END of LINE: Humanities Last Stand - part 3 (24 page)

Over the course of the next few months the crew of the Mercury was tested several more times as the pirates began to catch on to their tactics. So far they
had won every battle, but they paid a heavy price in lives lost. Mercury was at a disadvantage when it came to a ground assaults thanks to the pirates
having had plenty of time to build up defenses and prepare for an attack from space. The losses had dwindled down their supply of shuttles to the point
where Jon and his team were now taking apart in ground missions as well as attacking the pirate ships in space.

Jon wrote to his mate everyday but never received a reply from her, nor was their mating ever made public on the news. While he continued to write to her,
he stopped talking about her. He even refused to speak her name to her brother, the Crown Prince, despite the two of them becoming close friends. The
members of his flight team and everyone onboard the Mercury noticed a change slowly take place in him. He was less and less the happy pilot that they all
knew and liked. Each day that passed without word from Satrina brought with it a deeper darkening of his soul until one day the Prince came to him and
said,

“Jon, I have to believe that something is wrong back home for her not to write back. I know my sister and even the messages I'm getting don't sound like
her at all.” Jon only offered up a small smile and looked away, ending the conversation quickly before he allowed his feelings to overwhelm him. He had a
job to do and that job demanded his full concentration. Too many had already lost their lives for him to allow anyone to die because he was feeling lonely
without his mate.

Mercury exited the slip behind a gas giant in the next system on their list. This one had a mining colony working from an orbiting station that drifted
among an asteroid field. One of the elements needed in the production of the metal used to make prosthetic limbs that functioned like the real body parts
they replaced was being mined on those asteroids. Officially, they were here to pick up a load of the ore and drop off supplies for the kitchens that fed
the miners. After so many successful attacks against the pirates, word that Mercury was actually on a mission for the Peacekeepers was spreading around the
rim. As they came around and headed toward the inner colonies, her coms officer picked up the frantic emergency calls coming from one of the inner most of
the orbiting stations near an asteroid belt close in towards the system's sun. “I say again, we need help! We've been boarded by hostile forces and are
under attack! The enemy seems to be after our mineral stores! Come on guys! Help us!”

“Get us in there!” the Commander ordered the helmsman sitting at the controls of the Mercury. “Launch all fighters and shuttles now!” he screamed over the
ship wide coms.

Zeprik and his team of grubs stampeded up the ramp and arranged themselves on the drop hooks onboard Jon's shuttle. The sudden vibrations of the troops
taking their combat positions woke Jon from his nap where he had earlier fallen asleep behind the controls of their attack shuttle and he immediately began
the procedure for rapid engine start. The rest of Jon's crew fumbled their way into the cockpit and took their positions. This one had taken them all by
surprise! There had been no reports of activity when they exited the slip and despite the standing orders for all attack crews to be at their ready
positions during exit, the crews had become lax about having everyone onboard and ready to lift out. Jon's team wasn't the only one with essential members
out of place. Even with the delay in getting everyone in place and jacked into the small ship's systems, by the time the main bay doors were opened, Jon's
flight team and everyone of the grubs were ready to go. “Here we go again Butcher” Lt. Rik commed him.

“I haven't gotten any target info yet Rik. The outer doors are opening though so we're spooling up to go. We may have to play hide and seek on this run.”

“You'll figure something out. My guys need something to do. We've been pretty bored just riding around back here or watching you and Jarrieal beat the
stuffing out of each other in the exercise room.”

“That's what happens when a bunch of ground pounders are assigned to space duty.” Jon kidded with his friend, “Not a whole lot of ground that needs
pounding out here in the vast beyond. So we pound on each other. You should join us sometime. We'll play easy with you.”

Jarrieal, Jon's Libirian copilot and right hand man joined in, “You should have joined the Space Cadets like us Rik. At least we get to drive around and
have some fun. That is when we ain't otherwise occupied.”

“Sure. Then I could have gotten those fancy brain implants all you flight jocks get and been able to fly this thing in my sleep. No thanks. I don't need
anyone poking around in my brain.” Zeprik joked with him. “They might own my ass, but I still have my head.”

