AN: Additional Chapter to Honor Maxwell Guy for joining our ranks!
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"Shit!"
The voice of Royce Alfonse could be heard resounding through the bridge of the Personante, which was so quiet that one could even hear a pin drop on a carpet. The crew of the ship all looked through the viewport of their heavy frigate as the remains of one of the ships that had attacked them spread everywhere after its collision with the Swift Passage.
A massive debris field that easily extended for over 100 kilometers could be seen expanding over a kilometer every three seconds. The two ships drifted and merged into each other from the impact, and vapor clouds from escaping oxygen could be seen forming around both ships.
"What the fuck are we waiting for?" Royce roared. "Get a fucking move on, we need to start immediate rescue operations of that snot-nosed brat."
The crew around him stood frozen momentarily before moving back into action. Controls were redirected to the co-pilot as Royce's second in command walked up to him.
"Hey, Royce, what about our men?" His second in command, an older man with a graying beard, asked.
"Our people?" Royce asked. "Ray, if we don't rescue that waste of cum, then we- fuck, our entire Iron Talon Syndicate will go from being backed by House Dierdik to being their primary target. They'll stop at nothing to wipe us off the fucking map."
Ray nodded solemnly. He understood how crucial their mission was to the survival of the pirate syndicate they had created. Without the backing of House Dierdik, the Iron Talon Syndicate would remain the sex trafficking slavers they had been for over a hundred years.
The mission of smuggling this one brat through the outskirts of IUC space and into VIC space was supposed to be a walk in the park and something that would elevate their standing with House Dierdik. They were right there, a few more hours, and they would have reached the border of VIC space.
Their future was already looking brighter than ever. The promise of future jobs and a lessened IUC Navy presence in their sector of space was already within reach. But these three damned ships came out of nowhere and caught them off guard, showcasing power that did not belong to regular Corvettes.
Ray had been a part of the Navy back in his younger days, a traffic controller to be exact. The lack of markings and transponders on the part of their attackers would fool anyone into believing they were pirates. However, Ray understood that their power likely meant they were military vessels. Their lack of paint was what sealed the deal for him. No matter how broke, how shallow the wallet, show cheap the man, or how insignificant a pirate you were, everyone had the credits to give their ships a makeover.
During his time in the Navy, Ray had only seen one ship like this, and when he attempted to contact them, his superior had given him a scared look and ordered him to let them pass with no questions asked.
"Royce," Ray said, "those were no ordinary ships."
"I know," Royce growled.
"No, you don't," Ray countered. "What were you told by those Dierdik bastards?"
Royce stared at Ray for a second. They had been friends for over twenty years. He trusted Ray more than he trusted his own mother, but he had yet to share with him the information their contractors had given him.
"The representative of House Dierdik said that there was someone who was a little bothersome out on a hunt for their patriarch's son," Royce said, feeling his heart rate rise. "That they were a simple pain in the ass, and they couldn't take action against them publicly."
"Fuck," Ray let out a defeated sigh.
"What is it?" Royce asked.
Ray was about to reply when they were interrupted by a crew member as their ship finally reached the debris field of the Swift Passage and the Retribution.
"Sir, there's an emergency signal coming from the 3 destroyed Corvettes," called out one of the crew members. "We couldn't detect anything until we were within 1000 meters of the wreckage."
Ray felt the blood drain from his face as Royce slowly turned back to face him.
"Ray, is there something you know that I don't?" Royce asked.
Ray gulped audibly as sweat started to roll down his forehead and his hands began to tremble. "We just.... we just faced an IUC Spec-Ops unit."
Just as Ray finished talking, alarms began to blare loudly throughout the bridge of the ship.
"Sir! Spatial distortions levels are spiking! We have ships jumping into the system, danger close!" The frantic voice of the navigation officer was barely audible over the blaring alarms.
"Impossible, there are no jump points around," Royce exclaimed. "Only an emergency jump out of here should be possible."
But no matter how impossible it seemed, four ships had managed to jump into the system from the direction of the VIC border.
