Chapter 27

September 17, 2161
Strike Force Berserkers Alpha Flight Lead

Alan and Eris were exhausted. They had been bouncing and dodging through the asteroid belt for over an hour, their suits, helmets, boots, and gloves held magnetically in place as the ship automatically dodged asteroids and other rocks. The inner lining of their suits inflated, holding them tightly. Despite that, it felt like being tossed into a tumble dryer with three dozen bricks.

Finally, the ship snapped around backwards and the throttles opened wide, giving them 9 Gs of deceleration. They were crushed into the backs of their seats and shaken viciously as the fighter roared to a stop. Alan shook his head and looked around and he realized they were under the Friedensbringer looking up at the corroded and dented belly of the ship. Alan could see right above him that the side was open, and he saw a metal arm sticking out, ending in a square foot of slate. That was the target piece of Aldini’s field generator.

Alan connected his ‘external’ pack containing 30 minutes of air and a ‘puff pack’ for directional control and opened his canopy. He drifted upward and realized that someone was above him. He searched the suit to suit frequencies and heard the voice of Winston Scarver and an Eastern Bloc woman. “Dahlink. You can’t see where you are shootink. Wait for your eyes on the scene to let you know vere your shotz are going.” To Alan that woman’s voice was familiar, he’s heard her before. But instead of trying to figure out who it was, he drifted up behind Scarver while he argued with the woman.

“That could be all day!”

“Scarlett vill nefer get here, he is, how you say, shell shocked from Venus Prime.”

“He’s a dried up turd and I’m going to fuck up that bitch of his. That red headed cunt will never...” Scarver never finished that statement. Grasping the edge of the door with his left hand, Alan grabbed Scarver’s helmet with his right hand and pulled back as hard as he could. Alan was hoping to snap his neck, but he didn’t yank the pirate’s head hard enough. However, he yanked him hard enough for his boots to lose their magnetic grip. Scarver was pulled off his feet, and he drifted helplessly toward his Dislocation Field Generator. His helmet hit the piece of slate and disappeared, taking his head, neck, right shoulder, and arm with it.

Eris watched the decapitated body drift over her head and thought again about staying in the fighter, but she followed Alan up and found him shutting down a field generator like the device they found at the Rocking Bird Mine. Alan saw her peer over the edge of the deck and held up five fingers and she tuned to suit frequency five. There was a woman there complaining to Alan. “I thought you vould never get here.”

“Eris this is Nadia Volochenko, she’s a friend of the family. Let’s call her a Western Alliance operative, Nadia this is Eris Carmine, Pandora’s sister.”

“Dorogoy (darling) Alan and I are old lovers.”

“No, Nadia and I are merely old,” corrected Alan, and he noticed that Scarver’s body was drifting off into space. “Somebody should go get that...”

“I ain’t touching that,” said Eris.

Alan pulled the hunting knife out of the leg sheath and a laser pistol out of his hip holster. “I have to go forward and take over this ship single handedly, you could at least go put a leash on Scarver’s remains.”

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September 17, 2161 NSS Naha

A loud BANG! rang the ship like a bell, and more alarms started blaring. “We been hit!” someone yelled.

“We’re still alive people!” called Pandora. “Work the problem, we’ll have time to panic later.”

“Navigation is down, radar is down, flight controls are down, IFF down, ECS down...” called the helmsman. The list of broken systems seemed to outnumber the systems that were working.