Conflagration

Medicine or Pain

The colonel did not arrive shortly.

Erin quickly gave up trying to get any information out of Scalps or any of the other pirates⁠—correction: "private security contractors⁠"⁠—directly. She changed tack again and remained silent. She watched and listened. They din't blindfold her or anything, but they whispered a lot and were careful what they said within her earshot. Still, she was able to glean much from snippets of overheard conversation.

Apparently Scalps was in charge of a dozen-or-so man squad. Their patchwork uniforms notwithstanding, they were far more organized than Erin had ever expected any group of pirates to be. They had a clear chain of command and paradoxically seemed to take pride in their "work." And they hated somebody named Villalobos. Nobody mentioned Capt. Elof or his plane, at least not within her earshot. She wondered if that meant they didn't know anything about the missing Noémie pilot or if they knew something they didn't want to tell her.

Erin watched as a medic treated one of Scalps' men who had a nasty-looking bite mark in his forearm. Erin couldn't help but feel a little proud of Lyssa for that.

By and by, the plane was tethered properly to the platform's dock and she and the unconscious Lyssa were moved to the platform. Away in the distance on the lake's eastern shore, Erin could see a collection of shabby, wooden buildings she recognized right away as a Fourther village. The church, the spiritual center of any Fourther settlement, was easy to identify even across kilometers of open water. Its sides were partially whitewashed and its steeple was still under construction.

Most of the pirates re-boarded their troopships and flew off to wherever pirates go. The terraforming platform out in the middle of the ocean, Erin presumed as she watched the troopships disappear to the west. The old terraforming platform was likely their home base. It was the only other settlement 788NC's scanners had shown on the planet, though she supposed it was possible the pirates could have a cloaked base somewhere else on the planet. Only Scalps and his squad remained on the platform to stand guard over the prisoners and the hardpointer.

The platform had a small shed, a landing pad for smaller planes like fighters or gunships, a refueling tank, and a lean-to with some tools inside it for performing basic maintenance. The shed had a ladder bolted to its side to allow access to its roof. To the bottom rung of this ladder, Erin's hands were re-cuffed. She couldn't stand up, and she was obliged to sit there on the ground, her long chicken legs and big, clumsy feet stretched out before her. She shifted constantly, trying in vain to find a comfortable way to sit. Lyssa, still unconscious and hogtied, was simply placed on the deck beside her. Two men armed with full-auto slug chuckers stood guard over them.

"Sarge, we got a sail," announced the lookout, nonchalantly. Scalps had posted the lookout on the roof of the shed and now he stood almost directly over Erin staring eastward towards the distant village. Erin could just make out the patch of white, triangular canvas near the village.

"Yeah, I expected that," Sgt. Scalps said. "Wind's light. Take 'em an hour to get here." Whoever was approaching from the Fourther village clearly wasn't any great concern to the pirates. What kind of world is this where followers of the Fourth Testament are allied with pirates? Erin wondered.

And they waited. Still, this mythical colonel didn't show up. Erin considered asking what they were waiting for, but when she caught Scalps' eye, the look he shot her made her rethink asking the question. Eventually, Lyssa woke up and moaned.

"Mmmm...Anybody got anything for a headache?" Lyssa asked. The hogtied mechanic was laying on her side with her back to Erin.

"Yeah, we sure do." This was the man whom Lyssa had bitten. His forearm was now wrapped in a bandage. "Too bad we ain't gonna share it with you."

"Man, don't be a dick," said the medic who'd bandaged the other man's arm. "Would you've done any less if you was her?" The medic strode over to where Lyssa lay. He held an autoinjector in one hand and a stun stick in his other hand. He held them both where Lyssa could plainly see them. "You understand the choice I'm offering you here?"

Lyssa nodded. "Headache medicine or more pain."

"Good. I gonna get any trouble out o' you if I come close, then?"

"Where's Erin?" Lyssa answered the medic's question with one of her own. Erin felt like she knew Lyssa well enough by this point to know that the answer to the medic's question was dependent upon the answer to Lyssa's.

"I'm right here behind you," Erin answered her mechanic's question even thought it hadn't been directed at her. "I'm okay. Don't fight them."

"What's it gonna be, Fangs?" the medic asked again with a note of grudging respect in his voice.

"Medicine...please," Lyssa answered.

The medic warily held the autoinjector to Lyssa's shoulder and pulled the trigger. It hissed the dose of headache medicine into Lyssa's arm and then the medic stepped quickly away.

"Erin," Lyssa asked, "what's happening? What are they going to do with us?"

"Shut the fuck up, you two!" commanded Scalps.

Erin couldn't help herself. Even though she knew she should keep her mouth shut, she answered Lyssa's question. "We''ll have to discuss that with the colonel. He'll be here shortly."

* * *

Several minutes after Lyssa woke up, while they were still waiting for the colonel, there was a loud BOOM from the sky above. Everyone looked to the sky including Erin. A ball of fire and smoke high up in the atmosphere was all that remained of some unfortunate plane. For a couple of minutes, there was much low, tense, speculative talk among the pirates as Scalps got on his radio and requested a situation update.

Erin could only hear Scalps' side of the conversation as he spoke into the radio pack's handset. "Affirmative...Roger that...Understood..." He hung up the handset and announced triumphantly to his men, "I just talked to Major Tolbert. That was one of theirs. Score is three-to-nothing and now they're retreating!" At this, a cheer went up among the pirates.

The man whom Lyssa had bitten grabbed his crotch and shouted at the sky, "Suck it, Villalobos!"

* * *

"Sir, we just lost Big Dog. That's three fighters down and none of theirs."

"Fuck!" Capt. Villalobos exclaimed. "What's the status on our troopship?" They had lost three of their eight fighters while Third Law still had lost none, but Villalobos didn't care about the fighters. He'd expected to lose them. Third Law had better fighters, better pilots, and more of them. He didn't even care about the stupid hardpoint freighter anymore.

The real objectives were in that stupid, little village of squatters. If they could get the troopship on the ground and kill everybody in that village, then the Fourthers wouldn't have any legal claim on this planet any longer. His employers at Safe Harbor had made clear to him that they mainly just wanted the squatters gone. He'd hoped to skylift them out (willingly or not) to another planet, but this whole thing had gone on for too many months now and he just wanted it over with. He'd sent the troopship down to the planet with orders to kill everyone⁠—man, woman, and child⁠—in that annoying little shit stain of a village that Third Law was protecting.

When the tactical officer failed to answer his question right away, Capt. Villalobos shot the man a warning look. "Their gunships are beating our troopship up pretty bad and our remaining fighters are barely able to keep the enemy fighters away from it."

"Can the troopship make it to its target? That's all I wanna know."

The tactical officer hesitated. "I don't believe so, sir. Troopship pilots are requesting abort. Colonel Raith figured out what we were doing and sent his gunships to intercept before we even got the troopship out of orbit. It was an ambush."

"Fucking Raith." Capt. Villalobos sighed. "Okay, call them back. Move the Sophie back to a safe distance. Third Law wins this one."