by Terry Mixon
Sting had really done a number on the enemy ship. One of her torpedoes had taken the pirate right in engineering and blown out the fusion plant before it could explode. Hell, it had cleared the entire compartment and actually dismounted one of the drives.
The other torpedoes had punched holes deep into the ship’s armor all along her spine. While there might be survivors, there wouldn’t be a lot of them.
“Damn,” Falcone muttered. “Andre really kicked him in the balls.”
“And how,” Brad agreed with deep satisfaction. “I think we should use the cargo lock. It’s intact and will have backup power. That section of the ship is more intact than a lot of the rest, too.”
He turned in his seat. “Saburo, the hull is compromised everywhere. It’s in one piece, but he could come apart without much warning. Keep the grenades to a minimum.”
“You’re taking all the fun out of this,” the man grumbled. “We’ll be careful, Captain. Let me say once more that I think you should leave this to us. I don’t care how much you enjoy killing pirates; it’s our job.”
The words were innocuous, but the mercenary’s expression was not. He was watching Brad closely and with more than a hint of concern.
That splashed a little water on Brad’s rage but didn’t extinguish it. He’s see the bastards pay.
“We’ll let you go in first, but I’m coming along and so is Agent Falcone,” he said firmly. “We need intelligence. Don’t forget we want a few people we can question.”
He made sure to emphasize a few. He’d rather not let any of them survive.
“That’s all up to them,” the mercenary said nonchalantly. “If they fight, we’ll stop them. All I can do is offer them the chance to surrender. Which, by the way, is far better than they deserve.”
That answer satisfied Brad.
Falcone snorted. “Since the penalty for piracy is death, I suspect we won’t get many takers. The best chance we have to get live prisoners is to pull any wounded off the ship as we go. If they’re like Sting, we might get lucky.”
She deftly brought the shuttle to the enemy’s hull right beside the cargo lock and latched on with monofilament grapnels.
“I’m locking the controls so no one walks off with our ride. The code is 123-0-789-0. Not too complicated in an emergency, but not so easy that an intruder will figure it out before we get back.”
The security officer buried inside Brad wasn’t exactly pleased with her cavalier notions, but he wasn’t going to argue. They had pirates or slavers to capture. He’d figure out which group they were once this was all over.
They made their way out the airlock and crouched beside the cargo entrance to the dead ship. There in deep space, it was pitch black when the hull rotated away from the sun. Even when they were in the light, it was dimmer than he’d like.
The constant movement meant there could be pirates in the shadows that he might not see until the last moment. Or at all. He’d find out when the shooting started.
Falcone used a small torch to cut away the controls. “This is probably locked and will certainly announce our arrival to someone if I don’t bypass the security.”
It took her five minutes to satisfy herself and activate the airlock. The cargo bay was in vacuum, so she opened both locks at once.
They weren’t carrying cargo. The compartment was filled with dead men and women.
“Holy shit,” one of the mercenaries muttered as they entered the tomb.
“Cut the chatter and make sure everyone is really dead,” Saburo snapped.
“It looks like they were preparing boarding parties,” Falcone said. “They hadn’t suited up yet. Sting took them down with no warning and killed their biggest offensive force.”
Brad played his light around the compartment and tried to suppress a surge of unholy joy. This was just what they all deserved.
The large area had a few emergency lights, but nothing close to what was needed to see everything clearly. There were dozens of enemy troops there. Lots of weapons, too, including heavy weapons.
“Looks like slavers,” he said. “Pirates wouldn’t have so many guns.”
“I’ve never understood that,” Falcone said as she scanned the compartment. “Why limit yourself to a blade, pistol, and the occasional shotgun when you have frangible rounds?”
“Tradition and risk minimization, I suppose. If we ever capture a live pirate, I’ll ask him.” Fat chance.
They closed the airlock behind them. He didn’t want any potential evidence floating off. Then they headed deeper into the ship. The crew hadn’t fared much better than the boarding party. It seemed they weren’t going to find many live slavers.
“The next section has air,” Saburo said from up front. “We can get through the personnel lock in the pressure door. There might be paying customers after all.”
Saburo sent four of his men through the emergency bulkhead. One of them reported back almost immediately.
“We’re taking fire and advancing. It isn’t too heavy, but mind your heads.”
Brad let the rest of his men go through before he and Falcone advanced. The fighting had pushed farther up the corridor by then. It was weird how he couldn’t hear the shooting until the lock filled with air to carry the noise.
The resistance wasn’t all that bad, but a pistol wielded by a terrified slaver crewman could still kill the toughest mercenary. Saburo took no chances, having his men lay down withering fire until the shooting stopped.
The mercenaries advanced slowly, checking each of the bodies as they passed. The bleeding corpses were mostly men, but a few females filled the slaver ranks. Brad would never understand what could drive people into this kind of sick madness.
That’s when he discovered they’d missed someone in one of the cabins. A woman triggered a mono-blade and came barreling out with a shriek.
He drew his own blade and barely got it up in time, deflecting her slash away from Falcone and into the bulkhead. As much as he hated the idea, he was going to try and take her alive.
