by gerald hall
Ursula’s final words were chilling. Victor knew that Ursula would even kill him if she felt that it would accomplish what she felt were her Master’s wishes.
Victor heard his own voice speak.
“Yes.” He said as the color continued to drain from his face. “You can take the Hidden Blade to attempt to capture the other jump tender.”
“Excellent.” Ursula answered with a tone of utter satisfaction and contempt.
As she walked away, Ursula almost casually commented.
“I will need all of your remaining security personnel transferred to the Hidden Blade for the attack. I will leave within the hour. Please be sure to tell our visitor that we will be sending assistance soon.”
A terrifying laugh filled the hallway as Ursula walked through it towards the jump tender’s docking collars. Victor then remembered that Ursula didn’t mention anything about needing any medical personnel.
Aboard the Black Diamond, her crew had their own ideas about the need for medical personnel.
“They won’t let us come to their ship with out ‘casualties’, I’m afraid. Instead, they are offering to come here on their shuttle with medical supplies and several medics to help us.” the ‘Santa Maria’s communication tech reported. Once the transmission ended, her voice suddenly became far stronger, though with a twinge of disappointment.
“It’s not your fault, Jessi. Everyone is a bit on edge lately. While a Tramp would have been quite a prize, I’ll be more than happy to take a heavy cargo shuttle full of loot instead.” The Black Diamond’s Captain Jackson Farrow smiled.
“OK, everybody. You know the drill. We have visitors coming. We want to properly greet them. Now, let’s get to it.”
At the airlock door for Number Three docking collar, a pair of armed crewmen were setting up a cylinder at the adjacent bulkhead.
“What’s the cocktail for today?” Lieutenant Julia LeGrande asked with a little chuckle as she prepared her weapon and hostile environment suit.
“ND-42. It’s a delayed action nerve agent that is absorbed via inhalation. The captain managed to steal a load of this stuff a couple of years ago from one of the syndicate shuttles that we had hit. We are going to use a light overpressure in the airlock to push the agent right into their shuttle's atmosphere shortly after they dock with us. It is hard as hell to detect in these low concentrations as well. These fools won’t suspect a couple of extra PSI of atmospheric pressure in the airlock. After thirty seconds, they will start feeling the effects. By then, there will be enough agent inside of their ship to kill or incapacitate everyone aboard. After an hour, the agent degrades to a harmless compound.” One of the crewmen replied gleefully.
“Sweet….”
The Truist shuttle expertly docked with the Black Diamond. Armed personnel in both ships prepared to assault the other. But neither ship was aware of the true nature and intent of the other.
A green light intermittently flashed on the docking collar’s airlock. A frustrated sounding male voice was heard over the intercom.
“Sorry, folks. The explosion has badly damaged all of hydraulics and our internal pressurization system. You’re going to have to pull pretty hard on the outer and inner doors to get them open because our air pressure is running a little high right now. We really appreciate your help though.”
Adam Teach almost couldn’t keep himself from laughing before he shut down the intercom system. He could see from the nearby video screen, several crewmen from the shuttle in medical garb pulling hard at the airlock door that the pirates had deliberately kept secured. Adam finally unlocked the door using the console beside him. He could hear the faint hiss as the air and nerve gas mixture bled into the shuttle’s lower pressured atmosphere. He smiled as he spoke to his friend Emilio Franklin as they, among others, hid behind the cover of several crates in preparation for the ambush of the incoming personnel.
“We’ll give them about thirty seconds so that plenty of gas gets into the shuttle’s environmental system, then I’ll unlock the inner airlock door too. We’ve got some extra air pressure here too to keep the gas flowing in the right direction. The funny part is that they are all already dead. They just don’t know it yet.”
He was almost right….
