“The XR2 Patrol Craft were originally fitted with twin heavy blaster cannon on a top mounted turret and a forward mounted ion cannon used in disabling ships for boarding. It usual has a crew of two and two gunners with cabin space for an additional 4 crew, to allow them to run shifts.”
“The information the Imperium has on the pirates XR2, suggest that it has similar weapons. And has had little in the way of modification outside a few hull patches.”
“Either of these ships could be flown by one pilot in a pinch.” said Samantha.
“For the next few days, can we train with these two ships as models?”
“Intelecom would charge 200 game credits for upgrading your training room to include two ships.” said Samantha.
“Well, that’s a first. Why haven’t I been charged for anything else so far?”
“Your virtual home was at the limit of the package provided for Gold level accounts. There was no charge, because of the level of account the alpha group is testing out. Most other accounts will not include a training room, except at the gold level, without paying for it in credits.” said Samantha.
“I’m not sure what to think about that. Just another angle to get people to pay the higher subscription price I guess.”
“Ok, Sam, let’s do it. I’ll be almost broke, but knowing the ships might come in handy. What will that leave me, 116 credits left right? Well, I’ll only need 3 credits for the next psionic training session and a few credits of expenses like food… I’ll be fine. I’ll receive my first pay from the gun shop on Friday if all else fails.”
“Ok, Samantha, let’s get to work…”
***
The next couple days, until the scheduled meeting at the lawyer’s, were uneventful.
The attempt to trace the pirates by comms failed, leaving them with the plan to try using a mock data-cube to find the gang.
For Drake, he spent his time at the gun shop, in his training room, and attending the Tuesday psionic training, which brought him just a little more progress… He needed more time to dedicate to training. But having so many different things he was trying to learn made him feel like it was all taking too long.
The morning of Wednesday, before going to work, Drake asked Samantha about how he was progressing with his physical training.
“You have been improving some with every training session, but with working you’re not progressing as fast as I would like Kevin.” replied Samantha.
Samantha brought up a blue screen for Kevin to examine:
Name: Horatio Drake
Race: Human
Hit Points: 170
Combat Level: 1.5
Strength: 1.6 (max 3.5)
Charisma: 1.9 (max 3.5)
Agility: 1.5 (max 3.6)
Intelligence: 2.0 (max 3.7)
Dexterity: 1.3 (max 3.5)
Wisdom: 1.2 (max 3.5)
Constitution: 1.7 (max 3.5)
Memory: 2.3 (max 3.7)
Maximum values are based on personal genetics.
When Wednesday afternoon finally arrived Drake met with Apapetux at 5:15 pm in a meeting room in the Guild Hall, for a final mission brief before he would go meet with the pirates attorney.
Chapter 19 – Wrapped up in Business
This time, Apapetux had reserved a small meeting room on the first floor of the large Guild Hall, and he was alone waiting for Drake to arrive.
“Where are the rest of the team?”
“They are all in locations near to the Lawyers office, ready to either spring a trap or follow the cube,” said Apapetux. “Hand me your right bracer for a second.”
Drake removed the right bracer and handed it to Apapetux, who pinched open a section of a seam of the bracer and inserted a little disk.
“What was that?”
“Do you mean the hidden compartment in the bracer or the tracker?”
“Both.”
“Well, when we took down the previous owner of this set of armor, we discovered that he used the right bracer to hide important small objects like credit chits. At least we found one inside the armor later. So today we’re using the same spot to hide this tracer. If something goes wrong, we can use it to track you.”
“The datacube we replicated also has a tracker that will lie dormant until someone tries to break the encryption. Sid analyzed the encryption on the original data cube, and we found the software type that was used to encode it. So even if they check the cube, it will have the right type and size of file as the original. Put since we did not have time to crack the original we don’t know what its password was, so the pirates will not be able to actually access the data. The data is just junk anyway.”
“So now we can track you, and the mock data-cube.”
