November 20th, 2264. 03:25 Pirate Base – Lower Levels at Ship Junction
Paul was following his two idiotic and headstrong compatriots. But he didn’t feel comfortable at all about what they were doing. Sure, there was safety in numbers but they were only three. He, unlike David and Lukas, had heeded the warnings their commanding officer had tried to drill into them.
The three of them progressed through the corridors until they stopped in this odd room and looked around it. Instead of a drab gray wall, they were standing on an elevated and heavily reinforced walkway. Metal panels were roughly welded together. Paul stepped forward and looked down the other corridor. It looked clearly different than the ones they had been walking through.
“Looks like this is where they welded the ships together,” Lukas said as he was examining the welds, “Sloppy but they are strong.”
“Is this even safe,” David said as he picked his foot up and was about to punch a seam.
“Maybe you don’t do that,” Paul said, “Look, let’s fall back. This is dumb.”
Lukas shook his head, “No, we’re going to either help the Lieutenant or take her down ourselves.”
“Sergeant Anderson was clear with what the brother did. That one could just flat-out incinerate people. How do we fight against that?”
“Easy, we shoot first,” David said confidently, “Duh”
“What if we don’t get the drop on her?” Paul questioned the answer immediately, “Plus the lieutenant mentioned that they were capable of stopped projectiles in mid-air.”
“You worry too much,” Lukas said, “We got this.”
“We aren’t following orders, we should worry,” Paul’s voice was breaking, “We need to go back now.”
David slapped Paul’s shoulder and smiled in his helmet, “He’ll be thanking us when we succeed. Just wait.”
Just then their coms stopped working. The trio stood there confused as to why they couldn’t hear one another. Paul was the only one making any sense with his hand signals. Fed up Paul finally activated his tight beam communications.
“Jesus Christ guys, the standard protocol is to activate the backup communication systems,” Paul spat out, “Look we need to fall back now. This is not at all what we expected.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” David said confidently, “We got this dude.”
Lukas set his big hand on his pauldron, “It’s going to be easier to do this with three people instead of two.”
“Guys, Vanessa made me in charge of the squad. I’m ordering you to go back.”
“Paul, this is a chance for us to get some glory. Think of what they’ll say when we help take her out!” David exclaimed, “The Lieutenant won’t care if we may have bent or ignored the orders a little.”
“Absolutely, it’ll let us get the pick of assignment,” Lukas said confidently, “Maybe even get an invite to special forces.”
Paul rested his hands on his hips and shook his head. The overconfidence of the two was not swaying him. He knew deep down that this was not only a mistake but a potentially deadly one. But the Marine mindset was keeping him with the two, if for no other reason than to possibly keep them out of trouble.
“Why don’t I keep saying that to myself?” Paul muttered.
“What?” David asked.
“Nothing, we’re not going to engage her. I’m ordering both of you to hold on to any attack. We’re going to scout the other areas of the base. Nothing more.”
“Dude…” David was about to insist on something before Paul shut him down.
“I’m in command here, we will only scout ahead. We are falling back the moment we run into any resistance.”
Lukas nodded, “Very well, do you have any ideas on how to contact the boss?”
Paul pointed at a terminal over his shoulder, “Terminals are hard-wired systems, should be able to plug into it and have it sent to any friendlies that are connected. Now let’s get moving, Lukas you’re on point. David, I want you to have your VI synch with Lukas to enhance the scan resolution. Move.”
The trio continued to go deeper into the base. Two were cocky beyond measure but were feeling especially salty. Their new leader remained unconvinced that they were doing the right thing. Nevertheless, they continued to move deeper into the vessel.
03:45 Pirate Base – Top Deck Entry Point
Darryl slammed his fist into the inner wall. He flew into a rage when he heard that three Marines had left their squad leader and ventured deeper into the ship. His anger was tempered only slightly when Vanessa disagreed with their choice but sent the next senior member of the squad to keep an eye on the two.
“Fucking hell. What part of ‘hold your position’ didn’t those two fucking understand?” Darryl shouted.
Arianna responded, “Sarge, I got the other rooms connected. We kind of have communications back, but it’s only available via linking into terminals throughout the base.”
Darryl walked over to the terminal, “Sergeant Nielsen, Private Olson, and Corporal Meyer…”
Erica interrupted him, “I’m aware, Vanessa came back alone.”
“If David and Lukas survive, they are my bitches for the remainder of this mission.”
Erica shook her head, “That’s presuming they don’t get drummed out for failure to follow orders.”
Derrick joined the conversation, “Reaper 1 just left the Fargo. With any luck, the amplifier they are sending over should cut through this jamming signal. ETA is twenty minutes.”
