MORGAN STRAINED to hear what was going on below her, comforted only in that the racket of the pirates opening fire was something she would not miss.
Quiet is good, quiet is peaceful, for the moment, she thought.
There were always access volumes in space, whether ship or station made no difference. Machines broke and needed maintenance, and that meant someone had to be able to access them, no matter how buried behind bulkheads they were.
In this case, a narrow crawlspace ran parallel to the corridor below, panels on either side clearly labeled as to what systems, conduits, and wiring was accessible.
I could wish Takiyama was that well organized. I really wish I could hear what was going on down there.
For the moment, she was just inside the crawlspace, barely a meter away from the lift shaft, her pistol within easy reach, the formerly pirate-owned rifle on the floor of the conduit to her right.
She was torn between needing to know what was going to happen and recognizing that she really needed to put as much space between herself and the lift as she could.
That Anders, Bolton, and Khatri had been captured was hardly in doubt, and now Marcus and Eck had been as well.
It’s all up to me. No one else left to warn the ship.
The problem was, the airlock was sure to be guarded, and she wasn’t even sure how many levels down it was. She didn’t know where anything was on the station, and even acquiring a map was going to be very difficult.
If only I could at least get a message out through the jamming. Or even find a non-locked-down terminal; while we’re docked there are at least a few connections through the umbilical. Wait a moment.
Morgan looked back over at the panel closest to where she crouched.
Would that work? It just might. If this was the pirate’s ship probably not, but this isn’t. They captured it. This is a mining vessel. Pure civilian design.
She was distracted by a booming voice telling Max to toss out his weapons.
Taking them hostage after all. Good.
For a moment Morgan was surprised that she was surprised at this – taking hostages was clearly the intent the whole time – and then her conscious mind caught up with her subconscious. How many groups, especially outlaw types like these, would want revenge for the men who died on the bridge?
She didn’t much feel like answering her own question, and instead got back to work. The mechanical changes were easy enough; in fact, she was reminded of the hack job she’d done back on the Fate to force the armory door open. The coding side of things was going to be trickier, and not just because her software skills weren’t nearly as good as her aptitude with hardware. She had to assume the pirates were monitoring all signals leaving the ship, which meant she had to bury her message in something innocuous, something that was supposed to be going from the station to the ship.
Something like the air readings from the docking area.
As she worked, Morgan kept an ear tuned to what was going on below; it seemed they knew about Max’s grenades.
Morgan’s hands paused mid-cross wiring as they demanded Max and Marcus remove their skinsuits, and a wave washed over her, a wave of revulsion, fear, and memories of her own captivity at the hands of the terrorists on Emily’s world.
I need to finish and get away from here.
The work was done on the station side of things, not she simply had to do the hard part.
Pulling off her uplink, she plugged it – and its military hardware, if a bit outdated – into the cobbled-together mess of wires and connections she’d pulled together from the systems intersecting that part of the station.
Her fingers flying across the holographic keyboard the uplink projected, Morgan had to shake her head and snort in dark amusement as she pulled up the very program she’d kludged together during her last run-in with pirates.
Whatever the similarities, there were some differences as well.
For one, she wasn’t being shot at.
For another, this was a more complicated operation. The old program would do as the base, but only in that it would interface with the system. Everything beyond that would require her to cannibalize other functions of her uplink.
It had gone quiet below. She’d lost track for a moment, but she was relatively sure that Max and Marcus had left the lift, and had gone wherever it was the pirates demanded.
I wish the trackers on their suits were active all the time, and not just in emergencies…
…not that it would help in this case. I think their suits are still in the lift.
And besides, jamming.
Back to the task at hand. This is more important, regardless of how you feel, she told herself firmly.
The good news was that she was cannibalizing other functions, not coming up with new ones on the fly. If that wasn’t the case, there would at best be a miniscule chance of success, even if she could get enough time to finish.
She was almost done when the voice called out again.
“We know there were three of you. We know you’re in the lift shaft. I’ll keep this simple. Surrender, or I shoot one of our other hostages.”
The silence stretched on; the pirate’s ultimatum delivered.
Morgan forced herself to stay put, reducing the work in front of her to her entire world.
“No?” The voice called out again, the word echoing around the shaft, distorting the sound somewhat. “I’m not in any particular rush, but I don’t want to wait all day either. How about I give you sixty seconds to decide?”
A calm unlike anything Morgan had felt settled over her. That left time to spare. She knew exactly what she had to do.
Finishing her work, she jabbed the button to start the program, then put the uplink down. Shifting about, her pistol went in next to it, followed by the pouch on her arm and then the rest of her spare magazines, excepting the one in the compartment at the small of her back. The rifle fit in with just a little twisting and turning about to get it all within the limited space. Closing up the panel, she tucked her Daddy’s spanner in a corner where it wouldn’t easily move and where it would be less noticeable.