Looking through the viewport at the color schemes of the ships that had jumped into their system, Ray and Royce felt their hearts drop to the deck. The bright blue and white hulls of IUC Navy ships gleamed in the light reflections of the Seraphim Nebula.
At the front of the small convoy capable of laying waste to a fleet was an angular ship almost a kilometer long, and flanking it were 3 other ships of similar length. The names on the blue hulls of the 3 heavy Cruisers may not have been known by many, but the name of the ship leading them was known to all pirates. A ship that was infamous amongst the pirate community for its rarity, its scary combat ability, and most of all, who commanded it.
The Indifference's hull gleamed as its weapons were trained on the Personante and her sister ship, the Resonante, which had stayed in its original position to commence repairs after the engagement.
Inside the two Pirate ships disguised as escorts, alarms blared as energy readings spiked. Just when both crews thought they were goners, a message was broadcast on the open channel.
"Attention to the two operational ships within the Seraphim Nebula," a female voice called out. "This is the IUC Indifference ordering you to power down and ready yourselves to be boarded. Any retaliation or attempt to run will be taken as an act of hostility, and you will find yourselves smeared across this system."
"Fuck," Royce murmured, his voice barely above a whisper.
The Personante's crew all stared at their leader, awaiting his command. They were all ready to lay down their lives in their line of work, but prison was much better than death, which left them all secretly hoping he would give the order to surrender.
After a few tense seconds of deliberation, Royce let out a defeated sigh, looked Ray in the eyes, and nodded to his crew.
"Power down all non-essential systems, and prepare the ship to be boarded," he commanded.
A sigh of relief could be felt as the tension that hung in the recycled air rapidly dispersed after his orders. Royce, although a pirate of the Iron Talon Syndicate, was not like those other idiotic pirates who preferred to die before being imprisoned. Sure, he would probably never see the light of day again, probably be thrown into a station and worked until death for his crimes of piracy and sex trafficking, but he still prized his life above everything else.
"Sir, the Resonante is powering up its weapons," a crew member called out. "They're not surrendering."
Royce's face of relief was quickly replaced by one of anger and panic. He raced to his chair and immediately sent a communications request to the Resonante.
"Kord! What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Royce shouted. "You wanna get us all killed?"
Kord, on the other end of the line, looked at Royce with disgust and disdain. "Unlike you and your crew, Royce, the Resonante isn't afraid of death."
"No one aboard my ship is afraid of death," Royce quickly countered. "But what you're doing is meaningless. You're going to get turned into a heap of debris."
"Hmph," Kord stared at Royce. "I don't give a fuck what you and your group of rag-tag pussies think of us. We are true pirates, not some idealist bastards that want to become the dogs of some corporate cunts. We will die as we have lived, shooting our way out of this, as true pira-"
Kord didn't get to finish speaking as the connection was cut abruptly. Looking out the right side of the viewport towards the Resonante, Royce watched as the ship was torn to shreds as every single railgun aboard the 4 IUC vessels fired on it. In a split second, the Resonante had become a hole-riddled hunk of metal drifting in space.
The lights flickering on and off, along with the sparking circuitry, illuminated the bridge of the Personante for split seconds at a time. The bridge had been torn to shreds, with holes everywhere, and some parts glowing red-hot from the railgun slugs. The door of the bridge was a haunting sight, as it was painted with the bright red color of arterial blood, and chunks of meat that once belonged to humans, could be seen floating about.
Royce stared at the wreckage, zooming into the bridge through his console, and momentarily catching a glimpse of Kord's hairless head floating attached to about 5 inches of what remained of his torso.
"Good to see you're not as much of an idiot as your friend," the female voice from earlier called out again over the open channel. "Move your ship away from the wreckage and prepare for boarding."
