The Princess & The Privateer

by Peter Rhodan

  “Out here? No. Too far away through too many jurisdictions for my government to mount any sort of expedition. The common consensus in ze space lanes is to leave zem well alone. Let zem kill each other off, which zey seem to do regularly.”

  Gizel noted the harsh tone of his voice and dropped the subject. The Jex system had three jump points as well, and they took the one nearest the Klarian jump point and they were soon in the Moontide system, for which they only had rough charts. Karvon explained they had taken this route because there was another jump point here to the Nargone system on the far side of Iskander space, which made this route a shortcut of sorts.

  Chapter 9

  The home front

  Baron Travgar, current head of Imperial Security, which position traditionally came with the rank of Colonel, strode down the quiet corridor past several closed wooden doors before entering what was known as the West Room. This was an odd title, given there were plenty of other rooms on the western side of the Palace. The large room had a magnificent view out over the western side of the city, all the way to the Anderson Mountains beyond. The ground sloped downwards beyond the Palace on this side so the buildings of the endlessly growing city had so far not blocked out the delightful view. Travgar rather suspected there was pressure brought to bear on the City Council planning department to make sure no tall buildings could be built on this side of the palace.

  The room had a collection of people who were busily working at desks that were covered with computer screens and they all seemed oblivious to his arrival, although he was fairly certain this was an act. The Emperor was alone at the head of the room. His wife, after gaining a degree in Political Science and another in Anthropology of all things, had returned to work once her daughter had reached school age. She had worked her way up in the Foreign Ministry. To be fair her promotions were mostly through hard work rather than nepotism. She spent six years as assistant to the head of the Lotharian Bureau and when Henri had retired last year due to ill health she had been promoted to his position.

  Travgar thought she had performed the role quite well so far, although the disappearance of her daughter had caused her considerable strain, and in the end, she had needed to take a few weeks of leave. Whilst at a local government level the Empire was a democracy, above that level it was an autocracy with the Emperor appointing the Imperial Ministers who all reported to him. It was a system that had been in place for centuries and appeared to work well. Travgar approached the desk of the Emperor and bowed in the appropriate ‘work day’ manner. Deep bows and curtsies and other court carry-on were all for public display, whereas in the back rooms where the actual work was being done royal protocol dictated a simple, shallow, bow would suffice.

  The Emperor’s desk held four screens driven by three computers, which were needed for him to keep track of everything going on. Behind him was the famous Crystal Galaxy that took up most of the wall at this end of the room. It had been in existence for over two hundred years and was still being worked on. It represented a top-down view of the galaxy with every star represented by small crystals in the appropriate colors using rubies, emeralds, topazes, turquoises, and so on to represent the different star types with ruby used for red giants for example.

  The crystals were mounted on short transparent rods of different lengths depending on the depth of the star vertically, given the top-down view. This vertical height gave the whole thing an amazing depth and the colors were mesmerizing. Only those stars that had been properly observed and identified were represented. This meant that large parts of the map were bare, particularly the regions on the opposite side of the galaxy from where the Kimerian Empire was positioned. Only the really bright stars were shown on the far side of the map and mostly ones that were a bit above or below the galactic plane, as these were more obvious.

  That was where the fabled Earth lay, in the area that was still beyond their maps, although the ongoing exploration of jump points was slowly moving the explored part of the galaxy in the direction of Earth. Eventually, in some far distant future, the stars around Earth would be plotted and ultimately visited. For the moment though work continued on the map only on weekends when the salaried employees had their days off. Not that the Emperor ever really managed a day off but he did try to have weekends free from the normal day-to-day work routine.

  The Emperor waved to a seat in front of his desk and Travgar sat, although he didn’t relax as he sometimes did when in conversation with the Emperor. They were old friends these days you would have to say, but for all that Travgar never forgot who was the master and who was the servant.

  “You’ve got the final report on the Iskander spy operation?” the Emperor asked as he sat.

  “Yes, Sire,” he replied, and held out a folder.

  “No. No. Got enough to read old man,” the Emperor replied waving the folder away. “Send a file through and I can access it if I need to.”

  Travgar nodded. “I wasn’t sure if you still had full confidence sire.”

  The Emperor looked pained.

  “Of course I do Hogart. No one could have foreseen the combination of my daughter being able to sneak out of the palace undetected with the equally unlikely scenario of someone else bugging her.” he paused and shook his head. “I presume there is nothing further on the case?”

  He looked at Travgar with no real hope after all this time. His daughter had just disappeared into thin air and not a single clue had been found.

  “Actually, we have narrowed down the possible ways she could have been taken off-planet, if indeed she has been taken off-planet, that is.” Travgar offered.

  The Emperor studied him for a moment then waved a hand indicating he should continue. Travgar shrugged before continuing.

  “It is nothing concrete, understand sire, but we have narrowed things down to there being only two possible ships that anyone could have got the Princess aboard and out of the system.”

  He paused. No, he wouldn’t reiterate the caveat that the kidnappers could have been on any one of a dozen other ships and simply spaced the Princess before they had been stopped and searched. No one was going to find one girl’s body floating in the vastness of space. The Emperor knew as well he did such a scenario was a possibility; there was no need to harp on about it.