Finally, she pulled a tiny tool off her suit belt, a little flat bit of metal that could adjust to fit most bolts, screws, or other fasteners. That she stuck in her mouth, under her tongue.
Despite the calm she felt, she still needed to take in several deep breaths to work up the nerve to drop back down onto the roof of the lift car.
Opening the hatch, she dropped down into the car itself, raising her hands above her head once she’d straightened back up.
“All right, all right,” she called out as loudly as she could, taking in the drone hovering in the hallway and the small pile of weapons next to the pair of skinsuits. The drone had a holographic message displayed, telling her not to move with a number of expletives thrown in for good measure. “I surrender. You don’t need to hurt anybody.”
“With ten seconds to spare!” the voice called out. Now that it wasn’t bouncing around and echoing in the shaft, Morgan could hear him better.
An old memory stirred, but she pushed it down. That was impossible, her mind was simply dredging up unrelated memories of the evil she’d encountered over her short life.
“You can probably guess what comes next. Weapon on the floor, then suit, then come out here.”
“I lost my pistol,” Morgan called out. “It’s in the shaft somewhere.”
Technically that wasn’t a lie, which was just as well, because Morgan wasn’t very good at lying. Leaving information out, sure, she could manage that, but not lying straight out.
“Don’t try anything cute. The drone can see every move you make.”
“I am well aware, Morgan said, closing her eyes involuntarily as she retracted her helmet and began opening her suit.
At least they didn’t notice my uplink was also missing. So focused on the obvious threat, they missed the real one.
“Good. Now get out here. You three have already proven
far too much trouble.”
Hurry up so we can stall, right, Morgan thought. The irony was more palatable to focus on than what she was doing, so she went right on focusing on it.
That and his voice. It still reminded her of him, but that well and truly couldn’t be possible.
Suit dropped to the floor, Morgan covered herself as best she could and walked out into the corridor, terrified but hopeful, both that her actions were worth it – that Max’s safety was worth it – and that her plan had worked. There was no way to know, no way to receive a message even if the pirates weren’t jamming everything, so she’d have to take it on faith.
That, and find a chance to put her backup plan into motion.
Escape, get back here, get my pistol, with nothing to help me but a tiny slip of metal, not even my clothes.
Heart pounding, Morgan turned and headed toward the pirates.
Chapter 27
Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale --
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
- Rudyard Kipling, Planet Earth.
IT FELT to Morgan like the corridor stretched on forever, but in truth she was soon in the atrium with the pirates, as well as Max and Marcus over in one corner. She felt every eye on her, and she tried not to blush, or quail, or betray any emotion at their gazes.
Then the man who had been speaking, the one she assumed was the leader, spoke again, and the certainty she’d been denying crashed over her.
“Well now, I know I saw you on the footage from the bridge, but you’re still shorter than I expected,” said Officer Thirty-Four, the tin-badged tyrant who had been a guard in the mine shaft she’d worked every day from roughly the age of eight, Earth years, until she’d escaped Hillman.
Later she’d wonder how the universe had managed to be so cruel, so absurd. Later she’d wonder how he left their homeworld, the one no one left except by near miraculous escape, and how he came to be where he was.
In that moment, standing there with nothing to protect her, nothing to even give her privacy besides her covering hands, all she felt was rage.
Rage that she’d suppressed for years, rage that she’d then buried with no one and nothing to rage against within uncounted light-years, rage stoked like a fire by the further indignities, injuries, and ill-treatment she had suffered at the hands of evil men and women, a rage that now broke loose.
With a scream of primal fury that Morgan would not have believed herself capable of, Morgan launched herself at Thirty-four, slamming into his chest and bringing them both to the ground, but with Morgan on top.
She dug her knees into his sides, reaching for his eyes with her fingers curved into claws.
Surprise had gotten her that far, but Thirty-four would not have survived even a year in the mines without honed instincts for self-preservation. He got his hands up to cover his vulnerable eyes before she could blind him, but this just meant he couldn’t see when she balled her hands into fists and smashed them into his cheeks and the side of his head instead.
A small part of her remembered what few lessons Max had imparted, but the majority was lost in a red haze of anger, and she rained blows down on whatever parts of his body she could, especially his vulnerable head that was not protected by the skinsuit he wore with helmet down.
He tried to buck her off, and she rolled with him, digging heel and knee and elbow into whatever came within reach.
He tried to hit her back, but she leaned and dodged and parried, robbing his blows of strength.
She couldn’t see anything beyond him, couldn’t tell what the other pirates were doing, but it didn’t matter. Her target was before her, and she was committed. In that moment she didn’t care if she lived, died, or disappeared into the Black as the eternal captive of pirates, she would have him.
Had she been thinking, she would have known how it would end. He was armored, she was naked. She was strengthened by years growing up on a planet with twice Earth’s gravity… but so was he, and he was larger than her by a good margin.
