by PJ Strebor
“Captain Telford, look at me.” She followed his order.
The gun jerked in his hand and the projectile hit Celia Telford in the chest, throwing her backwards. Lucas caught his mother as she fell and cradled her in his arms as they slumped to the deck. Clamping his hand over her torn tunic did nothing to stem the gushing blood that flowed onto the deck. His tears mixed with her blood as his mother died in his arms.
He felt the warm barrel press against his head. He was numb with shock and grief.
“No,” Rebecca screamed. “Don’t kill my father.” Her voice quavered with fear. “I will comply with you, major.”
“Very well, my dear.”
He turned to face the Damage Control Station. “You,” he said to Amy Covington Telford, “look at me.”
Oh God, no.
Manson raised the gun and fired.
Lucas turned in time to see Amy fall, blood running from her ruined head.
“The next one of you, things, who looks at me, will die.”
Manson took Rebecca from the bridge. Tears shone in her eyes. With his mother’s body attended to he and Mary returned to their quarters. They held one another close as tears flowed. Time appeared to stand still until his comm. beeped.
“Yes,” he managed to say.
“Lucas, you’ve got to come quick. The guards are dragging the women away.”
“Fuckers,” Lucas hissed.
He told Mary of the most recent atrocity as he headed for the hatch. It snapped open and a rifle butt struck him a blinding blow to the forehead. He fell to the deck, his head swimming. Boots slammed into him from every side.
His body broken and unresponsive he could only listen as his wife screamed and fought until multiple blows rendered her unconscious. When the ordeal finally ended the brutes left, laughing. Mary wiped her tears and began, without a single word, to treat his wounds.
Later she tried to shower away the shame. Her whimpering reached Lucas’ ears.
Once finished with their foul business against the women, the guards beat every male crewmember. Manson had successfully marked his territory.
Nathan, all of seven years old, limped into their quarters, bruised and bleeding. His right eye was swollen shut. Mary tended to his wounds. Like her he said nothing, taking the stinging pain while his lips compressed with hatred.
Later, she sat by Lucas. Her words, spoken in a whisper carried more bile than he could ever remember hearing from her sweet lips. “I’m a God-fearing woman, as you know, my love. However, after today I think the good Lord would forgive us if we kill every last one of these fucking animals.” It had been the first time in twenty-three years of marriage that he had heard her cuss.
CHAPTER 2
O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, c. 500 BC.
Time: 22nd February, 309 ASC.
Position: Pruessen Empire. Kulak system.
Status: Freighter Bellinda, en route to Kulak four.
Four years as slaves and it came down to the actions of this single day. Time, it was all about time.
The mood on the bridge had become somber in the last two hours. The air seemed warmer, tainted with a stagnant dryness that parched the back of the throat. Lucas Telford's logic told him that his imagination must be playing tricks on him even though the sensation felt palpable.
A nagging pulse hammered at the back of his head. He had little doubt that all of Bellinda's thirty-nine remaining family and crewmembers would be experiencing similar feelings of apprehension. Depending upon how chance played out, they would either regain their lost freedom or die in the attempt.
Lucas sat in the captain's chair unmoving, except for the fingers of his right hand that strummed lightly against the armrest. It remained as the only outer manifestation of a deeper anguish. Four years as a slave of the Empire had forced him to develop a superficial mask to cover his emotions.
His anguish remained deep within him, hidden from all. If he had miscalculated even slightly, family and friends would suffer the dreadful consequences, and the fault would be his alone. Their painstaking examination of every possible consideration could not guarantee a successful outcome. Yet the entire crew had unanimously agreed that taking this desperate chance would be far preferable to spending one more minute under the oppressive heel of the Empire.
Following the beacon out from Kulak prime Bellinda entered hyperspace and travelled for fifty-one minutes before egression back into N space. She deliberately dropped well short of the egression beacon for Kulak four. For the last twenty minutes the ship had been crawling toward her destination at half speed. It would be just a matter of time before this state of affairs would raise the attention of their captors. The success of the bold escape plan pivoted on the predictability of such a reaction.
