Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (27 page)

“This is piracy, Doc,” Lev said, “and piracy doesn’t exist, remember? They’ll kill us for our silence.”

“Then why didn’t they just blast us?” Alf Martin asked.

“Too much debris. It’s evidence,” Meriel said. “They’ll just point us at a big mass at one-g, and we’ll disappear.”

John interrupted. “They want to know what she knows first. What
we
know. And what we’ve told others.”

Meriel immediately got the “we” and looked at John, nodding.

“People, we need to act,” Lev said.

The seductive voice returned. “Just come see us. We mean you no harm. A human life is so valuable; we would hate to see anyone harmed by accident.”

“They’ll kill us all, Doc,” Lev said. “No witnesses.”

A warm-suit with helmet walked up to them weighed down by a mesh sack full of weapons.

“Ah, there you are…” Lev said and stopped. He looked confused, turning his head back and forth between the newcomer and Meriel. He watched John take a blaster from the bag and run through the safety drill like a trained soldier and then grabbed a pulse rifle and a laser pistol for himself.

Meriel smiled at the newcomer but blinked repeatedly to convince herself that this was not a fantasy.
Now what would Cookie do?
She turned back to Lev. “We can do this. We’ve got the weapons now. Tell them we can do this, Lev. It’s not over. If we take the alt-bridge, we can jump away from the big ships and have the numbers on our side. Tell them!”

Lev turned to the assembled crew and passengers. “She’s right,” he said. “We have the weapons now. Only the boarding party is engaged until we’re pacified. They won’t bring the technicians aboard until then, and they’ll keep the big ships away. My squad can get there first if someone can distract the black-suits.”

Meriel raised her hand to volunteer.

“This is madness,” Ferrell said. “If we fight, we will die.”

Meriel put a finger to Ferrell’s chest. “Listen, Doc. I don’t know whose side you’re on, but you don’t get it yet,” she said. “You are already dead meat as far as they’re concerned.”

Ferrell looked at Meriel with wide eyes.

“They’re human beings; they can’t do that,” a passenger said.

“It’s only you they want!” another passenger shouted.

Meriel shook her head. “You still don’t get it. Pirates don’t set prisoners free.”

“You’re irrational, Meriel. Just calm down,” Ferrell said.

“I’m the closest thing to rational you’ve got,” Meriel snapped.

“You’re delusional if you think three marines can take a ship back from pirates.”

“No, Doc. We’ve got four: Lev, Nobu, me, and my sister.”

Ferrell shook his head but appeared sympathetic and lowered his voice. “Meriel, please, stop this fantasy. She’s dead. Your sister and the kids died on the
Princess
.”

A few of the passengers gasped, and one whispered, “She’s the one!”

Ferrell’s words silenced Meriel.
What if he’s right
? she thought.
What if I am crazy, and all this is just another delusion?
But if they follow Ferrell, we all die
.
“No,” she said with a weak voice and then a stronger, “No!”

Ferrell raised the link to speak, but the warm-suit walked up to him, trapped his hand in a wristlock, drove him to his knees, and took the link from him. The visor popped up from the helmet, and a frowning Elizabeth appeared.

“Who you calling dead?” Elizabeth said, emphasizing each word with a poke to his forehead with her gloved finger. “Hey, Sis, who’s the stiff?”

Meriel smiled. “He’s the acting captain, Liz” she said.

“Then frag him, and let’s do this,” Elizabeth said and gave the link back to Lev. “Jeez, come on, girls, we’re running out of time.” Ferrell looked up at her and squinted as if she could not exist.

Ferrell turned his head to Meriel. “Meriel, you can’t—” he began, but Elizabeth adjusted her fingers slightly on the wristlock, and he winced and became quiet.

“Open your mouth again, and I’ll break it,” Elizabeth said quietly.

“We have eight minutes,” Lev said, not knowing that the pirates had a much shorter deadline. “We can reach alt-bridge in one.” He leaned over to Meriel and whispered, “Not enough. There are three exits from the bridge, two from cargo C.”

Meriel looked at the remaining crew and passengers—the young men, women, and parents. She frowned and looked to the exits from the room.

Lev whispered, “Cookie’s not comin’, Meriel.”

Meriel found Elliot Goodwin among the passengers. Apparently, he had taken the captain’s advice and stayed on board when the
Tiger
disembarked from Etna. He smiled at her and nodded.

“We can do this,” she said to them. “We can take the ship back and save all our lives. But we need your help. Who will join us?” No one moved.

“I know that you didn’t sign up for this,” Meriel said. “You are not trained to fight, but I don’t believe you want to die. If we resist, we can win our freedom. If not, they will gut you in front of your children.”

“Human beings wouldn’t do that!” Alf Martin said.

“Yes, they would,” Meriel said. “Khanag runs the organ-smuggling trade.”

