"Eliminated? We agreed our intervention was necessary across the galaxy to save lives, Darlena, not end them."
"We can't save them all, and I wouldn't want to-we've got to cut out the rot. In time, we'll bring them all in. Just not yet. There's a proper moment for us to enter the stage."
"Oh, it's theater now? I thought you cared for these people."
"I do, Simon. Think from their perspective. These people decided fifty years ago to cut ties with Earth, and they went to war for it. It has to be their choice, not ours, if we truly want to mend old wounds. We learned that with some of the other rebel colonies."
"If they knew what we know, the changes we've made, they would choose to join us. We agreed about this!"
"I want them to know. We've made such wonderful progress rebuilding. And they would be right to join us-I still believe that-but not yet. Let me explain. I'll start with the girl."
***
"Willis, meet me in the hangar. We're going after Spud. Truly, mop up those fighters and give us support at the wreck. He's still there, right Myra?" Captain Anson demanded, sprinting through the halls of Wanderlust toward the shuttle bay.
"Just finishing up," came Truly's calm reply. "Down to four."
"Scans say Spud's alive, but I can't talk to him. He must have damaged his comms in the crash." Hesitantly, Myra began an apology on the Captain's private channel. "Victor, I'm sorry-"
"Not now. Just help me fix this." He seethed with restrained anger, struggling to compose himself before addressing the crew on the common channel. He'd deal with her later, but for the moment he needed her expertise to salvage what he could of their mission. "Myra, transfer full control of Wanderlust to Silver and Ferro. You're restricted to comms and sensors only, is that clear? The stock AI will take over your other duties."
"Yes, Captain," Myra replied, unable to keep the sting of shame from her voice. Humiliated, she fed a roster of the final remaining threats inside of Deep Fog onto the crew's display lenses. "Most of the pirates on board are already dead, but there are eleven left. One lieutenant, two sergeants, the rest are grubs." She also created a three-dimensional map of the wreck and tagged each pirate with their location inside. Last, she lit up Spud with a bright blue beacon at the bottom of the chaotic scene. "There's our boy. The bridge is still partially intact, but we need to move quickly."
Victor rounded the corner to the shuttle bay. Inside, he found Willis already waiting, fully suited in his white armor, carrying two stuffed weapons bags from the armory and wearing a bulky medical pack. With a nod at the gear, Victor asked, "What you got?"
"Everything we need." Willis dropped the bags and spread his arms at the empty hangar around them. "Except for that one thing."
As he moved to the massive cargo doors, Victor ordered, "Ferro, take us in close. We'll have to jump. Myra, depressurize the hangar and give me our best point of entry. Silver, you're in command until I get back with Spud."
On Victor's lenses, the map of the ship's remains zoomed in close to Spud's blinking marker. Most of the hostile targets clustered around him, but only a few were actively moving. Their crewmate's tag remained still. "You're sure he's alive, Myra?"
"I'm sure." She didn't waver in her response, and marked a twisted passageway leading from a hatch on the hull, through several other rooms, and finally to Spud and three pirates on the bridge. "That's where you want to enter. Part of the hallway is caved in, so you'll have to cut through an interior wall and move through the barracks. Lucky for you, that's also where the rest of the pirates have holed up, so you can take care of them all at once and secure Deep Fog before you rescue Spud."
"Then let's go. Silver, when we get in range, open the bay doors." Victor took an offered armory bag from Willis. "And go help Truly when you're done-he might get lonely out there by himself."
***
"Ship lady? Which way?" She hadn't said anything at all to Spud since everything went black. He hurt all over since he woke up, especially on his left side. Without the lady's nice voice there, the quiet was starting to make him nervous.
Spud was supposed to listen to her, no matter what, the Captain always said. But she wasn't there. The golden-haired girl was gone, too. Spud thought about what the lady might say to him now, and mumbled to himself, "Okay, Spud, okay. We're just gonna get ourself out of here. Nice and easy."
In the light from inside his nullsuit's helmet, he could only see shifting black sand all around him. He tried moving, but the heavy asteroid dirt had him wrapped up, holding tight even though he wanted to get out more than anything. He'd have to dig his way out, but he couldn't even tell for sure which way was up.
Spud found a little give with his right hand and started clawing at the smothering sand, eventually working his whole arm free. When he tried to do the same with his left, stabbing pain shot up from his wrist to his elbow and he cried out from the shock. One arm would have to do it.
He made enough room to wriggle his right arm in front of himself and clear some space around his helmet. Spud watched the sand tumble down slowly to fill the hole and started digging in the opposite direction until a crumpled metal wall stopped his progress.
Patting along the wall until he came to a jagged handhold, Spud latched on with his gauntlet and pulled himself up, shimmying most of his body out of the dark, packed-in sand. The higher he went, the looser and lighter the stuff got, so Spud kept climbing and digging until it felt more like waving through a heavy cloud of ash. Finally he stood, still buried up to his knees but at least standing straight.
From the thick, smoky fog of dust above, an arm reached at him and Spud reflexively grabbed it, twisting hard to break the wrist. No resistance-a dead pirate, the helmet and skull crushed in completely, Spud noticed as he pulled it toward himself. Blood and black dirt, dried together like mud, covered what was left of his head.