Aboard the Indifference, Rhen cut the connection over the open channel and started a new one with the 3 Heavy cruisers, diving straight into giving orders. "Captain Sainz and Captain Brauch, commence SAR (Search and Rescue) of any possible survivors aboard the Vengeance and Swift Justice. Captain Rodriguez, you will initiate C-SAR (Combat Search and Rescue) aboard the vessel that the Retribution is currently merged with. I also request that you send two squadrons of Marines to board the Heavy Frigate. I will send two squadrons of my own Marines to accompany yours. I will personally lead the SAR of any surviving personnel aboard the Retribution... and body... retrieval for our fallen."
Captain Sains, Brauch, and Rodriguez all nodded solemnly at Commander Rhen before ending the call.
Commander Rhen sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as she stared at the wreckage of the Retribution, whose entire front half had been badly weakened by the railgun fire from the heavy frigates and was now missing after its collision with Jarl Dierdik's ship.
"What a fucking mess," she said softly.
She watched the primary viewscreen of the Indifference. The visuals relayed from the forward sensors were high-definition, unsparing in their clarity. They showed a twisted, fused monument of metal where the Retribution had driven itself like a kinetic spear into the stern of the Swift Passage. The luxury liner's white, pristine aesthetic was shattered, stained with scorch marks and venting atmosphere that froze instantly into glittering crystals.
"Commander, the Whisper of War and Aide of Death have launched their Marines to board frigate and the medical teams to our downed ships," her comms officer reported, his voice subdued.
"Good," Rhen said, her voice betraying the turmoil churning in her gut. She turned to her XO. "You have the bridge. Keep a lock on that vessel. If they so much as twitch a maneuvering thruster before our men reach them, then you're free to scatter them."
"Aye, Commander."
Rhen marched off the bridge, headed straight for the armory and launch bay. She wasn't going to just sit around and wait for reports. She was going to go in just like she had said. Kaelen Starthmore was a legend in the academy, a man whose tactics were studied in textbooks. To see him reduced to this chaotic end felt like a violation of the natural order.
In the armory, the atmosphere was a mix of disciplined silence and the clattering of heavy equipment. Two squads of the IUC's finest Marines, the "Void Stalkers," were already suiting up. Their armor was matte black, bulky with hardened EVA plating and integrated life-support systems designed for the harshest environments known to man.
"Commander on deck!" a Sergeant barked.
"As you were," Rhen ordered, moving to her personal locker. She pulled on her undersuit, the smart-fabric sealing against her skin, before stepping into the heavy hardsuit. The mechanical hiss of the seals locking into place was a familiar comfort. "Loadout is C-SAR standard. We are expecting heavy structural instability, active radiation leaks, and zero-atmosphere conditions. We are also entering a crime scene, but priority one is life preservation. We'll be extracting the living first. The dead ain't going anywhere."
She grabbed her helmet, locking it into place. The HUD flickered to life, bathing her vision in amber telemetry data. "Sergeant Kove, your squad will join the sweep of the Swift Passage. Secure the target, Jarl Dierdik, if he's alive. My squad is taking the Retribution."
"Copy that, Commander," Kove replied.
They moved to the shuttle bay. The transport, a squat, heavily armored boarding craft known as a "Leech," was prepped and waiting. Rhen strapped into the crash seat, the harness digging into her shoulders. As the shuttle launched, the G-forces pressed her back, but she kept her eyes on the monitor mounted on the bulkhead.
The approach to the wreckage was haunting. As they got closer, the scale of the destruction became apparent. The Retribution was a ruin. The rear third of the ship was simply... gone, sheared away by the frigate fire before the collision. The remaining fuselage was twisted, the armor plating peeled back like the skin of a fruit to reveal the skeletal superstructure beneath.
"Contact in ten seconds," the pilot announced. "Mag-clamps arming. Targeting a hull breach near the mid-section of the Retribution. It looks like the most stable entry point to access the bridge."
Thunk. Clang.
The Leech shuddered as it made contact with the dead corvette. The magnetic clamps engaged with a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated through the hull.
"Seal established. Cutting laser active," the pilot said.
Rhen unbuckled. She grabbed her mag-rifle, not for combat, but because a weapon was an extension of her arm, and a heavy-duty cutting tool. "Marines, on me. Mag-boots on. Assume zero gravity beyond the airlock."
