After discussing the rescue plan with the other prisoners, we concluded that since I was so gifted with talent, they would be better off staying inside; besides, no one who could have helped me was able to squeeze through the narrow gap in the bars. And those who could fit were too small.
So, clutching the blaster, I set off on my journey in proud solitude, hoping to reach those who would provide us with real help if I released them from their cages.
"Also need to disable the collars..."
I didn't really know where to go. I was alone, without armor, with a shitty pea-shooter in the middle of a crowd of enemies. Ideal conditions. So, with the most serious expression my child's face was capable of, I made my way through the ship.
And do you know what the interior of a pirate tub looks like, inhabited by a crowd of armed scum who don't give a damn about anything from laws to hygiene?
Filth, in a word.
Accustomed to the near-surgical cleanliness on Super Earth cruisers, I was in true horror at what I occasionally encountered here.
Rust and dirt were the least of the evils, for they only showed how the space brigands treated their property. Though that was also strange. A ship is the main argument, the primary source of income, and in general... they live here. Such an attitude toward a void raider was incomprehensible to me, to put it mildly...
With disgust, twisting my face into a grimace, I bypassed a massive pile of excrement partially smeared across the wall. And they had smeared this "cutthroat's paint" over a Republic crest that peeked out lonely and sad from under the smears, clearly left by a palm.
"What kind of vile freaks are they?"
I even had to cover my nose just to pass by, and luckily I was watching my step, otherwise I would have tripped over a huge beetle eating some kind of rat. Recoiling to the side, I hit my shoulder against the opposite, clean wall, and at that moment, a net flew through the space where I had just been.
A big net, the kind you'd use to catch a school of fish or snare a puma, not catch a child.
Glancing down the corridor, I saw a pair of plump, lizard-like aliens already briskly loading a new projectile, sighting me in the fairly spacious hallway.
"Eh, no luck..."
Taking a step forward, I slipped on a piece of fruit peel and dropped to one knee, lowering myself further and falling onto my stomach, letting a new projectile pass over my head.
My hand was used to the fact that it's better to immediately fire back at the side shooting at you. So I unloaded a whole burst at the attackers, though most of it hit the already neutralized enemies.
The first two shots went wide, and only on the third did I hit the target. Hitting one of the lizards in the leg, I forced him to drop to one knee, pulling the aim of the hunting gun toward the floor. The point-blank shot didn't allow the net to open properly, causing its weights to ricochet back, entangling both shorties.
Briskly jumping to my feet, I reached my recent opponents with an important gait.
"Just as planned," I said, tapping the barrel of the blaster against my temple and winking at the unconscious residents of the planet Trandosha, whom I could only recognize up close. Ugly beasts, whose reputation is quite negative throughout the galaxy. "Ugh, and they stink so bad... Why do you need a net? With an aroma like that, you could knock out opponents just by passing them... Horrible."
My strolls through the ship continued... I wouldn't say it was difficult. Drunk, satisfied with life, and relaxed, the pirates spat on regulations, rules, and helping their fellow man.
Damn it, it got to the point where, after knocking out one standing on a corner, I didn't notice that he had been hanging out with a company of drunk comrades the whole time... if such a word even applies to this trash.
So. Three alcohol-soaked bodies watched their falling drinking buddy with their eyes, after which one of them simply slid the fallen comrade's mug toward himself and they continued chatting calmly...
But you know, no good western can be without drama, where a minor villain meets the protagonist, and I found myself one just like that.
A shady, hulking man in a cowboy hat, he caught me at one of the intersections just when I seemed to have finally found the right path.
Damn child's body, it doesn't know how to react to threats at all. Barely attempting to jerk away from the encroaching danger, I caught a backhand that nearly broke my neck.
Grabbing me by the scruff of the neck, the big man breathed booze fumes into my face, then carefully inspected me from head to toe. Horns protruded from his head—many small horns upon which the hat rested. He himself was apparently a mix of different races. But I had no more time for observation. Opening his maw, this parody of an Ogre bared yellow teeth, showing me a semblance of a smile.
"What kind of gnat are you?"
The attempt to shoot him in the face was unsuccessful—quite the opposite. Jerking his head back, he only singed his thick, unkempt beard and now looked at me resentfully, promising pain and suffering.
The blaster was ripped from my weak hands, and another slap nearly sent me to the afterlife.
"Perhaps I was overzealous, trying to save all the slaves alone."
