Vagabond, page 13
part #1 of Guild Series
“Shove that so-called respect right up your ass.” Tuya gestured rudely at the officer and the marines behind him, then turned to stomp to the far side of the room.
“Very well,” Davis sighed. “Marines! Take Miss. Sansar into custody, and remove her to interrogation.”
Erik stepped forward quickly, both hands up in front of him. “Lieutenant, you don’t need to resort to intimidation. Let me talk with her for a while, see if I can convince her to give up the unlock codes.”
“Step aside, sir.” The marines barked as they pushed past to enter the room. Fynn stepped up in a half-hearted attempt to stop them, but was shoved into a chair as the marines continued past without the slightest hesitation. The first trooper raised his weapon to point it at Tuya, while the second stepped around her to place restraints on her wrists.
She moved with swiftness fueled by the cybernetic implants, hand shooting forward to grab the pointed weapon and twist it aside with a loud snap of broken fingers. She followed up with a kick to the sternum of the marine behind her, folding the man up as he flew back to hit the bulkhead a few feet away. Leaping forward, Tuya wrapped her legs around the newly disarmed marine and chopped down with both hands to either side of his neck. The trooper dropped unconscious to the floor, and Tuya rolled backward to turn and face the second marine as he straightened up painfully. She slid one foot back and tensed up to strike.
A stun bolt appeared high in her back, causing her to convulse as the electricity pulsed throughout her body. Teeth gritted and muscles corded, Tuya turned to face Davis. His hand was still extended with the pistol pointed at her and he watched with stunned disbelief as she took two shuddering steps toward him, fighting through the pain. He pulled the trigger once more, shooting a second bolt into her chest. The low voltage that issued out went straight to her heart, disrupting its rhythm and dropping her to the floor to writhe in agony for a few seconds before the bolts ceased their electrical discharge.
Erik rushed forward, placing a finger at her wrist to check for a pulse. His shoulders slumped in relief as he felt the fluttery beat, and he turned betrayed eyes to glare at the Syndicate officer. “You could have killed her! She needs to get to the med bay.”
Davis holstered his weapon as six more marines rushed into the room to point weapons at Erik, Fynn and Isaac. They were herded back against the far wall to watch as the two injured marines were helped up and gently assisted out of the room. Tuya was roughly dragged onto a hovering gurney and tightly strapped in, and then with two marines on either side the gurney was taken out of the cabin. The lieutenant stared wordlessly at the Vagabond’s crew throughout the operation, his mouth a tight line and eyes cold as ice.
“I did not want any of this,” he finally said. “If she had only cooperated, instead of working against me and assaulting our marines, Tuya would not have been harmed in any way. I could have convinced Admiral Yumata that you could all be released at the end of our mission.” Davis cast his eyes around at the disarray caused by the brief fight. “Now I fear that the commander will have his way in the decision.”
The lieutenant turned sharply and strode from the cabin. The marines held their weapons on the three men as they backed out of the room and then slapped the control to close and lock the door. Erik slumped against the bulkhead, sliding down to sit with his face in his hands.
“My God,” Isaac breathed quietly. “What’s going to happen to us now?”
Fynn was staring at the location of the fight with wide eyes. The crew had known about the woman’s illegal implants, but never seen them used in violence before. “That girl is a whirlwind,” he said with admiration. “I think she could have taken on an entire squad.”
Erik ignored them both, lost in a spiraling depression. The entire chain of events leading to this moment were all a result of his own rash, greed-fueled decision. If they survived their time on the Syndicate ship, he did not know if it would ever be possible to make up for the danger and injury he had brought to his ship and crew. His body began to shake as the adrenaline rush started to wear off, replaced by the dreadful thoughts of what could happen to Tuya. He could only hope that she was returned to them, and was not treated too harshly.
He didn’t how much time had passed, only that he had somehow fallen into deep sleep as the dark thoughts ate at his mind. Erik woke to find himself being shaken insistently, the engineer squatting next to him and leaning close to whisper. “Someone’s trying to get in, captain.”
