Redemption

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"Good grief!" exclaimed Thompson loudly, mouth hanging wide with suprise as he looked in the case, the glow coming from it making him squint.  "What the hell do you reckon this is?" He slid out of the way as he saw Captain Dort approaching to allow him a better look.

Captain Dort walked over and took a look, his curiosity mostly aroused by the fact that Thompson had said ‘good grief' instead of turning the air blue with swearing as he normally did. It had been a testament to his complete and utter surprise at the contents of the packing case. But Thompson, like the rest of the pirate crew, was a roughneck, with bigger faults that foul language. It was all part of the business, Captain Dort supposed. He adjusted his gunbelt, holding the edges of his long grey coat back to keep them from trailing into the case as he leaned over it.

His face was washed by a golden glow as he leaned over the open case, taking a good look, his brow pinched up as his eyes squinted against the brightness of the contents. The light was so bright that it was putting off heat, and he felt beads of sweat pop up on his forehead as he looked. He couldn't tell what it was, but his gut instinct was that it was valuable...and dangerous. "Load it up." he told Thompson, turning his attention back to the other matters at hand.

"But don't you want to know..." continued Thompson.

Dort turned back to him with a sharp look. "I said to load it up. And make sure you seal it up good before you do." Then he spun away and turned his back to Thompson, and the mysterious case.

"Aye, Sir." came the reply from behind him, but he already had other things on his mind as he turned his attention to the rest of his crew, who were rapidly transporting cargo from their quarry, the Goliath, onto the holds of the Isis.

The entire op had taken less than fifteen minutes, from interception, to boarding, to sorting out what to take and what to leave. In a tired sort of way, he was proud of his crew, but it still bothered him having to raid other vessels for plunder to make his way through space, and he wondered again how he had managed to fall so far as to be reduced to this pathetic life he now led. Not that he wanted to return to being a soldier, he was too old for that, but at least he'd had some sense of dignity then. Somewhere down the line, he'd lost his path, and looking back over it now as he walked the length of the interplanetary transport Goliath, he couldn't identify exactly where that loss had been.

He made his way through the dingy and battered passageways to the bridge of the Goliath, where three of his crew were unceremoniously stacking the stunned and snoozing crew from the transport into a crew quarters. There had been six of them aboard Goliath, and they'd not put up much of a fight, thank God, so nobody had been hurt on either crew. Then he saw something hidden in the belt of one of his crew, and a frown crossed his face as he reached over and plucked the weapon out, turning it over in his hand. The crewman spun around, the anger on his face quickly replaced by fear as he recognized Captain Dort.

"Ah, Sir, I...."

"I thought we had this all straightened out, Mr. Jonas?" interrupted Dort evenly, looking Jonas squarely in the eyes as he slid the weapon into his own belt. "Do I NOT remember a conversation that I had with you, just last raid, about carrying lethal weapons... even if it was ‘just in case'?"

"Yes, sir, but I..."

"But you disobeyed my orders anyway." finished Captain Dort. With a sigh, he snatched his stunner from his hip holster and shot Jonas in the chest. Jonas went from wide-eyed fear, his mouth hanging open at the beginnings of a protest, to a crumpled heap on the deck of the Goliath, snoozing just as soundly as the native crew of the ship. "Throw him in there with the crew." he told the two of his men left standing there, mouths agape. They didn't move for a second, until he holstered his stunner and fixed them with an intense stare. "Or are you two going to prove yourselves useless by disobeying me, too?"

They quickly grabbed Jonas, dragging him into their make-do brig with the crew of the Goliath. Dort watched them drag him away, then reached to his belt and unclipped his communicator, thumbing it on.

"Kate." he said into it. There was a burst of static, then Kate's voice came back to him, high pitched and clear.

"Gotcha, Cap."

"Spool up the trans-light drive, we're almost done here."

"Can do, Cap. All over it." He slipped the communicator back onto his belt with a final look in the room at Jonas. ‘If only I had five more like Kate', he thought to himself, ‘then I wouldn't have to bother with this scum to make my way anymore.' He suddenly felt very old, older than his forty-five years. He watched the two crewmen finish up, sealing the door to their brig. He followed them back through the ship to the cargo hold, where the rest of the Isis crew was finishing up transferring the cargo. His loadmaster, a trusted man named Cleaver who'd served in the military with him, was doing a head count as they crew made their way onto the Isis.

