END of LINE: Humanities Last Stand - part 3

by John Short

  “Why would I want a pirate ship flying the BBITCo flag?” Jon remarked.

  “If she was flying for you, she wouldn't be a pirate anymore,” Jelio III told him. Always thinking about their ground team and proper cargo distribution, Jelio, call sign Lio, was already thinking about how much a Destroyer class ship could haul and if her fuel consumption would make it worthwhile to use her in legal commerce. As the only female in Jon's shuttle crew, she never said much, but when she did, all the males listened because she was always right.

  “I've got her in sight now team. I'll come in and sit down along her port side behind her cannons. Maybe she won't be able to shoot us there.” Jon announced, then went to work making the fine adjustments needed to bring them in line and parked safely on the sloping side of the big pirate ship. It was bad enough that whoever had designed this series of Destroyer had build a warship that looked like a flying predator, they had not used a single flat area anywhere along the entire hull except the engine covers. Even those weren't straight, they curved around the huge slip drives making for very dangerous shuttle landing spots for the men with nothing but pressure suits and magnetic boots.

  The instant he touched down and secured the shuttle, he felt the big ship lurch forward. She was heading out of the system in an attempt to enter the slip. “Did the rest of our teams make touch down?” Jon asked while the grubs were filing out of the shuttle.

  “Team 2 missed, but team 3 is off loading now. Team 2 is trying for a different spot. They reported that something threw them off the first time.” Legs told him.

  “They better hurry!” Lio told them. “This thing is going to hit the slip fast.”

  “Butcher, we're inside.” Rik commed Jon. “Moving toward the command center.”

  “I'm taking my team in and going to engineering. Maybe we can take the engines off line from there.” Jon replied.

  “Alright boys and girl. You all heard the man. In we go!” Jarrieal called out to the shuttle crew.

  “Everyone take your swords and hand weapons!” Jon called. “Legs, the ship is all yours until we're back. See if you can hack their data banks while you wait.”

  “Got it Captain.” Pabki assured him. “Go have fun.”

  Jon was last to exit the shuttle and begin the slow walk across the pirate vessel's hull to an open hatch. By the time he got there the vessel had picked up enough speed to enter the slip. The stars were beginning to stretch out and disappear around the entry point. Even the body of the ship he was walking on seemed to stretch as its forward section was actually traveling faster than its aft sections. This was when space walking was its most dangerous. If you got yourself caught between steps during this transitional phase, you could lose your balance and fall off entirely. The fall would send you floating out into space forever unless you were found and rescued. Rescue was never very likely though because you'd be pulled several million miles and many light cycles away from where you fell. You would be luckiest if your fall opened your pressure suit and killed you instantly. That way you would not run out of air or water before dying a slow, agonizing death. Fast or slow, in nearly all cases, a single person, alone in space with nothing close by and only a pressure suit to keep them alive was surely a dead person.

  Several tense minutes later, Jon and his flight team were all cycled through the air lock and making their way along a service corridor to what they thought should be Engineering. Carefully checking each hidden space and corner in their path, they reached a set of locked yellow doors with the warning symbols for radiation painted on them in bright red. “Engineering is through there Butcher” Lio quietly told Jon.

  “Let me go first. Jarrieal, you're on my back, then Lio and last Mopie.” Jon called out the order that they would enter the Engineering section. “Lets try not to shoot up anything important, like a containment vessel or the power transfer tubes. Computers, fine, anything that floods the room with radiation, no.”

  “You're just no fun anymore JonConnell.” Mopie joked.

