Part III 
	The pilots took off back down the hallway they had come from, moving
as fast as they could so they might get away from the damage they had done.
Moving that fast they didn't even had any warning when they ran head on into
a squad of pirates heading for the control room they had just left. It was
the perfect standoff, the pilots slid to a stop in a broken line and the
pirates froze in a line, jaws open at finding a group of infiltrators. Some
quirk of fate had set up this confrontation so that for each Exo-squad pilot
there was a pirate, a perfect four on four confrontation. It was the kind of
thing he absolutely hated, chance meetings could really put a cramp in you
day when they included a lethal dose of baseball bat, while under the
influence of adrenaline and fist fights. Ratislav stood with Nikki on his
right and Stulpin and Vouroit on his left. Moving very slowly he dropped his
gun, on the floor followed by his satchel and then he dropped the sword.
	On Ratislav's left was a tall skinny pirate wearing a ratted out
uniform barely recognizable as some sort of police outfit and carrying a
wicked looking knife. Next to him was a dark-haired woman in leather carrying
a straight edge sword, something of an odd weapon but it made sense in areas
where a loose blast could open up everything to the void of space. On her
left was a short bearded man with an old wooden baseball bat, he wore
overalls which showed off his chest and shoulders which were covered in
tattoos. Finally there was a giant black man clothed entirely in denim with a
six tattooed on his neck. He stood nearly seven feet tall, and actually made
Ratislav nervous which wasn't something that happened often.
	"How do you do," Vouroit tried to say with a straight face, "You're
all under arrest."
	Stulpin turned to Vouroit, "You are so weird. What ever made you
think that would work."
	"Weird is a relative, not an absolute term. I never cared if it
worked," he said smiling. "I've just always wanted to say that. I just
figured it sort of came with the job once and a while."
	"Yes, well, it would only be fair to introduce the pirates who will
shortly be putting you out the nearest airlock. The wonderful looking fellow
on the end with the knife is One-Eyed Wiley. Next to him is my wonderful dear
Terry, and on my other side is my, I guess you might call him a door man,
Kaplan. Finally you call me Clark, but of course you will really need to call
a hospital." The bearded man smiled as he looked at the pilots in front of
him. "Now that we have introduce ourselves, I see it as only fair that we
kill you now and stop beating around the bush."
	Ratislav smiled as his fingers tightened on his blaster. "So sorry,
but you seem to forget that the government does not take well to people
trying to blow up the Exo-fleet."
	"You figured that out, hmm? Well good for you, it isn't often that
you can find an opponent with the brains to tie his own shoes. But to
actually find one that makes that game worth while, that is not something
that is easy to come by. I will be truly sorry to watch you go, Mister
O'Muirdagh."
	"You know more than you let on Mister Clark. That could be the death
of you." Ratislav said, as his eyes tightened because this stranger knew his
name. Sighing he winked at Clark and jumped across the intervening distance
and dropped Kaplan with the butt of his blaster to the other man's stomach.
Nikki, Stulpin and Vouroit all leapt after him and each grappled with one of
the pirates.
	He hit Kaplan again, but this time over the head, knocking him
unconscious. Reaching down he took the other man's belt and used it to binds
his hands behind him. Looking up he saw Nikki was battling Terry back and
forth across the hall, while Vouroit was dodging around Wiley and his knife,
and Stulpin was trying to stay out of the reach of Clark's short powerful
arms.
	Ratislav spun on his right foot and used his left to knock Clark's
legs out from under him, giving Stulpin the chance she needed to leap on him.
Wiley moved to help his boss when Vouroit kicked him in the knee and then hit
him with a flat handed chop to the back of the neck. Wiley was unconscious
before he even hit the ground, and then Terry realized that she was standing
in the middle of a group of angry, tired and slightly annoyed e-frame pilots.
