Packmule

by Blaze Ward

  The only question in Phil’s mind these days was if that would happen before the new Emperor of Fribourg, the former Centurion Wiegand, gave him a medal, or after.

  Today’s meeting was going to be a small one. Nobody really needed to be involved except Siobhan and Heather. Evan was just here because he was acting First Officer with both of his bosses off-ship being pirates.

  And cattle rustlers.

  The hatch opened and Evan came in first, followed immediately by Heather and Lady Blackbeard. Heather hadn’t earned a crazy, piratical nickname.

  Yet.

  He had no doubts there, either. She’d have one before this was all done.

  It was interesting, watching the tableau as they all sat. He and Evan in uniform on this side. Both of the ladies dressed up like civilians, even here, across from him.

  “Are we there?” Phil asked.

  He didn’t need any preliminaries. Not with these folks. They had been building to this for months, since he first announced his plans to try to top Jessica Keller’s Long Raid.

  “I have only one question,” Evan asked. “Do we have everything set, in case we want to actually steal the orbital station over our target?”

  Siobhan grinned, as he expected. Heather’s smile was absolutely predatory. It was frightening to watch her emulate Lady Blackbeard. To learn from her.

  Hopefully, they would both have bright careers remaining, after the Navy was done burying him under the jail.

  “We opened up enough space by setting four containers down on the surface,” Heather said. “The other four got dismantled to make the parts we needed for everything else. Can’t slide it in on the rails that are there, but we’ll only need a few hours of work. Setting it in place here will actually take much longer.”

  “And the rest?” Phil asked.

  “That depends on what we find on the ground, Phil,” Siobhan said. “Same as Barnaul, there will be a significant element of random chance involved. If we can sneak in and around, I can get Bok everything on his shopping list. If not, we might have to take what we can get and move on to another target. I’m okay with pillaging down the entire Atlantic Coast of Central America if we need to. Lots of birds with one stone.”

  She was Lady Blackbeard. Her crew had taken his own words and twisted them into an operational vocabulary, and brought everyone else along. Staying in the fringes of the Altai sector was Central America. Crossing over into the Lena sector was raiding North America. Heading back across the M’Hanii Gulf, going home, had become Sailing to Portsmouth.

  Phil nodded.

  “Very good,” Phil decided. “Get everyone off the ground who’s coming and we’ll depart in sixteen hours. I’ve laid in a sailing plan that gets up to Abakn in good time. If the place follows the standard pattern, we’ll be dealing with no orbital defenses worth mentioning, and the only issues we’ll have will be on the ground.”

  “How do we get a gunship?” Siobhan asked. “Anything besides 405 with any weapons?”

  “If we didn’t need a full shipyard to do it, I’d be tempted to sacrifice one of the turrets here and mount it on Queen Anne,” Phil replied grimly. “It’s possible we could attack one of the larger planets to try and take one, but then we run the risk of armed stations and missiles. Not worth pursuing right now. Our mission is to set things on fire and force Buran to chase ghosts all over the frontier. Which brings me to the last point. The prisoners.”

  Everyone grew serious, watching his face. Lan and Kiel were always referred to as Guests and treated as such. The twenty-seven former crew of Packmule, the survivors, were not. They were locked up and fed regularly, but had no intelligence value, so no reason for Phil’s crew to interact with them.

  “When we are done on Abakn, assuming success, we will transport them to the surface near our target and turn them loose,” Phil explained in a severe voice. He sounded like Tomas Kigali in his own head, which was not the comparison he wanted today, but it couldn’t be helped. “I have considered asking Kiel and Lan about relatives or friends that might be recruited, but we have no way to easily contact anyone, let alone transport them as a work crew. However, we will be undertaking to survey for the planet Mansi, according to what Lan was able to remember, so actionable intelligence on missing Imperial prisoners of war will be second priority, behind stocking the ranch for Bok and Avelina. Questions?”