“What is the Lieutenant doing?”
“His suit had some modifications,” Darryl snorted, “More like wholesale changes. His VI is sending a tight beam signal to each terminal. Can’t communicate via voice channels in real time but we can track where he is. I sent him a text message with where we can tell groups of pirates are holed up.”
“I want those mods on our suits for all future missions,” Erica said, “I’ll have a conversation with the Lieutenant about sharing those and any other useful mods he may have. But for now, I want to get into touch with those three and have them pulled back to safety.”
“I think it goes without saying,” Derrick said, “But I’ll say it anyways. The pirates and or the Mercantilist fucks are planning something.”
“A counterattack would be my guess. The Lieutenant isn’t exactly doing a stealth op,” Erica shook her head, “He basically dropped his trousers and was slinging his dick around.”
“Gotta have giant balls of tritanium to do that,” Darryl said, “He knows something we don’t.”
“How are the airlocks coming along?” Erica asked.
“Nearly finished here. Why?” Derek asked.
There was a pause from Darryl but then he spoke up, “I’m being told five minutes.”
“We’re going to consolidate our position soon, but for now hold the position. In the meantime, I want you two to work on establishing contact with the trio. We’ll get the signal amplifier working when it gets docked.”
“Understood,” the junior sergeants said in unison.
The marines in the three beachheads quickly received orders. Each bulkhead was reinforced and guarded. If any pirates came to attack them, they’d feel the full force of the Marines. For now, the Marines were reluctantly willing to sit back and hold their positions for now. Their comfort would feel much better if they were able to communicate with their commanding officer.
03:55 Pirate Base – Alliance Ship - Rear Engineering
A sleek and sultry-looking suit of power armor paced back and forth in the room. Its metallic purple color shimmered and transformed into different shades of purple based on the light being reflected off of it. Its boots were a curious design, one part work boot infused with high heels. The user clearly delighted with form over function.
The owner of the suit was radiating killing intent. Those she walked by felt sick to their stomachs. More than one emptied the contents of their stomachs into conveniently placed garbage cans. The pirate helpers were slowly pulling their workstations back and away from her as much as they could.
“What is the status…” Lisa spat out before being interrupted by watching the main view screen.
Almost on queue saw that her crippled stealth corvette had been decoupled from the base and was slowly drifting away from the base. Then the familiar outline of a Confederate frigate appeared to come out from hiding behind the base. The CNS Fargo had lined up a proper broadside and unleashed all lances and plasma blast guns from the starboard side of the ship. The corvette was more than atomized with the firepower directed upon it.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“FUCK!” Lisa shouted, “I presume you have another way to get me off of this base?”
“With a Confed frigate this close to us? About the only way off this rock now is to steal one of their boarding ships,” the pirate boss said chuckling to himself.
“You think this is funny Terry? We had a deal!” Lisa screeched.
“The other pirates had a deal with you too. Look what that got them. The only way out is to fight them off our station,” Terry Prince said calmly, “Your weapons shipment didn’t make it onboard now did it?”
“Are you blaming me for this predicament? You know you shouldn’t do that,” Lisa’s anger could be felt in the room.
“In fact, I am,” Terry said confidently as he wouldn’t be cowed into submission, “Your presence here has brought these Confed fucks to my base and home. Thankfully they don’t seem to care about us so long as we don’t do anything to them. I can’t, nor would I try or wish, to kill you. Therefore, I must help you drive them off. If only so we could get a shuttle here to get you the hell out of here.”
Lisa turned and walked over to one of the workstations. She pointed at the man menacingly. Her eyes flashed with blue ethereal energy.
“Connect me to the station’s internal scanners. I need to know where he is.”
The crewman was stunned to silence. The others looked away and focused on their terminals and tried to not be part of the conversation or request. Laughter could be heard from their leader’s throne. Lisa spun around with an angry look on her face.
“You think this is funny?”
“I do. You seem to think this is like one of your bases or ships. You know, the ones that are new and loaded with all the most recent technology. Look around you,” Terry waved his hands, “Those terminals you are menacing are over a hundred years old. Do you think we spend our credits on sensors? We spend them on food and weapons. And bribes too I suppose. We’re scavengers, we make do with what we have, which is frankly not much.”
“Where is he?” Lisa spat out.
“He was in the primary engineering room. He’s heading to the main hangar of the battleship now. There are also three unidentified and intermittent blips but given the locations, we think that could be malfunctioning sensors,” the terrified crewman said as he stared at the terminal’s output.
“What’s the fastest way to get to the hangar?”
