Forgotten Past: Chapter Fourteen-From the Start

*

Three Years Earlier

*

Two months passed before Carolyn could be without medication for the
pain and could walk normally again.

“Why don’t you join the resistance?” Bruce asked her one day.

“Why bother?” she countered, stuffing supplies into her sack.

Bruce shrugged. “You’d have a place to go.”

Carolyn placed a hand on her hip and turned to him. “I’ll find my own
way.”

And she did. It didn’t take long for Carolyn to get a job with the
Company. She started piloting for them, transferring goods and
supplies from one point to another. It was the base for her “company.”
A ship was easy to find this way, and it was a good one. Carolyn
realized she didn’t have the credits for it, so there was only one way to
get the ship. Steal it.

“This is the plan,” Carolyn began, addressing her newly formed crew.
Mostly Rangers, but a few cons and a bit of the every day riff raff and
people of ill repute. They were her sort of people, or at least they were
now. “The battle cruiser is located in docking bay twelve, so there’s no
room for mistakes. Is that understood?” Carolyn demanded perfection
from her crew, or else you got out.

There were two ways out of Creed Xander’s crew. Escape, or you die.

When no one spoke, Carolyn continued. “Moe, Winter. It’s your jobs to
get the crew in.” Moe Jackson and Winter Keefe were professional
thieves prior to joining Carolyn’s crew. Now they were professional
thieves for her.

Moe nodded his head curtly in response and Winter smiled devilishly.

Carolyn’s crew consisted of five other pilots. Only the best. Her second
in command, Antwone Knoll, and about ten other workers with varying
jobs, depending on their skills.

“This ship is a big one, you’ve all flown the likes of it before,” she began
again, now addressing her five pilots. “It takes cooperation to get one of
these things moving, so I’m going to need all of you to come in with me
and the others when we take over. This is an in and out mission. We get
in, we fly out.

“Jesse, you’ve got the charts. Alexis, you’re on the controls. I’ll man the
head. Us three will be going in the door together. The rest of you, just
pay attention and follow Antwone.” Agreeing nods and murmurs rose
from the small group. Carolyn glanced at her watch. “We go...” she
lifted a hand, counting down the seconds to the guard change, “now!”

Everyone grabbed the supply bags under their care and took off in the
direction of the heavily guarded docking bay twelve.

Moe and Winter cut the electric fence links and parted back the wire,
allowing the rest of the crew to pass through. Then they continued to
the battle cruiser they were after.

Carolyn made sure they got through the fence safely before heading for
the front gate with Jesse and Alexis. When they got there the guard eyes
them suspiciously. “What are you doin’ here?” he grunted.

Carolyn smiled and tossed her long hair. It fell to the middle of her back
and curled slightly. His eyes caught the golden strands and she smiled
wider. “I’m Leela Morris, and I’m here to take CRBC-208 in for
maintenance.

The guard grabbed his charts and flipped through it until he got to her
name. “Morris. Here it is. This your crew?”

“Yeah. Can we go?” she asked, still smiling sweetly.

The guard grinned widely and hit the button to open the gates. “There
ya go, miss. Take care now, y’here.”

Carolyn assured him that she would and entered the lot, following the
paths between battle cruisers.

The Company wasn’t known for its creative and permanent naming
system of its ships. The one she was after hadn’t been used in two years.
Merely maintained. Carolyn had already checked it over and seen that
there was nothing wrong with it at all.

It was in the very middle of the lot, and would be easy to miss. No one
would even notice it was gone for months. The white paint on the side
wasn’t fixed to the hull and boasted the proud name of CRBC-208.
That’ll be the first thing to go, Carolyn told herself as she met up with
her crew, who were already assembled at the starboard hatch. She took
out the scan card and ran it over the locking mechanism.

The door hisses slightly as the air compression system unlocked and the
hatch lowered its ramp to the dirt.

“On aboard, crew,” Carolyn ordered and everyone filed on silently.
With her credentials as a Company pilot, Carolyn had secured the
maintenance cover easily. A little hacking into the Ranger Company
files had easily secured her name on the list for pilots taking off from
the lot that night. Now they were ready to go, and Creed Xander, space
pirate, had her ship.

The take off went easily. Everyone knew their place and Antwone
readied the cryo-tubes for departure. They were hitting the main
shipping lanes and stops to get new recruits. The best pilots were
Rangers, so they needed to find Rangers sick of taking orders from the
Company and looking for a little more excitement. Higher paying
excitement.

“Everyone ready for lift-off?” Carolyn questioned Antwone when he sat
next to her.

He nodded. “Yeah. We’ll only be in cryo for a week and a half, so
everything is prepared for when we awaken. Let’s get outta here.”

Carolyn turned to the controls. “No problem.” Her hands flew over the
levers and the ship powered up. The charts popped up on the view
screen and she lifted the ship into the atmosphere, then rotated the ship
into the flight path.

When the ship was on auto-pilot, Carolyn leaned back in her seat.
“Mine,” she murmured, gently stroking the butter soft leather of the
pilot’s seat. “All mine.”

~~~

“Wake up!” Carolyn banged on each cryo-tube separately. She always
woke first in these things. Sleepy eyes opened and blinked at her as she
made another round of the tubes and her crew began to slip out of their
tubes.

“Well, ain’t this pleasant?” Lucas Wallace joked sarcastically as he
stumbled from his tube. He was another of Carolyn’s pilots and it was
his job to guide them to Enelrad, the main stop off for the shipping lane
they were in.

Jordan Ross pulled back his lips and bared his teeth at Lucas.

“Very funny. Go put your pants on, dumb ass,” Lucas stated coldly to
Jordan.

Jordan looked down at his legs and his face became flushed. He claimed
he couldn’t sleep comfortably in pants, so he’d stripped those and his
shirt off in cryo-sleep in favor of traveling in his boxer shorts.

“All right, people. Let’s get a move on. You all know your jobs. When
we’re ready for re-entry *then* we can eat.” Carolyn ignored the
mumbles and groans as the crew woke up and began to move around,
getting circulation moving again. “It’s time for work.”

*

Present

*

“Keep talking.”

Carolyn lifted her eyes to Riddick, who was stretched out on his bed.
“All right.”

***

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