One Mission: Pirates of the Badlands Book 3 Read online

  One Mission

  Pirates of the Badlands Series Book 3

  Sean Benjamin

  Copyright

  © 2015 by Sean Benjamin – All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be copied or reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  Dedication

  For Joanne Morris.

  You always said I should be a writer.

  Too bad it took me thirty years to get around to it.

  Wish you were here to see it.

  Table of Contents

  One Mission

  Pirates of the Badlands Series Book 3

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  As I promised in the beginning of the second book, I will no longer explain how the universe works in this series. I assume you have read at least one of the two preceding books so have no need for any explanations. If you haven’t done that and can’t follow some of the concepts or relationships in this book, that’s your own fault.

  The first two books had events that clearly were not routine occurrences in the daily lives of the pirates or the Goldenes Tor forces within the Badlands. I felt it was time for a story that was about existence in that region. This book is about the pirates, the Goths, and several other key Badlands players. There are no Orion or Zeke characters here so this is a very much a back-to-the-basics type of story. It covers the ongoing warfare between all the Badlands factions. It is the story of many maneuvers, small victories, and the continuous struggle to see tomorrow. It is not a story of grand clashes or epic feats. Simple survival is not that way. Sometimes surviving to see another day is a victory in itself. And, sometimes, a victory is simply a case of “not losing.”

  War is not just fighting. War is strategy, maneuvers, tactics, logistics, intelligence, endurance, and willpower. Often the side that wins is the side that had the willingness to make the continuous sacrifice required to keep going. It is a painful grind, not a grandiose achievement.

  Wars are not noble or heroic. But the people who go to war often are.

  Introduction

  The trio of pirate destroyers under Raferty Hawkins have returned to the Badlands from their mission in the Orion Confederation. They have come home to a quadrant awash in Goth determination to hunt them down and eliminate them. Hawkins welcomes their resolve. He knows they desperately want revenge for the pirate strike on their base at Rosstrappe. Desperate people do desperate things. Often desperate stupid things. Therein lay possibilities to inflict more damage on the Goth Navy, their allies, and their commercial interests.

  The other ships of Pirate Flotilla One have been laying low while Hawkins and his strike force had been absent. They have had maintenance work done and visited their houses. Now it is time to get back to work. Hawkins scatters his ships across the Badlands to strike targets and ensure the Goths can’t destroy a large segment of his force in a single blow. The center of gravity in this campaign is the vegetable war, swirling around the five agricultural planets providing the majority of the exported food in the Badlands. The fight will come there. Hawkins has to ensure it is at a time and place of his choosing. The Goth retribution frenzy won’t last long. He must take advantage of it, as it burns hot.

  Chapter 1

  “Celestria, this is your second warning. I guarantee there will not be a third. Be advised, I don’t waste ammunition by putting shots across the bow. I’ll put the shots right into your guts. Now heave to and prepare to be boarded… or prepare to be shot to hell. Your choice. I’m good with it either way.”

  The voice was calm, but the words got everyone’s attention on the freighter’s bridge. All personnel turned toward the ship’s master. Captain Lawrence Maddox considered his options. There were only two. Be boarded or be dead. He had no doubt the owner of the voice would back up the threat. Killian O’Hare’s reputation preceded her, and the appearance of the Clan class destroyer decorated with a running wolf foretold of a really bad day unfolding.

  He turned to his helmsman. “Heave to.” The Captain then called down to cargo bay control. “Prepare the forward bay to receive visitors.” He took a deep breath and hoped he would be alive at the end of this bad day.

  Nemesis took up a position directly over the freighter and very close. The short distance allowed for an easy trip for the ship’s shuttle to move from the pirate ship to the freighter’s forward cargo bay, and the short distance made the larger ship an easy target for Nemesis’ guns and missiles if the need arose.

  The pirate shuttle quickly launched and landed in the large forward bay with cargo containers stacked in one end. The majority of the bay was wide-open space. Normally a trader running with a full load would have the cargo bay stacked with containers, so there would only be enough room for one large cargo shuttle to enter and begin the offload. As that lone cargo shuttle cleared bay space, more shuttles would come in to assist. Even if the other bays for this ship were full, Celestria was running nowhere near a full cargo load.

  The pirates stayed in their shuttle as the bay was pressurized. They continued to stay there until the freighter’s crew was in the bay and in front of the shuttle with Captain Maddox in the van. The presence of the crew and captain would ensure nobody would decompress the bay. Only then did the ten-member landing party emerge with Killian O’Hare in the lead.

  The shuttle’s hatch immediately closed and it was airtight again. Two men were still on the shuttle. One was on the comm equipment to maintain contact with Nemesis in case something developed in the immediate vicinity of the two vessels. The other crewmember manned a laser turret located in the top of the shuttle. The laser was pointed at the ship’s captain.