“Alright team, here we go, lifting out now.” Jon told them all and everyone went back into mission mode. Only those comments that were needed to complete
their mission, find the enemy's ship, board it, take control of it and come back safely, were heard over the coms.

“Butcher, I have her!” Legs commed. “She's a big one too. Easily Destroyer class. Parked behind the sun from our current position, she's sending shuttles
to the station. I'm transmitting my findings to Mercury now. Do you want to go for it?”

“Rik? It’s your guy’s butts. Tell me what you want, the station or the ship?” Jon asked.

“Our mission has always been their ships Butcher. Notify the other shuttle Captains that we're going after that big girl.” Zeprik told him.

“Legs, plot me a course that gets us to that ship without showing our hand too soon. Maybe find a path around so we come up under her. I'll need a clear
shot at her engines,” Jon commed to his Navigator.

“Coming in from below will mean taking a wide turn to get behind her. She'll see us coming for sure.” Pabki told Jon. “We might be better off putting the
team on her hull first, then going after her engines.”

“Do it Butcher. Put my people on her first. That way we can be working to take her down while you get her off line. Who knows, maybe we can capture her
intact. BBITCo could always use another fighting rim hauler.” Zeprik joked with Jon.

“Why would I want a pirate ship flying the BBITCo flag?” Jon remarked.

“If she was flying for you, she wouldn't be a pirate anymore,” Jelio III told him. Always thinking about their ground team and proper cargo distribution,
Jelio, call sign Lio, was already thinking about how much a Destroyer class ship could haul and if her fuel consumption would make it worthwhile to use her
in legal commerce. As the only female in Jon's shuttle crew, she never said much, but when she did, all the males listened because she was always right.

“I've got her in sight now team. I'll come in and sit down along her port side behind her cannons. Maybe she won't be able to shoot us there.” Jon
announced, then went to work making the fine adjustments needed to bring them in line and parked safely on the sloping side of the big pirate ship. It was
bad enough that whoever had designed this series of Destroyer had build a warship that looked like a flying predator, they had not used a single flat area
anywhere along the entire hull except the engine covers. Even those weren't straight, they curved around the huge slip drives making for very dangerous
shuttle landing spots for the men with nothing but pressure suits and magnetic boots.

The instant he touched down and secured the shuttle, he felt the big ship lurch forward. She was heading out of the system in an attempt to enter the slip.
“Did the rest of our teams make touch down?” Jon asked while the grubs were filing out of the shuttle.

“Team 2 missed, but team 3 is off loading now. Team 2 is trying for a different spot. They reported that something threw them off the first time.” Legs
told him.

“They better hurry!” Lio told them. “This thing is going to hit the slip fast.”

“Butcher, we're inside.” Rik commed Jon. “Moving toward the command center.”

“I'm taking my team in and going to engineering. Maybe we can take the engines off line from there.” Jon replied.

“Alright boys and girl. You all heard the man. In we go!” Jarrieal called out to the shuttle crew.

“Everyone take your swords and hand weapons!” Jon called. “Legs, the ship is all yours until we're back. See if you can hack their data banks while you
wait.”

“Got it Captain.” Pabki assured him. “Go have fun.”

Jon was last to exit the shuttle and begin the slow walk across the pirate vessel's hull to an open hatch. By the time he got there the vessel had picked
up enough speed to enter the slip. The stars were beginning to stretch out and disappear around the entry point. Even the body of the ship he was walking
on seemed to stretch as its forward section was actually traveling faster than its aft sections. This was when space walking was its most dangerous. If you
got yourself caught between steps during this transitional phase, you could lose your balance and fall off entirely. The fall would send you floating out
into space forever unless you were found and rescued. Rescue was never very likely though because you'd be pulled several million miles and many light
cycles away from where you fell. You would be luckiest if your fall opened your pressure suit and killed you instantly. That way you would not run out of
air or water before dying a slow, agonizing death. Fast or slow, in nearly all cases, a single person, alone in space with nothing close by and only a
pressure suit to keep them alive was surely a dead person.

