Shadowplay: Book One of the Starcrown Chronicles

by Jon Gerrard

  * * *

  On the bridge of the Dawn Star, Captain Chavez was starting to panic. He still couldn’t raise the engine room and a few minutes ago they had felt a second explosion vibrate through the ship. The sensors showed that a ship had grappled onto their port hull–a ship that appeared out of nowhere when there had been nothing within range of their sensors only moments before.

  “Engine room, answer! This is the bridge! What is going on down there?” Chavez yelled into the intercom.

  The young helmsman, Koslov, stood frozen at his post, his hands gripping the manual steering yoke in a death grip. His entire frame was trembling as he stood with his eyes staring blindly ahead, sweat beading his forehead.

  “Engine room, come in!” Chavez tried again.

  “They’re not going to answer, Ernie,” Sasha said, not bothering to hide the contempt in her voice. She had been following the pirates’ actions as best as she could using the ship’s sensors. She knew that they had locked onto their hull and were probably already aboard. It was only a matter of time before the raiders made their way to the bridge.

  Her mind raced through possibilities. Staying to face the invaders was her least favorite option. From what little she did know about how they operated, the pirates never left any living crew aboard the ships they attacked. The stories she’d heard were that the crew was either murdered to a man or missing whenever a hijacked ship was found. Neither of these choices were appealing to her. In seconds she’d made up her mind. This was a big ship. There were dozens of places she could hole up until the pirates finished ransacking the transport and left. If the rumors were to be believed the pirates didn’t scuttle the ships they victimized so she should be able to survive until the ship was discovered. It was as if they left the derelict hulks adrift on purpose to unnerve the public. If that was their aim it was working.

  Having made her decision, Sasha spun around and hurried toward the exit.

  Chavez looked up as she rushed across the bridge. “Where are you going?” he asked his first officer.

  “Anywhere but here,” she answered without breaking stride.

  A moment later she hit the hatch control and froze in the doorway as the door slid aside. From the far end of the corridor that led to the bridge she heard the heavy tread of booted feet approaching. Bulky shadows played on the distant bulkhead where the passageway came to a T intersection. She was too late.

  She started backing onto the bridge as the armored figures appeared at the end of the corridor and turned toward her.

  “Sasha, what is it?” Chavez said when he saw her expression.

  Sasha didn’t answer. She just kept backing into the bridge, her eyes locked on the advancing figures. After a moment Chavez could hear the approaching footfalls as well. Springing up from his seat he started toward the hatch as he reached for the holstered laser pistol at his belt. He fumbled with the holster for a moment then reached across with his free hand to hold his belly out of the way so he could draw his weapon. A moment later the first of the pirates reached the bridge. At the same instant Captain Chavez managed to free his pistol.

  “What is the meaning of this illegal boarding of my ship?” Chavez demanded as he looked into the mirrored visor of the pirate’s armored suit.

  Although the transport captain hadn’t even aimed his weapon, as soon as the pirate saw the pistol in his hand he reacted. Swinging his blaster rifle up in a practiced arc he squeezed off a single shot directly into the captain’s face. A small hole appeared in his forehead while the entire back of his skull was blown away in a cone of spraying gore. His body jerked once, then he toppled like a statue, an expression of surprise frozen on his features.

  The pirate took in the scene on the bridge quickly as the other three men in his team entered behind him and spread out. Apart from the body on the floor there was only the woman backed up against a console and the skinny youth standing frozen in front of the helm.

  “Who’s in charge here?” the pirate demanded, his voice projecting from the suit’s external speaker.

  Sasha glanced from Chavez’s corpse to the rifle in the pirate’s hands and answered without hesitation, “You are.”

  Several minutes later Sasha found herself and the terrified helmsman being prodded into line with the rest of the ship’s crew in the corridor outside the main cargo hold. The massive doors to the hold had been opened and row after row of stacked shipping containers could be seen within the cavernous space.

  Of the total compliment of twelve crew members aboard, only nine were present, and one of them was wounded. Perkins, the engineer, had been shot in the leg and was sitting on the deck. The missing three crew members, including the captain, had been killed by the pirates when they took the ship.

  The pirate who had shot the captain appeared to be the leader of the boarding party. He gave a series of orders to his men and turned back to the prisoners as half of the raiders jogged into the hold to inventory the cargo. At a motion from the leader, one of his men set an oversized case down on the deck and opened it. Taking out several obedience collars he began locking the metal rings around the necks of the prisoners while the rest of the pirates covered them with their blaster rifles. When the pirate with the collars reached the wounded man, the leader stopped him.

  Perkins had been hit in the thigh and a fist sized chunk of flesh had been blasted away. A tourniquet above the wound had stopped the bleeding but his pants leg was thick with blood and he couldn’t stand. The pirate leader gave the leg a casual kick, sending the engineer into a fit of writhing and groaning. Without a moment’s hesitation the pirate lowered the muzzle of his weapon and fired a quick burst into the man’s chest. Perkins spasmed as the shots ripped through his body, then slumped down against the base of the bulkhead, blood running from his sagging mouth and mixing with what was pooling on the deck beneath him.

  The transport crew huddled together at the sight of the casual murder of their shipmate. They stared in wide eyed horror at the pirate leader who stood to one side and watched in an almost bored posture as his man continued fitting the rest of them with the electronic collars. Once each of them had been fitted with a collar the leader slung his rifle on his shoulder, reached up and removed his helmet.

  “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to get in there and start transferring your cargo to our ship,” the pirate ordered. “And keep in mind that I’m on a tight schedule. Don’t make me late.”

  Even using the power loaders it took the crew more than three hours to offload the cargo under the watchful eyes of the pirates. When the last of the shipping containers was finally secured aboard the pirate’s ship the exhausted transport crew was directed into a smaller hold aboard the sub and locked in. Healthy slaves were worth as much as twenty thousand Solars each. That translated into about a hundred and sixty thousand for the transport crew alone. The money they would get for the prisoners on top of what the organization had promised them for delivering the transport’s cargo amounted to quite a tidy sum. Not bad for a few hours work.

  As soon as the prisoners were secured the pirates sealed their airlock and cast off from the ravaged transport, leaving the empty hulk to drift through the interstellar void. Minutes later the pirate sub Wraith activated its stealth system and disappeared.

  About the author

  Jon Gerrard is the co-author of two previous books: Tae Kwon Do and Blackbelt Tae Kwon Do, written with his friends the Park brothers who were involved with the selection and training of the U.S. Tae Kwon Do Olympic team. For their efforts they received the prestigious Books for the Teenage List award given the by New York Public Library. Mr. Gerrard holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Princeton University and a master’s degree in education from Lehman College. He is currently working as a teacher in New York where he lives with his wife and two daughters. When he isn’t conducting martial arts classes from his home on Long Island, Jon enjoys skiing,
scuba diving and riding his motorcycle. This is his first novel.

  Shadowplay:

  Book One of the Starcrown Chronicles

  by Jon Gerrard

  Copyright 2012 Jon Gerrard

  Cover by Dane Low