“If you have a good explanation, Commander, I’d start talking. Now.”
“Anything above ninety percent readiness is perfectly acceptable, Captain,” Trent replied. “Manipulator Five has a problem, one I was trying to find a solution for before I brought it to your attention.”
“Above ninety percent readiness would be acceptable if we’d been in the field for a month,” Kyle snapped. “On leaving the refit yard? We should be within point one percent of a hundred, or someone”—he looked at her pointedly—“hasn’t done their damn job.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“Perhaps,” Kyle agreed. “But it’s a matter of the Captain’s opinion, Commander Trent. Which means you have forty-eight hours to get all five Class Ones up to at least ninety-nine percent of maximum readiness, understand?”
She opened her mouth and he raised a hand.
“That’s an order, Commander,” he pointed out. “If you need assistance from Commander Tsien or to majorly adjust the fabrication schedules, we’ll make that happen, but I want this ship capable of doing anything I ask her to—and it’s your job to make that happen.
“Preferably while keeping your department from running anyone over!”
She sighed and nodded, reaching across the table to rotate the smaller screen she’d been working on to show it to him.
“We can probably get One through Four up in that time frame,” Trent admitted. “It’s often a waste of parts and labor, but it is your call.
“It won’t happen with Five,” she drawled, lighting up the diagram of the Class One mass manipulator on her screen. “The exotic matter coil is misaligned. They broke something, putting her into reserve. It’s subtle, basic tests didn’t pick it up and we’ve still got eighty percent power on Five, but…we’re never getting more than that.”
“How bad?” he asked, pleased to have actually found some thought on the part of the overly clever engineer.
“It’s in the coil itself, Captain,” Trent said. “We can’t fix it; I’ve been trying to find a way for weeks. We’d need to replace the coil and it’s just not worth it.”
The exotic matter coil was the most expensive part of any mass manipulator—and the Class One mass manipulators were the most expensive machines of any kind aboard Kodiak. The carrier’s five exotic matter coils were the single most expensive and irreplaceable part aboard.
“I should have been informed of this,” he told her. “I doubt the decision would have been different, but it wasn’t your decision to make, Commander. JD-Ships should have known and I should have known, without my having to drag it out of you.”
The Joint Department of Ships had handled the refit. Someone in the yard should have noticed what Trent had seen even if she hadn’t told them…but that, at least, was not currently Kyle’s problem.
“I thought I had an answer,” she admitted. “But I kept running the numbers, and no matter how I tried, it didn’t work.”
“It’s an exotic matter coil, Commander,” Kyle pointed out. “We don’t even the gear to open the damn thing up safely, let alone try and work with the exotics themselves.”
He shook his head.
“All right, I guess I won’t expect a hundred percent from Five,” he conceded, “but I expect the other four in top shape, and I expect you to keep an eye on Five. From your command center, because I think your department needs to know that you’re actually doing your job and not sleeping in your damned office.”
“I was never sleeping!” Trent objected.
“I believe you,” Kyle agreed. “But I also guarantee you that that’s what your subordinates thought you were doing.”
#
Chapter 9
KDX-6657 System
10:00 September 14, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
BC-305 Poseidon
“How bad?”
Rank had its privileges in the Terran Commonwealth Navy, and one of those privileges was the private “media room” attached to a flag officer’s office. It was a smallish room, still half the size of the Commodore’s immense office, lined with the best holoprojectors the Navy had. It was, in theory, intended for tactical planning and visualization.
James Tecumseh was quite certain that most flag officers used it more for porn. He’d certainly used it for that himself, though he wouldn’t admit it, but his main use of it was actually for meditation. The holo-projectors made it possible to create the illusion that one was simply floating in space, with no starship around the viewer.
Right now, he was “floating in space” above a dead world four light-years from Antioch used as an anchor point by Commodore Coati’s pirate fleet, looking down at a planet that glowed with active fields of lava.
There was nothing in the KDX-6657 System to make it remotely appealing—which was exactly why Coati operated from there and why Commodore James Tecumseh was here.
And why Colonel Alric Barbados, a man so pale-skinned he’d glow under a black light, was with him in that quiet chamber…
“However bad you think it was, it was worse,” the Marine said flatly. “The ship we boarded ourselves surrendered with barely a fight, no casualties on either side.
“The ones Coati’s people boarded…”
Barbados was behind James but the Admiral could almost feel the shiver in the other man’s voice.
“We took three hundred and forty prisoners,” the Marine said after several moment’s silence. “But that’s including Target Four, sir.”
James winced.
“Those ships weren’t a standard design I recognized,” he admitted. There was an unspoken question in the admission.
“Locally built except for one from the Renaissance Trade Factor,” the Colonel told him. “Average crew three hundred.”
Twelve hundred people. There had been twelve hundred people across those four ships, and almost nine hundred of them were dead—and they hadn’t died quickly or easily. Coati’s people had tortured and murdered their way through the ships James’s intervention had allowed them to capture.
