by Jon Gerrard
* * *
We made our way quickly to the landing field. Even though there were nearly one hundred and fifty of us everyone managed to keep up. The thought of going back to live as slaves under the not so tender care of Fernando Rabine drove us on.
We knew we were close when we could see light shining through the trees. Alex and I paused when we were just inside the tree line to study the area as the others quietly drew up behind us. The pirate ship sat just as I had seen it before, only now the guards by the access ramp were carrying plasma rifles. A single blast from one of those guns could cut a man in half. The pirates seemed fidgety, as if they wanted to be doing more than just standing sentry at the ship. But they weren’t our focus.
Beyond the pirate ship was a row of hangars, and in the center hangar was ... fire! My breath caught as I stared at the battered hull of what used to be Rabine’s transport ship. One of the landing struts had collapsed, leaving it listing to one side as flames licked out through the open hatch. The pirates must have destroyed it to prevent anyone from following them. But in doing so they had stranded us.
Ice formed in the pit of my stomach. After all we had been through, after all our planning and preparation, it couldn’t end like this.
I glanced over at Alex. Her expression was hard as she stared across the field and watched our one hope going up in flames. As I watched her I saw her eyes fill up with tears. One escaped and traced a curving track along her perfect cheek. Seeing that single tear caused me more anguish than anything Rabine or Lout had ever done to me. It was a knife twisting in my gut.
I set my jaw. This wasn’t over yet!
A sudden motion in the corner of my eye drew my attention. Half a dozen armed men jogged down the boarding ramp from the pirate ship and hurried off in the direction of the compound. One of the ramp guards went with them. Cross must have called for reinforcements.
Suddenly, I knew what to do.
I reached over and squeezed Alex’s hand.
“We’re not finished, yet,” I said. She looked at me but I could tell she didn’t understand. I pointed at the pirates’ sub. “We’re taking that ship.”
“Waaait a minute, buddy,” Lucky said on my other side, “we can’t go up against that armed crew. They’ll cut us to ribbons!”
“They would if they were here,” I said. “Seven more men just ran off to join the fight. How many do you think are left aboard?”
“Pell’s right,” Alex said. “They probably stripped the ship bare to throw everyone they have against Rabine’s men. I doubt if there’s even a hand full of crew still on board.”
“But they have weapons,” someone said behind us.
I glanced over at the row of buildings across the landing field. The little one on the far right was a workshop. “Then we’ll just have to arm ourselves, too.”
It took us a little while to circle around to the far side of the landing field and break into the workshop. There weren’t any weapons in the strict sense, but we armed ourselves anyway. Hammers, screwdrivers, pipes, chains, utility knives—we grabbed anything that could be used to inflict injury. Within minutes a pile of makeshift weapons had grown behind the building.
“Is that everything?” I asked.
“That and my swinging Johnson,” Lucky quipped.
“So you’re going unarmed, then,” Alex shot back.
Looking across our cache I selected a half-meter length of pipe. The solid feel of the metal in my hand was reassuring. I turned and took a look at the group of grim faced men and women huddled in the shadows behind me. There was a silent menace in their eyes. We were getting out of this hell-hole and woe be it to anyone who got in our way.
I turned to my team leaders and saw that they were ready. I had divided us into six groups, each with a specific task. There were two areas of the ship that we absolutely had to control if we were to succeed: the bridge and the engine room. Alex and I would lead a team to the bridge while Ian and Mark would secure the engine room. Three other groups would do general sweeps of each of the three decks. Chris, Ricky and Lucky would lead those teams. To protect our rear, Momma Mary and her group would hold the access ramp airlock.
The only thing left was to take out the guard at the foot of the ramp. Charging him would be suicide. One man with a plasma rifle could cut down our entire group before we got halfway to the ship. I was just about to call Ian over when Alex stood up.
“I’ve got this,” she said as she started toward the solitary guard.
I grabbed her by the wrist. “No! I can send Ian to—”
She covered my hand with hers and gently removed my fingers. “I’ll be fine. Just make sure everyone is ready to move.” She grabbed the front of her clothes and ripped, exposing a large amount of skin. She winked, then started onto the open landing field. Using one hand to not quite hold the front of her clothes together, she started limping toward the pirate sentry.
