by gerald hall
"We better keep working on getting one of those fusion plants back up and running. How long do you think that it will take now to get us some weapons?" Alec asked even before the congratulations finished.
"We just about have one of the fusion plants up now. We had to disconnect the power feeds when those pirates showed up so that they wouldn’t realize that we were here. I have people running final checks on the fusion plant feeds right now. Then we flip a couple of switches to hook them back into the station’s power distribution system a few moments later. I'd say that we can possibly have one or two of the capital laser batteries ready in perhaps an hour or so." Colin replied.
"Let's get to it. I have a feeling that we might still need those lasers after all."
“What are we going to do?”
“Right now, we are going to just quietly wait and see if we can get these weapons working as quickly as possible. The less that those other pirate ships know of our capabilities, the better off that we are. If we are lucky, might just be able to take those ships as well. But if we have to destroy them, that is acceptable too. We have to eliminate the threat to this installation if we are going to be able to do anything other than blow it up ourselves anyway.” Alec firmly stated.
Chapter Twenty:
Pirate Jump Tender: Black Diamond
Approaching Orbit Number Three
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
February 15, 2321
"Why hasn't that damned rock blown up yet? The timer on that nuke should have gone off a couple of hours ago." Captain Farrow asked.
"I don't know. Maybe the nuke itself failed. After all, that thing's got to be at least a hundred years old, maybe more, based on what Carol had initially reported. They build nukes tough, but maybe the core got too old to go off now." Sarah replied.
"Let's give things a bit more time. You said that there were others on that station when we arrived. Maybe they managed to turn the nuke off too. But if that place is still intact in say about an hour, we're going back in to take the whole damned place by force for ourselves."
Another hour passed without any sign of an explosion from the asteroid. A frustrated Captain Farrow had waited long enough.
“Let’s close in on that damned moon. I am not about to leave here emptyhanded.”
"Yes, Sir." a nervous tech answered.
"I want both Black Diamond and Hidden Blade in on this deal. We will have everyone ready to board with no quarter given to anyone who resists. I want that rock and everything that's inside of it."
"It will take us at least four hours to get back down there at standard acceleration, Sir." Sarah noted, though she wanted to take that base as much as anyone.
"We're just going to have to deal with the extra G's and push the engines a bit harder, won't we? I am not going to give those people any longer to prepare than we have to."
Several personnel groaned at the thought of being pressed against their seats on the shuttle and jump tender at close to 2G's for more than two hours. It would not be a comfortable ride at all for any of the pirates who would be on those vessels.
"Aye, Aye. Sir."
“Execute maneuver. We’re going to take back our ship and steal every piece of technology that those bastards have before we flush them out of the nearest airlock.”
Of course, Alec and his people had already anticipated this move by the pirates.
"They're coming back in towards us, Sir." Tony Wallace announced.
"How long do we have before the rest of those pirates arrive?" Alec confidently asked.
"They were pushing a lot of G's coming in, but have just made turnover and have started decelerating. I'd say that we have less than an hour before they get here, Sir."
"You said that you were able to get power to one of the capital laser batteries, didn't you? Martin asked.
"Yes, Sir. Colin has apparently been very busy hooking up power from one of those old fusion bottles back into the station’s main distribution node. We've got green lights for a couple of medium capital lasers that we can bring to bear. The targeting system is a little iffy, but we are still working on that."
"Hold your fire then. If we get them close enough, we can’t miss even with whatever problems that we are having. I am hoping that we can take those two ships intact if possible though. The prize money would be substantial for us all.
But if we have to shoot them to prevent the pirates from escaping with the knowledge of our little base here, well that is alright too. We’ll salvage from their wrecks for our own purposes if necessary. That materiel will also help us get some more of our ships inside of here back to rights."
“We are within fifty-thousand kilometers of that moon, Sir.” Black Diamond’s sensor tech reported after enduring more G’s than he cared to think about for the past hour or so.
“We still have not heard anything more from ‘Dream’? Captain Farrow asked.
“No, Sir. Just background noise.”
“Then we will just have to get in closer.”
Ten minutes later inside of the lunar base, Alec got a quick call from Colin.
“We got the bugs out of the targeting system now, plus we got an extra pair of capital lasers operational. Between that and the fact that those two pirate ships are now practically on our doorstep, we can’t possibly miss them now.”
“That’s good, because that is exactly what I want you to do. You are going to fire at them, but not hit them. I want the shots to be damned close though.”
“Will-do, Sir.” Colin quickly replied, realizing just what Alec had in mind.
A few moments later, onboard the Black Diamond’s bridge, the entire compartment suddenly lit up with the glare of something that shown brightly through the bridge viewports.
"What the hell was that?" the pirate sensor tech exclaimed.
"I think that was a pair of capital lasers firing at us and Hidden Blade." The pirate jump tender’s gunnery officer curtly answered as she looked at the sensor readings herself.
"How close?" Jackson asked.
"Pretty damned close, I think one of the shots grazed Blade’s side. She didn't receive any major damage but that was still close as hell. She's turning away and evading as well."