The airlock hissed, cycling rapidly before the outer door slid open.
The silence was always the first thing that hit Rhen during deep-space boarding actions. The absolute, suffocating silence of the vacuum. Sound existed only through conduction, such as the vibration of her boots on the deck, the hum of her suit, and the sound of her own breathing.
They stepped into what had once been a corridor on Deck 3 of the Retribution. The collision had crumpled the deck plates upward. Wires hung like creeping vines, some still sparking silently, casting strobe-light shadows against the walls. Floating in the air were thousands of objects, clipboards, coffee mugs, tools, and globules of hydraulic fluid that shimmered like rubies in the tactical lights of the Marines' rifles.
"Check your radiation counters," Rhen ordered, her voice calm over the squad channel.
"Reading elevated levels, but the suit shielding is holding," a medic, Corporal Hynes, reported. "It's the engine core from the Swift Passage. The Retribution basically cracked it open. We're swimming in leak-off."
"Then let's keep moving. The Bridge is three decks up... or forward, depending on how twisted this frame is," Rhen said.
They moved methodically. Without gravity, 'up' was relative. They pulled themselves along handrails that were bent almost double, kicking off bulkheads to glide over treacherous gaps.
They found the first body within 50 meters of exploring. It was a crewman, floating face down, his uniform singed. A jagged piece of bulkhead plating had pierced his chest. The blood had crystallized into a jagged, frozen flower erupting from the wound.
Rhen paused for a microsecond, a flicker of sorrow behind her visor, before compartmentalizing it. "Tag the location and move on."
The further they went, the worse the damage became. The ship hadn't just crashed; it had been compressed. In some places, the ceiling and floor had met, forcing the team to cut their way through blast doors or navigate through service vents that were barely wide enough for their armored shoulders.
"Commander," the point man called out. "Look at this."
They reached a junction that led toward the Command Deck. The entire starboard wall was missing. Rhen looked to her right and saw nothing but the swirling, bruised colors of the Seraphim Nebula. The corridor ended in a sheer drop into infinity. The stars looked cold and indifferent.
"Safety lines," Rhen commanded. "Tether up. One slip here and you drift until your oxygen runs out."
They hooked their tethers to the remaining structural beams and crossed the gap, suspended over the abyss. Rhen looked down, or out, and saw the twisted wreckage of the Retribution's port maneuvering thruster drifting a mile away.
"I'm picking up faint transponder signals from the bridge," Hynes said, his voice tense. "Weak, but they're there. Life support is critical. We're talking minutes of reserve air, if that."
"Double time, people," Rhen ordered. "Create a seal and burn through the door."
They reached the heavy blast door protecting the bridge. It was buckled, jammed into its frame by the force of the impact. The metal was hot to the touch on her thermal sensors, residual heat somehow retained in the vacuum of space from the friction of the crash.
"Are we sealed?" Rhen asked. She got a nod form one of the Marines and nodded back at him. "Alright, set the charges."
Two Marines slapped localized breaching charges on the hinges. "Fire in the hole."
The explosion was a dull thud in the vacuum thay was felt more than heard. The door blew inward, spinning lazily into the bridge before crashing against a console.
Rhen propelled herself through the smoke and debris, her flashlight cutting through the gloom.
The bridge of the Retribution was a tomb of red emergency lighting and floating carnage. The viewport was a spiderweb of cracks, miraculously holding back the void, but the structural supports had collapsed. The ceiling had caved in on the starboard side.
"Start searching the room! Medics, get your asses moving and scan for life signatures!" Rhen barked, scanning the devastation.
There were bodies everywhere. The bridge crew hadn't stood a chance against the sudden deceleration and the railgun impacts. Most were still strapped to their chairs, their necks broken by the whiplash or their bodies riddled with shrapnel.
"I have a pulse!" Hynes shouted, pushing off a floating console to reach a station near the communications array. "Two signatures here!"
Rhen drifted over. Buried under a collapsed conduit and a pile of debris was Lieutenant Valis. Beside her, slumped over the navigation console, was the navigator, Kiara.
