My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire

by Colin Alexander

  “Now!” I shouted.

  Fire from the door forced the Imperial at the boat to duck, and four of us broke for the control station. Too late, we discovered that there was a third defender in the bay. Situated on the far right of the bay he was in perfect position to enfilade us, and he held his fire until we were in the open. Our first warning was a bolt that dropped the trailing Srihani. Ruoni and I dove for the shelter of the console, but our fourth spun around to return the fire and was blasted down.

  The bay’s control console gave us cover from the fire on our flank and a chance to shoot back. Crouched at one end of the horseshoe console, Ruoni fired at the enemy by the boat. I took a similar position at the other end and shot at the one who had ambushed us.

  They were also firing at us, but aside from an increasing tang in the air, there was no effect either way. Despite our numeric advantage, our position was not good. The rear of the boat’s cradle, which sheltered one Imperial, was so constructed that he could fire at the console without exposing himself to my crew at the doorway. Those two were also unable to get a good shot at the Imperial across the bay without exposing themselves. That made it impossible for them to provide us with any effective covering fire. It looked like a stalemate, unless someone scored with a lucky shot.

  “Command, I saw the control settings when we ran over here. I think I can open the bay doors.”

  I looked across the console at Ruoni. “Do that and you’ll be exposed to both of them.”

  He said nothing in reply. I yielded to the inevitable, and asked him to wait for a moment. At least, I could improve the odds. I signaled Andrave and the other Srihani at the door to fire at the Imperial across the bay when I opened up on the one by the boat.

  “Now!” I screamed, firing from beside the console. I could hear blaster fire from the doorway at the same time.

  An instant after our shots, Ruoni jumped up to set the controls. There was more blaster fire and then a scream. Ruoni fell to the deck next to me, writhing in pain.

  “Where are you hit, Ruoni?” I yelled, forgetting convention.

  “Left shoulder,” he gasped. “The doors! Are the bay doors open?”

  I first looked down at his shoulder. It was an odd wound. He must have been ducking just as he was hit. The beam had caught him over the top of the shoulder and charred a crooked furrow into the upper edge of his scapula. The shape of the cut prevented the self-sealing suit from closing. Somewhere, a siren was shrieking as the air was pumped out of the bay. I slapped a patch over the hole in Ruoni’s suit. Its edges immediately melted into the fabric to establish a spaceworthy seal. When I looked up, the doors at the far end of the bay were swinging open. Beyond them, framed in the opening, was our landing boat. It was farther away than I remembered from our trip to the cruiser. In all likelihood, we hadn’t been completely at rest relative to the Imperial ship. I didn’t expect the bay’s decompression to finish our opponents. They were certain to be as well suited up as we were. Having the boat available gave me a different idea.

  “Landing Boat Pilot, this is Command. Acknowledge.” It took several attempts before Andrave worked out a patch to circumvent the smashed comm on the boat.

  “This is Pilot, Boat Four responding,” came Cardoni’s voice at last.

  “Can you land the boat in the bay?” I asked.

  “No, Command. I might be able to land the boat in an empty bay, but with the Imperial boat there I’m not sure there is enough space. I know I can’t bring it in cleanly.”

  “Do it anyway,” I said flatly.

  “At your order, Command.”

  Peering around the console, I could see a flare fan out in a circle behind the boat as Cardoni used the engine. The boat loomed large as it approached the door. Christ! I thought. It was way too big. No matter how skilled the pilot, there was no chance of fitting it in beside the Imperial boat. Obedient to my order, however, Cardoni brought it in anyway.

