Poor Man's Fight (53 page)

Casey
had his gun on the back of the girl’s neck. He was just about to say, “Just so we understand each other,” when the punk on the screen cut off the image with his pistol. Chang and another pirate nearby stared as their captain blinked in surprise.

“Son of a bitch!” growled
Casey, shoving the girl back to Chang without even thinking about it.

***

Wide-eyed and sweating, Tanner stared at the smoking remains of the comms station. His breath was quick and heavy. That little girl may have just been murdered. Perhaps she was still alive, but probably not. He never should have opened up the channel. Stupid. So stupid.

“Point’s made, kid,”
Lauren growled. “You know the score. You’re all alone on a ship you can’t even run. We’ve got a couple thousand hostages. If you don’t want them to start dying ten at a time, you’d better get back on the line and surrender right fucking now.”

“You mean
he’ll kill all those people you guys were gonna murder anyway?”

“Maybe not,” pressed
Lauren. “Maybe you oughta try making a deal.” She gave a little nod of her head toward the comms station. “Backup system is right there. Better make the call.”

Negotiating was pointless, and Tanner knew it. Moreover, he knew there was no further point in speaking with his prisoner. He lurched across the bridge to the damage control station, momentarily forgetting all his pain.

Without a word, Tanner threw the first large switch on the emergency venting panel. And then the next. And then the next.

***

“We’re on it, Casey, we’re on it,” called a voice over Casey’s holocom. “We’re at the bridge now. We’ll cut through and get the bastard. Don’t worry.”

“Almost got engineering under control again,” piped up another.

“Fuentes here. We’re on board
Vengeance
now.”

“Bell here, ditto that.”

Casey paced back and forth in front of his hostages and his men, listening in to the reports. The quick end to his conversation with Malone left him almost speechless. Casey was stuck on the luxury liner with no enemy to fight and his forces too far away to effectively direct. All there was to do was to keep his captives in check.

The thought stopped him in his tracks. He looked out over the faces of his hostages. They remained gathered in a single mass that began a few meters away, just down a handful of steps from the landing. “Don’t anybody get any fucking ideas,” he warned in a loud, but calm voice. Their whispers and murmurs ended as he spoke. “Sit quietly and cooperate and you might get out of this alive. You don’t have any other options. Nobody even knows you people are in trouble. Nobody’s coming to help.”

His gaze swept the crowd once more. The silence reassured him.

Then he heard the soft, distant thump from up above. And another.

Casey, Chang, and everyone else assembled on the promenade looked up through the luxury liner’s transparent canopy shell.
Vengeance’s
grappling cables and enclosed gangways had retracted; the ship was already drifting away from the
Pride
.

Dozens of pirates flew helplessly out of open airlocks, access hatches and bay doors all across
Vengeance
. They floated off into the void in all directions.

Casey’s heart leapt into his throat, choking off the scream that threatened to escape his lips.

***

Silence held across the bridge. Even Lauren had been cowed. Her natural aggression would soon reassert itself, but for at least this brief moment, her mind struggled to accept the reality of what the man at the backup comms panel had just done.

Tanner stared at the controls, too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice her silence. He found his hands trembling again. All this blood and insanity and he could still feel fear—and despair.

He’d already accomplished so much more than anyone could ask of him. He was already hurt. He was still utterly alone and outgunned. Getting this far was nothing short of miraculous. No one could blame him if he sat tight and waited for help. It was probably even the wisest thing to do from a tactical standpoint.

Somewhere out there was the corpse of
St. Jude
. Somewhere out there floated Morales. Tanner had escaped all that. He made it all the way here.

He could live through this if he just stayed put.

That uniform means that if there’s gotta be a fight, you want it to come to you and not to someone else,
Janeka repeated in his head
. You ready for that, recruit?

Tanner shut his eyes tightly. He saw the face of a scared little girl and an angry man with a gun. He took a deep breath, flicked the red switch on the panel, and threw away
his hard-won chances of going home alive.

“
Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Crewman Tanner Malone of
ANS St. Jude
, mayday. My position coordinates ride this signal.
St. Jude
is destroyed. I say again,
St. Jude
is destroyed. Pirates have boarded
NSS Pride of Polaris
at these coordinates. I say again, pirates have taken
NSS Pride of Polaris
with approximately twenty-five hundred passengers and crew on board. I am on board Centurion-class pirate destroyer
Vengeance
. I have taken the bridge and vented the majority of
Vengeance
’s crew out into space. I am abandoning
Vengeance
to attempt rescue of
Pride of Polaris
. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

“Course heading confirmed. ETA twenty-nine minutes at current speed.”
Allison’s voice trembled as she spoke. It wasn’t pronounced, nor loud, but Rick noticed. He also noticed the way she stared at the yellow circle on the astrogation chart marking the last estimated position of
St. Jude.
Sharma double-checked her findings, then input them in the computer.

“He wouldn’t be out here if it wasn’t for me,”
Allison said. She bit her lip.

“What do you mean?” Sharma asked. “Who?”

“Her friend on
St. Jude
,” Rick answered for her.

“I talked him into it. Talked him into enlisting.”

“Allison, he made his own choice.”

