Wandering Engineer 6: Pirates Bane

by Chris Hechtl

  He was hauled to feet and dragged out of the compartment. Despite the tape his sensors allowed him to see the pirates going over his ship as he was dragged out. They were smashing the plants, tossing things around. Bedding was flying. He could hear fabric ripping. Unfamiliar voices were all around him. His head turned, cataloging them, but for now not processing them for more than threat value. He'd let Sprite and Defender look for intelligence clues later.

  “Admiral, the threat of you being spaced is very real here,” she said, voicing her concern. She highlighted a discussion two of the pirates were having. “And oh, by the way, the identity is confirmed, they are Horathians,” she said, sounding disgusted.

  Instead he was hauled to the shuttle lock with guards all around.

  “Where are the others”? A voice snarled. He felt someone slap his head and then rip at the tape. He was kicked in the genitals and doubled over in pain. Proteus had to stand down, he needed to keep it real and so the wounds were left untreated.

  The Admiral gasped for air. It had been a long time since he had felt pain on that level. He had gotten soft, gotten used to the AI disconnecting his nerves and instantly repairing the damage.

  “Hurts doesn't it?” Sprite asked. “Just hang in there,” she said, sounding concerned as he breathed hard. He took a ragged breath, shoulders slumping. His hands formed fists as he tried to temper his anger. He'd get his revenge... soon.

  “I said, where are the others?” the voice said, backhanding him. He spat. Leaning to one side. A hand roughly righted him. “You want to breath you'll answer the question!” the voice snarled.

  “Well, maybe if you gave the man time to answer he would sergeant,” a dry female voice said. The voice was ugly, he could tell. She wasn't much of a looker on his HUD either, a pear shaped woman with a pistol on either shoulder.

  The Admiral felt blood drooling from his lips and spat. He groaned a bit, drifting. The microgravity and injuries were playing hell with his stomach.

  He could hear and see the pirates smashing things. Some were malicious some were just methodically searching.

  “Ma'am? There is no one else.”

  “How can that be?” the woman asked, turning to the new voice.

  “I don't know ma'am. Are they out on the hull?”

  “Like the ones that tried that two months ago? Do you think they are that stupid?” she asked thoughtfully.

  “I don't know ma'am.”

  “We'll, go find out then! And get someone to get power back on here!” she said, waving a hand.

  “Hey! Look what I found!” a fresh voice said. The Admiral scowled bleakly as he heard a cat squall. Blindly he looked around, using his other senses to see the bastard hold up the cat by her tail. The cat swung about, trying to get free or grab something.

  “Oh it's a lively one! Want a piñata?” he asked, waving the cat to another pirate.

  “No, but I'll settle for a boxing bag,” the guy laughed, punching at the cat. The cat clawed at his gloves, making him swear.

  “Don't breach your suit or I'll breach you Hemorrhoid,” the woman growled, looking over her shoulder to the two. “Take your toy and play with it somewhere else,” she growled.

  “Sure thing Lieutenant,” the first thug said, swinging the cat against the wall. Like a demented malicious kid he slammed it around, walking away.

  Irons fought his rage down as a second thug came up with the other cat. “Leave em alone! They didn't do anything to you!” he snarled. He felt a blow and fought the urge to brace for it. It was hard, incredibly hard.

  He knew they were dead, he could see it. Unfortunately, there was little he could do. Nothing really. He felt the surge of helplessness as the impact rolled through him.

  He recoiled, woozily moving and felt something cold and hard touch his temple. He knew it was the woman's pulser. “This ship and its crew are now the property of the Horathian Empire. Got a problem with that?” she demanded.

  The Admiral didn't say anything. There was a long pause. He could feel her, feel her pulse, feel her finger slowly tighten and then release the trigger. “I thought not,” she said.

  “Ma'am, the shuttle reports nothing on the hull.”

  “Nothing?” the woman demanded in disbelief. She turned. “Well! I'll be doggone. We've got a live one here boys and girls. A sleeper I bet. Only way someone could man this ship on his own. That right?” she asked, turning on Irons.