With grief and hardship, rising from the dirty floor, I watched the approaching heavy steps of the brute without blinking. He stomped heavily, and with every meter covered, his shortness of breath intensified, showing that the man's lifestyle was not sweet.
Therefore, when he came close, I darted between his legs, striking a proven weak spot, but my fist met a belly hanging below the pubic bone, covered by a huge, untucked shirt.
"Little shit." Turning around, he managed to clip me with a fist. Pain pierced my back and I fell to the floor again, but every cloud has a silver lining. Flying nearly two meters, I flopped right onto the blaster, which I now pinned under my left armpit.
Approaching within aiming distance for my child's hands, the "Ogre" reached for my leg, but at that moment I spun around sharply and unloaded a powerful stun charge into him...
Which, however, produced no effect. Good thing that, taught by bitter experience, I immediately began crawling away, opening up the distance from this carcass.
Swaying, the big man spent a couple of seconds trying to pull his eyes together, which he successfully managed, and then, literally growling, he lunged at me.
"Holy mother!"
My squeaky voice rolled down the corridor.
Well, obviously...
Bolting from the spot, I quickly ducked around a corner, running around some drunk pirate who, a second later, flew out after me, knocked off his feet.
Charging like a rhino, knocking down everything and everyone in his path, the bearded man knocked over a couple of people who had peeked out at the noise. Scattering trash, boxes, and other junk, he raced after me while I, improvising, retreated wherever my eyes led me. Yes, it was exactly a retreat!
Jumping over piles of trash, running around pirates popping up in my path, I realized that I had apparently screwed up big time, believing in myself too much. It felt like one of those old games where the protagonist has to hide from an unkillable enemy—the run proceeded in roughly that spirit.
And it ended in a rather unpleasant place.
Flying into a semblance of a captain's bridge, though it looked more like a cheap brothel, I immediately jumped onto a sofa where the captain of all this rabble was lounging. Shoving a slave girl onto him, simultaneously knocking over a tray of drinks, I grabbed the nearest bottle and smashed it with all my might against a pirate sitting nearby—possibly an assistant or the right hand of this circus leader.
Having smashed it into shards, I was already about to press it to the throat of the master of this tub, but the bearded man bursting into the bridge ruined all my plans.
Breaking down the flimsy door that hung there only on a wing and a prayer, he immediately spotted me and, ignoring the shouts of the others and the captain's orders, lunged at us, reaching for my throat with splayed fingers.
Then the fallen slave girl woke up and began to rise, leaning one hand on the captain's junk, and he thought of nothing better than to jerk away, saving his crown jewels...
"How many male... have entered my life. And I used to live in the barracks and there was nothing like this."
Slamming his throat onto the "rose" of the bottle I had held out, the man began to wheeze laboriously, clutching his throat and spraying blood everywhere.
A total bacchanalia was happening on the bridge.
The slave girl was screaming. I screamed too, though more from disappointment and resentment. The captain was turning red in every sense and waving his hands. His assistant swayed in his seat, poking his thin, long fingers at the computer standing nearby.
And then a fat Behemoth flew into all this mess, burying most of the participants under him.
I don't know exactly what happened. We broke something or the captain's assistant poked somewhere, but suddenly a red emergency light flickered on the bridge.
A siren wailed somewhere in the depths of the ship... probably the only surviving one on this whole tub.
And then, for no reason at all, the gravity cut out, tossing us into the air.
That was when all the cards were on my side. Clinging to everything that came to hand, I tried to fly off the bridge at full speed, but a firm grip on my legs jerked me back, throwing me into the opposite wall, right where the captain's escape pod was located.
Flying inside, thinking sluggishly and barely understanding what was happening, I managed to see what was going on on the bridge, and I didn't like it.
The captain was already coming to, sticking a patch with bacta—a miracle of local medicine—onto his neck. His assistant was feverishly digging through the computer, having restored gravity and gradually shaking off his alarm, but judging by the look of his worried face, something shitty had still managed to happen, and now the man was calling the captain over, slowly giving in to panic.
But what worried me most was not that...
Pushing aside the still-screaming slave girl, the fatty with bloodshot eyes crawled toward me. On all fours, stumbling frequently, sometimes pulling his huge carcass along with his hands, he approached slowly but surely...
Fuck, it even got a bit scary. So much madness and anger in his eyes were directed at me that I felt my ass pucker to the size of a Needler's eye.
"To hell with this..."
The mission was a failure and, thinking of nothing better, I kicked the big red button next to the pod's hatch with my foot, closing it and cutting myself off from the captain's bridge.
