Chapter 14: Meeting The Space Rebels

James was shocked by these sounds that came from the primary transmitter at the control unit more than Eli's collapse, so he put her rapidly on her chair and buckled her up with the safety belts in there and then moved immediately to his chair.

He looked through the eye of the cruiser to see three small cruisers were surrounding him from three directions, leaving only one direction for him to go.

"I have some damage at the cruiser, so I pumped here to just fix my ship, I mean no harm as I don't know where I'm or who you are."

James tried to make a way for him to escape from their clutches, but his efforts were fruitless as the response came loud and clear:

"You are not authorized to leave here, you have only one option, follow us and there you will discuss with our leader."

James gritted his teeth as he muttered to himself:

'That's the price you pay for trusting the words of a girl, you should have checked her information first, stupid James.'

James lamented himself for this silly mistake while he moved his cruiser following the course created by his three guarding ships. The three cruisers guided him to another cruiser, which was a huge space cruiser, that could adapt to thousands or even tens of thousands of his small cruiser.

'What is this ship, its model seems old to me.'

James noticed this first, but then he noticed something weirder when he followed the cruisers to land, as he didn't land inside the main hunger of this cruiser, but he landed on the ground, a couple of miles away from this ship.

His distance wasn't an obstacle against his scanning sensors to scan that huge cruiser, which came with another surprise… this ship wasn't intact; instead, it was damaged and seemed to crush here at this world.

"Leave your cruiser with your crew unarmed, or else we will open fire."

That harsh straightforward tone came from the speakers in the deck. James didn't have any crew members except for Eli, who was still lost in her dreams.

"I will come out now.�����

James then turned off the cruiser, and then headed to the outside, when he reached the heart; he found the dead bodies of those smugglers everywhere. He had neither time nor manpower to clean this mess, so he decided to leave it as it was.

He pressed on a side red rounded button to open the back door of this cruiser. He waited for a moment then he exited the cruiser after he took the breathing serum injection from a specific place beside that button.

As different planets had different atmospheres, there were some solutions to make all the races adapt to this problem; one of them was very commonly used especially from rogue space adventurers.

This breathing serum acted as a mediator between James lungs and the outer atmosphere, all he needed to do was to inject it in any place of his body and the serum would move in matter of moments to cover the entire interior of his lungs.

"We said all of your crew must come out, why only you, the captain, come out alone?"

James was faced by three groups from each cruiser, each consisting of 5 heavily armed men. The most prominent feature of them was their costume, he recognized this metallic dark luster of these specially designed helmets that covered the faces of these men.

These masks were another way to solve the breathing issue, but this helmet design was very famous in the entire galaxy, they were the rebels, the ones whose James' last empire was fighting with.

James knew their outfit perfectly as the base he worked for acted for some time as a frontline attacking base, so many prisoners were brought back from the brutal space battles into that base.

"Do you recognize us? That's not a surprise, as we are very famous these days," one of the masked men said, who seemed to be their leader.

"I know you, as your fame is very widely spread around here, but I don't know why did you stop my ship? I was just planning to land here for a moment then heading back to the space," James replied steadily as he felt some confidence after knowing their identity.

"Oh, you seem to know us well enough to know this isn't one of our scattered bases… Who exactly are you?"

James examined the three landed cruisers as he replied:

"I'm nobody, and I know you only have these three cruisers on this abandoned planet, so it's either you are waiting for someone, or running away from something.

Either way, I don't care about that, I hate to interfere in anyone's business as much as I hate strangers popping their heads into mine," James spoke with a strong calm tone, as he was sure these three cruisers couldn't pose a threat to him.

If he knew from the start this fact, he would prefer to run away from them instead of coming here. He lacked men, as if he had more members in his crew, other than this silly girl, he would take the violent route and hit them.

"A nobody? Huh, so what's your name then?"

"James."

"Only James?"

James paused for a moment before saying:

"James Fog."

"James Fog, interesting weird name, so let's reach an agreement here, James Fog, Y…"

James didn't wait for this man to finish his words as he interrupted him by asking:

"You didn't tell me your name; it's not good manners to behave like this."

The masked man looked straight towards James, then he moved a couple of steps forward till he became directly facing James. He took a moment before saying with his strange accent:

"Yes, it's not good manners indeed, I like you. Maybe in another time and place we could be friends, or even rivals. Anyway, you got the land of this planet to do whatever you like in it, but the airspace is ours to control.

If you try to fly your ship anytime, I promise you we will take you down. You can leave from here once we tell you that, and my name is Doratokal."

That man said these words then he turned around as he headed towards one of the three cruisers. James was still standing there in his place feeling shock mixed with overwhelming fear.

That masked person who just spoke with him wasn't a random man in that rebel force, he was the famous Dora, the bloody princess of the rebels. He just met the second person in the rebels and spoke with her arrogantly like that.

As she was here, that meant the rebels were preparing to do something massive here. He felt the urgent need for him to escape from here, but he just remembered the warning and threat of Dora, he couldn't underestimate her words because of the three cruisers.

He knew Dora always traveled in with a mighty fleet that consisted of many warships, real warships that the smallest of them was in the rank of huge cruiser like the one destroyed out there.

James watched the three cruisers take off in the air and disappear, then he took a very long deep breath, he was just risking his life right now without even knowing it.

'Traveling in space is really tricky.'