Sun Star

Sun Star - Log 2: An Unfriendly Face

Sun Star

Log 2: An Unfriendly Face


L'Datte and Simm quickly followed the captain past the anteroom and deeper into his well lit enclave, and Simm’s mind was already strategizing a multiplicity of probabilities of various proven counter-techniques that could alleviate their current distress; unfortunately the only information he had to work with were the names that the mysterious face had proudly bellowed: ‘The Signet Alliance and the Allied Protectorate‘, and the fact that whatever force was threatening them possessed at least one charged particle beam cannon, which indicated that their unexpected guests had a significant amount of resources at their disposal.

Upon stepping into the inner chamber, Simm and L'Datte were met by the freezing, grim-set stare of the Sun Star’s captain. A thousand thoughts could flow through the captain’s mind in an instant, and at any given time there was simply no telling what he was contemplating. The captain had been a prisoner, in a former life, and the mastermind of many off-world heists in a life before that, so he had grown accustomed to staying “five steps ahead of the enemy”, as he would often say.

“I suppose you’ve heard enough to accurately asses our current situation.” He said flatly in his usual tone, which would never betray the slightest hint of emotion or intention. “What I can’t figure out is how a force with no name is using a charged beam; there’s only one force that can afford such things, and they don’t lie about their identity.”

Simm thought it odd that the captain would spend the remaining two of the given four minutes in the countdown to their aforethreatened jettison contemplating a matter of intrigue, when the obvious priority was to devise a plan for offensive action or retreat. The captain had a point, however. Simm had never heard of the Signet Alliance or the Allied Protectorate, and was quite sure by the look on L'Datte’s face that he hadn’t either. His first reaction was that it may be an insurgent force seeking political realignment (which might not be such a bad thing in his estimation), but he had only read about such factions in history books. The only authority that had existed for eons was the Central Governance Authority, and as the captain had said, they would never use deception to accomplish their ends; they much preferred brute strength of numbers and threats of political repercussion.

“I think we should have a look at what we’re facing, captain.” reported L'Datte, “we don’t even know how many vessels are out there.”

“Tried that, just before you two came in, while that ugly mug was introducing himself. The second blast must have damaged the aft viewing lenses. We can see in front of us and to both sides,” he pointed as he spoke, “but whatever is out there is staying put directly behind us.” He pointed across the room to four tightly-packed monitors. Three showed a view of empty space, with a hint of a wing and a section of hull showing on one monitor, indicating that the lens needed to be realigned. The fourth monitor, which belonged to the aft lens, was completely blank.

“What we really need then,” L'Datte said, “is a little more time… Captain, If we make them believe that we’re ready to surrender, we could gain another five, maybe six minutes before they can shuttle a party over. The aft docking port may have been damaged by one of those blasts… We could tell them to dock aft first, and who knows how much time that could buy us before they decide to try the starboard dock.”

“It’s a good start,” replied the captain. He was already headed back to the anteroom as he said it. After punching in an Incoming Communication Source Recall algorithm he boldly stepped in front of the large monitor upon which L'Datte and Simm had seen their new enemy only three minutes prior, and waited as the pair began to discuss their situation in hushed tones. A few seconds passed before the same ugly face appeared again, this time with a noticeably less irritated demeanor.

“Captain, I see  you’re prepared to make the wise choice. That is well.” The face smiled.

“It appears as if I have no other choice, at present, but before I hand my venture over to the ‘Allied Protectorate’,” he spoke the name with obvious contempt, “I’d like a few answers. Its not every day that a captain is approached with a demand of this magnitude, as I’m sure you understand.”

The face laughed briefly, and patronizingly replied, “A wise leader deserves to understand his situation, and to know his demise by nature as well as by name. Ask your questions, but ask them quickly.” The captain could not afford to be offended at the man’s tone, so he continued to buy time for his weapons specialist and engineering genius as they frantically continued to argue their options, or apparent lack thereof.

“First, I want to know who you are, and I’m not talking about another long winded recitation of your inappropriately verbose title.” He paused for a moment, hoping to catch a reaction on the man’s face. Other than a slight twitch of the left eye, it remained unchanged. “The Authority is the only governing body on terran worlds, and certainly the only force capable of deploying that toy that you use to say hello.”

“As I have said,” the face responded calmly, “your vessel is being appropriated by the Signet Alliance for the glory of the Allied Protectorate and its subsidiaries. You are correct that the… ‘Authority’… has been the only governing body known to man for as long as man has known, as it were, but its days are now numbered. The Alliance will soon be the ultimate power in the ocean of space and on all terran worlds.”

“I wonder…” the captain now realized that he could buy all the time he needed. The Alliance was obviously in no hurry for this acquisition, most likely because the odds of its failing were currently miniscule. “If your forces do replace the Authority, do you intend to gain political support the same way you’re attempting to gain my vessel?”

