by Rachel Aukes
“No, he certainly is not. I know he annoys you, but I assume we’re not abandoning him?” Rusty asked.
“We’re not abandoning Eddy,” she replied.
“You should know that Eddy also shot two pirates. Sort of. Though Eddy should tell you himself. It was wise of you to send him. By the time he arrived in the air-processing center, the timer had less than a minute remaining. We were all uncomfortably close to being blown up. The on-station fire from the explosives would’ve burned upward through all the levels in under an hour. You would not have made it in time to prevent the fire.”
Finn scowled. “That doesn’t make sense. Anna East wouldn’t destroy Free Station when she was still on it.”
“It would’ve taken time for the fire to reach the upper levels. She could’ve easily activated the timer before leaving the station. Though, my assumption is that she’s no longer on the station or is very close to leaving,” Chief said, his features furrowed. He thought for a brief moment and then pulled out a handheld radio. “I think it’s time I have a chat with Ms. East.”
Chief tapped a button on the slim radio to speak. “Ms. East, this is Chief Roux.” The button clicked when he released it.
A couple of seconds passed before her response came.
“Chief Roux, I suspected I’d be hearing from you. How did you like my gift I left in the lowest level?” Her voice sounded as smooth as ever, even through the tinny radio speaker. In the background, a small beep regularly sounded along with a ticking sound.
“She’s in the command center. I’d stake my life on it. I can hear the video feeds along with an old manual clock,” Chief said in a rush. He then tapped the radio to speak. “Ms. East, I can’t say that I liked it very much at all, and I can’t say I like what you’ve been doing to Free Station and to my people in general.”
“Good. Because I don’t like the problems you’ve been causing me. I can’t believe you reached out to the Consortium and told them I was a criminal. I’m a politician and a business owner, not a criminal.”
Throttle could hear the anger building in East’s voice, and the distress Chief was causing brought the captain satisfaction.
“You have a pirate fleet, and you kill innocents. You are a criminal,” Chief said.
“They didn’t even give me a chance to speak, no thanks to you! I’m trying to help the Ross system, and both you and they are stuck in the past.”
“Let’s not pretend that you have this system’s interests at heart. What you’re doing is to help only one person and that’s you. You’re not helping Rossers, and you’re certainly not helping Jaders. Though I suppose Jade-8 will do better without you and the cancerous West family around anymore.”
Throttle suddenly jerked back when she caught movement edging over the top of Free Station a split second before her screen displayed a nearby ship. It was small, rough-looking, and had the Jader symbol painted on its hull. It’d been so close to the station that Rusty’s sensors hadn’t detected it until it was within visual range.
“Chief,” Throttle said.
He turned to her, and she pointed out the window. His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. The ship was heading for the same airlock that Throttle was steering the Javelin toward. Fortunately, the other ship hadn’t shown any signs of noticing the Javelin yet.
“Jade-8 has thrived under my family’s leadership, just like the Ross system will. And my so-called pirates are just entrepreneurs trying to survive under Sol’s smothering taxes.”
“Enough lies, Ms. East,” Chief said. “Surrender now, and you and your Jaders who’ve illegally boarded this station may live. This will be the only time I make such a generous offer.”
East belted out a laugh. “Me surrender? It’s you who should surrender. I have everything in your armory at my disposal. I can blow up this station any time I choose.”
“Permission to fire?” Throttle asked quietly.
“Just a warning shot. I want it scared off. I don’t want Free Station damaged,” Chief said before he tapped the radio to speak again. “You should’ve taken my offer, Ms. East.”
Throttle lined up a photon gun at the ship. It was a small ship, likely holding no more than six passengers. It was busy lining up to the airlock and hadn’t acknowledged the Javelin’s proximity, though the Javelin was so close to the station that no sensors would detect it.
“I could say the same thing to you,” East replied.
Throttle fired. The blast hit the rear corner of the pirate ship and spun it around a couple of times before the captain leveled it out.