"We're one short, Captain." said Cleaver dutifully.

"No we're not." answered Captain Dort, pulling the weapon he'd taken from Jonas out of his belt and throwing it back into the cargo hold of Goliath. He reached over and slapped the button to shut the door, staring at the pistol on the floor of the other ship's cargo hold until the reinforced doors of the airlock snapped shut with a bang and cut off his view. Then he thumbed the comm button on the loadmaster's panel.

"We're all on, Kate. Get us out of here."

"Aye, aye, Captain." came her reply, and he soon felt the deck plates of the Isis shift as the trans-light drive kicked in. With a clap on the back to Cleaver, he left the cargo hold and made his way to the bridge of the Isis as his crew began to stow and secure their new cargo. The Isis was a big ship for a transport, and he'd paid dearly for her because of her engine arrangement that allowed him to outrun just about everything but another ship of her class. But she was as old as the ship he'd just left, although not so battered, and he made his way through mostly darkened passageways knowing by memory which deckplates would squeak under his boots and which ones would not, making his way to the dimly lit bridge in almost silence. Kate was alone there, as she nearly always was, seated in the nav chair wearing a pair of coveralls that were covered in grease from some mysterious repair. She knew the Isis even better than he did, she had been booting about on ships every since her mother had died when she was nine. She'd been on this one as long as he had, for the past ten of her twenty-six years, and as a pilot and often a mechanic she was unsurpassed in Captain Dort's opinion. He'd even given her the Captain's cabin, right off the bridge, because it did more good for her to be close to the bridge than for him. She flashed him a bright smile as he came onto the small bridge.

"Hey, Cap." she said through her smile. "Did everything go smooth?"

"Mostly." he replied, and his flat tone shrunk her smile a notch. "I caught Jonas with another gun. He's not with us anymore."

"He's not..." She couldn't bring herself to finish the statement.

Captain Dort turned to her with a wry grin, and gave her a slight shake of his head. "No, he's not dead, Kate. But he's gonna be pissed off when the stun blast wears off, you can bet that."

Kate, reading his mood, let it go, giving him a short, sideways look to evaluate him further before turning her attention back to her nav console. He settled down into the Captain's chair, looking over the instruments before continuing.

"I can't keep this up, Kate. I'm getting too old for it, and I hate having to deal with these kinds of people all the time. I hate being a damned pirate. Even more, I hate having dragged you and Cleaver into being pirates. I could give a plakku's ass about the rest of these people, but you and Cleave deserve better."

Kate had heard versions of this speech before, but never had she heard him sound so tired, so worn thin with it all. She turned from the nav console to face him. "We can always go back to legitimate cargo. Get some new transponder codes for the ship, a new registry, a decent crew. You know me and Cleaver will stand by you, no matter what."

Captain Dort gave her a remorseful look, a frown spread across his normally kind face. "I've got warrants out for me on thirty systems now. How could I ever go back to being legitimate?" He shook his head. "No, I'm not sure how to get us out of the hole that I've dug. I'm going to have to think about that. For now, let's go to Tibald Three and make the drop like we planned."

"Aye, Captain." responded Kate, sadness in her voice as she turned back to her nav panel and laid in the course.

********

In the cargo hold of the Goliath, there was a deep, loud thump that resonated through the metal works of the ship, and then the airlock doors slid open with a whoosh of fresh air from a ship that had nearly perfect filtration. Soldiers spilled into the ship, green-hued armor reflecting light as they entered, guns held high and ready, fanning out to either side of the doorway as they scanned for targets among the floor, catwalks, and doors leading into the cargo hold from other areas of the ship. After twenty of them had entered, a man came aboard like a conquering admiral, the only one of them not wearing the encompassing suit of armor, but in a dress uniform instead, his chest bedecked with ribbons and medals, boots shined to an unrealistic sheen. His face was blank, emotionless and pasty from constant time spent out of sunlight, only his eyes were animated as they took in everything with a practiced glance. He paused in the cargo hold, waiting impatiently for a few moments, until one of the soldiers returned to him, a small scanning device beeping in his hand.

"It's not here, Sir. According to the computer the ship was intercepted by pirates."

"Pirates." the man repeated flatly, without looking at the soldier.

"Yes, Sir. Alpha team reports finding the ship's crew locked in a crew dorm room near the bridge of the ship. They're trying to cut them out now."