	Bringing his gun up to bear on the last pilot, "I believe surrender
is the option that has the highest survival rating at the moment." Terry
though for a moment, then was just starting to growl when Ratislav hit her in
the temple with his blaster. "Now that's entertainment. Stulpin, if you would
be so kind as to tie her up and we shall be going again."
	Leaving the pirates in a small closet off of the main hallway, they
started again at a trot back towards the hangar bay. Along the way they came
along a row of quarters whose purpose was unclear, and Ratislav being the
nosy bastard that he was, took the time to peek into each room. At one point
he popped into the room, and picked through a desk.
	"Sir, do we really have time to do this? Isn't there a little thing
called a time limit on this operation. Shouldn't we really be gone before
somebody catches on?"
	"Vouroit, some day you'll have to let me teach you the fine points of
business. One of the first things that my grandfather taught me was that
anything worth doing was worth doing for a profit."
	Alain smiled and nodded. They continued on gradually picking up speed
as the clock counted down to twenty minutes remaining.

	Ratislav made a wrong turn along the way and they were shocked when
then ran headlong into a huge set of double doors. Moving up to the doors
they could what sounded like hundreds of pirate were all inside eating the
food, drinking the liquor, fighting each other and periodically fighting the
food.
	"Nikki, take a look inside and tell me if you can figure out where we
are."
	"Are you serious?" Nikki was shocked at such a crazy order. But she
did it anyway, peeking inside she saw all of the things they had heard coming
from outside the doors. There were pirates everywhere, some upright, some
not, some were drunk, and some, well let's just say there were doing think
Nikki wasn't quite sure how to classify.
	"It looks pretty bad, sir. I think we should just go around."
	"Going around is not an option. This mission happens to be to clear
this asteroid, since the pirates have been so kind as to congregate, I feel
it is necessary to get a few things done. Stulpin, get over here, switch with
Montgomery."
	Nikki moved to cover Stulpin's side of the hallway, and Stulpin took
a position opposite Ratislav covering the door. "Stulpin, when I say go,
you're going to toss two grenades in that there door."
	"What about after that sir?" Stulpin asked confused, while Nikki
made choking sounds behind her.
	"I think running would be a good idea. We have twenty minutes to go
so its back to the hangar from here."
	Stulpin shook her head, and then reached into her sack and pulled out
two grenades. She calmly pulled the pins and waited for Ratislav's signal.
Ratislav tensed himself against the door, nodded once to Stulpin and then
yanked back on the handle. A few of the pirates turned at the sound of the
door opening and started screaming as they saw the grenades fly by. Slamming
the door shut again, Ratislav and his squad took off running.
	Even fleeing as fast as they were, the squad could feel the double
thump of the grenades exploding, and then the scream of structural supports
bending and flexing under unheard of stresses. Ratislav took the lead firing
ahead and down side hallways whenever he could.
	The squad stopped in a cavernous roomed directly beside the hangar
through which they had entered the asteroid base. The room seemed to have no
end, but Ratislav knew from the plans he had seen in the terminal that this
room ran for nearly half of the asteroids length. It was double walled with
buttresses every twenty feet and there were even sets of blast doors in case
anything ever went wrong in this room. That wasn't what made the room so
special of course. What made the room special was what line the floor, row
after row, of rockets with drill heads attached to the front. Ratislav did a
quick count and came up with close to maybe five thousand rockets packed into
this one room.
	"They must be out of their minds to put this much explosive charge
into one room. If anything ever went wrong in here, the asteroid would go
up."
	"Well, it didn't seem to occur to the pirates, so why don't we just
show them how badly they planned this little operation."

	By the time Ratislav and his squad had things ready there was only
eight more minutes left of emergency power, so the squad left in a hurry.
They were nearly to their e-frames when Ratislav got the call from Hobbes in
the control room.
	"O'Muirdagh, you better get up here, we're pinned down in the control
room. The pirates got the exits blocked off before we could clear out.
Herbert isn't going to last much longer. We need a quick way out here,
something along the lines of a shuttle would be nice."
