God's Dogs Book 2
Chapter 12

What we experience in our childhoods that comes to seem normal, or even inevitable, is that if you are placed in a hierarchy, you probably are immediately anxious about going further down and you’re striving to go further up, so your energies get placed into becoming “more than,” or at least not becoming “less than,” instead of becoming “part of.”

Gloria Steinem

The trip would take about a month, including two refueling stops about ten days apart. Their destination was the local quadrant capital of the Galactic Congress, but it was still over a thousand light years from League space. The invitation for the conference included directions on how to get there, including the coordinates for the refueling, re-provisioning stops.

None of the Coyotes liked the inflexible itinerary, and they advised the captain to hurry their journey. Their intuition was confirmed at the first refueling stop. As the ship transitioned out of hyper, a destroyer-sized warship opened fire on them.

The Blue Dragon’s crew was already at battle stations, shield at full power and weapons charged. Quinn sat at an auxiliary tactical station on the bridge. Moss was at a similar station in engineering. River and Pax were in the armory with the ready security team. All of them wore light armor.

“Hail them,” Captain Williams ordered.

“No response, ma’am.”

“Return fire and initiate random walk.”

Quinn watched the readouts on his station’s screen. The bulbous bow of the enemy, which was facing them, protected the ship’s spine and aft engine compartments. Plus, the bow was clustered with cannons and missile tubes.

The tactical officer next to Quinn reported, “It’s a stand-off, ma’am. Unless they drain our shields, they can’t hurt us, but we can’t hurt them either.”

“Then what’s their game?” the captain muttered.

Quinn took that as a direct question and answered, “To fix us in place. Probably for a mass attack of smaller boarding vessels.”

“Anything on sensors?” the captain wanted to know.

“Getting returns now off a full military ping,” the operator said. “A dozen ships near the refueling station, but that’s light minutes away. There is a ship boosting from across the system, but it won’t get here for three and a half or four hours.”

Williams glanced at Quinn.

“We’ve got three hours to figure something out,” Quinn said.

Shiva, Quinn’s A.I., took that as his cue and linked with the other A.I.s on their own battle-net. Over the next several seconds, they gamed out scenario after scenario.

At length, Shiva reported, [You aren’t going to like this, but we need to board and capture that destroyer.]

Quinn reviewed the plan as it appeared in the inner space he and Shiva shared, and he agreed. He didn’t like it. [Okay. Share this with the team and the ship A.I. Also, have River read in Raina. We will need her to manipulate the shield.]

Quinn brought his attention to the captain. “We have a plan. I’m not real thrilled with it because of the unknown variables.”

Quinn paused before continuing, “Ship, have you downloaded the plan and worked out your part?”

From the speakers on the bridge, the ship’s Class 1 A.I. answered, “I have, Coyote Quinn. I need to enter my protest to this plan on the record.”

“Noted,” Quinn said. “Please display it on the main screen.”

After the scenario played on the screen, the tactical officer remarked, “You’re shitting me.”

“Mr. Quesada,” Williams rebuked him.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“Quinn,” she went on, “what are the odds of this working?”

“We give it 60% with no casualties.”

The captain let out a long sigh. “Approved, then, Quinn. How much time do you need to get ready?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“First phase in twenty, Mr. Toyo. See that we are ready.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Quinn hurried to the armory where he met up with the team and their security support. River was packing her light armor with a combat load-out. She told him, “Raina is in engineering. All the other passengers are locked down in their cabins.”

Quinn nodded and began strapping on his combat load. Moss, the only one in a heavy armor exo-suit, detached from the suit’s housing and stomped toward the door. Pax was behind him, also in light armor and a full combat load.

“Sir,” an older security man approached Quinn. “Chief Montana. I’m to escort you to the monitoring station by loading bay C-14. My team is your backup on this op.”

“Lead on, chief,” Quinn said. “We’ll leave a comm-repeater at our entry point and let you know when to follow us. I hope to gain their surrender before you come aboard.”

The loading bay was smaller than the other bays – a mere sixty-foot cube. It was loaded with stacked crates. Next to the hatch was a monitoring station that was now tied into the tactical channel.

The captain was saying, “Ready, helm? We are about to play chicken with aliens.”

“In position now, skipper. Transferring helm control to the ship.”

The A.I. said, “I have control. Initiating Chicken protocol.”

The view shifted to show the enemy ship. The Blue Dragon was now boosting toward it and gaining speed.

“Impact in twenty seconds,” the A.I. said.

“It’s maneuvering,” came Toyo’s voice.

“Adjusting,” the A.I. said.

“Main engines are firing,” Toyo said as the enemy ship tried to reverse course. “He blinked, captain.”

“We will gain entry port-side amidships,” the A.I. reported. “Prepare for emergency reverse thrust in five seconds.”

“Seal suits,” Quinn said and his helmet extruded from the sleeve at his collar to enclose his head.

The ship went to emergency reverse thrust that brought it alongside the enemy destroyer. Then Raina’s voice came over the speaker as the view showed the Blue Dragon a hundred yards from the enemy hull. “Matching shield frequencies, and they are disabled. You have a thirty meter wide tunnel, Quinn.”

“Open the hatch,” Quinn ordered. “Moss, make us a hole.”

Moss fired his jets to get clear of the ship and then sent a three-foot long missile to the laser point he painted on the hull of the enemy ship.

That produced a ten-foot diameter hole in the outer hull. He then fired a second missile to open up the inner hull. That brought a gush of atmosphere, and anything not nailed down streamed into space, including four crew members.

The team jetted through the hole into the enemy ship.

“Seal it,” Quinn ordered. Pax and River spread a lightweight, nano-reinforced fabric across the opening, which stuck once it was in contact with metal. Then they used their pistols at a low intensity to laser seal the inner hull.