"When you free them, bring them directly to me." said the man. "Dismissed." He could barely contain his fury as the soldier walked away. He had been pursuing the crate for three weeks, every moment since it had been stolen from an Empire weapons lab; only to find that some gods-cursed rim-tripping pirates had snatched it out from under him right when he finally thought that he had it back in hand. He felt himself trembling with rage, and tried to calm himself before he made a spectacle in front of his troops that would make him seem less than godlike to them. He began pacing the mostly empty cargo hold to work his frustration out, back and forth. He spotted the pistol laying on the deck, and picked it up, giving it a cursory once-over before tossing it back down with a clatter as uninteresting.

Momentarily, six men and a woman were brought before him, all of them showing signs of recent stunning as they were dragged along, almost nonresponsive and hardly bothering to grumble at their rough treatment. They were lined up in front of him, and most of the soldiers had made their way there, as well, forming a circle around the group. The soldier with the scanner approached the man.

"All clear, Sir, this is everyone." he said in a subservient tone, and then backed away before their intractable commander could vent his obvious rage on him.

"Excellent. Have your men hack into the ship's navigation computer and lay in a course for the heart of the nearest star, then set up a remote link to engage it from our ship when we've gone. I want no trace of our presence left in this quadrant when we're gone."

"Aye, Kommissar." replied the soldier, and went to carry out his orders. The Kommissar turned his attention to the crew in front of him, who still stood there groggy and yawning, the effects from the stunners still lingering heavily in their systems.

"I have a problem." he began testily, eyes blazing. "A problem that you are going to help me solve. I am looking for a crate that was put aboard this ship on Sigma Delta Five. It was stolen from an Empire facility where I was assigned as Security Chief, and I want it back. Immediately. Only now I find that pirates have stolen it from you. So we're going to stand here until one of you can give me a clue as to how I might be able to track these pirates, or you are going to all die slowly, and horribly, and in very great pain. Am I making myself very clear on this matter?"

"Everything on board was to be delivered to the planet Regu. You have the manifests; you can find who the crate was being sent to." said one of the crew. The Kommissar snatched his sidearm out of his holster and shot the man dead, his face twisted with vehemence. Then he regained his composure somewhat, and continued to the rest of the group as though he wasn't speaking to them over the corpse of one of their comrades, still leaking blood onto the deck plates between them.

"That's not what I was asking about. Would anyone else like to say anything stupid to say to me?" The remaining crew said nothing, eyes wide with fear as they stood there fully awake and instantly beyond the effects of their recent stunning. Then one man stepped forward, dressed differently from the rest of them, his clothes more ragged, less utilitarian. "I know where they was going." said Jonas.

"Excellent. And how do you know that?" asked the Kommissar, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I was on the pirate crew. The bastards left me here when they left. Left me here for this crew to kill me." He looked the Kommissar in the face for a second, and then lowered his eyes out of fear of the mad gaze that he found there. "I know their drop point."

"Spectacular. Bring this man. Shoot the others." snapped the Kommissar, with a note of victory in his voice. Jonas was led away from the doomed Goliath onto the Empire ship, the sound of gunfire rattling in his ears as the remaining crew was cut down.

*****

The Isis settled into a low orbit above the northern magnetic pole of the planet, using the planet's magnetic field to help mask their signature from sensor readings. The ship was running ‘dark', all power not affecting ongoing operations or life support shut down so as to not be an energy reading to anyone scanning in the system. It was an old trick that Captain Dort had learned in the war, and it had helped him more than once in his piracy career. They began organizing their cargo to be loaded into their two short-range shuttles that were aboard the Isis to be taken down to the planet, where they had a network of caves that served as their storehouse in one of the temperate zones near the equator.

Captain Dort was in the cargo hold, directing the loading of cargo. He prioritized the cargo based on known value-the more valuable it was, the faster it got transferred off the Isis to somewhere safe and secure. They loaded the shuttles quickly and sent them down, knowing that it would be about an hour until they got unloaded and returned for the second load. After they departed, Thompson approached the Captain.

"Hey, Cap, what about that odd crate that I found? You want it to go out next trip?"50

"No, stick it off to the side. We're swinging through the Pofare system, and I have someone there that might be able to tell me what it is."

"Okay, then." said Thompson, and shuffled off. Captain Dort returned his attention to the sorting of the cargo.

