Chapter 46

Major Robert Sawyer carefully made his way through the wrecked corridor of the Lee’s Vengeance. Everything on this mission had started right, with getting the correct requisitions, the right personnel, and enough firepower to take the Abandoned Frontier without issue! How it had all gone so horribly wrong was beyond the man, but he had several culprits with whom he could lay the blame on.

While it was all well and good to be able to assign blame on those who were both culpable and convenient, he had to get out of there first! The man knew that taking any of the elevators on this ship was suicide, so he’d have to navigate his way to one of the hangars on foot. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the only option he had available to him.

The major continued walking, making sure to step carefully, as he didn’t know what was solid and what was not. He made his way down, opening a few emergency hatches for lower decks as he moved. Robert was halfway to his destination when he turned a corner and was facing the barrel of a gun.

“Hold it right there!” the soldier growled.

“Bains, put that weapon down! He’s one of ours!” a feminine voice snapped, making the soldier jolt before he lowered his weapon.

“Apologies, sir! I’m just a little jumpy,” the soldier apologized.

“Accepted, this time. Don’t do something that stupid again,” Sawyer drawled.

His tone made it clear he was too tired to even try dressing down the man. The soldier breathed a sigh of relief as he turned and regarded the woman who stood with the soldier. She was one of the officers who was down with him in the base on Prodosia! He smiled at her, grateful that she was there, or he might be a smoking corpse at that moment.

“Name and rank, now,” Sawyer demanded of the pair.

“Byrons, Amanda T., Lieutenant,” she replied crisply.

“Bains, Roger F., Sergeant,” the soldier told him.

“Well, Byrons, what exactly are you two doing down here?” Sawyer questioned.

“Trying to find a way out, sir, same as you! We’re also searching for any survivors, hoping that we can get them to one of the hangar bays,” she replied.

“Forget searching for any survivors. We need to get off this ship and we need to do it now! If any survivors have complete control of their faculties, then they can join us. If they don’t, then they will slow us down and could compromise our escape. I won’t have any dead weight preventing us from getting back home,” Sawyer stated bluntly.

Byrons was a little taken aback, but she nodded, as she didn’t want to chance invoking Sawyer’s ire. She had heard stories of how ruthless he could be, but the woman didn’t believe them. The lieutenant had thought of them as hearsay and bullshit concocted by those jealous of everything Sawyer had achieved. Now, she was seeing that maybe there was some truth to those rumors after all.

Sawyer then gestured to Bains, indicating that he should take point. Nodding grudgingly, Bains hefted his weapon and stepped into the lead, with Sawyer and Byrons following behind. They moved along through the corridors, making sure that they were clear and intact before proceeding.

As they walked through the wreckage, they encountered a few more survivors from the aftermath of the battle. A few were hale enough to move on their own two feet, but half of the survivors they found couldn’t. Per Sawyer’s orders, they were left behind, as the man was adamant that these people would only slow them down. A few tried protesting against this, but quickly found themselves staring down the business end of the major’s weapon.

Not wanting to join the dead in their eternal rest, those who protested quickly clammed up and moved along. It took them a while, but the group, which now numbered just under a dozen, finally found an intact hangar. Out of all five hangars that were on the Lee’s Vengeance, only hangar three remained somewhat operational. As they arrived, they saw they weren’t the only ones planning themselves an escape.

Inside the hangar, an entire cadre of engineers bustled about, performing every check possible on the frigate that was docked there. Sawyer smiled at this, happy to see that the soldiers of the Confederacy weren’t slacking on the job. He stepped forward, startling the men and women there. Then they relaxed, happy to see that Sawyer had survived.

“Major Sawyer! Glad to see that the detonation didn’t claim you, sir!” the lead engineer said, as he stepped up and saluted the man.

“It’ll take more than one simple explosion to end me! How’s the frigate looking?” Sawyer questioned, looking the ship over.

“It’s still in one piece, miraculously! Everything still functions, just not at peak capacity,” the man stated.

“Very good! We about ready to get underway?” Sawyer asked.