The face did not hesitate. “Of course. The Alliance believes in efficiency, and knows how to focus on the bottom line. Unlike the Authority, our new government will be lean and effective.”

“The bottom line?” The captain interrupted.

“Our profit margin. I would think that a pirate captain would have a profound appreciation for the pursuit of profit.”

“Yes, as a captain I well understand the concept of profit, as well as I most intricately understand the nature of taking things by force, but I’m still confused. I thought the role of government was to provide for the citizens it depends on, while most often losing more resources than it gains in the process.” The face scowled at this, and narrowed his eyes slightly, but the captain continued. “If a governing body possessed of the same philosophy as myself and my crew were to overthrow the Authority, I believe it should put us right out of business.”

“It is the intention of The Signet Alliance and its subsidiaries to put everyone out of business, unless they wish to do business as a member-entity. We shall be a force funded by taxation, and will set the strictest standards of adherence. It is high time to revive some of the wiser traditions of ancient history.”

As the captain continued to draw the conversion out, L'Datte abruptly waved his arm from the inner chamber. Careful not to turn his head, the captain sensed in his peripheral vision that L'Datte and Simm were both watching him, signaling that it was time to act.

“I seem to be in a hopeless situation. I think it best that we get this nasty business over with as quickly as possible, and continue this discussion at a more convenient time. We’ll meet you at the aft docking port.” The captain successfully showed no hint of hurry or anxiety as he made an open palmed gesture.

“I wish to thank you for your cooperation in this matter.” the face smiled, “We’ve noticed significant damage to your aft dock; expect us at your starboard dock in eight minutes.”

“Roger,” he muttered, and cut the signal. Striding into the inner chamber, he noticed a look of anticipation on L'Datte and Simm’s faces. When neither of them spoke first, he said “They didn’t fall for the aft dock ruse, they’re coming straight to starboard in eight minutes. What have you got?”

Not knowing how to divulge their quickly devised plan in a way that would appeal to the captain, L'Datte blurted out, “an ambush sir.”

“What?” The look on the captain’s face was one of incredulous disbelief. It was exactly the reaction the pair was expecting. Simm stepped forward, to L'Datte’s relief, and put a hand on the captain’s shoulder.

“We’ve considered every other option.” He began, “We really don’t know what’s out there, and I don’t think the Star can put up much of a fight in its condition. We don’t even know the true extent of the outer damage yet, so retreat is an unreliable course of action. The best place to make a stand would be inside the vessel, since we do know the extent of the inner damage.” Simm raised an eyebrow with his last remark, and the captain felt as if he should be having an epiphany at any moment, but it never came.

L'Datte jumped back in to support Simm and said, “We’re talking about the damage to corridor 2-19, about three meters to the left of the starboard docking port doors. There’s a hole about two meters wide exposing the main line of the Ion Delivery System. Energy has been re-routed through a temporary conduit directly above the main line until a repair can be scheduled. If we can shut off the ion flow to the second deck and re-connect the main line at this point, we’ll have a nice surprise waiting for our guests when they arrive.”

Simm spoke up again, sensing that the captain was struggling to grasp what they had in mind. “L'Datte will remain in Engineering and monitor the hall through the lenses in the corridor. Yourself and the crew will need to be in position in the corridor to the left of the door, to lure them towards the hole. When L'Datte sees that the boarding party is nearing the damaged conduit, he’ll re-initialize the ion-flow, which will should burst the main line, causing what we hope to be an un-survivable explosion. Since L'Datte will be out of harm’s way, he’ll be able to discontinue the ion-flow as soon as the job is done, which is where yourself and the crew will be waiting to finish any survivors.”

The captain hesitated, searching for a flaw in their design. Finally he relented and said, “It’s the best we’ve got. Good work. We’ll need to inform the crew.”

“They’ve already been briefed, sir. We’re only awaiting your approval.” L'Datte remarked boldly. It was at this moment that he began to wonder if there may be a hidden opportunity calling his name amid the chaos of their situation. As I’ve said before, L'Datte always had it in his mind to lead the venture. Four months of constant action and daily responsibility had caused him to put any thought of scheming out of his mind, but the response he received from the crew as he contacted them ship-wide and described his plan gave him a feeling that he had not previously known, and for a moment he could picture himself standing in a place of honor, addressing the cunning and fierce crew of the Sun Star before action.


*              *              *


As L'Datte hurried past the enclosed breezeway to Engineering he realized that for the first time since the venture’s launch the quickly familiar room was completely silent. Above and in front of him panels flashed and buzzed in seeming irritation at being suddenly left vacant mid-algorithm as the small crew of the Star rushed to the starboard docking port to meet their captain. There was no need for any detours, as each crewman’s discharge pistol was in his hand before his first step hit the ground running. The captain had ordered Simm to accompany L'Datte as an added precaution. If their first attack failed and L'Datte needed to somehow conceive and perform a miracle, Simm would be able to buy him a considerable amount of time with his experience in close-quarters pistol combat.

