Attack ships, p.8
Attack Ships, page 8
part #2 of Starwing Elite Series
I told her about the dream I had. I described in great detail and didn't leave a thing out. She finished putting her clothes on as I talked. While she checked her appearance in a mirror, I finished my dream story.
"I don't think it makes any relevant sense," she informed me. "Why should I be angry that Precious was with you? Why did you feel it important to get her out of that room? Why the laboratory in it when you opened the door?”
"The dream was the mercs own fears bleeding into my mind," I explained. "We know they were operating out of a base somewhere. There's a small planetoid near us, I think they're based there and protecting a drug lab."
"So what do you want me to do?" She said, as one hand placed down a makeup container. She turned around with a small amount of blush on her face.
"I want to go down there and see if it's true," I explained to her. The Captain smiled.
8
I took Tank down with me. I wanted him in the shuttle with me to find out whether or not my dream was affected by reality. Tank tested high on the paranormal tests given to us by the Goat Squad. If anyone was ready to detect a sudden surprise attack by the mercs, it was him. I wanted the transportation shuttle instead of an FAS because it wouldn't be as obvious we were on the hunt for a drug lab.
So it was the two of us in a shuttle designed to haul people and freight from a planetary surface back and forth. It didn't have much in the way of offensive capabilities, as the shuttle wasn't built for warfare. In an emergency, the FAS ships were supposed to provide protection.
Right then, the three FAS ships were on board the Hard Rain, ready to go into action if we ran into trouble.
"I don't want to hear a world from you two until you've found that drug lab," Captain told us when we boarded the shuttle. "You have five hours to find it. No sign of the lab, you get your collective asses back home. I'm supposed to move the ship to another sector tomorrow. The navy is sure the mercs retreated to another location, far away from us."
"You feel anything?" Tank asked me as we cruised over the surface of the planetoid. Like the resorts, this one had a modified gravity field and atmosphere. They were provided in case any traveler needed to stop.
"I don't feel a thing," I informed Tank as the shuttle turned and went over a small valley. "Maybe that dream was supposed to represent something else. I don't know, I was sure it meant something was down here."
"Maybe it meant you're worried Captain is jealous of all the time you spend with Precious. Don't deny it, I've seen you break rank and show her some basic repair techniques for the hanger, even when she was with one of the women. You even had her over at your table with Alyx before you left."
"Precious didn't have an assignment that night and I was worried she'd be lonely."
"Uh, huh, I hear you. I know you wanted her back in the room with the both of you. Captain won't allow that now that Precious is part of the pack."
I bit my lip and didn't say a word. By now, everyone knew about Precious and her shady past. However, only I'd gone deep into her psyche and knew what was there. It established a link between us that was special. With Britani gone and Kyle soon to leave, there was emptiness in me that no one else filled. I wasn't supposed to feel that way with any one woman in the pack, unless she was the mother of my child, but I did with Precious.
I turned to Tank and started to tell him what was in my mind. We were tight, probably closer than any other men on the ship were, but that wasn't supposed to make a difference either.
I opened my mouth and shut it when the pirate ship materialized right in front of us.
Tank slowed our descent to the planetoid's surface and tried to get out of the firing range of the pirate ship. I didn't think we had much of a chance, but I wasn't worried. If the Thunder Horse wanted to kill us, we'd have been dead. There was another reason it was over this planetoid.
I closed my eyes for a brief second and scanned the surface below with my mind. There it was, an entire cluster of mercenary consciousness, all firing their neurons over the appearance of the pirates. They'd not noticed us, but we'd missed them too.
I watched as the pirate ship began to search the ground for any sign of human activity. With the right instruments, it was possible to locate any person. I didn't think the pirates could afford the better scanners, but I was wrong.
And then I began to receive flashes of who was inside that pirate ship. I'd had them before, but this time they were from the captain of the Thunder Horse.
I saw her stare at me. She had multiple scars across her face, more on her body, which was held in place by a tight corset. She wore a leather hat with a broad brim, like something straight out of a story vid. All I could feel was the name "Dredge".
It wasn't her original name, but one given to her by someone who bought her years ago. Like Precious, Dredge was forced to have sex with many people. Unlike Precious, she hadn't killed her abuser and everyone who reminded her of him. Dredge set him up and took all his money when the gangsters he worked for found out he'd shorted them on his monthly bordello payments. Her broken face, that way from the many times he'd struck her, was the last thing he ever saw as the gangsters carved him up one night.
They never considered she was behind it all. By then, her body was so broken; no one would possibly think she could be responsible for the missing funds. The universe was a cruel place, especially in the free fire zones, and human sex trafficking was hideously common on the fringes of civilized space.
"Hey, Corwin," Tank spoke to me. "Are you alright?" I blinked my eyes and came out of the trance.
"I'm fine," I let him know. "The pirates found that drug lab we were supposed to locate. They're going to rip it apart."
"They do the job for us," Tank commented. "Sounds like a win for us and we don't have to worry about casualties." He leaned back in the seat of the shuttle and throttled down the fuel. We could maintain this orbit for a long time if we played the game right.