	"Well yes, sir. Let me just pull that out of my ass. Commander, how
did you get into the control room?" Ratislav asked motioning his squad on to
the hangar bay.
	"I took one from your play book. After you set off nearly every siren
in the compound we blew the top off control room and charged in. We turned
off the warning systems and told the crew it was an accidental systems test.
They believed us until there was an explosion in the mess hall. Speaking of
random explosions would you happen to know anything about that Lieutenant?"
	"Well, sir. Some of us have always wondered how picky a hungry pirate
was. And better yet what would happen if his food didn't agree with him."
	"And just what did you find out, mister O'Muirdagh?"
	"Well sir, pretty much everybody knows that something that doesn't
agree with pirate usually stops taking an interest in little things like
breathing. It turns out that pirate can be picky about what they eat if
doesn't blow up before they have a chance to complain."
	"Wonderful, now Lieutenant, if you would kindly hurry, I would like
to leave before any sort of reinforcements arrive. One last thing, Ratislav.
Were you born stupid or did you just take lessons?"
	"I took lessons, sir. We're on our way, now." Ratislav looked at the
rest of his squad waiting in their e-frames, and flipped his communication
system to talk to all of them. "Look's like its up to us to save the day.
Hobbes and his squad got themselves caught in a cross fire in the control
room. We're going in right over the top, we clear out the rest of the squad
and we get the hell out of dodge."
	Ratislav and his squad blew out of the hangar bay at full throttle
and curved around to follow the shape of the asteroid. Moving at full speed
they reached the crater leading into the control room in two minutes and dove
head first into a fire storm. Dropping into the room, Ratislav could see one
frame damaged beyond repair and another severely damaged. Hobbes in his
police enforcer frame was covering one entrance while Tedronai and O'Connor
covered the other entrance. With Nikki carrying the remains of Trooper Sun,
O'Connor took the chance to grab Herbert, and the reunited squad shot out of
the hole in the ceiling of the control room.

	Six kicked in the door to the storage warehouse and ran inside
followed by twenty armed pirates, and found the room completely empty.
Thinking he was mistaken, he had his group clear the entire room, and didn't
find a single person, except for those who came in with him. Everything
appeared to be going fine until one pirate near the door that they had come
in, gave a yell.
	It looked like a group of missiles had been rolled into a group and
the wired together. A seemingly endless mass of wires ran from one missile to
the next and then all came together in one mass of wires leading into a
timer. Six started sweating when he read the timer and saw that they had only
three minutes remaining.
	Six said seriously:
	"Go get the master of arms, tell him to bring his kit and haul ass.
You have one minute to get him and get back. He will have two minutes and
then he wont have to worry about recriminations. Get going."
	The pirate took off at a run, and Six walked to the nearest wall
terminal and contacted his commander to tell him what he had found.

	Dropping further and further behind the group, Ratislav finally
stopped and turned around to see if any one had followed them. He saw a
single flare of light as a ship blasted off from the asteroid before the
show began. It started small with little points of lights forming on the
edges of the asteroid. Then the points became lines and then the light grew
until the asteroid cracked.
	The crack expanded slowly at first and then within seconds the
asteroid seemed to break in half before it all went white. Ratislav watched
in horror as a shock wave took shape as a swiftly expanding ball an swept
everything out of its way. He was about to try to radio the rest of the squad
when the wave caught up with him and sent him into an uncontrollable spin.
Bouncing off first one piece of debris then another, he gradually brought his
e-frame under control.
	Ratislav caught up with the squad back at the rendezvous point, and
they all caught a slow shuttle ride back to the Normandy. The rider was made
ever more somber when Herbert's heart gave in after his lung collapsed and
the doctor onboard did not have the equipment to save him.
	Arriving back aboard the Normandy the squad split into groups of four
and each carried a stretcher covered with a sheet through the halls of the
ship to the morgue where the bodies would be stored until a proper ceremony
could be held.
End Part III