“I thought I said a warning shot,” she heard Chief say.
She shot him a grin. “Oops.” She returned her focus to the other ship to fire again, but it shot away, leaving sparks in its wake that were quickly smothered by the black.
“Last chance, Ms. East. Surrender,” Chief said as he watched the pirate ship disappear in the distance.
Several seconds passed, and Throttle suspected East was being informed that her escape route had just been cut off. Knowing that they were closing in made Throttle more anxious than ever to go after the crime boss from Jade-8.
Throttle maneuvered the Javelin in the same position the pirate ship had been in moments earlier and carefully brought the ship over the airlock to where the station’s door met the Javelin’s, and she extended a pressurized transit tube to connect the two openings.
“Ms. East, talk to me,” Chief said.
There was no response.
“She’s likely onto us. We need to move quickly. Give me a ship-wide intercom,” Chief said.
Throttle tapped an icon on her screen and nodded in his direction. As he spoke, she hurriedly donned her space suit.
“Peacekeepers, this is Chief Roux. We are now at the airlock on level eight and ready to go in. Best of luck to both teams. We will take back Free Station and release everyone still locked in their quarters.”
As soon as he was done speaking, he stood, though Finn assisted him when he nearly fell.
“I still think you should manage from here, Chief,” Detroit said.
“Just get me to the command center; then I can manage everything from there,” Chief gritted out.
Throttle glanced upward. “Rusty, keep an eye out for either team. You can handle the level nine team’s walk from the cargo bay. Open the doors if any of ours need to get back on. Who knows what we’ll be up against in there.”
“You can count on me, Throttle,” Rusty replied.
“That Trappist ship computer certainly comes in handy,” Chief said.
“He sure does,” she said.
She and Finn took the lead to the airlock. The strongest two marshals, Jack Ames and “Munny” Munson, assisted Chief so that the group could move more swiftly while Detroit and Hank covered the group’s rear.
Once they were in the airlock, Chief spoke again. “The command center will be two hundred feet in, another one hundred feet down the hallway after it turns left. There is a conference room on the right side that we’ll reach first. We’ll need to watch out for snipers. After that the doors should all be sealed.”
The outer airlock opened, and the group moved through the small transit tube. At Free Station’s outer airlock, Chief entered his code and opened the door. Everyone moved through and stood along the edges, avoiding a clear line of fire by anyone waiting on the other side. Chief stood at the panel and looked across everyone’s faces. “I’m opening the inner door in three, two, one.”
The door opened. Bright flashes of photon fire tore through the center, the airlock, and into the door behind them. Throttle and Finn returned fire as they hid behind the door opening. They swapped gunfire for several seconds before Finn leapt through the doorway and fired. The barrage stopped, and Throttle rushed through the opening and flattened against the wall opposite from Finn. Down the hallway lay the pirate who’d pinned them down. She wasn’t moving, and from the charred holes in her body, she wouldn’t be moving again.
She and Finn scanned the hallway but didn’t move forward yet. When no one else jumped out, Finn motioned for the rest to join them.
Behind them, Jack and Munny assisted Chief as the trio hugged the wall behind Throttle. Detroit and Hank lined up behind Finn in a standard GP insertion maneuver. Another pirate jumped out from around a turn a long way down the hallway and threw something at them. As the round ball rolled toward them, Finn yelled, “Grenade!”
Everyone dove to the floor. The grenade went off about midway down the hallway. The sound of the boom disoriented Throttle, and the floor rumbled. Smoke filled the air and she struggled to find her feet.
“Is anyone hurt?” Chief asked as he was helped to his feet.
No one complained.
“Hurry. We need to get to cover fast. We might not get so lucky next time,” Finn said, and he took the first steps forward.
Throttle kept pace until they all stopped just before the first doorway on their right—the conference room Chief had mentioned earlier. The door was wide open, which gave Throttle a bad feeling. What she wouldn’t give for a grenade of her own to lob into that room right about now.