With a grunt he parried one of her blows, a swing at his throat, and capitalized on the opening to close his calloused fingers around her throat. She did everything to break free, but he was stronger. Pulling her off him, he stood up, Morgan now dangling painfully by the neck from his hand, unable to speak or yell, kicking at him with both feet and hitting his outstretched arm with both arms, but not dislodging his grip that was already tightening around her throat.
Someone was saying something, and someone else was yelling, but all Morgan could hear was the pounding of blood in her ears along with a ringing sound of which she couldn’t place the source.
Her eyelids fluttered, her vision graying out at the edges, and her blows lessened, both in frequency and strength.
He was moving them, but she couldn’t tell where.
Then he flung her to the ground, her head bouncing off the hard metal floor, and it was all Morgan could do to take slow, gasping breaths of air.
Each breath burned as it flowed past her injured throat, but the warm air was the sweetest taste she’d ever experienced.
A shadow fell over her as someone approached, and she tried to draw back, but she was still too lightheaded.
“Shh, just me,” the figure said, and Morgan recognized Max’s voice, even with the ringing in her ears continuing. He said something else, but she missed it. Then he reached out and gently prodded at her throat, drawing an involuntary hiss from Morgan at the sudden pain.
Somehow, he smiled at her, saying something else, but all she caught was the words ‘not broken.’
Then someone else handed something to Max, and he gestured for Morgan to do something. As he held it up, she realized it was a long shirt of some kind, probably like the one he was wearing.
Nodding, she slowly brought up her arms so he could put it on her, as if she was nothing more than a toddler to be dressed by others.
Truth be told, in that moment she was probably more helpless than a toddler was.
Morgan managed to lean to the side, spitting out some blood.
Moving her tongue about, she verified that the tool was still in there, she hadn’t lost it or swallowed it or anything, though it was also probably what had cut the inside of her mouth.
“He get you in the mouth?” Max asked, probably referencing the blood.
Morgan shook her head.
“Never… never mind that.”
While all this was occurring, she was catching the edge of some kind of commotion in the middle of the room, but it was too much a jumbled mess for her to see. Gradually, her senses settled down, and she realized they were arguing about her.
Or more specifically, he was arguing about her, but the other pirates didn’t seem to be persuaded by his arguments.
“You won’t stop me from killing her,” Thirty-four yelled, clutching various injured body parts with slightly less injured ones. “She attacked me, not the other way around.”
“We’re not killing hostages,” one of the other pirates said, and as Morgan focused on him, she could see he had a pistol drawn in one hand. It was pointed at the floor, for now, but it was out of its holster.
Thirty-four said some rather harsh words, indicating what he thought of that, and then added some more, slightly less-crude words that were even worse in their content.
“I’m not here for your cowards’ ways. She needs killing, or we will all regret it.”
“I will not be called coward by a man who nearly lost a fight to a naked girl half his size,” another pirate said, and then the arguing began to overlap again and she couldn’t follow it.
“What’s going on?” she half-whispered, half-croaked at Max.
Max hunkered down close to where she was lying on the floor.
“The pirates here are insisting they aren’t pi
rates, but privateers. That means they can’t kill prisoners.”
“Don’t understand…” Morgan got out after a few deep gulps of air.
“They don’t care about us,” he continued, grimacing, “They’re just protecting their own skins. If they get caught, pirates get a quick trial and a short walk through an airlock with no ship on the other side. Privateers who get caught, on the other hand, get a trial back on the homeworld of whoever caught them followed by prison time. Assuming they follow the recognized intergalactic rules of war, that is. That includes taking prisoners where possible and then not abusing them.”
Marcus crouched down on the other side of Morgan.
“Still too many watching us,” she said to Max before turning to Morgan. “Why did you attack him? He nearly killed you before they forced him to stop.”
“Forced him? I missed that.”
“Four of the pirates pulled weapons on him, ordered him to put you down,” Max clarified, “Why did you go for him? That looked personal.”
“I knew him, back home,” Morgan stammered out.
“Clearly he knows how to make friends,” Max joked with a frown. “What did he do?”
Morgan shook her head.
“Anything he could get away with. He was a guard in the mine I worked in.”
“A mine? You worked in a mine before coming to Zion? I thought you said you were still a teenager when you got here?” Max asked.
“I was,” Morgan said, feeling more than a bit sleepy after everything. Adrenaline rush is wearing off.
“Hey, hey,” Max said, tapping on her cheek none too lightly. “No going to sleep. That was a nasty blow to the head you took at the end there.”
“Leavemealone,” Morgan slurred, feeling light-headed as well as sleepy. “What are they saying?”
“I think we’re safe,” Max answered, reaching down to gently pull at her eyelids. Morgan remembered something about checking eyes when someone hurt their head, but it just wasn’t clicking. “I can’t follow everything, but I don’t think the man you attacked is one of them. Some kind of authority figure, but not liked. Employer maybe? They could actually be privateers after all, which would mean someone hired them. Anyway, I don’t think they like him, as a lot of them seem either amused or happy about the beating you gave him.”
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