AN: Currently 9 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon. I'm working on chapter 32, so it will be 10 by the end of the day. I'll try to make it 11, though.
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
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The Strathos' Shepherd rumbled beneath Mark's feet as he sat in the captain's chair and maneuvered the ship into position for atmospheric takeoff. The ship gleamed in the rising morning suns, its golden accents turning almost pink with the reflection of the sunlight and the sand.
His fingers moved with familiarity across the console before him, running another systems check once the ship was in position to take off. When the results came back, he swiped his hand across each system, ensuring everything was to his liking.
Primary reactor output: 99% stable
Twin Class 5 Engines: Online
Maneuvering Thrusters: Calibrated
Inertia Dampeners: 96% sync
Life Support: Stable
Artificial Gravity: Online
Weapons: Offline
The hum of the reactor deepened into a steady roar as the ship's engines heated up while the Strathos' Shepherd maintained an angle of sixty-five degrees with its nose pointing upward. After about thirty seconds, the ship was ready for takeoff.
Mark pushed the throttle forward, and the ship moved. The initial jolt was slow, but as its engines gained more power, the Strathos' Shepherd began to pick up speed. Exhaust trails were left behind as the engines screamed to push the ship through the atmosphere, its nose punching through the thick canopy of clouds, and a mix of elation and sadness hit Mark.
He was finally doing it, but unfortunately, the person who had made this all possible wasn't here to witness or experience it.
As the ship climbed higher and faster with every passing kilometer, Mark remembered just why ships were not meant for atmospheric takeoffs. The ship shuddered violently as crosswinds slammed into her flanks. The stabilizer fought to correct the path diversion the ship was starting to take, warning chimes flaring across the console before Mark. He simply clenched his jaw as he gripped the controls, countering with manual adjustments of the maneuvering thrusters.
"Oohhhh shiiiiittttt," he let out a nervous chuckle as the ship shook even more violently.
The inertial dampeners lagged, and Mark was slammed back against his chair as the G-forces spiked. His vision blurred for a second, and a dark vignette crept at the edges of his eyes. He grunted, gritting his teeth while directing his focus to the console and its readout.
Altitude: 12,000 meters.
Hull Stress: 52%
Engine temperature: 780 K and climbing.
'Ffuuuuuuccckkkk, these ships aren't like Earth's rockets. They aren't meant to be exiting or entering a planet's atmosphere,' he thought to himself, the stresses of the G-forces too much for him to open his mouth.
The Strathos' Shepherd roared upward, every single second of ascent testing the brand new ship's ability to handle extreme stress. The atmospheric turbulence beat against her hull, and the trembling rose even more, to the point that Mark thought the ship would simply come apart while climbing. He managed to barely adjust the angle of the trajectory, which had decreased to 50 degrees, his fingers barely managing to reach and tap on an option that shifted the console closer to him.
Holo screens popped up from the console, displaying more options. He swiped through them before finally finding what he was looking for. He diverted excess power from the non-essential systems to the dampeners as a sharp alarm cut through the bridge.
Warning: Structural stress threshold at 70%
"Just... a... little bit... more..."
The hull shimmered across the viewport before the stabilizers locked back into sync, smoothening the ride while the engines howled, pushing the massive hull to speeds of over Mach 4 while still in the atmosphere.
The violent vibrations that had tormented the ship and Mark for the past couple of minutes quickly simmered as he climbed higher. The air thinned, and the G-forces no longer pulled as harshly on his chest, though sweat did run down his forehead in thick beads. The external cameras displayed the curve of the planet beneath him on the bridge's viewport and directly in front of him in one of the many holo screens that had popped up. The clouds scattered across its surface, a clear gaping hole made in the path the ship had taken.
It wasn't long before he reached the final buffer zone; the entire ship shook violently as shear forces clawed at the hull. Mark wrestled with the controls, yanking the nose up another 3 degrees, forcing the engines to burn even harder. The ship groaned, and he could hear metal flexing under the pressure. For a moment, Mark feared that the Strathos' Shepherd would give up and tear herself apart just before she reached outer space, but that fear was quickly replaced by a sudden change.
A silence filled the ship, and it no longer shuddered. The roar of its engines was barely audible as she embraced the vastness of space.
Mark's breath hitched, and a sense of awe filled him. Sure, he had been in space before, but part of him was experiencing all of this for the first time. Not to mention the fact that he couldn't recall a single memory of exiting a planet being as hectic as it had just been. It was, of course, because...