“We’ll arrange to have our prisoners ransomed,” James said with a forced calm. “We have some ties out here that aren’t linked to Coati, they’ll go home. And without creating any suspicion, either. That kind of thing is more normal than Coati’s…butchery.”
“Sir…”
“We have our orders, Colonel Barbados,” the Admiral snapped into the silence. “I don’t like our pirate friend any better than you do, but…”
“His people have shit gear and worse training,” the Marine pointed out. “You give the word, we could take all of his build-a-block corsairs in twenty minutes. Use his ships to run the raids ourselves—mission only says there has to be pirates, not that it has to be Coati’s pirates.”
James chuckled, grateful for the interruption of his dark mood.
“While I suppose that would be within the letter of our orders, it would be pushing the spirit, Colonel,” he warned. “We’re supposed to be able to pull out and leave our pirate friends to the tender mercies of the Alliance once they start sending ships this way.” He shook his head. “And I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to it. Give me a clean battle any day, not this backstabbing bullshit.”
“Sir, my troops are Marines,” Barbados said slowly. “They’re disciplined. They’re loyal. They’re obedient. To a point.
“I know at least one of Coati’s people took an ‘accidental’ friendly bullet, and that was with my Sergeants well aware of our orders. Next time…” The Marine sighed.
“Sir, next time, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop my people shooting the sons of bitches. They didn’t torture anybody in front of us, but now we know it happened, and I don’t know if my Marines will stand for it.”
“They probably won’t,” James agreed. “And if they did, they wouldn’t be worth their damned uniforms. I’ll talk to Coati, Colonel, try and make him understand.”
“He’s a pirate, sir. What exactly is he going to unders
tand?”
“That next time, I won’t be ordering your Marines not to interfere.”
#
James took an entire platoon of Marines with him to the pirate station. He didn’t inform Coati that he was coming until the assault shuttle was blasting clear of Poseidon’s hull, and he didn’t give the pirate warlord any choice about the visit.
If he’d needed to, he was prepared to have the Marine piloting the shuttle blow open the transfer station’s armored dock and make an assault landing. He figured he wouldn’t have to go much past that, but forty Terran Commonwealth Marines in powered battle armor would go through Coati’s scum like a hot knife through butter if needed.
The controller for the dock clearly decided better of playing chicken with an assault shuttle and opened the doors in time to allow James’s shuttle to sweep in to a perfect landing in the middle of the collection of aging junk that passed for Coati’s shuttle fleet.
Standing out like a sore thumb among the shuttlecraft were the gleaming forms of sixteen Castle Federation Cobra-type starfighters. They were older ships, sixth-generation starfighters phased out just before the current war had started, but still among the deadlier starfighters in space.
Coati’s people might not keep the place clean and their shuttles were almost as old as the Amerindian flag officer, but they understood what parts of their hardware needed to be kept in shape. The transfer station might have been a mess, but the air was clean and the automatic fueling system fully operational.
The robots were the only ones waiting for James, though, and he was about to collect his armored escort and head deeper into the station when the doors slid open and a quartet of power-armored figures swept out.
The armor was fifty-year-old Coraline Imperium manufacture, according to James’s implant. Any two of his escorting Marines could have taken all four of the pirates, but that wasn’t the point. The four guards took position around the door, attempting to loom at the impassive Terran Marines, and then the door opened again to disgorge Commodore Coati.
It was hard to tell with Coati how much of his oddities were by choice and how much were the result of pre-birth genetic engineering. James was relatively sure the iridescent scales that the man had for skin had been genetically engineered before the man’s birth, but Coati’s gem-like eyes and multicolored hair could be implants or modifications, too.
Certainly, the strange little pirate had made the most of them, wearing a tight-fitting black leather uniform that made the glittering colors of his scales stand out even more than they would have otherwise, and his hair was drawn up into a gloriously rainbow-colored mohawk—that James knew readily folded down over the side of the man’s head to fit under a helmet.
“Tecumseh!” the pirate warlord greeted him loudly and cheerfully, as if the Terran Commodore hadn’t just forced his way on to the base. “Welcome to l’Estación de Muerte.”
Death Station. Fitting for a broken-down shithole in orbit of a world that would never know life. James hadn’t even known the place had a name; it was just the “KDX-6657 Station” to his people.
“I appreciate your alacrity in meeting with me, Commodore,” James told the other man. “We have matters to discuss.” He glanced around the hangar, almost entirely empty of humans, and smiled thinly. “In private, of course.”
“De nada, Commodore. Of course!” Coati agreed. “We pulled some maravilloso brandy off one of the ships in Antioch; I’ll have my people send us a bottle!”
James concealed a sigh. He was very closed to hating Coati’s guts, but the man insisted on drinking through all of their business meetings. On the positive side, at least, Coati had an amazing taste in liquor.
#
The air aboard l’Estación de Muerte might have been clean, but the station itself was not. Without cleaning bots or anything similar, the pirates living in the base simply kicked garbage to the side when it got in the way. You could traverse the station, but the edges of the corridors were visible mounds of food wrappers and other debris.