Drake nodded, “Ok, by the way, I understand that this gang has two ships, do you know which one might have the data about Sid’s sister?”
“No we don’t, so we will want both ships. We need to get them soon too. Today we got word that a Navy destroyer just came out of hyper, and they should be nearing the planet soon. We think they might be looking for the same gang, but they may be just heading out for a sweep of the nearby stars for all we know.”
“I think your right; they may be looking for this gang.”
“Anyway, we have a lead, and we need to move fast… Ready? The plan is for you to take a cab to the office. I need to go now to be ready nearby. Good luck bate-man.” Apapetux said with a grin.
Drake had Samantha request a cab to meet him at the front of the Guild Hall.
On leaving the Guild Hall… something struck him from behind, his helmet absorbed most of the blow but left Drake stunned for just a moment, just long enough for something to be injected into his neck.
Drake’s world went black; he was floating in a sea of confusion and barely heard voices. The only voice his confused brain thought it recognized, was the man Drake had a fight with a few days ago, over a training mat in the Guild Hall… the one called Brice?
Drake seemed to drift on the edge of blackness, going in and out of conciseness, until he finally woke up.
He was alone in a small metal room… or cabin? His wrists and ankles secured by rope and his armor had been removed. In fact, he was wearing nothing but his underwear.
Now that he was awake, he tried to puzzle out what happened. The last thing he could remember clearly was walking out of the Guild Hall to a waiting cab. After that nothing was clear. Based on the bits he could piece together, that ass munch, Brice was somehow involved. Could he be part of the gang of pirates? He wasn’t one of the people on Drake’s list. Or maybe he was a new member?
He was tied to the bottom bed of a metal framed bunk bed. Laying facing up with each arm tied to each side of the bed frame, and each of his legs tied to either side of the bed frame at the foot of the bed.
With his hands so far apart, there was no way he could untie himself. He felt exposed and helpless lying on a bed nearly naked this way wearing only his underwear. Having people seeing him naked might not bother Drake, but being tied down this way certainly did. Were these pirates some kind of perverts? Sure, they probably tied him like this as the best way to make sure he didn’t escape, but he wondered for a minute how many women had they tied up the same way for an altogether different purpose?
Drake looked around the room, trying the find anything that might help him out of this mess. Hopefully, Apapetux and his team would be there soon. But this was not going to plan… What was the range on those trackers anyway? He forgot to ask.
He couldn’t depend on someone else to help him. He needed to find his own solution.
The room was furnished with just the bunk bed on one side of the room and two desks and chairs on the far side, with a pair of closets between them. His armor and weapons must be somewhere else.
After a careful look around the room, Drake thought he recognized some of the features as those belonging to the XR2 Scout Craft that the pirates were said to have. The way the metal bulkheads were fitted
together and the general arrangement of the floor plan, was nearly the same as one of the lower deck crew cabins of the XR2 that he had been practicing in for the last few days. If so there might be as many as 8 people aboard.
After a few minutes of waiting, the door hissed opened, and Brice appeared in the entrance. He leaned against one side of the doorway and leered at Drake.
“You think you're soothing special, huh pretty boy? Well, your nutten, sure yuh got a sucher punch in yaeah, but I gotcha I did.”
It was clear to Drake at this point that Brice was drunk, and slurring his words.
“They says your fur te boss, and I got to let cha be, but I’m smarter than them. Coldent go back ta base tey say, navee in the way. So I’s got time to play, yes. Slipped em a michy and passt it around make sure tey all had enough. Noow is juss te two ov us.”
He walked toward Drake waving a knife he had hidden until now. As Brice moved from the door, and it hissed shut.
“She tis?”
He grabbed hold of the top bunk for support, and then sat at the left side edge of the bottom bed, next to Drake.
Brice then waved the knife in front of Drake.
It looked like a standard combat knife to him.
“Aye, gud cut chur eyes out. Or ya could loos sompen spessial,” said Brice as he slowly dragged the knife down Drake’s chest, down past his stomach to rest lightly just below his balls.
