Wandering Engineer 6: Pirates Bane (14 page)

“Well, I couldn't find anyone who I could stand to be around,” the
Admiral said, trying to sound defensive. “I snore.”

There was a snort of disbelief over that. “Right.”

“Like I said, small ship. She has, or I should say, had a smart
'puter. Real smart. Kept me on my toes moving around fixing stuff.” John felt
at his jaw briefly. “Besides, I'm not a people person.”

“Oh.”

There were looks around the group. He wondered why and then
remembered their tech level and software skills. Just about everyone got by
with plug and play, they had no clue on coding. He frowned, trying to think of
a way out of it and then shrugged. There was little point; he had let part of
the cat out of the bag.

“An AI?” Franx asked.

The Admiral shook his head. “Dumb AI. Not a smart one, but damn
snarky. No one could stand him.”

“Him? I thought they were usually female?”

“Another reason they couldn't stand him. And he was malicious. If
you didn't do what he wanted he'd nag the crap out of you or get even in damn
horrible ways.”

“Ah.”

“Besides, I'm a sleeper. I was awakened a couple years ago.”

There were murmurs over this news. “Ooooh. Implants?”

“The basics,” Irons said, shrugging. He showed them his left arm
with the civilian jack. He pulled his sleeve back down after a moment.
“Probably why I am still alive. I'm glad I wasn't jacked in when they hit me
with that force beam or whatever it was.”

“
They
have implants too. Informational implants. Crude ones
though,” Captain Franx said, looking at his jack and then up to his head. “But
yeah, they probably kept you alive for that. That and more,” the battered
Captain said and then stopped as he coughed.

“More?” John asked as the civilian got his coughing fit under
control.

“Intelligence value. That and any skills we may have,” a red
headed freckled male said. “Captain Ian McGuyver,” he said, waving a hand. John
did a quick size up. Ian was in his mid forties, about one hundred sixty five
centimeters tall and thin. He had a fading black eye and some contusions and
bruises, but the most striking thing was how starved he looked. Ian grunted
when John didn't respond right off.

John nodded slowly.

“We're kept for that, and their entertainment,” a deep bass voice
rumbled. The Admiral turned to a short squat male. He could pass for a fantasy
dwarf, with his massive one hundred and twenty centimeter frame. He had a long
brown beard, balding on top, and bushy eyebrows to complete the look. The only
thing out of place was the filthy coverall he had on. From the look it had been
made for someone taller and not as broad, the sleeves and ankles were rolled up
and some areas seemed bursting at the seams.

“What are you looking at stranger?” the guy grumbled. He stared
back at John with piercing black eyes.

“Don't mind him, he's being a shit on left, right, and center,”
Ian said, shaking his head. He was the Chief engineer of the Anderson. When he
couldn't fix her they put him on toilet duty.”

“Because I'm so short,” the smaller man grumbled. He had a broad
bulbous nose and big lips. He also had a take no prisoner stare. “Which suits
me just fine. I'd rather be doing that than helping those slikes,” he said,
stroking his beard. He had a bit of a brogue in the way he spoke. John nodded.

“Is Anderson dead?”

“She's as dead as they come lad. Lost her hyperdrive. Flatline.
And her fusion reactor went cold. They say they can restart her, but there is
no point to it,” the big man said, shaking his head.

“She was holed too. She's been used as a source for parts to
rebuild the other ships,” Ian said. He looked at the engineer. The small man
muttered curses under his breath, much of them in protest. The Admiral glanced
his way and then nodded. No spacer liked the idea of sending their ship, what
amounted to their home, their world, to the breakers. It was heart breaking.

“We had pirates in my time, but I never thought of something like
this. Maybe in a bad holo drama...” the Admiral shook his head. Ian shook his
head as well. “I'm guessing they aren't planning on ransoming us?”

There was a spatter of dark almost hysterical laughter around the
room. “Are you kidding? We're sport to them. When we are no longer useful, they
chuck us out the nearest lock laddie,” the dwarf growled.