“I’m not a captain anymore,” he replied automatically, trying to clear the fog of sleep from his brain.
“You’ll always be my captain, Erik. Now focus! Whoever is out there has been making noises for almost a minute now, so they’re clearly not authorized to enter.”
The words snapped him into wakefulness, the fear returning. “This could be how they get rid of us. Send a small group, toss us out of the airlock or smash our heads in, and claim it was payback for the fight and they couldn’t identify the perpetrators.”
Isaac moaned nearby at the words, but Fynn snapped back “It could also be a rescue attempt, Erik.”
“Who’d want to rescue us on this cursed ship?” he asked morosely. A sharp, stinging slap jerked his head back and he turned to Fynn with anger burning in his eyes. A moment later he calmed and nodded his thanks. “Sorry, old friend, I got lost in myself for a while.”
Erik climbed to his feet and stepped closer to the door, hearing the scratching and soft clicking sound of the security panel being forcibly removed. He returned to the others and spoke softly. “Whether this is friend or foe, we need to be ready. You two stand against the wall over there, and I’ll wait by the door to jump them as they enter.”
“Not the best plan, but it’ll work. Come with me, Isaac.” Fynn pulled the technician to the far wall and they waited there as Erik returned to the door. He tapped the switch to dim the lights in the cabin, and then placed his back against the bulkhead a few feet from where the door would open.
The wait was not long, as half a minute later the door slid aside and a low cry of victory was heard from the other side. A slight figure entered the darkened room, light from the corridor streaming in around them. The person paused long enough to spot Isaac and Fynn, raising a hand toward them. Erik acted quickly, not wanting to risk that hand holding a weapon, tackling the figure and wrapping his arms around his opponent to prevent movement.
“Whoa!” a voice called quietly from the doorway as a second person entered. “We’re friends! None of us are armed.” A third person entered behind, hands raised to show that they were empty, followed by a fourth and fifth person dragging two unconscious marines into the cabin. They dropped a few empty alcohol bottles by the sleeping troopers, then crouched by the portal to keep an eye on the corridor in both directions.
“What do you want with us?” Erik asked, holding tightly to the person he held wrapped in his arms. The first three intruders were dressed in Syndicate uniforms with no rank designations, the two crouching by the door in basic light marine armor.
The person with raised hands turned to let the light from the corridor reveal a man with a face that seemed familiar. Erik stared at him for a few moments, then cried out in surprise as the pieces fit together. He released the person who had been struggling against him, standing in shock. “My name is Altan Sansar,” the revealed man announced. “I believe you know my sister, Tuya.”
“What?” Isaac asked, as he and Fynn approached. “Her brother is dead.”
“Supposed to be dead,” Erik added, stepping forward with narrowed eyes. “The ship was destroyed but the crew weren’t onboard, were they? Just as our ship will be damaged while we remain here on the Indomitable.”
“That’s correct.” Altan lowered his hands, and gestured to the four others who’d entered with him. “This is everyone who survived from the crew of the Telemachus. I’ll share our story, if you’ll allow us to remain. I assure you that this cabin is not being monitored.” Erik nodded and the two men in marine uniforms stepped out into the corridor to take the place of the guards. The door closed as they took up positions to either side of it.
“The two marines are Richard and Tom, who served as cargo haulers on the Telemachus,” Altan said, then waved at the two who remained in the cabin. “The woman you were holding so tightly is Jen, our doctor. The last of us is Mira, pilot extraordinaire.”
Jen stared daggers at Erik, tugging her uniform straight, then turned to nod curtly at Fynn and Isaac. She leaned against the wall near the door with her arms crossed. Mira smiled as she was introduced, and took a seat in one of the chairs as Altan sat in another. Erik and Fynn joined them, while Isaac retreated to sit on a bunk with eyes darting around at each of the newcomers.