With typical Pruessen efficiency the bridge and other key areas were under surveillance by their captors. Shortly after egression back to N space, components from her hyper generator had been removed and transferred to the escort ship Kania. The standard security protocols that the Pruessens employed were highly effective and predictable.
No last-minute instructions could be issued, no reassuring encouragement would be permitted to betray their hidden intent. Everything had to appear like the unfolding of another uneventful day in the lives of a ship of slaves. The bridge crew sat at their stations, unmoving, focused, determined.
Lucas desperately wanted to spare Nathan the coming nightmare but knew that he could not risk even the most inoffensive change to the normal routine of the ship. No matter how slight the variations, the chronically mistrustful Colonel Manson could see it as suspicious. Twenty-two years as the adjutant of the euphemistically called Internee Labor Camps had him seeing plots in his dreams.
Nathan sat in his usual place, the jump seat beside his mother, engrossed in his studies, observing the conventional running of the ship, and rarely uttering a sound. The ship currently had six cadet crewmembers with Nathan the youngest of the Telford clan to take up such a position.
During their four years of imprisonment, Bellinda’s crew had travelled from one side of the restored Empire to the other. They had been in the thick of battle, re-supplying the Pruessen push into the Pilbara and Bentport systems. They had carried cargo and troops, food and medical supplies and every fashion of dangerous goods not considered fit for Pruessen Merchantmen. Bellinda’s forays into warzones on resupply missions paled next to the dread generated by their infrequent visits to Kulak. Life as a slave of the Empire was harsh but a return to Kulak meant a return to a regime of such indiscriminant cruelty as to make their lives elsewhere within the Empire seem relatively pleasant. For a people who prized their freedom as highly as they did, the past four years had been an exercise in zealous restraint carried out within an existence akin to a living nightmare.
Everyone of Bellinda’s people were forever changed by that first shocking day in Kulak. The exercise to break them came close to achieving its aim. Some of the crew were traumatized and all of them had changed. Their rage focused them onto a single goal. Escape.
Two years later they returned to Kulak. Their naivety had been brutally torn from every one of them. Manson renewed his status with more of the same pointless cruelty. He did not need to prove his point. He simply did it, because he could. Two more crew died for no other reason than to fulfill Manson’s sadistic insanity.
They took it all. They endured. Now after four years of kowtowing to their masters, today would see them free or dead.
It did not follow the normal trend to have an eleven-year-old cadet serving on the bridge, even for something as mundane as shipboard orientation. However, Nathan had proved to be unlike the other children aboard the ship. And with the number of crew lost to them everyone was expected to lift their weight.
The other children, though older than he,
were puzzled at how quickly he understood the lessons that they struggled with. The older students welcomed his presence in their study groups until he proved to be smarter than they. Then the ugly green monster made its presence known. Lucas and Mary Telford both agreed that he could learn more on his own, under their supervision, than he could within the restrictions of the formal shipboard education system. He had been a cadet observer on Bellinda's bridge for the last two years. Nathan asked few questions during his time on duty, concentrating on the lessons scrolling across his computer screen.
Nathan glanced up from the touch screen and the lesson he had been reading, as if sensing his father's eyes upon him. He had the deep, soulful gray eyes of Lucas' side of the family, with the obscure blue flecks lingering in the background. Lucas allowed a small smile to touch the side of his mouth and dispatched a wink. Nathan returned his smile with that peculiar lopsided smirk that briefly creased the right side of his face. Today a devilish glint hid behind his eyes and a touch of malice distorted his mouth. Lucas felt unfazed by his son's reaction. Nathan knew his obligation to the family as well as any of them.
Lucas forced his fingers to cease their strumming as he heard the interlocking bridge hatch slide open behind him.