  They didn’t have any. Too many unknowns, this far away from their target. The problem was, once they got close, there probably wouldn’t be any time to organize things.

  The fog of war frequently turned into the chaos of battle.

  Especially with Phil Kosnett trying to set the entire Holding on fire.

  Lighthouse Station (August 18, 402)

  “You missed your chance to escape me,” Avelina said with a smirk as she walked out of the shipping container that had been serving them as a house up until now. At least the ground crew had finished building them a nice, two-story house with eight bedrooms, and windows made of transparent metallic alloys.

  Bok looked over at Avelina and gave her a good, stern appraisal. To make a point, at least in his own head, he had dug out a pair of field boots that he had owned for four years longer than this young woman had been alive. Three times resoled didn’t count. He had still bought them twenty-five years ago.

  It grounded him. Reminded him of one of those fanciful, non-existent Hometowns that everyone liked to carry with them when they left.

  “Guess I’m stuck with you, Indovina,” he replied after a beat. “You sure you wanted to volunteer for this mission? You might be stuck with me for the rest of my life.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him, which somehow just seemed to fit. On anyone else, it would have come across as juvenile, but she never slipped out of a mode that seemed three parts cowgirl and one part sailor. Reminded him of girls he had known back home.

  Bok turned his eyes back to the sky, and then the clouds, the mountains, and the lake they had named Ladaux. Lots of fish in there. Weird variants of things he knew from other worlds, but all of it edible. Some ungulates in the valley, mostly deer that had sized up and down in scale, in response to the isolation. A few predator species that were solitary cats of various sizes. Nothing like coyotes or wolves. Just cats.

  Had no fear of humans. Not yet. He would have to change that, given time. Still knew how to stalk things, a skill he’d never really lost from being a kid. Bobcats and cougars, back home. Roughly the same here.

  With twenty hands to do the work, they had built a nice little ranch station here. Pens big enough for a variety of domesticated creatures to be held. Big barn for keeping things dry and safe. Motion and thermal sensors around the outside of the range, adapted from the ship, to warn if one of the cats got too close. Repulsor bikes to go out and deal with them when they did.

  He looked forward to horses, if that was possible. Bikes required recharge time on the auxiliary power generator in container number two, so he couldn’t go too far from home right now.

  “Lev for your thoughts,” Indovina asked, standing silent next to him.

  Not lurking. Just watching.

  “Sorry for the poor city kids,” he answered honestly. “Never get to see something like this.”

  “Didn’t we both join the Navy to escape something like this?”

  “Everybody’s escaping something,” Bok said, mind and eyes wandering.

  The cleared landing zone that could accommodate both Queen Anne’s Revenge and Saddlebags at the same time. The covered-over water-pipe trench up from the lake bringing fresh water. The field churned up, well off to the side, where the septic tanks were pumped the drain field.

  He turned, feeling rather than seeing Indovina turn with him.

  Two shipping containers on the left, stacked up with a ladder connecting them inside. A third one perpendicular. The fourth one well off to the side, storing some of the equipment that he would need to level trees, split them, and take care of a ranch and farm.

/>   The farmhouse itself could hold all visitors. If Siobhan brought back hands, he could turn them loose on building a bunkhouse.

  “What were you escaping, Bok?” she asked, pulling him back to the present and then casting him deep into the past.

  “Who,” he corrected.

  “I assumed that,” she said. “We all have a who.”

  “Nobody and everybody,” Bok replied cryptically. “Found out she and my best friend had kinda forgotten to tell me some things. Decided to run off and join the Navy instead of beating him to death.”

  “Ouch,” she said. “You loved her that much?”

  “I was nineteen,” Bok said. “We all do stupid shit at that age. Everything is of utmost importance. All turns out to be a pile of beans, when it comes right down to it.”

  “Ever talk to them again?” Avelina asked.

