Sins of the Father Ch66

Modius watched the broadcast and felt his heart pound. The little hole in the wall noodle shop was burning fiercely, the fire was so intense that it compromised the structural integrity of the whole block. Alien news speakers were reporting live on the scene as emergency responders were trying to get the fire under control.

On another screen Modius watched as a Zxx’thi anchor stood in front of a very distinctive silhouette of the Astaroth’s hull. The Zxx’thi reported on the situation, “As you can see the pirates have all been taken into custody, but a preliminary count of the available bunks has revealed that hundreds of pirates are still at large and hiding amongst the Terran population of Unity. The new Unity Station Security chief, Ben’kodic, has requested that any civilian who suspects a Terran of harboring pirates should call their local station security precinct.”

On another a human of clear Asian decent was speaking in front of the council meeting hall. “This miscarriage of justice all leads back to my brother’s now apparent corruption. During his tenure as Chief of security my brother has held back many progressive policing initiatives, and now we can see why.” The man shook his head “cavorting with pirates, he dishonors our family name.” Councilman Gin said.

“Well” Bell said in a clipped tone as she turned the sound down, “it seems that things took a turn faster than we ever anticipated.”

Modius glared at her. “You think? How did this happen?”

Bell sighed. “This was bound to happen sooner or later. This was always going to happen eventually. Pretending to play by their rules and hide behind the law was only going to work so long as the Union felt like playing by the rules. Obviously, it became more convenient to do away with due process.”

“I smell politics.” Modius growled.

“As do I.” Bell agreed.

“The reports from the Astaroth were vague about the situation, could it be this human councilman, or this new chief of security?” Modius mused.

“The specifics are inconsequential at this point. Right now we need to figure out our next steps.”

Modius agreed. “The crews of the Astaroth and Lucifer gave up too quickly. I think Aster has initiated one of her protocols.”

“I agree. But which one, and how can we help?”

“Astarte came here with a goal, and if I know Aster she hasn’t given up on that.”

“The terraforming equipment, yes. She’s probably still after that, the question is how will she accomplish that with the station on high alert?”

“Chaos and mayhem.” Modius answered unflinchingly. “Once she knows where it is she will cause as much trouble as possible to give herself a chance at the terraforming equipment. And since she won’t abandon her ship we can also assume she has a plan to retake the Astaroth. And with half of her crew under arrest…” he trailed off.

Bell met his gaze. “Shawshank protocols?”

Modius sighed. “That’s my best guess.”

Bell nodded. “If that’s the case then she’ll need us to secure her escape. Not an easy task given the fleet elements defending Unity. Even with the full fleet we’ll be torn apart.”

Modius leaned over and pulled up a system map of the local region around Unity. The holographic rendering of the station appeared with thousands of yellow blips flowing in and out, with larger red blips patrolling the outskirts. “Lots of civilian traffic.” Modius noted.

“Will it be a hinderance or an advantage?” Bell asked.

Modius grimaced. “Depends on how flexible our moral code is,” he said grimly.

Bell’s eye went wide. “You’re not suggesting…”

“Why not, we all saw how that much scrap and chaos affected the battle for the confederacy. Shipboard computers are powerful, but there are limits to how much they can track at once. And if we can employ large scale jamming and electronic warfare, we’ll triple the effectiveness of the distraction.”

“Yes, but the cost in collateral…”

“That’s why I said it depends on how far we’re willing to go.” Mobius hated himself for saying. But he knew the importance of Astarte’s mission. One planet of allied Terrans versus the lives of Union species who were ostensibly his enemy.

An easy calculus, so long as you didn’t have a heart.

“There are measures we could take to minimize casualties.” Bell offered.

“Yes, but minimizing damage doesn’t absolve us of the cost.”

She nodded.

He and his old captain had a good understanding of each other. They both knew that they would do it, and later at night it would haunt them.