“You cosht my gilt mem-bersip show I tink you shoud hav tu pay.”
He then cut away both sides of Drake’s underwear leaving him completely exposed, while making some small cuts and scrapes on the way. Drake wanted to yell for help, but from the sound of things Brice drugged the rest of the group they sent to capture him. And he didn’t want any parts cut off with that knife waving around his privates.
“But they shay yous belong to ta bossh. But cha be purty anough that I can think anouter way fur you ta pay, I’s usally perfur girls shinse tey squeal show well. But cha I gotta show you hoos boss.”
Brice then moved the knife down to Drake’s left leg and cut the rope. Then he looked confused like he forgot something. He put the knife down on the end of the bed and picked up Drake’s leg with both hands.
Drake was certain from the sound of the man’s speech that he was a rapist, he might prefer girls, but he seemed not to draw a line at either sex. And he seemed bent on raping Drake, to establish his twisted sense of dominance. But it seemed the way that the bonds and bed were set up confused his drunken mind.
As Brice tried to move Drake’s leg over to expose his backside, Drake pulled the leg up in a sudden move that pulled Brice over across the bed. With a thunk sound, his head hit the cabin bulkhead, stunning Brice and causing him to lose his grip on Drake’s leg for a moment.
At this point, Brice’s head and shoulders lay across Drake’s left leg, and his right leg was free. With Brice momentarily stunned. Drake wrapped his right leg around Brice’s neck and hooked his right foot around his other leg, then squeezed down on Brice’s neck for all he was worth. This seemed to bring Brice out of his shock, and his panic seemed to bring him some sense. He moved his left arm around as if looking for the knife. Then in panic Brice started punching at Drake while twisting trying to get free.
If he had been more sober, Drake would never have had a chance. But Drake held on, focusing all his strength into squeezing his legs shut. Drake used all the fear and anger at what this man planned and poured it into this one task. Drake didn’t notice when Brice stopped moving, but after some time he became aware of the fact. His legs were getting tired from this unusual use of his muscles. But Drake kept squeezing his legs together for a couple more minutes just to be sure that the man was dead.
After Drake let his legs relax… he stopped moving for a second. He desperately wanted to kick this dead rapist fucker off the bed. But he made himself stop to think.
He needed to get loose. And there was a knife somewhere, where was it? He carefully used his free foot to feel around the bottom of the bed for the knife. He found it at the edge of the bed. If he had kicked the body to the floor, there was a good chance he would have been fucked.
Now he had to figure out what to do with it. Fortunately, he was pretty tall, at 1.8 meters he just barely fit on a normal bed. So even with his arms and leg tied, he could almost reach the ropes around his wrist with his teeth. But any knots were on the far side, and he couldn’t bite through the rope, so without a knife, he couldn’t get free.
He pushed the knife under his left leg, away from the edge of the bed, and then kicked the body to the floor.
The next part took a lot of time and moving around, but he managed to get the knife handle between his teeth. He didn’t want to imagine where the sweaty, salty knife handle might have been. He tried to just focus on cutting his left hand free. It seemed the easiest to reach for some reason.
After creating a few self-inflicted wounds, he finally managed to cut through the rope and free his left hand. He was free from the rest of the rope in seconds…
What now? He had one dead rapist and would-be pirate.
Had he said the rest were drugged?
Drake didn’t like the idea of running around a Pirates’ ship with his pecker waving around. So he first looked in the two crew closets for something to wear.
He was in luck one had blue overalls hanging from a clip that was a near fit… a little loose around the middle, but he would have to get his own gear back.
Drake looked over Brice’s body. No other weapons, just the knife. He took the belt and knife sheath off the body and put them on.
With the knife in hand, he left the cabin. There were no people in any of the crew quarters on the bottom deck.
Drake climbed the ladder to the second deck. Knowing the layout, he moved slowly up the ladder since it came up in the main lounge of the small space ship.
