Star Talon (Fortune Hunters Book 1)

by Bradford Bates

  Laser fire erupted towards Maze and Gabe forcing them to cover. Six men rushed out on Maze’s side of the cargo bay. The first man in line was holding some kind of kinetic shield. I dropped the shotgun and pulled out my two pistols. I waited until they passed me and opened up into the flank. Three men fell before the shield bearer turned towards me. The other two men ran around him and into the ship.

  “Kyra, I’ve got two coming your way.”

  “Shit.” She mumbled.

  “Don’t worry, I’m coming for you, just keep the door sealed.”

  “Just hurry, Captain.”

  The two pistols found their way back into the holsters on my thighs. I took out our secret weapon. We had one flash bang on our ship. It was always used as a last resort. In the small space even with ear protection, it would throw us off balance. I just hoped it would hurt the pirates more.

  “Maze, are you ready for this?”

  “Just get to her, Captain.”

  The small grenade flew over the crates. I heard it bounce twice and then I started running. It exploded in a rush of sound and bright light. The pirate in front of me fell to his knees but managed to keep the shield up. He must not have realized what happened to his buddies because a kinetic shield wasn’t going to stop what I had coming for him. I pulled the trigger, and the ground next to him sparked. Damn, flashbang had done more to me than I thought.

  His pistol came up through a small hole in the side of the shield. He started to fire, but his shots were even worse off than mine. This time, I waited until I couldn’t miss. The first shot buckled the shield, the second shot ripped through it, and the third and final opened a wound in his chest that he wouldn’t be recovering from.

  A laser blast scorched the wall to the right of me as I ducked into the passage. There wasn’t another one, so I assumed Maze got the shooter. Now all I had to do was get to Kyra before they could get through the door. My heart started to beat faster as shots rang out from in front of me. Damn it. If they hurt her, there would be hell to pay.

  I rounded the last corner and had to duck back as a laser blast came my way. I could hear the torch they had cutting at the door lock. There wasn’t enough time for subtle. I stuck the shotgun around the corner low and started to fire. One man screamed, but then the sound I had been dreading to hear came. They had the door open.

  Two shots rang out and then a third before I was moving. I pumped one blast into the man on the ground before I ran past him. Kyra was down on the ground bleeding, but her assailant was already dead. She got shot in the stomach, and that meant we had some time. Our medbay wasn’t state of the art, but it would have to be enough. “All hostiles inside the ship are down. I’m taking Kyra to the medbay.”

  “The airlock is clear for now, seems as though they’ve had enough.” Maze reported.

  “Ice, I need you to make sure they can’t disengage from the airlock.”

  “Why and the hell would I want to do that, Captain?”

  “Just do it!” I growled.

  “It’s done.”

  I laid Kyra down on the table in the medbay and grabbed a handful of gauze. I pressed it to the wound. “Just hold that in place for now. It will slow the bleeding enough to buy us some time. I’ll be back.”

  She spoke through gritted teeth. “Go get the bastards, Captain.”

  “I intended to.”

  “Ice, how long can you keep them attached to us?”

  “Forever if we need to. They could always rip their ship way from us, but it could destroy both of our ships.”

  “Just keep me updated.”

  “I still don’t see the logic in this, Captain.”

  “They shot Kyra, Ice. How many other folks you think they killed with that little life support trick. Plus if we let them go now, they could just come back with more men and a worse attitude. This ends now.” I was glad for the silence that followed.

  “The cargo bay is still all clear, Captain. I’m ready when you are.” Maze said as I ran into the room.

  I nodded to her that I was ready to go. I popped out the magazine on the shotgun and put a new one in place. Twenty-five shots and then it was pistols for the rest. “Gabe, stay with the ship. Anything that comes through that airlock that ain’t us, you kill it. No questions.”

  “You got it, Captain.” I noticed he had replaced his rifle with an automatic laser of some kind. That wasn’t something we kept in the weapons locker, so I was going to have to ask him about it later.

  Maze nodded once and then I started moving. These bastards were going to figure out what it meant to screw with my crew. We moved around the crate, the man whose legs I had shot out was still lying there. I delivered another blast to his chest silencing him forever. None of these men deserved to live. I wondered how many people they killed that never even saw it coming. They were going to see me coming, I guaranteed it.

  Chapter Seven

  “Ice, get me a schematic of their ship and send it to my display.”

  “Done.”

  I knew she just wanted this to be over, but letting these kind of people back out into the world was something I couldn’t live with. I checked my wrist, and the ship’s layout slowly moved across it. Maze tapped me on the back indicating that she had received it as well. She took up a position to the right of me as we passed through the airlock.

  There was no one waiting to stop us from coming into the ship. That surprised me. Maybe I had overestimated the amount of people they had on board. We moved through the cargo bay unmolested and made it to the first hallway. I reached for the door and felt Maze’s hand grab my shoulder and pull me back.

  She moved in front of me and looked through the glass cut out and slowly stepped away. She motioned for me to follow. We knelt down about fifteen feet away. “What gives?”