The woman wasn’t that skilled, which actually made his defense more dangerous. One never knew what an inexperienced fighter would do next.
Before he could attempt a risky disarm, Falcone shot the woman several times. The slaver collapsed.
“I was going to take her,” he said as he checked the woman. She was dead. Part of him was pleased, but the professional side of him was mildly annoyed.
“Maybe,” Falcone said, holstering her pistol. “Maybe not. Sorry to cut in on your dance, but I’d rather have you alive and uninjured than get a prisoner.”
“No live ones,” Saburo reported a few minutes. “Sorry about missing that one, boss.”
“Don’t stress over it. This looks like crew quarters. A lot of the slavers were probably at duty stations. Maybe we’ll find some up front.”
In fact, they did. Ones with more guns.
The scene reminded him of the slaver attack on Louisiana Rain. The bridge blast doors were partly open, and an unknown number of slavers were crouched behind them. The fight was eerily silent since the attackers had transitioned back into vacuum.
Brad cycled through frequencies on his suit radio until he found the channel the slavers were using. It wasn’t encrypted like the mercenary signals.
He cut over someone shouting for the slavers to keep firing. “This is Captain Brad Madrid of the mercenary frigate Heart of Vengeance. You came looking for us. Here we are. As much as I’d like to shoot every single one of you, I’m calling on you to surrender.”
“Screw you,” the first man shouted. “We’re already dead men. We’ll go down hard, taking you with us.”
With the fusion plants gone, they’d have to do it the old-fashioned way: with guns or blades.
“Perhaps not,” Falcone said. “I am Agent Falcone of the Commonwealth Investigative Agency. If any of you surrenders now and cooperates fully, I’ll see that the death penalty is taken off the table. That offer has a very short shelf life
, so you’d best take it before I change my mind.”
Needless to say, that started quite the argument among the slavers.
While they bickered, Brad switched over to the encrypted frequency. “You’re not really going to let them off, are you?”
He tasted bitter disappointment at the idea. A few prisoners were one thing. There might be a dozen slavers in there. They had to pay.
“There are worse things than death,” she retorted. “I was thinking the lead mines on Mercury.”
He shivered and then smiled. That was where the Commonwealth sent their worst offenders. The living conditions were as good as modern technology could make them, but on those sun-blasted plains, the mining facility was exceedingly dangerous.
Prisoners arrived with a life sentence, and they served it as quickly as one might imagine.
“I’ll wager you don’t mention that up front,” he said dryly, satisfied with the proposed punishment.
“Damn straight. Otherwise, they’d fight to the death for sure.”
It sounded as if the shouting man was losing the argument. His men—for he sounded like their commander—weren’t interested in dying today.
A loud grunt and a curse sounded, and a new voice came on. “We surrender. We’re tossing our guns out.”
Brad watched the weapons come flying over the blast shield. Mostly pistols, a few rifles, one shotgun, a pile of mono-blades, and knives by the score.
Once the flood stopped, Falcone spoke again. “You’d best make sure there aren’t any more weapons. If we find anyone holding out, they get escorted to the nearest airlock.”
Half a dozen additional knives and a pair of pistols came out.
“That’s it. We’re done.”
“Come out one at a time with your hands up,” Brad said. “Move slowly and obey my men.”
A dozen men and one woman walked out of the bridge with their hands up. Saburo and his people quickly searched them for weapons and strapped their hands behind their backs with disposable cuffs.
Brad led the way onto the bridge. It was as much a wreck as the rest of the ship. A single figure in a vacuum suit lay sprawled on the floor. Probably the pirate leader.
To his astonishment, the man was still alive. He had blood on the inside of his helmet, so he wasn’t doing that great. It looked as if someone had shot him in the back and then slapped a patch on his suit. Considerate, that. Or cruel. He couldn’t decide which.
The man was crawling toward the captain’s chair, so it was a good bet he had a weapon concealed there.
Brad planted a boot in the man’s back, eliciting a scream of agony. “Where you going, sport? The party is the other way.”
“Screw you,” the slaver moaned.
“No, screw you. I have some bad news. You didn’t take Agent Falcone’s generous offer, so as ship’s captain I can declare you guilty of piracy. The penalty is death and I can make sure the sentence is carried out right now. It’s up to you to convince me otherwise.”
Falcone held up a pistol. “Look what I found stashed in the armrest. Naughty man.”
She squatted near the slaver. “I’d love to help you out here, but Captain Madrid is absolutely right. You’re going to have to do some damned fast talking to avoid the airlock. If, of course, you don’t just bleed out first.”
“I’ll never tell you squat.”
“Saburo, escort Captain Fancy Pants to the forward airlock,” Brad said. “I could just pull his helmet off, but I’m feeling traditional today.”
“Yes, sir.”
The wiry mercenary and two of his men hoisted the wounded slaver to his feet, secured him with disposable cuffs, and dragged him forward. It wasn’t far. They could still see the other prisoners from beside the airlock.
Part of this charade made him a little sick to his stomach in spite of the burning hatred trying to eat its way out of him. Sending him Dutchman might be satisfying, but if he did, he’d be the one that had to live with doing so for the rest of his life. A sobering thought.
