SD241712.17 - Log - Sails - "Rise of a Gardener" - part 2

Posted on Sun Dec 17th, 2017 @ 3:36pm by Sails-at-Dawn Mr

3,145 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Test Mission
Location: Near a Trading Outpost
Timeline: Many years ago...

=^= Sails-at-Dawn, Age: 21 =^=

The ship rocked with incoming fire. Time and again, streams of light lashed against the shields, making them flare brightly in the dark of space. Lacking offensive weaponry strong enough to harm their pursuers, the victimized cargo vessel had no choice but to absorb the shots as they travelled at warp speeds. Their destination was close, and they only needed to keep going a little longer to be in the clear. The trading outpost had strong weapons, and pirates didn't dare risk its wrath.

"No damage." Mr Red stated, watching the shield status like a hawk. Even though their weapons were lacking, the superior shields aboard the cargo vessel were shrugging off the pirates' attacks with ease. It was the third time in the same number of days that their ship had been attacked by this particular band of pirates. This was unusual, as pirates usually got bored after a while and went away, hunting for easier prey. Like a tortoise, their little home survived by being too small to attract larger predators, and too difficult for weak hunters to crack open. As was the case here.

"Again? Don't they have anything better to do?" Dee complained out loud, leaning his face on one hand, and poking console buttons with the other; more out of boredom than anything else. It was running a series of diagnostics on the sensor array. Not entirely vital, but still something that needed doing today. Also, it made Sails work faster.

*zap*. "Ow. Stop that." Sails' voice echoed out of a grate in the floor. He was busy re-tuning the lateral sensor array, and those diagnostics sent pulses of energy through the circuit he was adjusting. Every so often, he would get too close, and one of the energy pulses would nip at him, like a static shock off a dry carpet. By way of revenge, Sails leaned under Dee's chair and reached up through a gap in the grating, pulling the nozzle off of the gas cannister that supported the chair, allowing the height to be adjusted, along with the angle of the back-rest. As a result, the air shot out of the chair, and the entire thing virtually collapsed, causing Dee to yell and tumble out of the chair.

"You will be repairing that chair Mr Blue. And the deck needs scrubbing in the galley." The Captain stated, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Worth it." Sails replied, finishing off the sensor re-tuning before Dee could run another diagnostic.

As he moved the grating aside and climbed out of the floor, the lights went out.

Literally.

Moments later, the emergency lights came on. They flickered for a moment as the ship dropped out of warp, draining the batteries for a moment to prevent space dust from punching holes in their hull as they dropped to sub-light speeds. Mr Red's eyebrows shot up as his console came back online.

"Report!" the captain said calmly, retaining control despite the unexpected situation.

"Power is down. I don't know why." Mr Red replied, rapidly entering commands into his console, and getting no useful information of any kind. "The reactor is still online, but the power isn't getting to our systems. Maybe a new weapon?" he asked, rhetorically.

Further speculation was cut off by the sound of collisions with the hull. Sails listened carefully, and recognised the sound of a docking craft. He had worked here for almost a year now, and the sound was a common one. Ships would arrange to meet them at pre-arranged co-ordinates, handing over goods and passengers, and would then simply fly away. There was probably a reason for this, but Sails hadn't asked, and no answer had been offered.

Though he had been sorely tempted when a ship had docked with them four days ago, dropping off three crates of something he didn't need to know about, and one black-haired girl. Eighteen years old, she could talk the hind legs off a donkey, and had a habit of interrupting people when they were in the middle of important work. Especially Mr Red, for some reason. Dee suggested a crush, Dum "corrected" that opinion with a swift kick to Dee's rear, and the girl had eventually been confined to quarters. The talking aside, she had been wandering around too much for the Captain, and he had acted to ensure her curiosity didn't end up with her "exploring" places she wasn't supposed to. Like the more sensitive cargoes.

A series of clanging sounds reverberated through the hull, making the floor shake a little. "Emergency bulkheads sealed." Mr Red declared, securing the three corridors that led away from the T-junction next to the airlock. The bulkheads were designed to keep air in the ship in the event of a hull breach though, not repel angry pirates. It wouldn't stop them for long. Only slow them down.

The captain knew this, so he activated the ship-wide comm channel. "All crew to corridors 3-beta, 3-gamma, and 3-epsilon. Yellow and Green to beta, Blue and Pinks to Epsilon. Me and Red will hold gamma. Move people!" he shouted, emphasizing his commands by taking the safety off of the pulse-pistol in his holster. Mr Red opened a locker on the wall, passing out rifles to people as they left the bridge. Sails, never having held a weapon before in his life (except for a knife, for hunting deer), was handed a pulse-pistol. It wasn't exactly state-of-the art, but it seemed to be functional, as best as Sails could judge such things.

The groups split up as they ran through the ship, with Dee leading Sails' little group. The muscular dwarf clapped Sails on the shoulder as they ran, offering a brief smile by way of encouragement. He knew that the fresh-faced newbie had had no training in weapons yet. They had always meant to train him, but there were always a million things that needed doing first. Thankfully the new kid had proven a quick study of engineering so far, and Dee could only hope that the same applied to weapons.

