Mother Ship by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2023-01-02T16:00:00+00:00

14

Breaker-controlled Starcraft, Hephaestus Station (Outer System)

“You’re insane,” Marshal whispered as the captain of the Mad Dogs—now apparent de facto ruler of the entire Breaker Group—turned back to the other people standing in the wide halls of white-and-cream alien metal.

For his opinions, Sergeant Marshal Smith was rewarded with a very sudden and very fierce fist in his belly by the scarred Breaker Group guard standing beside him. The sergeant of the Forward Recon wasn’t wearing any armor, just some old and dirty borrowed fatigues that they had thrown him in. With his hands secured behind his back, he was in no position to do anything but take the blow as he gasped and fell to his knees.

“Gakh!” Marshal coughed, spluttering onto the floor.

“Please ignore my technical adviser. We’re still breaking him in,” said the stocky form of Max Holler, captain of the Mad Dogs. He swivelled on his boots at the end of the Thaal hall, turning back to beam and open his gloved hands at the others assembled in the room.

Those others, Marshal saw, looked like a motley who’s who of Breaker life. Several of them, he knew were wanted on system-wide arrest warrants for piracy, and one of them, he suspected was the most infamous gun for hire in the entire solar system.

“So,” Max said. “What do you say?” He gestured to the room around him once more. “It’s all ours. All for the taking!”

“Kronos will work it. There isn’t anything we can’t break down,” broke in the first voice from the assembled crowd belonging to an older, hunched man dressed in long black robes and using an actual stick to hold himself up. Half of his head was wrapped in bandages. Marshal, from his time with Holly and Bastian as part of the Forward Recon squad stationed in the Outer regions of the asteroid belt and beyond, recognized him as Holfast Senior, the Coalition Chief of Kronos.

“Glad to hear it. Send your teams,” Max said with a broad smile . . . that suddenly faded. “But we’re not breaking her down for materials. Not yet, anyway.”

“What?” Holfast Senior grunted, his voice phlegmy and aging, which Marshal presumed was from a life of working the barely legal factories and smelting works of the Breaker mining station of Kronos.

There was another ripple of unease from the others in the room, all the senior Breaker Group representatives, Marshal could see.

The group of men and women stood in one of the atriums of the captured Thaal craft that had been racing for Hephaestus Station at the time that Holly and Dr. Crow had done whatever it was they had done to cause them all to stop. It had taken the Breakers and mercenaries a long time to clear out the Thaal. But the Thaal no longer had a large amount of their technology—their ship appeared dead—and the humans had succeeded eventually.

Without help from the marines, Marshal winced. He could understand where Max Holler of the Mad Dogs was coming from. The Breakers did clean this craft out.

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