* * *
When the first pirate to enter the ship clubbed Lucky across the mouth, I had to fight down the impulse to grab a blaster rifle and charge down to the gangway hatch. I knew that if he had wanted to kill Lucky the pirate would simply have shot him. But knowing that his life wasn’t in immediate peril didn’t make it any easier to sit by and watch as one of my people was brutalized.
“When this is over,” Bobby growled, “remind me to pay that guy back for what he just did to Lucky.”
“I’ll hold him for you,” I said.
The entire bridge crew watched the main screen as the six armored pirates came aboard and took charge of the situation. When Miguel finally led Lucky away from the area by the gangway hatch I shut off the viewscreen and pushed myself to my feet.
“Bobby, Tom, you know what to do,” I said. “Remember, don’t give the bastards any reason to shoot you.”
“They’ve just entered the main stairwell,” Morgana said and shut down her console. “We have to go.”
I took one last quick look around the bridge to make sure that everything was set. We had added a few additional touches to increase the dilapidated appearance of the bridge such as disconnected fiber-op cables hanging from open access panels and a number of electronic components scattered about. The command center looked even more broken-down than it had the first time I had seen it.
“Good luck,” I said to the two men I was about to leave to the tender mercy of the invading marauders.
“We’ll see you below, Jason,” Bobby said, flashing me a thumbs up.
I returned the sign but couldn’t suppress a feeling of unease as I turned and hurried from the bridge. Morgana and I led Chris and Mark quickly into the small foyer behind the command center. As soon as we stepped off the bridge we could hear the pirates making their way up the stairwell. They were already past the A deck landing and would be on the command level in moments.
We hurried to what appeared to be a blank bulkhead directly opposite the bridge entrance. I pressed the hidden release and pushed open the concealed door to a bounce tube. The four of us scrambled through the doorway. I shut the door behind us just as Lucky and the two pirates stepped onto the command deck.
The bounce tube was a shaft that ran from the command deck all the way down to the bilge crawlspaces. It was isolated from the artificial gravity field and provided a secret means for the crew to move within the ship. Altogether there were three bounce tubes, the central one that we were in, which ran parallel to the main stairwell, one at the aft end of the port side companionway and one at the bow end of the starboard companionway.
As soon as we closed the door behind us, Morgana pulled out a palmpad and accessed the feed from one of the hidden bridge cameras. As we hung in the weightless environment of the tube, the four of us huddled together and watched the small screen as the pirates forced Lucky to make his announcement on the PA system.
“They’re bringing everybody to the main hold just like you figured they would, Jason,” Chris whispered.
“Good. We’ll be ready for them.” Morgana handed me a comm-link earpiece. I looped the hook around my ear and slipped the miniature speaker into my ear canal. The comm-link was bulkier than a normal phone but had far greater range and penetrating power. It would also enable me to hold conversations with numerous people at the same time over an encrypted, private frequency.
“You two wait here until they’re gone, then seal yourselves on the bridge,” I told Chris and Mark. “We’re going to need you to be our eyes and ears throughout the ship.”
“They’re leaving,” Morgana whispered. On her small pad we could see Lucky, Bobby and Tom heading off the bridge in front of the pirates with their fingers laced behind their heads. It was time for us to move.
Grabbing one of the tow bars that ran the length of the tube, Morgana and I started pulling ourselves down to the bottom levels of the ship. Once we reached C deck we opened the concealed door, slipped into the passageway and crept around to the port side entrance to the main hold.
The port side cargo bay door was a mess. The thick deposits of rust encrusting the edges of the doorway screamed that the hatch hadn’t been opened in years. The hatch itself was covered with dents, scrapes and gouges and the door’s control panel was hanging from the bulkhead by its fiber-op leads. But that was all for show. The rust was merely painted on while the apparently broken control panel was fully operational. We wanted the door to appear to be broken to ensure that the pirates used the starboard entrance. That way they would be confronted with the wall of fake containers when they entered the bay. I lifted the dangling keypad, tapped in a brief code, and the hatch hummed smoothly open for us. We slipped quickly inside and I secured the hatch behind us.