  There was a hypnotic quality to the scene as the boat settled into the bay. I stared for what seemed an hour, transfixed as the boat slowly settled toward the deck. Then the boat sideswiped the craft berthed there. The left wing of the landing boat caught the bow of the Imperial. The collision ripped the wing halfway off, then twisted it up ninety degrees. The hull lurched and struck the wall of the bay. The wall buckled under the blow, but it held. True to the laws of physics, the boat rebounded from the collision and back into the bay. Meanwhile, the Imperial boat, nose smashed in, tottered on its cradle. The landing boat skidded across the deck as it bounced away from the wall and struck the supporting cradle. That was more than the structure could take. It collapsed, dropping the Imperial boat to the deck, and partly on top of our boat. The jolt knocked me flat.

  When I lifted my head again, the bay looked like a junkyard. Bits and pieces of spaceship were strewn everywhere. Tons of smashed spaceship covered the position of the Imperial who had been hiding by the boat. What a novel way to take out a sniper. Drop a loaded spaceship on him! Then I realized someone was yelling into my earphone.

  “I yield! I surrender!”

  I looked up and saw that it was the Imperial across the bay. He was on his feet, arms away from his body, hands empty.

  It took a while to sort out the mess. Andrave and Jonorosso, the other Srihani at the airlock, were unhurt. Ruoni was alive but needed medical attention despite all his protestations. The patch had fixed the tear in his suit but it had done nothing for the wound underneath. The boat was in worse shape. The crash had so disrupted the structure of the ship that many of the personnel racks had been torn from their mountings. They had been flung, crew and all, back and forth in the ship. Those without the racks had even less protection, and many of them were dead. All told, only a half dozen of the crew I had taken off the Flower were still able to fight. I’m sure Cardoni would have said “I told you so,” but he was unconscious, so it would have to wait.

  At last, I marshaled my band of nine. Since the automatics had not survived the boat’s landing either, we hand-cranked the inner airlock door open. The corridors were almost empty, with only two brief exchanges of fire marking our progress toward the bridge. Then, quite suddenly, Andrave put up his hand.

  “Listen to this!” He fed the signal through to all of us.

  “Attention Imperials! Your ship is under the control of freebooter Danny a Troy. The bridge is taken and all command line officers are dead. One opportunity will be given for surrender.”

  Jaenna’s force had done it. They had taken the ship.

  Chapter 13

  The bridge of the Heavenly Blossom (so help me, that was the name) was huge compared to the bridge on the Flower. The basics were similar, of course, but where Flower made do with a single Fire Control position, the cruiser had a bank of them. Likewise, for the support and analytical sections. The computer made the one on the Flower look like an abacus.

  There were blaster scorches everywhere I looked. There was also a lot of blood—the Imperial bridge crew had fought to the death—but most important to me, leaning on the navigation console and staring at the image of Flower on the cruiser’s screen …

  “Jaenna!”

  She turned. “Danny! You’re here!” There was no mistaking the happiness in her voice. “When we took the bridge, we tried to raise the ship, but we couldn’t get an answer.”

  “It was pretty close,” I admitted. “I brought the able-bodied crew over in the landing boat. Only dead and wounded left on Flower now. We’ll have to send a rescue party. I take it things went well here.”

  “It was fantastic!” Her face lit up as she told me about the fight for the cruiser. “Haranyi always said his tactics would work and they did. The Imperials fought hard, very hard, but they’re not accustomed to this and they couldn’t adjust fast enough.”

  At first, I was caught up in her enthusiasm; it was so infectious. But there was something wrong about the conversation. It sounded like a postgame interview, but we weren’t standing in a locker room peelin
g off tape and pads. There were dead and dying scattered all through both ships. To be excited about it seemed perverted. I turned away from her, toward the screen, wondering if I was just plain weak.

  “What’s wrong, Danny?”

  I shook my head. “We can talk about it later.”

  I was watching the Flower on the screen when, suddenly, it disappeared into a fireball before my eyes. Gone in an instant. Jaenna’s eyes followed mine to the screen.

  “Oh Danny, your ship. I’m so sorry.” When I made no reply, she said, “I’ll see that this ship is secured,” and went off to do it.