Astarte and Lucile wouldn’t hesitate. They would look at what needed to be done and do it no matter the costs. In some ways that made them better leaders than Bell and Modius, but in other ways it also made them worse people than Bell and Modius.

~~~*~~~

The hole in the tunnel let light into the dark tunnels like some sort of beacon, or maybe it seemed that way since Rachels eyes had been in the dark for far too long.

They had been walking, jogging more like, for nearly half a day. Rachel had no idea how the pirates kept up the pace in the heavy-looking armor they all wore, she and Judge were nearly dead on their feet while the pirates were only mildly winded.

Three times during their flight the pirates sent out to scout the way discovered an ambush set by the Station’s security forces. Each time the Pirates stopped and cut their way into another section of maintenance tunnels. Descending further into the station’s bowels, tunnels that had become obsolete and were never replaced, apartments that had been boarded over, and planned sections of the city that remained uninhabited.

For a station with supposedly limited space and the second largest space born population in the galaxy there were a surprising amount of empty or abandoned. A product of the station’s age perhaps.

But while the depths of Unity were unknown to Rachel or Judge it wasn’t to the pirates who were somehow able to deftly maneuver the twisting tunnels. And they weren’t the only ones.

Once they had run across a section of tunnel that opened up into a wide atrium whose original purpose was unknown because a black market bizarre had sprung up in the tunnel and filled the space from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

The pirates had forced Rachel and Judge to wear some pieces of their armor to help them blend in with the pirates and look like a part of the group. Then they just strolled through the literal black market as if it were normal to walk past shady stalls selling weapons, bombs, and drugs.

Then there was the stall that everyone gave a wide birth that sold Terran goods like cinnamon, nutmeg, and Cheyanne peppers. Some of the patrons were just Terrans looking for spices that were classified as high-end poisons and narcotics, but others gave Rachel the impression of shadier intentions. Ceshix fawning over tea leaves, Cèk’ek purchasing tobacco, and even a Kalisian purchasing coffee beans.

“To think this place is just sitting here in the open, we could have put an end to the drug trade if we had known.” Hanzo had muttered.

The silent pirate who covered everything, but her eyes gave him a condescending look but said nothing.

The pirate wearing metal studs in her face looked back. “Mute says ‘you’re an idiot if you think that would really put an end to this issue.’ And I agree, this is just the last stop in a long supply line. Shut this down and another will pop up in weeks.”

“And you’re an expert in drug smuggling?” Rachel asked icily.

The punked out pirate snorted. “More than you are apparently. I was a part of a concerted effort to clean up the streets back on earth, a war on drugs never really works. Especially when the source comes from off world, dammed Guthulu.”

“The Guthulu cartel is just an urban legend, like the pirate capital.” Rachel said.

That got a laugh out of everyone present. Which made Rachel uneasy.

Now they were finally at the end of their long retreat.

Astarte stepped up  to the hole in the station’s interior plating and called “The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide!”

To which the response was “They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way. One sec cap’n and I’ll toss down the ladder.”

Judge frowned. “Was that… Milton?”

“Astarte has a fondness for the stupid poem.” The blonde hard eyed pirate retorted. Lucile was glaring, but Rachel felt a note of fondness in her glare as she watched her daughter climb up the ladder. “Couldn’t get past the first pages myself.”

Judge and Rachel gave each other puzzled looks.

Rachel recalled Astarte had quoted Milton before and guessed that even pirates could enjoy classic literature.

Poetry loving, satanic pirates. It had to be said that even with all the secrets Rachel had learned Astarte still had depths that both intrigued and terrified her.

Rachel climbed the ladder and was briefly stunned as a black and white furred face greeted her. The… tiger women… greeted Rachel with a sharp toothed open mouth smile. “Oh its you.” She said cheerily.

“Um, yes… do I know you?” Rachel asked.

“No you didn’t see me. I was there when Zera ambushed you in your apartment.”

Rachel blinked, then it clicked. “you were the sniper!”

The tiger women grinned “Yup,” she thrust a clawed hand forward “Captain Alice Fidelis, Hellworlder Marine.”

“Uh, Rachel Heart. ADCU Officer.”

The tiger’s grin broadened, “not from what I saw. Your fellow SS officers turned on you.”

“How did you-,”