“We are getting a message from the base now. They are ordering us to cut our engines and immediately surrender. If we do not comply immediately, they will destroy our ships.”
"If they have gotten capital weapons running on that installation, we're dead meat, especially if we hang around here any longer. Let's get this boat turned around and get the hell out of here before these people get off another shot at us. Make sure that you don't give those buggers a clear vector to fire at us with. I don't care if we end up bouncing off of the bulkheads a bit as long you keep them from hitting us."
"What about Hidden Blade?"
“Tell them to do the same thing. We will rendezvous at the nadir jump point and cut our losses while we still can.” Captain Farrow immediately ordered just as the jump tender made a quick preemptive evasion maneuver that slammed a couple of bridge crew up against their stations.”
“I don’t think that those pirates got the message. Both enemy vessels are attempting to leave the area at high speed. They are also employing evasive maneuvers to avoid our targeting systems.” One of the gunners manning the asteroid station’s defensive battery reported to the privateers’ commander.
Alec sighed in disappointment.
“Engage both ships before they get out of range. Try to target their bridge command centers if possible to reduce damage to the rest of the ships’ systems.”
“Roger, Sir.”
The next volley of high-energy laser bolts did not miss their target, at least, not exactly. A hit to the disguised battler’s bridge at point blank range caused a catastrophic hull breach that killed the entire bridge crew in just a few seconds. The Hidden Blade quickly began to slow as the surviving crew shut off her drives and signaled surrender.
&n
bsp; Black Diamond was far less fortunate. Just as a pair of capital lasers fired, the pirate jump tender made an evasive turn right into both shots. One shot gutted the jump tender’s bridge. The second shot hit the vessel in Engineering, causing massive damage to her maneuver drives and fusion power plant.
The subsequent power spikes crashed numerous other ships’ systems including life support as the jump tender began a slow uncontrolled tumble through space. Multiple internal fires, sparked by the power surges, gutted the ship’s interior and incinerated her surviving crew before they could reach their escape pods.”
“Stupid pirates should have listened to our warning.” Alec coldly said as he watched the tumbling wreck float away from the lunar base.
“We probably should send out a shuttle to catch those two vessels. We can save the survivors from the shuttle at least. There is a possibility that we can still salvage some materiel from that jump tender as well, Sir.” Colin said as he looked at Alec staring still at the station’s main sensor screen.
“Yes. You’re right. Go ahead and send our battlers out to go get them. We will figure out what to do with the survivors afterwards.” Alec answered without even bothering to turn around.
Chapter Twenty One:
Near Docking Bay 2
Inside the former Red Star Collective Base.
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
February 15, 2041
Several people were clustered around the screen in the asteroid base's auxiliary control center. They had literally been holding their breath as they watched the sensors showing the approach of the two pirate vessels. Now they were watching the two pirate vessels taking catastrophic hits from the asteroid base’s heavy weapons in spite of the radical evasive maneuvers that both of them took.
"I guess that we have a lot of work to do then, don’t we?" Tony asked.
"Yes, it sure looks like it. We better get that pirate shuttle moved over to one of the other bays so that we can get Orca and ‘Challenge’ outside to drag those ships back inside."
Angela and Jonathan saw a pair of women dressing in dark blue technician's coveralls walking down the main corridor near where the two refugees had been hiding. The klaxon and warning announcements had gone silent over an hour earlier, much to Angela's relief. The air pressure in the chamber where they had been hiding was restored, allowing Jonathan and Angela to finally remove their helmets. They were running out of oxygen in their suit tanks as it was.
"We need to go introduce ourselves now, my Angel." Jonathan said before suddenly standing up and yelling towards the two women. Angela tried to stop him, but Jonathan moved far too quickly. Now, she quickly prayed that they both didn’t get shot before they were able to explain their intentions.
"Hello there, friends. We could use a little help here!" Jonathan yelled.
The two women paused for a moment. Both were armed with pistols that they drew immediately when they heard Jonathan's call. Angela could see the technicians talking over their personal comlinks for a moment. Then she heard the rapid footsteps of at least half a dozen other personnel running towards Angela and Jonathan's location.
"Who are you? Put your hands up!" An armed man yelled at the pirate tech and the former explorer.
"Don't shoot! We surrender." Angela quickly replied as both she and Jonathan immediately put up their hands. One of the newcomers quickly snatched Angela's sidearm right out of its holster.
"Move this way." Ordered one of the women that Angela and Jonathan had first seen. She pointed with the motion of a pistol barrel towards where she wanted Angela and Jonathan to go. Angela thought that perhaps her captor here was more scared that she was at this point however based on the other woman’s expression.
On the way, Angela and Jonathan walked past a large transparent panel that overlooked the main chamber that was still unpressurized. The panel overlooked a group of bodies that were lying down on the floor of the main chamber near the ramp of the captured pirate cargo shuttle. Actually, the bodies were still weightless inside of the main chamber, barely touching the floor where they had been moved by some of the privateers after the end of the battle.
