Chapter 8

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 Zed and Chris’s Mad. The Captain was relieved to hear the pirates had been captured.

Chris decided to move to where they could intercept the Farestar so it could slow 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.

“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 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 Nations 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.

“Yeah, the settlement ship is a big enough target that you would have to be cross-eyed to miss it. If we swing around behind those asteroids and come in behind it, I can slip a torpedo into the aft engines before they can even scan for us.”

“The only way they can then escape is to come past us using the fore engines. They will be shut down and she isn’t that quick to get up to speed from stationary orbit. With those engines off, she is a sitting duck. I can then take out her rear guns and we can board her,” Beanie said.

Chris nodded in agreement and they quickly altered course to sneak around behind the ship. Chris took manual control to get the tighter turn. The ship’s computer complained but she still responded to his commands and the Striker moved into the position that Beanie had asked for.

It was a textbook takedown. The torpedo had pieced the pirates’ shields as if they weren’t there. The Striker’s crew all grinned as they watched the aft engines of the pirate ship flare brightly. Tale sent out a broadcast to the ship, “Unidentified ship, this is UNSEC Space Patrol. Please identify your ship and explain why you were in stealth mode with no beacon active?”

“Fucking bastards, you have no jurisdiction here. King Rupert will sue UNSEC for every dollar he can get. You fuck off, this is our system,” The male voice came back angrily.

Tale replied, “Under International Law for human occupied systems, the use of ‘stealth mode’ in an occupied system is an act of Piracy. Please stand down and prepare to be boarded,” she answered calmly. “If you fire up your fore engines you will be considered guilty as charged and we will fire upon you again.”

“Get fucked!” the voice spat back before the comm closed.

“She is starting the fore engines,” Darla told them gleefully.

“Aim for the guns, Beanie,” Chris ordered.

Beanie grinned and fired at the gun that was easiest to line up. They all saw the flare from the hit as Chris maneuvered the Striker so Beanie could take out the next set of guns on the ship. Just as Beanie went to shoot, they all saw the ship shudder and then she started to roll.

“Crap, that hull must be as thin as paper, that shell shouldn’t have breached the hull, it should have only taken out the gun,” Beanie said in consternation.

“I think it exploded into the ship and you took out the ammo stored near the gun. I’m sure there were at least three internal explosions, going by the shudders,” Darla replied in amazement.

“Shit, she’s going to hit that asteroid,” Chris said with worry. “If they do, they will all be dead before we can get to them. Tale, open the channel.” Tale did as Chris requested. “Captain, you must abandon ship now, you’re going to hit the asteroid,” he broadcasted. “We can pick you up even if you’re in suits. Get your people off now,” Chris said with emotion and concern.

They didn’t get a reply. Chris broadcasted the message several more times but no pods or bodies exited from the ship as they watched. The ship shuddered again and then her rear twisted as she rolled over. A minute later, the stricken ship smashed into the asteroid. The huge asteroid just ploughed into and then over the ship, as if it wasn’t even there.

The crew of the Striker watched in fascinated horror as the ship exploded. For the most part, it simply vaporised. Those few pieces that manage to escape the boiling inferno flew off into space. It didn’t burn for more than half a dozen heartbeats but it was still an impressive end.

“Shit, I hope they were pirates,” Kola gasped. His eyes were wide as his brain caught up with what just happened.

“Yeah, they were pirates. A cloaked gunship with no transponder had only one reason to be behaving as she did. They were definitely lying in wait for the Farestar. I plotted their vector and they would have made contact with the Farestar before the occupants even realised they were under fire,” Darla replied.

The crew didn’t feel so bad after that announcement.

Dusty confronted Whitney.

“So who was on the gunship?” Dusty asked the heavily pregnant woman.

“What gunship? Rupert’s ship is here,” she replied perplexed.

“Well we just blew one up, it was going to attack the Farestar,” Dusty replied, suspicion still evident in her voice.

Whitney frowned as she rubbed her bulging stomach. “Show me the prisoners. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the ward of late and I don’t even eat with the pirates. I’ve never been privy to Rupert’s schemes other than the one to breed the prisoners. That wasn’t a secret to anyone.”

Dusty escorted Whitney so she could look at the people in the storerooms. They were all still sleeping off the drug injected by the darts. Whitney looked carefully at each face and started naming them and which ship they crewed.

“Wait! Carl Rigger and Haiti, his woman, they took the last lot of slaves to Terra on the Horizon. We have been waiting for them to get back. They were supposed to be back here a month ago, that’s why we have been rationing the food.”

“He would have had to purchase a smaller ship to come back. I’ve heard talk that the settlement ships now had guards, so maybe they decided to pick up another gunship instead of a freighter. Carl had put the four shuttles they had confiscated from the other ships aboard the Horizon before he flew it away.”

“He could have exchanged them for the gunship. Selling the people on the ship would have pulled a small fortune too. Strong, healthy men are worth a lot, so I’ve been told. Rupert made me test them and he only kept the ones who had a chance of breeding. He sent the other men he had previously kept, who failed the fertility test, on that ship too.”

“Do you know where he planned to sell the people?” Dusty asked.

Whitney shook her head, “Sorry, I wasn’t privy to that information.”

Dusty let her go check on the pregnant women in the cube. Whitney had been flabbergasted when she realised how much space was available in the cube. She was even more shocked by how they had been set out. Dusty told her they had a couple more on the ship and that they could spread the people out in the morning.

James was going to pilot the gunship and Pat was going to fly the freighter. They would go back for the troopship latter. Aaron and Bella volunteered to keep James company. Just after midnight, they lifted off and headed south and east. They were flying into the morning and it took them two hours by their clocks to get to the bay Dusty had picked out.

They arrived as the bay turned into the sun and they all agreed that it was very beautiful from the air. James, being in the small ship, found a rocky outcrop near the river, just big enough for him to land on. Aaron and James both had Nature and Physic Skills and Bella had Earth and Energy so they put them to good use.

James had learnt a lot in the last three years and found that his transmogrifying skills were up to the task when his energy was boosted by Aaron and Bella. They used their magic to clear a three hundred metre square area.

They trimmed and then cut the eighty-metre-high trees to four-metre lengths and roughly fifty centimetre wide slabs. They drove them a metre into the ground, alternating the skinny widths of one end to the thick widths off the other, to form a three-metre high solid fence around the new compound.

They left two twelve metre wide gate spaces in each wall to effectively divide the area into nine equal spaces. They compacted the earth around the fence’s base to lock the slabs into place. They sealed the edges of the wooden slabs so the walls were firmly locked together.

The big trees here reminded James and Aaron of a form of eucalyptus trees. However, they grew a lot taller and straighter than any they remembered from back home. The boys both loved the scents the trees released into the fresh, clean air, as they cut and trimmed them using their magical abilities.

Using the spaces for the gates, they divided two-thirds of the area into six quadrants on the riverside and left the other third of the area for the ships to land in. They had left some of the smaller clumps of trees that were only forty to fifty metres high and several taller trees for shade around the edges of the six smaller squares.

The rest of the trees they stripped and sliced to a length of four metres before they stacked them into piles in the middle square for later use. Some of the trees were over three metres across at the base.