“Thought so,” John sighed.

“So, it's important to be useful, but not too useful. If you get
too useful than someone else becomes a liability. You catch my drift?” Ian said
warningly. John nodded. “Bad things happen. Accidents and all that.”

“What he's saying is that if you kiss ass too much and fix things
too well, than the Horathian's will weed out the borderline people. We don't
want that Admiral,” Sprite said. Irons grunted. He didn't need her translating
that for him.

“What I'd love to know is why? Why do all this?” John said, waving
his hands.

“Well, it's partly fun for them,” Ian said, hunkering down into a
squat. John joined him. He looked over to the dwarf. The man had massive
gnarled hands. He was a brawler, but also a hard worker.

“It's also their policy on weeding out aliens,” the dwarf rumbled.
He pointed a meaty thumb at his chest. “Vestri Sindri.”

“John Doe,” the Admiral replied.

“You must be quite the engineer to keep that ship running.”

“A fair bit,” John replied with a knowing smile. The dwarf stared
at him for a long moment with one bushy eyebrow raised. After a moment he made
a huffing sound in amusement.

“And yes, I know the origin of your name. Well, the first part is
Old Norse mythology for the Western dwarf. Sindri was the name of the dwarven
smith in Norse mythology who made the gifts of the gods including Mjolnir.” He
cocked his head. “A fine name for an engineer.”

“You don't say,” the dwarf rumbled, chuckling. He slapped the Admiral
on the shoulder. Irons didn't flinch. “You and I will get on just fine then,”
he said, chuckling.

John nodded to him and then returned his attention to Ian. “You
were saying cap. I mean skipper?”

Ian nodded in appreciation at the catch. He looked around and then
tucked his hands in his armpits. “We've picked up a few things. For instance,
Horath is no longer set to just put their anti alien policy on their own world.
Now they want to expand it. They've been doing it for years.”

“You don't say,” the Admiral said.

“From what we've gathered, Horath has managed to rebuild dozens of
small warships and has over thirty freighters in its merchant fleet. That was
all before they became aggressive and began sending out raiders.”

“I see,” John replied darkly.

“And that was oh, about five or six hundred years ago. They've
been taking their ill-gotten gains back to Horath. There is no telling what
they've done with it all since then. Or what else they have found.”

John made a face. “Yeah,” he said, remembering some of the
intelligence reports they had gotten after the battle of Pyrax. Some of this he
knew, but... he shook his head. “Not good,” he murmured.

Ian looked at him. “Understatement of the century,” he exhaled
noisily. The engineer looked up as someone spoke his name. He waved and moved
off, patting Irons on the knee as he left.

Ian snorted. “I think he was bucking for a fight just to prove
he's still a hard headed bastard,” he said in an aside to John. John sniffed
softly.

“Some people bond over a fight. Honor of a warrior,” John replied.

“Yeah some. We've talked him out of it. We get enough bruises from
the Horathians,” Ian said darkly.

“I know,” John said, rubbing his temple. He could feel the bruise
there.

“Go get cleaned up,” Ian suggested, waving him to the small sink.
“You look like shit.”

“Gee thanks,” John replied dryly. Straightening up. “I think I
will.”

He went over to the small sink. People looked up and got out of
his way. Some with dark looks, some with their heads down. He cataloged them,
not just in who might be a threat, there were a few, but also in who had some
spirit left, and who didn't. Of course one brief encounter wasn't much to go
on, but it was a start.

There were sixty-four non-Horathian prisoners in the twenty
capacity brig of the destroyer. They took prisoners out in lots of six to
fifteen each shift depending on the work. Sometimes they formed work parties
doing cleaning jobs; sometimes they were broken into smaller groups and then
chained to consoles to man unimportant parts of the ship's engineering.