  “Her a couple of years later,” he reminisced. “Home on leave between assignments. He’d run off with a bartender by then and left her with a daughter. She was trying to go back to school and find herself.”

  “Him?”

  “Nope,” Bok grimaced. “Standing offer to kick his ass if I did. Figured it wasn’t worth looking. You?”

  “Almost verbatim,” she laughed. “Are we all dumb, crazy punks?”

  “We are, Avelina,” Bok laughed with her. “But it let me see the galaxy in ways those folks never imagined. Hell, I’d retire out here if I could.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “In the middle of Buran space?” Bok turned sidelong to glance at her.

  “Sure,” she said. “If Keller wins, this might all be fair game. Planning to file a request with the Imperial Throne to be made the Duke of this planet. Big boss. Even if we get chased off later, it’ll still look damned good on a resume.”

  Bok laughed and laughed at that.

  “What?” she demanded. “What’s wrong with asking?”

  “I think that it’s a magnificent idea, Your Grace,” Bok finally got the giggles under control, until he saw the crestfallen look on her face, then he started up again.

  “Duke Avelina Indovina of Lighthouse Station,” Bok pronounced grandly. “Remind me to file paperwork for a ducal grant of land. I want this whole valley.”

  “You can have the southern shore of the lake, from the line at both ends,” she laughed back. “I want to put a summer palace on the north shore so I can sit on a patio and watch you peasants sweat to make me rich.”

  That triggered another round of laughter, that ended in a silence like a blade dropping, for no reason either of them could name.

  “Are we nuts, Bok?” she asked, serious this time.

  “The best kind, Avelina,” he replied soberly. “The best kind.”

  Abakn (September 4, 402)

  “So what do we do if the bad guys show up in the middle?” a voice intruded on Siobhan as she worked the scanners.

  She turned and appraised Max, standing in the door to Queen Anne’s bridge with a hangdog look. He didn’t have much to do on this ship, being the medic, so he ended up doing a lot of scut work, mostly cleaning and cooking, all the while hoping that they never needed his skills.

  Must be a rough way to make a Lev.

  Siobhan patted the left-hand seat as an invitation to sit and talk. She had to act like a Command Centurion today, guiding her charges and taking care of the emotional and psychological well-being of everyone.

  How Phil managed it and kept sane she hadn’t yet figured out, but her crew were a better-balanced fit.

  As Max sat, she pulled the scanners back a little and set the screen on the console between them to show as much of the system as 405 had managed to scout from clear out here on the perimeter.

  “We do whatever we can to ensure the safety and escape of CS-405, and then Packmule,” she replied in a serious voice. “In that order. We are the least valuable, and most expendable part of the squadron, because Heather has all the food and Phil has responsibility for everyone.”

  “Whatever?” Max asked in a voice filled with awe.

  She forgot sometimes that the young man had his soft and vulnerable side. Everyone who had to deal with Max professionally got the hard-ass medic who charged in and fixed people, regardless of their opinions on the topic. Even stubborn folks like Markus had learned to back down when Max was working.

  But this was the guy stuck in back with no clue what the big players had on the table.

  “Whatever,” Siobhan repeated. “Anything we have to do to make sure the others get home safe. Whoever we have to kill included.”

  “Are you really that ruthless?” Max asked.

  “Max, if the only way out involved taking Anna and ramming a Hammerhead so that 405 could make the edge of the gravity well, the only question would be if the rest of us could manage to abandon Anna first, or if we went down with her.”

  “And that’s what it means to be a pirate?” he asked.

  “That’s what it means to be an officer, Max,” Siobhan corrected. “To be the Republic of Aquitaine Navy.”

  A chirp sounded from the boards as Max fell silent. She could tell he was a little overwhelmed, but she knew he needed the truth up front, all hard and ragged, so he could process it and make it his own. Max was like that.

  She turned to the board and pressed a button.

  “Queen Anne’s Revenge,” she said aloud. “Go ahead 405.”