“A few more checks and we should be ready to go! Hop aboard and we’ll get ready for launch!” the man enthused.

“We are not launching this ship in the traditional manner,” Sawyer stated seriously.

“But sir, we’ll need to if we’re to get clear of the ship!” the engineer told him.

“Negative! We’ll have to do an atmospheric vacc launch so we don’t get ourselves blown to bits! The ship that eviscerated the Lee’s Vengeance is still out there! What do you think they’ll do if they see us on their holos all of a sudden?” Sawyer asked brusquely.

The engineer paled a little, having lived through the disaster that was the ship they were on. If that ship was still out there, ready to pounce on them ... the man shuddered at the thought. He saw the major’s point and nodded in agreement.

“Yes, sir! I can rig up a control module that we can activate to drop the containment field and launch us out of here,” the engineer said.

“Get on it! The sooner we’re out of here, the better!” Sawyer ordered, as he and the surviving officers climbed aboard the frigate, each one of them manning a station inside the ship. Half of the engineers hustled, doing everything they could to get the device ready. The other half slipped inside the ship, getting to their positions for when they were ready to turn the power and the engines on.

“How much longer?” Sawyer questioned, as patience wasn’t his strong suit when the chance of being apprehended was hanging over him.

“It should be ready just ... now!” the lead engineer told the man.

“Good! Now get in here, unless you want to be left behind!” Sawyer told him.

“But sir, what about them?” one of the other engineers asked, gesturing to the remaining personnel who were wounded but alive on the hangar floor.

“What about them?” Sawyer asked in a snarky tone.

“Shouldn’t we bring them aboard and try to...” the engineer started before he was cut off.

“Only those who can stand on their own two feet can come with us. Everyone else is being left behind. Besides, we can’t have any witnesses to tell of our passing,” Sawyer told him rather coldly.

“But sir, this is wrong!” the engineer protested.

“If you think so, then go and join them,” the major said calmly before shooting the man in his knees, finishing it up with a gut shot. The man screamed in pain as he collapsed, surprised at the sudden turn of events.

“Throw him off this ship and let’s be ready to get under way,” Sawyer said coldly.

Gulping, a couple of engineers and officers picked up the man and took him to the airlock. While what they were doing was wrong, they were all acting in a manner of self-preservation. If the major did something this cruel to someone who protested against his orders and actions, they didn’t want to know what the consequences would be for direct disobedience.

Once they arrived at the airlock, the officers stepped away and headed back to the bridge, as there was no room for them. The engineers holding him whispered something in his ear, then threw him bodily away from the ship. The door shut behind them as the man fell to the ground with a grunt of pain.

“How long before the device is ready to activate?” Sawyer questioned as he stared at the lead engineer.

“It has to charge the circuits! Two minutes, sir! Not a second more!” the man replied a bit fearfully.

“You had better be right about this!” Sawyer growled, not liking that they were being held up like this. He then started a timer to see if the engineer was being truthful. If he was, he’d spare him, as the man was only trying to do his job. If not ... well, he knew who he’d have to watch if anyone started dissenting against his orders.

The engineer who was thrown out, Dravek by name, inched his way towards the doorway that would lead to the corridor outside the hangar. He didn’t know how long he had, but he knew he had to get there soon! The men had whispered to him that the device the lead engineer had put together needed some time to warm up and charge the circuits. But that time was limited to two, two and a half minutes at most.

Not one for wasting time, the man continued to crawl and reach for the doorway, hoping he’d make it in time! He was nearly there, just a few meters away, when he could sense the change in the atmospheric pressure. The field was about to collapse and suck him and the remaining engineers out into space and to their deaths!

Just then, a figure hobbled through the door, taking in the scene, and looking down at Dravek. It was a woman, an officer going by her dress and insignia, and she stared at the ship hopefully. He grunted as he moved, catching the woman’s attention, and she stared down at him.

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked, her low alto voice sounding like music to her ears.

“Sawyer! Get out! They’re doing ... a vacc launch!” he warned, trying to ward her back through the door.