Coati and his guards seemed unbothered by the mess, stepping around it or kicking it to the side as needed to lead the way through the station. James and his own men were less cavalier, but they made their way forward regardless.
The Commodore had been here before, even if no one had bothered to tell him the place had a name. He’d warned his guards just what they were going to see, and if the Marines were bothered, nothing made it through the ceramic masks of their powered armor.
“The troops can wait out here,” Coati suggested as they reached a door. “Canaste, get them food, beer!”
“We’re fine,” the platoon Sergeant rumbled. “We’ll wait.”
“Suit yourself,” the pirate warlord told them, then led James through the door into an observation deck looking out over the dead world below.
The observation deck was the first completely clean room James had seen aboard the station, probably because it was part of Coati’s personal space. A table next to the window held two glasses and a bottle of brandy, lit up a brilliant purple in the light of the burning world behind it.
Coati crossed to the table and poured brandy into the two glasses, but his affable cheer was gone as he offered one of the glasses to James.
“Do you think this is a fucking game, Tecumseh?” he snapped. “You fuck with me, you make me look weak. I look weak, I need to do something drastic to stay in control. Do you get me, Commodore?”
“What I ‘get’, Commodore, is that your people killed nine hundred civilians we were planning to capture and ransom,” James snapped back. “Regardless of the issues my personnel—who you know damned well are real soldiers—have with that, that’s a lot of damned money your people butchered.”
“And next time we call on some idiot fucking merchant to haul over, they’ll obey without us having to goddamn board them,” Coati replied. “’Cause they’ll know what’ll happen if they don’t roll over and show their bellies—we’ll rip ’em out!”
“I’ll warn you, Coati, my people won’t stand by and watch another atrocity like that,” James told him. “Next time your scum start raping and murdering their way through a ship, they’re going to have my people up their asses with battle rifles.”
“Goddamn tight-assed Marines,” the pirate snapped. “I don’t need your fucking armored paladins, Tecumseh. If you can’t control ’em, don’t let ’em in the boardings—it’s that simple. I didn’t sign on with your Marshal’s plan to have a bunch of useless twats get their panties in a twist!”
Coati swallowed the brandy, glaring at the Terran Commodore.
“I op my way, and you need to be seen showing respect,” he continued. “You disrespect me, and I have to be seen taking it out of your hide, you get me, Commodore?”
“Try it,” James murmured, holding his own brandy but not touching it. “I am here because I have my orders, Coati. And my people will follow my orders—but you need to play cleaner or this will cease being a ‘fucking game’ and become a fucking nightmare.
“Your fucking nightmare. Do you get me, ‘Commodore’?”
#
Chapter 10
Deep Space en route to Coraline System
16:00 September 18, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-052 Kodiak
In reality, Wing Commander Michelle Williams’s bomber nestled in its cradle on Kodiak’s flight deck, the zero-point cells that skimmed both electrons and positrons from the quantum foam of reality stood down while it drew its power from the surrounding carrier.
In this state, the deadly bomber was quiescent and harmless, software and hardware interlocks keeping the seven-thousand-ton spacecraft from activating anything except its computers.
The screens and neural feeds supplying Michelle and her flight crew with information showed a very different scene. The bomber floated in deep space, surrounded by the other hundred and twenty-seven starfighters of Kodiak’s flight group. Immediately to hand were the other twenty-three
bombers of Michelle’s Echo Wing, their neat parade-ground formation a reassuring sight around her.
Thirteen squadrons of Falcons, still the deadliest starfighter in space despite the deployment of seventh-generation fighters by every power in the war now, and three squadrons of the new Vulture bombers.
It was a lot of firepower, enough to send a shiver of contemplation down Michelle’s spine. Kodiak was an older ship, but her fighter wing was completely modern. They could have won the last war on their own.
Today, those fighters were taking on their own compatriots, Kodiak’s flight group zipping through virtual space toward Alexander and the battlecruiser’s own nine squadrons. In theory, this wasn’t even a fair fight, Alexander’s own firepower more than making up the seven-squadron difference.
“So, Commander Williams,” Vice Commodore Song said in Michelle’s mental ear. “The skipper says your bombers should make this actually doable, but I know neither Vice Commodore Altena nor Captain Sarka think that we can take Alexander without Kodiak providing fire support. Or even with that fire support, to be honest,” she said crisply.
“Ideas?” the senior asked.
“Alexander can’t stand off a full salvo of torpedoes from the bomber wing,” Michelle replied. “That’s almost a hundred missiles with capital-ship-grade electronic warfare suites. Our range is more limited than a cap-ship missile, but the brains and projectors on our birds are just as capable.”
“But as much as Altena and Sarka underestimate your ships, they’re still not going to let you get them into range without trying to kill you or having Altena’s birds in position for missile defense,” Song pointed out. “They know the Fox thinks you can make the difference, so they’re going to focus on you.”
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