No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter (4 page)

His grip slowly suffocated me.

I gripped his hand instinctively with mine and tried to pull his fingers off my neck. It was useless. He had more strength in one hand than I had in both.

I was back in school again, but he was trying to make me suffer and then kill me. Bullies at school omitted the killing part.

I struggled with him, but he kept the pressure around my neck constant, reducing my oxygen levels. He wasn’t trying to knock me unconscious; he was going to kill me slowly before going for the rest of my men.

Dying of suffocation really sucks. Doesn’t even give you the chance to say your last words properly.

“Thanks for the neck massage,” I said between struggles. “Mind working on another area?”

The corners of Redbeard’s mouth twitched upwards into a fleeting smile. He
did
understand me; he was simply ignoring whatever I said.

I wasn’t going to die without a struggle.

I curled my hands into tight balls and punched him in the ribs, then again, then again. My knuckles hurt even more, but he didn’t even move. He didn’t try to block my fists.

Curse my three-week officers’ boot camp. Why hadn’t anyone prepared me to fight men twice my size? I’d only learned to march, to salute, and to drink myself to unconsciousness whenever the vets invaded our barracks.

When I was about to lose consciousness, Flanagan stood up, stepped behind the Cassock, put a plasma gun against his forehead, and shot him dead.

I gasped for air and recovered my breath. I still felt the Cassock’s hand around my neck as if he continued strangling me. I coughed and struggled to breathe normally.

I know I should’ve fallen with the electric shocks, but adrenaline had saved me.

Whew
. It had been closer than I would’ve liked.

“You okay, sir?” Flanagan stared at me as if expecting me to get a panic attack and lose control.

I couldn’t speak yet; I was too busy getting oxygen back into my lungs. I nodded and gestured at him to wait.

He did. He didn’t smirk or poke fun at me like I’d have expected. He remained alert in case another Cassock noticed us. He wasn’t going to let anyone else catch us by surprise.

Once I’d recovered my senses, my eyes stuck to the Cassock’s lifeless body. Redbeard’s blood gurgled out of his head and his inert eyes stared into emptiness. I gulped, but I couldn’t stop looking at him. I could’ve been in his place if I hadn’t been luckier.

The blood stains unsettled my stomach. Officers aren’t supposed to feel bad when they see blood, but I did.

I’d never killed anyone before, and I hadn’t seen any violent deaths. This had been close to a front-row seat to witness an execution. Some people paid to get those seats in public hangings, but I’d always avoided getting too close to the Reaper in case he wanted to take more than one person at once.

“First blood, eh?” Flanagan broke the rules and smashed a hand against my shoulder to bring me back to reality. “No worries, sir. You’ll get used to it. Couldn’t do much against our old buddy here, other than letting him hit you. Almost believed it myself that you’re used to fighting. And an engineer, no less.” He nodded to himself approvingly. “Taunted the Cassock as if you’d done it all your life.”

I’d earned several points with Flanagan with my actions. Officers rarely cared about earning the crew’s respect, but veterans like Flanagan mark the difference between being followed in battle and being ignored. Small differences define great victories. I was an inexperienced lieutenant, an engineer, and I was going to need all the help I could get.

Flanagan’s heavy hand came down hard onto my shoulder twice more. “Don’t let the lads know that you’re battle green or they won’t listen to you. They’ll do well to listen; you’ve got the fight in you. Just have to let it out.”

Flanagan stared at me with worry. Was he waiting for me to curl up into a fetal position and cry myself to death? The North Star had me and a preteen midshipman as her officers. I had no other choice; nobody wants to rely on kids when weapons and Cassocks are involved. I wasn’t fit for the job, but I had to keep the men alive and rescue the others. The Cassocks weren’t going to kill our men if I could help it.

“Let’s call the others,” I said. “I don’t want anyone relaxing before we’re done.”

Flanagan glanced at me and followed my eyes towards the Cassock. He didn’t believe that I wasn’t faking my strength.

“What is it, Flanagan?” I asked him.

He hesitated and looked at the Cassock. He shook his head and scratched his scruffy grey stubble. “Don’t you need to wash your face, sir? Breathe some air? Sit down for a few minutes? Throw up? You have drops of blood everywhere. More like buckets of blood. Not sure if you’ll want to walk around like that.”

That
explained the smell of iron.

Certain ancient cultures used to place their enemies’ blood over their skin and clothes. Blood showed their power and their strength and warned their remaining enemies of the dangers that awaited them. I’d always admired warrior cultures, but I was no warrior. Blood is icky, full of diseases, and it sticks everywhere.

Posh officers were afraid of letting anyone see them with a stained uniform, so they got distracted cleaning their clothes and died too frequently for my taste. I wasn’t going to put more odds against me.