  “Small amount of explosives on the other side of the door. Not enough to do real damage to the ship, but you would have lost your hand.”

  “How in the hell did you see that before looking through the glass.” She just pointed at her right eye. I had totally forgotten that she had it replaced with bionics. She could see things that I couldn’t.

  “It’s giving off a small heat signature against the door.” She looked at me waiting for something. I just lifted up one hand and twirled my fingers with impatience. I wasn’t ready when she fired her gun at the door. So much for me being impatient. The door exploded outwards, covering the ground directly in front of it with shrapnel. Before I could even think about moving forward, Maze was on her way towards the door. She hated letting me take point, after her display with the bomb it’s something I could learn to live with.

  I couldn’t let her get too far in front. Someone had to have her back. I heard her shotgun spring to life, and that got me moving. I ducked through the door and started to run to catch up. I saw Maze turn the corner, and a man came out of a concealed door behind her. He took the first blast from my gun in his leg and the next one in the chest as I continued running past him. Maze had already cleared the next two rooms before I caught her, just outside of the bridge.

  “Seriously Maze, try not to leave me behind.”

  She ignored my statement. “Thanks for having my back, Captain.”

  “I can’t quit you!”

  “Captain, we don’t have that kind of relationship.”

  I couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “Just open the fucking door already,” I said with a fake snarl. She looked at me one eyebrow pulled up in question, a hint of a smile tugging at the right side of her mouth.

  She reached out and hit the panel to open the door, and nothing happened. She hit it again, with the same result, and then banged her fist against it in frustration. She stepped back and leveled her shotgun at it. “Damn it Maze! We’ll never get in that way.”

  She lowered the gun and looked at me. I took a small receiver out of my pocket and placed it on the panel. “Ice, you picking up my signal?”

  “Loud and clear, Captain. It’s going to take me
a few minutes. Like I said their computer guy is good. Lucky for you, I’m better.”

  “Just get it done. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

  As if thinking the exact same thing, Maze ran back down the hallway and dropped to one knee at the corner. She would be able to hold them off for a while, but any real push from the enemy and we would be overwhelmed. I checked the schematics on my arm again, and there were only two ways to go, forwards, or back to our ship. Maze’s shotgun rang out again, and I tapped my fingers against the wall impatiently.

  “Captain, I can open the door on your signal.”

  “Maze, you ready to go?”

  She spared me a quick look, popped around the corner firing off five quick blasts before running back towards me. “Do it.” The door slid open, and we ducked behind the side panels as shots rang out from inside of the room. The scorch marks were still cooling when we simultaneously stepped back into the opening and fired our shotguns into the enclosed space. After three shots each, we ducked back behind cover and waited.

  No further shots came inside of the room. “Ice, are you picking up any life signs from the bridge?”

  “Everyone is down, Captain. I do have four coming at you from behind.” We slipped inside of the room just as the bullets hit the door. Maze leaned her shotgun against the wall and pulled out her favorite pistol. She ran one hand lovingly down the barrel before poking her head around the corner.

  Her cybernetics would have isolated the targets for her. She nodded at me and I leaned out and blasted my shotgun into the corridor. The return fire was all focused on me. Maze leaned out and fired four times. There was only one scream, which came to an end with her fifth shot. I walked back out into the hallway trying to ignore the mess. I took the chip I had placed on the door and brought it to the console on the bridge.

  Snapping the chip into place was easy. “Ice, I have you plugged into their console. Anything else we need to worry about?”

  “There is one more life signature coming from the ship. I’m sending you the location now.”

  Maze tucked her beloved pistol away and picked up her shotgun again. We started to walk back down the hallways until we reached the second room we had entered. Two rooms further down the hallway was our target. “Gabe, we are moving in on the last pirate. Start moving any bodies left on our ship back to this one. We’ll let the guild deal with the mess.”

  “I’m on it, Captain.”

  Maze took point again. The next room was clear, leaving just one door between us and the last pirate on the ship. She hit the door panel, and it opened with a whoosh of air. Entering the room I didn’t see anyone at first and then the gurney in the corner started to shake. I motioned for Maze to lower her gun and moved towards the sheet covered gurney.

  The sheet pulled off easily enough, revealing a man huddled underneath the gurney it had covered. He was shaking so badly I thought he might have been a boy. He was mumbling something that resembled, “Please don’t hurt me again.” I moved the gurney away from him and if anything his shaking got worse. I nodded to Maze, and she walked back towards the door.

  When I reached out towards him, the man shrank back against the wall in fear. “Hey, you’re safe. No one is going to hurt you.” He turned his face towards me for the first time. I could see the deep yellow bruising around his eyes and lips. He had been beaten badly and not too long ago.

  “You’re not one of them are you?” He seemed almost confused as he asked. Almost as if he was waiting for this to be some kind of trick.

  “No, I’m not one of the pirates.” I reached out again, but he shrank away from my touch. I decided to back up a step instead to give him some space. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Richard. Dr. Richard Haus.”

  “And when you say doctor, do you mean medical?”