“Captain, we’re in place.” L'Datte belted after patching the engineering communications console through to the entire second deck.

“Roger,” came a quick reply. “We’ve shut off the ion-flow from here, and we’ll have the main line re-integrated shortly. Stand by.”

“Any sign of our visitors?” Simm added before the connection was cut.

After a short pause, the captain answered, “Affirmative. A shuttle is approaching starboard… should be arriving in three minutes, I’d guess, but we can delay decompression for at least twenty seconds before they board.”

The crew of the Sun Star stood at the ready with their captain in the corridor. Most of them had been fully briefed by L'Datte during the captain’s conversation with the unfriendly face, and the ones who had not were far from worried. Action was common to the men who lived each day by the seat of their pants with a vice grip on their discharge pistols. All the crew really cared to know was that whatever came through that door needed to be shot, and they were just the men to do it. Not that the crew was entirely made up of men, mind you; in fact seven of the pirate crew were women, one of which still has a significant part to play in the story of the Sun Star’s destiny, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For the moment let us simply say that every one of them was tense and ready to strike, and the captain would not hesitate to lead such fearless individuals into any hopeless situation, and indeed many of them had faced certain death at his side many times, and had returned all the richer from their victories. The only difference between the action they had seen together up to this point and the dire situation that they now faced was that none of them really knew what to expect when the docking port doors opened. There could easily be three dozen well trained soldiers in the shuttle that was now making its final rotation in preparation for docking. This was a fact that the captain could not get out of his mind, but the crew didn’t seem to care one way or another, as long as there was action to be had and plunder to be gained. They were much more occupied contemplating the possibility of hard currency and high-quality rations aboard the enemy vessel than its compliment of soldiers.

L'Datte kept one hand on an ion-re-initialization switch as he punched up a view of the corridor on the communications panel. He could see a team of three crewmen sealing off the hastily re-connected main line, and watched the captain punch a few buttons before his voice rang loud in L'Datte’s ears.

“We’re all set here,” he said confidently, and then turning to the crew he raised his pistol and shouted, “let’s show ‘em how we feel about giving up what’s ours!” His characteristically short and blunt speech brought a mixture of laughter, pistol raising, and jeering as the rowdy crew felt their blood begin to burn with a lust for action.

L'Datte and Simm could see the crew quietly move down the corridor, hopefully out of harm’s way. There was no telling how large the blast would actually be, since most of the time every possible precaution had been taken to avoid what they were about to intentionally orchestrate. Sweat fell into L'Datte’s eyes, as thick blood from Simm’s temple ran into his own. After the first blast of the Alliance’s beam cannon rocked the Star, splitting open his head, Simm had been too busy to notice, and everyone else had been too busy to mention it. Now, however, he realized that his temple was throbbing, and that the blood had not yet stopped flowing freely. Far from phased, Simm wiped his brow with his hand, unceremoniously smearing blood across his forehead, hand, and everything that he touched.

Corridor 2-19 was filled with an excited tension so thick that it was hard to breath. It is a rare sight to behold men with no fear faced with a terrifying situation, and more than one of them was smiling uncontrollably in anticipation. The shuttle outside could no longer be seen through the small docking port window, alerting the crew that it was only seconds away from the hull. A few moments passed before a loud rumble faintly shook the floor. The shuttle had docked. A low hissing could be heard as the decompression sequence started, and the captain, as promised, threw a proverbial wrench in the works by attempting to manually initialize the decompression process after it had already started automatically. This caused the sequence to stop and reset before sensing the presence of the docked shuttle and beginning again. After a few more breathless moments the hissing died down completely. The space-side door was opening. Slowly a large lever on the corridor side of the inner door worked its way to the ‘unlocked‘ position. The corridor-side door was open, and the time for action had finally come.

Immediately five large soldiers burst through the doorway, looking first frantically from left to right, then focusing on the crew which was gathered down the corridor. With their pistols hidden behind their backs, the crew seemed to be in a stance of military submission, daring the soldiers to sense an easy victory. These soldiers were unlike any that L'Datte had seen on Authority governed worlds, and he said so under his breath as he tensely watched from Engineering. They were not in uniform, and each carried a different type of weapon. None of the four stood out as an obvious leader; they resembled a group of thugs more than salaried warriors.

“Have your leader stand forward!” One soldier screamed, as they began to march towards the crew. “This vessel is now under the command of the Allied Protectorate!”