Valis was conscious, barely. Her eyes were glazed, staring at nothing, more likely in a high of adrenaline than aware of her surroundings. Her left arm was bent at a sickening angle, the bone visible through the fabric of her flight suit, and a shard of glass from a monitor was embedded deep in her thigh. Blood globules floated around her head like a halo.
Kiara was in worse shape. She was unconscious, her breathing shallow and ragged. Her helmet was missing, and the air in the bridge was thin, toxic, and freezing. Frost was forming on her eyelashes.
"Get masks on them, now!" Rhen ordered. "Stabilize them enough to move the and get them prepped for extraction."
"Commander..." Hynes hesitated, looking toward the center of the bridge. "You need to see the Admiral."
Rhen turned slowly, dread pooling in her stomach.
The captain's chair, or what was left of it, had been torn from its mountings and smashed against the main tactical display.
Kaelen Strathmore was there.
Rhen floated toward him, her magnetic boots disengaging so she could drift silently. The sight that greeted her tested every ounce of her military composure.
Kaelen was a broken doll. The crash had thrown him forward with such violence that the safety restraints had severed, but not before crushing his chest. He was pinned to the wreckage of the console by three reinforced steel rods, likely structural supports from the ceiling that had sheared off. Two had pierced his abdomen, and the third had gone through his right shoulder, pinning him to the bulkhead behind the console.
"His legs..." Rhen grimaced. His legs were trapped beneath the crushing weight of the fallen tactical table. The metal had flattened them. There was no shape of legs left, just a compressed mass of suit and biological matter.
His back was twisted unnaturally, bent backward over the edge of the console. Even without a medical scanner, Rhen knew his spine was shattered in multiple places.
And yet, the bio-monitor on his suit, cracked and flickering, showed a heartbeat.
It was slow and erratic, but it was there.
"Admiral?" Rhen whispered, kneeling beside him in the zero-G, grabbing a handhold to steady herself.
Kaelen's head lulled. His helmet visor was shattered, the glass gone. His face was a mask of blood from a deep gash on his temple, and his skin was the color of gray ash.
At the sound of her voice, his eyes fluttered open. They were bloodshot, unfocused, swimming in shock and pain so deep it likely transcended feeling.
"Mark?... No, Rhen..." The name was a bubble of blood escaping his lips, barely audible over the suit's audio pickup. "Did... did I... get him?"
Rhen looked at the man who had taught her fleet tactics. He was dying. By all rights, he should be dead. Only sheer, unadulterated spite was keeping his heart pumping.
"We're checking now, Kaelen," Rhen said softly, her hand gripping his armored forearm. "But you wrecked his ride. That's for damn sure."
Rhen then turned away from Kaelen, her voice hardening. "Extraction team! Get the jaws over here. We need to cut him out gently. His spine is compromised. If you jostle him too hard, you'll kill him."
"Commander, look at these injuries," Hynes whispered, floating up beside her with a scanner. "His internal bleeding is massive. The rods are effectively acting as plugs. If we pull them..."
"Then don't pull them," Rhen commanded. "Cut the rods and leave them in. We'll be extracting him with the metal inside. Cauterize the leg wounds as soon as the pressure is off. What are you waiting for? Get to work!"
The team went to work. It was a gruesome, delicate operation. The hydraulic cutters whined as they sheared through the steel rods pinning the Admiral. Kaelen grunted, a wet, guttural sound, his body spasming as the vibrations traveled through the metal and into his flesh.
"Morphine," Rhen said. "Max dose."
"Administered," Hynes replied.
It took twenty minutes to free him. Twenty minutes of cutting metal, moving debris, and watching Kaelen's life signs dip into the red and bounce back. When they finally lifted the tactical table off his legs, Rhen looked away. The ruin of his lower body was catastrophic.
They secured him to a grav-stretcher, a rigid board designed to lock the spine in place. A containment field was activated around him to maintain pressure and atmosphere.
"Valis and Kiara are stabilized," a Marine reported. "Valis is asking about the Admiral."