  Pushing the door open and taking several steps inside, Jon found himself on an upper walkway in a darkened space. Looking down he saw what appeared to be several workstations far below him with three frightened males studying one of the display screens. Motioning for his team to wait, Jon reached inside Jarrieal's backpack to remove repelling gear. Together he and Jarrieal tied ropes to hooks and fastened the hooks to the walkway before tossing the ends of the ropes over the side and down to the lower level, but not as far down as the floor where the workstations were. Then with a wink at his copilot, Jon went over the handrail and slid rapidly down. Jarrieal followed, all the while cussing Jon for being a fool who always had to go first! Taking careful note of where he would fall, Jon released his hold on the rope and landed on the balls of his feet to one side of the frightened Engineers still engrossed on the screen in front of them. Jarrieal landed on their other side, both warrior males as silent as the wild tigers on Haven.

  “This is no good, I warned them not to try it!” one of the frightened males was telling the others. “We were too close to the sun for a clear slip. The engine mix is all wrong.”

  “You can fix it, right?” another asked. None of the three had even noticed that Jon's entire team now surrounded them.

  “I can fix anything,” the first male said with pride, “we just have to exit the slip for me to recycle the calibrations.”

  “How can we do that when the Master has ordered that we slip straight through to base?” The third male spoke up for the first time.

  “Youngling, I'll just wait until there is nothing else he can do. Did you feel those strange vibrations as we entered the slip? This imbalance is tearing us apart. I give it an hour at most and the whole ship will be impossible to stand in for the shaking.”

  Jon's coms came alive at that second. “Rik to Butcher. We have captured the command center.”

  “Understood Rik, we have Engineering under our control.” Jon answered. “ We'll be dropping out of the slip soon. Make sure you can retrieve the destination logs or we'll be stuck in between. Seems our good pirate Captain was more worried about getting away than he was the safety of his ship and crew.” The three Engineers finally noticed the heavily armed troopers surrounding them and almost as one fell to their knees in as real a show of terror as Jon had ever seen.

  “Have mercy on us.” their leader begged. “I warned the Master this would happen. You cannot enter the slip that close to a sun. The intermix is too aggravated.”

  “You said you could fix it and have the ship back on course.”

  “Yes my Lord. All that is needed is to drop out of slip and recalibrate.”

  “Make it happen. Get this ship back on its original course as quickly as you can.” Jon ordered. “I am not your Lord. I am Captain Jon Connell of the Peacekeeper Task Force assigned to the rim. You will never call me your Lord again. Understood?”

  “Yes Captain.” the small male replied as he worked to bring the Destroyer class ship out of slip.

  Another of the Engineers spoke up, “Are you the same Jon Connell who hired my niece, Phillmma?”

  “Small, furry blonde female with a no nonsense attitude? Yes, she works for me now.” Jon told him. “She's doing an excellent job too. Much better than the life of a pirate, like you.”

  “We are NOT pirates!” the third, and most timid, engineer spoke out.

  “You're the Engineers on a ship involved in piracy, that makes you a pirate.” Mopie informed the male.

  “We were forced to fly her this way. Up until three months ago this ship was the finest of the TransCo fleet and we were honored to have been selected to fly her.” he continued to tell any who would listen. “Then we received a call for help and when we went to assist we were hijacked. We came in close to what appeared to be a ship in trouble. When we brought it onboard no less than fifty pirates came out who took over our ship and forced us to fly her attacked us. The ship they used to trick us is still in our hold. They said they were
bringing it back to their base to reuse it.”

  “There we go, all fixed.” the head engineer announced. “We can resume course any time.”

  After giving it some thought, Jon told Jarrieal to stay with the Engineers while he and the rest of the team went to investigate the ship that was supposed to be stored away in the hold. If what they had been told were the truth, he'd need to get his shuttles onboard and have Legs go over that ships data records. Even if it was a lie, Jon didn't want to exit the slip over a pirate base with Peacekeeper shuttles attached to the hull. He'd bring them all inside and then make a rapid launch to attack their base using everything this ship had including his own shuttle's guns.

  “Butcher to Rik. I'm taking a team to investigate a report of a pirate ship in the hold of this ship. I'm also bringing in the shuttles. We'll spring our own surprise on those pirates' base.”

