Part V
	Ratislav left the briefing and headed for the shooting range on the
recreation deck. He stepped in to find the range totally empty, there wasn't
even a noncom to watch over the ensigns or petty officers who came in. He
found this a little odd but ignored it, and grabbed a pair of headphones from
the rack near the door.
	Taking a booth in the middle of the range he loaded his pistol and
hung a target on the line and set the distance for ten meters. Turning his
head from side to side and spreading his feet, he put out his left arm
holding the gun, and put his right hand under the butt. Breathing slowly, he
relaxed until he exhaled again, and then fired shot after shot until he
emptied the clip.
	Stopping to take the headphones off, he turned the knob to reel the
target back in. Looking at it he saw a good set in the dime group, this was
the second circle out from the bull's eye. Except for one shot on the line of
the bulls eye and two or three off the lines of the sheet, he had put two
thirds of his clip into the dime group. Not bad for a guy who hadn't fired a
pistol since training, and before that not since he was just a kid.
	Ratislav went through five more clips and was just checking the last
target when he heard a thump behind him. Spinning around he saw a pirate
pulling the body of the sergeant out of a closet. Ratislav realized the
pirate must have thought he had left when the shooting had stopped. He raised
his gun to shoot the pirate and the click of an empty gun were as much a
surprise to him as the sound of a gun was to the pirate.
	The pirate spun around, giving Ratislav his first good look at him.
The pirate was Nordic looking with blond hair and fair skin, he was well
built, but seemed to lack the mass a man of his size should have. The two
stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the other
to make the first move. Ratislav smiled and watched as the pirate crouched
into a fighting stance.
	"You know, I guess saying that you're under arrest would be
pointless. Surrender is also probably out of the question, so let's go. I
should warn you though, I have a horrible sense of humor, and little sense of
style what so ever." He dropped the gun and the headphones, and shifted his
feet. "Oh, yeah and the last time I got into a fight with someone as ugly as
you I killed them."
	The pirate screamed and charged the five meters that separated the
two, Ratislav sighed and rolled backwards grabbing the stranger by the
shoulders. Putting his foot in the pirates stomach he heaved him over his
head and through one of the booth walls. Spinning around he saw the pirate
leap up and circle in more warily this time.
	"You know you have the same problem I have. You can't seem to control
your anger. By the way I must ask what is your name?" Ratislav winked before
lashing out with a foot to the pirates knee, and then put an elbow into the
pirates faces, causing an explosion of blood.
	"My name is Miasnik." The pirate put his hand to his face to wipe the
blood off of is face. "You will die."
	"You know I seem to get that a lot. It is nice to meet you,
'butcher.' That is what your name means. Funny thought, the butcher being
killed by glory. That's my name, Ratislav, it means fight for glory."
	Miasnik caught him off guard with a roundhouse that hit Ratislav in
the gut, sending him sliding along the floor right past his gun. Ratislav
rolled into a crouch with the gun in one hand. Miasnik smiled.
	"Nice try, but you and I both know that gun won't help. It's not
loaded, and you don't have the time to load it. What are you gonna do hit me
with it?"
	Ratislav's eye brows knitted together and he frowned at the pirate.
"Throw it at you? Of course not, that just isn't sporting." Ratislav threw
the gun just over the pirate's shoulder, which made Miasnik drop to one knee.
In that position he couldn't roll away as Ratislav charged up and put one
foot on his out stretched leg and jumped over him. Ratislav stomped on the
leg Miasnik had supporting himself and grabbed him by the head with both
hands. Pausing only to focus for a second, he tightened his muscles and
snapped Miasnik's neck.
	Rifling through the pirate's pockets, he found no identification, not
a surprise from a pirate, but he did find several schematics of the ship and
a small box. Dropping the box and schematics into his pocket, he took a bag
used to collect empty pistol clips and pushed the pirate inside. Making no
one else was around he tossed the bag over his shoulder and ran down to his
room, dropping the body inside he ran back up to the shooting range.
	Inside he found the sergeant just starting to come around, helping
the man to his feet, he grabbed his pistol and dropped it into his holster.
	"You all right there sergeant?"
	"Oh, my head hurts. What the hell, happened to me?"
	"I think you must have slipped or something. Looks like your having
a rough day."
	"Damn, all I remember is hitting my head and then it all went black.