“Shit!” she yelped and almost turned to leave. The woman stared down at him, then cursed under her breath and bent over, grabbing him by the arms.

“Leave me! Save yourself!” he moaned.

“I’m not leaving anyone behind to die, if I can help it!” she growled as she dragged the man through the door.

She quickly deposited him on the ground, then hobbled through, seeking any other wounded out in the hangar. She came back not even thirty seconds later, towing a pair of female engineers by the hand, just managing to get them through the doorway. A high-pitched alarm then sounded on the air and the woman cursed as she looked back out into the hangar.

She shut the door and locked just seconds before the containment field dropped, launching the frigate and everything and everyone else into space. The woman huffed in annoyance and grief, as there were other wounded that she had failed to save. Tears formed in her eyes as she looked at the door, knowing that opening it was suicide. She wouldn’t be able to save the others out there because they were already dead.

“First time ... dealing with death?” Dravek asked knowingly.

“Yeah. How could you tell?” she questioned.

“That look on your face. It’s the look everyone gets ... when they are facing an ... impossible situation,” Dravek stated as he moaned through the pain. “You think you might be able to save everyone, but realize that you can’t. It’s out of your hands and there’s nothing you can do about it. It seems hopeless and you feel hopeless, like you can’t do anything right,” Dravek told her.

“How do you deal with that?” the officer asked, feeling the weight of their situation bear down on her.

“Don’t focus on ... what you can’t control, but ... on what you can control,” he told her.

“What can I control in this fucked up situation??” she demanded, feeling defeated.

“Save ... who you can,” Dravek replied.

The officer looked at him, then at the other engineers she had saved from death’s maw. She then remembered the other wounded souls she had seen, but had passed by, in the hopes of reaching the hangar in time. The woman knew that while they had been left for dead, that didn’t mean that she had to let everyone die. Steeling herself, the woman stood up and hobbled over to the man, a small smile forming on her face.

“What’s your name, soldier?” she asked.

“Dravek, Engineer, second class,” the man replied. “What’s yours?”

“Ruusa, First Lieutenant,” she said to him. “Do you think you can get us out of here?”

“If you can find the ... materials, I might be able to ... fashion a signal beacon. If the enemy fleet is out there ... they might come looking,” he replied. Hope lit the ebony skinned woman’s face as she felt they might just get out of this mess.

“What exactly did you need?”

The transfer of Confederate soldiers and personnel was going smoothly enough at the moment. Since they had seen the raw, unfettered power at the disposal of the defending Prodosians, they opted to surrender. None of them wanted to join their compatriots aboard the Lee’s Vengeance, or the destroyer that had been eviscerated by the Darkstrider.

Many of them saw no real option other than surrender, as they all liked living and breathing far too much. There were a few loudmouths, but not so many that they gave too much trouble. The few that didn’t do much other than shoot their mouths were quickly silenced or beaten down by their compatriots. They were already in deep shit with the natives, and they didn’t want to dig themselves any deeper.

While some ships went planetside to ferry the captured soldiers to a more confined place, most of the others stayed up in space. They surveyed the raw carnage among the site of battle and wondered what they were going to do.

“That’s a lot of shit to clean up! Not even sure if it’s worth cleaning!” one of the captains said over the comms.

“Oh, it will be worth cleaning! Especially once it’s being used to craft the things you need!” Inari told him.

“How? How could we use all that wrecked garbage?” the captain stated.

“Simple! The carrier we just took has a foundry and recycling depot on board! It’s how they’re able to craft new parts and weapons for their complement of fighters! Confed carriers are designed to help sustain entire battlefleets, with the exception of destroyers or larger ships! Why do you think I was so adamant that we take the carrier intact?” she asked.

“Inari, you are a fucking genius!!” Daved replied over the comms, liking this idea immensely.

“Not to mention all those precious metals that your people are sitting on planetside! A carrier like this one is not only new, but going by the size of the force, they were looking to occupy this world and dig in! It would be reasonable to assume that they also came prepared to get whatever mining operation they had in mind underway!” she responded.

