Lucas sealed the hood over his suit, going slowly to be sure that Elena got a good look. It wasn’t particularly complicated – it would have been asinine if it was – but it could be a little finicky. He smiled to himself as he watched her fingers quickly find the seams and close the hood. The clearplast visor kept most of their faces visible, but weren’t exactly the height of fashion and Elena clearly agreed, as he saw her lips twitching as she fought off a smirk.

The boarding hatch was located amidships in the cargo hold, and its warning lights were currently emitting a steady green glow. Standing at the hatch, Lucas drew his ‘old-fashioned’ pistol and motioned Elena towards the right side of the hatch. It was time to go to work, so he let out a breath and cleared his mind.

Grabbing the airlock controls – he had rigged this side with a physical controller on a 5 meter cord – he stepped to the side opposite Elena. He lifted the hand with the controller and used his fingers to geve her an exaggerated three-count before depressing the opening stud.

Both hatches opened at the same time and a flurry of gunfire snarled into the hold of his ship. Boarding operations were almost always a battle over chokepoints, and this one would be no different.

Instead of returning fire, Lucas studied the tracers impacting the far wall of the cargo hold. From the divergence of impact points, he counted two firing positions with two shooters each, likely on opposite sides of junction in a corridor. There was one laser shotgun on the right, dialed for a wide spread, the rest wielded either carbines or rifles, and their fire wasn’t particularly accurate on top of that. In fact, any moment now…

The expected drop in fire came. None of the pirates had staggered their fire to create space for reloads or cooldowns. Sloppy. And Lucas wasn’t above taking advantage of the opening they freely gave him.

He spun on his heel and leaned out into the open, pistol pre-aimed and eyes already seeking a target before he cleared the corner. He found two.

The first, the owner of the laser shotgun, had the poor discipline to be crouched only halfway behind the cover of the corner, his weapon held at the low ready position as it vented excess heat. A five-millimeter slug punched through one of his surprised eyes, causing him to drop the shotgun to the ground.

Lucas scarcely noticed, already putting his customary three rounds into the man standing over the crouched shotgunner. The standing man had fumbled his magazine change in his haste, three rounds to the upper torso – one of which tore through his neck – ensured he wouldn’t finish reloading.

The fire started up again as he ducked back into cover, this time with a noticeable drop in its intensity. In a matter of moments and with only four shots, he had halved the current opposition. Lucas waited for the next lull, sure to come very soon.

“What the fuck!”

There was the moment; the two shooters on the left had just noticed their comrades’ deaths, and in their surprise, stopped firing. Lucas stepped fully into the corridor this time, and with six quick shots eliminated the remaining opposition.

“Wait here until I call you forward,” Lucas said as he hustled past the airlocks and into the Makres Labama. If he was in combat armor, he would have sprinted and trusted it to protect him from any surprises, but he needed to keep his gun up and covering the hopefully empty junction in front of him.

As he reached the dead bodies, he gave them a quick once over to make sure he wasn’t going to get any surprises. One from the pair on the left was female, he noted with detached interest, and the way her body lay exposed a very particular tattoo on the side of her skull, hidden by both her hair and ear; a blood-red coin about the size of his thumb. The Claret Coins then, interesting because this wasn’t their usual style.

Both corridors were clear when he arrived, so he quickly waved to Elena to get her started his way. Once she crossed the airlock he input the lockdown command into his wristcomp and the heavy door slammed itself shut behind her and there was a shudder as the Errand undocked herself.

Then he switched his first pistol to his left hand and drew the laser, a Drang model, in his right while he made a plan of attack. Currently he was in a corridor that ran fore and aft on the port side of the freighter. He could head towards the bow, which contained the flight deck and the angry man with a Carnivex, or he could head towards the engineering room and seize direct control of the reactor, engines, and life-support.

Remembering his earlier goal of including Elena more, he asked, without turning his head, “Shall we head to the bridge or the reactor?”

“Wasn’t that really angry guy at the bridge earlier?”