I guess I must have slipped, I must be working to hard."
	"Ain't that the truth. You ought to be more careful." Ratislav helped
the sergeant to his seat and then went back to his room and called up Hobbes
on the intercom.

	When Hobbes got to Ratislav's quarters, he had put the body in his
private head, that each officer had. Hobbes walked into the room and looked
around wondered what all the hurry was when Ratislav had called him out of a
perfectly good shower.
	"Well, what is it you want, O'Muirdagh? This better not be something
that couldn't have waited until at least tomorrow." Hobbes was not very
please to receive nasty intercom calls at odd hours of the night from his
subordinate officers.
	"Yes, sir, this is serious. I was practicing on the range when I ran
into a little trouble."
	"You called me here because your gun jammed on the shooting range and
you need me to fix it at 2030 hours at night? You will spend the next week
cleaning the outside of this ship in your e-frame for this one." Hobbes
flexed his hands to keep from punching Ratislav right then and there.
	Ratislav looked shocked and moved towards the head. "Oh, no sir. I
got something in the bathroom you should see in the head sir."
	"What, is your toilet clogged?" Hobbes was getting annoyed now, and
the sarcasm was beginning too show.
	"No, sir. I'd think of it more as a very large rodent. Take a look,"
he said holding the door open for Hobbes to step inside. Hobbes looked inside
and froze.
	"Oh. That's a pretty big rat, too." Hobbes looked down at the dead
pirate, and only one thought came to mind. He was thinking that the academy
really didn't cover this sort of thing, sure it was all good to say you went
to the academy to get the slot you wanted. The problem was the academy never
got around to giving you the knowledge to deal with whatever sort of weird
situation that cropped up aboard a ship of war. Situations like an enemy
corpse in a subordinate officer's quarters, and what should be done to
relieve such a situation.
	"What should we do, sir? We can't report this to the captain he'll
have a fit. We have to just get rid of the body fast and make sure there
aren't any more pirates aboard."
	"You're right, O'Muirdagh. All right, we have to keep the body on ice
until we have a chance too dump it. Go to the kitchen and ask Lieutenant
Macchia if we can keep something in his freezer for a couple of days. Be sure
to tell him that there can not be anyone else in the kitchen when we bring it
in."

	And so later that day Hobbes and Ratislav walked into the ships
kitchen carrying a large sack between them. Lieutenant Cookie Macchia stood
back out of the way of the two flight officers, as they stumbled through the
kitchen towards the walk in freezer. Cookie was leaning against a stove top,
arms crossed over his chest, frowning at the size of the sack the two men
were carrying.
	"Just what is it you two got there, that's so damned important.
Emptying my kitchen, moving all my staff out, all for some sack." Cookie was
more than a little annoyed with these two but he couldn't think of any way he
could get away with mouthing off to a superior officer like Hobbes. Hobbes
and O'Muirdagh stopped and put down the sack in the freezer, and turned back
towards Cookie.
	"I will ignore your tone, Lieutenant. So why don't you just come on I
here and take a look." Hobbes bent down to pull down the zipper to the sack,
revealing the corpse of the dead pirate.
	"No shit. Where did you two find that guy? I mean we didn't just open
up the hangar bay and yell 'free weapons,' did we?"
	"O'Muirdagh here found him in the shooting range up on the recreation
deck. We are keeping him in here because we can't have this body stinking up
the whole ship. When the time is right we will dump him out the hangar and
into the path of the engines, which will vaporize him. We can't do this now,
because the jump troops are running through maneuvers. In the mean time we
can't tell the captain because that would mean that we would have to explain
why he was not informed right away of intruder aboard this ship."
	"So you get a slap on the wrist for not letting the captain know
right away. What's so bad about that?"
	Hobbes looked around the kitchen and then moved the sack deeper into
the freezer and put it behind several crates of various food stuffs. He
sealed the sack again and slapped a lock on the opening. Then he stood and
turned back to Cookie.
	"The problem is that in all likely hood, what we have here is two or
probably more suicide bombers. These bombers were put onboard for a specific
reason, more than likely to disable this ship to the point where more pirates
can board and pillage her. If we alert the captain now, the pirates will go
to plan 'B.'"
	Cookie was confused, where the hell had plan 'b' come from. "What's
plan 'b'?"