“Tuya shared the story of your disappearance and assumed death with Fynn and Isaac just this morning,” Erik said. “I only found out a few months ago at the start of this trip, when she recognized the cargo container as being the same that you described on your last guild job.”
“She remembered my sparse details that well after half a decade? My biggest fear all these years has been that she would forget me, or give up her dreams because of what happened to me.”
“Quite the opposite. She joined the Vagabond because she clung to her dream of following you into space even harder than before your loss. I think she may harbor secret hopes of finding out the truth, which unfortunately appears to have happened.”
Altan leaned back and heaved a deep sigh. “I heard she was taken. My friends and I were working on plans to get in here as soon as we heard that another freighter crew had been taken prisoner, but it took us hours to find the guard schedules and to all be off shift at the same time. I hope to still see my sister again.”
“Tuya is the toughest person I know, and if anyone can survive whatever they do it will be her.”
Mira leaned forward with an inquisitive eyebrow raised. “Is it true she took on two marines at once?”
“And beat them!” Fynn said triumphantly. “Don’t tussle with a person who has implants.”
“Implants?” Altan asked in surprise. “When did she get those?”
Erik shrugged. “She had them when she joined our crew four years ago, but I never asked for details. With something that illegal, I knew she would bring it up if she ever wanted to talk about it.”
“Sounds like my sister has been through some interesting times of her own.”
“Speaking of which, will you tell us how most of the crew of a freighter ended up working on a secret Syndicate ship?”
Altan pursed his lips for a moment, and then replied. “To start with, the Indomitable is more than just a ship. I’m sure you saw the size of her, or you wouldn’t have been taken prisoner. She is the first ship designated as a heavy cruiser by the Syndicate Navy. Indomitable was built to be an overwhelming force against the Coalition ships, heavily armed with twenty-four railgun emplacements, four forward torpedo launchers, and two rear torpedo launchers. She also carries a full squadron of twelve Dart class fighters and another squadron of armored personnel carriers for boarding enemy ships or ground assaults.”
Fynn whistled in amazement. “That’s more firepower than we estimated.”
“As to how we became a part of the crew, that story starts with the captain of the Telemachus taking the same kind of job that led all of you here. The money was too good to pass up, of course, and it didn’t help that we ran into issues on the previous run and barely walked away with any credits at all by the end of it. The constraints stipulated by the contract were extremely odd, but the money overruled all second thoughts.”
“Sounds familiar,” Erik added gloomily.
“I only told Tuya about how the container looked, but we actually carried three of them. They were so massive that they filled our cargo bay. A few people expressed doubts about making an eleven month round trip for a single job, but the objections were half-hearted at best.
“Once we were past the orbital path of Mars, control of the ship was turned over to our AI for the trip to the offload point and back to our starting point. The captain was upset by that more than any other restriction of the contract, because he’d never grown comfortable with a semi-sentient computer in control of any major part of his ship. Everything ran smoothly, though, and the crew were happy since we spent most of our days in our cabins or the rec room goofing off. A few of us missed being able to see the view outside the ship, but we were able to pull up recorded views from other trips and satisfy ourselves with those.
“As it turns out, all of that downtime is what led to the five of us ending up here. Our engineer and computer technician got bored, and started tinkering with the ship to see if they could bypass the AI controls enough to get a view of our destination when we arrived. It took them a few weeks, but they succeeded a day before we arrived at the Indomitable.” Altan paused, and shrugged. “Well, they mostly succeeded. You see, the AI had detected the changed coding, and while it couldn’t try to override the bypass it did log the action and forward it to the Syndicate AI with the hourly progress reports it was sending out.”
“Progress reports?” Erik turned to look at Isaac, who shook his head to show he didn’t know if Aurora had been sending similar reports before they shut down the AI.