As a slaver officer, he would know useful things. Even if he didn’t talk, the others would be able to hear everything the three of them said over their radios. This would be a good time to be instructive.
Brad shoved the prisoner into the airlock and Falcone trailed them.
Once the three of them were inside, he closed the inner hatch and brought the pressure up. Then he removed the slaver’s helmet and his own. If he was going to do this, he wanted the other man to see the face of his executioner.
The brawny man was heavily bearded and he had a scar running across his nose. Blood dripped from his lips. The shot to his back must’ve clipped a lung. The wet sound of his breathing confirmed that.
“The only question now is whether I jettison you with your helmet on or off,” Brad said coldly. “Convince me to leave it off and this is over quick. Be an ass and I put it on and leave your hands cuffed while I send you out to die slowly. Be particularly troublesome and I’ll add some extra air to your suit first.”
The man looked as if he wanted to spit in his face, so Brad turned him around to face the outer door.
“Look out the port,” he said softly. “That’s the last thing you’re going to see. Do you want to do that for hours or seconds?”
The man hyperventilated a bit before he shook his head. “I can pay for my life.”
“Your money is no good here.”
“Data! I have information on the slaver leadership that those traitors don’t.”
“The fact you call them traitors means we can’t trust a thing you tell us,” Falcone said coolly. “You’ll say anything at all to save your skin but lie about the important parts.”
“Tell me why you’re chasing me,” Brad said. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“The leadership put a price on your head,” the man said tiredly. “A million credits for the verified destruction of your ship. We have ears in Fleet. We knew you’d be heading for Io today. Hell, we came running once we heard you was on Mars.”
“What’s so important about my ship?”
The man shrugged. “Nobody said. It used to be one of ours, so I was thinking it was just revenge.”
No way. Not for a million credits.
“I’m not hearing any information worth your life,” he said after a moment. “You better reach deeper.”
“I came from a meeting where our leadership talked with the Cadre. The Terror was there. It was a big deal.”
“Where was the meeting held?” Falcone asked.
“Deep space. We brought the bigger ships together to talk strategy. The Terror wants us to up our activity around Mars. That’s why we were so close.”
One question answered, though the information raised new ones. “What exactly did they discuss?” he asked.
“Can’t say. I wasn’t at the table.”
“This is a lot of nonsense,” Falcone said. “You’re holding out on us.”
“I’m still the only slaver commander you’ve captured. You’re not going to kill me.” He sounded smug.
“Put your helmet on,” she told Brad. “I’m bleeding off the atmosphere.”
Sure she was bluffing, he resealed his helmet.
Falcone reached over to the airlock controls and started dropping the pressure slowly. “Before it gets so you can’t hear us, you should know that I’m only stopping if you give me a base location.”
The man laughed wetly. “The leadership don’t trust the likes of us with base locations. They have pilots that meet up with us and take us where we need to go. Same for the Cadre.”
That complicated matters. Brad wondered how they’d ever locate the major bases without getting their hands on a pilot with the coordinates.
The man coughed again and spat up a little more blood. “Wait,” he gasped. “I have some hardcopy in my safe.”
“Once again, we could have guessed that,” Falcone said. “One last try. Tell me something worth my time or we say goodbye.”
“There’s a boss on Ganymede.”
She reached out and reversed the pressure. Air flooded back into the lock.
“Finally, you begin to interest me. Tell me about him.”
The slaver coughed and spat up more blood as he gasped. “I saw him at the meeting. More of an ass than most. Sneered at everyone. The leadership acted like he was somebody important.”
“That’s pretty generic,” Brad said. “Details.”
“He runs a spaceship company. I think his name was Dean. Only saw him for a minute before they whisked him into the meeting. I wasn’t even supposed to see that much.”
Brad felt his lungs freeze. “Astro Transport?”
The man straightened. “Yeah. Dean with Astro. That’s the guy.”
“Tall guy, big muscles? Long brown hair?” That was completely the opposite of the short, balding, red-faced Breen whom Brad had met on Ganymede.
The slaver shook his head. “Not even close. Kinda short with very little hair. Big voice, though.”
“Just checking.”
That was far more confirmation of Breen’s identity than Brad had ever expected to get. The fact the weasel was a slaver boss stunned him. The man was right there in plain sight. And he’d gone after one of his own liners. Why?
He and Falcone kept pushing the slaver, but it became clear that he didn’t have any other world-shaking information.
“I think we’re done here,” she told Brad. “Let’s wrap this up.”
She then reached over to the control panel and blew the outer lock. It flew open and sent the helmetless slaver tumbling into the void with a rapidly expanding puff of air.
Brad might have followed the suddenly dead man if she hadn’t grabbed him tight. He started to say something, but she made a slashing gesture across her throat.
“Use the encrypted channel,” she said on that frequency. “I don’t want the prisoners hearing this.”
It took him a few fumbling moments to change over. “Why did you do that?”
Part of him—the dark demon in his gut—gloried in the man’s death. The tattered remains of the young man he’d been quailed at what had just happened.