One of the privateer crew members was standing nearby and commented as he looked down at one of the bodies. That particular pirate had been hit by so many projectiles that it was difficult to tell that it was at one point a woman before being essentially torn apart.
“You know if this idiot woman had not fired on us in the first place, we wouldn’t have had to kill so many of these intruders. There was no way that they could have escaped the trap that we caught them in. But she decided to raise her rifle and fire at us anyway. After that, it was just a shooting gallery where she and her fellow shipmates quickly died.”
Angela looked more closely through the panel as she walked by and immediately recognized the bullet-riddled body that the privateer referred to. It belonged to Sarah Bucholtz. Even as Angela said a silent prayer for all of the people who had died there, she knew that Sarah had died violently much as she had lived inflicting violence upon others.
The woman guarding Angela and Jonathan saw the look of recognition on Angela’s face as the latter looked down at the dead pirate.
“You know this woman?” She asked Angela.
“Yes, Ma’am. Her name was Sarah Bucholtz. She was the second-in-command for Farrow’s Furies.”
“So that is who we were fighting. I’ve heard about this pirate band before. Good riddance is all that I can say.”
“They were still human beings though.” Angela quietly said. After all, she personally knew many of the men and women lying dead there.
“So were the people that they murdered.” The privateer bitterly replied.
Angela understood the woman’s anger. The technician felt enough guilt in her role of helping keep this band of pirates capable of raiding so many innocent ships after she left the True Way.
But now, Angela wanted to make a completely clean break from all of the poor choices that she had made during the past several years.
Angela and Jonathan continued to move under escort until they ran across another group of armed privateers.
"Hey, Julian. We found these two over near the airlock where those intruders had come in from their shuttle."
"Who are you?" A heavily armed Sergeant Julian Arromanche asked as he ran up towards the small group of people.
"My name is Angela Collins and this is my friend Jonathan Murrel. We are both trying to get away from those pirates out there."
"Why don't you tell us about your 'friends' out there, Angela?" Martin demanded as he pointed towards general direction of the pirate Conestoga.
"They are a pirate band led by a man named Jackson Farrow. They have an armed jump tender and two armed Conestoga class shuttles. You need to be aware that both of those shuttles are heavily armed with concealed weapons. One of them even has a pair of capital missile launchers." She quickly explained.
“Thank you for the information, Miss.” One of the women replied sadly, as though she had already seen something terrible that day.
"Excuse me, Sir. Your group here is fighting on behalf of one of the Kepler independents, isn't it?" Jonathan interrupted Angela by raising his hand and getting her attention before speaking.
"What the hell are you taking about?" One of the other women asked in surprise.
"It just that I recognize your unit insignia from some of the video transmissions that my team intercepted. I also know that your group is a lot more capable than what you have let on, Sir." Jonathan commented with an astounding degree of confidence in his voice.
"How do you know all of this?" A tall brown-skinned man standing off to the side asked incredulously.
"Because the team that I had been working with from Galactic Expeditions had picked up information on you during the course of our surveys. Of course, we picked up a great deal of information on a lot of groups over the course of our mission before our ship ran into that Truist j
ump tender."
After pausing for a moment to look at the shocked expressions of the others' faces, Jonathan then turned to Angela to speak. He looked happier and more comfortable than he had the entire time that he had been staying aboard the Black Diamond.
"Angela, you might not have realized this, but I actually did you and a great many innocent people a tremendous favor by not telling you any more about what I had discovered out here. Had Farrow or the Truists discovered this base, they would have utilized it to inflict tremendous pain and suffering upon so many people. I knew enough about this group to trust that they were on the side of light."
Turning back towards the heavily armed privateers, Jonathan continued.
"I was an explorer working for Galactic Explorations doing a survey of the Spinward border area in the Orion Arm between human and Lu’non space. My team was onboard a small Equus-class jump tender named Auntie Mae for eighteen months. We were on the way back to the Kepler Alliance when we were intercepted by one of ‘The True Way's raiding groups that we had the misfortune of running across. Auntie Mae and both of our shuttles were quickly destroyed. I was barely able to get to a life pod before my shuttle was torn apart by enemy fire. Less than an hour later, I was captured and brutally tortured for information.
Luckily for me, the Truists were too arrogant to consider that the hunter might also become the hunted out in the frontiers of the Orion Arm. Oddly enough, I think that neither the jihadists nor the pirates that they encountered had any idea of who they were fighting until well after the shooting started. Because of that unexpected encounter, I ended up in the hands of Farrow's pirates and this angel of a human being here. She saved my life and made it possible for me to be here with you today.
Now, I want to offer my services to you. I think that the information that I have gathered about the stars in this part of the Orion Arm might be of considerable value to you. I have a feeling that you could probably use Angela's services as well since she has worked with some of the most advanced naval systems used by Earth Fleet and ‘The True Way’. We can also give you information that will help you with understanding what the situation in the Orion Arm is currently regarding all of the area conflicts."