"Tell her he's alive, that's all she needs to know for now," Rhen said. "Move out. Let's get the survivors back to the ship first. We'll come back for the fallen once the living are safe."
The trek back to the Leech was slower, encumbered by the stretchers. Rhen took point, her rifle raised, though the only enemy here was the environment. They navigated the twisted corridors, floating the stretchers through the gaps with agonizing care. Every bump, every jar, could be the end for Kaelen.
As they passed the breach where the universe stared back at them, Rhen looked out at the Indifference. She paused momentarily before continuing to march until they made it to the airlock. Inside the shuttle, medics swarmed the stretchers the moment the seals were pressurized.
"Get this bird moving," Rhen ordered, stripping off her helmet. She wiped sweat from her forehead, her hair matted. "Contact the Indifference. Let them know that I want the trauma team ready in the hangar bay."
As the shuttle detached and banked away from the wreckage, Rhen moved to the communications station at the back of the transport. She pulled up the fleet status.
"How's everything going?" she asked into the headset.
Captain Brauch of the Whisper of War came on the line first. His image was grainy. "Indifference, this is Whisper. We have completed the sweep of the Swift Justice wreckage."
"How many casualties?" Rhen asked, her eyes drifting to the medical monitors where Kaelen's heart rate was beating at a slow rhythm.
"It's bad, Commander," Brauch replied. "The reactor explosion gutted the engineering section. We found twelve survivors huddled in the forward escape pods, mostly junior crew. But we have confirmed four dead in the primary hull." Brauch paused. "Captain Thel is among the dead. We found his body on the bridge. It looks like he stayed behind to ensure the ship held its blocking position until he took a direct hit."
Rhen closed her eyes for a second. Thel. So many fond memories of the old joker, and now that's all that remained, memories...
"Understood, Whisper. Secure the survivors," Rhen said. "Captain Rodriguez, status on the Vengeance?"
The captain of the Aide of Death responded, his tone grim. "Indifference, the Vengeance is a ghost ship. We checked the logs, they went into a spin, and the centrifugal force... it killed almost everyone who wasn't strapped into a crash couch. Blunt force trauma on a massive scale. We have recovered fourteen bodies."
"Survivors?"
"One," Rodriguez said. "Captain Zev. He was strapped into the command chair. He's battered, concussed, and dehydrated, but he's alive. He was conscious and the only one left on the bridge when we got there. He was just... sitting there, staring at the debris field."
Rhen let out a long, ragged breath and looked back at the stretcher where Kaelen lay. The medics were working frantically, shouting out blood pressure numbers that were terrifyingly low. His body was shattered, and he'd likely be paralyzed forever unless he undergoes extensive body modifications, if he even survives the night.
"Commander," the pilot called out. "We're on final approach to the Indifference."
"Copy that," Rhen said. She looked at the display showing the wreckage one last time. The Retribution and the Swift Passage were drifting together, a funeral pyre burning in the cold dark.
She opened a channel to the Marine squad she had sent to the luxury liner. "Sergeant Kove, report. Did you find Jarl Dierdik?"
There was a pause, filled only by the static of the nebula.
"Commander," Kove's voice came back, sounding unsettled. "We've breached the Swift Passage. We're at the safe room. The door was sealed, but the structural damage from the Retribution's impact compromised the integrity of the panic room's floor. We'll be breaching now."
The sound of a muffled explosion came through the comms, followed by a brief firefight, which had Rhen on the edge of her seat. "Kove, Come in! Seargent kove!"
"I'm still here, commander," Sergeant Kove replied, his breath ragged. "I got hit, but I'll live. Enemies neutralized, and target secured."
"Get up, you piece of shit," a faint shout was heard over Sergeant Kove's comms.
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Starting next week, on Tuesday the 10th, I'll return to uploading 3 chapters a week. 1 additional Chapter will be uploaded on Sundays.
You can read up to 25 Advanced Chapters, plus an additional 2 that shall be uploaded today on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Sci-fi is the way.