"Attention on the bridge," Mary Telford ordered.
Every crewmember leapt from their duty stations and snapped to attention. In accordance with Pruessen doctrine their eyes were cast to the deck.
Four guards entered, their eyes alert, pulsar rifles at their shoulders. They fanned out into a semicircle covering the hatch. With wide-swinging arcs of their rifles they scanned the bridge for danger. A ludicrous show of force against powerless slaves.
Unlike the squad of bored garrison guards who normally accompanied Bellinda on her intersystem voyages, these guards were professionals. The colonel's personal bodyguard stood thirty strong, were highly trained, physically hard, well armed. The crew survived their mistreatment at the hands of the guards only because of their status as a valuable commodity. The guards’ strict orders forbade them from killing any of the crew. Beat them half to death, degrade them, torture them, but never kill them.
Manson did not see himself as a lesser being to whom such petty constraints applied. Looking directly at the colonel meant death.
The head guard, Mendlesolm, finally satisfied himself that the seven defenseless slaves presented no danger.
"All clear, colonel."
With his eyes averted to the deck, Lucas could only see the sparkling black boots and immaculately pressed trousers of the person who stepped onto the bridge. The black boots walked casually forward until they were under his lowered gaze. He stood without movement or sound for what seemed like many minutes. The two men had played this game many times before and Lucas resisted the urge to swallow the bile that threatened to choke him. The crew had found out the hard way just how much Colonel Manson enjoyed his games.
"Captain Telford," the colonel said, "how good it is to see you again." As always, his voice sounded unusually high for someone of his build yet still held the same inference of knife-edged menace. The gleaming boots walked to where Rebecca stood frozen by the helm station. "And how pleasant it is to see you again my dear." Lucas could only see her hands clench into fists, the knuckles jutting out white and bony. Manson turned on his heel and in two strides came level with Lucas.
"Now, enough of the pleasantries. Captain Telford perhaps you would be so good to tell me what sort of game you are playing?"
A shudder ran down Lucas' spine. For a terrifying moment he thought that Manson had discovered the plan. Then he remembered that it had been he who had invited the colonel to visit the bridge. He forced his pulse rate down and made certain that his voice did not betray him.
"Colonel Manson, sir," he said in low respectful tones, "I do not understand, sir."
"Still you play these games with me Telford. After all these years and everything that we have shared you still think that you are my equal. You are a piece of property captain, not an individual, not a person, but a thing." Manson tapped the baton into the palm of his left hand directly into Lucas' line of sight. "Why are we taking so long getting to Kulak four, Telford? We should be there by now but my people tell me that the ship is running only at half speed."
"Colonel Manson sir, we…"
Lucas doubled over as the baton slammed into his stomach. He leaned on his knees and pushed himself to a standing position.
"Did I give you permission to speak, slave?"
Lucas gritted his teeth and said nothing.
"Good, we understand one another at last." Manson's voice held a note of triumph. "Now tell me why this bucket is moving so slowly."
"Colonel Manson sir, my senior engineer informs me that he has a problem with the number three engine and that the number two is running erratically. As I informed your office on many occasions this ship is badly in need of a major engineering overhaul."
The baton came under his chin lifting his head upward. Lucas averted his eyes downward and to the side to avoid committing the cardinal sin.
"I don’t care for your excuses Telford," the colonel growled. "I will not be late for my arrival at Kulak four because you Athenian wretches are playing games with me. It seems that you need yet another lesson." He gestured to Mendlesolm who stepped up to the helm station and grabbed Rebecca roughly by the arm.
David made the mistake of touching the guard. The butt of the rifle struck him in the stomach and he fell to the deck. Mendlesolm dragged an unresisting Rebecca to the back of the bridge.
"Colonel Manson sir," Lucas pleaded, "this isn’t necessary."
The gold head of the baton cut a broad line across his left cheek forcing him to grab the arm of the captain's chair to remain standing.