“I’m fine,” I told Flanagan.

He stared back at me with a ‘
really?
’ expression.

I was fine. Better than usual, in fact. There was enough blood on the floor to scare anyone, especially a soft engineer like me, but I was alive.

Don’t take me wrong; I’m averse to death and violence. But, honestly, I’d rather have the Cassock dead in front of me than with his hand around my neck. Once dead, his threat was over, but we had a whole new set of threats on the other decks and in four other frigates. I couldn’t let myself think about the man’s death or the blood on the floor. My adrenaline levels hadn’t gone back to normal yet, and I needed them to take the other decks.

“Let’s go back with the others,” I told Flanagan. I took my gun back and stole the Cassock’s sword. He wasn’t going to need it, and a new sword always comes handy.

We got rid of the corpse and I hacked into the ship to seal their communications and their axial elevators. Without their intercoms, limiting their movements meant keeping them blind and defenseless, just like they’d left us aboard the North Star.

Once the men had finished disabling the intercoms and preparing the explosives, we gathered near the bridge. Kozinski kept scratching behind his neck and York slapped him on the chest to make him stop. The Cassocks were deadly mercenaries, but they hadn’t noticed our presence aboard their own ship.

We entered the bridge and caught the Cassocks off-guard. They fought bravely, but we knocked them down with our electric guns before they fetched theirs. Cassocks always shoot themselves dead to avoid capture, but we’d incapacitated many of them with our electric guns. We took their weapons and I fetched the captain’s sword.

The captain used a real rapier with a sharp point, pointy enough to stick it into your enemy’s chest. I saluted the incapacitated captain with his own sword and asked the men to lock him and the other Cassocks up in one of the rooms. They weren’t going to tell us where to find the brig, so we’d have to use other means at our disposal.

“Kill me,” the captain said as the men dragged him away. His blue eyes were full of shame and begged for an end to his dishonor. “Kill me.”

The men stopped taking him away. Flanagan would’ve wanted to slit the captain’s throat like he’d just asked. It would’ve been less trouble than doing the paperwork of capturing a ship, taking prisoners home, and making sure that they didn’t cause us any trouble while in our custody.

I’d read about Cassocks. They were an honorable fighter culture who sought perfection in everything they did. They won most fights, and defeat was not an option to them. They despised their enemies and considered us inferior. Our reluctance to end our own lives only encouraged their negative opinions of us.

Is it unfair to force a man to live with dishonor if his culture demands him to take his life? My own survival instincts wouldn’t have allowed me to end my life if there was a remote chance of escape or of success.

I had no right to decide. The Laws of Space were clear, and I had to keep prisoners alive and take them into custody. I was going to follow the rules; I wasn’t going to end my officer career before even starting.

I nodded at the door so that my men continued escorting the captain out. The Cassock captain switched to insulting me in German.

Knowing Cassocks, he probably thought that I was keeping him alive to flay and gut him once we got bored. We weren’t going to hurt him, but he didn’t need to know. I smirked and winked an eye at him. “You’ll see what the Admiralty’s planned for you, mate.”

The Cassock captain’s face reddened with rage, and he started shouting and spitting with every word. Some of my men exchanged satisfied grins with each other. The men needed strong officers, even if it was just a pose.

Once the men had left the bridge with the Cassocks, I finally breathed and stared at my own clothes. I wore a blood-stained olive cassock. I’d broken many laws by supplanting the Cassocks and using their own uniforms, but the men were starting to take me more seriously. Was it the uniform? Had my black engineering clothes limited my credibility? Perhaps I should take a couple of cassocks back to the North Star and wear them. It would make me look badass and dangerous.

We’d expected to rescue our lads, but the frigate’s brig was empty. We still had four more frigates to board. We’d captured one easily; how hard could the others get?

We boarded the second frigate using the same strategy and seized control of it. The Cassock captain ended his own life before we could stop him. The frigate didn’t hold our men hostage either. We tried it once more and a fourth time, and we were equally unlucky.

For the last frigate, we used the communications systems. I used an instant translator to supplant a Cassock and ask for help in the North Star, and the captain quickly sent many of his men aboard transport shuttles. We shot their shuttles down and disabled their engines, but the Cassocks chose not to survive and blew their shuttles up before we reached them. One of our own shuttles had been ready to board the frigate as soon as the others left, and we boarded them to stop the Cassocks from killing our men in retaliation.

We encountered the Cassock captain when he was heading belowdecks, probably to the brig. We exchanged shots and I hit him straight in the chest. The ship was ours. If our men were still alive, they’d be aboard this final frigate.

The adrenaline boost of shooting at the enemy filled me and blinded me with energy. I’d fought once more, and I was starting to like it. Why had I stayed in an engineering lab all my life? I should’ve started shooting sooner. I was awesome!

