A Whore at Dread Harbor Ch. 09

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A thrilling adventure he had during his ten years out on the frontier.

*

Deckard pulled her close, enshrouding Corani in his duster coat. She seemed to enjoy the gesture, cuddling into his chest as she took deep, even breaths.

An old story about his childhood would do no good here. He'd already told her most of the good ones, and the rest might just make the tears flow anew. Corani was too world-weary a soul to tolerate a flowery fairy tale, either. She needed strength, an inspiring tale of bravery to gird herself for what was to come.

Without thinking, the words bubbled up to his lips.

"This business of ours reminds me of a scrap I had several years back. A pirate attack - if you can believe it." Deckard pulled back from the hug, looking down at Corani. "... Would you like to hear it?"

She smiled at him, her tear stained cheeks pulling up into that awkward smile of hers. "More than anything right now, Deckard." She whispered, rubbing at her eyes.

Deckard smiled, feeling years flake off his shoulders as he looked down at his old friend. He gently led Corani over to the Deliverance's faded black couch. He sat down, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it as he collected his thoughts.

"This happened two or three years ago, I'd just managed to flee from the mess on Tasitov with my life, this ship and the clothes on my back." Deckard chuckled, toying with his cigarette as he stared at his false thumb. "You could say I'd grown jaded... more jaded than usual, I guess. I didn't want to see another living being for a while, so I headed out to the eastern fringes. The wildest of Wild Space, where even the Elven Iolina-Voyager vessels are thin on the ground."

Corani sat in her seat, her eyes wide and attentive as she listened. She had always loved to hear Deckard talk.

Deckard took a long, thespian drag off his cigarette. "I took a supply job running yearly shipments of materials out to far-flung colonies. And when I say far, I mean far, the kind of isolation where they not might not see another sapient being until the next time I swung around."

"My pryde was planning to head out to one of those places, before we reached Dread Harbor. Corani said. She smiled, her eyes shifting to a pleasant turquoise as she dwelled on the old memory. "It sounded like a grand adventure to me at the time."

Deckard's expression softened when he thought back to that now-distant, almost nostalgic time. He realized only in hindsight how much the solitude had helped to steady him. "I saw strange and wonderful things out in those far-flung regions, little mouse. Fungal forests the size of skyscrapers, ice fields of jagged, angular needles as far as the eye could see, entire star systems enshrouded in the twinkling, purple dust of nebulae."

She was engrossed. Deckard inwardly congratulated himself on steering his friend away from her navel-gazing melancholy.

"Half the systems I traveled through had only been given a cursory survey, with most of the stable jump points having only been tested a few times, if that." Decker took a drag off his cigarette, pacing back-and-forth across the deck of the ship as his analytic mind parsed out the details of that confusing time. "A couple of colonies lay out on the absolute edges of civilized space. They were little more than isolated frontier towns, clusters of prefab-habitation blocks huddling together like a white inkblot on the green earth. Most of them were tiny, a few dozen people at the most. Drifters and vagrants, outcasts and loners."

Deckard took another drag to hide his sad smile. "I fit right in."

"Some of the farthest of these places wouldn't see their first colonist ship for a half a decade or more. None of the residents talked to me much. I didn't pay it much mind: any stranger they might meet out on these far shores was odds on end a pirate." Deckard chuckled. "Hell, for all they knew I was playing them for a ruse, scoping out their settlement's defenses while reporting to my buddies lurking over in the next star system."

"You'd make a poor pirate Deckard." Corani said, smirking.

Deckard made a great show of being offended. He let out a huff of nicotine. "Why?" he asked, brushing aside his coat to finger the grip of his revolver, as if he intended to rob her.

Corani didn't so much as flinch. Her sly smirk turned into a cocky grin. "Trust me Lieutenant, I've worked with pirates. You don't quite have the... panache."

He grunted. "Well I suppose I could always affix a few skulls to the front of the Deliverance and brush up on my razor blade skills."

Corani giggled. "You've watched too many holovids."

