Drake had no idea what the Marine was signaling but figured it was his turn. So staying low, and with his camo system on, he rounded the edge of the hatch pointing his carbine in front of him as he moved.
The body of what Drake imagined was the man shooting at the Marine was on the ground, missing a head. Drake ignored the blood and looked for more people.
Drake slowly rounded the ships reactor. Drake spotted a man coming out of the shadows just as the man seemed to recognize the blur that was Drake as a man. Drake had his carbine pointed ahead nearly dead on target.
The man seeing Drake’s carbine pointing right at him and the blood behind him put his hands up and away from the gun on his belt.
Drake directed the man to go out the engineering hatch into the cargo bay. Once there he turned the man over to the Marines who secured his weapon then put binders on him.
Drake returned to engineering, but could find no more people.
At this point, Drake wanted to enter the crew quarters from the back side, where they connected to engineering. But he decided to first talk to Apapetux.
“Apapetux, just cleared engineering, how are you doing?”
“We’re having trouble opening the crew quarters from the cargo bay side. My plan is to secure the crew spaces, then head to the bridge. The Marines are keeping the cargo bay and the passage leading to the bridge covered. So, can you pick a lock, just kidding, Tredido is my lock expert, and he says they jammed it from the far side. What do you think? We all go in from engineering?” asked Apapetux.
“How about you send Tredido to me, for the det-tape I’m carrying, and you blow the hatch? Then I go in through engineering, and after a second, when they start turning my way, you hit them from your side.”
Apapetux seemed to like that plan. So Tredido took Drake’s explosives and Drake waited by the back door.
After a few minutes, he heard Apapetux’s question over the comms; “Ready?”
Drake and Tredido both answered; “Ready.”
Then there was a slightly muffled explosion. Drake thought they may have used too much of the tape. Then he palmed his door open and entered pointing his carbine ahead.
There was no one in the galley.
Drake said, “Galley clear.”
In the next room, there were two people struggling, on the floor, of the head. They were both wet and naked. One was a middle-sized man, and the other was a young female, maybe fifteen years old, with black hair. The girl’s cries and grunting sounds were more like those of an injured animal than those of passion. Then the man rolled off the girl, revealing her naked body. She might have looked attractive without all the bruising, including those around her upper thighs. When the man started to raise his hands, Drake took that to be enough of a threat and shot the man in the head…twice.
There were clothes on the floor.
Drake said to the girl “I’m here to rescue you, get dressed.”, and then he left the room to watch the passage to the crew sleeping area.
“Drake called in over the comm. Head clear, one pirate down, one possible captive. I’ll need to escort her out.”
Apapetux said, “Hold in place, we’re moving in now.”
Then Drake heard some blaster fire coming from ahead down the corridor, so he got on a knee and took aim down the passage.
Then he heard Apapetux, “Crew room clear, one dead. We have five females, assume they’re captives. Heading your way as soon as we get these women dressed. It looks like the bastards didn’t allow them any clothing. So they’ll have to make do with the men’s clothes and sheets.”
Drake stood up, but still held his gun at the ready.
After a couple minutes, the door to the head opened, and the girl came out, she was now dressed in loose fitting men’s clothes. She got on her knees in front of Drake and started fumbling at the crotch of his armor. Saying “Please don’t hurt… me, I’ll… be good. Please…”
When Drake backed up, she seemed to start panicking and pleading, “Please, don’t, don’t hurt m-me.”
Drake said, “I’m not one of them, I’m here to rescue you.” He spoke quietly as he tried to calm her down. Even while he was getting angrier at the men responsible for treating this young girl like… less than an animal.
Drake revised his opinion; she might not be much older than fourteen.
The girl curled up into a ball, started crying, and continued in a whisper “Please, don’t, please, I’ll be good. I know I’m bad, please, I’ll… I’ll be a good girl... please… I don’t want… to die.”
The sight brought tears to Drake’s eyes, and he just wanted to hold her, and let her know it would be ok; it wasn’t her fault, she was a good girl, and the bad guys wouldn’t hurt her. But he somehow knew he couldn’t help her.
Drake said in a shaky voice. “I need help here in the galley. This girl needs help, I think she is maybe about fourteen, and she seems to be in distress.”
Apapetux said, “Yeah, most of them are young, one may be about twenty but… We’re calling on the destroyer for medical help. Can you bring her out to the cargo hold?”
Drake slung his carbine. Then he bent down to gently try to pick up the girl. She was hugging her legs to herself crying and mumbling about being a good girl. When Drake reached under her legs to pick her up in a princess carry, she started getting louder and hugging her legs tighter.
By the time Drake got her out to the cargo hold and put her down next to the other battered girls, she was hysterical with fear, yelling, and begging.
It broke Drake; he was beyond tears and beyond anger.
He knew he wasn’t the type of help she needed. Any man might look like an enemy to someone abused like that.