Instead, Finn pulled out what looked to be a pair of gloves from his pack and held the edge out into the doorway. Photon rifle fire burst out from the room. Finn backed up and held up a single finger for how many shooters he estimated were in the room.
They couldn’t get past the room without getting shot, and they were at constant risk in an open hallway, which meant that they had to take out the shooter—or shooters—in that room sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, no one in the group had a shock grenade on them.
Chief spoke quietly. “That panel on the other side of the doorway…Run a test on the lights. Maximum brightness.”
“I’ll do it,” Throttle said, knowing her blades gave her an edge in jumping.
“I’ll lay down cover fire,” Finn said.
He eyed her until she nodded. He swung his rifle around and fired nonstop into the room.
Throttle sprang forward. She didn’t turn to look inside the room, focusing only on the door panel to the left of the doorway. Shots came at her, and she swore she heard a zap as a shot nicked one of her blades, but it didn’t slow her down. In a single leap she was past the doorway and skidding to a stop at the panel. She’d lived on Free Station long enough to know the menu options forward and backward. She swiped to the administrative menu and found where she could run the power tests. In a rush, she selected to run all the tests.
She readied her rifle, standing opposite Finn on the other side of the doorway.
“You take high. I’ll take low,” Finn said, knowing Throttle had no knees to go down on.
As soon as she heard the sound test begin, the pair swung around and started firing.
Their shots narrowed in on a shooter using an overturned conference table as a shielded firing position.
The pirate yelled out, “Stop! Don’t shoot.”
“Hands in the air, and come up on your feet slowly,” Throttle commanded.
A man stood. He was more of a boy, really, not looking to be twenty years old yet.
“Are you alone?” Throttle asked.
“Yeah! Is just me here alone,” he answered.
“If you’re lying, I’ll shoot you,” Finn added.
“I ain’t lying! I swear it’s just me.” The boy held his arms up higher in the air.
Throttle covered Finn as he stood and walked into the room. He grabbed the table and knocked it over so that it sat upside down, removing the barrier. The pirate cowered yet managed to keep his arms in the air.
“Clear,” Finn called out, and the rest of their group entered.
Chief nodded to Detroit. “Tie him up.”
Chief stood before their prisoner as Detroit put restraints on the boy and relieved him of two knives. “Is East still in the command center?”
“Don’t know. I was told to shoot anybody who tried to walk in front of me.”
“How many are in the command center?” Chief asked.
The boy shrugged. “Don’t know. Four maybe?”
Chief frowned and turned from the pirate. “He’s just a peon. He doesn’t know anything. Leave him.”
Detroit wagged a finger at their prisoner. “You try to break free and run, you’re a dead man. You stay here all nice and quiet like, you live. You understand?”
The boy nodded furiously.
“Can you believe that pirate used a flak grenade back there?” Detroit asked after he turned away from the pirate as if he wasn’t even there. “Damned fool could’ve breached the hull if it’d gone off near an outer wall.”
“There’s a reason pirates are known for their violent streaks rather than for their intelligence,” Chief said as he headed toward the doorway. “We’ll hit the command center hard and fast. Chances are, the door will be locked. I just need access to the panel and can unlock it. Fortunately for us, East doesn’t have someone with full administrative access to override my security. There’s nowhere she can hide from me on Free Station.”
Throttle and Finn continued in the lead position, and they scanned the hallway before reentering it. They knew there could still be a pirate down at the end of the hallway, ready to lob a second grenade. But they were also within ten feet of the command center.
Throttle motioned them forward as she stepped out into the hallway, keeping her rifle aimed in the direction from where the grenade had come from. At the slightest hint of movement, she would unleash a barrage of photon shots at the corner.
No grenades came tumbling at them, and she began to think a pirate had thrown one to buy himself time to escape. Not a single pirate would be escaping if the marshals had anything to say about that.