In the pirate's other hand, he held a beam rifle. Spud wrenched it out of the man's death grip, checked the power cell, and gained a bit of confidence back when he saw its full charge.
"Nice and easy," he reminded himself.
***
Victor and Willis crouched at the edge of Wanderlust's open bay doors, each with an armory bag strapped on securely. Still a fair distance from the asteroid's surface, they were separated from the wreck by a massive collection of debris from Deep Fog.
"Ready?" the Captain asked his crewmate.
"Let's clear a path," Willis replied. He reached around to the base of his medical pack, flicked open a protective plastic covering, and pressed the button beneath it. Two fist-sized metal spheres popped out of a compartment in the pack, bobbing in a patient orbit around Willis as they waited for his commands. "Drones away."
The two little spheres were studded with gravity nodes. Victor watched them shoot off toward the wreck, throwing out green tendrils of energy to grab floating debris and collect it around themselves, growing in size as they went. When they got too big to pick up new material, the drones accelerated toward the asteroid and then released their gravity tethers, slinging scrap and rock harmlessly to the surface.
After they had a clear path to Deep Fog, Victor nodded. "Good, let's go."
The drones continued to widen the safety area, catching stray bits that wandered in as they came. Victor pushed off the edge and dove through space toward the asteroid, with Willis trailing behind him. As soon as they were away, Wanderlust streaked off to support Truly and his Hornet fighters.
Victor asked, "Myra, any update on Spud?"
"He's moving. The surface of the asteroid softened the impact when they crashed, but he got buried in it. Looks like he's made his way out. I still can't talk to him, but he's going the right direction." Privately to Victor, she added, "I never intended to separate him and Bee, or to send her so far. I'm not sure exactly what happened in the moment. Might have been the counter-intrusion from the gate. Either way, I shouldn't have overextended myself like that. It was a mistake, and it won't happen again."
"We'll get them back. One thing at a time." Captain Anson pulled himself over to the hatch Myra marked on his lenses. "Willis, this hall's clear, but once we cut through to the barracks they'll be all over. We don't stop 'til it's done."
Willis dropped in beside him, taking a position on the other side of the airlock. He unzipped the armory bag strapped to his chest and pulled out a scatter blaster, a long, fearsome-looking weapon with a wide barrel. "Don't worry, I packed you one too."
Victor drew an identical blaster from his own bag, along with a laser pistol which he stuck onto a gravity node on his lower back, locking it in like a holster. "Let's go get him."
***
Nearby the asteroid, Truly's little fleet of six scarlet Hornets pursued the last four single-pilot fighter craft as they desperately tried to escape. The farther he got from Captain Anson and the asteroid, the more likely an ambush by other pirates in the area became. "Silver, they're bugging out."
"Stop them if you can," Silver replied. "There's a Lee Family outpost nearby-they'll bring more back with them, if they aren't already on the way. Wanderlust moving to support."
Once the pirates realized the gate was disabled and they'd lost the upper hand, the ragtag squadron of fighters had scattered and tried to disappear into the Styx Belt. This gave Truly some easy work, allowing him to split his fleet in two, then quickly chase down and destroy several of the outmatched pirates on their own. Next, he hunted the rest-four patchwork junkers that had proven to be surprisingly resilient despite their poor condition.
"They're getting too far," Silver warned.
"Just back me up. Almost there."
These pilots, unlike the others, all worked together. They flew in a diamond formation, and each time Truly sent a missile to its target, the others would intercept and destroy it. This made things more challenging, but Truly gained on them with each second of his pursuit. He outnumbered them by two, and his Hornet fighters were far more advanced than their aging, cobbled-together ships. Once they came in range of his laser weaponry, he'd gain an even bigger advantage. For the time being, he harried them with two seeker missiles and carefully watched for their response.
The pirates broke formation and paired off, one seeker heading to each group, then weaved back and forth until it was obvious which ships the missiles targeted. Both pairs then flipped backwards, still moving ahead at full speed, and fired machine-gun rounds in bursts until they eliminated both seekers. Their ancient weapons might as well have been bows and arrows compared to what Truly's Hornets boasted.
Just as he came close enough to begin his final attack, three of the fighters shot straight toward his Hornets while the leader of their formation accelerated away. Truly immediately changed direction in his own ship to dodge around the three suicidal pirates. But instead of engaging his Hornets, they honed in on Truly alone, firing a barrage of bullets and missiles to block him in, forcing him to evade instead.
The rest of his swarm carved up the defenseless pirates, dancing around their sluggish metal projectiles, but Truly knew they'd bought enough time for the last one to escape. If he kept up his pursuit, he'd end up far from his crew and deep in enemy territory. "Heading back, Wanderlust. One got away."
"Acknowledged," Myra said, her reply free of its usual friendly barb. "Regroup over Deep Fog. We're still working on getting to Spud. Victor could use your help."
"On my way," Truly said as he and his Hornets left the sliced-up remains of the three fighter ships drifting in space behind him.
#
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