The corridor felt cooler than the cargo bay and was much darker than it initially appeared. There was eerier screaming echoing from down the corridor from behind, along with some other loud mechanical sounds Aaen couldn’t identify—and he didn’t even bother trying to figure that one out. He took the cold chill suddenly running down his spine as a sufficient indicator and warning to him that he should stay focused on keeping his up, himself glaring down his rifle sights centered and stay in formation. He leaned right, panning every visible space in the corridor going left, then signaled the all-clear. The deputy did the same, except going left. The Commander gestured for the bridge crew to move out along with their Delta Force escorts.
Aaen was two-thirds of the way towards the back on the right-hand side of the slightly disordered single-file line of crew members creeping into the adjacent corridor. The Commander gestured for the bridge crew to bear-left and keep their heads low. Aaen watched the right-hand-side of the end of the corridor and gestured for the deputy to watch the back of the line’s backs. The deputy snapped around and began walking backward staying on Aaen’s right. The Commander was crouched slightly and aiming down the way forward while the two other bridge crew members who were not members of Delta Force were alternating looking backward and forward with their rifle barrels pointed mostly upward, and on a swivel angle that made Aaen nervous that he was going to get shot either in the face or in the neck or chest. All-the-while his right trigger finger was resting firmly on his rifle’s trigger. Tiredness from being awake for nearly thirteen hours was setting in, and he was beginning to feel the fatigue on his aching shoulders from holding his rifle and gently marching with the rest of the bridge crew. He subconsciously dismissed the sensation as he likewise focused on protecting himself and the rest of the bridge crew. He panned right . . . then left—then right again, this time much more sharply . . . Footsteps!
The Commander gestured to stop walking. The line stopped with a few crew members bumping into each other. Another gesture said to find cover. The crew scrambled to break up into smaller groups and then snapped to fill the doorway gaps in the sides of the corridor. . .
Four pirates became visible walking in formation, each wearing woodland camouflage jackets, black cargo pants, boots, and protective combat helmets, and firmly carried similar large black particle rifles at-the-ready. The Commander gestured to stay back and out of sight. Aaen nodded and immediately relayed the signal to the next pocket of crew members, who in-turned nodded and immediately relayed the signal until the rest of the bridge crew received the message.
The two pirates in the rear of the formation broke off, turning left, and began marching down the corridor. Aaen’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest and he felt a heat wave on his face and started to sweat from his forehead as his hands became clammy from anxiety as he promptly lowered his rifle in front of him and took aim at the nearest pirate’s torso, then the barrel rose to a headshot. He kept aiming—his breathing suddenly became irregular, his heart pounding as he realized he had a solid wall behind him and to his right and left—as he glared panning between the two pirates until both pirates were out of sight. He could still hear them walking, and leaned right, eying the pirates as they glanced left into the cargo bay, continuing to march, then took a left at the back end, out of sight.
Aaen and the Commander made brief eye contact; Aaen nodded the all-clear.
The Commander gestured for the Deltas to scout ahead. The Commander cautiously inched up the corridor, poking his head out for an instant to glance right as Aaen reached the right corner. The Commander looked left; Aaen looked right. Aaen gestured the ‘all-clear’; the Commander gestured the same from the left. For now, Aaen thought skeptically, then eyed two taller humanoid figures from down the far adjacent corridor. They were walking fast toward them. Aaen realized that they had seconds to make a decision before their proverbial goose was cooked! Aaen gestured with his left hand to the Commander what he saw. The Commander nodded, knelt down and looked over his right shoulder and whispered to the bridge crew, “We’ve got two coming! We need to move, now! The armory is just ahead! We’re nearly there!” another circular hand gesture, “Let’s move! MOVE! Non-Delta Force-crew-members cover the front and bring up the rear!”
More blood-curdling screaming from one of the nearby rooms lining the corridor, and eerier mechanical sounds, including electrical hissing noises. There were dozens of possible rooms along this corridor where the bone-chilling sounds might be coming from. Aaen wanted to find out but knew he needed to stay focused on not being spotted or otherwise detected by the pirates, first. That, and no one was ready to engage the pirates in an all-out firefight . . . not yet, at least. This was reassuring, and he was somehow confident that after a visit to the armory, and the formation of a tactical plan to retake the ship. . . payback was coming. He looked forward to that, and grinned, trying to aim more steadily under the anxious stress and worry about being detected or spotted.
The bridge crew entered the adjacent corridor and scrambled to fill in the multiple doorway cavities relatively evenly spaced throughout the corridor, except beyond the security checkpoint twenty feet or so behind them. The corridor was too dark to see past that point. The power apparently wasn’t cut for several hundred meters toward the starboard section of the hull—
More footsteps. . . Two of the four pirates were coming back around, their helmet radio chatter subtly echoed down the corridor, along with more of those eerie sounds. The eerie sounds stopped, leaving only the subtle radio chatter, and subsequent acknowledgments from the recipients of the transmissions. These pirates were walking more like they were looking more aggressively for something, and were looking back and forth, right and left. Their body language said they believed they couldn’t be stopped—like victory had already been declared, it just hadn’t happened yet, and they were looking for their chance to shoot a few Starfleet personnel. . .for fun.