  “One was a ship bound for Nordland which we are tracing even as we speak. The other, well the other we’re not sure about.”

  “Not sure?” the Emperor enquired, well aware in his mind of the unlikeliness of his daughter still being alive given there had been no ransom demands of any kind.

  “No sire. You see the ship in question carried the identity of a ship that was also in Brython space at the same time. Now, if the ship in Brython space was the real ship then the one that left here wasn’t, which opens a whole other can of worms.”

  “How so?”

  “The identity of the ship is a secret alias of a privateer known as the Kormorant. This a sort of grey operations ship that several different security services use from time to time, including us, I should point out, sire. It is almost certain she wasn’t taken aboard the Kormorant as we have an operative aboard the vessel and we have heard nothing from him regarding the Princess. And before you ask, yes, he has communicated normally since the disappearance. It is possible, I suppose, that he has not recognized her since we are using her double to hide the kidnapping, but I find that unlikely. Besides, the captain of the vessel is a Brython naval captain whose father is a member of their nobility. He is not likely to lend himself to kidnapping your daughter sire.”

  “Which noble?”

  Travgar shrugged. Few knew and it wasn’t likely that the Emperor would talk.

  “Baron Huntsmouth sire.”

  The Emperor nodded.

  “No, you’re right. He would not be a party to kidnapping, well not a hostile one at least. Hmm. We’ll have to wait and see what your people can get from the ship that went to Nordland.”

  “Yes, sire. I am sorry for the lack o
f results sire. I’ve concluded that the decision to hide the disappearance was a mistake, sire. It is making it hard to pursue leads and ferret out information when we can’t tell our people who we are looking for.”

  The Emperor nodded his agreement to this assessment. He then raised another matter and their conversation never returned to the subject of his missing daughter. Later, as he walked back down the corridor after the meeting had concluded, the Baron considered the likely prospect that Gizel was dead, given no one had approached them for a ransom or made demands of any kind. Lena still hadn’t stopped blaming herself for going along with the whole thing and the Longarm kid was even worse. He was chastising himself mentally far more harshly than the extra physical duties he’d been awarded as punishment following the event.

  After the initial relief that Teron was going to make a full recovery, and Lena had honored the promise she had made to the Gods at the time of his shooting, the shock of what happened at Starfire really set in. Gizel’s prolonged disappearance was putting strains on their budding romance too, as they both felt a large degree of guilt over what had happened to her. They spent considerable time contemplating what else they could have done to save the Princess from the unprovoked and unexpected attack. In hindsight, they agreed they should have just nipped the impetuous idea in the bud, and then they would have avoided the whole sorry situation in the first place. The constant stress of not knowing whether Gizel was still alive and being held against her will by a band of outlaws in some far-flung system or whether she was already dead didn’t help their relationship either, although so far they had continued seeing each other.

  It was a pity they had nothing to go on from outside the system thought Travgar. The Kormorant would have been the ideal vessel to surreptitiously rescue and return the Princess on the quiet. It was the sort of mission he’d used that ship for before.

  Chapter 10

  Pirates ahoy!

  The jump point to the Nargone system was a good distance from the one they had jumped in through, the Klarion system being one of those systems where jump points were spread out rather than clumped in a loose group trailing the system’s sun. They had been in the system barely an hour when Krevis broke into a casual conversation about past missions of the Kormorant, which were being retold mainly for Gizel’s entertainment.

  “Looks like we have company boss,” he said laconically.

  The conversation halted immediately and everyone started paying attention to his or her consoles. Everyone that is except for Gizel who had no bridge task and was sitting in a flight chair at the back of the flight deck near the entry hatch.

  “Ah yes. I have him now.” Karvon acknowledged.

  They all looked over at the captain while he processed the data.

  “Pulling twenty gravities. Seems a might low. Did he come from a jump point?”

  “No boss. There’s one nearby, but it’s over here.”

  Krevis must have caused something to be highlighted on Karvon’s screen as the Brython scratched his head and then nodded.

  “He appeared onscreen too far from it to have come through there. Unless he had been coasting, powered down, from before we entered the system.”

  “Could have seen us emerging and gone quiet so we didn’t see him?”

  “Would have to have been pretty sharp to get the power off before I spotted him. Not saying he couldn’t have, but even so, I doubt he could have got to where he is now if he had come through that jump point and then coasted.”

  “Hmm. It does seem a bit much. Let me see what is in the area he emerged from.”

  Karvon did something with his screen and waited. The big screen showed the plot with the two ships heading towards the Nargone jump point and slowly converging. The newcomer was moving slightly faster than the Kormorant and the two ships would get quite close well before the jump point was reached.

  The minutes dragged by as Karvon studied his display, touching buttons and fiddling with things occasionally. Eventually, he sat back.

  “Nothing. At least nothing our instruments can pick up. He is either exactly what he purports to be or he was lying doggo there waiting for a victim to jump into the system. But which is it?” he drummed his fingers on his console. “Right. Let’s pull his chain a little. Take her up to twenty-five gravities as if we have just spotted him.”

