The tattooed hijacker Dern dubbed Five Star paused in the middle of pacing and touched an area next to his right ear to activate a sub-dermal communicator. He nodded and turned in a slow circle. “Good news, people. We’re a few minutes out from our destination. This will all be over soon and you can get back to whatever mundane lives you were leading before you met us.”
Ura flashed a relieved look at Dern.
Theresa clenched Cyril’s hand tightly. “Now we have to worry about how we’ll get to Ceres 3.”
“Cyril nuzzled closer to his wife. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that. We’ll find a way.”
Dern said nothing. He watched the hijackers, unable to shake the nagging voice in the back of his head telling him that the resolution to this crisis was all too easy, all too reassuring.
Annually, thousands of deep space sleeper ships cruised to the farthest parts of known space and quite often beyond. Such journeys had become routine and safe enough for the most risk averse traveler to undertake with minimal concern. But they were not entirely void of hazards. A ship’s shielding could degrade, exposing passengers and crew to lethal radiation. A defective stasis system could fail in its IV delivery of nutrients to sleeping passengers, subsequently starving them to death. Engines might shut down, stranding ships or a faulty astrogation computer could veer a ship off course by years, perhaps centuries.
Thankfully, those problems were rare to nonexistent in an age when the major wrinkles initially hobbling deep space travel were ironed out.
And then there were occasional stories of sleeper ships disappearing enroute to their destinations never to be seen again.
Dern had heard of such occurrences over the years, but like most citizens paid little to no heed to them. Now, he had to wonder if those vanished ships had fallen into the hands of bandits and if so, what of the occupants? What was their fate? What would be the fate of he and his fellow passengers?
Dern’s fears bounded to full fruition when Five Star and his comrades suddenly leveled their weapons on the sitting passengers and opened up. Diamond-tipped, carbon-jacketed flechettes ripped from nearly a dozen assault rifles and pistols, buzz sawing across rows of flesh. Dozens of men and women crumpled beneath jack hammering rounds. A few passengers tried to scramble away only to be riddled to shreds, their bodies twisting in mid flight and crashing to the deck in contorted positions.
Blood and gore splashed across polished white surfaces, mingling with flachette- gouged pack marks.
Dern had enjoyed a relationship with violence that was disturbingly deep and abiding. But that was long ago, relegated to another life. To be so unexpectedly reunited with a specter from his past was so jarring, he could only sit, frozen in place watching death unfold around him as if he were outside his body.
A hijacker ten feet away pointed his RI4 at Dern and smiled. Dern peered into the weapon’s muzzle and saw his imminent demise, yet he still could not move.
Ura jumped up screaming.
The muzzle flashed.
A spatter of flachttes punched through her body, exploding against the bulkhead. One flachette caught Dern in the collar bone. Another one grazed his head after passing through Ura’s lower back. She collapsed on top of Dern as he lapsed into anguished darkness.
The ship entered the planet’s atmosphere, descending toward a settlement called Routh. Neither the Coalition nor the other five polities comprising the human Diaspora was aware of this settlement’s very unsanctioned existence. That was sure to change in time. The Coalition dispatched regular patrols to search for and dissolve rogue settlements on the planets it laid claim to. Most unsanctioned settlers accepted dissolution. If they were upstanding, law-abiding types, Coalition patrols, acting on the discretion of commanding officers, opted not to deport them.
Criminal settlements were another matter entirely. Routh’s unsavory inhabitants knew they lived on borrowed time. Until a patrol did discover them, they intended to squeeze as much profit from their varied criminal enterprises as possible. After that, it was on to another uncharted world… provided they escaped arrest and imprisonment.
Tunnal slouched in the captain’s chair, his fingers drumming a delightful rhythm on the armrest. A place like Routh needed all the ships it could get, since it lacked the industry and skilled labor to build them from scratch. The latest model sleeper ship, with cutting edge propulsion, state-of-the-art spatialonics and high yield multi-range weaponry to fend off pirates (Tunnal smirked) was guaranteed to net him and his associates their biggest payday.
His subdermal com buzzed. Tunnal sat up straight and pressed next to his ear to receive. “Go ahead.”
An enthused voice responded. “The passengers have been liquidated, Boss.”
Tunnal gazed surreptitiously around the bridge. Crew members sat at their stations, stupidly oblivious to the slaughter he green lighted below. Their turn would soon come…but not before they landed the ship. He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Good job. Check the bodies. Confirm that they’re all dead.”
“Will do, Boss. We’ll make damn sure there are no witnesses.”