	"That's where the pirates hit the weak spots, and blow this ship
always the way back to Earth. Then anything they find will probably be the
crew going home in a box."
	"So what do we do? We can't just let these pirates go running around
the ship."
	"'We,' there is no we. You don't let anybody see this body. Somebody
sees it and this whole plan goes to waste. O'Muirdagh and I, and maybe some
other members from Gamma Squad will figure out how to take care of the other
pirates."

	Ratislav went to his quarters and was on his way to Hobbes' quarters,
when he heard a scream coming from the mag-lev. Running up he saw, Dr. Rhodes
leaning over the edge to stare down the shaft. Coming to a stop he took a
quick look down before turning to the doctor.
	"What was that scream?" Karen spun around to look at Ratislav, eyes
wide open.
	"It's Lieutenant Hobbes, I was talking to him while he was waiting
for the mag-lev. The doors opened and he stepped through without looking. The
carriage wasn't even there, I don't know what happened."
	"All right. I'm gonna go back too my quarters and get some things. I
need you to get Lieutenant Macchia, up here as fast as you can. Tell him we
found the other rat, and we need his help." Ratislav looked up and down the
hall. "And get Lieutenant Commander O'Bannon from S-2, she's an old friend of
mine. Tell her that I may have a possible situation, and she should really be
here. The last thing I have to say is that you do not tell any one else, no
matter what goes on today, this never happened, and the only time we ever
met, was the time I stopped into the medical bay."
	It was a little cold, but Ratislav knew he had to hurry, the
Lieutenant had known perfectly well the mag-lev wouldn't be there. He had
made an act of it was to make the doctor believe it was an accident, the
trick being where the carriage was when the doors opened.
	Running back to his room, he rifled through his things until he came
up with a length of a rope and a good pair of work gloves. He kept wandering
until he grabbed the rod for the shower curtains from the bathroom and ran
back to the elevator. By the time he got there, both Cookie and Lt. Commander
O'Bannon, were waiting at the doors with Dr. Rhodes.
	 "Hi, Sarah long time, no see. Or should I call you Lieutenant
Commander, now?" O'Bannon smiled at Ratislav and leaned out into the shaft.
	"I've known you too long to have you start that sort of shit with me.
So what sort of situation have we got?"
	"Looks like a raging rodent akuso with torpedoes at hand. Why don't
you take Karen here," Ratislav smiling at her and directing her towards
O'Bannon. "And explain the rules that go along with De Chelonian Mobile."
Cookie and Karen both looked at Ratislav in confusion. Neither had any clue
just what the hell he was saying, because it didn't make a damn bit of sense.
	"All right, but if you can't take care of this, there will be shit to
pay and the bill is not going to land in my lap. I'll explain the rules to
Karen, you do your thing." With that, Sarah directed Karen down the hall,
away from Cookie and Ratislav who began making preparations.
	Cookie looked at Ratislav with a very special look he reserved only
for those assistant who pulled the seriously dumb stunts in the kitchen.
	"All right, Lieutenant would you care to explain that last bit about
the rodents and the torpedoes?"
	Ratislav smiled at cookie while he put down the rope and opened the
curtain rod across the opening for the mag-lev. He set the rod on the floor,
before tying the rope to the rod and getting out his gloves.
	 "Well, Lieutenant, a raging akuso, mean there are pirates aboard the
ship. The torpedoes and the rodent part mean that we have killed at least one
pirate and that the remainder may have special plans. Special plans referring
to the remaining pirates possibly going suicidal and blowing the ship to
kingdom come."
	"And that mobile line? What the hell was that."
	"De Chelonian Mobile. That means, 'the turtle moves'. I can't let you
in on that one without O'Bannon's okay." Ratislav had the gloves on and was
running the ropes through several carabiners he had stuck onto his flight
suit. He looked up to see Karen and Sarah coming back down the hall towards
the mag-lev.
	"You all set there, O'Muirdagh?"
	"Yes, Ma'am. I'm on my way." Ratislav checked the lines one last time
and then jumped into the shaft without a warning. Karen screamed again and
all three rushed to the edge of the shaft. Cookie looked at the swiftly
disappearing shape in the shaft, and the looked at Sarah.
	"Where the hell, did you find this guy?"
	Sarah smiled and said, "He's from Cuba."
	Cookie smiled and turned to look down the shaft again.

End Part V