"I'm going to let Captain know," Tank spoke and picked a phone receiver up from the console in front of him. "Our channel is scrambled and the pirates won't receive it. They'll think it’s a signal from the mercs and the cartels." He punched out a code in front of us.
Both of us had armor on in case of a compromised hull. I wasn't so much worried about rapid decompression as I was about the shuttle torn apart by a laser or missile. In either case, the armor and life supports wouldn't do us a whole lot of good.
"Hard Rain," he spoke into the receiver. "Tank here. The pirates are back and are ripping up the drug lab. We don't think it necessary to stay around and will head back."
"Ely here," a familiar voice responded. "Captain says to stay put. The Udie Navy is on the way. They're planning on landing several squads of Tactical Marines down there."
"What?" Tank exclaimed. "I don't think it's necessary. The pirates have a lot more firepower than those mercs. They'll never get into the air."
"Captain says the navy wants to take as many mercs alive as they can. Plus, they want those pirates dead too. That pirate ships is wanted for crimes against humanity. Seems like they finally created enough collateral damage to get themselves on a kill list. Stay put and let the marines know where you are when they contact you. Right now, you're the closest thing they have to a forward observation post."
"I hope they understand we're unarmed,” Tank spoke as he put the phone down. "Those marines will have all the toys they need from the UDF, but we'll be target practice if either the pirates or mercs spot us."
"Maybe they'll be too busy to worry about us," I mused. "As a matter of fact, it's getting pretty hot down there."
I watched on one of our foreword screens as a small speeder tried to get out of the drug lab and make for orbit. In most scenarios, it would've survived. My guess was that a few of the higher bosses in the cartel thought it would be easy to bug out and worry about the ramifications later. No use having all that drug money if you can't spend it.
However, the speeder didn't count on the impressive laser arrangement on the sides of the Thunder Horse.
I watched the speeder ramp up its electrostatic engine and try to achieve orbit. The little ship wanted to get on the other side of the planetoid fast. They had to have reckoned the pirates were preoccupied with the mercs down at the drug lab. A quick trip out of the atmosphere would allow them an easy exit.
Their plans backfired when the Thunder Horse struck the departing ship with three lasers. I watched the small ship try to reach orbit. Both it and the Thunder Horse were high enough in the atmosphere for the lasers to work. The icons on my battle screen changed from green to red in seconds. The speeder lost altitude and tumbled out of the sky to the ground below. It made quite a fireball on the oxygen rich ground of the planetoid.
"I don't get that," Tank observed. "The speedster tried to leave with gold or cash, it’s gone now. No way will those pirates be able to recover it. Why didn't they let them go and catch up later?"
"Too much risk of not finding them?" I thought aloud. "Guess it's better to make sure no one gets the loot."
An hour later, we heard from the marines.
"Hard Rain shuttle," a voice came in over the audio. "This is UDF Marine Captain Mascal," it said. "We need you to land close to the action down there and guide us to the target."
"It's pretty hot down there," I told him. "We don't have much armament on the shuttle." In fact, we didn’t have any.
"You captain is launching two of her FAS ships," the marine captain replied. "They'll cover your part of the sky while you land."
Great, I though, and two of them without commanders because we're here.
It turned out the only FAS that Captain sent was Shelly's. He and his crew guided us down to the best hiding place on the surface near the drug lab. The pirates ignored us for the most part and continued to pound the mercs on the ground. Once again, I was certain they'd have destroyed the shuttle if it represented any threat to them. We made planetoid fall without any issues. Shelly's FAS went to higher orbit to stay out of the way of the marines.
The marine unit came in hard. They tied up the pirate ship with several starfighters and landed their troops in a drop ship close to the drug lab. This caused the pirates to pull back far enough to avoid the marines but didn't get them out of the action.
I watched from the surface as the drop ships let out one squad after another on the surface. They had a lot in their way, as the surface of the planet was torn asunder from the concentrated fire of the pirate ship. Even with the modified cybernetic suits the marines wore, it wasn't easy to cross that terrain.
I watched as the Thunder Horse moved further away from the position where it’d rained death on the surface. At least it stayed away from us. I didn't think we'd have much of a chance to survive if the pirates wanted us dead. Once again, they had to assume we weren't a threat. They had to know our shuttle was near the drug lab they'd blasted from the sky.
Right now, the pirates were busy with the starfighters sent out by the marines. I watched as one starfighter after another soared over the pirate ship and hammered it with projectiles. Most shattered on the surface, but a few inflicted some damage. These fighters were too fast for the pirates and they couldn't fry them with the laser or particle beams. That's the advantage of using starfighters instead of our larger FAS models, the pilots could engage well within the effective fields of battery fire, the proximity making the ship's powerful weapons somewhat useless.
The only thing they could do was pull back further from the remains of the drug lab.
I could tell the marines wanted to get inside the lab and find out what was left. The lab was housed in a large cavern beneath the surface of the planetoid, which provided an excellent shelter from detection. I don't think we'd have found it on our own without the pirates help.
