Read Scourge: Book Two of the Starcrown Chronicles Page 18

  Chapter Ten

  Clive Mayweather and his team were crouching just inside the infirmary door waiting for the pirates to leave the area. On the inside of each man’s left forearm was a small monitor screen the size of a playing card. On those screens was the image being relayed by the camera at the gangway hatch. The first pirate to board the ship had just tipped his hand and was holding a gun on Lucky. Then things started to get ugly.

  Clive’s eyes narrowed when he saw the pirate pistol whip Lucky in the mouth. He could have slipped out of the infirmary and taken out the pirate before the man even knew he was there, but his assignment was to get aboard that ship and take its captain into custody. Unless a member of the crew was in imminent peril, anything else was a secondary priority, so he held his position and waited. But just because he and his team took no action didn’t mean they had to like it. All of the men on the tactical team were marines. One of the longest standing traditions among marines was loyalty to one’s team. Although they had only been part of the Prometheus’ crew for a short time, these were their people. An assault on any member of the crew was taken personally.

  Six armored pirates walked into camera range at that moment and took over. As soon as he saw them, Clive pulled out a remote trigger and flipped up its safety cover with his thumb, exposing a single illuminated button. Mounted on the bulkheads of the passageway just inboard from the gangway hatch was another of Barney’s surprises. By removing sections of the wall panels and scattering electronic components on the deck, they had made it appear as if the crew had been working on the systems inside the bulkheads. In reality what they had done was to install powerful EM pulse emitters in one wall. The emitters were designed to focus an intense burst of EM energy across that small section of the passageway. Any active electronic system in the target area would be overloaded and burned out, including powered battle armor. Protective insulation lining the opposite bulkhead would contain the burst so that no other area of the ship would be affected.

  Clive kept his thumb poised over the activation switch as he watched the scene unfold on his tiny screen. All six of the pirates were in position but he couldn’t trigger the pulse generator until the pirate not wearing battle armor left the area. Unlike his crewmates, he wouldn’t be affected by the pulse. And as soon as he realized that his shipmates had been immobilized he would warn the rest of his crew. He could also decide to lash out against Lucky who would be helpless in the frozen grasp of the armored pirate who had him by the arm.

  Although he would have liked to have stopped all six of the pirates then and there, Clive held himself in check and watched as a pair of the invaders was sent off on a mission to sweep the ship. Moments later the lone pirate not wearing battle armor was sent back through the docking sleeve while two others forced Lucky to take them to the bridge. Soon, only a single pair of armored men remained to stand guard at the open hatch. So far the pirates had acted exactly as they had predicted.

  Clive waited until the last of the armored men disappeared into the stairwell with Lucky, counted off ten seconds to be sure the other pirates had cleared the area, then glanced back at his team.

  “Fire in the hole,” he said quietly and pressed his thumb on the control stud.

  Inside the passageway, a high frequency whine quickly built up to a crescendo and was suddenly cut off as a bright flash briefly illuminated the area in front of the gangway hatch. The pirates standing guard at the ship’s entrance never moved. The only noticeable change was that the tell-tale indicator lights on their chest panels had suddenly gone dark.

  Clive set down the now useless remote and motioned his team to follow him. Bruce and Jimmy each took one side of a bulky, jury rigged apparatus on the deck between them and stood up. Clive opened the infirmary door, tucked the stock of his assault rifle against his shoulder and started into the passageway as he sighted along the barrel of his weapon. The black clad trio moved quickly, their soft soled boots making no noise against the deck. Clive led the way silently, moving in a slight crouch as he led his team toward the immobilized pirates, his rifle sweeping the area before them as he watched for any signs of trouble. Every few seconds his eyes would flash to the screen on his forearm. The monitor was now set to display sensor returns of anything moving nearby. The area was clear.

  As they passed between the immobilized pirates they could hear the muffled voices of the men trapped inside their armor screaming to be let out. They ignored the pirates’ pleas and continued into the docking sleeve. They had gone about two thirds of the way across the connecting bridge between the two ships when Clive raised his hand, his fingers closed in a fist to signal a stop.

  Bruce and Jimmy set the device down in the center of the walkway, carefully arranging it so that the emitter was pointing directly at the pirate ship, then backed away. Clive kept his eyes on the open hatch ahead of them as he crept backwards as well, his weapon trained on the doorway in case anyone appeared. As soon as he was behind the device he reached out and pressed the only switch on the machine, then backed away another several paces. As the high pitched whine grew in the passageway, the three men took up defensive positions just outside the Prometheus’ hatch. The sound grew in pitch and intensity until its humming vibration could actually be felt in the air. Then it suddenly stopped, and an intense pulse of light burst from the front of the machine. At that instant everything aboard the pirate ship shut down, including the light in the docking sleeve, as the EM pulse overloaded all of the sub’s electronic systems.

  The machine was the big brother of the devices mounted on the bulkhead near the Prometheus’ gangway hatch. Barney had come up with a way to incapacitate an entire ship in a single stroke. The true genius of Barney’s invention was not that he had devised a way to generate an EM pulse, but that he had figured out how to precisely direct the wavefront. Since they didn’t want their own ship affected by the pulse, he had designed the device to send out the pulse in one direction only.

  At the far end of the docking sleeve, the open hatch into the pirate ship yawned dark and foreboding. The team slid light amplification headsets down over their eyes and crept toward the pirate ship. The bulging, honeycomb patterned lenses made them look like alien insects as they stepped into the darkened doorway. The passageway they entered went straight for several meters before ending at a “T” intersection.

  The nebula class sub they were entering was nearly twice the length of the Prometheus. Although similar in general layout, instead of a single transverse passage connecting the port and starboard companionways on each deck, the larger class ship had two such passageways, one near the bow and the other toward the stern. The tactical team had studied the blueprints of the different types of Fleet ships that had gone missing and they knew the layout of the ship they were aboard in detail. The command superstructure was forward of their position so they would need to head to the bow stairwell to reach the bridge. They had monitored the conversation between Miguel and his captain and they knew that their objective was in the command center. But they needed to deal with the rest of the crew first.

  They paused when they reached the intersecting passageways. Nothing moved in either direction. Clive took a moment to consult the display on his inner forearm for the locations of the pirate crew. They were clustered in four different areas of the ship. A group of four pirates was one deck below and slightly aft of their position near the main hold. Six others were located in the engine room. Another group of five was up on A deck headed for the avionics bay in the forecastle. The rest were on the bridge.

  “Bruce, you take the four tangos one level down in the starboard passage,” Clive said quietly. “Jimmy, you’ve got the engine room. I’ll take the group in the fo’c’sle. Once you’ve secured your area, rendezvous on A deck at the forward stairwell.”

  Bruce and Jimmy acknowledged their instructions. Tucking the stocks of their weapons into their shoulders, each man silently headed out. A
s they stepped away from the light dimly shining through the open hatch, each of them was swallowed by darkness.