“He was supposed to go off to an ecology lab for an internship before university, but it got all fucked up and he didn’t know what else to do,” she went on. To her credit, there were no tears in her eyes. This was the military. It was risky business. There was every likelihood that she would someday have to say goodbye to friends whose lives ended much too soon. But she could steel herself against only so much. “
He’s gentle. Nice. I never saw him hurt anyone. All he wanted to do was work with furry animals and estuaries and stuff. I talked him into this.”

Sharma glanced at her, unsure of what to say. “Why’d you encourage him to do this?” he asked, figuring maybe it would be good for her to get it out now.

Allison swallowed. She didn’t answer right away. “I thought he’d be good at it.” She tapped at a couple of buttons. “He’s smart. Really smart. Tougher than he knows. I thought… I thought he’d be good at this.”

Rick gave her shoulder a small squeeze. “Who says he isn’t?”

Allison huffed.

“Captain!” a voice called out across the bridge. “We’ve picked up a mayday call.”

Heads turned toward the communications watch officer. He had one hand over his ear, covering his headset out of habit. A pair of enlisted specialists beside him wore similar expressions of disbelief. “It’s—this is weird, ma’am,” he frowned. “I don’t know whether I believe this or not.”

Standing at the center of the bridge, Captain
Leigh gestured for her comms officer to put the message on speakers. Allison’s breath caught in her throat.

“…Crewman Tanner Malone of
ANS St. Jude
, mayday. My position coordinates ride this signal.
St. Jude
is destroyed. I say again,
St. Jude
is destroyed. I am on board a pirate vessel, Centurion-class pirate destroyer
Vengeance
. I have taken the bridge…”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sharma blinked.

“That’s him,” said Allison, who was more astonished than anyone. “That’s his voice.”

Sharma focused on his station. He nudged
Allison out of her chair. “Get over there and tell the captain.”

She blinked. “What? But—“

“Midshipman Carter, I would think that’s a prank or a lunatic talking except you’re here telling me he’s legit. Get over there and tell the captain now.”

Following his instructions more out of reflex than sense,
Allison walked over to the communications station. Both the captain and XO had moved over there as well, listening in and evaluating the message with their comms watch section. “It’s the right band for distress calls, ma’am,” said one of the enlisted technicians. “Nothing on the signal is out of place. We’re riding up on it, too. Almost a reciprocal of our course.”

“Yeah, but listen to what he’s saying,” countered the ensign standing beside her. “The hell kind of mayday call is that?”

“The kind you put out when the protocol goes out the window, sir,” shrugged the tech. “I mean if that’s the truth, what else would you say?”

“I don’t know,” frowned the captain. She crossed her arms thoughtfully. “We’ll have to check it out, but it sounds awfully fishy to me. What if this is a wild goose chase?”

“Captain?” asked Allison. She waited for Leigh to turn around, taking a breath as she realized once more how far beyond her station she was reaching. “Ma’am, I know that crewman. I went to school with him. He’s a friend. This is for real.”

Leigh
raised a curious eyebrow. “You think it could be any kind of a set-up? Could he have snapped?”

“No way, ma’am. Not him.”

The captain’s eyes stayed on her. Allison held her gaze.

“Captain,” piped up the ensign, “the call has changed.”

“Headset,” Leigh said, reaching out with one hand while her eyes stayed on Allison’s. She held up the earpiece to listen. “XO,” she said finally, “bring the ship to battle stations. Tell Major Kading to ready his marines for a boarding action.” She returned the headset and then strode away from the station, calling for the helm to increase speed and for Sharma to plot out an emergency FTL jump.

Allison
glanced down at the comms techs. One of them held the headset up to her without a word. Allison listened, once again feeling the breath knocked out of her.

“Midshipman Carter,” she heard the captain say. The captain faced another direction entirely, her attention on another matter as she said, “if I was in that kid’s shoes, I’d be shooting everything that moved. Might be best if we had a friendly face over there to talk him down. Suit up for boarding and go get your boy.”

***

He allowed himself
three minutes with the first aid kit. Localized painkillers provided minimal relief. Clotting gel stopped the bleeding. Micro-weave bracing bandages ensured nothing would open back up.

The last of his electrostatic tape plugged the holes in his vac suit. The roll ran out before he could tape his combat jacket closed again. With its shattered eyepiece, his helmet was a loss. Fortunately,
he found a couple of spare helmets on the bridge—nothing as good or combat-worthy, but enough to get the job done.

Tanner looked over the external passageway monitor again.
A mob of pirates lay dead just outside the hatch. They had been considerate enough to bring a plasma cutter with them. Tanner would need that.

“You don’t really think they’ll fall for that bullshit,” said
Lauren. Her voice had gone dry, which only made her sound all the more bitter.

“Fall for what?”

“That mayday correction. Going over to
Polaris
.”

Tanner shrugged. “They’ll know when I show up on the ship.” He adjusted his new helmet’s seals and made one last check of his weapons.

“Christ, you really think you’re some kind of knight in shining armor, don’t you?”

“Yup. That’s me. Speaking of chivalry,” he added carelessly, “here you go.” He tossed the open first aid kit down to her. It landed on the deck beside her, its contents scattering all around and on top of her where she lay with her arms trapped by the wrecked console.

Lauren screamed in rage, trying to wrench her arms free once more only to suffer further pain. “Fuck you, asshole!” she howled. “Go to hell!”

“Probably on my way,” Tanner said as he got to the bridge hatch. “You
might want to hold your breath.”