Finally, the inner door opened up. A tall, beautiful, auburn-haired woman, followed by over half a dozen men and woman, all dressed in medical garb and carrying yellow cases marked with first aid symbols, stepped into the compartment. They also wore standard magnetized footwear since this was a Zero-G section of the jump tender. The visitors saw that the compartment was littered with boxes and crates, ancient-looking, dirty as though it hadn’t been cleaned in a hundred years. They also didn’t see any people.
“Where is everyone?” One of the men standing near Ursula asked.
“I don’t know.” She activated the IR imaging in her prosthetic eye and scanned the compartment. She started to see the traces of heat signatures when one woman, then several of the men in her team began to suffer severe muscle tremors before going limp and collapsing, foam spilling from their lips.
“Put down your cases and put your hands in the air!” A voice called out from behind one of the boxes.
Fighting the tremors that suddenly began racking his body, Acolyte Terrance Wilson opened his case and pulled out a submachine gun. He sprayed the room with bullets before a woman wearing a hostile environment suit lifted up from behind a case and shot him through the heart with a laser rifle.
“Get back in the ship!” Ursula screamed as she aimed her right arm and fired its internal laser pistol through the head of one of the ambushers that had come into view. None of the men and women who were with Ursula survived to dash the short distance back to the Hidden Blade. They had all either succumbed to the gas or had been shot by the numerous pirate ambushers in the compartment. As Ursula turned to run, she was hit in the back multiple times but the body armor that she wore underneath the medical garb stopped the rounds. The impacts knocked her down hard though. She got back up immediately and ran back into the shuttle, passing a dozen of her fellow jihadists that had been poised to assault the jump tender but instead had died from the spreading nerve agent. Ursula was so stunned by the turnabout in events that she did not even try to close and lock the airlock as she ran through it.
“Let’s go get some loot from these bastards!!!” joyfully cried out several of the pirates as they quickly followed behind Ursula and secured the airlock into the shuttle. Another twenty pirates flooded into the Hidden Blade and split up into two groups. One went to Engineering while the other headed for the shuttle’s bridge.
“I can’t let them take this ship intact.” Ursula said to herself as she kept just ahead of the intruders. As she ran towards Engineering, she saw dead and dying crewmen everywhere. But she was practically unarmed herself. She had not been able to pick up a weapon from her fallen crewmen. Also, a hit to her left arm had damaged her spare power cell at the beginning of the ambush. She now had little power left for her imbedded weapons as well.
She stopped for a moment and heard footsteps coming towards her. Slipping off to the side of a passageway. She saw an arm slowly appear with a laser pistol in it. Without thought, a vibroblade popped out of Ursula’s right arm, activated and flashed downward across the exposed forearm. Immediately, she heard a scream over the humming of the blade. Then Ursula noted the next sound as the impact of the severed arm and pistol on the floor.
Ursula seized the pistol even as its former owner ran away still screaming in agony with blood spraying in the air from the stump of his wrist. Using her available weapons, she brutally shot and slashed her way through several small groups of pirates she found heading towards Engineering.
Finally, enough boarders arrived to drive Ursula back with their sheer volume of fire. She was hit repeatedly, her legs mangled. Ursula found herself sitting behind a control console, her own blood welling in the air around her. Bullets were ricocheting off of the walls and through her body armor. She was also stru
ck in the cheek losing an eye and tearing apart half of her face. Her vaunted beauty was being taken from her, bit by bit, along with her life.
“No enemy of the Blessed True Way will profit from my flesh or my death. I shall strike out even as I give my life for my Master.”
At that moment, she voluntarily detonated all of the self-destruct devices imbedded in her implants. The explosion tore apart several control consoles and sent shrapnel flying through several of the nearby pirates.
The ship was suddenly silent as the surviving pirates watched in shock at what one woman had done to them and to the shuttle. The bridge crew had all died as well. Most of them died from the effects of the gas, but the others, including another Uomo Dominante, had fought the pirates to the death as well. ‘The True Way’ disguised battler, Hidden Blade now belonged to Captain Jackson Farrow’s pirate band.