He nodded.

“Then we should probably make him come to us,” she said seriously.

“Reactor room it is.” And from the corner of his eye he noticed that one of the pirates had a fragmentation grenade dangling temptingly from their belt, so he quickly ‘rescued’ it.

He began a quick but cautious walk towards the rear of the ship, spinning every so often to check their rear. After the first few times, he noticed that Elena was periodically turning too.

“Good job, you pick things up quick. Don’t be too frightened, this won’t be too hard. They might have fought in a ship a few times, but this was my bread and butter for twenty-five years.”

“Why aren’t they in suits like we are?”

“Because they’re not very smart and they haven’t had much practice at this. The types of hand weapons we’re using aren’t usually powerful enough to put a hole in a ship, so they don’t bother with vacuum suits. Plus, armored models like ours aren’t exactly available for sale to pirates.”

“What about armor like your chest plate?” He could practically feel her envious eyes on it, and he didn’t blame her in the slightest.

“These aren’t too hard to get a hold of, or to make. Don’t worry, you’re getting one too, I just didn’t have one in your size.”

Further conversation was cut off by one of the hatches on the side of the corridor swinging open to admit someone who looked like a giant at first glance. Standing just over two meters tall, bald, tattooed, and possessing ponderous breasts as large as Lucas’ head, the Amazonian took one look at their vacsuits in the colors of the Empirial Navy and let out a contralto cry of, “Navy scum!” before beginning a charge while reaching for the battlesaw strapped to her thigh.

While a part of himself marveled at her size, muscles, and speed – she was obviously enhanced – another part of his brain calmly and smoothly took aim before firing a pair of blasts from the Drang into her face.

She went down with a thud that he felt in his boots, and a chorus of surprised shouts errupted from the open hatch behind her.

Lucas pulled out his rescued grenade and looked at it for a moment.

***

Elena looked down in shock at the dead woman. She knew that ‘enhancing’ humans was taboo in the Empire, but she had never seen the results of those who had been enhanced here. The Amazonian, the catch-all term used for women enhanced for strength and combat, was crude and inefficient compared to what she had seen before.

At first she had been worried, someone so obviously enhanced should have been much faster and tougher, possibly with internal armor plating. But she had gone down so quickly that Elena had barely even noticed Lucas’ hand twitch as he targeted and fired.

She followed as he stepped up to the hatch were all the shouting was coming from and poked his head around the corner for a bare instant. Then he smoothly hooked the grenade through the hatchway and all hell broke loose inside. One man managed to stumble out just before the explosion, and Lucas almost casually put a red laserbolt through the back of his skull.

She followed him as he stepped inside, wondering about the strange way he first almost circled the open hatch, and found a charnel house. The room had obviously been a mess hall, but now shattered furniture, broken bodies, and pureed food littered the floor. Lucas put a quick shot into someone stirring in a corner, with the laser pistol again, before gesturing her back out the hatchway.

“Why are you using the laser more?” she asked.

He checked behind them as he answered. “Laser weapons are mostly heat limited, if I fire too often or too quickly it’ll force itself into cooling mode, making it useless for a minute or two. For situations like these using the laser lets me keep all the bullets in the other gun ready and waiting.”

“Then what about your rifle?”

“That’s for when things start to go bad.”

Things felt like they were already pretty bad to her. They were alone on a ship that seemed full of pirates who wanted to capture or kill them, somewhere in deep space, and she didn’t even really know how to use a gun.

But she had to admit, Lucas was absolutely deadly with his pistols, and she had the feeling that this was not the first time he had taken on a ship full of people trying to kill him. There was an air of calm confidence about him, it wasn’t that he was brash or arrogant; it just seemed that, while he might not know every step to get there, he knew that in the end he would inevitably win.

Somehow, as they advanced through the pirate ship together, she drew solace from his confidence. Then she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and she shouted out, “Behind!” as she dove to the side of the passageway.