Several tense minutes later, Jon and his flight team were all cycled through the air lock and making their way along a service corridor to what they
thought should be Engineering. Carefully checking each hidden space and corner in their path, they reached a set of locked yellow doors with the warning
symbols for radiation painted on them in bright red. “Engineering is through there Butcher” Lio quietly told Jon.

“Let me go first. Jarrieal, you're on my back, then Lio and last Mopie.” Jon called out the order that they would enter the Engineering section. “Lets try
not to shoot up anything important, like a containment vessel or the power transfer tubes. Computers, fine, anything that floods the room with radiation,
no.”

“You're just no fun anymore JonConnell.” Mopie joked.

Pushing the door open and taking several steps inside, Jon found himself on an upper walkway in a darkened space. Looking down he saw what appeared to be
several workstations far below him with three frightened males studying one of the display screens. Motioning for his team to wait, Jon reached inside
Jarrieal's backpack to remove repelling gear. Together he and Jarrieal tied ropes to hooks and fastened the hooks to the walkway before tossing the ends of
the ropes over the side and down to the lower level, but not as far down as the floor where the workstations were. Then with a wink at his copilot, Jon
went over the handrail and slid rapidly down. Jarrieal followed, all the while cussing Jon for being a fool who always had to go first! Taking careful note
of where he would fall, Jon released his hold on the rope and landed on the balls of his feet to one side of the frightened Engineers still engrossed on
the screen in front of them. Jarrieal landed on their other side, both warrior males as silent as the wild tigers on Haven.

“This is no good, I warned them not to try it!” one of the frightened males was telling the others. “We were too close to the sun for a clear slip. The
engine mix is all wrong.”

“You can fix it, right?” another asked. None of the three had even noticed that Jon's entire team now surrounded them.

“I can fix anything,” the first male said with pride, “we just have to exit the slip for me to recycle the calibrations.”

“How can we do that when the Master has ordered that we slip straight through to base?” The third male spoke up for the first time.

“Youngling, I'll just wait until there is nothing else he can do. Did you feel those strange vibrations as we entered the slip? This imbalance is tearing
us apart. I give it an hour at most and the whole ship will be impossible to stand in for the shaking.”

Jon's coms came alive at that second. “Rik to Butcher. We have captured the command center.”

“Understood Rik, we have Engineering under our control.” Jon answered. “ We'll be dropping out of the slip soon. Make sure you can retrieve the destination
logs or we'll be stuck in between. Seems our good pirate Captain was more worried about getting away than he was the safety of his ship and crew.” The
three Engineers finally noticed the heavily armed troopers surrounding them and almost as one fell to their knees in as real a show of terror as Jon had
ever seen.

“Have mercy on us.” their leader begged. “I warned the Master this would happen. You cannot enter the slip that close to a sun. The intermix is too
aggravated.”

“You said you could fix it and have the ship back on course.”

“Yes my Lord. All that is needed is to drop out of slip and recalibrate.”

“Make it happen. Get this ship back on its original course as quickly as you can.” Jon ordered. “I am not your Lord. I am Captain Jon Connell of the
Peacekeeper Task Force assigned to the rim. You will never call me your Lord again. Understood?”

“Yes Captain.” the small male replied as he worked to bring the Destroyer class ship out of slip.

Another of the Engineers spoke up, “Are you the same Jon Connell who hired my niece, Phillmma?”

“Small, furry blonde female with a no nonsense attitude? Yes, she works for me now.” Jon told him. “She's doing an excellent job too. Much better than the
life of a pirate, like you.”

“We are NOT pirates!” the third, and most timid, engineer spoke out.

“You're the Engineers on a ship involved in piracy, that makes you a pirate.” Mopie informed the male.

“We were forced to fly her this way. Up until three months ago this ship was the finest of the TransCo fleet and we were honored to have been selected to
fly her.” he continued to tell any who would listen. “Then we received a call for help and when we went to assist we were hijacked. We came in close to
what appeared to be a ship in trouble. When we brought it onboard no less than fifty pirates came out who took over our ship and forced us to fly her attacked us.
The ship they used to trick us is still in our hold. They said they were bringing it back to their base to reuse it.”