  O’Hare got right to it. “Line up your crew here,” she ordered the captain. “Who is not present?”

  Captain Maddox replied quickly. “There are two in engineering and two on the bridge.”

  O’Hare nodded and turned to four of her crew, giving them a hand signal to move out. These four-armed pirates would search the ship to identify the cargo and to find any of the crew or passengers if they were in hiding. One of them would go through the records of the ship in the administration office to ensure the records match the reality of what was really on the ship. These four men were experienced and motivated. They would carry out their orders quickly and efficiently. The remainder of the boarding party spread out around the bay with guns drawn and eyes searching for any hint of trouble. O’Hare only allowed well-seasoned veterans on her landing parties. If the situation went bad during a boarding, it would go bad quickly, and help was not immediately available. People needed to think on their feet and quickly make the right response to any trouble or potential trouble.

  The freighter crew lined up in the middle of the bay. They were men and women from all regions, age groups, and heritages. The only thing they had in common was that they were crewmembers of this ship. Now they had one more thing in common. They were all scared. They would have been afraid in this situation regardless of who the pirates were, but the crew knew the woman with the wolf head hallie on her face. She was not the forgiving type.

  O’Hare moved up to stand to the side of the captain and a few of his officers. She had her shooter out and was holding it loosely at her side. Her operations officer, Reese Patrick, accompanied her with a shooter in his hand. He approached Captain Maddox and took the captain’s readout covering the cargo manifest, flight route, and crew listings. He flipped through the screens on the pad.

  “The cargo is bound for Necessity. Tools and machinery for construction.” Patrick looked up and spoke again to nobody in particular. “Small cargo load for this large ship.”

  O’Hare listened without taking her eyes off the Captain and his officers. The construction equipment made sense. Necessity was in the Cinnamon System and was becoming a center for Goth effort in that system. Expanded effort required an expanded infrastructure.

  O’Hare spoke to Maddox. “With
all the building going on there, your cargo load should be bigger.”

  Maddox nodded in agreement. “Lot of work being done down there, but we are not among the favored few ships to get the majority of the hauling work. This cargo is all from one small supplier who has had a long relationship with me, and he throws me some work whenever he can.”

  O’Hare gave no outward sign, but she knew what Maddox was saying between the lines. The ships getting most the cargo loads were giving kickbacks to the suppliers, or were skimming off some of the cargo and splitting the black market profits with those same suppliers. Either method ensured the suppliers got off-the-books money and the ships continued to get hauling business. Some called it the Badlands tax, and it was a widespread business practice in the quadrant.

  As the conversation was going on, the remainder of the landing party had gone about their duties with practiced precision. A pirate stood at each end of the line with a shooter covering the sailors. Two pirates walked along the line of crewmembers, one from each end. The two had face-recognition monitors in their hands. They paused in front of each merchantman and held the screen up to each face. The equipment did two things; it took a photo of the crewmember, and it compared the face with a database of all crewmembers who had been aboard ships stopped by all Flot 1 ships. After the two pirates met in the middle, they moved back to each end and waited.

  One minute later, one of the four pirates searching the ship came into view at the end of the bay.

  “We got some,” he yelled across the bay. “In the last cargo bay in a couple of containers. Forty of them packed in like missiles in a magazine.”

  Each member of the boarding crew straightened slightly and their faces turned into masks. Hands tightened on weapons as gun barrels were leveled at potential targets. This ship was now a confirmed slaver and the boarding party immediately went to higher state of alert. O’Hare’s eyes flicked to the captain and then to the two pirates who had walked the line. “Anybody?”

  “I got one,” each pirate said at once.

  The two pirates turned to walk the line again. The pirate at the nearest end of the line stopped in front of a short young man with long hair, a ragged beard, and a nervous disposition. The pirate spoke, “This one was on a slaver named Alpine. Caught nine months ago by Rebel.”

  Killian took purposeful strides toward the man. He started backing up in response and held his hands up. He spoke rapidly. He knew he was begging for his life. “I won’t do it again! I promise it! Never again!”

  “You’re absolutely correct,” O’Hare replied conversationally. She raised and fired the shooter in one smooth, practiced motion. The single bolt hit the man in the chest, blowing him off his feet to land on his back on the deck.

  Down the line, the second pirate had stopped in front of an older fat woman who, based on her attire, worked in the galley. As the sound of the shot faded, the woman shoved the pirate out of the way and made a run for the nearest hatch. She never had a chance. The pirates had seen this before after someone had been executed and were prepared for exactly this type of escape attempt. The pirate covering the far end of the line, raised his shooter, took careful aim, and dropped the running fugitive with a single shot in the back.

  O’Hare barely noticed as she strolled down the line toward the pirate who had been in front of the woman. The man frowned and cast his eyes downward. He knew what was about to happen, and he knew he had it coming. O’Hare stopped in front of him and drilled holes in him with her stare.