  I didn’t want to do anything. It was as though my feet had been welded to the deck, and my eyes were fixed on the screen long after the flash had faded to a faintly glowing cloud. There were no answers to the question of why it had happened. There had been no fire from the cruiser then, but the Flower had been badly battered. Maybe it had only been a matter of time before her engines detonated. Should I have foreseen it? Even if I had, what could I have done differently, other than stay with the crew that could not make it to the boat? Such thinking served no useful purpose, but it occupied my mind to the exclusion of all else.

  Since I was a pirate captain on a captured ship, events didn’t let me stay preoccupied for very long. The first interruption was a bellow from behind me.

  “Hey, Cap’n Danny! We got a problem here.”

  I turned around to see what trouble Angel had found. He had a youngish Srihani in the uniform of an Imperial officer in tow. He planted the Imperial right in front of me and stood just behind him, maintaining a firm grip on the Srihani’s upper arm.

  “Danny, this here piece of shit is called Ferens a Lynnar. Seems to be a junior bridge officer.”

  From the youth’s uniform, Angel was right about his position, although I thought that all of the line officers had been killed. The huge purplish bruises over Ferens’ right cheek and temple explained his survival. He had been unconscious while the heaviest fighting had raged.

  “So,” I asked Angel, “what’s the problem?”

  Ferens answered that himself. “I told him and I will tell you. I will not join you and I spit on your parole and I spit on you!” Physically, he did it right after he said it, just in case there was any doubt about his meaning. “The son of a squadron commander knows his duty!”

  The words were barely out of his mouth before I saw blasters coming out of holsters all around the bridge. The weapons had nothing to do with the blood-tinged gob of spittle that adorned my chest. They were more concerned with the word “parole.” Angel was right. We had a problem.

  Through centuries of faction fights, the kvenningari had evolved a simple system for dealing with prisoners of war. Holding them was out of the question. To do so would have given the lie to the fiction that the empire was at peace. In addition, the fighting had become so much a part of everyday life that no one saw a way for it to end. Holding prisoners through a perpetual war would have been impractical and would have complicated the frequent shifts in alliances the kvenningari practiced. It was better to let a prisoner choose between shifting allegiances himself, or to retire to civilian life. Freebooters followed a variation of the practice, as witnessed by Carvalho’s treatment of Flower’s crew.

  The only alternative to changing sides or parole—just going home—was death. Ferens believed his duty was to force us to kill him, and therein lay our problem. The young Srihani was the last surviving bridge officer, the only survivor in the ship’s command line. By setting an example, he was hoping to compel the other surviving Imperials to join his martyrdom. Not all of them would, I was sure, but I was just as sure there would be a good number who would. Once word got out that we had executed them, Christ, we would have half the Fleet hunting us, bent on revenge. All it took was a look at Ferens’ eyes to know that he was counting on that. By his death, he would ensure that we died as well. To an Imperial, I guess, that made sense. If I followed custom, there was no way out.

  “I don’t recall offering parole,” I said.

  Now, I saw surprise, not just in Ferens but in my would-be firing squad as well. The Srihani hated being bumped out of their customary rituals. The blasters didn’t go down, but there was no shooting either.

  “You would shoot me without offering parole?” His smile—more of a sneer—was back. “Go ahead then, the result is the same.”

  Ferens was so set on dying honorably that he had missed my point.

  “Not at all. There was no offer of parole, so you can’t refuse it and compel me to kill you. You can join us if you want, but otherwise you are free to go, or you will be as soon as we can set you down on a planet.”

  Ferens had the look of someone who senses a trap. His voice, however, was all hauteur. “You realize, freebooter, that without parole if I ever get another ship, I will come after you when I can.”

  I shrugged. “You would anyway. Or your father would, if he really is a squadron commander. The empire, I’m sure, would hold that parole given to a freebooter does not have to be honored. So, why bother? But you won’t have the Fleet hunting us to avenge a crew that surrendered and went free.”