Terry grinned as he pointed to a bulkhead to his right, “It’s a five-minute trip with a leap of faith if you take that port to the vacuum. You can see the hangar on your left when the exterior door opens.”
Lisa spun about and walked over to Terry where she grabbed her helmet, “When I’m done with him, you and I are going to have a conversation about this business arrangement.”
“Oh, I do look forward to having that conversation with you,” Terry said sarcastically, “I will be sending some troops to aid you. Please remember that you are not their commander, do not expect them to lay down their lives for you.”
Lisa put the helmet on and walked by Terry without saying a thing. When she got to the door she turned and looked back at him. She snapped her fingers randomly. A shard of ice was formed into the shape of a knife barely three molecules thick at the point. It was sent hurtling towards the portly pirate king.
The ice blade easily sliced his chubby cheek, causing a wound about two inches long. While the wound was only superficial in nature, crimson blood streamed out of it making a mess out of his clothing. Before he could stand up and do anything she closed the inner door behind her and waited for the pressure to be pumped out of the room so she could take the shortcut to her destined meeting with John.
“Fucking bitch!” Terry said as he held his hand against his bleeding cheek.
“Sir was the deal with her worth it?” one of his lieutenants said.
“We’ll see. Send Max and Nick’s squads to assist the frosty bitch.”
“Nick will refuse that order, you know…”
Terry pointed his other hand at his lieutenant, “I wasn’t asking for your opinions. Nick needs to learn his place here. If he doesn’t show up, I’m going to space his traitorous ass. Perhaps then the remaining vestiges of our former leader will accept our new paradigm.”
The lieutenant nodded and headed back to his workstation. Orders were furiously given. Despite Lisa being gone the tension in the room hadn’t subsided at all. Terry had managed to get the bleeding under control but looked annoyed at the situation, had she delivered the goods that were agreed upon they may have been able to repel their would-be attackers. Whether those goods were on her ship or not mattered little at this point.
03:55 Pirate Base – Confederate Ship – Outside of Engineering
John’s hulking armor stood over a terminal. A wire from his right wrist was connected to a port. Thankfully his VI could control the wires and guide them into place. The bear paws that passed for John’s hands meant there was little hope he had the required dexterity to plug them in. John laughed at the thought of trying to accomplish that without ruining the wires or the terminal itself.
Nick appeared on his HUD, “Bad news, my team and I got ordered to back up the bitch.”
“Where?”
Nick laughed, “Right where your heading, the big hangar bay.”
“How’s about a deal?”
“I’m all ears, mate.”
“Backstab the other team then get the hell out of dodge.”
Nick was silent on the other end as if he were pondering it, “I need my boss eliminated. Do that too and we have a deal.”
“I have a feeling I’ll be running into him before this shitshow is done. Consider it a deal,” John grinned, “Don’t worry about the cameras, my suit will be shutting down all communications in the hangar when I get there. Do you want me to kill him or take him with us?”
“Thrill me,” Nick laughed as he ended the conversation, “Either way he isn’t here anymore.”
John thought to himself, ‘never trust an ambitious pirate,’ but that ambition was certainly something he’d have no problem exploiting. He looked back at the terminal and saw the same three dots on the display. The trio of idiots he thought, but more worrisome was that they appeared to be converging on the main hangar as well.
That would complicate the fight as John was still unwilling to fight with his abilities out in the open. Military members observing the fight, coupled with their written reports and suit-captured videos, would generate far too many questions for John. If he answered any of them incorrectly the Psy-Ops division may try to claim him, irrespective of his willingness to comply.
That of course would be utterly absurd. His psychic gifts were long gone, though a spectral figure seemed to suggest John could receive them back at some point in the future. John chuckled to himself; he made that thought as if the specter was real. Whether it was or wasn’t hadn’t yet been confirmed.
The point remains though, any hopes John had for a future, either with Alice or as a captain of a ship, would vanish to dust if that department got involved. At the very least they’d make his life miserable. There was enough bullshit he had to deal with on a daily basis, there was no need to add to his troubles unnecessarily.
John quickly sent a message back to Erica and then turned and headed down the corridor. He ordered Eve to plot the route to the main hangar. He was a short walk away. A pair of rights and two long walks down different corridors. They were silent except for John’s hulking form jogging through the corridors.
Thump…
Thump…
Thump…
Inside the bulky armor, John slowed his breathing and entered a meditative state to help him focus on the next battle. Capturing, not killing her, was going to require his utmost focus and skill. He was afraid to say that he could do nothing for the marines that foolishly decided to enter the battle. They would have to figure out their own way to survive.