  Andreas on the helm nodded. “Twenty-five gravities, aye.”

  Silence reigned on the bridge while they waited for the other ship’s response. A real freighter would almost certainly ignore their increase in speed.

  “And right about now,” Krevis said then peered at the screen. “Accelerating sir. At thirty gravities and rising.”

  “Acknowledged. Lothar, ready the gun turrets. We will aim to disable, not to destroy. OK?” Karvon turned to face the Iskander marine.

  “Sir. Cripple not destroy, aye sir.” Lothar responded.

  “Passing fifty gravities, sir,” Krevis said.

  “Right. Take us to thirty-six gravities.”

  “Thirty-six gravities, aye.’ Andreas responded and adjusted his flight controls.

  Gizel turned to Corinne who was not involved in flying the ship.

  “Thirty-six gravities?” she said as a question.

  Corinne smiled. “It’s such an odd number that it looks like our genuine top speed. Fools them every time.”

  Gizel nodded, tucking this thought away. The very military tone being used on the bridge now was such a contrast to the casual, often jocular tone most of the crew affected normally and Gizel almost didn’t recognize them as the same people. The short precise commands and responses were made in that calm professional tone that any well-practiced team developed.

  “Sixty-four gravities now.” Krevis intoned.” Appears to be his maximum, or at least the maximum he is willing to go to at the moment.”

  “Roger that,” Karvon responded absently, still focused intently on his screen.

  Seconds seemed to creep by and Gizel was startled when she glanced at the time on the top left of the main screen and realized nearly twenty minutes had passed. The track of the other ship shown on the screen indicated it was gradually closing in on the fleeing Kormorant. After three more minutes Krevis spoke again.

  “Being hailed sir.”

  “Put it on speaker.” Karvon ordered.

  “Unknown cargo ship. This is the Medio frigate, Caxton. Prepare to be boarded for customs inspection.”

  “Any visual?” Karvon enquired.

  “No. Just voice,” Krevis answered.

  “No matter.” Karvon reached forward and pressed a button.

  “Unknown ship. This is the SS VonKormann. We are an Iskander merchant vessel going about our lawful business. You will not be boarding us.”

  He fiddled with some more controls.

  “Here we go.”

  The main screen display flickered and then the image of a rather beat-up-looking small warship appeared. It was almost certainly the cast-off from some military force but none of those on the bridge offered an immediate opinion as to its ancestry.

  “VonKormann. This is the frigate, Caxton. We will be alongside in two minutes and thirty seconds do not attempt to avoid us or we will open fire.”

  Karvon leaned back in his chair, his teeth showing as he smiled ferally.

  “Caxton. This is my one and only warning. Shear off or we will regard you as pirates. We saw both the Medio frigates in their home system so that ploy is not going to work with us, try some other identification.”

  “VonKormann. Stand by to be boarded. We have six-centimeter plasma cannons aimed at you so don’t try anything.”

  Krevis could hardly contain himself and the others were all smiling at the measly armament the other ship boasted of.

  “And do your guns come in single mounts or are they doubles?” Karvon asked trying to keep his voice steady.

  Lothar struggled to keep from laughing out loud. Corinne sniggered.

  Karvon’s response see
med to surprise the other ship and they did not respond immediately.

  “You wait smart arse.” came the eventual response. “I’m going to enjoy dealing with you personally.”

  “I doubt it,” Karvon answered with a grin, then was all business again and turned to Lothar.

  “Shields up. Unship the guns, Lothar.”

  “Shields up… now.” announced Juxton.

  “Outer doors opening and turrets undocking. Powering up now sir.” Lothar announced.

  “Caxton this is the Privateer Kormorant under hire to the Medio government. You will power down your shields and weapons and prepare to be boarded.”

  “You’re kidding right?” came the response.

  Krevis sat up straight. “Enemy has fired sir.”

  “Return fire at will Lothar. Engines and bridge.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Lothar replied. “Weapons hot in twelve seconds.”

  “Enemy has fired again sir.”

  “Port shield at ninety-seven percent sir,” Andreas announced, sounding surprised that the battered-looking pirate ship had managed that much.

  “Firing again,” Krevis announced.

  “Port shield now ninety-five percent,” Andreas reported in an unconcerned monotone.

  “Opening fire,” Lothar announced.

  And the image on the screen abruptly changed as the fifty-centimeter weapons of the Kormorant went straight through the enemy shields and smashed into the frigate’s hull. The top turret took the forward part of the enemy ship where the bridge most likely was, and the lower turret went for the engines at the stern. The pirate ship’s shields offered little resistance to the massive weapons, and the bulk of the plasma bolts impacted onto and through the small ship’s hull. Large explosions and an outpouring of gasses from the areas that had been hit could be seen on the screen.

  “Enemy power plant has shut down, sir. Can’t tell if it is damage or auto scram.” Krevis reported. “Weapons are cooling down. The enemy ship had central power rather than local.”