We jogged across the open floor of the cargo bay to the stack of shipping containers on the far side of the compartment. There was only the one stack of containers, but from the other side the hold would appear to be crammed full. As soon as we reached them I pulled open the door on the back side of the bottom container. Unlike the two that were stacked on top of it which were collapsible fakes, the bottom container was actually a thick walled bunker. The plan was to draw the pirate’s attention to the forward end of the bay while our people ducked into the hidden door at the other end of the container. Chris would then secure the hatch into the bay from his bridge station, trapping the pirates in the hold where we would deal with them.
As we stepped into the dim interior of the container we found Barney seated on a small, folding stool watching a portable monitor he had mounted to the wall. In his hand was a small control pad and at his feet was a weapons locker. To his right a massive ‘gun’ was mounted atop a sturdy tripod. The gun was simply a tapered, hollow tube nearly a meter long with a double handled grip at the back end. Twin firing triggers were attached to the heavy grips. When squeezed, the triggers would open the valve at the butt end of the gun allowing a high pressure liquid to surge through the gun’s barrel. Connected to the butt of the gun was a thick hose that snaked across the floor before disappearing into an opening in the bottom of the container.
Stepping quietly up beside Barney, I looked over his shoulder at the image on the screen. Ian, Max and Doc were milling around the narrow space on the other side of the container as they waited for the pirates to arrive with the others from the bridge. Just then the bay doors opened and we saw Lucky step into the compartment, followed closely by the rest of the bridge crew, and finally the two pirates.
“We need to get into position,” Morgana said softly. She bent down, reached into the gun locker and pulled out a blaster rifle. It was an AP-6 assault rifle, a high discharge weapon with an oversized clip that carried enough charge for a hundred shots. If anyone could score a telling hit on a man in battle armor it would be her. Out of the entire crew, the only person who could match Morgana’s marksmanship was our tactical team sniper, Jimmy Hunter.
But Morgana was only going to serve as a distraction. She would only have to keep the pirates busy for the few moments it would take our people to hustle into the protection of the container. The tripod mounted ‘gun’ in the middle of the container was what we would use to stop them. That gun was one of Barney’s ingenious solutions to the problem of our armored visitors.
In order to generate an energy field around a starship that was powerful enough to allow the jump to hyperspace, the massive field coil that was the heart of a hyperdrive engine was turned into a superconductor by submerging it in liquid helium. At a temperature of minus 210 degrees Celsius, the super cooled liquid would instantly freeze anything it touched, including a man in battle armor. Barney had simply tapped into the reserve tank and run a high pressure hose to the special ‘gun’ he had constructed in his shop.
As Morgana crept to the far end of the container where she would draw the pirate’s fire away from the hidden door at the other end, I turned to the tripod. Polarized gog
gles were hanging from the back of the gun. I took them and slipped them on.
“You’ll need these too,” Barney said quietly, handing me a pair of heavily insulated gloves. “Remember not to let the nozzle touch any part of your body.”
I had just pushed my hands into the stiff gloves and was flexing my fingers experimentally when we heard all hell suddenly break loose in the cargo bay.
“Move!” I heard Ian’s muffled voice yell through the bunker’s wall. Almost immediately there was a loud crash from the bay. A moment later the concealed door at the end of the container flew open as our people started scrambling through.
My heart jumped into my throat as I realized that something had gone wrong and we weren’t in position. I lunged for the nozzle gun as blaster fire began streaming into our container through the open door. Just as I reached the gun a body came flying through the door and crashed heavily on the floor. Bobby had been waiting behind the door. He slammed it shut and rammed home the deadbolts as soon as Ian’s body cleared the doorway.
For a fraction of a second my mind refused to accept what I had just seen. Then the realization that one of my people had been shot galvanized me into action.
“Now!” I yelled.
Barney touched a series of switches on his control pad in rapid succession. First, powerful arc lights hidden in the sides of the dummy containers atop our bunker flashed on, flooding the compartment in a blinding wash. To anyone facing that battery of floodlights it would be like looking into the sun. Then the concealed gun ports in front of where Morgana and I were positioned dropped open. Even though I was only seeing the reflected glare and not looking into the lights directly, I still found myself squinting against the brilliance streaming through that narrow opening in spite of my goggles.
Both of the pirates had been caught by surprise and their arms flew up to protect their eyes from the blazing assault. Then a stream of blaster fire burst toward them from the far end of the container as Morgana opened fire. The barrage of powerful blasts hammered at their armor, burning streaks across their suits and tearing gouges from the decking and bulkheads around them.