Eventually, they reached 3-epsilon. Taking cover behind a corner, they were quickly joined by Dum, who held his rifle in experienced hands. Dum, realising that there wasn't enough cover for all of them, pried a panel off of a nearby wall, and took cover behind it. As if the pirates had heard their sounds of preparation, the center of the bulkhead in front of them began to glow red. Concentrated weapons fire, Sails guessed, having seen the effects of energy weapons several times down at the shooting range. Dee had always been too busy to teach him, but Miss Green usually ignored him, and he had taken that as permission to watch. Which meant he knew where the trigger was, he just hadn't used a weapon himself.

This small bit of knowledge came in handy later, as the bulkhead suddenly exploded inwards, sending a large chunk of metal hissing past his ear and embedding itself into a wall, discharging some form of steam from a damaged system. As the fog started to flow down the corridor, the first pirate stepped through the hole in the bulkhead, and was greeted by three pulses of green energy that sent him flying right back through it. When the brigand's partners saw this, they growled and opened fire, trying to hit one of the defenders. Sails fired back, but his shots went wide this time, and missed by a country mile. Dum was a little more accurate, and hit another pirate in the shoulder, sending the man spinning to the ground.

"Guys, this is Yellow." Came a voice over the private comms, which was transmitted straight into the receiver implanted in their ears. "Go yellow." the captain's voice replied, the sound of heavy gunfire in the background.

"Green has been hit. I repeat, green has been hit. She's awake and firing, but there's a lot of blood and *BOOM*....

Suddenly, all of the teams felt a vibration through the ship. Dum looked at Dee, recognising the sound as it came through the walls. "Grenade." he said quietly, realising that Yellow's transmission had been cut short by an exploding device. The man was most probably dead, as was Miss Green. Sails, realising that he had started to hyperventilate, tried to force himself to breath slowly. The most important thing here was to stay calm. To panic was to die horribly.

Oddly enough, that thought didn't help.

His moment of introspection was interrupted by a sharp rise in incoming fire, washing over the edge of the wall they were leaning around. As they leaned away from the heat, Dum's impromptu shield was struck by several consecutive bolts of energy, and promptly cracked due to the intense heat. A single bolt passed through the armour and ripped through his abdomen, passing out the other side and blackening the wall. A shocked look passed over Dum's face, and he dropped the shield out of shock. When the next wave of weapons fire washed over him, the only remains were barely human. In a flash, he had been almost totally disintegrated, and Sails promptly threw up.

The smell was vile, and Dee was visibly shaken. He tried to put down some more fire on the enemy's position, but there was too much incoming fire for that to be a realistic possibility. Swearing loudly, he grabbed the terrified Sails' shoulder and dragged him away from the battle, moving back towards the bridge. There was another emergency bulkhead there that they could use, and besides; there wasn't anything more that they could do here.

"*cough cough*, This is Red." said the comm, delivering more bad news as Sails raced through the gloom, backtracking to the bridge. "The Captain is dead. All survivors rally at the bridge." he stated, never a man to waste words, even in a crisis such as this. Since they were headed there anyway, this didn't really change Dee's plans, and he readied the emergency bulkhead as soon as they reached the bridge. It was still open, but one button-press would lock it down, sealing off the bridge from the rest of the ship. It was a dire measure, but there was little else they could do. Glancing over his shoulder in terror, Sails could help but stare longingly at the door to the escape pod. The only one on board, it was big enough for the whole crew, plus two passengers.

Dee noticed, "Hey! We'd just be blown up." he told Sails, no longer Mr Fun-and-Games, "so our only hope is to kill these guys first. Or, I guess we could blow the *woah!*" he exclaimed, dodging a shot aimed at his head. The pirates had been fast in catching up to them, made bold by their quick success so far. Regretting that Red hadn't made it, Dee hit the console button and closed the emergency bulkhead, sealing them off from the pirates. They both moved further back into the bridge, taking cover behind consoles as the bulkhead started to glow red.

"Damn all cheap bulkheads." Dee growled, ducking his head behind the console. Prepared, they were unaffected by the blast when the shoddy bulkhead finally caved, exploding inwards like the last one had done. This time though, the hole was smaller, and Dee lined up a shot on the poor sod who had been chosen to enter first. One shot killed the man, and then one of the man's friends fired on Dee's cover. The console exploded with surprising force, throwing Dee backwards across the bridge, and slamming him hard into the viewscreen, shattering it into a thousand sharp pieces. Eyes already glazed by the time he hit the floor, heavy glass shards greeted him when he landed. Some had fallen before him and stuck in the deck grill, forming a spiked-pit, and other shards took a moment to separate from the top of the viewscreen, dropping and thudding into his helpless form; ending any suggestion of remaining life.

Firing wildly over the top of his console, Sails could not believe that this was the end. Only a few minutes ago he was a part of the crew, and now he was the only one left. It was too much, it was all too much, he was going to die, he was going to *die*. These thoughts wrapped him in a cocoon of terror, and left little room for trivial things like "aiming". As a result, the pirates at the door were unharmed, with grins like the edge of a rusty saw.