While the Truist force was running into unexpected difficulties in space, their troops on the ground swept through their opposition. The heavy armor that had been landed on the planetary surface had easily overwhelmed the colonial defenders who were armed with little more than light personal weapons and some obsolete conventional tanks. A few more hours of combat, and the Truist force would have full control of the entire colony and its valuable resources. But something elsewhere would end up interfering with that objective.
Demi-Precentor Mirabella Lucas stopped for a moment, surveying the battlefield from the turret of her heavy battle tank. A warbling tone in her commo helmet warned her that she was getting a long-range message from the jump tender.
“What’s the situation, Adept Stern?” Mirabella asked. The distance between the planet and the distant jump tender meant that there would be several minutes of delay between transmissions.
“Ma’am. We had another jump tender enter the star system at the jump point. They told us that they had a medical emergency and needed assistance. Adept Tureau took the Hidden Blade and a platoon of boarding troops with the intent of capturing the jump tender and her two shuttles. The Hidden Blade docked about two hours ago with the other jump tender. We have received several audio transmissions from the other jump tender claiming to be from our personnel. The messages say that resistance is much heavier than anticipated but that slow progress is being made towards taking the vessel.”
“Figures that Ursula would rush in and get over her head, even if she is a Uomo Dominante. But if you are getting messages stating that they are making progress, what’s the problem, Adept? I’m still busy fighting against the infidels here.”
“Ma’am. The messages do not conform to protocol with their lack of video and authentication codes. I strongly suspect that these transmissions are coming from the enemy. This would mean that our shuttle and its crew have been compromised.” The jump tender captain said in an emotionless tone.
“Oh, that’s just great….. If an enemy force has control of Hidden Blade, then our entire force will be vulnerable. I want you to begin to prepare to jump. We are going to evacuate our forces from here and returning to you ASAP. If Hidden Blade begins to return to you but is not confirmed as being in friendly hands, you are to jump out of system immediately. You will then recharge and jump back to rendezvous with us in 200 hours at the system nadir point. Redirect all recharging to the jump drive. Confirm orders upon receipt.”
“Calling all True Way units. Let’s pack it up ASAP. Return to your shuttles. All three Angel flights will conduct saturation bombing runs in 30 minutes to provide separation for your withdrawal.”
“Crap!!! We were within 48 hours of completely neutralizing all resistance and procuring targeted enemy assets.” An irritated Mirabella said to herself as she fired her tank’s heavy plasma cannon at a distant militia armored fighting vehicle. A light scout tank from her team had provided targeting telemetry to Mirabella’s tank through the unit's cooperative engagement datalink. A pair of Truist medium tanks along with a heavy tank destroyer were stalking several militia light hover tanks about half a klick to the south. The last member of Mirabella’s unit; a second heavy tank destroyer, was firing its heavy mass driver at extreme range to engage a militia self-propelled artillery piece at the same time.
After a couple more salvos, a radio message from one of the Truists’ Aerolances prompted everyone to start pulling back.
“This is Angel Flight Beta coming in with a mixed load of incendiary and cluster bombs. You might want to start moving back now before you find yourself with a bit of a hot foot.”
The tree line lit up a few moments later with hundreds of explosions and dozens of massive fireballs following the roar of a pair of passing Truist aerospace fighters. Several militia tanks were caught in the explosions and fell within the flames. Behind them, a company of militia armor and dozens of infantry squads fell back from the roaring inferno.
“Alright everyone. Let’s get back to the shuttle…fast!”
It took over five hours for Demi-Precentor Mirabella’s troops to get back to their shuttles, offload the technology that had already been looted from the planet and then get their equipment secured for takeoff. She paced furiously on the bridge of the Tiger-class assault troop shuttle Dagger of Truth after reading the reports that had come in from their jump tender. She had a videolink open between the shuttle and Purity of Flame.
“Adept Stern. Why in our prophet’s name did you allow that…woman….to take Hidden Blade to that other ship. That damned cyborg has cost us a shuttle, half of our fighters and even a nuclear missile.” She growled after reading the last of the reports.
