Enjoy! And thanks for reading!Chapter 5: Pirates
The Herald had been attacked numerous times previous to the attack on that voyage. The crew was equipped to handle the situation; each knew his or her place for when it did occur. Angels scattered to the control rooms, to corridors where weapons were stashed in sealed compartments in the walls, to the torpedo and missile bay to arm the big guns, to turrets that projected from the sides of the ship in order to shoot down enemy ships.
Lasers were primed, and every face on the ship was grim with the determination to prevent a hostile takeover of their territory.
The Captain was on the bridge, giving orders and monitoring the cacophony of bleeps and signals that told him about the attacker’s position.
“Captain! We have sight of the ship, sir!” cried a young Angel with blue hair who was in control of the radar system. The enemy ship had been pinged ahead of them and was then gliding into view.
Brisneron narrowed his dark eyes at the vessel that had dared to attack his ship.
“Fire a warning shot,” he commanded.
The bright, white light of the forward laser cannon flashed and then was seen to disappear upon reaching the opposing vessel. But the ship kept advancing, and Captain Brisneron narrowed his eyes even further as the space between the two ships shrank with each passing second.
“They aren’t going to stop, I see,” he commented. “Alright, Nevero—“
“Captain!” interjected the Second Mate. He had a headset on and was scrambling to write what he heard. “Captain!” he repeated. “I’m receiving a distress call from the ship! They claim to have been attacked by pirates and are in need of assistance!”
Brisneron frowned and every head on the bridge was turned to watch his reaction.
“Have them stop their advance and I will go over to the ship to confirm. Nevero will remain behind to act in my stead,” he replied. “Alright, men, we know this could be a trap, so we go fully armed.”
The message was relayed to the approaching ship, which slowed its advance and stopped within a hundred yards of The Herald. It was suspiciously devoid of activity and there weren’t any markings on the outside to determine what system from which the ship hailed.
“We’ve stopped,” Aren said aloud as she clambered off of her bunk to press her pale face against the porthole. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then, the looming bronze shape of a ship limped into view. It wasn’t as sleekly styled as The Herald, and Aren became curious as to why nothing was happening.
Finally, she turned away and paced her cabin, one hand under her chin. She had removed the covering on her wings and they unfolded and stretched as she walked. The sparkle from her wings made the chamber brighter.
“I have to know what’s happening,” she thought. “I don’t like having to stop. What if it’s a Royal Fetcher?!”
She froze at that idea. She wouldn’t put it past her cousin to send a ship to retrieve her so that she could be banished properly. Or…what if it was for another reason entirely? What if that ship was sent to make sure she wasn’t able to return—permanently?
Aren’s heart chilled and she wrapped her arms around her torso trying to contain shivers of fear. Would Arenslayme really have her murdered? Aren couldn’t take that chance.
“Well,” she said. “I guess I’ll just have to keep that from happening, won’t I?”
Aren went to her closet, donned her toughest garments, some she had made for when she practiced the fighting styles of her clan, and then she slipped out of her cabin without a backward glance. In the corridors of the ship, she watched crew members grabbing weapons from hidden compartments, and they didn’t seem to notice Aren.
The crew was too busy reacting to an attack, and they naturally assumed that anyone they saw was also a member of the crew. No one had ever disobeyed Captain Brisneron’s orders in the past.
So it was that Aren melded into the stream of activity, grabbed a medium knife that belted onto her waist, a small laser gun with a holster for under the arm, and a sturdy helmet that had a visor to cover the eyes during a gun fight. The weapons and hat completed her ensemble and she hurried without seeming to hurry to the bridge. That seemed like the place to be.
The disguised Aren slipped onto the bridge in the wake of a small company of hardy looking Angels. They stopped and saluted the Captain, Aren mimicked their actions, and they waited for the Captain to address them.
His eyes flitted over the company and he nodded in seeming approval.
“Good, the boarding party is assembled,” he said and then addressed Nevero. “If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, take the ship and get as far away as possible. It will have been a trap. No arguments, First Mate.”
Nevero looked both grim and green at the prospect of having to potentially desert Captain Brisneron, and Aren wished for a moment that she could make him feel better. But doing that would require her to step out of character and into trouble before she got a chance to do anything worthy of punishment.
Brisneron gave the bridge one last contemplative look before sweeping out of the room with the company of Angels stalking in close pursuit, Aren among them.
She couldn’t believe her luck. Somehow, the Captain and no one had recognized her, and she was getting to be in on the action first-hand. If she got out of it alive, the Professor was going to kill her and then the Captain and Nev would ground her to her cabin.
Aren marched in the loose formation, the others were too busy checking weapons and bantering amongst themselves to notice she didn’t join in.
“Hope they try something,” said a rather twitchy Angel.
A buddy of his punched him on the shoulder and said, “Why? So you can stop ‘em?” He laughed at the indignant expression on his friend’s face.
A few of the most reserved of the group gave the pair a scathing look. Obviously they didn’t care for humor pre-fight.