“You know, that does make a lot of sense!” Captain Johnson replied. “Hell, maybe they had plans to go even further than that? Like maybe set up a small station here until they could build a bigger one?”

“I think we can confirm that!” came a new voice.

“Who is this?” Daved questioned.

“Rykker, sir! One of the fighter pilots that flew into the carrier to make sure the Confeds wouldn’t cause no trouble. Sitting here on the bridge going through the data files and there’s a lot here! Everything you folk were discussing and more!” the man replied.

“More? How much more?” Daved queried.

“Looks like they were going to start stripping Prodosia of everything that was down there. All the old buildings, crashed ships, everything! Hell, they even made a map of the places that would give them the most amount of viable material for them to make a mid-sized space station! Not only one that could set things up for their mining operation but also a drydock for ship repairs!” Ryyker told them.

“Damn! These guys came here with a plan! They certainly weren’t playing around!” Inari commented.

“I would agree! I think maybe we use those plans, but for our own purposes!” Daved replied with much enthusiasm.

“Building things up to be better defended?” Inari asked, knowing this was the probable plan!

“Damn straight! It’s like you said, we’re sitting on a shit ton of viable resources that the Confeds want! If the Confeds want them, then so will other groups and organizations! I’m thinking we get to work on this and set things up to do all of it ourselves! If anyone comes knocking, thinking to take it from us, they’ll be in for a rude awakening!” Daved said, almost chuckling over the line.

“And what about those who wish to come and do legitimate business?” Inari questioned.

“Then we will do business with these people! If they come to trade and pay for what we have, then we’ll certainly be up for that! But anyone who thinks to steal from us won’t be walking away so easily!” the sheriff said.

“I like this plan!! Maybe it will help get us back on our feet, back before this place was called Prodosia!” Captain Johnson replied with as much enthusiasm.

“Oh, hell yeah!” Rykker agreed, which was also met with enthusiasm from the others on the line.

“Excellent idea! But first, I think we need to get about a particularly important part of business,” Inari told them.

“Which is?”

“Search and rescue of those still out there. I know you guys are going to say let them rot out in space, but hear me out,” Inari replied amid some angry comments. Daved called for all of them to be quiet and they held their tongues.

“Two minutes. Go,” Daved said, not liking Inari’s idea, but gave her a chance to explain herself.

“It’s simple. We look for and find any survivors and bring them back planetside. If they can be saved, then we save them. If they can’t, then we leave them. Why we save them is simple. Money. We bring as many of these bastards down and keep them confined, then get ahold of the Confeds. We tell them we have their soldiers and officers and are willing to hand them back, for a sizable fee,” she started.

“They stay confined and in windowless cells, so they don’t know what we’re doing and can’t report jack shit back to their superiors. The more officers we find, the higher a chance will be that their families or Confed command will pay to get them back. Especially high-ranking ones!” Inari finished.

“While I don’t like the idea of saving Confed scum, the woman has a point. Spirits know we could definitely use the money!” Johnson said.

“Are you suggesting that we also give them Sargol too?” came one exasperated voice.

“Oh, hell no! That guy and all the infiltrators on Prodosia are staying here! Fuckheads like that need to be punished properly! What I’m talking about is sparing the soldiers and crewpeople of the fleet,” Inari clarified. There were some sighs of relief and grunts of agreement, as the rest of the defense force was glad that she was being reasonable.

“OK then. I think you’ve just made your case there, Inari,” Daved said, seeing the logic and merits of her idea.

“Oh, and there’s one more thing I want to add,” Inari stated, as she was ready to play her final card.

“Which is ... what?” Daved queried.

“Zuzie was a Confed until she saw all the shit that her people were doing to yours. I’m not saying that everyone will be like her, but ... you never know,” Inari finished. Hearing this left some of the men on the line to hum and huff, as they saw the point that Inari was making.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet,” Daved interjected. “How about we bring these people down to Prodosia first and then we see if anyone is like the Doc?”