“Maybe we can send more troops over to try to take the Hidden Blade back?” Acolyte Julius Martin, one of the bridge crew of the shuttle asked.
“We are going to have to wait and see what happens. If the Hidden Blade has been captured by hostile forces and made operational, it could destroy our entire force in a matter of minutes with the nuclear-tipped missile that we know that the ship carries. But we have to be sure first about who truly controls her.” The Demi-Precentor replied angrily.
Chapter Six:
Jump Tender Alacrity
Messier 67 Cluster, Orion Arm
October 14, 2320
“This is the fourth system that we have looked at since we entered the Messier Cluster. So far, nothing.” Joanna grumpily noted while she worked at her navigation console.
“Patience, Joanna. Even if we haven’t found the ideal location for a new base yet, we are still learning a great deal about this part of space. That knowledge will be very useful in the long run.” Alec pleasantly replied.
He wanted to get to business as quickly as possible himself. But long experience had taught him to gather as much intelligence as possible first, before settling upon a single course of action.
“Yes, it will be. But unfortunately we don’t have any of those new spy satellites with quantum communications arrays yet. Those all belong either with the Earth Fleet or with the people living on the colony at Libertad. All we have been able to manage was to place nanosats with sensors and data recorders in the systems that we have visited so far.”
“Joanna, those data recorders give us covert records on all ship traffic that come through the systems around us. Those traffic patterns will tell us about potential threats and targets that we can strike. Rita assures me that we will soon have our own quantum communications set up for our surveillance satellites though.
We wouldn’t want to have a task force of Lu’non ships come through our little part of the cluster without us knowing about it, would we Joanna?”
“I have to admit that the Lu’non terrify the hell out of me, Sir.”
“They terrify me too. We, as a species, will have to eventually confront them and eliminate them as a threat to ourselves, one way or another.”
“I have always been curious why Earth’s fleet did not go ahead and launch a full military expedition to go out and destroy the Lu’non. I have heard some terrible stories about what the Lu’non had done to the humans that they had captu
red during their raids on the border?” Joanna commented as she continued to work on the navigation calculations for the journey ahead.
“Politics, I’m afraid. When I was an officer in the Gliese Confederation Navy, I was told by one of our intelligence officers that Earth’s government, at the behest of certain corporate syndicates, had largely suppressed information on the Lu’non raids. It seemed that there had been some degree of collusion between Earth and those syndicates to prevent that information from getting out and spurring a major armed conflict on the border. The syndicates did not want the independent colonies to benefit from the elimination of the Lu’non threat. Earth’s governing part simply did not want to go to war and justify the conservative opposition’s desire for more military spending at the expense of social welfare programs.”
“Some people are just so damned selfish and short-sighted just for the sake of power. Were the rumors of the Lu’non viewing humanity as cattle to be slaughtered and consumed accurate?” An angry Joanna asked. The entire subject of the Lu’non sent chills down her spine whenever someone mentioned them.
“Yes, that is what my source told me. He also revealed certain other details about the other atrocities that the Lu’non had committed upon its human captives as well. An emergency beacon had been received from a human ship that had been captured by the Lu’non. Many of the crew had been captured alive after the attack on the jump tender.
All of the survivors had been taken off of the crippled jump tender except for the women of child-bearing age. The recording from the emergency beacon stated that the Lu’non had started to use the women as hosts for Lu’non larva, much like a wasp uses a spider as a living host for its young. The women on the crippled jump tender were stranded inside as the Lu’non temporarily left for reasons unknown.
According to the message in the beacon, the women eventually discovered what was happening to them and chose to destroy themselves and the jump tender when the Lu’non returned. The women took their own lives rather than die a slow, horrible death giving life to more of those creatures. The women recorded the details of what had happened to them and sent it within the distress beacon. There were some other graphic details about what the Lu’non had done to the women that were also very disturbing in their nature.