  “Understood and approved Butcher. I'll contain the bridge. We may have more going on here than just simple piracy. Seems our teams throughout the ship have met very little resistance. Most of the crew claim that they were being forced to fly what they all say is one of TransCo's flagships. The real pirates must have all been attacking the station when we arrived and this so called captain decided to leave his men behind to face us while he escaped with the real prize, a nice new combat ready Destroyer.”

  “In his hurry to get away, he almost blew it up!” Jon filled Zeprik in on what he had learned before he entered the ship's main cargo hold.

  Walking through the clear tube that acted as an airlock between the main ship and the hold, Jon could see an older ship resting on its landing pads on the Destroyer's decking. It looked to be the same model as Jon's first FTL ships had been, except this one was much smaller. This vessel had not been well cared for at all. It had suffered damage to some of the main super structure that had been cut away, the two remaining halves welded back together. It had entire sections of the outer hull missing. It didn't appear to have its engines in the cowlings. There was just a collection of parts bolted together to look like engines from a distance. Jon decided that this ship was nothing more than a decoy to lure in other ships. Something that the pirates towed into position in space then left it to seem as if a ship was in desperate need of help. Then when some unlucky ship came to its rescue, it was over run by pirates and either taken, like they had this Destroyer, or looted and destroyed. As for the ship used to tow the wreck that was a Cutter that would leave this one in place and go off to find another prize before returning to retrieve the pirates hidden in this wreck. Jon and his team had already found the tow ship and destroyed it themselves over a week ago. Jon remembered the briefing where they had all been told to be on the look out for this very vessel.

  Back when he had first taken charge of the old Pluto, Wrenches had shown him where the ship's recorders were located, so that was one of his first search areas when he went onboard the decoy ship. As it turned out, the recorders were still in place and had continued to work as they had been programmed to do many cycles ago when the ship had been built. When he played back the logs they told a story of a once proud ship, ferrying supplies and passengers between the inner planets. It had then fallen into the hands of a corrupt corporation that used it to transport illegal drugs to backwater worlds and smuggle convicted criminals out to the rim planets to escape their prison sentences. One place in particular stood out as a safe world for criminals to hide from the law while they either joined a pirate crew, or became a broker for the stolen goods coming in on the pirate vessels. The company name sounded familiar. Jon remembered when his uncle had told them about one of the biggest criminal companies being shut down by the Peacekeepers cycles ago. The name of the planet didn't set off any memories for Jon. The planet was called Canari Prime. It was far away from any of the shipping lanes and not on many star maps. However, this wreck of a ship with little still working except minimal life support and this hidden data recorder had been brought back to it many times in the last several cycles only to be towed back again to some remote location near the rim worlds.

  “Get the shuttles inside! We're going to Canari!” Jon ordered through the coms. “Someone get a message through to Mercury and let them know what's happening! Have them meet us there!”

  “Butcher, you're the only one qualified to take control of a ship this big,” Zeprik commed to him. “You want to come up here and takeover as Captain?”

  “On my way Rik. Jarrieal, how are things in Engineering?”

  “Everything is fine here Butcher.” Jarrieal told him. “The one who thinks he's in charge says the coords from that old ship match the ones the pirate ordered them to fly this ship to. I think we just found their base.”

  “Good work Jackal, give them a hand bringing our shuttle inside. I'm heading up to the bridge. Let me know when everything is safely brought in so we can reenter the slipway.”

  Jon took an elevator up to the main command center and was shocked by how familiar it all looked. It was as if the command center of this ship and the command center of Mercury were built in the same factory, by the same workers, and then had the rest of two very different ships built around them.

  “What have you learned Rik?” Jon asked Prince Zeprik.

  “The majority of the flight crew are all the victims of these few pirates Jon.” Rik told him as he pointed to four rough looking men standing under guard in a far corner of the command center. “That one there was giving all the orders when we came in. I'm guessing he's supposed to be the Captain. We caught them when the rest of the pirates where attacking the orbiting station. Mercury and her group ended the attack and arrested the pirates.”