An automated message was programmed nonetheless and would inform them to fall back immediately. John gave it less than a twenty percent chance of successfully saving their lives. He had to push those thoughts from his mind for the moment. He couldn’t lose his head. Especially being able to see the main doors into the hangar ahead.
The negative-psychic suite he had installed on his suite powered up. The sickening black aura was now faintly visible to the naked eye, but only just. With that level of output, John would likely avoid any scrutiny. He was positive that the current output was not going to be enough, but there was no more time to prepare for the door to the main hangar that was looming ominously in front of him.
“Fuck it, no sense in dragging this shitshow out,” John said as he opened the door.
John powered up his plasma blast gun and walked inside and scanned the hangar bay. It wasn’t as messy and unkempt as he had predicted it’d be. But aside from a few rodents, he was the only living being there. That wouldn’t last for long.
The energy shield holding the atmosphere inside flashed briefly as a small object slipped through it. The shield immediately accounted for an object trying to pass from the void to inside the bay. Some atmosphere was forever lost as it adjusted to surround the humanoid object.
A lithe and sleek suit of power armor did a graceful backflip before landing on the deck plate. John had but a moment to take in the suit, but immediately knew it was beyond lethal. Its power output was notably less than his own suit, but most troubling was how even he could feel the psychic aura radiate off of it.
John raised his arm and fired his plasma gun at her. From this distance, John figured it’d be easy for her to dodge the attack or otherwise be unaffected by it. She rose her hand and then sidestepped. The plasma was frozen in mid-air. It passed by her harmlessly as it was destined to become a ballistic object in the void as it crossed through the EM shielding.
Her helmet came apart and was withdrawn into the partial hood behind the helmet. Pure unadulterated hatred was the best description John came up with upon observing Lisa. He grinned then spoke up.
“Apologies for not taking my helmet off. Bit of a pain in the ass to do that manually.”
“It seems that my father and I have advanced beyond what you were capable of doing. A pity, I had hoped you’d be able to challenge me,” Lisa spat out as she walked sultrily toward him.
“You presume much,” John said as a set of doors opened on the far side of the hangar, “I’m wounded, you asked for backup? Where’s that confidence of yours, didn’t think you could cut it by your lonesome? Ooh, Is that too soon?”
Lisa had somehow grown angrier with that last barb, “My host insisted on ensuring that you and yours are removed from their home. Friends are coming…”
“Yeah, I doubt any of your friends will do much to a frigate,” John said as he was using his suit's external cameras to scan the pirates to his rear, “I don’t suppose you’d tell me how y’all solved the psychic harmonization and feedback issues?”
“Do you think I would tell you how we did?”
John laughed again, “Ok, so you don’t know how your eggheads managed that. A pity.”
“I’m going to make you suffer for what you did.”
John shrugged, “For putting down a rabid dog? Fuck, the galaxy ought to give me a medal for that.”
“You make light of my pain.”
“I do. What makes you think I have any fucks to give about your pain?”
“Do you know what I’m going to do with that precious wife of yours?”
“Oh, I can imagine some pretty pornographic and grim things you’d like to do to her. Trust me, you probably aren’t going to be dead after I’m done with you here, but I assure you I will be the one ending your life.”
Lisa began to laugh maniacally, “I’m disappointed to hear that. Playing the role of a soldier is not befitting of you, you’re a murderer, you should have embraced that side.”
“I am many things, but above all else, I am a consummate professional. Lisa Benning, I am hereby ordering you to surrender. Pursuant to the Confederate Psychic Act of 2162, you will be remanded into my custody. The Psy-Ops division of the Navy will place limiters…” John read out this speech with nary a bit of emotion.
Lisa’s helmet suddenly appeared once more. With a wave of her hand, the first wave of pirates stood up to the railing and began a fusillade of fire directed at John. John stood in place and accepted the attack for what it was. The pirates paused and let the dust and smoke from the high explosive rounds dissipate from around him.
Then John’s right arm shot out of the smoke and his twin plasma blast gun fired. Two streams of ultra-hot, not to mention lethal, plasma struck a pair of pirates on the end of the firing line. The plasma burned a basketball-sized hole in their woefully inadequate armor. The plasma balls continued through several crates before impacting against the hangar’s wall.
Before Lisa could react the rear rank of the Pirates raised their guns and fired. But unlike the first group, their target was the now very helpless and impotent first rank of pirates. After a quick burst of fire, the group immediately fell back out of the hangar.
Just as Lisa was able to register the betrayal the door to her left opened and out came three more marines.
Marines that didn’t, and couldn’t, receive John’s failsafe message. A pillar and several stacked crates prevented a direct line of sight from being achieved. Words that John so desperately didn’t want to hear echoed in the lonely room.
“CHARGE!”