  “I do.”

  “I have an injured person on my ship. Do you think you can help?”

  He seemed to come back to himself for a moment but then shrunk back against the wall. “It’s just a trick. You want me on your ship, just like they did.” He looked up at my face once and then tried to hide against the wall. I got the distinct impression that if he could have, he would have crawled through it to get away from me.

  “Listen if you can help my friend, I’ll drop you off on any planet you want. In fact, there are two ways I can do it. We will be sending this ship back to the mercenary guild. You can stay on it, and they will get you squared away when it docks. Or you can stay with us until we finish our mission and I will personally take you anywhere you want to go.” He looked up at me once but then moved away a step. “Sound good to you?”

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “You don’t, but I don’t see any other options for you. My friend needs your help, and then you decide what happens from there.”

  He started to move away from the wall and was pulled back into place. I saw the cuffs on his wrist then. I wondered just what had happened to this man, but now wasn’t the time to ask. “Which one of them had the keys?”

  “He had blonde hair in a Mohawk with tattoos on the sides of his head.”

  “Maze, look for a spiky haired blond with tattoos. See if you can find a set of keys on him.” She walked out of the room coming back a moment later with a set of keys. She tossed them to me, and instead of reaching out to uncuff the doctor I handed him the keys. He didn’t trust me yet, and really I couldn’t blame him for that. I wasn’t willing to get close enough for him to lash out at me.

  Once he was free of his shackles and standing, I gave him a quick once over. “We can also give you some new clothes.”

  The barest hint of a smile cracked across his lips before it vanished. “What, you don’t like what I’m wearing?”

  I looked at the rags he had on. Rags were too nice of a term for the clothes that hung from his skinny frame. The clothes had more holes than swiss cheese. Obviously, the pirates didn’t care too much about the man’s health, or they were still trying to break him. “Not especially. So tell me Doc, do you have any experience with gunshot wounds?”

  “I do.”

  “Good, grab what you need from here and let’s get the hell off the ship.”

  Chapter Eight

  Once the doctor got to work, he seemed to forget about anything but his patient. I watched him from the corner of the room. His hands moved quickly over Kyra’s wound. His fingers were nimble, and he didn’t hesitate at all. The surgery went quickly, and before long he was stitching the wound closed.

  When he put the last of his tools away, I asked. “How’s my girl?”

  “She is going to be sore, and probably needs to stay off her feet for a few days, but other than that she is going to be fine.”

  “Thanks again, Doc.”

  “It’s probably me who should be thanking you. If you hadn’t come along, I would have been stuck on that ship until I died.”

  “One of these days you’re going to have to tell me how that happened.” I held up my hand to stop him as he started to protest. “Don’t worry, today isn’t that day.”

  “You said I could leave after I helped you.”

  “I did, and you can. Why don’t you get a shower and change.” I handed him an old pair of jeans and a shirt. “Meet me in the center of the ship when you’re done, and we can talk about it.”

  “Captain, I didn’t catch your name?”

  “It’s Drake.” We shook hands, and I led him to where the shower was. Along the way, I pointed out where I would be waiting. He looked grateful, and somehow doing the surgery on Kyra seemed to snap him out of his ordeal. I left him and moved into our meeting room and kitchen.

  “Gabe, is everything squared away?”

  “Sure is, Captain. We pulled weapons and ammo from the ship. Everything else we left for the guild to handle. The cargo hold looked to be pretty full, so all in all a healthy payday.”

  “Maze?”

  “We can expect the guild to screw us on our cut of the m
erchandise. That’s just how it goes, plus those poor bastards have to clean all the dead bodies out of the ship. We’ll get seventy percent of the ship’s sale. Gabe’s right, this should be a good payday.”

  “Since the crew is whole, and the pirates are dead, it sure seems that we made a nice bonus. It was still a little too close for comfort.” I turned to face my computer specialist. “Ice, can you do anything to boost our sensors, if there are more pirates out there I’d like to know sooner, rather than later.”

  “I can probably do something. It won’t provide us with too much notice, but it should buy us enough time to engage the FTL if we need to rabbit.”

  “That’s all I needed. Anything new with our missing science vessel?”

  “It hasn’t moved since we came into orbit. Scans of the surface show it’s docked at some kind of building on the surface. Probably their main research facility. Seems unlikely that they would have a research facility whose communications were also down.”

  “I agree. Losing comms on a ship is one thing, but on the ground, they should be fine. It looks like we have at least one more mess to clean up before we get to take some time off.” Dr. Haus walked into the room. “Can I get you something to eat, Doc?”

  “I’d appreciate that. I didn’t exactly get regular meals during my captivity.”

  I tossed him two ration bars. “These should fill you up. Get you back on track vitamin-wise.”

  “Thank you, Captain. I’m sorry to say I overheard the end of your conversation. You said you are going to go planetside to check on some scientist.”

  “Correct, they have been dark for over a month now.”

  “I had planned on leaving with the ship, but if you think that they might be in need of medical attention, I’d be happy to stay.”