Jan turned to Naero. “The way this ship is laid out, there must be more in the next hold,” he said over their suit coms. “I can stay on top of things here with Mrin until the others arrive. You and Gallan go take a peek at the drive core. The readings are pretty scary.”
Naero nodded.
“Don’t take too long, N,” Jan said. “There’s still a lot of smoke and heat coming from the aft section. It could go critical any moment.”
She grinned and patted his shoulder. “I’ll be careful, Jan.”
She and Gallan pushed their way through the shambling workers.
The rescuers zapped a number of wounded along the way with their needlers, putting them in a state of chemically induced stasis until the medteams could get to them. At last they made it to the passageway between the holds.
A young boy about her age made Naero stop and pause at the bulkhead. He sat to one side, staring out into nothing, cradling the body of a little boy or girl in his burned arms.
The missing head made it hard to discern the child’s gender.
She couldn’t stop from looking into the boy’s shattered eyes.
“Let’s help this one,” Naero told Gallan.
“Hey, c’mon,” Naero said to the boy, kneeling down at his side. “Go with the others. You’re gonna be all right.”
Gallan gently tried to take the corpse away from the boy.
The boy only hugged the corpse tighter.
“I got him. I got him,” he sobbed. “We’re okay; we’re gonna be okay.”
“Your brother?” Naero guessed. The lander boy nodded.
“His name’s Rain. He just turned six last week.” The boy wept uncontrollably. “I was supposed to keep him safe.”
“Rain’s gone,” Naero said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no he’s not. I got him, I got him. He going to be okay.”
Naero sprayed healer on his burned arms. Then she gave him a mild sedative. “Shhh...give Rain to my friend,” Naero said. “We’ll look after him.”
The exhausted, malnourished boy relaxed suddenly, going drowsy from the sedative.
Gallan slipped the corpse free and covered it with a rag of blanket.
“I’m Naero,” she said.
“Tarim,” the boy told her. He desperately grabbed her wrist. “Don’t let us die here, Naero. Our parents got
blasted as soon as the attack started. I said I’d protect Rain. He was playing with some other kids. We took a direct hit. It tore right through all of those kids.”
His eyes fluttered closed. He spoke as if in a delirium. “Promise me you’ll get us out of here. Look after Rain. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Naero said.
Tarim’s head drooped back in her hands. She glanced back at Rain’s little bare feet sticking out from under the old dirty blanket and closed her eyes with a shudder.
No time for tears. There were still so many lives to save. So much to do.
“Gallan, can you carry this kid?”
“Easy.”
She’d made a promise. She was determined to get this poor boy out of there alive.
The husky Spacer picked Tarim up, popped him into a rescue floatball, and tethered it close behind his back.
Once in the corridor between the holds, Naero sealed one bulkhead behind them before opening the other.
Inside was a total mess.
No survivors. Hundreds of floating bodies and pieces of bodies, most of them charred.
The hold had burst, decompressed, and then re-sealed.
Jan cut in over her com.
“N, we’re in control up here. How’s it going on your end?”
“Nothing alive back here, Jan. Very ugly. There’s a lot of heat coming from the aft section. I’m worried about those reactors. The foam appears to be working, but that might not keep them from blowing. Continue getting everybody out as fast as you can. We’ll check and see if there’s anything we can do about the core.”
“Will do. Over.”
They pushed off and propelled themselves through the floating morgue. Gallan still held the unconscious lander kid secured in the floatball. Naero fended off bodies. With all the blood and brains and entrails spinning about, they’d have to detox for sure.
“All Spacer crew,” Aunt Sleak commanded over their private coms. “Sensors show major damage to the freighter’s reactors. Explosion imminent. Take what survivors you can on this run and evacuate the ship immediately. The Botaru could go up at any time.”
Naero knew Aunt Sleak was doing the right thing, but she quickly made a reply. “Captain, this is Naero. Gallan and I are at the reactors. We might be able to jettison them before they cook off.”
“Too risky, Naero. They might go up when you try to dump them. Get out of there. That’s an order.”
“Acknowledged.” She cursed. Hundreds more were about to die and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. She turned to Gallan.
“You with me?”
Gallan smiled at her and simply nodded. They made their way to the reactor chambers and found the controls.
Aunt Sleak was right. Both cores were ready to go at any moment. Naero dumped one almost immediately, but the other was so bad off she wasn’t sure she could dump it in time. When the first one exploded a short distance from the freighter, everything shook. She hit the controls on the second one and held her breath, hoping for the best.
Nothing happened.
The jettison sequence jammed. They were sitting on a fusion bomb.
Then her comlink cut out.
Jamming? What the hell?
She heard Gallan cry out once behind her and whipped around.
Several of what she had assumed were corpses moved to attack them.
Naero felt three darts and a stun beam knock her around.
If she had been more observant, she might have noticed before how some of the corpses looked to be in such excellent physical condition.
The disguised strikers came at them, intent on abduction.
They zapped Gallan repeatedly.
He only got off one shot with his sidearm before five of the strikers swarmed on him and took him down.
Four more rushed at Naero.
She shot one and knifed another before they stunned her into submission. They thought she was unconscious, so they spoke freely.
“Get the spacks into the shield bubble,” the leader said. “We got the girl. We’ll blow the remaining reactor to cover our exit. Move it!”
They stuffed her and Gallan into an even larger protective bubble, along with the lander kid.
Her thoughts grew fuzzier.
Her insane voice hummed in her mind.
Me. You. You. Me. Talk me. Talk you.
The next thing she knew, she barely felt the concussion as the other reactor blew.
They and their captors survived the explosion, heavily shielded and propelled out into open space. The spray of debris from the freighter breaking up masked their retreat.
She guessed that they’d get scooped up in the chaos by the arriving Triaxian battleship. She couldn’t see anything. She felt their captors maneuver them toward the retrieval.
Aunt Sleak would think that she and Gallan had been killed in the blast.
No one would search for them. Naero had to hand it to these people, whoever they were. They were good. They were utterly ruthless.
What worried her most were the extreme measures they went through in order to get at her. The entire corsair attack had all been a huge set up.
Just to abduct her.
She hoped they didn’t get Jan as well. The only possible consolation.
Hull doors closed around them. Gravity came back on and the bubble opened. Rough, powerful hands dragged them further and further away into harsh captivity with every passing second, entirely against their will.
The strikers efficiently scanned and stripped her and Gallan of most of their obvious gear and weapons. No way to contact Aunt Sleak and the fleet now.
She’d have to wait for an opening once her paralysis wore off. Perhaps when they revived her and Gallan for the inevitable questioning, and most likely torture.
Stun gas suddenly flooded her mouth and nose. Their new hosts didn’t take any chances. Naero blacked out, questions and fears and her insane, other new voice racing through her shuddering mind.
You. Me. Talk. We talk. Threat. Danger.
22