  “Yes,” he croaked out.

  “Well!” she said, smirking. He heard someone whistling in appreciation. “Yes sirree, we've got ourselves a genuine sleeper. Bet you wished you'd never woken up to this nightmare,” she said, laughing. She turned.

  Irons scanned the room, noting the sergeant carefully studying him. “Don't even think of resisting,” the sergeant murmured softly.

  The Admiral spat as his mouth filled up with blood once more.

  “Patience Admiral,” Sprite cautioned. “You'll get your turn soon enough,” she said soothingly.

  Irons coughed. It bothered him, this entire thing. A lot of what they were doing, the malicious destruction was completely unnecessary. Why? He thought. Why didn't they want to keep it? He fought a sigh. The impulse to destroy was an easy one, a seductive one. The adrenaline release for doing something, something you knew was wrong...

  He saw in himself the urge to return the favor, to retaliate. It would be so easy to snap the cuffs, bring up his shields and then tear them apart.

  But no, he promised himself he'd wait. He'd get his revenge he thought, watching the bastard with the second cub tear her head off and mount it on his shoulder. Yes, he'd get his revenge. The proverb was right it was best served cold.

  The sergeant watched the man and turned to his Lieutenant. “Ma'am, this one isn't like the others. I don't see any fear in him.”

  “That's cause he's a sleeper, probably in denial. He'll get over that soon enough,” the woman gloated. She motioned with a hand. “Ball him up, pack him up on the shuttle. The skipper will want to see him,” she said, waving an airy hand. “Hell, I'm looking forward to going a few rounds with him in bed. I like men with spirit,” she said, laughing with her hands on her hips. “They're fun to break!”

  <----*----*----*---->

  Sprite watched, feeling helpless as the pirates tore apart all they had worked for. They wrapped the Admiral in riggers tape and then secured him in the shuttle. One of the pilots remained, grumbling about not getting a chance at the loot.

  Occasionally pirates would come in loaded with armloads of things. They'd stash them and move off.

  “Are they going to abandon the ship?” Sprite asked.

  “Hopefully,” Proteus responded.

  The pirates were from the Horath system, and had been preying on ships in the area, that much was obvious. Phoenix was the ninth ship taken since they went on station according to the open gossip. The fourth in the past two months.

  When they were finished looting they left a small crew and then loaded back up. There was some good-natured ribbing and grumbling about the prize. Irons could smell the copper scent of animal blood. He had Proteus send out nanites as the AI repaired any internal injuries he sustained. He left the skin alone, the dermis damage would serve as necessary camouflage.

  There was a bump as the ship undocked, then a drifting sensation. Obviously the shuttle's inertial dampeners were out of synch. “Hope everyone's buckled up!” the pilot said over the PA. One of the pirates raised a one-finger salute in reply. Then there was a kick as the shuttle moved out.

  As they moved nanites infiltrated the shuttles systems. It was a Navy Skyhawk, Irons and the AI noted. Proteus picked its way through the systems, and under guidance from Sprite and Irons, directed his attention to the sensor feed.

  They were shuttled across the void to another ship, a destroyer. It was an Arboth class, a small but familiar blocky shape about four hundred and ten meters long. The ship was stacked vertically rather than linear or horizontally, making her look like
an ancient Terran Angelfish. She was almost as tall as she was long, measuring four hundred meters from the tip of her skyscraper structures just aft of her midships line.

  She had four clusters of drive pods and three massive Smythe ion-force emitter engines. One of which appeared to be down.

  Damocles, the tin can they had captured in Pyrax was an Arboth class. Things were certainly getting interesting.

  <----*----*----*---->

  In transit, with little to do, the Admiral accessed his data on the Arboth in order to familiarize himself with its stats and deck plan. When he pulled up the blocky ship he sighed internally. It was a modular design in the final stages of design development before he went into stasis so his information was only partial. He hadn't picked up much from the repairs to Damocles; he'd focused on the other ships.