“Fair enough! If anyone has a zero G suit or two that works, you might want to get your kids suited up! There’s a lot of wreckage out there and plenty of closed off compartments with heat signatures! We can’t ransom dead bodies, folks!” Inari stated, which kickstarted the rescue effort.

As the working ships were brought into position, the defending fleet set up a perimeter around the debris. Once they were in place, several spacewalkers in zero G suits were deployed and made all haste to begin the rescue. The spacewalkers headed for the smallest pieces of debris, as the people trapped in those pieces didn’t have a lot of time.

The moment each piece was secured, they took it to the carrier to open up. It was the only ship that had enough room to accommodate a retrieval effort and to store all the new prisoners. It didn’t take long to salvage those who had survived from the smaller ships, as there weren’t many survivors there. Most of the survivors were on the decimated flagship, the Lee’s Vengeance.

As they confirmed that there were no more survivors adrift outside of the massive ship, did the search and rescue focus their efforts on the command cruiser. They started with the sections that had broken off from the main ship, searching for any heat signals. Some people had been pulled from their confines in the nick of time. Others didn’t make it, having succumbed to their wounds, or died from lack of air.

It wasn’t too long afterwards that the focus was shifted to the main two halves of the cruiser. In the frontal half, less than one eighth of the crew had been found alive. While they were less than thrilled at the outcome of events, the soldiers of the Confederacy were grateful for the rescue. The aft half fared a bit better, with nearly a quarter of the crew being found alive while the rescue teams searched for any survivors.

Unknown to them, the frigate carrying Major Robert Sawyer and his hodgepodge crew of survivors drifted away from the battle. They had done their vacc launch well before the Prodosians had agreed to start searching the wreckage for survivors. Their ship had been in line with an empty sector of space in which they were now drifting. They had made sure to keep all systems and power off, so they wouldn’t be discovered.

“How much longer are we going to drift like this, sir?” the female officer asked Sawyer.

“As long as it takes for us to be outside of their scanner range. Once that has happened, then we can power up and get out of here,” Sawyer stated, annoyed that he had to explain himself like this.

“Understood!” she replied and went silent afterwards.

Sawyer allowed himself a small smile, happy to see that this woman didn’t need to be told again. To him, it was clear she was more of a follower sort of officer rather than a leader type. She might go somewhere further in her career, as she was sharp and picked up on things straight off, without having to be told twice. If she continued to prove herself capable, then he might decide to keep her around, as good, obedient officers were difficult to find.

“Distance?” Sawyer asked, directing his question to the engineers. They had stayed on the bridge and close to any other viewports, so they could have a visual on the slowly shrinking fleet. With their computers off, the only way to calculate how far away they were was by hand, which is why the engineers were still there. The engineers jabbered for a few seconds more before the leader turned to address him.

“According to the math, we’re on the outer edge of their radar screens! I would still advise that we continue to drift for at least another fifteen minutes, sir!”

“Fifteen minutes?” Sawyer questioned, slightly miffed that he would have to wait any longer.

“You asked for us to get out of here without being noticed, correct, sir?” the man asked.

“I did.”

“Another fifteen minutes will not only push any active radar screens they have, it will also push us closer to the hyperspace jump point. This will make the chances of them detecting our signature far less likely and even if they find any trail later, we’ll be long gone by then,” the man explained.

“Very well. Fifteen minutes, and not a moment more,” Sawyer agreed, seeing the sense in this.

While it was less than ideal to manage his breathing for a bit longer, Sawyer knew that staying off the radar was essential at this point. So far, they had been lucky, clearing the debris field relatively quickly thanks to their vacc launch. Their momentum did slow down slightly, but their speed remained constant, allowing them to get clear of any ships or debris.

The only way this was going to work was if all electronics were turned off and the crew bundled up. Keeping their electronic and heat signatures at a minimum was essential if they were going to escape without being noticed. It was working, even though some people were having trouble breathing, with the life support turned off. Still, they needed to be certain that they were out of range before daring to turn the ship back on.

“Time?” Sawyer asked as he huffed a bit.

“Thirteen minutes, forty-seven seconds,” the lead engineer informed him.