The clanging hatch drew the attention of everyone on the bridge, and while the brute only howled resentfully, the captain, who had managed to review the data from the computer, was more frightened by the prospect of being left without an escape pod.
For a couple of seconds, nothing happened, but after that, I was jerked into the nearest seat with all the force, slamming my back into it.
Clicking my teeth and nearly biting my tongue, I watched in fascination as the ship receded, becoming smaller with every moment. Only as the ship moved away did the reason for the captain's and his assistant's panic become visible.
A huge station, hovering in orbit of a yellow planet, stood directly in their path. An unpleasant feeling appeared in my chest. I felt in my heart that something terrible was about to happen, and I was absolutely not mistaken in my conclusions.
The pirate ship continued to move forward, not swerving from its path. Its engines flared several times and it even managed to turn around, but it didn't change the essence.
Even through the void of space, I felt the clang and the force of the explosion. In absolute silence, I watched the slaver ship ram the station. In the first second, plumes of flame erupted from it, but they were instantly extinguished under the pressure of the boundless cosmos.
The station was falling to pieces. And from it, as from the compartments of the ship, already dead bodies flew out, scattering across the orbit of the yellow planet.
Pressing a splayed palm to the viewport, I felt that I was to blame for this whole situation. How many slaves were on the ship? How many people worked on the station?
Slumping in the chair, feeling the taste of blood in my mouth, I felt my lips themselves whisper the words of the Helldivers oath. Reciting it aloud, I felt the bitterness and grief fade, but in exchange, they settled firmly in my heart. They would not leave me, but now I could think and act, and I could grieve later.
"...To protect Super Earth and all Humanity."
Swallowing viscous saliva, I cast a final glance at the destroyed station, which was slowly dissolving into the blackness of space as I approached the planet. Small fragments of the station and the ship, thrown off by powerful explosions, floated around me...
And a simple automatic pod, without any frills, carried me to the nearest place where I could make a landing and not die from an aggressive environment.
I only understood the full irony of the situation later, when I learned the name of the planet I had landed on.
***
The space pod, encased in a cloud of fire, plummeted toward the surface of an unknown planet. Inside, amidst the flickering voice of alarm systems and dull thuds, the boy huddled in his seat. His heart hammered as if trying to tear through his ribcage, every beat echoing in his ears, drowning out the sound of emergency signals. Outside, deafening explosions and the screech of metal rang out—the remains of his spacecraft continued to burn, leaving a trail of sparks behind.
The pod pierced a cloud of dust, breaking free from the fiery trap, and for a moment it seemed to the boy that everything was ending. But reality turned out to be quite different. The fall continued, and through the viewport cracking before his eyes, he noticed a lifeless desert sprawling beneath him, shimmering under the scorching sunbeams.
Two hot suns, one larger and brighter than the other, scorched the surface with flame, and the sand around sparkled like glowing embers. The wind, carrying fine sand, howled, creating ear-piercing sounds as if the world itself were protesting the uselessness of this pod here. And yet the fall continued—the pod descended inexorably, its metallic body shuddering from turbulence.
When only a few meters remained until landing, the pod jerked sharply, kicking up a cloud of sand into the air and creating the illusion that it was remembering its majestic purpose one last time. But the expectation of a hard landing turned into a real hell: the cabin filled with the suffocating sound of cracking, and a violent impact occurred. The metal hull of the pod radically changed direction, and the internal mechanisms flared with rage and failure.
The desert met the boy cruelly—with an unforgettable symphony of blows and shaking that resonated through his body. His first thought was that he had broken something important, but other feelings quickly filled him: fear, determination, lack of understanding, until they gradually grew into confidence. When the pod finally stopped, overturned on its side, frozen motionless among a series of dunes, he felt a sharp rush of adrenaline. And only one thought spun in his head while his parched lips repeated a strange chant.
He would survive, despite everything.
A quiet "click" accompanied the exit from the pod and opened the way into a world full of unseen dangers. Outside, two scorching suns awaited him, shining mercilessly in a monotonous sky. The sand seemed to stretch to the very horizon, creating a sense of infinity and hopelessness. The battered boy was met by a motionless silence, broken only by the rustle of debris under his feet.
He climbed out of the pod, believing he had just survived the end of the world. However, only then did he realize: this was just the beginning of his new life. Looking around, he saw the sands shimmering in the hot wind, and although he found himself in absolute void, a flame of hope and determination ignited within him.
***
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