  The ship was divided into three sections, a rectangular bow with a slit for a mouth, extending to a cross shaped midsection with spars extending on the vertical Y axis then followed by the eight main sublight drives. The ship was a simplified design, something that could be mass-produced in large numbers with each having a small crew of roughly a hundred souls.

  The weapons were limited to a spinal mount force emitter in the bow slit, most likely the device that disabled his ship he mused. The ship had a bow magazine and six missile tubes, as well as four spinal mounted grasers clustered around the main weapon. Two three barrel kinetic turrets on port and starboard rounded out its primary arms.

  The ship also had a large number of point defense clusters, more than a normal ship of her class, but half seemed to be improvised Gauss mounts. It had less than half the normal counter missile tubes. One destroyer class reactor, a small micro reactor near her outer hull on her stern nestled between her subspace fusion drives, and a class 4C hyperdrive.

  The ship had good legs in subspace, the cross-shaped mid section had drive pods on the tips allowing it pinpoint maneuverability. Its shields were strong for its class, having taken in the new tech advances from the R&D of the time. However clustering the eighty percent of the ship’s armament in the bow allowed it to focus on one target, but left it vulnerable on every other axis.

  The Arboth was a modular designed ship, something he was of two minds about. On the pro side she shared the same parts and frame as each of her different variants. But on the con side a craft that tried to do too much usually couldn't do any one particular job well. And a tin can was just too small to mount a lot inside.

  The ship's basic frame had an escort carrier variant that deleted all the offensive weapons and most of her magazine space in favor of twenty small fighters, two shuttles, two multipurpose AWACs and SAR craft, two refuel and rearming shuttles, and two cutters.

  It wasn't a design he favored; he preferred a general approach to ship design. She sacrificed the long-range fight in favor of a heavy short-range punch. She was reliant on her stealth ability to get into range of an enemy ship. That strategy had little room for error, and a good hit would take most of her weapons or drive out. There was little room for redundancy and she had little or no self-repair ability.

  Specialists were fine for some things, but taking it to this extreme probably wasn't a good thing. He was curious about how the design had held up in combat.

  Bounty herself was a basic destroyer, which was good. She was a gunslinger, with that odd ability to knock down a ship's shields and systems. He'd have to look into that once the tables were turned.

  <----*----*----*---->

  Sprite watched in disgust as the goons that had killed the cats compared notes. What she had seen had angered her. Such depravity for another life form was typical of destructive types. Unfortunately organics weren't the only ones who harbored such tendencies she reminded herself.

  One of the goons leaned over to the other and poked him. The other grunted and looked at him. “What?”

  “So, um, the pelt.”

  “What about it?” the other asked lazily. He stroked the fur. They had gutted both carcasses and bagged them in clear plastic to keep the smell down. He'd opened it to play with the fur and claws.

  “You still thinking about tanning it?”

  “Are you kidding me?” the first said, flexing a paw by pushing on it with his fingers. He smirked as the claws came out. “Hell yeah! I want the skull as a pommel butt too!”

  “Oh hell. You have any idea about the smell?? Stink? Boy does that crap stink!”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, ran into this a few times. My advice? Freeze it. Vacuum freeze it or freeze dry it. It'll keep till we get somewhere that you can thaw it and get a pro to handle it.” The thug fondled the soft pelt. “Something like this? You can make into a woman's stole or purse or something. Fetch big credits in the right market.”

  “Ah, yeah,” the first said, now thoughtful. “I hadn't thought about that.”

  “Well, think it over. That's what I'm doing with mine.”

  “What about the meat?” the first asked after a moment of playing with the dead animal's body.

  “Are you kidding? Give it to Cookie. Why let it go to waste!”

  “Cat? You're not serious?”

  “Why not? Meat's meat! Besides, can you tell the difference with his cooking anyway?”

  The first thug laughed, shaking his head. “You know what, no,” he said as his guffaws died down. His bray of laughter hadn't even woken up the guy snoring away across the aisle.

  “What about the ship?” the first asked when they stopped snorting and laughing.

