Defensive Position

The next episode for Jamison’s Battlefields. Here are the previous episodes in order. Zilkas Asteroid Belt, Jamison’s Rescue,  Dinner with an Alien, Dibolocos Attack, Departure Orders, Homecoming, Into the Darkness, The Family Business,  Jewel’s Place, Shanghaied,  First Mark, and The Pirate’s Life. Like any story you will get the most out of it by reading it in order.

Tyler died in an attack on a CDF vessel, it surprised everyone and in the next few minutes Jamison began barking the familiar orders of their commander. He had to, if they didn’t stay organized they would all be killed. This vessel had more seasoned and higher ranking defenders. This fact and the loss of Tyler caused Jamison to go on a new level of rampage. He had killed nineteen and was leading his group into another heavily defended room.

Then he heard a sound, it was one of those quiet noises soldiers make when they are trying not to be discovered. He spun around ready to dispatch whoever had survived the battle, and he saw Captain Chambers. She was the MPO who had attended him at his failed homecoming. Her small frame was pinned under the body of a much heavier officer. He stared for half a second and realized that she still reminded him of Jenny, at least the old Jenny, before she aligned herself with the Dibolocos.

At that moment, everything in his thought processes shattered. There was no justifying killing Captain Chambers. He wanted to be the man he used to be. He didn’t want to be the murderous aggressor he had become. Neither did he want to be the skittish sniper who had suffered from isolation in the Zilkas Asteroid Belt. He wanted to be her defender. He was certain the choice would get him killed, but he didn’t care. Death would bring relief.

He didn’t exactly make a decision what to do next. He just did it, improvising a plan as he went along. The whole time he believed his situation was hopeless. He would die today and so would she, but he would die defending the young woman instead of killing her.

He ordered his men to the next room to continue the battle. No one asked about the woman, they probably all assumed he would rape her. Some of the men may have wanted to argue splitting up, but they were scared of Jamison. And at that moment they had every reason to be, he appeared fiercer than he ever had before.

When the men left he threw the corpse off of her and picked her up roughly. She tried to fight him off, obviously thinking similar thoughts to what the other pirates had thought. In the battle, she had not recognized him. Under the circumstances, she wouldn’t have trusted him even if she had.

But these facts mattered little, Jamison had the capability to completely master her and drag her back through the ship. He was looking for a defensible place to make a final stand. He found a room on the extreme side of the ship, he didn’t recognize it at first, but he chose it because it had one way in. He would turn that access tube into a killing field.

In the few minutes he had before his treachery was discovered by the other pirates and Lobokidos, he tried to explain to Chambers. At first she didn’t listen at all, then she stopped fighting and looked carefully at his face. Recognition and memory came slowly.

Jamison might have enjoyed a smile or a word of thanks. But instead she looked over his shoulder, out the window into space and screamed. The pirate ship had just launched a massive salvo of missiles at the mark. In a few moments the ship and everyone on it would be destroyed. Jamison, turned, recognized what was happening and stared hopelessly.

Chambers came to her senses. She slapped a button on the wall that closed the door and started a launch sequence.  She ordered Jamison to take one of the seats and strap himself in. About that time he realized his defensible location he had chosen was a survival pod. He strapped himself in just in time. They launched away from the ship and within a few seconds he saw it being ripped to shreds behind them. The pods survival display indicated there were no other pods.

He saw chambers starting to unbuckle. He yelled at her to stop, hang on for a few more minutes. She did so, and suddenly the pod was hit by the shock wave from the explosions. The pod had been launched away at a high rate of speed, but now they were going much faster.

Jamison continued to study the displays. He expected to see the pirate ship shoot them out space. They had no reason to let them live. But no shot came. Chambers must have had the same thought because she speculated aloud whether there pod was hidden among the wreckage.

Then Jamison figured it out. They were heading out into space with limited supplies and no chance of rescue. Shooting them would be a waste of energy. They had already chosen the slow painful death of starvation.

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