Deckard smiled. This was the woman he remembered from Dread Harbor. "So after a year or so of doing this I began to get a bit comfortable. I found myself shipping supplies out to a distant Colony world known as Borchax III. It was a grueling journey, four months of zig-zagging across local systems in search of a stable jump point to the next. Most of the region remained unexplored; I never knew if the next jump would be my last."

He took a last drag of his cigarette and put the butt of it out on the edge of the holoprojector. "Well, you know how reliable my luck can be: one of my jumps dropped me on the fringes of an asteroid belt, near an old nav buoy where a frontier company had gone bust trying to mine out a dead claim." Deckard paced the room.

"The abandoned asteroid station had been re-purposed into a pirate stronghold. Little did I know, I was walking into a trap. Before I knew what was happening, the Deliverance was getting attacked from all sides by strike craft."

He gestured grandly as a paced, his body thrilling with the adrenaline of the memory. "I managed to catch them off guard, none of the pirates had been expecting me to be so well armed. It was easy pickings knocking one ship after another as they came in for their strafing runs."

He turned to look at Corani, smiling inwardly at her attentive gaze. He had her in the palm of his hand. "Finally, realizing my guns had a blind spot, one of their fighters hit my engines. It killed my thrust, and left the Deliverance drifting like a wounded animal in space."

"They sent a small transport filled with their most bloodthirsty bastards to dock and cut me out. They thought I was just going to lay down and die."

Corani's eyes were affixed to him with rapt attention. "...How did you get away?"

Deckard pulled out another cigarette, intentionally stretching out the answer as he popped open his thumb and lit it. He took a long drag, then exhaled.

"Unbeknownst to them, I was no longer on the ship. The moment they disabled my engines I donned a spacesuit, hopped out the airlock directly behind you, and wedged myself in the grooves of the upper part of the ship. They didn't see me lurking there when they docked."

"What was your plan?" Corani asked.

Deckard shrugged. "I was making it up as I went. I didn't really have time to think about it much more than that. I had a gun, a breaching charge, and not a lot else."

"So, basically Dread Harbor." She responded.

Deckard tried but failed to hide his grin. "If only, Corani. At least you were there with me on that station. Here, I was all alone. When they docked they found the airlock sealed tight. While they were busy trying to cut through I spacewalked over to their ship, planted the breaching charge on the roof of the transport, and detonated it." Deckard paused, allowing the tension in the air to hold for a long moment. "Their ship vented out into space, alongside most of the crew."

"I reentered my ship and walked into theirs through the now-unsealed airlock, making sure there were no remaining stragglers lying about. Thankfully, the fools hadn't thought to put on spacesuits, so it was basically a ghost ship." Deckard took a drag off his second cigarette. "I then heard a knocking coming from the engine room. It took me only a minute or two to realize there was a survivor. He was just a mechanic, Unarmed and terrified."

Corani bared her fangs. "...How did you deal with him?" She asked. She seemed to relish the thought of Deckard wreaking righteous vengeance upon these men she'd never met.

Deckard sighed, shaking his head slowly. "I didn't 'deal' with him. You should know better than most little mouse: revenge is like picking at a festering wound. It might be momentarily cathartic, but in the end it only makes things worse." Corani's eyes faded to an unreadable purple. "I managed to talk to him through the speaker on the ship. With some cajoling, I convinced him to put on a spacesuit and meet me outside. His ship was going nowhere, his only hope of survival was to help me fix my ship and find a safe harbor to escape."

Deckard took a drag, dwelling for a moment on that strange, awkward time when he worked side by side with the young mechanic. "He was just a kid, didn't give me a hint of trouble. At gunpoint, I got him to help me get the Deliverance's engines running. A few fighters were still circling the two ships at a distance. We waited for an opening, then severed the airlock connection and gunned the engines."

"They hadn't been expecting me to make a break for it. By the time the fighters caught up to us, the Jump Drive was charged. Not knowing whether we'd hit our target or end up inside the belly of a black hole, we made an emergency jump." Deckard smiled, patting the edge of the holoprojector as he sniffed out his second cigarette. "As you can see, this old girl didn't let me down."