The exposed ion line was only a few steps beyond the docking port door, and L'Datte quickly sensed his queue. He slammed the re-initialization switch forward and was grateful to hear the telltale high pitched hum of ion energy-flow as one of the Star’s main drives began to work harder than the others to flood the second deck with energy. Before they even had time to see the vessel’s reaction on the monitor, the screen flashed completely white. The Sun Star rocked so violently that Simm was thrown to the floor, while L'Datte’s unbroken vice-grip on the switch kept him steady. A sound like lightening ripped through the corridor outside Engineering a moment later, and the pair knew that their plan had worked, and that their fate was now in the capable hands of their captain and crew.

The pair considered sprinting to the aid of the crew, but Simm insisted that they wait until visual communication could be re-established, to make sure there wasn’t a hull breach, or a raging fire, or any number of things that can result from an ion explosion in space. As the image slowly began to re-emerge, however, their hearts sank at the unbelievable scene that met their unblinking stares. The four soldiers that had burst into the corridor could all be seen lying dead near the conduit. Luckily there did not appear to be any major damage to the vessel‘s interior, but that would have been a better sight than that which the pair beheld in reality. Standing over the bodies of the fallen soldiers were at least twenty tall, rough looking men dressed in much the same way as their comrades. At their head was the unfriendly face from the captain’s communications panel monitor, and it was attached to the smallest body in the boarding party. Simm noted to himself that their leader must be a man who was more at home behind a podium than on a battlefield, and more at ease with a keypad than with a pistol. Simm knew from experience that those could be the most dangerous men of all. The captain and crew were struggling to get to their feet after the blast, and were caught at a complete disadvantage by the armed party that had their weapons trained on their heads.

“Slowly captain,” sneered the leader, “I would hate for the Alliance Workforce’s newest members to arrive damaged. If everyone cooperates we can get this business finished at a reasonable time and with as little difficulty as possible.”

The boarding party began to round up the crew in ranks, disarming each one of them in turn, when to L'Datte’s amazement the captain leisurely strolled over to the leader and shook his hand.

“I expect payment will be prompt.” He scowled, not looking the man in the face.

“As promised,” the leader smiled, and handed the captain what appeared to be a large wrapped stack of hard currency.

“What’s going on?” L'Datte exclaimed, but Simm was not phased.

“Looks like we’ve had a rat on board,“ he replied , “the biggest rat of them all. The shepherd that leads his flock to the wolves..”

“We’ve got to do something!” L'Datte burst. “If the crew is being sold to some kind of workforce, what do you think they’ll do to us when they find us here?”

“I have no intention of becoming a patriot today, and I’m inclined to agree with you, but whatever we do, we must do it now.” The pair could see the crew begin to be herded through the docking port and onto the waiting shuttle.

“Why not stick with what works?” Simm smiled.

“You mean boost the ion-flow again? There’s no telling what will happen if we do that. The damage to the main line could have been expanded across the entire corridor; there’s no way to know where an explosion would rupture if we tried that again. We’re lucky we even have a hull after that last burst.”

Simm looked sternly into L'Datte’s eyes. “We do not have a hull at all at the moment, as it would appear that both vessels now belong to our guests. You might not be happy about the possibility of destroying our own ship, but try to remember that the Star is technically theirs now.”

After a pause L'Datte relented. “You’re right, it’s the best we’ve got, and I guess we’ve got less than a minute before everyone is aboard that shuttle.” Without another word or a moment’s hesitation, L'Datte punched in an algorithm to disable the ion-drives’ safety protocols, and set the flow to maximum. Again the reaction in the hall was instant, and the monitor once again flashed completely white.

This time the pair sprinted out of Engineering and hurriedly made their way starboard. Nothing could prepare them for what they witnessed when they arrived at corridor 2-19. Every man from both crews, over forty five in all, was lying still in the corridor or in the short enclosed breezeway connecting the Sun Star to the recently docked shuttle. No sign of movement could be seen, until from the corner of his eye Simm noticed first a twitch from a crewman, then a silent contortion of agony from a soldier. Soft moans could be heard as burned hands slowly reached for melted pistols, and blinded pirates searched in vain for a friend to grasp or an enemy to choke. Each and every individual in the corridor had seemingly either been killed, knocked unconscious, or seriously wounded, but the pair could not easily tell which body was in which condition, or if any enemies were still in a condition to fight.

The captain lay on his stomach near the leader of the soldiers. Both men knew they had to do something about the captain, the soldiers, and their leader, but they had no idea what, and there was no one to help them.

All they knew was that whatever they did, they had to do it fast…


What will become of the crew of the Sun Star!?
Who is the mysterious unfriendly face!?
When and Why had the captain betrayed his crew!?

Don’t miss the next thrilling adventure of the Sun Star!

Next - Log 3: No Rest for the Weary