Chapter 18

Pat, Dusty and James went to inspect the ships.

The others were occupied putting the cuffs on the pirates. The drug from the darts should keep them unconscious for at least four hours and up to six hours for those with Napper in their system.

Zed told Dusty that the ships were serviceable. Dusty dropped a repair spell on them, just to be sure. The freighter was empty of goods, so they drove the bikes into it and parked up the six cubes. They unloaded the twelve rescue sleds, and then the team started moving the ex-prisoners.

They had forty rooms they could use in the two cubes. The rooms were big, and at least half of them had double beds in them. The other half had two single beds with plenty of room for a third.

They decided to shift the youngest kids first while Que and Whitney were prepping the pregnant women. Since the kids were sleeping in small groups, they left them together. They took them back to the cubes and put them into double beds in their group.

They put the pregnant women in rooms near the kids. They put the males into rooms with single beds in one cube and filled the other beds with the rest of the women and girls. It was a tight fit, but they found a bed for everyone.

They deliberately left all the doors to the rooms open so that the people knew they weren’t locked in when they awoke. They dropped ten cots into each of two large empty storerooms on the deck above. Their doors were in the corner of a hallway. They put the pirates and the six people who had been in the tents, with the two women who were part of that group, into the rooms.

Aaron had found some portable toilets and put one each into the storerooms with a large bottle of water that could have a tap attached and stood on stands. They even gave them disposable cups. They were going to be thirsty when they woke up.

Dusty shielded the rooms and the doorway but left the doors open so a guard could keep an eye on them. Bindy agreed to take the first watch and found a comfortable chair to place outside the doorways.

They would transport them to Striker One when Chris came back.

Chris and his team were floating along with the asteroids.

They were all relieved to hear that the pirates were all out for the count. Dusty informed Chris that Zed had said that the freighter and the gunship were flyable, but they could do with a serious overhaul. She also told him the pirates were now their prisoners.

Chris and the team were waiting for the Farestar to pass them and head out of the system before they came back to join the ground crew. Dusty had informed the ship of what was going on through her AI and Chris’s Mad. He was relieved to hear the pirates had been captured.

Chris decided to move to where they could intercept the Farestar so it could slow down enough to stay in the same orbit with the planet as long as they could before they would need to alter course to exit the system.

If some of the captured people still wished to go to Terra, they might be able to find room on the Farestar for them. They would then have fewer people to worry about on the ground.

“Chris, we are getting a strange reading from between those two asteroids. Our pings are not returning like they should,” Darla told him as they headed to the position. They planned to exit the asteroid belt so that they could intercept the Farestar.

“Make sure the shields are up and the guns primed,” he told the team.

They all felt that something was out there, even if the sensors weren’t returning a visual or picking up the transponder beacon for a ship.

“Darla, try doing the sensor sweep in the frequencies for those shield generators that Lee told us about that can hide ships.”

Darla nodded and adjusted the sensors and sent out the new signals. A few minutes later, she chuckled with an evil laugh, and an image flashed up, indicating a ship was sitting between the asteroids.

“A Chinese Zui Zhi Shi gunship. One of the cheapest you can buy. It still has six guns that can hole a ship, but their accuracy is only as good as the gunner,” Beanie said.

“The guns are notorious for going out of calibration and requiring manual control; one of the reasons it’s so cheap. They are larger than some of the other gunships.”

“The Chinese can load a small ten-man drop-ship on them. They like to use them as cargo drop-ships, too. They are versatile but a pig to fly in atmosphere and bastards to maintain.”

“So, it’s not a threat to us, but it is to the Farestar,” Chris commented.