Genesis by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N08
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-05-25T04:00:00+00:00

“CFS Hakudo Maru, this is the privateer Gang-i-Sawai. You are about to be boarded. We have the boost and the fuel to chase you down if you try to run, but I warn you, if we have to do that, you’ll all be killed. There’s no need for violence. The cargo doesn’t belong to you and there’s no need for you to die for it.”

The voice was surprisingly smooth and oily for a pirate, Leer thought. Very convincing…if there’d actually been a crew for them to convince. She smiled thinly and touched the control to link her cockpit comms with the ship’s radio.

“This is Captain Eva Rojas of the Hakudo Maru,” she said, softening her tone, adding a tinge of stress and fear she rarely even let herself feel, much less show to anyone else in her squadron. “Please do not fire on us. We have no weapons, no defenses! If you promise you’ll spare our lives, you can have the ship.”

She could hear the grin in the man’s voice, as if he thought he was putting one over on the stupid freighter captain.

“I can assure you, if you surrender, you will not be killed.”

“No,” Brad agreed, and her eyes darted to the comm board to make sure he’d kept it to their private channel, which, of course, he had. “You’ll keep us alive to sell off our organs or run us to the human traffickers, you piece of shit.”

“Then we surrender, Gang-i-Sawai,” she told the pirate. “You may come aboard.”

Leer switched from the external radio to the internal comms.

“Wait for it, Jokers.”

The pirate ship was impossibly close in the external cameras, closer than two spaceships this size had any right to be outside of a drydock. Its lines were bulbous and ugly, with a patchwork look where armor and extra fuel tanks had been grafted on to the old freighter. The most obvious difference from its original design were the weapons pods jutting out at the midsection, missiles and coil-guns and lasers sticking far enough out from the body of the ship to be clear of all obstructions…and far enough that if one of their fabricator-made missiles blew up, it wouldn’t put a hole in the hull.

Maneuvering thrusters flared at the port side of the ship as it made final adjustments to match velocity and alignment with the freighter, and then it made the final commitment, what Leer had been waiting for…the hangar bay doors slide aside on her dorsal bow and three shuttles coasted out, one on the heels of the other, their steering jets guiding them out until they were clear of the bay.

They were sleek, deadly, purpose-built, in sharp contrast to the makeshift lines of the pirate ship, and Leer knew they’d been stolen, likely directly from a military shipment. All too many of them had been hit, their weapons and shuttles sold on the black market to people just like the crew of the Gang-i-Sawai.

And now they were going to get theirs.

“Launch.”

The interior of the

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