The arrogance dropped from Alf Martin’s face. Meriel picked up a blaster and clicked the safety off.

Lev tapped his wrist. “We only have a few seconds,” he said. “Will you die without a fight?”

No one moved to help.

“We don’t have to fight! We just have to surrender!” said another. The mood of the crowd became ugly.

Wrong approach
, Meriel thought and raised her hands for quiet. She walked over to a mother with a small boy and softened her voice. “I understand your fear. If I had the power, I would arrange your passage on another ship, and you would be safe.” She stood. “But that is not to be. If we do nothing, we will die and be forgotten like all the other ships that have disappeared in the black.”

Elliot Goodwin made his way to Elizabeth. She gave him a weapon and a few instructions.

Meriel raised her voice. “If you will not defend yourselves, you will die. If your children live, they will be slaves, and no one will know to free them from their torment.” A few of the parents stood and made their way to Elizabeth, but Lev shook his head—still not enough.

“This is suici—” Ferrell began, but Elizabeth tweaked his wristlock again. “You, shut up,” she said and then mumbled, “Dead, huh?”

“But if we resist, we can win our freedom,” Meriel said. “Your children will be safe, and you will rejoice the rest of your days with your children by your side.”

More of the parents joined, and Meriel spoke to the young adults. “Imagine what they will say about us few who escaped an entire fleet of vicious slavers and did so knowing how overwhelmed we were. Those who hear your story will wish they had been here with you to expose a hundred years of murder.” Meriel looked over the remaining passengers. “Choose now. Join us and live.”

“But we are only a few,” a passenger said.

“I survived the
Princess
with less,” Meriel said. “We can survive this.”

The remainder of the young adults stood and went to Elizabeth for weapons. Lev shook his head, indicating they still did not have enough fighters. Meriel looked at the grim but committed faces of those who had volunteered and smiled. “We go with what we have.”

She turned and slammed the passageway wall. “Corporal Tyler is in command,” she said.

Lev barked orders. “Firepower to the alt-bridge—that’s John, me, and…

“Liz,” Elizabeth said.

“OK,” Lev said. “My team defends John until we jump. Alf, you can shoot; come with me. Nobu, Meriel, the rest of you are the diversion going for the main bridge. The minute John engages the nav comp, they’ll know and start killing people. So, John will not spin up nav until we hear fighting from the bridge. Five seconds after John’s signal—”

“What signal?”

“Three beeps on the comm,” John said.

Lev nodded. “Five seconds after the beeps we jump. When you hear it, hang on to whatever is close. Clear?” he said, and they nodded.

“Short jump. No tranq,” Meriel said.

“Jump where?” John asked as he switched off the safety on the pistol and pulled back the slider to charge it.

“Anywhere!” Meriel said and then caught herself. “Lev? You OK with that?”

“Oorah!” Lev said and led his team to the alt-bridge.

***

Meriel prepared to leave with her small team when a mother of a young boy tugged on her sleeve.

Meriel turned to Nobu. “Go. I’ll catch up, but don’t start without me,” she said and turned to the mother.

“Please, I cannot leave my children to join you,” the mother said. “They’re offering us amnesty and safe passage.”

“They’re lying,” Meriel said and handed her a stunner.

Then she turned to Doc and held out a stunner for him. “And they lied to you about me.”

Ferrell grimaced as though he’d been struck. “You trust me?”

“No. I trust only that you don’t want to die without a fight.” Ferrell took the stunner. “Protect them,” she said and turned to go.

Ferrell watched Meriel’s back as she walked away and raised his weapon slowly. The mother next to him saw observed him with an open mouth, shocked at what he might be thinking, and aimed her stunner at him. But Ferrell lowered his weapon and watched Meriel turn the corner to join her team.

Lev’s squad stopped near the cargo-C assembly area, where others were being held, and waited for word from Meriel. When they heard the blasters from her team, Lev’s team attacked the black-suits nearest them and went for the alt-bridge. Once inside the alt-bridge, it would take John only a few seconds to input jump coordinates into nav and send the beeps for jump.

***

At the other end of the ship, Meriel’s team fired into the bridge from behind the decompression doors with no expectation of winning a firefight. Their goal was only to distract Khanag’s men so that John could jump the
Tiger
.

Nobu sprayed fire into the bridge and looked around. “They’re reprogramming nav,” he said and fired again to afford Meriel a look.

“They’re leaving. They’re gonna kill us,” she said. “They can’t leave anyone behind who can restore nav.” She took another quick peek. The black-suit with gold bars on his lapel checked his watch and stood behind Tim Brown, the engineer, with a pistol to his head. “Crap,” she said, knowing he would kill everyone in turn.

“Hey!” Meriel shouted. She stood up and waved her arms wildly to draw his fire. But he ignored her, killed the engineer, and moved to stand behind Jerri at nav. Meriel jumped into the bridge and kicked the pistol from the black-suit’s hand. The black-suit fought back, but the other pirates did not shoot at her, because she was so close to their officer.