"Out of options and now probably not welcome with his pirate buddies, I offered to take the kid on for a while as a crew member." Deckard let out a low chuckle as he ceased pacing, facing Corani. "...I think I scared him too much. The kid declined. So instead we made the jump to the colony, and I dropped him off with them, lying through my teeth about how he was a new arrival looking to make a living. So far as I know, he's still there. I warned them about the pirates in the nearby system, dropped off my shipment, and headed out again."

"You're a very lucky man Deckard." Corani said,

Deckard shook his head. "Luck had nothing to do with it, just like it has nothing to do with what's about to happen." Deckard sat down next to his Catian friend, staring hard into her multicolored eyes.

"This thing we're about to do, it's gonna be tough. I won't lie to you. But we aren't hopeless, Corani. We can salvage this situation, we just need to play it smart. Remember how desperate we were on Dread Harbor? how impossible the odds were?" Deckard put a hand upon her shoulder. Corani put her hand over his, rubbing his fingers gently in platonic empathy.

He smiled at her. "Life has a funny way of throwing you into situations you don't expect. But that doesn't mean you can't overcome them. We'll get through this, little mouse," His smile widened into a comforting grin, "I promise."

Corani smiled back at him. Her tears had dried on her face. There was no fear in her eyes anymore, only a strong resolve to see things through. The two were - for the second time in their lives - united in purpose, Ready to face the horrors that awaited them.

"Just like old times, Deckard." She said, her eyes flashing a hopeful, green hue.

* * *

Days of boredom passed as they made the long trip to the Dorantis system. It took three jumps and the better part of a week to reach the remote region of space. The bureaucratic wheels of galactic colonization had not yet lurched itself in this direction of space, so there were few stable jump points that had been charged.

Corani did her best to seclude herself during this fleeting downtime. She rested, relaxing as best as she could in the budding tension. She spent long hours reading in silence off of her holo-tablet. They both knew it was likely going to be the last time they'd have real rest for some time, and she did her best to make the most of it.

Deckard busied himself perusing the tidbits of information Corani had provided him. He poured over the facts of the case like he was investigating a crime, attempting to connect the dots together with the scant details he had. The squad reports were confusing and contradictory, the schematic he'd acquired was at best only a rough approximation of the facility they'd actually be entering, and the bios of the assorted crew members scant and incomplete.

It took him a few days, but he finally had cobbled together the rough sketch of a plan, though much would still depend upon the circumstances they found when they arrived.

When they finally emerged into the Dorantis system, they made for the lone moon orbiting a nearby gas giant. This is where the base was located at, this is where Corani's surviving crew were, hopefully, still alive.

Deckard waited till they were in orbit over the moon itself to give his impromptu briefing. He wanted Corani to be fresh, clear headed and ready. It wouldn't do for either of them to overthink the plan, given how much of it they would inevitably have to improvise.

He began the briefing like he was back on the flight deck of the GFP Dauntless: grim, stoic, staring at his (only) squadmate with his back facing the holoprojector, projecting an air of authority in the silhouette lighting. It was a pleasant reminder of simpler, more innocent days. He pointed behind him as the 3D schematic of a series of buildings popped up.

"This is a Zeta Moonbase: a long distance rest and refit station for exploratory starships, produced by a now-defunct Starbase company of the Triumvirate era called Prism Industries. This particular model was manufactured en-masse approximately 600 years ago, roughly the timeline when this base was constructed."

"A prefab." Corani said, nodding slowly. She was nothing if not an attentive student.

Deckard afforded her a slight nod in return. "What that means is that we can make a pretty good guess as to the interior design of this particular station. So far as I can tell, this is the basic layout." Deckard pointed at the central buildings they lit up in bright fluorescent yellow.

"The exterior buildings are nested in the impact craters of an asteroid, roughly 3 1/2 mi.² in diameter. Most of the outer structures are used for maintaining the integrity of the main base: An oxygen generation plant, a solar panel network, and an external waste disposal unit, respectively."

Deckard zoomed in on the largest buildings of the schematic. "The main base is split into three central hubs, set on magna-steel stilts that have been driven into the moon's crust. These hubs are shaped roughly in a triangle, with pressurized surface tram lines connecting all three together."