“News stations have been showing your pictures all day.” She held up a finger and slowly ticked off crimes. “Cavorting with pirates, resisting arrest, miscarriage of justice, and I even saw your father telling a Cék’ek reporter all about your ‘perversions’ and deviant mind as it were. You are now the face of anti-Human sentiment on Unity. ‘The human who infiltrated the heart of our justice system to cover up the Terran’s criminal nature’ or something.”

Rachel stared at Alice in horror, she didn’t care about what the media was calling her, because something else stood out to Rachel. “He, he said that all, on the News. My Father?” Rachel felt the ground falling out beneath her.

She knew her father had no love for her, but to out her secrets so publicly, that was a step to far.

“Alice, quit teasing Miss Heart.” A voice cut in sharply.

Rachel turned and saw a familiar purple skinned woman. “Bones?”

The Torweni grimaced “I told you, its Doctor Djani to you,” The peevish doctor said.

Alice looked amused “What you don’t want her to call you Bones?”

“She’s not apart of the crew, until recently she was trying to dig up dirt on the captain by pretending to be romantically interested in her. She may be on our side for now, but she’s not our ally.”

“Hold on, there was no… romantic interests-,” Rachel tried to interject.

But neither Alice nor the doctor was listening.

“I think it’s a good idea for our enemies to know the legend of Saint Bones the Godslayer.” Alice protested.

“Godslayer?” Rachel squawked.

The doctor put a hand to her face “I told you not to call me that, Kazlum wasn’t a god, he was just some Aunviry pirate lord with an ego.”

“You killed an Aunviry?” Rachel burst out.

Alice grinned wildly “Yep, Bones here cut its skull open and unloaded a clip into his grey matter, during the battle for the confederacy.”

“What confederacy?”

Alice looked confused “The Pirate confederacy of course.”

“That’s real!”

“Captain Fedelis,” Lucile barked sharply. “Now is not the time, toy with the pigs later. I need a full report on the situation, as well as the reports from the other companies.”

The jovial smile left Alice’s face, it was replaced by a stern and serious expression. “Yes captain Lucile. We’ve been collecting reports for the last hour, we haven’t had the time to organize them, and more are pouring in-,”

As the pirate reported to the blonde-haired captain a thought occurred to Rachel. But the only person she could ask was the angry Torweni doctor, she was weary of the violet-colored humanoid, but she had to ask. “What is this place, when did you pirates set up a base like this.”

The Doctor gave her an annoyed look. “Yesterday, right after the meeting.”

Rachel looked around at the crates, the sleeping quarters, and the communication equipment in a corner. And then she saw the curtained off section where she glimpsed a red skinned women examining a vail of blood. “You did this all in a day, why? And whose blood is that?”

The doctor sighed. “We needed to better study the long-term effects of MBV, so we hunted down the gang of infected chimps and took over.”

“You found them, in only a day?” Rachel knew officers who had been tracking this gang down for months.

The doctor sneered. “With how much trouble they caused it wasn’t hard.”

Rachel was about to question the doctor further but a angry shout from across the room grabbed her attention.

“Oh, come on, you useless idiots, those aren’t even the right size to be ours!”

Rachel turned to the shouting and saw Astarte and a handful of other pirates watching the news broadcast.

Doctor Djani walked away from Rachel, and she felt compelled to follow.

On the screen was a Zxx’thi Anchor person reporting in front of the Grey hulled silhouette of the Astaroth. In a little corner was a separate video of officers walking out of the ship holding pulse rifles.

Rachel frowned as she watched the hunched forms of several officers straighten as the exited the tight confines of the ships. One Feal officer held an armful of rifle, but… weren’t those too large?

They looked like the perfect size for a Feal, but Feal’s had nearly a meter on Terrans in height. Those guns were too large to fit in a Terran’s arms.

The doctor scowled, “That’s not even the right kind of gun, we don’t use energy weapons.”

“No, we don’t.” Astarte bit off angrily. “I get that they’re trying to set us up, but they could at least put in a little effort. Would it be so hard to get some Terran weapons?”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have looked as threatening?” the doctor mused.

Metallika stepped up next to them. “Does that mean they couldn’t our actual weapon stash?”

“Good question, oh looks like they’re attaching tow cables, this might be interesting.”

Four tug craft had indeed dropped ultra strong tow cables around the ship, likely to move it to a more secluded location, when all the running lights on the ship went red. A wave of panic went through the crowd .

“Hold on,” the Zxx’thi anchor said in a rush his veins pulsing faster with alarm, “We’re being told a buildup of power was just detected from the ships reactors. I’m now being told that the ship is rigged to force the power from its fusion generators back into themselves until a critical mass is reached.”

Rachel stared in alarm. “You rigged your ship to explode?”