There were three men passed out in the saloon, one of the men was a Dwarf.
Drake was pretty sure a room on a ship where people can sit together and talk was called a saloon, anyway. He felt like calling it a living room but knew that wasn’t the right term to use on a ship.
One of the men was wearing a blaster that looked just like his… it was his heavy blaster… Drake held the knife near the sleeping man’s throat then he carefully drew his blaster out of the sheath.
He then quietly searched the rest of the ship.
There was one other man half sprawled over the large bed in the Captain’s cabin, he found his armor in the there too.
He carefully pulled the door closed; then he put on Samantha’s bracer. While pointing his gun at the man on the bed, he whispered to Samantha. “Hey, Sam, good to see you. Any chance you can get a signal out?”
“No, they jammed my signal and sensors just a fraction of a second before you went down. They then pulled you into a van. The whole capture was over in three seconds, and I was jammed. I haven’t been able to get a signal since we’ve been out here, even though the jammer is off now.” said Samantha
“You can’t connect through the ship?” asked Drake
“I’m not part of an authorized group.” Answer Samantha.
“Does this type of ship have a key, like the shuttle?” asked Drake.
“See if anyone has a black flat card, about four centimeters by six.”
“I think I should first finish searching the ship and then secure these… men,” said Drake.
So Brice was telling the truth, he did drug the crew. Drake could imagine that there were more of them outside, and there was no telling if the rest would stay passed out.
Drake ducked into the engineering area searching for duct tape.
He was starting to get worried that he might have to fall back on plan B when he finally found three rolls of tape in a little storage room off of engineering.
He started with the man in the Captain’s cabin. He first removed any weapons he could find, and then he taped his legs together, and finished by taping his arms behind his
back.
Then Drake searched the cabin and found a large bag for carrying clothes and tossed the weapons he’d so far discovered in it.
He realized that this was a poor solution since there could be a thousand places either in this room or on his body that a knife or other weapon could be hiding.
Drake made a search of the man who he thought might be the Captain’s body and found a black card in one of his pockets, which he hoped would work for the ship.
Before tending to the three men in the saloon, Drake went to the bridge and inserted the card key into a slot near the left pilot’s chair.
With the card in place, he had Samantha override any ship security and lock the ship down to just the two of them. Then he had her call Apapetux and tell him to get his ass over to this ship.
“He says they’re on their way,” replied Samantha. “Now that I have access to the ships systems I have been able to determine our position and relayed the coordinates to Apapetux. He says it will take about 45 to 50 minutes for his team to get here, and he hopes you’re still alive by then.”
“Fuck, 45 minutes. Well, they sure have been a lot of help so far,” said Drake
When he returned to the saloon, he only found two people passed out. Then he heard a noise coming from down the passageway toward the head. It sounded like someone was being sick to their stomach and cursing between throwing up. Drake kept an ear out on the man in the head. While he collected all the weapons he could find and added them to the bag he was carrying around. Then he walked past the head into the kitchen around the corner and waited for the active pirate to come out of the head.
After a few minutes, the man half stumbled out of the head and turned away from Drake to head back into the saloon. Drake had his blaster pointing at the man’s back. In a firm but quiet voice, Drake said. “Don’t move or I’ll…”
The man didn’t wait for Drake to finish. He started to spin like he was going to hit or kick at someone behind him.
Drake did not wait to find out what he was doing. Being only two meters away, his finger on the trigger, and his blaster targeting the man’s center of mass, he didn’t miss. As soon as Drake recognized the sudden movement, he fired the blaster, but the first shot hit the man in the arm. The force of the shot, to the arm of the drunken spinning man, was enough to knock him off balance and stumbling backward. But Drake had been training on targets for a couple weeks in-game that required two shots to put them down. So without even thinking he shot the down man a second time, this time in the chest.
Omnia Online (Omnia Online Series Book 1) Page 16