  “Feeding you an orbital file now, Blackbeard,” Evan’s voice came back over the line. “Standard four signals in orbit right now. Can’t tell much about the surface detail from this far away, but I’ve incorporated Lan and Kiel’s ideas on a planetary colony. Phil wants you and Heather to digest them, and then we’ll swap in crews and make a run down there in twelve hours from now.”

  The three ships were hiding out at the edge of the solar system, like they always did when going someplace. CS-405 had the best scanners in the galaxy, and Evan had tuned them to paranoid levels, so Siobhan was fine with him scouting for everyone for now.

  “Roger that,” she replied, cutting the point-to-point laser connecting the two ships.

  It was far better than radio, when you needed sneakiness.

  Shortly, Queen Anne’s Revenge would be on point, leading the others in. Hopefully, nothing more than a simple surface raid.

  She turned back to Max. He had regained some animation and he stood up, nodding.

  “You tell the others,” Siobhan said. “Everyone runs through a sleep cycle now, and then we’ll eat dinner in ten hours.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, leaving her on the bridge.

  Siobhan stared at the scanners, as if they could tell her what to expect below, but the galaxy was keeping her secrets today. At least there were no ships of any kind in orbit right now.

  That would make the first part easier.

  Stunt Dude (September 5, 402)

  Just like at Barnaul and Laptev, Trinidad had all six of his people with him today, plus nearly twenty more crew, down in Anna’s cargo hold. Not much for a planetary invasion, but more than enough for a raid. Bok wasn’t with them, and Kam was back up on the ship being Chief Engineer, so Galin Tuason had taken the old man’s place with the raiders, rather than staying up on Packmule with Andre.

  Anna couldn’t really function with this many crew aboard, getting in each other’s way, but they only needed to run down and disable the target, so that Saddlebags could land with two specially configured containers.

  It would be his job to get in and keep the locals contained while the crews went to work. Hopefully, this would be more like Barnaul was supposed to work out, rather than the messy eventuality they ended up with.

  “All hands, stand by for landing,” Heather’s voice came over the speakers. “Ninety seconds to ground.”

  He had been expecting Siobhan, but she was probably busy actually flying the ship through the darkness of night on Abakn.

  They hadn’t even been challenged in orbit, according to Siobhan. Just noted by automat
ed systems on the station, and then nothing.

  Trinidad was furiously hoping that sleepy applied to this colony, and not death-trap. They had been lucky so far, but it was a manufactured luck, not something he wanted to trust.

  Trinidad turned around and counted noses. Until Heather and Siobhan came down to the cargo deck from the bridge, he was in charge.

  “Markus,” he called. “Mount up and make sure the truck’s ready. Everyone else, grab your packs and get ready.”

  Mild grumbling from the non-marines, unaccustomed to backpacks filled with survival gear. His marines just laughed at those folks, when they only had to carry less than five kilograms each. He and his routinely ran up and down every flight of stairs on CS-405 with a twenty-kilo training pack, just to stay in shape.

  The ship canted suddenly, pushing everyone forward that hadn’t been paying attention, and then settled on to the ground with a lot of bangs and crunching. Even as light as Queen Anne’s Revenge was, and as good a pilot as Siobhan was, it was still a lot of mass moving around.

  Engines powered down aft and the internal lights and fans came up to full power from the lower level they had been on approach. Trinidad pushed the button to lower both fore and aft ramps. According to Evan Brinich, they were in early spring at this latitude, and another late snow was expected.

  As the ramp dropped open, a chill wind suddenly cut through everyone, from the bitching and whining. Again, not his marines, who had listened to the entire briefing and closed up their jackets and pulled out hats and gloves before they landed.

  Everyone else hurried to join the smug marines as Trinidad walked down onto the surface of a new planet, reveling in the shallow footprints he was leaving in the snow.

  “Fall in,” he yelled, pretending to be a proper officer and all that. It sounded good, anyway.