  “Are you still good to be on these little excursions, or do I need to replace you?” Her tone was not casual. The man fidgeted a little but spoke with authority. “I’m still good, Captain. Always will be. Just got distracted for a minute.”

  “What distracted you so much that a fat old cook shoved you out of the way like you were a little school girl?”

  The man held up the face recognition pad. “That woman was on a slaver named Gillespie. She was put into the face system a year ago by Bandit.”

  O’Hare nodded. She got it. Bandit was an open, raw wound in the flotilla. After the loss of families at Ulatar, the destruction of Vandal and Desperado, the death of Bandit had been keenly felt throughout the flotilla. Pirates were not feeling invincible any more. The loss of the three ships had yet to be made up, and the loss of the families could never be made whole again. Killian knew only time and success could ease the pain. In the meantime, the pirates of Flot 1 would have to work through it. O’Hare understood all of this, but she was not a giver of warm hugs and sweet words.

  She stared at the offender. “I get all that. I also get that if you fail me again, it will be the last time. Are we all clear on that?”

  The man nodded. “Aye, Captain.” He knew a moment’s failure could doom the whole landing party, and he had had one. It would not happen again.

  Killian surprised him by giving a hint of a smile, nodding to him as she turned, and moving back to the ship’s captain. Maddox shrank back but knew he had nowhere to go.

  “We seem to have a transgression of the law here. Last time I checked, slavery was outlawed throughout the quadrant.” She walked up to the Captain, stuck her shooter hard under his chin, and pushed up. “Has there been a change in the law I am unaware of?”

  Maddox tilted his head up to relieve the pressure of the barrel under his chin, but O’Hare kept pushing and soon he was on his tiptoes with his head tilted far back. Behind those two, Reese Patrick held his shooter up as a warning to any freighter crewmembers who might feel the need to assist their Captain.

  O’Hare hissed at him, “I don’t ask rhetorical questions.”

  “They aren’t slaves. They are workers moving to another job.” Maddox knew it was a weak excuse. The pirates saw those workers’ situation and would talk to them, so the truth would come out soon enough. He was trying to buy time, anything to live a little longer.

  “You want to die with a lie on your lips?”

  Maddox decided he did not. He looked down at her. “I was paid a great deal of money to move them to the Cinnamon system. I don’t know exactly where they would end up. I was to be contacted upon arriving in that system and would be told the drop off point. I’m not proud of the job but I am desperate. I used to run foodstuffs for the Agra planets but that has dried up with the coming of the Sunrise Grange. I can barely crew my ship and it needs repairs. I haven’t had a full cargo load in months. After I completed this haul, I have no further work slated.” He took a step back and got away from the gun barrel. He gave her a regretful look but the eyes were defiant. “Don’t think for one minute I take any pride in this. I believe Outlaw is one of your associates. They stopped me six months ago and I had a one-quarter cargo load. They let me go. No slaves then, but it is desperation time now. I need work and I need money.”

  O’Hare knew the Outlaw encounter had happened as she had reviewed the Flot 1 records for the name Celestria. The merchantman only came up in that single input by Outlaw. She was secretly amazed this one freighter had been stopped by two Flot 1 ships in less than a year. The odds on that were astronomical. This guy’s luck was running bad. She abruptly lowered her weapon, turned away, and took a couple of steps toward the line of Celestria crewmembers.

  “Gather around.” She waited a few seconds as nobody moved. This was not an uncommon reaction, and the pirate guards began to roughly push a few crewmembers forward to lend encouragement. The group started to move after that. They formed a rough semi-circle around O’Hare, keeping a respectful distance away. The merchantman’s officers followed their captain and stood at the end of the arc.

  O’Hare paused for a second as she ordered her thoughts. She liked to give a different speech each time. Not for the freighter people, the only two people who had heard a similar speech were just killed. She did it for her landing party. The party was composed of the same crewmembers each time, and she felt she owed them a different speech rather than the same tired threats soon to be made against the freighter’s crew. Variety kept the landing party members interested in the proceedings. She decided to start with a saying she had heard Raferty Hawkins use on occasion. “My name is Killian O’Hare. I forgive every mistake once; I forgive no mistake twice. Now, I hate slavery and I hate slave ships. You are the crew of a slave ship. I’m willing to overlook that once but never again.” She gestured at the two bodies on the deck. “They were forgiven once but they didn’t heed the warning that went with it.” She held up her right hand with index finger extended. “They say you should learn from your mistakes, but a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others.” She now swept the group with her index finger. “You need to be truly wise. Learn from the mistakes made by your two fellow crewmembers. Get out of the slavery business. We have your faces in our files. If I or any of my associates catch any of you on a slaver in the future, you are dead.”