I motioned to the team leaders to have their groups arm themselves. Everyone except for Momma Mary selected something from the pile. Somehow, Mary had managed to bring her lucky skillet with her. I had no doubt that in her hands the cast iron frying pan could deal out serious injury. Once armed, everyone grouped together with their leaders.
“Help! Help me, please!” Alex yelled as she approached the pirate ship.
My heart jumped into my throat when the guard swung on her with his weapon. From his expression he must have been surprised to have someone come up to him from that direction. But as she limped closer I could see his stance relaxing. Just as she was within a few meters of him, she stumbled and fell. She was really selling the helpless slave girl routine. I doubted that she had ever been clumsy enough to trip in her entire life.
The guard’s rifle lowered as Alex slowly pushed herself to her knees. Judging by the way his eyes suddenly goggled she must be letting quite a bit of skin show as she got up. Shifting his rifle to one hand, he actually took a step forward and reached out to help her up. She moved so quickly in the next moment that I didn’t see what she did. All I knew was that one moment the pirate was reaching out to her and in the next moment he was sprawled on the ground with his weapon now in her hands.
We charged the ship. In spite of our numbers we covered the distance like wraiths and soon we were swarming up the boarding ramp.
Alex fell into step beside me as I led the way aboard. Behind us I could hear each team split off and head in different directions as we went about taking the ship. Cross must have pulled his entire crew off the ship. We didn’t encounter anyone until we reached the bridge. The sole crewman on duty there was so surprised that he never had time to seal it off. Our team swarmed inside just as he was trying to draw his pistol. Alex swung the plasma rifle at him and fired a single shot. A fist sized hole appeared in the pirate’s middle as red gore splattered the bulkhead behind him and his body was hurled through the air.
Ignoring the body for now I posted guards at the bridge entrance while Alex moved to different duty stations and powered up the systems. Blue standby lights winked on across several consoles, but amber lights on others warned that those systems still needed to be brought on-line in the engine room. When Alex had done everything she could she tossed me her weapon and settled into place at the helm.
“Fuel reserve is nominal,” she said glancing across a bank of indicators. “All propulsion systems appear to be in good shape. I’m bringing up life support up and securing all systems for space flight.”
I took the captain’s char as the different sweep teams started reporting in. Within a few minutes everyone had reported that their area was secured—everyone except for the team in the engine room. I was just about to send someone down to find out what was happening when Mark called the bridge. Like the bridge, there had been a single crewman left on duty there. He had heard them coming however and had barricaded himself behind some circuitry cabinets. From that posi
tion he had been able to hold off their entire team with his pistol until Ian managed to work around behind him and take him out. Even as Mark was giving me his report, amber lights around the bridge began switching over to green. Mark cut the connection then to help Ian power up the drive systems and I switched the intercom to the access ramp.
“Close it up, Momma!” I said. “We’re getting ready to lift.”
“You got it, honey!”
I stood and moved over to the helm to watch as Alex fired the belly thrusters to lift us into the air. Reaching over her shoulder I activated the main view screen mounted on the forward bulkhead. As the ship rose over the trees, the compound and Rabine’s mansion came into view. From our vantage point we could see flashes of blaster fire and scattered explosions as the battle continued. Something about the way Alex’s posture suddenly stiffened drew my attention. She was wearing an expression I had seen before.
“Hold us here for a moment,” she said quietly, as she got up from the console. There was ice in her voice. “I want to send someone a farewell gift.”
I took over her place at the controls as she moved to another station nearby. It wasn’t one of the boards she had brought on-line earlier. From where I was sitting I couldn’t see the console’s surface as she activated it and began pressing switches, but I had a good idea what she was doing. After a few moments she paused and looked up at the main screen. The same hard expression was still on her face. It was the expression she always wore after Rabine summoned her to the mansion in the evening. On the screen a targeting reticle appeared and centered on the mansion. Without looking back down at her board she jabbed a control.
I watched as the ship’s forward pulse blasters cut loose. Rabine’s mansion may be shielded against small arms fire, but it was no match for the blaster cannons this ship carried. The side of the mansion facing us disappeared under that barrage and the entire thing began to collapse in a cloud of smoke and dust. Alex kept up the barrage for a long while. After some time she switched the cannon’s aim to the compound. The targeting reticle swung to the new target and she again cut loose with the cannons.
When she finally ceased fire Rabine’s property was hidden behind a thick cloud. As it slowly drifted away we saw that where the mansion and compound had once been there was now nothing but a pair of rubble strewn craters.