Wandering Engineer 6: Pirates Bane (12 page)

“Sure thing Lieutenant,” the first thug said, swinging the cat
against the wall. Like a demented malicious kid he slammed it around, walking
away.

Irons fought his rage down as a second thug came up with the other
cat. “Leave em alone! They didn't do anything to you!” he snarled. He felt a
blow and fought the urge to brace for it. It was hard, incredibly hard.

He knew they were dead, he could see it. Unfortunately, there was
little he could do. Nothing really. He felt the surge of helplessness as the
impact rolled through him.

He recoiled, woozily moving and felt something cold and hard touch
his temple. He knew it was the woman's pulser. “This ship and its crew are now
the property of the Horathian Empire. Got a problem with that?” she demanded.

The Admiral didn't say anything. There was a long pause. He could
feel her, feel her pulse, feel her finger slowly tighten and then release the
trigger. “I thought not,” she said.

“Ma'am, the shuttle reports nothing on the hull.”

“Nothing?” the woman demanded in disbelief. She turned. “Well!
I'll be doggone. We've got a live one here boys and girls. A sleeper I bet.
Only way someone could man this ship on his own. That right?” she asked,
turning on Irons.

“Yes,” he croaked out.

“Well!” she said, smirking. He heard someone whistling in
appreciation. “Yes sirree, we've got ourselves a genuine sleeper. Bet you
wished you'd never woken up to this nightmare,” she said, laughing. She turned.

Irons scanned the room, noting the sergeant carefully studying
him. “Don't even think of resisting,” the sergeant murmured softly.

The Admiral spat as his mouth filled up with blood once more.

“Patience Admiral,” Sprite cautioned. “You'll get your turn soon
enough,” she said soothingly.

Irons coughed. It bothered him, this entire thing. A lot of what
they were doing, the malicious destruction was completely unnecessary. Why? He
thought. Why didn't they want to keep it? He fought a sigh. The impulse to
destroy was an easy one, a seductive one. The adrenaline release for doing something,
something you knew was wrong...

He saw in himself the urge to return the favor, to retaliate. It
would be so easy to snap the cuffs, bring up his shields and then tear them
apart.

But no, he promised himself he'd wait. He'd get his revenge he thought,
watching the bastard with the second cub tear her head off and mount it on his
shoulder. Yes, he'd get his revenge. The proverb was right it was best served
cold.

The sergeant watched the man and turned to his Lieutenant. “Ma'am,
this one isn't like the others. I don't see any fear in him.”

“That's cause he's a sleeper, probably in denial. He'll get over
that
soon enough,” the woman gloated. She motioned with a hand. “Ball him up, pack
him up on the shuttle. The skipper will want to see him,” she said, waving an
airy hand. “Hell, I'm looking forward to going a few rounds with him in bed. I
like
men with spirit,” she said, laughing with her hands on her hips. “They're fun
to break!”

<----*----*----*---->

Sprite watched, feeling helpless as the pirates tore apart all
they had worked for. They wrapped the Admiral in riggers tape and then secured
him in the shuttle. One of the pilots remained, grumbling about not getting a
chance at the loot.

Occasionally pirates would come in loaded with armloads of things.
They'd stash them and move off.

“Are they going to abandon the ship?” Sprite asked.

“Hopefully,” Proteus responded.

The pirates were from the Horath system, and had been preying on
ships in the area, that much was obvious. Phoenix was the ninth ship taken
since they went on station according to the open gossip. The fourth in the past
two months.

When they were finished looting they left a small crew and then
loaded back up. There was some good-natured ribbing and grumbling about the
prize. Irons could smell the copper scent of animal blood. He had Proteus send
out nanites as the AI repaired any internal injuries he sustained. He left the
skin alone, the dermis damage would serve as necessary camouflage.

There was a bump as the ship undocked, then a drifting sensation.
Obviously the shuttle's inertial dampeners were out of synch. “Hope everyone's
buckled up!” the pilot said over the PA. One of the pirates raised a one-finger
salute in reply. Then there was a kick as the shuttle moved out.

As they moved nanites infiltrated the shuttles systems. It was a
Navy Skyhawk, Irons and the AI noted. Proteus picked its way through the
systems, and under guidance from Sprite and Irons, directed his attention to
the sensor feed.

They were shuttled across the void to another ship, a destroyer.
It was an Arboth class, a small but familiar blocky shape about four hundred
and ten meters long. The ship was stacked vertically rather than linear or
horizontally, making her look like an ancient Terran Angelfish. She was almost as
tall as she was long, measuring four hundred meters from the tip of her
skyscraper structures just aft of her midships line.

She had four clusters of drive pods and three massive Smythe
ion-force emitter engines. One of which appeared to be down.

Damocles, the tin can they had captured in Pyrax was an Arboth
class. Things were certainly getting interesting.

<----*----*----*---->

In transit, with little to do, the Admiral accessed his data on
the Arboth in order to familiarize himself with its stats and deck plan. When
he pulled up the blocky ship he sighed internally. It was a modular design in
the final stages of design development before he went into stasis so his
information was only partial. He hadn't picked up much from the repairs to
Damocles; he'd focused on the other ships.

The ship was divided into three sections, a rectangular bow with a
slit for a mouth, extending to a cross shaped midsection with spars extending
on the vertical Y axis then followed by the eight main sublight drives. The
ship was a simplified design, something that could be mass-produced in large
numbers with each having a small crew of roughly a hundred souls.

The weapons were limited to a spinal mount force emitter in the
bow slit, most likely the device that disabled his ship he mused. The ship had
a bow magazine and six missile tubes, as well as four spinal mounted grasers
clustered around the main weapon. Two three barrel kinetic turrets on port and
starboard rounded out its primary arms.