Are you judging my ego? Do you know what capturing five out of five frigates means? It meant that either the Cassocks were stupid or I’d picked the wrong career.

Capturing ships makes you think that you’re invincible, and now I wanted to take this small fleet and start conquering the universe with it. If I was half as lucky, I’d crush all enemies within a month. Defeating five ships when outmanned and outgunned is no easy task.

“Good shot, sir.” Flanagan put his gun back on his belt and approached the captain, who was retorting in pain with the shock. He was impressed by my luck when shooting, and he was starting to take me seriously as an officer.

Not bad for an ego boost, but the men couldn’t praise their acting captain like one praises a dog when it performs a trick. I’d never paid attention to subtle attacks to my authority, but if real officers took it seriously, so was I. Though, if we were lucky, we’d find a couple extra lieutenants in the brig and I’d return to my lab and forget about leading anyone but my engineers. I couldn’t risk it, though.

“Save your flattery, Flanagan,” I said. “I wouldn’t need to take my gun out if any of you looked at your targets instead of daydreaming.”

Most of my engineers would’ve hidden under a table and wasted hours in breakdown mode. Normal crewmen weren’t like engineers. Flanagan nodded and seemed satisfied with my response. He actually expected officers to keep the men under their boots, and so did the others. The Navy was insane, but it wasn’t horrible if you were an officer.

I left most of our remaining men on the bridge and tasked them with contacting Gomez, who was in charge of the North Star. On my first day as an acting captain, I’d turned into an acting commodore in charge of a fleet of six. Regardless of how many officers we found in the brig, I’d end up commanding one of the frigates back to friendly territory so that the Admiralty transformed her into one of our own.

Once we’d secured the bridge, I took Flanagan’s squad with me to the brig in case we found any rogue Cassocks. When you capture a ship, some enemies end up hidden and waiting for their chance to slit someone’s throat. They’re less likely to act like heroes when you have Kozinski at your side.

We’d disabled the communications and the transportation systems, but fixing the axial elevators was easy… even after Kozinski had used his persuasion skills on their control panels. It took a while, though, and the men had to wait for me to repair the systems to go belowdecks.

“Won’t understand officers, I won’t,” Kozinski told York. He talked quietly and assumed that I couldn’t hear him. “He keeps talkin’ about engineerin’, but then gets us to break things. You need no engineer to break no computer.”

“Shut up,” York cut him. “He’s told us to break stuff because we don’t understand him. He’s an engineer. He’s studied and learned books; wanted a neat solution instead of breaking things.” He moved his hands in the air, drawing a flat line with his palm. “It’s always you and your asking for explanations, you know? We could’ve done things nice and neat. Shortcut and tinker, nice and neat. Not smashing things like brutes. We’ll never get civilized if we don’t act proper.”

York was probably talking about short-circuiting the motherboards and tinkering with the fuel supplies, like I’d suggested before. The message had been distorted in the transmission, but York didn’t mind.

“I ain’t not said nothin’!” Kozinski shook his head and sat on the floor of the room. He kept his back to a wall and faced the entrance. He was used to keeping his back safe from aggressions. “Lieutenant Wood wants to break things, I break ’em, I do. I ain’t not ignoring an officer for your ci… civili… whatever.”

“So you plan to be a seaman forever?” York grunted and sat beside him, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket. The men never used their tablets to gamble and play cards so that their officers couldn’t tell when they were wasting time instead of spending the whole night on watch. He dealt the cards while he continued talking. “You won’t get no real job outside the mines if you can’t act nice and proper.”

“I like this job.” Kozinski drew a card from the pile and groaned. “Keeps me fed, it does. Warm food in front of me every mornin’, better than the wife’s food.”

“That’s because you married wrong, you fool. You had to pick a girl to make you dinner and look after you, not act like a posh lady and make you cook for her.”

Kozinski shrugged. “The lass had nice breasts and a better rear. What could I do?”

Free time sometimes got the men too unfocused. No wonder that many officers became controlling and expected the men to jump whenever they instructed them to. I didn’t mind them chatting, but they weren’t letting me concentrate. If our men were held captive belowdecks, we needed to free them quickly in case Cassock survivors decided to eliminate their prisoners.

“Gentlemen.” I raised my head from the task and looked sternly at them. At least as stern as I could look; I wasn’t used to acting like an officer. “Why don’t you let me concentrate so that we can free our lads? I’m sure that they’ll be eager to get out of the brig.” I returned to work and ignored them. The sooner I fixed the axial elevators, the sooner we’d get some rest.

“You keep talking and don’t let the lieutenant hear himself think,” York told Kozinski.

They continued blaming each other and arguing, but I finally unblocked the axial elevators. The brig was ours.