The pirate called Lucas had just pushed himself up from the floor when the lights were switched on and he froze in place as he threw his arms up in front of his face. Miguel on the other hand had been caught still sitting on the deck when we sprang our trap. Blinded and confused, he seemed to have no idea where the blaster fire was coming from. But instead of freezing in place like his shipmate, as soon as the blaster fire started spraying them, Miguel lifted his hips off the deck and started madly crabbing his way backward out of the line of fire.
I was working on shoving the muzzle of my gun through the open port in front of me when I realized that the cargo bay door was still open.
“Chris! Seal the bay door!” I yelled into my comm-link, just as the end of my gun cleared the port opening. Because backsplash from the liquid helium would be instantly fatal to an unprotected person I could not open fire until the end of the nozzle was clear. As soon as it was projecting into the bay I grabbed the trigger levers and squeezed. A stream of violently frothing white liquid burst from the end of the nozzle. Lucas was standing directly in the line of fire and the stream of super-cooled liquid exploded against his chest.
Dense vapor began filling the compartment as the helium immediately began evaporating back into its gaseous form. I played the stream up and down as I tried to ensure that I completely covered Lucas. In moments, visibility in the cargo bay dropped to zero as the billowing cloud obscured everything. I took a few extra seconds to focus the spray at the area of the deck where I had last seen Miguel, then I released the triggers.
It was instantly silent.
I held my breath as I listened for any signs of movement in the hold. Nothing.
With the stream of liquid shut off the mist started to clear. In a few moments Lucas’s unmoving form began to coalesce out of the swirling fog. He was still standing exactly as I had last seen him, with his arms crossed protectively in front of his face. Only now he looked like a statue carved from ice. His suit was completely white from head to toe and vapor trails streamed from every part of him. Barney shut down the blinding arc lights, returning the compartment to ship normal lighting which now seemed dim to my sore eyes. I pulled off my goggles and looked around the compartment.
“I’m not seeing any movement,” Morgana’s voice spoke quietly in my earpiece.
“Same here,” I said as the last of the mist evaporated into the air. Searching the deck behind Lucas’ frozen form I realized that Miguel was nowhere in sight and that the bay doors were closed. I tapped my comm-link.
“Chris, one of the pirates made it out of the bay.”
“I’m tracking him,” Chris’s voice said in my ear. “He’s in the starboard companionway. I’m sorry, Jason. Everything happened so fast—”
“Don’t worry about it. Just keep an eye on him.”
“What about Ian? I saw …”
“I know. Hold on a second.”
I pulled off the insulated gloves and hurried to the corner of the container where Ian was sprawled face down on the floor. The others who had been posing as the Finian’s crew were huddled around his limp form. They made a space for me as I knelt down beside him. There were four holes burned through the back of his uniform where he had been hit. Acrid smelling smoke curled upward from the impact points.
“Ian?” I said, tentatively.
A moment later his body stirred and he gave a low groan.
“My ass!” he moaned.
I tore open the back of his uniform, exposing the black Kevflex body armor he was wearing. Each of us had on one of the form fitting, flexible bodysuits under our clothes in case things got hairy. To turn aside the powerful energy bolts however, one of the things the tough microweave polymer did was to become rigid for an instant at the point where it absorbed a blaster hit. In that way it changed part of the power of the blaster bolt into kinetic energy. Although the body armor had not allowed any of the shots to penetrate through to Ian’s flesh, the impact force from a gun as powerful as the assault rifles the pirates carried must have been like getting hit with a major league line drive.
“Your suit’s still intact,” I said. “How do you feel?”
“Like I was just run over by a charging bull,” he said as he slowly began to lever himself up onto his forearms. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sit down for at least a week.”
“Guessh you didn’t need that bullsheye after all,” Lucky teased as he helped me get him to his feet. Once we had him up, I activated my comm-link again.
“Ian’s fine,” I told Chris. “What about that pirate who got away from us?”
“He’s heading back up the central stairwell. It looks like he’s trying to get back to his ship.”
“Seal the hatch,” I ordered. “I don’t want him to run into our people over there.”
“Done,” Chris reported a moment later. “But now he’s locked in here with us.”