They reached the command center with no one shooting at them. Jack and Munny assisted Chief to the panel, where he used his special codes to gain access. The door opened with a swoosh, and the six marshals poured in. Shouts and gunfire erupted from the two pirates inside as they rushed to get behind three battered Peacekeepers. She noticed one specialist lying dead on the floor, who looked like he’d been beaten to death. Her stomach dropped, not at the sight of the dead person but at not seeing East anywhere in the room.
“Don’t shoot!” one of the specialists cried out.
“You shoot, they die,” one of the pirates said.
Chief strolled into the room, standing next to Hank in the face-off between marshals and pirates. “Put down your weapons, Jaders, and we’ll let you live.”
“I don’t think so,” the same pirate said. “I think that you’ll put down your weapons and let us walk out of here and down to the docking bay, or else your Peacekeepers here will die.”
“Well, then that puts us at an impasse because I will not let you take my people and use them as bargaining chips,” Chief said, then changed his approach. “Tell me where Anna East is.”
“She ain’t here,” the other pirate said.
“Where’d she go?” Chief asked.
“I said she ain’t here,” the second pirate repeated.
“We’ll tell you where she went if you let us go,” the first pirate said.
“I can’t do that,” Chief said. “But I’ll let you live if you speak the truth.”
“She went down to the docking bay, with Skully Pete’s crew,” the second pirate said in a rush.
Throttle’s muscles tensed as she fought the urge to chase down the crime boss.
The first pirate cursed at his partner. “Idiot.”
Chief eyed them. “You’re lying. My people have taken or are in the process of taking control of all the stairways and elevators to the docking bay.”
“We’ll tell you if you let us go,” the first pirate said. “And we’ll take your people with us until we’re safe. Then we’ll let them go.”
Chief sighed. “You have no chance of escape without my help.”
“We do, too,” the second pirate said, then shut up under his partner’s glare. Then h
e lifted his chin and spoke again. “We tell you, and you’ll let us go.”
“Yes,” Chief said.
Throttle frowned because she hoped Chief was lying. None of these pirates deserved to get away.
“I told you before, East left with Skully Pete’s crew ’cause they got their cables cut on their ship. They’s spacewalking down a couple levels to the docking bay. Then they’s taking off and coming to pick us up.”
“We told you the truth,” the first pirate said. “Now, we’re going to take these three prisoners here with us until we board the Bendix. Then we’ll release them. You have my word.”
Throttle heard movement and saw Punch, followed by Sylvian, enter the room. Relief flooded her at seeing her friend alive, though both were bloodied and looked like they’d been through a battle.
Punch looked at the row of marshals and looked at the two pirates using specialists as their shields. Then he strolled over toward the pirates, lifted his pistol, and shot the first pirate in the head. Chief shouted. The second pirate’s eyes went wide the instant before Punch shot him between the eyes.
“Never trust the word of a pirate,” Punch said as he turned around to face Chief. “You looked like you could use a little help.”
“Peacekeepers do not execute prisoners, Marshal Durand,” Chief said, his voice deeper and angrier than Throttle had ever heard.
“Those prisoners were going to kill our people. You know it, and I know it,” Punch said and motioned to the three specialists who’d stepped away from the bodies and were leaning into each other.
“We’ll discuss this later.” Rather than walking toward Punch, Chief walked the other way and over to his chair, took a seat, and began working on the screen before him, paying attention to no one in the room. The specialists noticed and went to assist him at their own workstations like they were used to working alongside Chief.
Throttle turned her focus to Sylvian. Finn had run over to embrace his wife, and it was then Throttle noticed that Sylvian was cradling her arm, which was covered in blood. “What happened?” she asked as she walked over to the pair.
Sylvian had leaned into Finn and seemed to be using his strength to bolster hers. “We saw what was happening from the server room and came up this way to lend a hand. We ran into a bit of trouble on the way up.”