The Adronaut

“I REPEAT, WE ARE ABOUT TO BE BOARDED. ALL GUARDS TO THEIR STATIONS. OVER AND OUT.”

The mechanical tone to the man's voice, accentuated by the tannoy system he was talking through, blared through the ship. Not one person on board would have, or could have missed that warning.

Lars missed that warning. He was meant to be on guard, but had traded his shift with his crew mate - due to him being overworked and too tired - Daryl, aka Bug, nicknamed because his body had so many unnatural curves it looked like it was in three segments. Being overworked happened a lot, and wasn't uncommon, but typically Lars would complete all shifts, today however was a different story.

Lars didn't miss the warning in the conventional sense, meaning he had heard it, he just hadn't interpreted it as a warning, instead, it was time. Lars knew this boarding was going to happen, he hadn't known exactly when, but he had known ever since this ship full of medicinal goods had set off.

He'd been the plant, the man on the inside, the traitor. His instructions were simple: learn the security code to the door, to get ahold of the goods - these were hard to come by, and only a few people on board knew for security reasons, it was only a matter of time until someone slipped up though, and Lars had to find that slip up and take advantage of it. He then needed to find the best or quickest route from boarding to the goods which were in the most heavily guarded area of the ship, and then translate that back to his crew aboard The Adronaut, then finally escape with the boarding crew.

Quite deliberately Lars had picked Bug to cover his guard shift on the captain's deck. Out of all the members of the guard unit, Bug was known to be the laziest. He took the job the least serious, and that was because he was in his late forties, having been in the job for over twenty years, he had never been in a boarding raid and not even seen a pirate ship. To him, the job was boring, repetitive and paid well. He was retiring in just a few months, after this journey he had one more return journey then he was done.

Despite Bug not seeing a pirate ship, realistically and statistically, he had been lucky. Piracy was rife, and had only been getting more and more common over the last couple of years. With wars escalating all over, supplies were being sent from the wealthier areas to help with relief, and in some cases to help with the war efforts. At times of war there is money to be made, and pirates were only part of the problem.

What Lars was unaware of, was due to the increase in piracy, this ship, The Orion, was one of the first ships to have increased security. A measure brought in in secret that would no doubt be outed in the next few months, but would hopefully deter and prevent some piracy. Behind the closed doors of the “storage of sealed goods” was also a whole separate security team, hired externally from ex marines and paras. Highly trained, and whose sole purpose was to sit and wait behind that closed door, to see if it would open before their specified drop zone. Security Team Zeta, who would later down the line be known as Zetas, some of the hardest men and women around, had heard the warning alarm, and all twelve of them were suited in bullet proof carbon fibre armour, and held M4 plasma rifles, with a Zastava M19 side arm strapped to their waist alongside some flashbang grenades.

The men entered the ship, there were twelve of them, pirates all heavily armed. The best way to run an operation like this was to not kill anyone, it just made things complicated. So quickly in, follow the route laid out, grab the goods and get out. Not too many people so it would overcrowd, but enough not to scare anyone into being a hero. For this size ship, twelve was perfect, considering there were ten guards, and one of those was Lars, there didn't seem to be much that could go wrong.

And that's when everything went wrong.

The pirates made it to the goods door, cracked the code which they got from Lars, and opened it. Four of them were instantly downed by the rattle of the Zetas M4 plasma rifles. Before they could even think about firing back two more were downed and the Zetas swarmed through the unlocked door into the corridor to take advantage of the surprised pirates.

It took less than a minute, all twelve pirates had been downed by the plasma rifles, only one had been killed, hit at the wrong time the electric shock, like an overly powerful taser, had stopped his heart. The other eleven were escorted to the brig.

Lars had heard the commotion, he had been en route to join the boarding crew when he had heard the shots, the shouts of alarm, the screams as more people got shot, and then the silence. He hoped against hope that all the boarding crew were dead, as bad as it sounds that's the only way Lars could survive the rest of the journey.

Two hours is all it took the Captain of The Orion to get the name ‘Lars’ out of them. They knew it was an inside job because they knew the way to the door and the code to get inside. Not to mention that's how most of these operations worked. Still, it had to be difficult as a Captain, entrusting your ship with a security detail, knowing that they are the most likely out of all the crew to be plants.

It was the Captain herself alongside two Zetas who found and escorted Lars to the brig, he had attempted to hide, but gave up after twenty minutes, knowing it was only a matter of time after his name was called out on the tannoy.

Lars knew how these things operated, this was the end for all of them. They were to be ‘thrown overboard’. Despite the term not meaning the same thing anymore, despite the fact they had zero chance of survival and despite the fact there was no water to throw them into, the phrase had stuck. Even though humans had migrated to ships and outer planets. Lars had never even seen natural flowing water.

There wasn't enough oxygen, food or water on board to cater for criminals, deadbeats and especially pirates. The brig was just temporary, everyone knew that, you're either locked up for one or two nights for being disorderly, or violent. But a crime worthy of proper punishment? It's not accepted on a ship, and out in no man's space, martial law was used.

The twelve men and women, including Lars were escorted to the airlock that the Adronaut docked to, as soon as the firing started, they disengaged and fled, the smartest move to pull in that engagement. Lars knew each and every person being escorted by name, he'd worked jobs with them for years, and their time had come to an end. He had accepted that, where some of the others hadn't yet and were shouting, arguing or trying to get away, none of which made any difference to the direction they were going or the final outcome.

Escorting them was the Captain who was flanked by the eleven Zetas who weren't injured in the fighting, the twelfth was in the infirmary getting treated, he would survive.

Captain Joan Peters hated this part of her job, she struggled internally to justify sending someone to their death, somehow it was easier when there were more of them. The airlock was prepped and ready, as a sign of respect, Captain Peters never turned her back on the people who got thrown overboard. Her ex security guard Lars was the last face she saw as she pressed the button which evacuated the pirates from the Orion.