  That was just a guess, but it made sense. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for Ferens to provoke a massacre. All at once, he exploded. Kicking and flailing his arms, he screamed as he went for me. Fortunately, Angel still had a grip on him. That gave me the half second I needed to shield my face. Then three more of my crew piled onto him and held him fast on the floor.

  “Ferens, ask your father, when you see him, whether he would rather have you dead if all he got for it was one destroyed freebooter.”

  “I know the answer to that, scum.” He tried to spit at me again, a difficult task since he was flat on his back.

  “Ask him anyway. I’d like to hear the answer.” Then I told Angel to find a cabin and lock Ferens into it. The sooner I could unload him, the better.

  My dealings with the Imperials didn’t end there. While I had been busy with Ferens, Andrave got the in-ship communications running again.

  “Captain Danny,” he called as soon as Angel had escorted Ferens out, “Engineering reports that the surviving Imperials there will join us. That includes surviving officers. Full power is now available.”

  “Great.” That was one bit of very good news. Obviously, many of the Imperials were more pragmatic than the way the uncompromising party line that Ferens spouted made it appear. “See if you can find someone who can handle the Helm and Navigation positions and have them bring us in-system.” I looked back at the screen for a moment. It showed only stars. I would have needed to use the instruments to find any evidence that the Flower had ever existed.

  While Andrave was busy trying to find crew to fill the critical open slots, I headed off to where many of both crews were probably located: the medical unit. The place was jammed. Every bed, every seat, in the ward was taken and a good part of the corridor space outside. Fortunately, the Imperial medical personnel were available and willing to work (they ultimately joined us, too). That was another stroke of luck, because our only doc had stayed on the Flower with the wounded.

  The medical staff had good equipment to work with, no question about that. Any Earthside doctor would have signed away his right arm for any of the instruments in that ward. Blast burns, as well as other penetrating wounds, were dealt with by the physician using what looked like a robotic jellyfish. One of them was suspended from the ceiling over each bed and could be lowered over whatever portion of the patient needed work. Once over the wound, a bevy of fine tentacles dipped into the wound. They fed information back to the physician at the bedside via an interactive helmet that he wore. A small control panel at the side of the bed allowed him to control the activity of other tentacles that carried out the repairs. I saw no drapes or scrubbing. The apparatus projected a sterilizing field that removed the need for any special surgical preparation. The problem was that there were far fewer units than there were people in need of them.<
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  I met Ruoni coming out of the medical ward. He held his shoulder stiffly, but otherwise seemed as good as new. Since he claimed to be ready and eager to return to work, I sent him back to the bridge. He probably would have gone there regardless of what I said, and Andrave certainly needed his help.

  Cardoni was still in the medical unit. The funny way his arm had dangled earlier was apparently the result of a fractured humerus. The rig they’d fitted onto him was interesting. There was no cast, only a light plastic sheath holding the arm in one position. At the site of the break, two parallel metal rings were fastened. From each, a score of wires ran radially into the arm. The doc told me, when I asked, that some supplied a series of growth factors, others a small electrical current. The device would promote union and good callus formation in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and complete healing after about two more days.

  “The problem I have,” he said, “is that there are enough fractures to fill a clinic. No ship would stock that many bone-growth promoters, so some of them are going to have to make do with simple immobilization until the others heal and free up the units.”

  I nodded. It was as reasonable a plan as could be made.

  “There is another problem,” he continued. “There are far more blaster wounds than we are equipped to care for. This unit was designed to treat the type of injuries we see in ship-to-ship actions, not ground actions. The work takes time and I don’t have enough treatment units, or skilled personnel even if I had the units, to treat them all now. Some of them are going to have to wait.”

  The doctor’s problem confirmed Jaenna’s comment that the Imperials didn’t customarily use strike forces in ship actions. They were not equipped to handle a large number of Srihani who had had high-energy beams drilled through various parts of their anatomy.