“Shit, Meriel’s a friggin’ mad dog,” Elliot said, aiming for the pirates who were leaving the hull breach and those firing at Meriel.

“Yeah, but she’s
our
friggin’ mad dog,” Nobu said, jumping onto the bridge to help her.

The black-suit punched Meriel and pushed her away to give his men a clear shot at her. A direct hit by a pulse rifle threw Meriel back into the bulkhead, near Nobu, and she fell unconscious. When the beeps announced that jump was imminent, Nobu restrained her, armed a stun grenade, and prepared to throw it.

The
Tiger
jumped.

General Khanag scanned his fleet of ships from the bridge of his flagship. He paced impatiently while waiting for his son to dispose of the
Tiger
crew and return. As he watched, a hole appeared and took the
Tiger
and big chunks from the three ships that had penned her in. Men and debris from those ships spilled into space from the gashes in their hulls, and Khanag knew his son would never return.

***

John jumped the
Tiger
only a few AU away, capturing pieces of Khanag’s ships in their jump field and dragging those pieces with them to the new jump point. The few seconds of disorientation during the jump gave Nobu enough time to throw the stun grenade onto the bridge. The grenade exploded and knocked the pirates and the bridge crew unconscious bleeding from their ears and noses. This gave the defenders time to tie up the pirates on the bridge, but the fighting was not over.

Khanag’s men searched the
Tiger
for leverage, knowing there would be no reinforcements. Two of them found Doc Ferrell and the noncombatants hiding in a cabin near the gym.

“Please. I’m Dr. Patrick Ferrell. BioLuna will vouch for me and the passengers. General Khanag knows this.”

The black-suit laughed. “BioLuna is not here.”

Ferrell’s face was visible to the passengers, and his expression of pain frightened them. “It was all a lie,” he mumbled.

“What?” the black-suit asked with contempt. Ferrell raised his stunner, but the black-suit was faster. “Imbecile,” the black-suit muttered and shot Ferrell point-blank in the face.

After killing Ferrell, the black-suit scanned the cowering passengers in the room to assess how much leverage they might provide him when a child hit him in the face with a toy. The black-suit scowled and raised his blaster to target the child, but the mother raised her stunner and shot the first pirate before he could kill her child and then the second pirate before he could kill her.

***

Elizabeth was just outside cargo C tending to Cookie and pulled up her link.

“Where’s Meriel?” she asked.

“Meriel’s down,” Nobu said through her link.

“On my way,” she said and rushed to her sister with Cookie close behind.

“How bad?” she asked when she reached her.

“Internal,” Nobu said, which meant there was little they could do on the
Tiger
without a doctor.

***

Nurendra Khanag, the black-suited attacker with gold bars, was the last of the black-suits on the bridge to wake from the concussion grenade. He tested the cargo ties that bound his hands behind his back and saw his comrades bound as he was.

His eyes scanned the bridge. In the far corner one of the defenders kneeled over the woman that his men had shot. He recognized her from briefings, an unintended survivor from one of his father’s early missions. But she was down, which meant one of his goals had been accomplished.

The dark-haired woman he had pistol-whipped was gone, leaving only one of the
Tiger
crew to hold them at blaster point. He began to sweat and breathe quickly, frantically planning escapes from his only options—death or a lifetime of dishonor and humiliation. He found none and took a deep breath. His men expected him to lead. If they had to die, they would show the infidels they were defenseless against the resolve of believers.

Nurendra looked to the remaining defender, a skinny, nervous man who held his blaster as he would a wrench.

“I can help you,” Nurendra said.

“Just how is that?” Alf Martin said.

“I can tell the rest of my soldiers to surrender to you and end the bloodshed.”

“They’ve lost already.”

“But some are still free to kill more of you and destroy the ship. You could be left out here without rescue.”

Alf looked down at him with a squint. He tapped his link and held it out in front of Nurendra’s face. “Go ahead, tell them to give up.”

Nurendra spoke toward the link. “My brothers, hear my words,” he said and listened for his voice on the PA system. “We are lost and have no future in this world. There is only one honorable decision left for us. Join me.”

“Shut him up!” Elizabeth shouted as she entered the bridge and ran to Alf.

Alf furled his brow, confused. He moved his thumb to turn off the link, but before he could, Nurendra grinned and spoke again.

“Follow me to Paradise, my brothers!” he yelled and bit down hard on something with an audible click. White foam drooled from the corner of his mouth, and he began to shake. “Subedei!” he sputtered and fell on his face, convulsing and coughing up bloody foam. Before Alf could stop them, the other black-suited captives followed their leader, and within a minute, all the remaining pirates onboard lay still.

“Idiot,” Elizabeth said to Alf and went to help Meriel.