"Ships were never meant to take off in the atmosphere," Mark said, his hands trembling from the adrenaline coursing through his veins. "I'm never doing that ever again."
One of the holo screens before him displayed shifting information of the ship's systems:
Reactor: 95% Stable
Engines: Operating at 87% capacity, temps stabilizing
Hull Stress: 38% > 37% > 36%
The systems glowed green across the board, signifying that nothing had gone wrong and nothing had been damaged by the violent vibrations. Mark leaned back, exhaling a long and shaky breath, staring at his shaking hands as they started to stabilize. Only now did he realize just how tight his chest had been throughout the climb.
"Good work, Ani... she made it out in one piece," he whispered, swallowing hard as his throat knotted up and a tear threatened to fall from his right eye before he wiped it.
He pulled up the navigational computer on one of the holo displays surrounding his chair. A web of faint markers populated the star map, each one a potential jump point, though the nearest one was positioned at the edge of the system's gravity well.
The ship's computer estimated the time of travel to be fourteen hours at safe cruising speeds, but Mark had other thoughts.
"Yeah, I don't think that's gonna cut it."
He rerouted additional power from non-essential systems and auxiliary systems into the engines, the reactor flaring brighter on the diagnostics as energy surged through the engine cores. The acceleration jolted him into the chair for a second time as the Strathos' Shepherd left forward, stars streaking faintly across the viewport as her velocity climbed.
---
The hours passed slowly, the roar of the engines being the only sound and the occasional flicker of warning lights as Mark pushed the ship harder than he had ever intended. As the ship streaked through the void of space, Mark's eyes kept on sweeping the radar, ensuring that there were no other starships in the system, that there was no other sign of life other than his own. He was making sure that there would be no one there who could possibly ambush him for a second time.
But it was just him and the ship in the current system. Anahrin had told him months ago that the CIV had long left the system, which didn't really make much sense, considering the fact that they were willing to shoot first and ask questions later only to safeguard whatever it was they were trying to hide in this system.
Mark forced his mind to focus back on the task at hand, running routine diagnostics, checking hull stresses, and monitoring the reactor's stability. He was doing anything he could to stop his mind from wandering back to the time he had spent with Anahrin.
By the time the jump point beacon came into range, he had managed to shave the trip down from fourteen hours to just over nine hours. The Strathos' Shepherd had proved herself to be more than capable of pushing beyond safe speeds without much of a repercussion. She was performing beyond expectations, her twin engines propelling her to speeds that had never been reached before by human starships in real space. The engines themselves were also working far beyond their expected range, being much more efficient than Mark had previously calculated. It was probably due to the fact that the calculations had been done in an atmosphere, and the engines simply worked differently once in zero-g space.
He had taken a moment to rest once he had arrived at the jump point, closing his eyes and cracking his neck. But just seconds later, an alarm rang throughout the bridge of the ship. It was the timer for the self-destruct sequence of the factory, which had finally reached zero.
He manipulated the ship's exterior cameras to look back to where he had just escaped from, zooming across a vast expanse and focusing on the red planet. The planet was barely even visible as it was so far away from where he currently was. But that didn't mean that he couldn't tell the explosion had gone off. He couldn't exactly see the factory, but once it detonated, a colossal bloom of light erupted across the planet's surface, quickly flowing as a wave toward him.
But he couldn't really see that right away. As the glare from the explosion had blinded the sensors and the cameras. His breath only hitched a moment later when the censors came back online and registered massive amounts of energy heading his way.
This had been much more than he had expected, and his mouth opened in shock. The wave of energy moved towards him at a much faster speed than he could anticipate, something he could feel as his ship started to vibrate where it stood, even though only about twenty seconds had gone by since the initial explosion.
Warnings flared across the ship's bridge, alerts of space-time instability blaring to life, and warnings about critical risk if he jumped.
But he didn't have much of a choice right now. His hands flew across the console, and he locked onto the nearest jump point, forcing the navigation computer to accept an emergency jump. The ship shuddered even more violently as gravitational ripples slammed against her hull, the inertial dampeners screaming warnings as they fought to stabilize her.
Mark gritted his teeth as he gave the computer the go-ahead to initiate the jump. The jump drive immediately engaged, and stars stretched as reality itself bore down. The ship shuddered violently one more time, and Mark thought that he was not going to make it, that the wave of energy would tear his ship apart. But just as the brunt of the wave was about to reach him, the Strathos' Shepherd vanished into the jump.
Seconds later, the wave of energy reached where the ship had once stood, destroying anything and everything in its path. An entire solar system had been reduced to nothing from the mere explosion of a factory.