Deckard pointed at the bottom right point of the triangle. His face lit up as the holoprojector cast a blue glow across his rugged features. "This hub is the ship service station. The top half is made up of six hangar bays: A-F, while the bottom half is a series of cargo bays connected to the hangars though elevator lifts. These would mostly be used for storage and maintenance work. The rest of the hub is devoted in one way or another towards servicing the hangars. Lots of small maintenance halls, a number of pressurized air locks allowing engineers to work outside, etcetera."

"...Lots of narrow spaces." Corani said, a worried frown growing on her face.

Deckard nodded. "Each hangar itself is large enough to hold up to three small freighters at a time, but not much else. Larger shipping has to dock on top of the hub and be worked on in space."

Deckard made a circling gesture with his hand, his fingers causing the hangar hub to light up in its entirety. "This hub is where your team first inserted. It is also the most likely location for any remaining survivors to be located. Though, if that's the case, it begs the question: why haven't they escaped or sent out a distress call?"

Deckard pointed to the second hub, the top point of the triangle. "This hub is the command and control center for the station. It is where the station's commander and the station's permanent crew would be located, as well as the flight control center, the sensor array, and the main security hub. Most of the blast door and security systems controls will be located in this section. Assuming we spend any amount of time on the station, this will be a top priority to secure if at all possible."

Deckard pointed to the third and final hub, the bottom left part of the triangle. "This last spot is the transient living hub. It's basically got the full amenities of a modern Starbase in microcosm: housing, entertainment, a small market, a medical deck. Pretty much what you'd expect to see on Dread Harbor, if a little dated."

Corani's brow tightened. "The Goblins loved to make labs out of people's homes."

Deckard nodded "Given the number of potential hideouts and dead ends, will have to be careful if we end up in this area. The good news is: standard goblin psychology wouldn't necessarily apply with an established base of their own. On Dread Harbor, such methods were mostly done for the sake of expediency. In general, Goblin gene-splicers would seek more ideal locations for their labs. Preferably large, open spaces with lots of room for them to install their tech."

Corani crossed her legs. "...They're probably set up on the medical deck."

Deckard shook his head. "Careful not to jump to conclusions, little mouse. We have no way of knowing that yet. Stick with what we can prove, avoid making baseless assumptions."

She waved her hand dismissively at him. "Yeah, yeah Lieutenant. I know the lecture."

Deckard suppressed a smile. "Now, let's go over your team's timeline: Four months ago they entered the base and landed here," he pointed to the shipping hub, lighting up a particular hangar deck.

"Hangar Bay B. They encountered no resistance, but proceeded cautiously, conscious of potential ambushes and booby traps. The first week's action was a careful scouring of the hangar bays from top to bottom. They discovered indications of Goblin activity, as well as a number of recent corpses, but nothing else. Their reports stated that they were skeptical the station was even inhabited anymore. Once they secured the hub, they tarried for about a week setting up defenses and fallback points in case of an attack."

Deckard pointed to the top point of the triangle. "On the third week they split into two teams. The first, under the command of Captain Rezov, moved on foot through the depressurized tram line to secure the C&C hub, while the other squad, commanded by his second in command Lieutenant Krelka, remained in the hangar hub, keeping watch over the geneticist and her entourage. The report indicates the civilians were ordered confined to their ship until the all clear was given."

Deckard pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with his false thumb. "The report states that the geneticist was agitated at the slow going. She repeatedly demanded to enter the facility on her own, but was rebuffed."

Corani smiled wistfully. "Jiana is stubborn, if nothing else."

Deckard didn't like how forgiving Corani's tone was. As far as he was concerned, 'Jiana' was still a prime suspect for whatever fate had befallen Corani's crew. He let out a huff of smoke.

"It is at this point that the unit under Captain Rezov began to experience concentrated enemy resistance. I have no confirmation on the spefcific breed of threats they faced, but the wording in the reports indicates they were Goblin flesh chimeras."

Decker took another drag, savoring the taste of the nicotine. "A firefight ensued, but they suffered no casualties. These guys knew their stuff. By the end of the first month's report, Captain Rezov and his men were in control of the C&C center and were about to power on the whole station."