The Deltas and the other armed bridge crew members took careful, sharp aim, anticipating the worst to happen as the pirates continued marching down the corridor. Aaen wanted to fire. He had a clean shot, no other apparent dangers in evidence, but the Commander gestured sharply for him to hold his fire.
Aaen was frustrated by the order, but followed it, keeping the rifle tucked into his right shoulder while narrowly leaning right, around the corner, holding the rifle at an angle, keeping the target’s upper spinal column in the rifle’s sights, his finger firmly on the trigger, following the pirates until they met with the other two humanoid figures walking down the corridor.
They spoke for several seconds, and then the marching continued.
One of the taller pirates was dressed more like a military administrator than a foot soldier, dressed in colorfully decorated jackets and matching dark pants and dressier shoes than the combat boots the guards were wearing. One of the taller pirates was male, the other was female. Their personally distinguishing features were hidden in the darkness. They said something to each other as they wrote something down on a PADD they were holding as they entered a turbolift whose doors quickly closed behind them. The other armed bridge crew members also took aim.
The Commander entered the corridor and marched forward sharply. “Nobody fire! C’mon! Let’s move out!” he gestured for the rest of the Deltas and the bridge crew members to follow. They stopped one door ahead, on the left. This doorway was wider than the others they had used to hide. Aaen gestured for the rest of the armed crew members to take up tactical positions and pointed out the crew members, and then the positions in the corridor where he wanted them to go, and where to face. The rest of the bridge crew knelt down next to the wall and faced to the front of the line where Aaen and the Commander and a junior member of Delta Force were assessing how to get into the armory.
Aaen looked behind him at the door to the armory ahead. The door’s panel read “LOCKED”. The Commander began sharply working to disengage the lock which involved carefully forcefully removing the faceplate on the lock’s inner workings: fiber-optic wires, small isolinear chips, and a maze of other light-up colorful angled hard circuitry. He tactfully navigated the inner workings, gasping in frustration about the security lockouts. The pirates had done a thorough job to make sure the more sensitive areas of the ship stayed off-limits.
“We don’t have time for this anymore.” he declared sharply, quickly pulling a circular disk-shaped object out of a compartment on the left of his belt. He entered a few commands into the device, and then pressed another command which started a 10-second countdown. He put the device inside the maze of circuitry and replaced the panel, then ordered the crew to get back, and FAST! They took cover behind the security checkpoint. Three seconds later, a subtle explosion sent jagged pieces of smoldering metallic and glass-like debris into the corridor. Another gestured from the Commander told the crew to RUN into the room. They could all hear more footsteps coming closer! It sounded like several individuals were walking towards them, from multiple directions! The crew rushed into the armory like they were being shot at from behind, down the corridor, and from their right. The Commander and the rest of the Deltas worked together to shut the doors to the room. The bridge crew breathed loud sighs of relief.
“What about the debris from the breaching charge?” Aaen asked the Commander.
The commander looked back at him directly and replied, “They should dismiss that as battle damage from when they boarded earlier.”
“And if they don’t?” the first officer quipped. The footsteps were very loud. They sounded like a small crowd was approaching. Aaen gestured for the bridge crew to be silent. They listened to the chatter from outside. A male voice was speaking.
“—Tell Maddog the ship will be ready. There will be plenty of Starfleet personnel to interrogate and torture. I’m pretty sure Maddog will want this ship for himself. The Starfleet captain and first officer will be the most valuable hostages because they know more and have more security clearance for information. We can use that to our advantage, as long as they don’t think anything’s happened to them. Have you heard from patrol ‘Hangman’?”
“Not yet, sir. I was going to contact them as soon as we get back to the bridge, for an update.”
“Good.” the first voice acknowledged sharply. “Report to me as soon as you have an update from them.”
“Yes, sir, . . .” the dialogue became muffled and indistinguishable.
“. . . They’re gone.” Aaen declared as he turned around. The bridge crew had formed a crowd throughout the room. The Commander turned on the lights to the room to reveal a tactical briefing area in the far corner, comprising of a large six-by-six-foot black viewscreen filled with TV snow. On the opposite side of the room, a series of black locked locker-like closet spaces locked by a numeric access code. The Commander entered his access code into each of the doors. The locks disengaged and then the doors opened.
For the Deltas, this was another day of keeping people safe. For the rest of the bridge crew, tactically, Christmas had come early. Each crew member was given a similar large black particle rifle and a sidearm. The rifles featured standard iron sights. The Commander handed each Delta Force operator small circular and pentagon-shaped explosives. None of the explosives were armed; however, they looked like they could make easy work of even the cargo bay doors, were they to be armed.
The captain and Commander led the bridge crew to the briefing area where a few commands into the screens’ adjacent control panel cleared the TV snow-like effect and showed a side tactical cutaway of Voyager.
The captain directed their attention to the Commander—
*****
Steve H. told Jordan Foutin, "You are the next Tom Clancy. You really are a gifted writer."
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