As she hit the wall, there was a short exchange of fire. Then Lucas fired his laser pistol nearly a dozen times in rapid succession while bringing the pistol in his left hand up in a rock steady grip. He paused, and it was like he knew exactly what was coming, because a moment later the pistol in his left hand barked four times.

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He motioned for her to follow as he continued down the passageway. The Makres Labama was slightly ovoid, and the gentle curve as the corridor followed the hull made it impossible to see more than a few dozen meters in either direction.

Then they were at the end of the passage. The large and heavy hatch to the engineering spaces was cracked open and Lucas risked a quick peek before giving her instructions.

“I’m going to go in quick and quiet. Once you hear shooting start, count to three and follow. If you see anyone comes up behind us before that, just try to quietly slip inside.”

She nodded her head in understanding, it seemed simple enough. She just had to follow directions and watch Lucas’ back, and they would get through this.

***

After making sure that Elena knew the plan – he mentally added hand signals to the list – Lucas let down the hood on his suit and ghosted through the cracked hatch. It was awfully sloppy of them to leave it open, and these particular pirates wouldn’t be living long enough to learn from their mistakes. In point of fact, that was one of the primary goals of the Empirial Navy or Marines.

Most of the lights in the engineering spaces were turned down low for some sure-to-be-stupid reason. And then his ears picked up the reason. There was a fast, rhythmic sound of flesh slapping flesh, punctuated by the occasional pained whimper coming from one of the darker corners of the engineering deck.

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared in contempt, but he painstakingly made sure that there was no one else in the engineering space. This wasn’t his first time coming across a scene like this, and once he had lost several good soldiers because the rapee and rapist had had a pervert secretly watching them.

“That’s right, just like that, you’ll make a great little whore. And remember, either I blow my load or I blow your brains out.” The rapist said from his position on top of what Lucas was fairly certain was a woman lying prone. He could also vaguely see a handgun pressed into the back of the woman’s head.

As much as his blood boiled and demanded action, he took one more long slow glance at his surroundings. Once he was sure there was no one else in the room, he transferred the Stinger, his propellant-based pistol, to his right hand and carefully lined up a shot. He would have to hit his target precisely in the hollow where the base of the skull met the neck; if his shot destroyed the brainstem, it was instant lights out, no random muscle twitches or anything else.

But just before he pulled the trigger, some sixth sense warned him of a presence at his side, and he nearly shot Elena out of reflex.

“The man with the big shotgun is coming this way.” She whispered quietly into his ear.

Well that put a damper on his plans. He quickly mentally played through a couple versions upcoming confrontation.

“Find a good bit of heavy machinery to hide behind and don’t come out until it’s safe.” He whispered back before once more aiming his pistol. The continued smacks of flesh and quiet sobs were starting to seriously damage his calm. As he started gently taking up the slack in the trigger he heard the sound of heavily booted feet outside the hatch off to his side.

The trigger broke under his finger and instantly improved the human gene pool. The shot warned whoever was at the door of course, so while Lucas holstered the pistol in his right hand, the laser in his left came up and let loose a pair of shots towards the hatchway. Then, as he shifted position towards a good piece of cover, he pulled his rifle singlehandedly to his shoulder and let off a burst from the much more intimidating weapon.

Smacking into cover behind what appeared to be an O2­ scrubber, he considered his options. It was a shame he had only managed to rescue a single grenade, another would certainly come in handy here. He really didn’t want a Carnivex letting loose in the engineering compartment. While most of the equipment in here were designed to be robust and proof against accidental damage, a mechsuit-sized shotgun could hardly be called an accident.

Wishing that he had a better option, or that he had some Marines with him, he launched himself from cover and ran towards the hatch, firing to suppress as he went. The old-fashioned brass casings spat out of the rifle and tinkled on the deck as he went. The magazine ran dry just as he made it to the hatch, so he let it drop and dangle from the sling.

He fired a few more quick shots from the laser pistol, before slamming it into its holster and unclipping the breeching charge from his belt. Fingers blurring, he attached the charge to the hatch before quickly jamming his wand in to arm it.