“I have an idea how we can handle him,” I said. “What’s the status of the other pirates who boarded us?”
“The two who were sweeping the ship are trapped in the starboard companionway on A deck. We’ve got the gravity field in that section up to 5 g’s. Even their power armor isn’t helping them. Once we dialed up the gravity they hit the deck like sacks of laundry and haven’t been able to lift as much as a finger.”
“Good. What about the ones by the gangway hatch?”
“Completely immobilized,” Chris said. I could hear the amusement in his voice. “You can tell Barney that his little surprise worked perfectly. So what do you want to do about the one that’s still wandering around?”
“We’re going to bounce up to B deck and make him an offer he can’t refuse. This is what I need you to do.” As I outlined what I had in mind I moved to the weapons locker, grabbed one of the assault rifles and pock
eted a couple of spare clips.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Chris said after I had filled him in on my plan.
“These are not nice people we’re dealing with,” I said as I slapped a charge clip in place. “He’ll get a chance to come out of this alive, if he cooperates, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over cancelling his ticket if I have to.”
“Hey, I’m on your side, Jason,” Chris said. “I just admire the devious twists your mind takes sometimes.”
“Thanks. I think.” I looked up and caught Morgana’s eye. She nodded that she was ready. “Stand by for my signal,” I told Chris. “We’re going to move into position.”
I turned around and found Bobby and the others standing behind me.
“We’re coming with you,” Bobby said. “We heard what you’re planning and you’re going to need some help.”
He was right. Even with our Kevflex body suits we would still be going up against a man in battle armor.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I told him. “You and Tom arm yourselves.”
“What about me?” Lucky asked. “The more people you have the better your chanchesh. Beshidesh, I’d like a little pay back.”
I studied his grotesquely swollen lips and the purple bruise darkening the right side of his face.
“That looks pretty bad,” I commented.
“It only hurts when I laugh,” Lucky said, forcing a smile with the left side of his mouth.
I looked at Doc who had opened Ian’s suit and was checking his back as the big man leaned against the rear wall of the bunker.
“I examined him already,” Doc said with a shrug. “There’s no sign of a concussion. Must be that thick skull of his. I gave him something for the pain and I’ll need to re-socket a couple of his teeth but that can wait. Medically, there’s no reason why he can’t go with you.”
“Okay, join the party,” I said.
Ian straightened himself stiffly and started toward the weapons locker as well.
“Not this time, my friend,” I said, heading him off. “I need you and Barney to get that pirate out of his armor before he freezes to death.”
“And that’s a problem, why?” Bobby asked, as he looked up from checking his weapon.
“I know how you feel,” I said, “but right now he’s no threat. Besides, he may have useful information. Remember that our main objective is to gather intel on how the pirates are operating. And Doc, I need you standing by in the infirmary in case anyone gets hurt.”
Ian and Lucky exchanged looks.
“In case anyone gets seriously injured,” I corrected myself.
“I think thish ish sherioush,” Lucky said, touching his swollen lips gingerly. “I might need shurgery. Jusht imagine the sherioush problemsh it would caush if ladiesh acrosh the galaxhy were deprived of my good looksh.”
I was just about to point out to Lucky that it really wasn’t such a big loss when Max stepped up to me.
“If it’s all the same to you, Sire, I believe I would like to accompany you as well.”
I looked into the eyes of the man who had been my family’s valet since before I was born and saw the iron determination there. Although I didn’t know his actual age, I estimated that he had to at least be in his fifties. I also knew that arguing with him would be about as effective as commanding the wind not to blow.
“Can you handle a firearm?” I asked him.
Max quirked one of his eyebrows and stepped over to the gun locker. Pulling out one of the assault rifles, he expertly dropped and checked the clip’s charge, slapped it back into place, primed the weapon for firing, reset the safety, then snapped it smartly to his chest in perfect port arms position.
A grin spread across my face. “And here I thought your expertise was limited to the kitchen.”
“Oh, I can also cook,” Max said dryly.
“Okay, Max, you and Lucky come with me. Morgana, you, Bobby and Tom go up to B deck by the starboard tube and cut through medical. Set up on the other side of the transverse so we can get him in a cross fire.”