Thunder Horse fought back against the assault by the marine starfighters, but it was obvious to me each side held back from a killing blow. The starfighters wanted to keep the pirate ship occupied and the pirates wanted to avoid the full wrath of the UDF. It looked like that kill list wasn't as important to the UDF as the drug lab. Each side wanted what was in that bunker, although I could hardly see how much survived the bombardment from orbit.
It didn't allow us much to do. All Tank and I did was sit in the shuttle and relay information to the marines and Hard Rain. This was a heavy-duty operation, far outside the smuggler chases and border patrols that we were supposed to perform for the UDF. I watched sections of the ground near the pirate ship explode from misfired missiles and wondered how much this encounter would cost the navy. There weren't supposed to be any people here at all. If someone had decided to squat on the surface of this planetoid, they'd picked a bad location.
Right now, I thought about Precious and wondered what she was up to in the mothership. Our last assignment ended too soon, although most of them did. I drifted off and thought about her tight little butt as the sheets fell off it when I woke this morning. I hadn't wanted to startle her; what demons remained inside her pretty head worried me. I'd seen most, but not all, of them. It was a good thing to keep in mind that she enjoyed hurting people in the past. It was a defensive wall that allowed her to function, but one that she had to tear down.
"I think the marines have reached the bunker," Tank informed me, which snapped my mind of its haze. "They've disappeared below ground level."
"Let me see if I can get them on the audio," I told Tank. I reached over to the console in front of me and began to fool with some of the settings. We were supposed to be able to hear whatever the marines said, although I worried they might have scrambled the channel for anyone but their own people.
However, they'd not scrambled it for us. The AI on the shuttle soon found the transmissions from the first assault squad and begin to send them back to us. Then it let us in on the marine’s visual feed too. It was not a good day to be a drug dealer. Like they say, war is hell.
Later, I watched the tactical marines haul out several survivors in handcuffs and put them to one side. Inside the bunker, it was a madhouse and only chaos remained. Artificial light was the only way anyone could see inside it. I saw smashed lab and processing equipment. The pirate ship couldn't penetrate the solid rock barrier around the drug lab, but it did cause all manner of hell to break out on the inside from the shock waves. I watched body camera feeds as the marines swarmed over the remains of files and computer parts in search of what they wanted.
"Did the marines find any of that gold the mercs and their bosses were supposed to have down there?" Tank asked me. My face was attached to the screen in front.
"Not from what I can tell," I replied to him. "I'm going to bet any gold was on that speedster that didn't make orbit."
"Which means it’s scattered all over the surface of this place," Tank grumbled. "Lot of good it will do anyone now."
"They'll get it all rounded up," I explained to Tank. "Too much of that shiny metal to let go. They'll put this place under an interdict and declare it off limits until all the gold is accounted for." I was certain some UDF government accountant was busy doing a cost analysis for gold recovery. It wouldn't be cheap. The navy would make sure every gram was accounted for before they left this place. Fiat currency was a significant contributing factor to the ruin of Old Earth, and so the gold standard had returned.
"Who was on your roster for tonight?" I asked Tank. With little to do but report positions, I needed some conversation to keep me from boredom.
"Adri," he answered. "I don't know how Captain will keep the charts straight unless we get more men into the pack. I haven't checked the balance, but it has to be messed up."
"Adri," I repeated. "She'll want it over quickly and let you get some sleep tonight. Doesn't want a whole lot these days, kind of going through the motions. I remember her right after she pledged into the pack. Walked around with a smile on her face for months, but now she's much more reserved. I think losing Reagan was tough, she might never come back from that."
It wasn't unusual for new packmates to think they'd entered the gates of heaven, but the problem is that when the dying starts, you realize that loving the crew of a warship carries a steep price.
9
It took the marines another day to purge the drug lab. They never did find the bulk of the gold or cash that the cartels and their mercenary allies were supposed have in the place. The pirates finally decided it wasn't worth the trouble to duke it out with the Udie Navy and pulled up to the outer orbit of the planetoid. The starfighters gave pursuit. When one of the starfighter pilots was fried by the pirate's particle beams, the marines realized their quarry was tired of playing games. The pirates pulled back and made the jump to their next location while the navy watched. Since it's impossible to track a starship through the Insubstantia, there wasn't much else they could do when the Thunder Horse left orbit.
Shelly's FAS escorted us back to the Hard Rain. I could tell he wasn't thrilled by the inactivity.
"They could've left us all on the ship, after you located the drug lab," he grumbled to me over the audio, "If the Udies wanted it so bad, why did they have to tie you up down there? They need to let us get back to what we're good at, border patrol."
Adri was there to greet Tank and helped him get his suit armor off. Captain wasn't there for me, but I didn't expect her. She had plenty of work to do and evening shift wouldn't kick off for another hour. I expected she was on the bridge talking to whoever was in charge of the Tactical Marines on the surface.
I watched Tank and Adri leave together. I went over to my locker. Soon, all my gear was in place and I was ready to report for my assignment with Captain.
As I was about to leave, Precious walked into the ready room. I was a bit surprised she wasn't there to greet Rin; the other men on Shelly's crew were already gone with their nightly assignments. I put it down to her inexperience. Captain would let her know how important it was for her to meet her assignment in the ready room when he left the FAS.
