Soldiers of Fortune (22 page)

              “
Copy, Captain. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

              “This seems serious,” Lucky said calmly. Already Jason could feel the battlesynth powering his own arsenal as a precaution, the air in such close quarters humming with energy. Crusher smiled fiercely at Lucky and nodded, engaging the power supply on his own plasma weapons.

              “Let’s talk first,” Jason cautioned. “This may be a misunderstanding, or it may not. I want you two on either side of the hatch, I’ll be in the middle and back out of your way to clear your shooting lane. Match force for force, don’t shoot unless you see me draw down or dive out of the way.” The two warriors turned and moved to either side of the airlock hatch and waited. A few long minutes later he could hear the pressurized gangway banging against his ship’s hull and anchor itself.

             
“They’re requesting we open up, Captain,”
Kage said over the intercom.

              “Open it up,” Jason said simply, every nerve tingling in his body. With a hiss and a jerk, the inner airlock door began to slide into bulkhead. Standing in the hatchway, looking quite angry, was Captain Colleren herself along with a visibly armed Commander Bostco and another armed crewman flanking her. Crisstof could be seen looking worried and pallid behind the trio. They remained just a step back from the hatch opening.

              “
Captain
Jason Burke, we’re here to take you into custody. Will you and your crew come willingly?” She asked simply.

              “What in the fuck are you blathering on about,
Captain?
” Jason retorted with equal insult in his inflection. “Explain yourself before I tell my crew to engage the engines and fly out of here, whether you’re back onboard your own ship or not.”

              “You were hired to gather intelligence in order to plan a lawful interdiction of a certain criminal element. You were not hired to run wild through the Cluster as a part of that element,” she said hotly. “Since you disappeared, without giving any status reports, we’ve heard nothing but news of shootouts, assaults, drug running... and this ship popping up in some of the most brazen attacks the Cluster has seen yet.” Jason, a little confused, just stared at her as if he couldn’t believe how dense she was.

              “No shit, genius. That’s why you called us; to gather the intel you were too incompetent to gather yourself. It’s called being undercover, operational security precluded the ability to file status reports with you people,” Jason said insultingly. “How the hell is it you’re so bad at this? Did you really think we’d just land and walk into a bar and the ringleader of this operation would come introduce himself to the new faces?” Captain Colleren was turning red and appeared apoplectic at the human’s barrage of insults.

              “We don’t operate this far outside of the gray line, Captain,” she said through clenched teeth, showing the first bit of emotion Jason had ever seen from her. Perhaps it was this loss of control that led to her next mistake; “Take him.” Bostco and the other crewman came forward, weapons raised and pointed at Jason’s chest. He could see quite plainly they were simple stun rifles, so he almost felt bad for what was about to happen.

              “We don’t want any trouble, Jason,” Bostco said as he stepped forward slowly. “Just call up to your…” An ear shattering roar cut him off as he cleared the threshold of the hatch. Crusher slammed his palm down on the stun rifle and clamped the other massive hand around Bostco’s neck and yanked him off the floor, slamming him hard against the opposite bulkhead. The roar distracted the other crewman so Lucky grabbed the stunner out of his hands and broke it in half like it was a twig, showering the room, and the crewman’s face, with sparks.

             
Jason hadn’t stood idle during the exchange, he roughly grabbed Captain Colleren, spun her around, and wrapped his arm around her throat in a vise-like choke hold. He could feel her reaching for a weapon so he dug the end of his plasma pistol into her temple. “This is
not
a stunner,” he snarled into her ear. She was struggling to breath, but Jason wasn’t stupid enough to let up and risk her going for her weapon. He saw Bostco trembling in utter shock and terror as Crusher held him off the floor by his throat. The other crewman had fainted, so Lucky turned and aimed one of his arm-mounted plasma cannons directly at Crisstof, who seemed to be at least somewhat in control of himself.

              “What’s it going to be, Crisstof? My crew is listening in right now, any further aggression and they have orders to turn our guns on the
Diligent
. We’re too close for your shields to come up and save you,” Jason said.

              “Please, everyone! Stop this! There’s no need…”

              “Oh yes there is, you piece of shit… you boarded
my
ship with an armed party with the intent to take me by force. I’ll drop all of you and do it with a clear conscience. This is
not
a stalemate; start talking, and fast, or bodies start hitting the floor.” Crusher punctuated Jason’s words with another snarl and a snapping of his jaws that was straight out of a nightmare. He felt Colleren squirm a bit so he dug the pistol in harder until she went still.

              “Please!” Crisstof pleaded again. “Let’s defuse this misunderstanding. Let’s you, I, and Kellea find someplace to talk about this where the threat of death isn’t imminent.” Jason stared at him a hard moment before releasing Captain Colleren and shoving her towards Crisstof before she could turn and draw on him. When she spun she saw that Jason already had his weapon raised and trained on her head.

              “Your men go back to your ship. We talk in my galley with Crusher present. Lucky stands guard at the airlock, which we’ll leave open as the
only
show of good faith at this point,” Jason said calmly. “Understand your situation is still not good. I view this boarding as nothing more than an unprovoked assault, which we don’t take kindly to.”

              “I agree to your terms,” Crisstof said, his arms raised, palms out, in a calming gesture. Jason couldn’t miss the death stare that Captain Colleren sent his way.
I do have a way with the ladies…

              “Very well. Crusher, gently lower and release Commander Bostco. Lucky, wake up the other one.”

