Reavers (Book 3) (24 page)

“Final checks are confirmed; we are set to go Rosy,” Andreas said as she took a seat on the bridge.

“Missiles?” Rosalyn asked.

“Loaded and primed,” the man at the tactical station reported.  “Took us a while to configure the ones we got from the
Great
White Rat, but they look like they will be worth it.”

“And our human cargo?”

“Every last person is accounted for.  It’s now or never,” Tardos said as he took a seat next to the navigations officer.

“Didn’t think you’d join us,” Andreas said as he eyed the short old man.

“If I’m about to meet my end, I want to see it with my own eyes.”

“Of course, that won’t be the case.”  Kevin put a reassuring hand on Tardos’ shoulder.

Rosalyn noticed he was the only one not seated or holding on to something.  There was solidness to his stance that was almost reassuring in itself.

“It’s now or never; let’s see if luck favors us today,” Rosalyn said as she moved toward the edge of her seat.

The main monitor gave an external view of the Freeport, focused on the path they planned to take.  Dozens of ships were flying about as they tried to avoid the fire of the larger battleships while also attempting to return fire.  When the path was almost clear of ships, Rosalyn gave the signal.  On one of the smaller secondary monitors she watched as the docking port to the Freeport opened.  The ships fighting nearby altered their course to intercept anything leaving the Freeport. 

A medium sized ship slowly emerged from the Freeport.  The ship was bright white with that stupid logo of the rat over the dead cat illuminated proudly.  As the swarming pirates launched their weapons, Rosalyn gave the second signal.  Just as the first shots started impacting against the ship formerly belonging to the Great White Rat, her ship raced out of the open docking port.  Moments after her ship escaped the docking port, the decoy burst into a massive explosion.

“We’ve got four ships altering their course to intercept,” Andreas reported, “and one of the battleships is shifting some of its fire our way.”

“Prepare to open fire on the ships pursuing us,” Rosalyn commanded.

“I’d suggest against that,” Tardos said in the quick pace he used whenever he was panicked.  “If we attack the battleship, we will show our pursuers we aren’t interested in them.  They might see us as a temporary ally and break off to engage the battleship themselves.”

Rosalyn was surprised at his advice.  Her surprise wasn’t so much that he had second-guessed her orders, it was the fact he sounded so sure of himself.  Every time he spoke, he sounded like he half doubted everything he said.  Not now, though; he sounded like a battle-hardened veteran.  Whatever the reason behind it, she found no reason to ignore him.

“You heard him.  Fire a full salvo against the battleship firing on us!”

The tactical officer nodded and complied with Rosalyn’s order.  The pursuing ships hesitated for an instant as her ship launched an impressive swath of missiles.  When they realized the neat formation of quick moving death wasn’t aimed at them, they shifted their courses.

Just as Tardos had predicted, all four ships vectored off toward the battleship in hot pursuit of the missiles, adding their own contribution to the strike.  Rosalyn’s ship quickly sped off toward the edge of the fighting, not bothering to wait for the small missiles to hit the battleship.  She couldn’t believe it had worked.  Rosalyn turned to thank the old man but paused. 

Kevin was leaning toward one of the small secondary monitors; his grip on Tardos’ chair was so strong his knuckles where turning white.  Quickly joining his stare she found him locked on the monitor following the progress of the missiles.  While everyone else on the bridge was watching their escape route, he was fascinated with the arcs left behind by their weapons.  Suddenly, a brilliant blue glow outlined the left edge of the main monitor.

“What the . . .” Tardos muttered.

One of the bridge officers shifted the view to find the source of the brilliant glow.  As the monitor panned to the left, everyone let out a gasp.  The battleship they had targeted was completely encased in a blinding light.  As the light died down, only fragments of molten slag remained of what had been a mighty battleship.

“Did we do that?” the tactical officer asked in awe.

“Impossible!” Andreas shouted.  “We don’t have anything
near
that powerful.”

“Then who?” Tardos asked.

Tardos was nearly tossed out of his chair as Kevin bolted out of the room.

“Where’s he off to?” the navigation officer asked.

“We have bigger things to worry about,” the tactical officer said as a bead of sweat rolled down his brow.  “After that little stunt, we appear to be the life of the party.”

The main monitor zoomed out.  Every pirate ship on their side of the Freeport was changing their courses to intercept her ship.  The massive battleships were actually
turning
to bring all their weapons to bear on her.

“Distance to the edge of this mess?” Rosalyn demanded.

“Still too far; not like it’s going to matter now,” the navigation officer moaned.  “Even if we did make it far off enough to jump, we’ve got so many ships headed our way that they’ll wipe us out long before we clear the Wall.”

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have jumped from inside the docking port!” the communications officer shouted.

“Don’t be stupid.  There wasn’t room in there to jump, the Wall would have intersected the Freeport and collapsed instantly,” the navigation officer shouted angrily.

“This isn’t helping!” Andreas said as he slammed his fist against the arm of his chair.  “Bickering won’t get us out of this.”

“Any ideas, Tardos?” Rosalyn asked.

Tardos stared at the monitor.  Rosalyn’s ship was nimbly avoiding the larger weapons fire as the smaller ships quickly closed.  Without a word, he leaned over and started pointing out orders on the navigation officer’s console.  Rosalyn watched as her ship changed course.  Instead of heading away from the nearest battleship, it turned and headed directly at it.  Tardos quickly moved to the tactical console and started targeting the massive ship.  Before anyone could question him, the battleship started to jump away.

“What did you do?” Andreas asked, obviously stunned.

“Giving us some room to work in,” Tardos said with pride.  “They know we can destroy them, so they are getting out before we have the chance.  As long as we assume an aggressive posture, most of the sane captains will back off.”