Aren watched and listened to the conversations with varying degrees of awe. Her whole life she had been sheltered—hidden more likely—from the grittiness of life. She knew all about court proceedings, the newest scientific findings, what courtier was seeing whom, and a whole list of equally useless topics that didn’t matter one iota to someone living a real life.
That was what she wanted: real.
Before she knew it, Aren found herself crammed into a shuttle and nestled uncomfortably between the twitchy Angel—whose name she discovered was Corvo—and two other Angels that combined felt like a massive brick wall. She was afraid to breathe for fear that they would be able to tell she wasn’t one of them. Thankfully, her luck held and the shuttle left its dock and began the agonizingly slow trip to the vessel claiming to be in distress.
“First fight, huh?” Corvo asked her.
Aren nodded.
He seemed to understand her hesitation and inability to talk.
“Just stay close to one of us. We’ll take care of you. Don’t worry about what I said earlier. Heat of the moment and all. Jitters just got to me and I had to run off some steam. Odds are we won’t have to raise a laser.”
She nodded again, this time with gratitude.
The visor on her helmet had just begun to fog up from the overwhelming body heat and her own breath, when a shock ran through the shuttle and a deep voice said, “We’ve made contact. Ready your weapons; we don’t know what we’ll find once those doors open.”
Aren’s heart beat faster and she reached for the grip of her gun, suddenly thankful that she had opted to take fighting and shooting lessons over embroidery and baking—a choice she had been ridiculed for at the Capital.
Captain Brisneron was the first one out when the doors slid open, and for a moment, Aren was amazed at how anyone could look so totally terrifying, yet simultaneously peaceful all at once. The moment dissolved into laser fire and shouts, and Aren was dragged into a scene she thought had only existed in her own nightmares and history books.
“Pirates!” she exclaimed as she remembered her weapon and began firing at the fierce faces screaming taunts at her companions. She thought she may have hit one, but didn’t stop to check as she tried to keep up with her people.
Brisneron had led the charge to the enemy bridge, but she could see that Corvo, her twitchy new friend was exchanging fire with two brutish looking creatures she had never hoped to see in lifetime.
The Angelic race didn’t have very many enemies, but the Demonan fighters she saw in front of her qualified as two of the few.
Demonans hated Angels, and as such, Angels felt it their duty to repay the lack of affection. The bloody history of their two races was longer than history itself, and Aren had no trouble conjuring up her own dislike for the Demonans: her ancestors were notorious for leading the charge in many anti-Demonan wars over the centuries. She felt an almost natural hatred of the two Demonans who confronted her at that moment.
She screamed a yell of fury as Corvo was hit in the arm, and she joined the fight, jumping over the body of a fallen pirate. She aimed a shot at the farther of the two Demonans, hitting him squarely on the chest. A neat hole singed his shirt and he fell, never to get up again. The second Demon yelled venomously and came at Aren with a wicked knife curved in the shape of a jagged sickle moon.
She dodged his first strike, sweat rolling down her neck, and then she brought her right leg up and around in a kick that sent the Demon to the ground. Another kick to the head made sure he stayed down.
Aren stood for a moment, panting at what had just happened. The still bodies of the two Demonans she had disabled—possible killed—lay at her feet and she took a long look at them, some feeling of dissatisfaction invaded her high-strung mind. Suddenly, she remembered why she had killed them and looked for her newest friend among the bodies.
Aren rushed over to see if Corvo was still alive. She didn’t know a lot about laser wounds, or wounds in general. Corvo was leaning up against a crate, clutching his arm and his face indicated he was in extreme pain.
“Are you alright?” she asked breathlessly. She hadn’t known actually fighting another person who wanted to kill you was so exhilarating—and dangerous.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he moaned. “Go join the rest of the others. Don’t know what I was worried about with you,” he joked. “You’re a real natural.”
Aren gave him a small grin and she ripped a strip of cloth off of the unmoving body of the nearest pirate and began to bind the laser burn on his arm.
“Just stay still. The shot was clean, as far as I could tell. Don’t try to get up,” she cautioned.
Aren did what she could and then with one last glance at Corvo as he sat wincing on the ground surrounded by bodies of enemies and some friends, she ran off to rejoin the fight.
“I guess Corvo is right after all,” she thought ironically. “You can take the clan out of the fight, but you can’t take the fight away from the clan.”
By the time Aren found the others, they had all but wiped the place clean of pirates. Captain Brisneron was interrogating what Aren supposed was the captain of the ship, when she burst into the room breathing heavily.
The enemy captain looked at her with a look of complete hatred and spat, “Are you blind?! What do you mean; you have no idea where the Princess is?! She is right there!” His insane laughter filled the room until it was cut short by a gag another Angel shoved in his wide mouth.
All eyes found Aren in an instant, and she was confused about what he could have meant until she realized one: she had lost her helmet somehow in that fight, and two: her jacket had been so badly singed that her wings were visible and glittering.
Brisneron’s dark eyes were the only ones Aren found herself compelled to meet. What she saw made her cringe. She was in trouble.
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