Astarte looked offended “Of course we did, but right now she’s set to ‘anti-theft mode. Any attempts to move her, disable her weapon systems, or damage her in any way will trigger a buildup. We even coded the running lights to go red just to drive the point home. There’s a command to ramp down if the hostile activity stops, but if they don’t heed to warning then they’re facing at least a hundred mega tons of explosive force.”

“Are you insane? An explosion like that will destroy the whole station, millions will die,” Rachel hissed.

Astarte gave her a cold merciless smile. “It won’t be a problem so long as they don’t touch my ship.”

“That’s insane. You would rather kill millions than let someone touch your ship. That’s too much, that’s-,”

“Shut up!” A sharp voice barked behind her. Rachel turned and saw Lucile behind her. “Your whining is giving me a headache. We’ve made the consequences clear as day, even the Union isn’t dumb enough to miss that. They won’t risk setting off the trap. And when we retake our ships it won’t matter.”

“Retake… you think you can retake your ships?” Rachel asked incredulously. “There’s an army of officers surrounding it, as well as warships. Theres no way you’re going to retake your ships.”

The hard face women sneered derisively, “then what would you have us do, turn ourselves in to face execution, hide and hope they never find us, run with our tails between our legs? No! we’re going to retake our ships, free our captured crew, and get what we came here for, because we have no other options left to us.”

Rachel crossed her arms. “And how do you plan on doing that. If I recall you needed us to search our databases for you. But now that Judge and I are on the run our access is revoked. How are you going to succeed now?”

Lucile’s sneer became wolfish. “That was before, things are different now. We were playing with kiddy gloves, but now that our secrets are out in the open we can take them off. We’ll raid data centers to get what we want directly, we rip this station apart to find what we want, and we’ll kill anyone who gets in our way.”

Rachel’s arms fell limp at her side “You can’t do that, what about the consequences?”

“What consequences?” Lucile asked rhetorically. “Astarte said it best, the penalty for space piracy is death, so what’s to stop us from doing worse? They can’t kill us twice.”

“What about morality. Killing anyone who gets in your way is wrong.”

“You think that matters. Look at the news, they’ve already done away with any semblance of due process or justice the moment it be inconvenient. Why should we continue to play by their rules?”

Rachel stared at the pirate in disbelief, her eyes slid to the side of Lucile and locked onto Astarte’s. “You can’t believe that… right?”

Astarte shuffled on her feet; she looked away. “We have a job to do, I don’t see any reason why we should hold ourselves back.”

Rachel felt her heart drop, she took a step back, but a firm hand on her shoulder held her in place.

She turned her head and saw Judge beside her, “I am afraid those terms are unacceptable. We cannot cooperate if that is how you really feel.” He said calmly.

“Who said you get a choice?” Lucile asked icily. “We don’t-,”

“Mom!” Astarte interjected.

“What?”

Astarte put a hand to her forehead, massaging her temples with two fingers. “We’re not threating them.”

“We’re not?”

“No, we’re not. Any info they gave us would be suspect. I don’t think Hanzo here is above sabotaging us at the cost of his own life.” She looked up to Judge, “Look I have a headache, and we’ve had a hell of a day. We don’t have any plans as of this moment, so let’s wait until then before we decide what’s too far or not. Okay?”

Judge frowned, and two sets of identical dark eyes locked with each other. He sighed, “fine, lets rest and let cooler heads prevail. But I will say, any cooperation between us will be contingent on bringing the criminals who orchestrated this to justice.”

Now it was Astarte’s turn to frown. “You want us to bring down the entire Union? Seems a little excessive.”

“Not the entire Union.” Judge snapped. “This is the work of a few individuals. The entire Union is not to blame for their actions.”

Astarte glanced back to the broadcast. “I don’t see anyone protesting this. And I doubt we will. Maybe only a few people know the full scope of this, but the rest of the Union seems content to let this happen.”

Judge stiffened, “the Union is massive and numerous beyond comprehension. It has flaws, but it doesn’t bare all the guilt for this miscarriage of justice.”

Astarte stared at him for a long moment. “We can discuss this all later. After we rest.”

It wasn’t a refutation, but it also wasn’t acceptance. It was a simple agreement not to bring up the issue because both knew and understood that the other would not budge.

Rachel then knew that no matter what agreement they came to their philosophical differences were incompatible. They were at odds, and always would be. This she understood in one crystal clear moment of comprehension. An epiphany.

What she didn’t understand was why it made her heart break.