As soon as everyone had armed themselves we hustled out of the container and left the cargo hold. I led my group to the port side bounce tube while Morgana’s team split off and headed across to the starboard companionway. It took us only a few moments to bounce up one deck where we crept cautiously into the passageway. We kept ourselves pressed against the side of the passageway as we stole quietly forward toward the gangway hatch.
Just before we reached the intersection I called my team to a halt. I heard pounding coming around the corner ahead.
“What’s that banging?” I whispered into my comm-link.
“He’s trying to beat his way through the hatch,” Chris reported from the bridge with a chuckle. “When he got to the gangway entrance and found the hatch locked and his men trapped inside their suits, he lost it. At first he tried to radio his other men, and then his ship, but our dampening field kept him from transmitting. Then he charged the hatch and he’s been trying to punch and kick his way out ever since.”
“It looks like we’ve got his attention,” I said. “Stand by to hit those airtight doors like we talked about. I’m going to get in position to flush him into the open.”
Gesturing Max and Lucky to wait here, I tiptoed forward and pressed myself into the uncomfortably narrow space behind a vertical structural support. Leaning around the edge of the support I peered around the corner toward the hatch. Just beyond the point where the two passages intersected I could see the two pirates who had been left to guard the ship’s entrance standing as if they were carved from stone. Another of Barney’s ingenious innovations had shut down their battle armor, leaving the men trapped inside. Now the only member of the boarding party who had not been neutralized was their leader. And we were about to correct that.
At first I couldn’t see him. Only a small part of the right hand bulkhead was visible from my position. Then the pirate came into view as he sidestepped along the dead end while he searched for a way to open the doors. A movement down the passage drew my attention. I looked over to see Morgana and her team emerge from the infirmary and move toward our position.
“We’re in place,” Morgana’s voice spoke softly from my earpiece.
“Stand by,” I whispered. “I’m going to let him know we’re here.”
I raised my weapon to my shoulder and squeezed off a quick burst in his direction. The pirate’s reflexes were faster than I expected. As my first shots began to strike the bulkhead beside him, he spun around and returned fire on my position with impressive accuracy, forcing me back behind the meager cover of the structural support. I waited for his return volley to end, counted to three and popped out to fire off another volley of my own.
We went back and forth like that a few times before he decided to advance on my position. He must have thought that I was alone and pinned behind the support brace. Since he obviously had the advantage the pirate eventually decided to close in for the kill. What he hadn’t counted on were the five additional guns that opened up on him from both sides as soon as he stepped into the intersection.
Although power armor offered good protection in a fire fight it was not indestructible, and the model suit he was wearing looked to be several years old. He apparently decided that a tactical retreat was his best option and the pirate lunged across the passage toward the starboard side of the ship.
“Now!” I called into my comm-link as he made a mad dash toward the stairwell.
Throughout the ship, airtight doors were positioned at critical junctions to seal off each section in case of an emergency. In the event of a hull breach, powerful hydraulics would slam the heavy doors closed in a fraction of a second to protect the rest of the ship from sudden decompression. While the doors usually operated automatically, Chris could also trigger them from his station on the bridge.
Before the pirate had made it more than a few steps toward the sta
irwell I heard the deep clang of the emergency doors slamming into place over the stairwell landing, trapping him on this deck.
By then we had taken up positions at the corners of the intersection and I took a quick peek into the passage. The pirate was standing in front of the sealed stairwell staring at the doors that had just sprung out of nowhere to cut off his escape route.
“There’s nowhere to go,” I called out. “Put down your weapon and you won’t be hurt. You have my word.”
His answer was a volley of blaster fire in our direction. He kept his finger on the trigger of his weapon until the clicking from the drained firing capacitor announced that his power pack was depleted. As he ejected the empty clip and was reaching for a spare one, the six of us popped from around the corner and opened fire. The air around him sizzled with bolts of blaster energy. Many of our shots scored hits on his armor in brilliant, pyrotechnic splashes. Most of them did little more than burn fresh score marks on his armor although a few dug furrows in the tough plating. Eventually, someone was going to hit a weakened area and pierce his suit.
Even as I was thinking this one shot found a vulnerable spot on his left knee. The hit caused the servos controlling the joint to short out in a brief electrical explosion. The knee of his suit locked and he began backing away in a stiff legged shuffle. But the piratel refused to give up. Even as he backed away from the fury of our combined barrage he slapped a fresh clip in place and returned fire. When we ducked back around the corner of the passage for cover, he broke and made a staggering run for the safety of the starboard side companionway. Just as he was about to turn into the companionway, Chris closed the next set of airtight doors, once again blocking his escape.