The jump itself only took about five minutes, which felt like an eternity for Mark, as colors warped into streaks and his body was pressed against the unseen forces while the ship howled around him. Then, as suddenly as it began, the pressure had vanished, and the ship stepped out of the jump into a quiet and dim system. A small red sun glowed faintly at the edge of his vision, and a bunch of asteroids drifted across the void.
There was a small difference between normal jumps and emergency jumps, and that was the time it took for them to happen. Normal jumps took their time as the jump drives formed the bubble around the ship to keep it fully safe. However, emergency jumps only formed a partial bubble at the front of the ship, ensuring that the ship would not be torn to pieces to perform the jump, turning what would normally be a calm ride into a hectic and uncomfortable one.
Mark sat in his chair, chest heaving, and his hands still locked onto the controls as the orange hues of alarms swept silently across the bridge. Only the soft hum of the reactor and the ship's life support systems resounded. The jump had knocked various systems offline, most of which were auxiliary and made for comfort, like the artificial gravity. However, there were also some more essential systems that were knocked offline, one of them being the engines and another the maneuvering thrusters. It would take about thirty minutes for them to come back online, but in the meantime, Mark was drifting aimlessly through the void of space.
The Strathos' Shepherd's navigational systems were still online, so he decided to take advantage of his current predicament to map out a path back into a system that would have a station. The nearest one was located in IUC-controlled space, so he mapped out the path that he would need to navigate, something that would take five more jumps and about four days of travel before he finally arrived.
By now, most of the systems that had been knocked offline had come back online, except for the engines. Mark stood up from his chair and stretched before making his way to the bathroom to relieve himself. He hadn't been gone for more than two minutes and had just stepped out of the bathroom when alarms rang throughout the bridge.
Mark quickly got himself seated in his captain's chair before taking a look at what the problem was. His radar had picked up four signatures, heading his way from the formation of asteroids, travelling at full burn with their weapon systems online and trained on him.
Not a single one of the ships had a transponder or identification numbers, something that told Mark everything he needed to know. These were pirates. His frown deepened, and he leaned back into his chair, tension pressing between his shoulder blades as he ran a hand down his face.
"Of course, I would run into pirates in the middle of nowhere, cause why the fuck not," Mark muttered to himself as he checked how long it would take for the pirates' ships to reach weapons range and how long it would take for the engines to finish coming back online.
The pirates were about ten minutes away from weapons range, and the engines only needed about two more minutes before they came back online. Mark tapped his fingers against the council, weighing the options of what he should do. He could either wait two minutes in a high tail it out of there, but the ships were already moving too fast, meaning they would catch up to him if he chose to run. Or he could turn his ship in their direction and prepare to engage them once they came within range.
A smirk plastered itself across his face as he remembered something Anahrin had told him. "I have done some modifications to these railgun designs, pushing the range to about triple their normal capabilities and making them longer while still maintaining their current rate of fire. Besides, your ship's design would draw attention on its own. So I thought, if anything is going to draw attention to my pupil, I would rather it drew attention in a way that said 'stay away' rather than 'come have a look.'"
Mark silently thanked Anahrin's style of thinking as his fingers slid across the controls, rerouting reserve power to the weapons systems and bringing them online.
---
Aboard one of the pirate ships, their scans indicated that the unknown ship that they were currently approaching had brought its weapons online and trained them on them as well.
"Well, ain't this pretty? What does this fucker think he's doing, aiming at us? Does he think this will deter us from approaching him? 'Cause it ain't gonna work."
The same sentiment was felt throughout every single ship, as other pirates said similar things.
Only one of the captains aboard the ships frowned, an uneasy feeling in his chest telling him that there was something wrong.
One of his crew members looked at him and asked, "Hey, Cap, what's wrong?"
The captain looked to his side, making eye contact with the crew member as he pointed to the enhanced image of the ship that was before them. "I don't know, Skip, something is telling me that that ship is dangerous. I don't know what it is, but I can feel it in my chest. It's as if we are heading straight towards our deaths."
Another crew member piped into the conversation, throwing his hands up into the air in dramatic flair, "Now, why are you always so pessimistic, Cap? You thought the same thing about the last ship that we attacked, and then we made off with such a haul," the man said. He then made a squeezing motion that was accompanied by a perverted face. "Let's not even mention the little toys that we got for us."