Meanwhile, Moss advanced on the aft pressure door that sealed the hall because of the hull breach.

“Sealed,” Pax said when they finished with the fabric seal, and Moss sent another missile into the pressure door. Air rushed in until the pressure equalized.

“Seal is holding,” River told them and activated her grav-control so she could float near the top of the ten-foot high ceiling.

Moss led as they marched to engineering. Quinn and Pax flanked him a few steps back. River kept rear watch and high guard.

Shiva reported to Quinn, [We’re into their computer system, but their security is too good to take it over. We are trying to open communication with them, but we don’t have this species’ language in our download from the Congress.]

[Send what you have to Blue Dragon,] Quinn directed. [Maybe he can do something with it.]

[Sent,] Shiva said. [We do have the ship’s layout and crew complement. There are 300 hostiles.]

[Location?]

[We can’t get that. At least, not yet. River and Becky are doing what they can to break into their system.]

Moss blew down another hatch. In the distance, he could see crew working to set up a barricade. He launched another missile at them. The missiles were attached to fold-down panels on the back of the exo-suit. They rotated up for firing. There were five missiles on each panel.

The passageway, similar to many ships’ design, was one long hallway. Ships tended to long hallways on both port and starboard along the inner hull. It made travel as well as stocking the ship easier. In this case, though, it made it easier for Quinn’s team to gain access to the engineering spaces.

The crew responded before they got there. Withering fire met them as they tried to cross a connecting passageway. Their shields held, at least at first.

“I’m down to 80%, Quinn,” Moss said.

Pax answered, “That’s because they’re aiming at you.”

“River, can you take out some of their shooters?” Quinn asked.

“Moving up,” River said. “All quiet behind us for now.”

She floated above Moss and fired five shots from her sniper rifle. For a moment, the barrage of fire ceased. Moss pushed aft toward the end of the hallway.

“Pax and I will punch through these compartments to get behind them,” Quinn said to River. “You stay with Moss. We’ll meet at engineering.”

She clicked acknowledgement, dropped to the floor, and sprinted after Moss.

Cross-corridors and hatches to compartments were before her, as well as stairs heading up and down. Partial catwalks hung on the inner hull and were more frequent the further aft they ran. The ceiling also grew to forty feet above them as they neared the engines.

Crew took shots at them from behind and from the catwalks, but it wasn’t a coordinated effort until they came to the firewall at the end of the corridor. Turning inward, they met a hail of both laser and frangible fire.

Moss took the fire long enough to light off a pair of missiles, but the barricade’s shield held. Behind it was a platoon of soldiers.

“Well, shit,” Moss complained as he ducked back behind the corner. “I wonder how that will hold up to a rail gun.”

“Well, don’t break their engines,” River snorted.

Moss grinned. “Quinn, stay out of the corridor for a minute. I’m sending 60 mm DU slugs downrange.”

Hearing the confirming clicks, Moss stepped into the hallway and pumped rounds downrange from both forearm cannons. The enemy shield flared a few times before failing. The barricade across the hall shattered into flying splinters, and bodies, torn up by the slugs, littered the space behind it. The far wall was also damaged as the depleted uranium rounds punched holes all the way to the inside of the outer hull.

“Okay, Quinn,” Moss said. “They’re all yours.”

“Yeah,” River commented, “we’ve got bad guys massing behind us.”

Moss whipped around and began firing down the corridor, making sure he shot through the corners to the connecting corridors he could see.

The blast of a breaching charge echoed behind them, and Quinn called, “We’re into engineering. Hold the door, Moss. River, get up high when you get here. They’ve got this place fortified.”

The engineering space was three levels, some of it open, some of it compartmentalized and connected by catwalks. It was cramped in one way, but expansive in another – a three-dimensional maze that housed engines, generators, FTL drives, life support, fuel, and more. It could easily conceal a company of soldiers.

Moss took up station at the door. River slid through it and toggled on the camo feature of her suit and hovered to the catwalk twenty feet above. From there she surveyed the battlefield. Pax and Quinn showed up on her HUD as green dots, but she couldn’t see them otherwise as they were also camouflaged.

“Quinn,” she sent, “it looks like the command shack is in the middle, in front of those big engine compartments. Plus, there’s about ten guys guarding it.”

“Okay. Take them out when I tell you.”

She clicked confirmation and moved up to a better sniper position. Below, the agitated crew, armed with both pistols and rifles, were trying to figure out where the team was located.

“We’re in position,” Quinn said. “Take the ones in the middle; we’ll get the ones on the right and left.”

“Okay,” she replied and calmly snapped off eight rounds. Then she saw Quinn and Pax drop their stealth and punch into the office. More flashes of laser fire ensued, and River picked off more crew as they hurried to reinforce those inside.

Quinn said, “I’m shutting down everything I can figure out.”

“That ought to get their attention,” Moss quipped.

After long minutes of battling the swarming crew, Captain Williams voice came over the combat channel. “Quinn, we’re in communication with the bridge. They have surrendered and would like it if you turned life support back on.”

Quinn chuckled. “I don’t know which one that is.”

After a moment, Williams told him, “Their captain will send someone down. Don’t shoot him.”

Quinn called the security detail over to round up what was left of the crew and secure them. Once the crew was accounted for, Williams assigned a prize crew to take command. The second ship boosting towards them veered off, apparently notified that the ambush had failed, and the warship was under new management. Once the destroyer was secured, both it and the Blue Dragon proceeded to the refueling station. The team stayed aboard to reinforce the security team.

Once at the refueling station, the Penglai diplomatic team filed an incident report and claimed the enemy ship as a prize. The local officials weren’t sure what to do with a ‘prize’ of battle, but dutifully forwarded the notification to their superiors. They also took charge of the ship’s crew with charges of piracy hanging over them.

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