              “He appears to have urinated himself—“

             
“--that’s fine, Lucky,” Jason interrupted, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Just get him up. He can walk in wet pants.” Bostco went and picked his fallen comrade up, gave Jason an unfriendly glare, but quickly exited the airlock as Crusher saw the look and gave another growl. The other crewman seemed to be almost walking under his own power when they were halfway down the gangway. After holstering his sidearm and handing his plasma rifle to Crusher, Jason gestured for the remaining two members of the
Diligent's
crew to follow him. He was supremely confident nobody would do anything stupid while Crusher had two weapons pointed at their backs.

             
Once they were seated in the galley, Jason began, “As you can see, we’re not a helpless, soft target despite only being six people on a tiny ship. My crew will not allow you to take me into custody for doing what you essentially hired us to do. If you want to fire us, that’s up to you, but any further attempt at an arrest will be met with a violent response. Is that clear?” When they nodded he continued, “Good. Captain Colleren, I sincerely apologize for physically assaulting you. In a way, you can look at it as a complement; you were one of the most dangerous people in the room and needed to be neutralized quickly.”

              “I’m flattered,” she said in a tone that indicated she was anything but.

              “Captain Burke,” Crisstof began. “I’m afraid I own you an apology. I let Kellea convince me you had gone rogue and needed to be neutralized before you could do any more damage. It seems you still feel you’re working towards our mutual goal, but I am somewhat appalled by your methods.”

              “Speaking of,” Jason said, holding up a hand. “What are you talking about, specifically? We’ve mixed it up a little bit, and I emphasize the word little. To be honest this has been one of our more tame jobs so far.” Captain Colleren wordlessly handed over a tablet computer with a series of reports from various local law enforcement agencies and a collection of images. The first thing that stood out was that the supposed actions were on worlds that they had yet to visit within the Cluster, the other was that the included images of one of the suspected ships bore a striking resemblance to the
Phoenix
. “Twingo! Get down here,” Jason yelled over the intercom. He held up a hand to silence the other two as the engineer hustled down the stairs. When he arrived Jason handed him the tablet with an enlarged image, “What is that?”

              “Hmm, it’s a Jepsen Aero Mk XII rapid transport,” Twingo said. “Looks to be in pretty bad shape. Too bad, that’s actually a rare ship these days.”

              “So that ship is not the
Phoenix
?” Jason pressed.

              “The
Phoenix
? Hell no,” Twingo scoffed. “It looks similar if you’re ignorant and don’t see very well, I’ll admit, but this is a high-speed courier ship. They were sometimes used as executive transports as well. It’s a Jepsen, so it has some design cues similar to our own DL7, but this thing is a butterfly compared to a heavy gunship.”

              “Thanks, that’s all I needed,” Jason said, grabbing the tablet back. Twingo just stood there until Jason turned and gave him a pointed stare.

              “Oh. Yeah,” he stammered, “I’ll just be on the bridge if you need me.” Crusher rolled his eyes and shook his head as Twingo strolled off.

              “Anyway,” Jason continued. “Can we agree that the ship in these law enforcement alerts is not my ship?” When Crisstof and Captain Colleren nodded mutely he continued, “For now we’ll treat the existence of this ship as a wild coincidence, like Twingo said; all Jepsens will look similar at a distance. So… why is this particular ship so special?”

              “It isn’t especially so, Captain,” Kellea Colleren spoke up, managing to look somewhat abashed at her armed incursion into his ship on such flimsy evidence. “It has been involved in the continuation of the raids in the Cluster, but it hasn’t been involved in some of the more serious actions. While we assumed incorrectly that you had been involved, there is something you may not be aware of; the raids are not only happening at greater frequency, but they’ve taken a disturbingly violent turn.”

              “Please, go on,” Jason prompted, not at all sure he wanted to hear what was coming next.

              “These raiders have moved on from attacking lightly crewed commercial freighters and have concentrated almost entirely on passenger starliners,” Crisstof said quietly. “While this wasn’t unheard of, there have been a number of civilian deaths. The political climate on Eshquaria is of growing concern to us, the population is demanding action on these attacks and now the Prime Minister’s opposition is coalescing around a certain few vocal representatives.”

              “What is the opposition demanding?” Jason asked, wishing not for the first time the job didn’t include so much political intrigue.

              “For now, only action. They aren’t being specific about what action that should be, content to let Colleston face the brunt of the public backlash alone. For now,” Crisstof answered. “Colleston has dispatched a few small patrol fleets from the Eshquarian System, but they’re too few and far between to make much of a difference. His fleet advisors warn that these attacks may be designed to draw Eshquarian forces away from the homeworld and leave them vulnerable to attack.”

              “That makes no sense,” Jason said with disgust, rising quickly from his seat and startling the other two. “If the goal is to attack Eshquaria you don’t give them months to put their forces on alert by harassing their commercial fleet with a ragtag bunch of wannabe pirates. The change in tactics to attacking passenger ships is the main clue here; this is a terroristic action, it’s meant to drive the Eshquarians onto a particular course of action. The trick will be to find out what that is.”

              “Easier said than done,” Captain Colleren said. “They’re a fiercely independent bunch, and often unpredictable. Besides, I can’t imagine any major power wanting to disrupt anything on that world; nearly all of them are supplied with Eshquarian weapons, at least in this quadrant of the galaxy.”