The ship also had a large number of point defense clusters, more
than a normal ship of her class, but half seemed to be improvised Gauss mounts.
It had less than half the normal counter missile tubes. One destroyer class
reactor, a small micro reactor near her outer hull on her stern nestled between
her subspace fusion drives, and a class 4C hyperdrive.

The ship had good legs in subspace, the cross-shaped mid section
had drive pods on the tips allowing it pinpoint maneuverability. Its shields
were strong for its class, having taken in the new tech advances from the
R&D of the time. However clustering the eighty percent of the ship’s
armament in the bow allowed it to focus on one target, but left it vulnerable
on every other axis.

The Arboth was a modular designed ship, something he was of two
minds about. On the pro side she shared the same parts and frame as each of her
different variants. But on the con side a craft that tried to do too much
usually couldn't do any one particular job well. And a tin can was just too
small to mount a lot inside.

The ship's basic frame had an escort carrier variant that deleted
all the offensive weapons and most of her magazine space in favor of twenty
small fighters, two shuttles, two multipurpose AWACs and SAR craft, two refuel
and rearming shuttles, and two cutters.

It wasn't a design he favored; he preferred a general approach to
ship design. She sacrificed the long-range fight in favor of a heavy
short-range punch. She was reliant on her stealth ability to get into range of
an enemy ship. That strategy had little room for error, and a good hit would
take most of her weapons or drive out. There was little room for redundancy and
she had little or no self-repair ability.

Specialists were fine for some things, but taking it to this
extreme probably wasn't a good thing. He was curious about how the design had
held up in combat.

Bounty herself was a basic destroyer, which was good. She was a
gunslinger, with that odd ability to knock down a ship's shields and systems.
He'd have to look into that once the tables were turned.

<----*----*----*---->

Sprite watched in disgust as the goons that had killed the cats
compared notes. What she had seen had angered her. Such depravity for another
life form was typical of destructive types. Unfortunately organics weren't the
only ones who harbored such tendencies she reminded herself.

One of the goons leaned over to the other and poked him. The other
grunted and looked at him. “What?”

“So, um, the pelt.”

“What about it?” the other asked lazily. He stroked the fur. They
had gutted both carcasses and bagged them in clear plastic to keep the smell
down. He'd opened it to play with the fur and claws.

“You still thinking about tanning it?”

“Are you kidding me?” the first said, flexing a paw by pushing on
it with his fingers. He smirked as the claws came out. “Hell yeah! I want the
skull as a pommel butt too!”

“Oh hell. You have any idea about the smell?? Stink? Boy does that
crap stink!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ran into this a few times. My advice? Freeze it. Vacuum
freeze it or freeze dry it. It'll keep till we get somewhere that you can thaw
it and get a pro to handle it.” The thug fondled the soft pelt. “Something like
this? You can make into a woman's stole or purse or something. Fetch big
credits in the right market.”

“Ah, yeah,” the first said, now thoughtful. “I hadn't thought
about that.”

“Well, think it over. That's what I'm doing with mine.”

“What about the meat?” the first asked after a moment of playing
with the dead animal's body.

“Are you kidding? Give it to Cookie. Why let it go to waste!”

“Cat? You're not serious?”

“Why not? Meat's meat! Besides, can you tell the difference with
his cooking anyway?”

The first thug laughed, shaking his head. “You know what, no,” he
said as his guffaws died down. His bray of laughter hadn't even woken up the
guy snoring away across the aisle.

“What about the ship?” the first asked when they stopped snorting
and laughing.

“What about it?”

“Any ideas what we're going to do with it?”

“That's up to the brass,” the other sniffed. “My money is we'll
keep it. That is if we can get it running again. We'll probably use it as a
courier between us and Admiral Cartwright.”

“Why? You think we'll need it?” the first asked in surprise. “You
think Pyrax is as bad as they say it is?”

“I have no clue. We'll find out in a couple of months. Once
pickings are too slim to stick around and we've gotten our prizes out, we'll
find out. Hell! Maybe the brass will kick things off early and we'll miss out!”

“Hmmm. I dunno. I'm not sure I'm happy about losing out on loot.”

“Are you kidding me? I'll pass on riding into a shooting gallery
any day of the week! Let some other dipshit get shot up. Then we'll come in and
clean up!”

“True,” the other cackled. “Too true,” he said, smiling nastily.

“No honor among thieves indeed,” Sprite texted to the others.

<----*----*----*---->

 The tin can had a single boat bay. There was no IFF transmission,
but it was obvious she was a former Federation naval vessel. Unfortunately
someone had painted over the hull identification markers with Horathian
markings. The Admiral frowned. She was marked as a D-971. If they really had
that many destroyers... he flinched as someone poked him. He realized he needed
to maintain his situation awareness more carefully. Watched through the nanites
as the man got the package behind the Admiral and then moved out.

The thing was many nations throughout time had skipped around with
hull markings to confuse the enemy, the Admiral thought. So that could be the
case. But worst-case scenario meant he had to seriously rethink things down the
road. But first, he had to deal with this situation.

He was tempted to break out now, they were stupid enough to cuff
his hands behind his back and then leave him. Prisoner protocol always said to
cuff the hands in front so you could watch them. Stupid, he thought coldly. He
was tempted to show them the error of their ways, but he decided it was best to
stay the course. He wanted to get a better feel for the ship before he acted.
He needed Intel and definitely needed to disable any self-destruct packages.
Besides, if they had been capturing ships for some time, like the two derelicts
he had overlooked, they could have other prisoners. Other prisoners meant
potential allies to recruit.

Decision made he settled down for a wait. Once the shuttle was
inside and on the deck, the apes unbuckled, grabbed their stashed loot and then
moved out even before the pilot gave the all clear.