  “What say we teach him how it’s done in the civilized planets.” Jon joked.

  “Captain, will you please come here?” Jon politely asked the unshaven male.

  The pirate smiled which exposed rotten teeth with protruding lower tusks that were more yellow than white. “Sir, I must protest this military takeover of my peaceful vessel. We were engaged in peaceful trade with the mining conglomerate when your men attacked us.” the pirate stated.

  Jon had all he could do not to sneeze because of the male's terrible body order, but when he spoke the stench that came from the pirate's mouth nearly overpowered him. “Is that why nearly every member of the crew onboard this ship who isn't in need of a bath, claims that you and your men hijacked them three months ago and forced them to fly it for you? Or can you explain the data record of the derelict ship in your hold that says it has been repeatedly towed to some spot and left, only to be brought back to the same coords? Or perhaps that's why you ran away when you saw Peacekeeper shuttles attempting to land on your hull? If you were involved in peaceful trade, why was the station calling for help when we arrived and claiming to be under attack?” Jon asked. “No Captain, I believe that you were in the middle of committing some serious crimes when we came into the system and that's why you nearly blew up this ship by running into the slip so close to a sun. I further believe that you have used this ship as a pirate vessel operating out of the Canari system. You should know that we have either killed or captured your pirate crew that was attacking the miners. You and your officers are all that is left of your people on this ship. I am relieving you of command of this vessel, effectively immediately. Every crewman or woman who remained loyal to the laws of the common good will be increased in rank by one step, provided they remain at their posts and continue to serve peacefully by following any lawful orders I or any member of my crew give them.” Pointing at the coms officer Jon asked, “Where is your rightful Captain?”

  “That animal threw Captain Gillioi and Firstmate Helmip out of the lock! Sir.”

  “Did he now.” Zeprik said. “I know just the thing to do with him and his bunch then, Don't I Butcher?”

  “You want some help?” Jelio asked.

  “If you like Lio, I can always use the advice of an intelligent female.” Rik lightly told her. Then, pointing his plasma rifle at the pirates he told
them in a stern voice, “Move you scum. Get down to the hold and that ship you came here in. When I give the word Butcher, open the bay doors.”

  “Anything you say Rik.”

  As a last desperate attempt to stay alive the pirate yelled out, “You guys can't takeover this ship. You're Peacekeepers. You can't own ships! Now an experienced Captain like meself, I could fly her any place you want.”

  Jon stood straight and announced for all to hear, “I am Admiral Jon Connell owner of record of the BBITCo FTL Transport Company. I am taking possession of this vessel under the rules of salvage concerning ships taken in the act of illegal pirate operations. This ship and her legal crew are now officially a part of the BBITCo FTL deep space transport fleet. Until I can hire a replacement, I will retain command of the ship.” Turning back to his friend he said, “Get that garbage off my boat!”

  “Yes Sir!” Rik responded. “You heard the Admiral, move out!” As he left, forcing the whimpering pirates ahead of him, Rik issued orders for all of the captured pirates and the bodies of any of the dead or wounded pirates to be brought down to the hold. Once there he forced them all into the remains of the ancient space wreck and sealed it closed after disabling any COM equipment and only then getting himself and his men safely inside the main ship. He issued commands to open the bay doors and release the older ship out into space somewhere along the slipway out in normal space where it would never be found. It would float in space for decades if not centuries before being found again. This time with a crew of dead pirates onboard in place of the living ones who had stolen the TransCo Destroyer.

  “How long at full power until we reach the coords I sent you?” Jon demanded to know.

  “Less than an hour Sir. Its so close its a wonder it hasn't been charted before.” the navigation officer told him.

  “Jackal to Butcher, Our shuttles are all inside now skipper.”