On the bridge, Kate sat at navigation, musing over what the Captain had said to her earlier. She had known that he'd been having bouts of depression, and she was getting more and more worried about him. He wasn't one for idle speak, and to hear him bemoan his life like he had done was downright disturbing to her. She'd never known him to be so melancholy, and it set her on edge. She didn't know what to do to fix it, as he was convinced there was no turning back from his life of crime.

She sat there lost in her thoughts for over an hour, because the shuttles had returned for the second load, docking on their own without her assistance. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts, and so used to the boredom of cargo transfers, that she was completely taken by surprise when her console beeped at her. She looked up; checking her scopes, then stabbed her comm button, eyes going wide with fear.

"Captain to the bridge!" she called over the intercom, eyes never leaving her scope.

Captain Dort ran onto the bridge as fast as he could get there. Kate had never sounded so panicked for as long as they'd flown together. "What? What is it?"

"We've got an Empire frigate in-system, bearing directly down on us. It's too exact to be anything but an intercept."

"Are you sure?" he asked, his heart sinking, not believing their rotten luck. He leaned over her shoulder, looking at her scope, then cussed.

"What the hell do they want with us?" asked Kate. "Frigates are too important, they don't chase pirates."

"They do if pirates have something that they want." replied the Captain. "Hail them."

"What?" asked Kate, incredulous.61

"Hail them, find out what their business is. Try and stall them. Something."

Kate flashed him a worried look, and then opened a channel. "Empire frigate, this is the cargo vessel Isis, dead ahead of your current course, please respond."

The response came seconds later, the voice trite, petulant. "Cargo vessel, indeed. Pirate vessel Isis, this is the Empire frigate Vanquisher, stand down and prepare for boarding."

Kate and Captain Dort shared a worried look. "There must be some kind of misunderstanding, Vanquisher; we are a cargo vessel already standing down for repairs, please state your business."

"You will prepare to be boarded, Isis. That is all." Kate closed her eyes. They were screwed, so screwed.

"Okay." said Captain Dort. "Spool up the trans-light drive and wait for my signal."

"We're already in range of their weapons!" cried Kate. "They'll blast us before..."

"Do it, Kate!" he yelled, face getting red. "Do what I say!"

Kate sighed, powering up the trans-light engines. The Captain had been in tough spots before; he had to know what he was doing. Then her console beeped at them again, and she paused to lean over it, taking a look at her scopes. "They're scanning us, but... it's theta range?" She made an adjustment to her scope and studied her screen again. "That's confirmed, they're scanning for theta range energy signatures. Nothing else."

Captain Dort's mind raced, and then he reached over and hit the comm switch to the cargo hold. "Cleaver, come in."

The five seconds that it took Cleaver to respond felt like an eternity to the two on the bridge. "Cleaver here, Cap. What's going on?"

"Never mind. I need you to scan the entire ship for theta range energy signatures, right now."

"Okay, hang on." said Cleaver, and the channel fell silent for what seemed like an eternity as Captain Dort waited. "Hey, believe it or not we have one down here with us. It's a doozy, too! Off the meter!"

"Kate, do what you have to, I'm going down to the hold." said Captain Dort as he bolted from his chair, heading back into the bowels of the ship.

"They're getting close, Cap!" she told the Captain, but he was already gone.

*****

Captain Dort raced into the hold with his stomach tied in knots, knowing what he would find, and he was right. Everyone was standing around the mystery crate that Thompson had found, looking at it with curiosity. With a sudden flash of insight he knew what he had to do, and suddenly he felt like years had fallen off him. He ran up to the men around the crate, pointing at it.

"Get that damn thing into the shuttle, right now! And MOVE!" he roared. Four of them grabbed the crate, carrying it easily through the door of the shuttle and setting it down on the empty floor. Cleaver followed him into the shuttle, looking nervously as Captain Dort began to strap himself into the pilot's chair, checking over the already primed engines.

"Captain?" he asked, and Captain Dort spared him a look, a sad smile on his face.

"I'm going to need you to look after Kate, Cleaver. I need you to promise me."

"Sir?" asked Cleaver, more confused. Then he saw the look on the Captain's face and blanched. "Yes, sir. I will, I promise."

"Thank you, Cleaver. Make sure the two of you start over, something legal and decent this time." He extended his hand. "It was a pleasure flying with you, Cleave."