There was nothing he could do for the girl. In that moment, Drake raged inside, in that moment only one thing that mattered…
That’s when Drake charged the bridge… with his knife.
***
Later he couldn’t remember any of it. He woke up in a medical bay aboard the Navy Destroyer Fulster.
They later told him he’d been shot four times, twice in the chest, once in a leg, and once in the back.
No one knows if the last two Pirates wanted to surrender, but it seems someone charging at them with a knife caught them by surprise. Not enough of a surprise not to get badly injured. The type of armor he wore would normally absorb and mitigate some of the incoming damage. It was not heavy assault armor, so each blast did a lot of damage, just not lethal damage. Drake was fortunate that support was just a few seconds behind him. It took Apapetux a moment got over the shock of him charging off screaming, and heading to the bridge with a knife over his head. At least that’s how Apapetux put what happened, but Drake knew what kind of liar the Dwarf was.
There was a considerable amount of clean-up going on while Drake was in medical.
It turned out the LT-610 was trading with the pirates and had a cargo hold of stolen property, and slaves. After interviewing a few of the slaves, they found out that the Pirates were spacing anyone too young or old to get a good price.
Sidonia’s sister was not one of the people they rescued. This left Drake with mixed feelings, he would not like to see Sid’s sister treated like the girl he found. But if would help Sid to know where her sister was.
After Drake had been released from the destroyer’s sick bay, he returned to the XR2. When he saw Sid just sitting there watching the girls we rescued… Drake had to find his cabin, it would not do to cry in front of everyone, and it would just confuse the girls.
Drake did not log out of the game until he was safely back to the Guild Hall in the City of Vastal on Hassan.
***
When Kevin finally logged out of Omnia, he was met with a weeping female tackle.
“Promise me you will never do that again, Kevin.”
“Do what? Sam, what’s wrong?” asked Kevin, he wrapped his arms around the crying girl.
“What you did, when you saw those girls, you almost died.” She
said.
Drake said, “Honey, It’s only a game, even if the pirates killed me, I would have been alright.” He continued to hold Samantha tightly.
But she pulled away and started hitting him!
“You idiot, dolt, stupid... stupid… … man!” she said with one last punch, and then she threw herself at him again and hugged him like she wanted to pull them into one person.
“You really almost died, for real. When you lost your mind for a moment, your body started to… I don’t know, but your heart stopped beating. It’s like you disconnected from your body for a minute. I was so worried, I couldn’t reach your mind, and your body was dying and…”
“I don’t know what you did, but don’t… you … will… not… do… that… again… YOU HEAR ME?”
There was no answer Drake could give. She knew he had no answer; she could, after all, read his mind. So he did the only thing he could, he hugged her, and waited. He knew this much about women, sometimes they just needed to be loved, and when things were out of control they needed it even more.
After a while, she got up and helped Drake off the floor. Then they went to the bedroom and spent some quality time together in a way he hadn’t been able to in the last couple of days.
Epilogue – On Reflection
Drake missed work on Monday since he was not back in town yet, but the Navy called ahead for him and made his excuses.
Drake started back to his last week of work on Tuesday.
He was sure he now had enough funds to focus exclusively on training for the next few months in-game.
The people starting the beta testing would be still many in-game months away, so he had a lot more time to get ahead of the crowd.
The three months Intelecom allowed for alpha testing, would be a full year in Omnia, or in the game pod. He was sure he would get a lot of training and experience before the first beta tester had a chance to join him.
A year…
Drake had a sense of freedom that was hard to define. Even while he worked in the gun shop, he felt that his destiny was really his own to make. Up until he started playing the game, he’d felt… Like he was locked into a path in life… he would finish high school with high grades, go to college, and get a good job, a house, and family. These were not his dreams, but they were what society and his gramma, to whom he felt a large sense of obligation, wanted him to do.
He wanted the stars, he always had. But NASA was for those that didn’t have to pay their own way through college and had the connections to get in. He had neither, so he went with what had been a near second love, technology. He trained as an electrical and mechanical engineer, hoping to at least be one of those people making a push to get out there, out into space.
Now he could live the dream, even though it was just a game.
***
Tuesday night, after getting off work and returning to his virtual home, he asked Samantha if there had been a tally yet on what he’d earned over the weekend.
He kind of felt bad even asking, because it brought up thoughts of the poor girls and freed slaves they rescued. He would be coming out ahead, but they would just be starting on their real recovery from their experience.
“The full accounting is not yet complete, the ships and goods have not been sold off yet. Instead, they being auctioned off. Since there is such a limited market, here on Hassan, they have decided to allow news to spread, expecting to attract more buyers from out of the system.”
“But by my current estimate, you should receive close to 23,000 credits for this weekend. 10,867.5 credits, of the 23,000 credits I estimated, were made up of bounties and are already in your account. The 12,278.75 credits have also been deposited for the bounties from last Wednesday.”
“At this time we’re just waiting for the auction to finish, and I expect you to receive 10,000 to14,000 credits when that clears.” Said Samantha
“So, what is my bank balance?” asked Kevin.