“What about those that aren’t so sane?” Rosalyn asked.

The flashing of an alarm answered her question.  Her ship was under fire.  The navigations officer desperately worked to shift the rotation of the ship to avoid most of the incoming weapons bursts.  For the first time in her life, Rosalyn had proof her custom ship was better than any of her father’s - and worth the expense.  His ships had appeared exactly the same as any trade ship.  They were large, unmanageable bricks that relied on blending in and surprise to get the job done.  In a firefight like this, they would have been sitting ducks. 

The Legion, on the other hand, was able to avoid a good deal of weapons fire due to its sleek profile.  Instead of an elongated cube, her ship was a compact slip, only three decks tall at the highest point.  When they turned that small profile toward an attacking ship, they offered next to nothing to target.

With agile hands at the controls, the ship was next to impossible to hit at all.  A second alarm started flashing; they had taken hull damage.  A quick glance at the main monitor answered why.  There were too many ships.  The navigator was rotating the ship and evading as best she could, but the enemy was everywhere and attacking from every angle.

“We’ve got reports of a fire,” Andreas called out.  “We’ve lost hull pressure in three sections.  Sealing them off now.”

“The engines aren’t responding!” the woman at the navigations console shrieked.  “I can’t do anything!”

“Well, it was a good run,” Tardos said with a sigh.

Every alarm started to sound, one after another.  Rosalyn stood and walked toward the main monitor.  Countless pirates were swarming around her, battering her ship with volley after volley of weapons fire.

“I’ve lost weapons control!” the man at the tactical station shouted.

“No more,” Rosalyn said with a heavy heart.  “I don’t want to hear about every system they disable.  We are finished.  At least let us go in peace.”

“You don’t understand!  It’s not been disabled, it’s been rerouted!”

“What?” Andreas shouted as he jumped to his feet.

“Sensors report all our missile ports are opening,” the navigations officer said in awe.

“We’re targeting . . . nothing?” the tactical officer said as he blinked in confusion.

Suddenly, an elaborate pattern of missiles launched from the ship.  Each one moved away from the ship in parallel.  The trails they left created long spokes that gave the ship the appearance of the hub of a massive wheel.  Without warning, the missiles exploded in unison - not one impacting an attacking ship.  However, it was obvious something wasn’t right.  The explosion that had engulfed the battleship had been massive while these were minor, barely larger than the missiles themselves.  The small spheres of light quickly shrank to nothing, collapsing into single points of blinding light. 

As the monitor shifted the view to compensate for the light, the small points burst outward at an alarming rate.  The brilliant points of light that had haloed the ship were exploding into massive washes of light, bathing the view in so much brightness there was no detail to the view.  As the bridge crew stared at the pure white monitor, an alarm sounded.

Rosalyn recognized the sound instantly.  Someone had accessed the jump drive directly and was forcing the ship to jump.  The Wall passed through the bridge almost unnoticed as every eye locked on the brilliant light shining through the main monitor.  As the Wall passed and the ship reached its destination, the crew held perfectly still - not wanting to break the spell of whatever had just happened.

“Are we . . . dead?” Tardos asked hesitantly.

“I hope not,” the navigations officer said in a whisper.  “I don’t want to spend all of eternity on this ship.”

“Report!” Rosalyn shouted, breaking the daze.

“I’m getting damage reports from every section,” Andreas said as he studied his pad.  “The fire is out, but we are not in the best shape.”

“What just happened?” she asked.

“No idea.”  Andreas shrugged.  “Wait, I’m getting a report from engineering . . . they’ve apprehended Kevin.”

“
Apprehended
him?”  Tardos asked, half in alarm and half amused.  “I didn’t think we had a jail on board.”

“Whatever for?” Rosalyn asked as she shook her head in annoyance.

“He knocked out three maintenance workers and took control of the system.  Looks like he was the one who jumped us out of there.”

“Get me a communications link with engineering,” Rosalyn demanded.

The main monitor shifted to an internal view of central engineering.  A man stood waiting, dressed in the gray uniform of maintenance.

“No need to worry captain, we’ve got things under . . .”

A fist slammed into the man’s jaw.  The maintenance worker instantly fell off screen as Kevin moved to take his place.  There were three pairs of hands wrapped around him, trying to hold him back.

“It was a trap,” Kevin said, panting slightly.  “We were set up.  We all were.”

“What are you talking about?” Rosalyn asked.

“The Freeport.  It was all a trap.”

“A trap?”  Andreas scoffed.  “Have you gone mad?  Who could do such a thing?”

“MI,” Kevin said between gritted teeth.  “It
had
to be them.  They tried to kill us all.”

Renoff breathed in deeply the liquid’s fragrance and sampled a small sip from his glass.  Exquisite.  He’d been saving this particular bottle of wine for years and couldn’t think of any occasion more fitting.  Reclining back in his command chair he took in the scene before him.  MI agents darted about as they readied their forces for the final blow as the massive monitor above displayed the carnival of carnage dancing around the so called
Free
port.

The pirates liked to use that word a lot.  Free.  They all claimed they were truly free.  And yet, for all their freedom they did little else but try and steal the freedoms of others.  In a sense they were the opposite of free.  They were slaves to the Commonwealth.  Without the hard work of the citizens floating about the trade lanes for them to plunder every last pirate would starve off.

They raved against the Commonwealth, railed against its rules and raged against those who didn’t agree.  They had taken so much.  Renoff’s grip on the glass tightened as the amusement faded from his features.  They had taken too much.  He would be the one taking
this
time.

“Status report,” he said as he set down his drink.

“Numbers are lagging behind estimates,” a man said idly over his shoulder, “but things are proceeding according to plan.”