Retreating, he kept up an unpredictable stream of fire from both pistols and made his way back to cover. The bulkheads and hatch coaming were looking decidedly scorched and pockmarked by the time he found a solid piece of cover with a sightline to the hatch. This time it was actually part of the reactor housing.

“You still alive out there?” Lucas called out as he searched the room for Elena’s hiding place. It seemed she was behind one of the engine feed nozzles, a chunk of metal nearly as dense and durable as the reactor casing he himself was hiding behind.

“You little pissant! You have no idea what you and your so-called Brotherhood have stepped in!” came the angry bellow from outside the hatch as he methodically reloaded both the Stinger, and the Storm, his rifle.

“Well why don’t you enlighten me?” He called back. Then he motioned for Elena to drag the poor woman into cover as she was still lying underneath the dead body and weeping openly now.

“I don’t think I’ll bother. It won’t matter because we’re about to kill you all!” The final words were yelled as a battle cry, and there was a hail of fire from the pirates’ position.

Elena hadn’t quite managed to drag the woman into cover, and she fell with a yelp. Seeing that, Lucas immediately detonated the breeching charge, and the rain of incoming fire petered out.

Although he wanted to go check on Elena and drag both her and the woman behind cover, he knew had to end the threat from the pirates first, or they would all three remain trapped. He shouldered the Storm and once more charged toward the hatch.

He didn’t fire as he ran, not wanting to give the pirates any warning. The breeching charge had hopefully cut through the heavy hatch and disabled the pirates on the other side. Unfortunately, it was a heavy hatch and he would have preferred a double charge to be sure of getting through.

The pirates had pulled the swinging door open a little more for firing and the explosion had pushed it further still, so there was enough room for Lucas to burst through at a dead sprint. As he exited the engineering room he saw half a dozen or so men and women down, but there were four others still on their feet, and with weapons rising to point at him, further along the passageway.

Lucas had surrendered control of his body to his instincts, adrenalin, and reflexes. He fell onto his backside without conscious thought, the rifle somehow finding and servicing all four targets as he slid across the deck. Once he came to a stop next to one of the downed pirates, his hands released the rifle and snatched Drang and Stinger from their holsters. Several of the pirates were trying to struggle to their feet, and his hands felt as if they were aiming and firing at their targets independently.

And then it was over. The sudden silence was accompanied by a high-pitched ringing in his ears; a sure sign he had hearing damage again. From the time he came through the hatch to the end, it felt like everything had happened in one long moment, but as Lucas noticed empty magazines from both Storm and Stinger, he realized it had taken at least ten seconds.

“Elena? You okay in there?” He shouted as he nearly stumbled simply walking back through the hatch. His ribs felt strangely warm, and as he ran a hand over his chestplate it came away streaked with soot.

He slapped the releases and dropped the scorching hot piece of armor. Luckily it had held up one last time against the laser that had hit him – he hadn’t even noticed any of his targets firing back – but now the faithful plate had taken one hit too many.

Elena was still gamely trying to drag the woman into cover, but she had taken a hit in the calf and was reduced to scrunching along the deck.

She looked up at him with tears running from her emerald-colored eyes, and he could see she thought that she had failed somehow.

Gently cutting her off, he reached down to examine leg. The light armor on her shin had help up and deflected a kinetic round of some sort, but there was likely one hell of a bone bruise underneath because she gasped in pain as his fingers gently probed her calf.

He turned his examination towards the other woman and was surprised that he recognized her, it was the woman with short blond hair from the first message they had received from the Makres Labama.

She was now sporting a black eye and bruises on her neck, and it looked like she had shut down; she was sitting with the same thousand yard stare he had seen fellow Marines wearing after nasty action. Her pants and had been cut off without any particular care by a blade, and there were various cuts and small nicks all over her legs.

Lucas looked around the engineering room, but didn’t see anything that could really be used to cover her up, so he started stripping out of his own suit. She was tall, maybe 185 centimeters, so she should be able to wear his suit without too much trouble.