The captain gave the man a look of disgust before finally speaking, "I already warned you not to touch a single strand of their hair. They are our hostages, and you know how the IUC Navy gets when we go overboard with our hostages. There is simply a way for us to make more credits. And then you could go fuck all the bitches you want in a whore house back at our base."
The man shrugged his shoulders and kicked his feet as he said, "Oh, come on, cap, don't be like that. Just let me get my hands in that one little platinum blonde. Ooh, I'll make her feel like no other man ever made her feel before. I'll have her begging for more in no time."
Anger could be seen placid across the captain's face as he spoke, "I already gave you your warning, Charles. Don't you dare think I will not keep my word if you act. But going back to the ship, I don't know, I just don't like it. Something stinks about it just turning its weapon systems online and training them on us immediately instead of turning to run."
"They probably just have some missile systems, and we can just shoot those out before they ever get a chance to reach us," Skip said as he made finger guns and shooting sounds.
The captain was about to speak again before something on the display caught his attention. The ship had shifted just slightly, and that same feeling he had felt in his chest started gnawing at him. "Did they just-?"
The captain never got to finish his words as a railgun round slammed into the bridge of the ship. It tore a giant gash to the right of the bridge, and all the air got immediately sucked out with every single occupant as well. All of the crew on the pirate ship's bridge had died before even realizing what had happened.
Similar scenes played out across two other pirate ships, as they all got struck by railgun rounds. Only one ship was spared from being shot through the bridge as it had tried to dodge, the railgun round slamming into its engine, something that sent it spinning aimlessly across the void of space.
The other three ships had been shot at their engines, immediately reducing the speed at which they were travelling and continuing to slow down.
---
Mark stared at the display of the video feed of the ships drifting aimlessly through the void of space. They never stood a chance against his railguns as their range of engagement was simply astronomical in comparison to theirs.
Mark smirked in his seat as he quipped, "Talk about amateur hour. It should be a no-brainer that if a ship decides not to run and face you head-on, then you should be the one running. Kind of like they used to say on Earth: If it doesn't look like it belongs on the drag strip, but it is lining up against you, then you should probably not be racing it."
Mark then noticed that one of the ships had not been hit in the bridge. So he sent out a communication request to them.
He cleared his throat before speaking, "Unknown vessel, this is Captain Mark Shephard aboard the Strathos' Shepherd. Your engines are gone, and you're drifting dead in the water. I'm only going to give you one chance, and one chance only. Surrender and face justice at the hands of the IUC authorities at the nearest station, or die in the vacuum of space. The choice was yours."
Static filled the channel for a moment before a rough voice cut in, guttural and laced with disdain. "This is Captain Varik of the Black Fang. If you think we will bow to some lone scavenger and face the so-called justice of the IUC, you're wrong. You simply got lucky with your shots."
Mark's eyes narrowed as he spoke. "Luck? If I'm lucky, then you're shit out of luck. Do you really think that striking four ships from such a distance before they can even react is just luck? Then you're completely wrong. You're simply outclassed and heavily outgunned. Now this is your last chance, surrender."
Laughter erupted over the channel as the man spoke again. "You think we're gonna surrender. We're pirates, god damn it. We don't surrender. You're going to have to drag my corpse off my ship before I surrender, you stupid son of a bitch."
Mark's jaw clenched, and he nodded. He had given them their chance, he had shown them enough mercy. " Alright then, have your way."
More laughter erupted on the other side of the, "Have it my way, he says, look at the stupid son of a-"
Marks simply ended the communication before firing a single round into the bridge of the ship, venting it, and killing everyone aboard the bridge. Mark looked at the radar again, noticing that the ships still had their weapons systems online, but the weapons were no longer tracking him.
He maneuvered the ship forward, engines humming softly as he angled toward the field of wreckage.
The ship glided silently through the void, its rail guns online and swaying from ship to ship, just in case the pirates weren't all dead. He made his way to one of the ships and latched onto it before sending the drones to make their way inside and depressurize the cargo hold. Once they had done so, they transported anything that appeared valuable from the cargo hold into his cargo hold.
He repeated the process with two other ships before finally arriving at the third ship. When the drones made their way inside and were about to depressurize the ship's cargo hold, Mark realized that there was something else in the cargo hold. He ordered them to stop and await further instructions.
Inside this third ship were humans. Not pirates or anything of the sort, but about twenty women all wearing IUC navy uniforms. They had their limbs tied up, and they were bound to some of the cargo. He could see through the cameras of one of the drones as their eyes widened at the sight of the drones.
Mark scratched his head as he thought about what to do next, talking to himself, "Well, this is going to be a fucking problem."