Irons wondered about the wisdom of that. He could use it. Placing
bugs or a virus... nanites. It all came back to nanites. He put the thought
aside as they continued. From the sound of it, what they were telling him was a
well-rehearsed lecture.

Most of the ships companies had been taken intact. However, two
ships had failed fusion reactors, the Jaw-te and the Anderson. One had a plasma
leak, which had gutted the ship. She was a derelict. The other ship had her
reactor and hyperdrive offline. Both ships were being used as parts. The
apparent plan was to get at least the other two ships functional enough to
leave the system.

“That and the prison barges,” Ian said darkly. “My Deianira and
Franx's Le More.”

“Prison barges? I didn't detect any power readings from them,”
John said.

“That's because the Captain had them shut down the moment you
showed up,” Ian replied darkly. Now the Admiral knew why some looked at him
with hostility, they blamed him for...

Ian shook his head. “I know what you're thinking, and no, not all.
Some maybe. Probably definitely lost some. But it's not your fault.” He turned
to the compartment at large. “You hear me? It's not on him. It could have been
him, or someone else, or the sick bastards. Get over it,” he said gruffly.

After a moment there were a few sheepish or grudging nods of
acceptance. Ian stared a few hardheaded people down until they looked away.
Finally he returned his attention to John.

“They used heat exchangers and batteries to keep the life support
minimally functioning. Now that you are caught,” the smile he had wasn't nice.
“Now that you are caught they will hopefully switch the power back on.”

“How many?” the Admiral asked.

“I don't know if we have hard numbers. A couple hundred,” Ian
said.

“More or less. Most likely less now.”

“Misery loves company,” Captain Franx said.

“Entirely too true in our case,” Ian sighed. Some among the group
nodded.

 “Occasionally the Captain would send over a work crew made up of
prisoners to get a part or to do a survey. Usually it is make-work. Dangerous
make work, but we don't have a choice.”

“Why not use the crews on the wrecks?”

“Oh, sorry, I'm talking about the dead ships.”

“Oh.”

The Admiral glanced at Bard. The big man was lounging back, head
back, eyes closed. He seemed to have nodded off, recovering.

Both the Jaw-te and Anderson were dead they would never fly
again. From the sound of it, Anderson, the ship with the least amount of damage
had her hyperdrive melted down. Irons wasn't sure how that was even possible,
the dark matter in the drive should have destroyed the ship had the shell been
breached. He glanced at the diminutive engineer. He might have had a hand in
it, John mused. He couldn't blame him, a little act of revenge to make certain
the bastards didn't run off with his baby.

Anderson was little more than a skeleton now. Jaw-te wasn't far
behind, but the ship's components didn't mesh well in the surviving ships.

“It's all that Supreme Secretary President Pyotr Ramichov. He's
the ruler of the Horathian system. Only now they are declaring it an empire and
him as their first emperor,” Captain Franx interjected with acid commentary.
“He just had his coronation, they got a courier in with a stick. The
Horathian's here even got to watch,” he said, indicating the dark LCD mounted
in the one corner of the ceiling. “He wants every scrap of hardware shipped
back to the Horathian home system. They are building for an offensive.”

“Empire huh?” John mused. “I had heard the old Federation was...”
he let the leading question die when no one answered; they just hunched their
shoulders.

“Emperor,” Ian glanced at the others in the room. “Ramichov is a
conqueror, determined to turn himself into the “First Emperor of Man” on the
ashes of the old Federation. He has been planning on building a human empire,
destroying any and all aliens that they can find. They've already taken a half
a dozen worlds.”

“Really?”

Franx nodded. “They had their hooks in Finagle, Garth, and Dead
Drop.” He glanced over to the dwarf who had come back to stand nearby. The
dwarf nodded, adding his considerable weight to the subject.

John pondered that for a moment. “Where else? You said six?”

“More than six. But they announced six, the three Franx here
mentioned, plus this fleet has taken New Horizon, Hinata, Konohagakure. They
dispatched a force to hit OTBP too.”