The pirate leader, a beast of a man, stepped through the door and calmly shot the pistol clean out of Sails' hands, giving him burns all over his fingers. The pain only sent the young man further into himself, and his body started to go into shock, rocking backwards and forwards on the floor as the pirate leader approached, and pressed a large rifle to Sails' head. Pausing only to let his men enter the bridge, so as to witness his victory, the execution commenced.

The pirate leader squeezed the trigger. His evil grin widened as he anticipated the kill, completing the take-over of his new ship.

Silently, a grey form dropped out of a panel in the ceiling, bringing a hand around in a swift semi-circle as it landed behind the pirate leader. Just as quietly, the leader released his grip on the gun and let it clatter to the floor, his expression quizzical. It remained quizzical as his head toppled off of his body and hit the floor, followed moments later by the body itself. What was once a well-muscled killing machine was now a slab of meat, fit only to take up space, and maybe decompose.

As the pirates adjusted to the idea that their leader was dead, the grey form sprang to its feet and flipped towards them, crossing the ground between them remarkably fast. Two similar blows and two more pirates died, falling to their knees with their lifeblood pooling around their feet. One raised a stunned hand to his bloody throat, before collapsing like his leader. The other three pirates regained their senses quickly, but it didn't save one of them from having his throat slit. Another pulled his side-arm and got stabbed for his troubles, but the last one managed to get a shot off.

"No!" A surprisingly young and female voice cried, falling backwards with her torso smoking. The energy bolt had struck her in the gut, missing the spine but causing major burns. She twitched a bit, and tried to curl up, before passing out from the pain. Grinning like his leader before him, the surviving pirate put his rifle to her head.

Again, fortune smiled upon an unlucky fool, as a bolt of energy ripped through the remains of the door and smacked into the surviving pirate, casting the man across the bridge to land next to Dee, equally dead.

Through the bulkhead stepped Red, who leaned against the door frame and gasped in pain, holding a serious wound closed with the hand that wasn't gripping his rifle. Staggering forwards, he made his way across the bridge and kicked Sails. Trying to focus, the young man looked up at Red, trying to concentrate on what he was saying.

"I'm going to blow the ship. Use the escape pod." Red told him, a man of few words right to the end. There were almost certainly more pirates still within the ship, and also in the pirate ship. They had no ship-mounted weapons that were strong enough. This was their only choice. Sails nodded, acknowledging the plan, and struggled upright. Moving clumsily towards the escape pod, he nearly tripped over the body of the grey person that had intervened. On a whim, he knelt down and tugged off the hood, revealing the face of the black-haired passenger.

It might have been a bigger deal some other time, but Sails just felt confused and tired. Noting that she was still breathing, he sighed and grabbed her by the arm, half-dragging her across the bridge to the escape pod. He set her down for a moment as he worked the handles, pulling the pod open, before picking her up again and shoving her inside. It took a while for him to figure out the straps on one of the chairs, eventually tying knots to hold the girl in position. They wouldn't be easy to untie, but he'd worry about that if they survived.

While Sails was busy manhandling the half-dead passenger, Red gasped for breath and accessed the one console that hadn't been damaged by weapons fire. Reaching forwards, slowly and carefully, his bloody fingers left marks on the buttons required to access the reactor status. According to the readouts, it was online, but would require manual input to override. As he felt more of his life flowing between his fingers and onto the deck, Mr Red knew that he would have to stay behind. There wasn't enough time to do anything smarter, nor enough wits left in his blood-deprivation-addled head.

Laconic to the end, he made sure Sails was inside the pod before locking it down remotely. The pod door shut, locked, and fired the pod out into space without a word of warning. Though he would have liked to dredge up some cheerful thoughts for his last few moments, the sound of more pirates could be heard coming down the corridor outside, and he knew he had no time. Quickly and efficiently, using both hands, he entered the override command on the reactor safeties, and detonated it within the ship.

From far away (and accelerating), Sails watched through the small window as the ship flashed, the center of it lighting up like a small star. Panels tore away from the ship, disintegrating in moments, and the framework was torn to shreds by the forces at play here. Moments later the pirate ship was also enveloped, and its own core seemed to burst in sympathy for its tortured companion. Two overlapping spheres of light expanded behind the pod, growing close for a moment, but not enough to do anything more than rock the pod gently, as if bidding them a fond farewell.

As the display within the pod locked onto the nearest habitable world and programmed a course, Sails couldn't think. There were too many thoughts, too many experiences, and far too much fear and sickening loss. To save himself from thinking, he chose instead to busy himself with something. Noticing the passenger bleeding over the seat, he dully located the first aid kit and pulled out a tricorder and a dermal regenerator.

As the burst of antimatter faded into nothingness behind the pod, Sails quietly saw to the girl's wounds.


=^= To Be Continued... =^=

Sails-at-Dawn
Civilian
Versailles

 

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