Each of the three main decks on the Prometheus was laid out in the same basic “H” pattern. Two parallel companionways ran along both the port and starboard sides of the ship from the forecastle bays back to the engine room. Connecting the companionways on each deck was a transverse passageway which ran directly across the ship from port to starboard amidships and also gave access to the main stairwell. On B deck, where we were now, the transverse passage continued across each of the companionways to egress points in the outer hull. On the port side it led to the gangway hatch, which was only used when the ship could be secured to another ship or pressurized docking sleeve. The starboard end of the transverse led to the EVA airlock. With both inner and outer airtight doors, the airlock could be used to enter or exit the ship without the need for us to be docked with anything else. Now that the starboard companionway was closed to him, the pirate found himself being driven into a dead end.
As he retreated under the renewed fire from the six of us, the pirate unknowingly backed through the inner airlock hatch which had been purposefully left open. As soon as he was inside the lock, Chris triggered the door from the bridge, sealing him inside.
As soon as he was imprisoned in the airlock, I safetied my weapon and walked over to the control panel mounted on the bulkhead by the airlock door.
“Put your weapon down,” I said into the intercom. I watched him through the triangular viewport in the hatch as he responded with a spray of blaster fire. When the ship had gone through its refit, I’d had the airlock reinforced to withstand an armed assault and his shots were doing little actual damage.
“Please stop shooting up my ship,” I said. “Just put your weapon down and we’ll let you out of there.”
This time he varied his response by raising his middle finger at me. I sighed.
“Is that your final answer?”
He went back to spraying the inside of the door with another barrage of blaster fire.
I tapped my comm-link. “Chris, open the outer door.”
“You got it.”
Red lights began flashing inside the airlock. A moment later the outer hatch opened and Miguel was blasted out of the ship. I watched for a few moments as his tumbling form dwindled into the depths of interstellar space. Then I turned away.
“Give him a minute to think about his situation,” I said into my comm-link, “then contact him and tell him that we’re willing to pick him up if he agrees to toss his weapon away. I don’t want him shooting holes in our skiff.”
“Will do, but what if he doesn’t want to cooperate?” Chris asked.
“Then wish him well on his sightseeing trip across the galaxy for me,” I said. I was not going to put my people at risk to save the life of a murdering bandit. “You can stand down the ship now. I’ll be up to the bridge in a minute.”
As the various airtight doors began retracting into the bulkheads, I turned to Morgana and asked her to oversee securing the prisoners. She headed toward the engine room where the bulk of the crew was waiting out of sight. They had already been assigned to sweeper groups and were only waiting for word from us to come out of hiding. Leaving her to round up the pirates from the different places around the ship where they had been incapacitated, I headed up to the command deck. When I stepped onto the bridge I found that it had been restored to its normal appearance.
“We got an answer from that pirate we sent on an extended space walk,” Chris said as I moved to the command chair.
“What did he say?”
“When I told him what the conditions were, he made a suggestion that I don’t think is anatomically possible.”
“His funeral. What about Clive’s team? Have you heard from them?”
“Nothing yet,” Chris answered.
I looked at the clock above the main screen and was surprised to see that less than fifteen minutes had passed since the pirates had docked with us. It seemed like a lot longer. I took a few moments to glance at the different monitors around the command center. Most of the screens were displaying the activity taking place in various areas of the ship.
At the front of the bridge, the wall sized main screen was divided into three windows showing the cargo hold, the gangway hatch and the section of A deck where the pair of pirates who made it that far were pinned to the floor. I enlarged the window showing the gangway hatch. Morgana and her team were just leading away the pair of pirates we had immobilized there. They appeared slightly haggard from their experience but none the worse for wear. Their useless armor lay disassembled on the deck behind them.
I sat in my chair for a while after they had moved out of camera range, staring at the sealed hatch on the screen. Through those doors and past the other end of the docking sleeve, our tactical team was making their way through the pirate ship on a mission to neutralize its crew and take the captain prisoner. Three marines against a ship full of vicious murderers.
If they had been deserving of sympathy, I would have felt sorry for the pirates.