"Aye, Cap, same here." said Cleaver, shaking the Captain's hand with sadness.

"Now get off my shuttle. I'm running out of time." The Captain smiled as Cleaver gave him a baleful look, then left. He thumbed the comm switch, connecting with Kate. "Kate, how's the trans-light drive coming?"

"We're clean and green, but that frigate is almost in spitting distance."

"Don't worry, Hon. In a second it's going to turn around. Soon as you're out of its line of fire, I want you to fire off the trans-light and get the hell out of here."

"What makes you think it's gonna do that?" she asked.

"Trust me." he replied. "And Kate? The Isis is yours. Take care of her, Hon."

"WHAT?" she cried shrilly, but he cut the channel off, and engaged the docking mechanism to the shuttle. He eased it out of its docking slot, hanging on the side of the Isis as the airlock sealed behind him. Off to his starboard side, he could see the frigate closing, speed falling off as it maneuvered to line up with the main airlock and dock with the Isis. He rapidly fired up the engines to the shuttle and set the limited sensors on board to read scanning signatures, taking a last, long look down the Isis. She'd been a good ship to him, never letting him down in the ten years he'd commanded her, and he wondered briefly if what he felt was love for her. Then the couplers let him go, and he gave the shuttle all she had, leaping off the side of his old ship. An alarm went off that signified he was being scanned by the Empire ship, again for theta range emissions, and he shot his ship straight under the belly of the massive frigate, skimming the black-hued exterior as close as he dared and shooting out from beneath her right below her trans-light thruster ports at her rear, still gaining speed. He saw with satisfaction that the frigate banked around to begin maneuvering after him, the Isis forgotten in their quest for the crate. He looked at it on the floor behind him, wondering what was in it for the last time, then reached down to the console and engaged the self-destruct sequence, setting the timer for thirty seconds. He banked off at an angle so he could take a long, lingering look at the Isis as it hung in space, dirty, battered, and beautiful, as the sunlight from the system's star washed over it. His last thought was of Kate. Of her smile.

Kate watched as the shuttle shot underneath the Empire frigate, stunned. Then, true to the Captain's word, the frigate rolled over and began a turn, looping around in pursuit of the escaping shuttle. As soon as the Isis was clear of the frigate's firing arc, she engaged the maneuvering engines on the Isis, heaving the nose up out of the atmosphere for a clean trans-light jump. Tears rolled down her face as she followed Captain Dort's last orders. Then out of her starboard portal she saw the shuttle blow up, not from weapons fire but from an internal explosion, the self-destruct. An alarmingly strong secondary explosion resulted that was much too big to have originated from the shuttle's systems as the crate it had contained went up. The explosion ripped into the Vanquisher as it was turning to pursue. It sat between the explosion and the Isis, effectively shielding her from the blast while it took a crippling blow itself. Watching it begin to arc into the planet's gravitational field trailing atmosphere from a hundred ruptures along its hull didn't ease Kate's pain over the loss of the Captain, and she stared out the portal as the shock wave from the secondary washed over the Isis, rattling everything that wasn't bolted down. Alarm sirens began to ring, but her systems revealed that it was nothing serious.

He had given his life to save them. After all his stress and internal conflict, he'd found a way out that had some dignity to it, after all. He'd found his redemption. She began to sob softly as she engaged the trans-light, and as she heard the drive build itself up for the jump, she laid her hand against the portal where she could still see the pieces of shuttle winking sunlight as they traveled out from the blast point, her fingers splayed as though she were trying to wave at him one last time.

"Goodbye, Dad. I love you." And then the trans-light drive fired, and took her away.

Comments (3)

Posted by Dirkin 04-13-2008 03:12,   ... Hey this was really good. An intricate plot, well realised characters with history, demons and individual flair, a convincing villain... well done. I think this piece shows a lot of writing talent.   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... » See all 1 replie(s)   Posted by lorislittlesecret 04-14-2008 09:28,   ... This was an awesome story. Well told, held my interest. There's something about pirates that makes a girls' insides turn to mush....hahaha. Seriously, this was a great story   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... » See all 1 replie(s)   Posted by thirteen 04-14-2008 09:40,   ... Yeah, bloody good story .Really sad to see the finishing line to be honest.Love to see more of these and I really liked Captain Dort.Excellent read.   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... » See all 1 replie(s)

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