“One of the stipulations in the contract,” Altan explained. “It allows the Syndicate to keep track of the important shipments, and also provides clues when a crew is trying to circumvent the restrictions. Or when they break it, as both of our ships did. As soon as Telemachus docked, the marines marched on board and took us all into custody.”
He paused, and swallowed a lump in his throat. “Our captain protested and insisted that it was illegal for the Syndicate to take any action against us without notifying the guild and filing a grievance. The marines shot him. None of them even tried to calm him down, they just shot him and left him bleeding to death on the ship as they dragged the rest of us into the Indomitable and shoved the eight of us into a cabin just like this one.
“We languished there for half a year, with no contact other than a junior officer who would stop in once a week to ask us if we had any needs. Every visit, he would say that the admiral was deciding what to do with us, but we stopped expecting that decision fairly soon. He told us when the Telemachus was destroyed, and to give the boy credit he had sympathy in his voice. Not that it made us feel any better or more willing to be well disposed toward him.”
Altan paused his story, rising to walk to the small kitchen and pour himself a cup of water. Sipping and returning to his chair, he continued.
“Finally, the admiral and his senior staff had made their decision. We were given an ultimatum: join the Syndicate navy and commit to years of serving aboard the Indomitable until construction and her first mission were complete, or die.”
He shrugged. “We all accepted the offer to join them, but we never forgot the death of our captain or the imprisonment. As a group, we decided to become a part of the crew so that we would have opportunities to gather information and sabotage the construction as much as possible.
“It took more than a year, but we were finally accepted as part of the crew and the wariness around us all but disappeared. We had seen three other guild ships deliver shipments and then leave to accept their payments, and I confess that a small part of me had started to hate each of them for not suffering through the same things we had. The day after that third ship dropped off a couple of containers of computer cores and the first disassembled railgun, we met to discuss our first attempt at sabotage.
“Indomitable had spent years cruising through the asteroid belt, dispatching mining crews to pull out ores and minerals that could be used in her construction. The cargo containers brought in by guild freighters contained all the items that could not be constructed internally, which made them the most precious objects on the ship. So, we decided to destroy the most recent shipment and set the construction back by at least five or six months.
“Our plan went well. Half of the shipment was ejected from the ship to be destroyed in the vacuum while the other half was burned into uselessness by thermite charges. Unfortunately, three of our crew were caught in the process and charged with treason. Commander Guildersen was furious, and wanted the rest of us arrested and charged as well, but the admiral could find no proof that we had been involved. We were all demoted to the lowest ranks, never to receive promotion again, and were watched for a long while after having to see our friends executed as an example to the crew.”
Jen let loose a muttered string of obscenities from her spot by the door, and Mira wiped away a tear. Altan reached over to place a reassuring hand over hers.
“We found opportunities for small bits of sabotage here and there after that, but never anything too significant. Jen finally got a job as an orderly in the med bay and Mira got posted to the bridge crew on the overnight shift. I ended up on one of the construction crews, while Tom and Richard were drafted into the marines as low-level grunts. When the Indomitable is complete and begins her mission, they’ll be at the front lines and in the most danger.”
“What’s left to be completed?” Fynn asked with interest. “The construction looked finished when we were approaching to dock.”
“The ship itself is operational,” Altan said. “What’s lacking is the weaponry and firepower, with only six functional railguns. The shipment you’re carrying is two more railguns, a dozen torpedoes, and a crate of flechette rifles for the marines.”
“Why wait until the final stages to install the weapons and stock the armory?” Erik asked incredulously.
“Because the ship has been running on a skeleton crew since construction began.” Altan chuckled. “A skeleton of a skeleton crew, with there not being enough personnel for the minimal staffing levels. In order to hide the apparent disappearance of personnel, the Syndicate selects only unmarried candidates with no family ties so that few people question it if they stop hearing from them. On top of that, they can only deliver a dozen or so new crew and marines when a frigate happens to be passing through our approximate area. That only happens once or twice a year, at best. It’s the reason they wanted us to join the crew.”
