Vengeance Part 10

Vengeance Part 10

Captain Jorn ordered a cycle of microwarp drive. The cruiser was nearly in range. He needed this loot. He needed the cash. Whilst his comms had been running dark he had been receiving messages, he just wasn’t sending. He'd followed the reports as that capsuleer had slaughtered his old bridge crew. He knew he was next and needed the cash to run. His Drake class battlecruiser closed on the Thorax. It's heavy missiles taking down the armour plates of the hapless cruiser with ease.

"Sir, Assault Frigate on scan"

Jorn froze in fear.

"It's landed 100km off sir. It's aligning out. It's warping off again."

Jorn checked his console. It was him! But he had warped off without engaging.

"Sir what should we do? That was a capsuleer!"

"That capsuleer is a high-value target we need to take him down."

"Sir?" the XO sounded uneasy.

"Launch probes, scan him down!"

It took a few minutes before the Nav Officer got a lock on the Harpy. "Warping to him now sir!"

"Good! I want scram, web and painter on him as soon as we land." Jorn had refitted the ship a week ago especially to take down a Harpy. The warp tunnel collapsed and the Harpy appeared before them.

"What in Divinities Edge!?!?"

The Drake dropped out of warp by a wormhole. They just landed in time to see the Harpy vanished inside.

"Follow him!"

"But sir! That's a violent wormhole, it could lead anywhere!"

Jorn pulled out his side arm and pointed it at the XO.

"FOLLOW HIM!"

The Ferox entered the wormhole and re-established visuals on the Hawk.

"GET HIM!"

"He's warped! He's gone towards that beacon that we have on overview sir."

"Warp to zero! NOW! Catch him as he lands."

"Aligning to the beacon. Entering warp sir.... it's a short one, twenty seconds to warp bubble collapse and..... Sir! We just passed the Harpy in warp. He must have made a safe spot between the gravity beacon and the wormhole!"

"As soon as we drop out of warp drop probes, I want him scanned down the....."

"SIR! Oh my god......"

The Ferox dropped out of warp as it reached its destination. They had dropped out of warp into the middle of a fleet. At its heart a Reverent supercarrier loomed in the distance!

"GET US THE FRACK....."

Alarms went off on the bridge as warp disruptors locked onto the Ferox.

"Sir, we're pointed! We're also webbed and heavily neuted. That thing out there sir! It's moving towards us!"

The bridge crew sat in silence as the Reverent supercarrier slowly turned towards them and the rest of the Sansha fleet approached.

"Incoming comm channel sir, it's the Harpy!"

"Open the comm link."

"So Captain Jorn, it's been a long time."

"What have you done you egger bastard!"

"Me? I've done nothing. What have YOU done? Well from what I can see you jumped into an unknown wormhole, warped to an unknown beacon and have been snagged by a Sansha's Nation fleet. To be perfectly honest with you, that's not good Captaincy if you ask me."

"You bastard!"

"Me? Don't be like that captain. I'm sure you'll make Sansha a lovely experiment. If you are really lucky you'll just become a True Slave. A mindless zombie blindly obeying every order. I hope that after the procedure, somewhere in the back of your mind, you still know what is happening to you. To me, that would be hell. Stuck, hopeless and unable to escape."

The capsuleer disconnected the comm line as the captain screamed in rage and as the lead Nation ships started to launch boarding parties. The Harpy aligned towards the exit wormhole and warped.

-o0o-

"That all you got Capt'n?" Helena said between breaths. Jian grabbed the ball from the net and threw it at her. She caught it squarely.

"Come at me bro!" he said with a smile opening his arms wide.

Helena returned the smile and crouched, pushing herself of the floor and projecting herself to the ceiling. The one tenth gravity allowing her to leap 30 feet effortlessly. Jian watched her glide. Sweat covered her abdomen between the skin tight sports crop-top and shorts. She pushed off the ceiling and came towards him, her arm pitched back ready to throw.

Something caught Jian's eye. On the back of the court there was usually nothing, just a featureless wall, but Jian noticed a small pulsing red light. The ball sailed passed his head into the net as he was distracted. A second later Helena tumbled into him knocking him onto his back!

"Ha 2-0!" she gloated as she sat on top of him. He quickly rolled her off and started over to the far wall of the court.

"That wasn't very nice! I thought you said that you preferred me on top!" she purred laying on the floor of the court where he left her. Jian and Helena had been an item for the last week and the relationship had got extremely physical, extremely quickly. However Jian was more bothered about reaching the blinking light.

"What's that?" Helena asked, walking over.

"I don't know. It's a small light set into the walls surface. But I've never seen it before."

Jian ran his fingers over it and it slightly depressed under his touch. He gave it a push and a low rumble occurred. Suddenly the playing court floor started to separate from the centre. Jian and Helena backed off as the floor retracted. A huge grey metal shape began to appear as the floor retracted.

"Erm, now what? Did you just activate some sort of death-trap?"

"Don't panic, we're still at point one G. I can see a deck down there, worst case scenario we float down a level but what is that?"

The huge grey metallic shape took form as the floor retracted further.

"That's a Badger! A Caldari industrial vessel! I'm going for a look!" and with that Jian took a running jump, landing on top of the huge transportation vessel. Helena followed him. He walked along the back of the ship until he got to the fore. He knelt by a hatch and opened the command console next to it. As was normal for ships like this there was a ten digit keypad, what was unusual was that a code was scratched into the metal covering. Jian hit the keys and the hatch opened.

"Careful!" Helena said.

"Trust me!" was his only reply.

-o0o-