“The pilot’s deck is ours,” he said just before wincing in pain from his wounds, “Wipe the nav logs and set the launch sequence and trajectory for Waypoint 229157, that’ll drive this ship straight through necrospace where somebody’s bound to capture and scrap it, just like we planned.”
“Nobody will ever know they were here,” said Tanya grimly, “And nobody will come looking for them either.”
“Get it done, I’ll make for the cargo bay,” said Samuel as he turned to point his rifle shakily down the corridor. “They’ll have everyone from the Longstrider Alpha raid in cryo-crates in ship’s hold.”
Tanya entered the pilot deck and Samuel pressed forward into the corridor. He knew that Tanya would do as instructed, and without her pilot’s experience all he would have been able to do otherwise was short out the ship and ground it. The problem was that most cartel ships had geo-trackers, and if the ship stayed here, sooner or later another slaver would come looking for their lost comrades. By wiping the nav log and scuttling the ship in the void, the vessel and the crew would just be chalked up to shrinkage on Tasca’s balance sheet and the cartel would be none the wiser.
Samuel held his rifle in a mid-guard position, now unable to raise it to his shoulder thanks to the two bullet wounds in his side. The former marine couldn’t tell how bad they were, and hoped that Doc Rayburn had survived the firefight outside, as Samuel could tell he was going to need professional attention. The old man might have been ousted from the ordo medicae for malpractice, but he did a good job of keeping the folks of Longstride Beta in decent health.
The marine mentally pushed his pain aside and rounded the corner just as the final operative attempted to bring up his trap caster. Samuel had seen the armored man’s shadow and knew the move was coming. He was able to duck under the barrel and avoid being caught in the high velocity net as it streaked over his head. The marine fired point blank into the man’s mid-section and the operative tumbled backwards and out of the airlock. Samuel checked his ammo count and saw that he was down to two rounds, and hoped that this operative was indeed the only survivor of the ambush.
The cargo bay was positioned on the opposite side of the pilot deck, and Samuel wasted no time in continuing down the corridor towards the access hatch. He was confident that he’d scored at least one critical hit against the armored slaver and hoped that would buy him the time to eject the cryo-crates before the launch.
Now that Tanya controlled the ship she had opened the access hatch and even as Samuel moved into the cargo bay the outer airlock was opening. The former marine could see that six cryo-crates were double-stacked in three rows, all still sitting on their loading tracks. Samuel gave a sigh of relief when he realized that all he had to do was activate the loader and guide the crates back onto solid ground.
It had been some years since he had worked as a deckhand on board the Reaper tug, and even then it was only during the Ellisian deployment that he’d logged many hours in that capacity. When the trade war broke out the marines often had found themselves assisting the techs in crew duties when the bullets weren’t flying.
As Samuel used the controls to off-load the crates he counted roughly forty human beings, at least a third of them children, and could not help but imagine the faces of Sura and Orion among them. It was good that he had been here, he thought as he set down the last crate, because the Longstride Community, now his community, was certainly in need of soldiers.
“You can only keep what you can hold,” said Samuel to himself, the cliché words of the prospector feeling more solid than ever.
Samuel stumbled out of the airlock and back into the clearing, his vision getting fuzzy from blood loss. The operative was holding his mid-section and weakly attempting to drag himself away from the ship. Samuel could see several villagers emerge from the treeline, but his vision had gotten blurry and he couldn’t tell who was who among them. The slaver operative raised his helmet’s visor and spit up a globule of blood before he tried to speak.
“Wait! I got no loyalty to Tasca past the last pay period,” said the man as he held a hand up in a clear gesture for mercy. “We’re not the bad guys; it’s just that human cargo pays the best. This is the job.”
Samuel stopped dead at the use of the familiar phrase in an accent not unlike his own, and his expression went as cold as it had ever been.
Moments later two shots rang out across the clearing.
Shortly after that the engines of the slaver ship ignited and the craft disappeared into the upper atmosphere, shooting into the void beyond.
EPILOGUE
Sura Hyst awoke to the orange rays of sunlight as they bathed the small room with the soft glow of morning. For several moments she did not move, and let the sun warm the already bronzed skin of her back and legs that were not draped in the smooth sheets of the bed. She thought that Orion must have opened the windows of the front room, as the fresh scent of the forest hung in the air, no doubt carried in by the gentle breeze that never ceased to blow through their secluded valley.
She sighed deeply and rolled over to face the other side of the bed, hoping that this time would be different, but it wasn’t. Samuel’s side of the bed still lay undisturbed, as it had for the last three days. Sura sat up and ran her fingers through her hair.
With a deep breath and closed eyes she basked in the sunlight coming in through the window for a few moments more, then rose from the bed to pad into the front room after strapping a pistol belt around her slim waist and slipping a heavy, bladed revolver into the empty holster.
Orion had already carved up several pieces of succulent fruit, and had arranged it on a small plate along with some strips of smoked fish. She smiled at that as she poured herself a steaming mug of water and dropped in the ground tea roots the boy had provided. She took her drink and breakfast to the covered patio on the other side of a sliding glass door in the front room.
As she walked outside Sura paused and looked back into the house. Her eyes swept across the little cabin, with its two bedrooms, modest kitchen in the corner of the front room, and the single bathroom. It was a small place for a family to live, but she and Samuel had grown up in Grotto space and were used to living in small areas. Now that the valley was home, they had seen little reason to build more space than they needed. Let the forest be home had been their saying, and even now that still held true.
Their nearest neighbor was miles away, and unless they made a special trip into the village, for school, supplies, or festival, there was little to distract them from the enjoyment of day to day life.
Sura set her plate down on the simple table in the center of the patio and nibbled a bit of fruit before taking a sip from her mug.
There was a keening wail from somewhere nearby, just inside the tree line that bordered the small clearing where their house rested. Sura recognized it as Cragg, the saurian companion of her son Orion. Cragg often accompanied the boy on his regular forays into the wild.
He was soon to be a young man, thought Sura to herself, and it would not be long before he would begin to ask the hard questions about his father, and about their life on this lawless and violent frontier.
Sura moved to the front of the steps that led down into the clearing and placed her hand on a weather worn and blast-scarred helmet that had been mounted on a post at the front of the house. One day their son would want to know everything, about Grotto, about the Reapers, and why they had chosen to homestead this primordial wilderness planet.