“Elena, could you help me get her into these?” He asked softly and quietly, knowing that the victim might snap out of shock and into hysterics at any time.

She nodded in understanding before saying, “Her name is Kharlie.”

He laid the suit out at the woman’s feet, and Elena began slowly working it up to cover her legs. Lucas left her to it for the moment and politely turned away to reload his weapons. He was down to his last two magazines for the Stinger, but there were still three more for the Storm on his chest rig.

Once they had the suit on the near-catatonic woman, Lucas helped the both of them to their feet. He supported Elena with her arm over his shoulders, and the Kharlie followed them, clearly in a daze.

They made their way, cautiously, to the bridge, but they encountered no other resistance along the way. Once there, it seemed a spark of life came to life in the woman, as she parked herself at the communications station as if by instinct.

Lucas locked the hatch behind them and gently deposited Elena in the engineer’s chair, then took the helm. Most human helm stations were designed to be reconfigurable, so that in an emergency, a single person could theoretically pilot a ship without having to run to all the various stations around the bridge. So he pulled up the sensor displays from the nav station on one screen and the engineering control on another.

The Night Errand was still nearby and didn’t look to be damaged, although there was a fair amount of debris floating around her. But she wasn’t the only ship the scanners picked up. There was a frigate in the distance, and it was approaching at what appeared to be full burn.

“In… Incoming message,” poor Kharlie said in a small voice from the com station.

“On my screen.” Lucas commanded. She was clearly reverting to training in order to try to function. That was fine by him, he had done it more than once himself.

One of his screens changed to display the message from the frigate. The image of a haughty young man with a face so smooth and symmetrical that it was clearly sculpted cleared his throat before speaking. “Ahem. Chazley, you’d better have taken that tramp freighter by now. You’re over an hour overdue for a status update.” Lucas took an immediate dislike to him, something about the overdone aristocratic accent and the man’s fake looks immediately pushed his ‘suspicion’ instinct into overdrive.

Time worked strangely; Lucas was sure that it hadn’t been more than thirty minutes since he and Elena had dropped down to check on the rescue beacon. He swiped the message from the screen and brought the navigation display back up. It was as he feared, the frigate was only about five minutes out, not enough time to cross-deck back to the Errand and still flee before the warship arrived.

That meant that they had to flee on the Labama, as he had no desire to take on a serious warship in an unarmed and unfamiliar freighter. With that goal in mind, his mind began to race.

Elena tapped him on the shoulder, even with her leg injury she had somehow snuck up on him as he was lost in thought. “Sheep in wolf’s clothing,” she said, and then looked at him as if he was magically supposed to get her meaning.

And then, all at once, he did. He ripped the wand from his belt and jabbed it into the wristcomp before he dropped it to the ground and began furiously inputting commands.

After a few moments, there was a flare of light through the viewports as the Night Errand powered up her engines and began to flee. Then the engines abruptly cut out and a moment later, there was a bright streak as the crewless light freighter powered up her alternator and jumped into h-space.

“Kharlie, send a reply to that frigate, tell them that we are going in pursuit.” Lucas commanded as he used the maneuvering thrusters to spin the ungainly freighter in the direction his freighter had just jumped. He didn’t bother with trying to power up the shields or even the engine, he just dumped all the juice he could funnel into the alternator.

Technically ships could translate while moving, but for some reason yet to be explained reason, it was very rough when they did, so unless it was an absolute emergency, ships would cut their engines just before making the translation to h-space.

The alternator would take another thirty seconds or so to warm up, so Lucas watched Kharlie send the message to the frigate before Elena walked over to try and comfort her.

“Another message… sir.”

“Save it for now, we’re outta here.” And then the alternator pulsed and the Makres Labama jumped to h-space to ‘chase’ the Night Errand.

But Lucas’ sense of relief was immediately cut off by Kharlie erupting into an ear-splitting wail.