“Everyone, to your posts! Let’s be ready to move!” Sawyer ordered.

As one, everyone exploded into action, heading to their respective stations in anticipation of getting out. The moment everyone was where they needed to be is when the fifteen minute mark had elapsed and the power came back on. The systems flared back to life, and everyone breathed a little easier, as life support started pumping out proper air again inside the ship.

“Time to hyperspace point?” Sawyer questioned, as he felt the familiar hum of the ship returning to full power.

“Three minutes, sir! Hyperspace co-ordinates will be ready in two!” the navigation officer told him.

“Very good! Engineering, how does the hyperdrive look?” Sawyer asked over the comms.

“It’s coming back online, sir! We’ll be ready to jump in two and a half minutes!” came the reply.

“Excellent! Tactical, have the enemy ships spotted us yet?” the major wondered.

“Nothing to indicate they have spotted us, sir! Looks like our gamble may have worked!” the tactical officer responded.

“Superb! Helm, continue to the jump point! The sooner we’re out of here, the better!” Sawyer stated.

Everyone nodded and stuck to their jobs, not wanting to be caught like their compatriots had been. Or worse, getting blasted into scrap by the enemy frigate, the Darkstrider. They stayed frosty and, as the engineers had predicted, they were too far out to be noticed by their enemy’s radar. A few minutes later, they had reached the jump point and leaped into hyperspace, safe and away from the battle they had been a part of.

Aboard the captured carrier sat the remnants of the bridge crew of the Lee’s Vengeance. Many of whom were looking both surly and defeated, considering how badly their fleet had been decimated, then forced to surrender. To them, this had to be a bad dream they would wake up from, eventually. The only thing was, many of them were aching and in pain from the wounds they had suffered from the attack on the cruiser.

Among them sat Daruisz Walczak, who looked shocked, bitter, and utterly defeated. The man hung his head in shame as he ran through a multitude of scenarios in his head. He wondered how it could have gone so wrong when they had everything in place! While the interference from the drew of the Darkstrider was a factor, it shouldn’t have been the sole reason why they lost this conflict to begin with!

“It was because of your arrogance that we lost!” one of his subordinates scoffed at him. Dariusz’s head snapped up and glared at the man, surprised that he knew what he was thinking! It was then that Dariusz saw everyone’s faces and knew he had been thinking aloud again.

“We only lost because we did not know what our foes were capable of! Which is something we should have been made aware of!” Dariusz protested, defending his actions.

“Bullshit! You let that frigate get a shot in, because you wanted to prove that the Lee’s Vengeance was impervious to anything it could throw at it! You could have eviscerated that ship but didn’t because you wanted to show off, like the arrogant sonofabitch that you are!” his XO, Riley Stanford, berated. The woman had been with him through many campaigns and never uttered a single complaint until now.

“Mind your tone, Riley! It’s not like we had any real warning about what the ship could potentially do to us!” Dariusz growled, daring the woman to keep going.

“Oh, we had a warning! I was there when Sawyer told us to open fire and take that ship down! That man may be a tough nut to crack, but I could tell that he was scared when he saw that ship coming for us. It was almost like he knew something was up!” Riley countered, directing all the onus onto Dariusz.

“Fucking Sawyer!” Dariusz cursed.

“What? You going to blame him for this now?” Riley sneered, having lost all respect for her former commander.

“The bastard gave us a cursory warning and only when his life was threatened! Yes, I accept it was my mistake that devastated our flagship, but we could have taken additional measures if Sawyer had opened his damned mouth!” Dariusz fumed.

“Speaking of Sawyer, where is that man? I don’t see him here!” another officer interjected.

“The fucker took off, like the errant coward that he is! Downloaded everything he could from the ship’s mainframe and left us to die on the bridge!” Walczak told them. Some officers were surprised to learn of this, but the seasoned ones, not so much. They knew that intelligence types like Sawyer only thought about themselves. The fact that a coward like him had escaped filled them all with rage.

“I seriously hope someone gunned his ass down for trying to get out!” one officer said.