Sean-Michael Argo - Trade War

The ship was small, a converted cutter much like the one he’d seen years ago in Ellisian space, and he knew it wouldn’t take long. The lock fell to slag and the former marine shouldered his way through, falling to his knees by instinct as he entered, which kept the shotgun blast from ripping him to shreds. The marine fired his own rifle upwards in several bursts and the security staffer who had attempted to kill him flailed against the wall and then slumped to the ground with multiple holes in her torso.

“ Tanya move up! On me! On me!” Samuel shouted as he raised his rifle and rushed down the corridor toward a two way hatch. By the time he reached it Tanya came thumping in behind him, the combat armor so bulky and unfamiliar that she was having trouble keeping up with him.

“There are at least two of them pressing in behind us, I didn’t see or hear any of our people in pursuit, might have lost everybody,” said Tanya, already out of breath but obviously making the effort to stay in the fight.

“We’ve got to get you to the pilot’s deck, that’s one deck up,” said Samuel as he affixed his boarding knife to the bayonet lug on his rifle, doing his best not to think about Sura and Orion as he considered the fact that he and Tanya were attempting a boarding action that should have been done at squad strength at a minimum. “I’ll clear it out then you come up fast as you can, we’ll switch places and I’ll handle the operatives while you take control of the ship.”

Tanya nodded as Samuel cut the lock to the pilot’s deck. She couldn’t see what happened to the former marine when he kicked open the door and leapt inside, but she heard the furious firefight that lasted for several seconds, which she’d learned today was a lifetime in terms of combat. An operative attempted to rush down the corridor and she hosed him down with her last magazine. The slaver must have been already wounded or desperate to have attempted such a mad dash, though Tanya considered herself lucky to have managed to put him down. She turned back and Samuel, blood dripping from his bayonet and two ragged holes in his side, stepped up to her position.

“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.

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.