sidebar image
Chapter 8 Chapter 10

Alternity - Chapter 9

Halcyon Run

Time: (CY 10089 AD Oct 5166)
Location: near the planet Sinti IV.

"Pilot to environmental, Trance, is Aurora strapped in?"

"She's strapped in and sound asleep Beka. Environmental's ready for slipstream."

"Pilot to engineering, Harper, we ready?"

"Everything's ready here, Boss."

"Pilot to crew, all right here we go. Entering slipstream on my mark. Three, two, one, mark."

The Eureka Maru slid into slipstream, the alternate dimension that made interstellar travel possible. Beka navigated the twists and turns of the stream with practiced ease; she had been running this route for the past six months shuttling cargo on the Sinti-Halcyon-Mobius loop.

"Preparing to enter normal space on my mark. Three, two, one, mark."

They entered the normal universe in the outer reaches of the Halcyon system and Beka began checking her navigation instruments, plotting the course to Halcyon. "Ok kids," she said after ensuring everything was in order, "I'll take the first watch, Trance, you and Harper work out who has the second and third watches."

Leaving her younger crew members to work out their watch schedules she settled into the pilots chair where she began to idly speculate on what she would do with her proceeds from the sale of the Maru's cargo. Two hours after assuming the watch her reverie was interrupted by the sound of the electronic intercept alarm going off. Someone had locked a fire control radar onto the Maru.

BEEEEEP. BEEEEEP. BEEEEP.

"What the..?" . A quick check of the radar indicated that the Maru was confronted with every merchant ship captain's greatest nightmare, multiple high-speed contacts on intercept courses. Pirates had ambushed them. Space was too big for a pirate to simply blunder into it's prey, but if a starship's point or origin, destination and time of departure were known in advance, it was generally possible to predict the position where the starship would emerge from the slipstream within a reasonable amount of accuracy.

"Harper!" Beka shouted into the intraship communicator. "Get to the engineering room I need max power. NOW! Incoming bogies. We need to get out of here. Trance, man the weapons station."

Like most merchant ships plying the space lanes the Maru was armed, but two point defense lasers and a handful of deployable false target generators did not make it a warship. Their only real hope lay in flight. Fortunately for the crew of the Maru, the pirates would be unlikely to use heavy weaponry; they wanted to capture the cargo, not destroy it.

The Maru began to buck and shudder as Beka began evasive maneuvering, pushing the ship's antigravity field generators and inertial dampers to their limits. A detached part of her mind noticed Trance arriving at the weapons station, while indicators on the control panel showed that Harper was bringing up the engines to emergency power. As she was maneuvering the ship, Beka began broadcasting an SOS, if the Divine was with them there would be a Halcyon military craft nearby that would respond to the distress call.

"Mayday, Mayday, this is the merchant ship Eureka Maru inbound to Halcyon. We are under attack from pirate vessels and require urgent assistance. Any ships please respond. Mayday. Mayday."

The ship shook violently from the effects of a near miss. A point defense laser could turn an incoming missile to so much plasma, but a cloud of ionized gas moving at near light speed was capable of doing serious damage all by itself. Her radar showed that Trance had deployed the false target generators, but the incoming missiles were ignoring them and she was attempting to destroy them with the ship's defensive lasers. To make things worse, the pirates had nearly closed to the point where they could employ their own lasers and anti proton cannon.

"Beka," Trance cried over the communications system. "Our ESM equipment indicates a transmission coming from the Maru. I think the missiles are homing in on it."

Damn, thought Beka as another near miss caused the Maru to shudder as the plasma cloud impacted the ship, no wonder the pirates found them. With a beacon transmitting they would have known when the Maru arrived in system, and would have had no trouble calculating her course and intercepting her. It also meant that the false target generators were useless. They had been set up. The pirates must have had one or more agents working at the spaceport and who had undoubtedly concealed the transmitter someplace on the outer hull, or in one of the cargo containers in the cargo hold.

WHAANNG! ARRGH! The sound of the explosion within the Maru was followed almost immediately by Harper's scream of pain. The Maru's speed dropped dramatically as warning indicators began flashing. The port side engine was completely off line.

"Harper!" screamed Trance.

"I'm OK, babe, just keep those missiles off of us." From the tone of his voice he most definitely was not OK.

Beka continued her evasive maneuvers, but with one engine down she knew the odds were against them. Trance was sobbing as she operated the weapons console. The missiles were coming in even greater numbers and she was nearing the limits of what she could do to defend the ship. The ship was shuddering almost constantly from a steady bombardment of near misses. The shaking awoke Aurora and she began to wail in fear. Beka heard someone praying, and realized that it was herself.

"Mayday, Mayday, This is Beka Valentine commanding the merchant ship Eureka Maru inbound to Halcyon. We are under attack from pirate vessels. I have injured crew members and require urgent assistance. Any vessels please respond. Mayday. Mayday."

BWAMM! The explosion shook the Maru. The lights flickered, then went out and the emergency lights came on. The entire instrument board was a mass of red warning lights.

A moment later the shipboard computer announced, "Major hull breach in engineering section. Emergency containment procedures have been activated. Engineering section is isolated." The toneless voice of the ship's computer was telling her that if Harper hadn't made it out of the engineering section before the section was isolated he was dead; either from the missile impact or from explosive decompression.

The ship-to-ship communicator came to life and the missile barrage ceased. "Eureka Maru, your position is hopeless. Jettison your cargo and we will let you continue on to Halcyon."

"You bastards, I'd rather blow the Maru up before I give you the cargo. If my engineer is dead, I will hunt the lot of you down. There will be no place in this universe where you will be safe."

"I can assure you that my parents were married," came the voice from the pirate vessel, totally unfazed by Beka's threats. The time delay between Beka's transmission and the pirates response was so short to be almost unnoticeable. The pirates knew the Maru was defenseless and had closed in for the kill. "And as for your threat to destroy the Maru, while your crew might be willing to go along with your decision, do you have the right to make that decision for an infant? What is her name? Ahh yes, I believe the child is named Aurora."

"What guarantee do I have that you will allow us to continue if I jettison the cargo?"

"None at all, but what choice do you have?" The voice on the other end wasn't gloating, he was simply stating facts. They had won, she had lost. "However ,if you do not comply within thirty seconds we will resume our attack. This time we will concentrate our attack on the crew compartment rather than the engineering spaces. Twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty …"

Numbly Beka reached for the control that would jettison the cargo they had all worked so hard for. The pirate vessels began moving in to capture the cargo.

"Thank you. Eureka Maru, you are free to go. Have a nice flight."

With another curse Beka turned off the ship-to-ship communicator.

"Trance, go aft and check to see if Harper made it out of the engineering compartment. Maybe he got out in time."

She didn't have the strength to get out of the pilot's seat. Everything they had worked so hard for was gone.

Chapter 8 Chapter 10