"One more time Telford," Manson hissed into his face, "and this vessel will be looking for another new captain." He smiled at Rebecca before turning back to Lucas. "Now captain, you were saying?"
Lucas had no doubt that the colonel would interpret his labored breathing as fear. He surreptitiously examined the guards. They were relaxed, entertained by their colonel's performance. They were armed and confident, having witnessed such cruel, cowardly displays many times before. In their minds they truly believed that four years of slavery had beaten the fight out of the Athenians. They had actually slung their rifles over their shoulders.
"Colonel Manson sir, if I may talk to my crew I am sure that I can motivate them to greater efforts."
"If you cannot motivate them I am certain that I will find a way to do so." Manson smirked. "You have my permission, captain."
Lucas backed away from the colonel with his head averted until he bumped into the right armrest of the command chair.
"Jack pipe me through the ship, please."
The comm. officer nodded once.
Lucas took a deep breath and pressed the comm. stud.
"This is the captain speaking." He paused ever so slightly before continuing. "England expects that every man will do his duty."
"What?" Manson said. "What is that?"
Lucas raised his head to look directly into the colonel's eyes. His anger boiled to the surface. Manson's eyes widened in astonishment.
"It's a quote, from Nelson, you fucker."
The next few seconds were a blur of frenzied brutality.
Manson, sensing the obvious danger, reached for his sidearm.
The bodyguards tensed and reached for their pulsar rifles.
Lucas produced a knife from his left sleeve. It had many brothers and sisters, manufactured covertly in the ship's workshop. A narrow sliver of polished Decadone, short, sharp and made from an alloy that did not register on sensor scans. Lucas lunged at Manson, awaiting the expected agony of an energy blast tearing through his back.
At the same instant the main hatch slid aside. Four of Bellinda's largest crewmembers charged onto the bridge. In their hands were solid metal bars and sharp gleaming slivers.
Distracted by the attack on their colonel, the unexpected onslaught caught them napping. Garrison guards would have presented little problem. But these were an elite force.
The attackers closed with the bodyguards fast. Too fast to give them any chance to raise their weapons. The two guards closest to the hatch went down quickly: the first felled by a mighty blow that crushed his skull, the second to multiple stab wounds to the throat.
David jumped from the navigation station and charged at Manson. The colonel saw him coming and tagged him with his heavy baton. David staggered to the deck.
The third and fourth guards had precious seconds to react. Number three backed away and managed to raise his weapon up to his hip. As his finger closed on the trigger, Jackson – rising from the comm. station behind him – drove the knife into his throat. The guard jerked violently as he died, and his weapon discharged. Miraculously it missed hitting anyone directly, but the ricochet caught one of the attacking Athenian's in the thigh.
Colonel Manson got his hand around the butt of his pistol before Lucas closed the distance between them. He head-butted the colonel with stunning force then seized the weapon with one hand, trapping it in its holster. In the same fluid movement he shifted his stance and swung around behind him. As the sharp, cold alloy of his knife touched the colonel's throat, all resistance ceased.
Now, only Mendlesolm remained as a threat. The guard proved to be quick on his feet and remarkably agile in his thinking. In the tradition of all cowardly bullies, he backed away from the melee, dragging Rebecca with him. He came up against the unoccupied Damage Control console. His huge left hand held Rebecca by the back of her neck, while the right gripped his pulsar rifle. The barrel of the weapon pressed against the back of Rebecca's head.
Lucas stared into the guard's eyes, cold fury and hatred burning. He pushed the knife far enough upward to cause a trickle of blood to run down the colonel's taught neck.
All movement on the bridge stopped as if in a frozen image. The three Athenian attackers poised to grab the fallen weapons. Jackson standing stock still, the bloody knife in his hand. Lucas and Manson unmoving except for their heaving chests. Mendlesolm, cold eyed, determined never to allow the slave to win. Rebecca, inhumanly calm, her eyes sparkling with fury.