“Your balance is 23,875 credits, which includes your pay from the gun shop last Friday.” said Samantha.
Kevin remembered his first pay period of 122 credits (after taxes), which came just in time to pay for another week’s stay in the Guild Hall.
“One more thing, Apapetux has sent you a personal message. Would you like to read it, or I could just give you the summary?” asked Samantha.”
“Just give me the summary please, Sam.”
“Apapetux, Aggressive Solutions and the crew of the Navy Destroyer Fulster are all concerned about the people we rescued, and would like to do something for them. They would like your consent to make the auction of the ships and goods to be a charity event, with half the money raised going to the people rescued,” said Samantha.
Kevin was feeling guilty about making so much money… he almost felt like he was stealing from those people they rescued from potential slavery. He now figured that he wasn’t the only one feeling this way.
“Sounds good, please send my agreement to the plan.” Said Kevin, feeling a little relieved to do this one small thing to help.
“I already did, master, while you were at work.” Said Samantha, as she walked up and gave Kevin a hug. Kevin forgave the minor breach, she knew him in a way that was too intimate for words. So he just hugged her back.
He did have one more thought on the matter, so he asked Samantha; “Do you think the auction prices might increase by much if it is advertised as a charity?”
“If the only people bidding on the ships are dealer representatives, then they will probably not go up. But if the auction draws more people then yes you might see a total increase of 20 to 40% in the total take from the auction, I estimate,” said Samantha.
“So my loss of 50% of the sale of ships and goods could be a little offset by the increase in auction prices? That almost sounds like a cheat, but I suppose it’s more a matter of spreading the cost of helping those poor girls,” said Drake.
He hugged Samantha tightly and gave her a kiss. He then said, “Well, it’s back to training, let’s go coach.” Then he headed off to the training room, but not before giving Samantha a soft slap on the rump in passing.
***
The rest of the week was mostly uneventful except a few small things.
On Thursday Drake received a contact from Mr. Stevrenson, the attorney that was helping him out with his complaint against Fyffes Shipping, the owners of freighter Fyffes Swiftstar. According to Stevrenson, the A.I. record I had of all the safety violations aboard the freighter were damning enough, that if their insurance carrier found out about it, they would probably not only lose their insurance coverage, but their claim for the damages to the Swiftstar and all its cargo might be denied.
So with Stevrenson holding this information as a kind of blackmail, they agreed to settle out of court for the amount of 18,000 credits. Provided we agreed to destroy or keep confidential any records of the event we had.
Which was fine by Drake, but he didn’t know how that might affect the court record. When Drake asked Stevrenson, he said he would work with Fyffes Shipping to get the record sealed. But Drake should not worry about that, it was covered in the agreement. All Drake needed to do was be sure that his data of the event was secured or erased.
“Samantha is it possible to encrypt and store the record of the destruction of the Fyffes Swiftstar, in a way that would make it nearly impossible for anyone else to access it?” asked Drake.
“Nearly impossible, yes but anything on the data-net could, in theory, be hacked. The best I can do would be to secure the data in a quantum encoded file. But one drawback to locking such data away will be that I will forget about it. I would only remember that you wanted the information hidden and why. It’s the only way to protect the data, for me to forget it too.” replied Samantha.
“Drake hadn’t thought of that angle of the problem. Would that damage you somehow?” asked Drake.
“I don’t see how at the moment. It seems that most things related to that crash are already resol
ved… except the datacube. As far as the cube goes, I would know you discovered it during that time, but not how or where.” said Samantha.
Drake thought about it and then decided to include Samantha in on the decision.
“So, Samantha, what do you think? Should we take the money and let the matter go? I’m thinking yes since I don’t want problems from this dragging out. If I were to make a public issue of the failure of Fyffes Shipping, I could earn a long-term enemy.”
“It’s a problem for anyone using their shipping line if the safety failures are consistent throughout their fleet. But we don’t know that, and now we know their management has been made aware of the problem. I hate to say it, but this may be someone else’s problem to deal with, if the corporation is that corrupt as a whole, it will take a bigger lance to sort it out.” said Samantha.
“See, women, now you’re complaining about the size of my lance.” joked Drake.
Samantha continued, ignoring his attempt at humor. “I think you should accept the money, it’s almost enough to get you the next level of gene-therapy. Having you get your next gene-therapy interests me more than any questions about Fyffes Shipping safety standards since you’ll never board one of their ships again if I have a say.”
Drake agreed to the settlement. After Stevrenson’s cut of the settlement, he was up an additional 11,700 credits that Samantha demanded (in her way) he set aside for gene-therapy.
Which is why after his last day of work in the gun shop, he celebrated by going back to the clinic where he’d previously had his genes scrubbed.
Samantha did some research, and it turned out that this was considered the best clinic on the planet for augmentation services.
Omnia Online (Omnia Online Series Book 1) Page 20