  “What about it?”

  “Any ideas what we're going to do with it?”

  “That's up to the brass,” the other sniffed. “My money is we'll keep it. That is if we can get it running again. We'll probably use it as a courier between us and Admiral Cartwright.”

  “Why? You think we'll need it?” the first asked in surprise. “You think Pyrax is as bad as they say it is?”

  “I have no clue. We'll find out in a couple of months. Once pickings are too slim to stick around and we've gotten our prizes out, we'll find out. Hell! Maybe the brass will kick things off early and we'll miss out!”

  “Hmmm. I dunno. I'm not sure I'm happy about losing out on loot.”

  “Are you kidding me? I'll pass on riding into a shooting gallery any day of the week! Let some other dipshit get shot up. Then we'll come in and clean up!”

  “True,” the other cackled. “Too true,” he said, smiling nastily.

  “No honor among thieves indeed,” Sprite texted to the others.

  <----*----*----*---->

  The tin can had a single boat bay. There was no IFF transmission, but it was obvious she was a former Federation naval vessel. Unfortunately someone had painted over the hull identification markers with Horathian markings. The Admiral frowned. She was marked as a D-971. If they really had that many destroyers... he flinched as someone poked him. He realized he needed to maintain his situation awareness more carefully. Watched through the nanites as the man got the package behind the Admiral and then moved out.

  The thing was many nations throughout time had skipped around with hull markings to confuse the enemy, the Admiral thought. So that could be the case. But worst-case scenario meant he had to seriously rethink things down the road. But first, he had to deal with this situation.

  He was tempted to break out now, they were stupid enough to cuff his hands behind his back and then leave him. Prisoner protocol always said to cuff the hands in front so you could watch them. Stupid, he thought coldly. He was tempted to show them the error of their ways, but he decided it was best to stay the course. He wanted to get a better feel for the ship before he acted. He needed Intel and definitely needed to disable any self-destruct packages. Besides, if they had been capturing ships for some time, like the two derelicts he had overlooked, they could have other prisoners. Other prisoners meant potential allies to recruit.

  Decision made he settled down for a wait. Once the shuttle was inside and on the deck, the apes unbuckl
ed, grabbed their stashed loot and then moved out even before the pilot gave the all clear.

  Two thugs remained behind. Irons noted one of them had a tattoo of a line across his throat with the words 'cut here' in various places above and below the line. Cute. He had a heavy jaw, nose flattened by repeated breaks, and hard hands. He was an older bruiser, going a bit thick in the middle, but he obviously still worked out.

  The tape was cut and he was kicked a few times. He was roughly forced to his feet and then escorted to the brig under heavy guard. There he found it filled with the surviving crew of the other ships. He looked around as the guards freed him. One had a hand on his shoulder, pushing him against the wall outside the brig door. “New Meat!” the guard said, grinning evilly.

  “Hang on, you gotta tell him the rules,” another guard, said. He frowned suddenly and looked to the companionway they had just come down. “This it? He is the only survivor?”

  “He's the only one period. Boss lady said he's special,” the first guard said.

  “Well, he can go in with the rest,” the guard behind the desk said, waving a baton to a shift coming in. Irons glanced with his eyes but they were still covered in tape. He focused with his implants and watched the IR signatures of six prisoners, shoulders slumped, in chains, shuffle past him under guard. After a moment he felt the tape around his eyes being roughly ripped off. He gasped.

  “Rules of the road,” the guard growled. He slapped the baton against the Admiral's kidneys. Irons gasped, knees buckling.

  Irons felt a hand roughly grab his short hair and pull back. “You listen here boy,” the guard snarled he tugged on the hair and shoved the new prisoner into the wall hard enough so his chest was compressed. “You mind your P's and Q's and you'll live to see another sunrise. You so much as think mutiny and you will be out an airlock so fast you'll never know it till you are sucking vacuum.”

  Irons gasped. “That clear enough for you Guppy?” the voice asked, turning his head away to the guard on duty.