“Sir, we’re receiving a transmission,” Girard said, interrupting his reflections. “It’s CSS Harrier.”
“Harrier?” Sikander glanced over to his operations officer. “I didn’t realize she’d be here. Let’s see it, Mr. Girard.”
Commander Giselle Dacey’s visage appeared in a comm window near Sikander’s seat. “Welcome to Tunis, Decisive—this is an unexpected pleasure. What brings you to this corner of Zerzura, Commander North? Over.”
“Always nice to see a friendly face,” Sikander remarked to Girard. Giselle Dacey was an old shipmate—they’d served together on the Helix Squadron staff during the warumzi agu rebellion in the Tzoru Dominion. She was one of his fellow COs in Pleiades Squadron, a colleague who shouldered the same responsibilities and faced the same challenges he did on a daily basis, and the sitting Senator Kilgore to boot. She’d assumed command of Harrier at Neda just a couple of months after he’d joined Decisive, and they’d shared a few fishing trips and barbecues during their off-duty days. Romance wasn’t really in the cards; dating someone in the same command structure rarely worked out well, and even though they each had their own ship, they both worked for Wilson Broward and saw too much of each other in squadron meetings to be anything but friends. “Where exactly is Harrier, Mr. Girard?”
“High orbit over Ben Arouz, sir. That’s Tunis IV, the inhabited planet of the system. We’re sixteen light-minutes away.”
There wasn’t much point in trying to hold a conversation with a sixteen-minute lag, so Sikander decided to keep his reply to the point. “Commander Dacey, my compliments. The pleasure is mutual—I’m glad to see Harrier here. We’re in pursuit of a pirate vessel that attacked a mining station in Bursa. She should be only half an hour or so ahead of us. I’m sending along our imagery in case you detect her, over. Mr. Girard, if you’d be so kind?”
“Already on it, Captain.”
“Thank you,” Sikander said. He got up and walked over to the sensor technicians at their posts; on Decisive’s bridge, the sensor watch consisted of three operators positioned at the forward end of the arrowhead-shaped compartment, with the sensor officer’s station just behind them. “Anything yet, Ms. Carter?”
“No, sir.” The young ensign gestured at several points on her display. “We’ve got a few high-speed contacts currently decelerating from transit terminations here, here, and here, but the vectors aren’t right—none of these ships came from Bursa. Either we passed Target Alpha en route and she hasn’t arrived yet, or she managed to get behind a sensor shadow before we unbubbled.”
Sikander studied the display, frowning. There was a sizable gas giant not too far off their projected course line on the other side of the system … with a bit of deft maneuvering the pirate vessel might have slipped behind it in the twenty-five minutes between the two ship’s arrivals, using it to screen a crash deceleration and vector change. It’s not impossible, he mused. They observed us maneuvering to begin our pursuit, and they might very well have guessed that we’d be on their heels when they arrived here. Then again, that would require precision military maneuvering, and it seemed unlikely that criminals flying a beat-up old cargo hauler could pull off that sort of timing—Sikander didn’t know if Decisive could have managed it. In fact, it’s likely their navigation is much worse than ours. Chances are they missed their planned warp termination by a wide margin, maybe even light-hours … in which case they might be so far from us that we haven’t even seen them yet.
There was a third possibility, for that matter: The pirate vessel might have departed on the Bursa-Tunis transit line, only to cut her warp generator somewhere in the interstellar space between the two systems. In that case, Decisive would have overshot them by literally light-years by heading toward the obvious destination. Powering and depowering warp rings required very expensive charges of exotic matter, and no captain would want to run the risk of stranding himself with empty fuel bottles years away from port. But if this fellow had full magnetic bottles and decided he could spare the ring charge, he just might have done it. So are we dealing with a shockingly incompetent navigator, a brilliant helmsman, or someone rich enough or desperate enough to waste a charged ring?
Sikander chose the first option. “Expand our search parameters, Ms. Carter,” he told his sensor officer. “Assume Target Alpha missed her course by a light-hour or three, and look for high-speed targets on the outskirts of the system.”
“Yes, sir,” Carter replied. She turned to her sensor techs and started working out how to best survey the outer portions of the Tunis system. Sikander left her to her work, returning to his command seat and settling in to wait for results.
Half an hour after he’d replied to Commander Dacey’s greeting, he received her answer: Harrier hadn’t detected any terminal cascades from Bursa arrivals for most of the day. “But it’s a fifty-fifty chance that our orbit placed us on the wrong side of the planet when your pirate arrived,” she added. “We’ll add your imagery to our database and make sure to watch out for that ship.”
“What now, Captain?” Michael Girard asked as Sikander digested Harrier’s news.
“Wherever Target Alpha is, she isn’t close by. Secure from general quarters and set the normal underway watch. Hold this course, standard deceleration. We’ll loiter in the outer system for a bit and see if she shows up.”
“Aye, sir.” Girard began issuing orders.
Sikander stood, stretched, and made his way back down to his quarters to tackle some busywork while they waited for the Bursa pirate ship to make its appearance. But the rest of the morning passed without a glimpse of Target Alpha … then the rest of the day … and the rest of the day after that. Decisive’s operations specialists pored over the sensor records of Tunis’s traffic control and compared their imagery from Bursa against scores of ships going about their business in the system, to no avail.
On the third day of their fruitless search in Tunis, Harrier departed Ben Arouz and met Decisive in the middle reaches of the system, her port call concluded. Giselle Dacey shuttled over to Decisive to visit Sikander as the two destroyers proceeded in company, joining him and Amelia Fraser for a working lunch. “I hate to say it, Sikay, but I think you lost your pirate,” she told him when they finished their meal. “They cut their warp transit short or they overshot on purpose, and they’re not going to show themselves in Tunis as long as either of us is here.”
“I’m beginning to think that you’re right,” Sikander admitted. “They must have guessed that we’d try to unbubble on their heels, so they gave themselves a couple of light-hours of distance to avoid us. We should have tried to get here before them.”
“In which case you still would have been hours away when they arrived, and they would have had plenty of time to run again when they spotted you waiting for them. It’s hard to catch a ship that’s got enough of a lead to line up a transit course, Sikay. Don’t blame yourself for failing to do the impossible.”
“Given that, how much longer do we want to stay in Tunis?” Amelia Fraser asked. “I don’t think we can say we’re in a pursuit situation at this point, and this is Harrier’s beat, not ours.”
“Only until tomorrow,” said Dacey. “We’re scheduled to make transit for New Kibris.”
“You might want to leave today,” Fraser said to her. “I have a feeling that the troublemakers in New Kibris know exactly when Harrier is due to arrive. I bet you’d have a better chance of catching someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing if you showed up a day early. After all, we didn’t find any trouble until we unbubbled in Bursa a week ahead of schedule.”
Dacey thought over Fraser’s advice. “That’s a good idea, Amelia,” she finally said. “In fact, I think I’ll do just that. I’m getting tired of plodding through system after system where everyone’s on their best behavior. And if that’s the case, I’d better get back to Harrier and kick things into high gear. Time’s wasting, as they say.”
Sikander nodded, and reached over for the comm
panel by his seat. “Hangar? This is the captain. Ready Commander Dacey’s launch, please. She’s departing soon.”
“Where are you headed next?” Dacey said as she stood up and brushed a few crumbs from her uniform.
“I suppose we’ll resume our patrol in Bursa,” Sikander said. “I’ve got a prize crew of fifteen sailors to pick up, after all. And we still need to restock our generator parts, which was the whole reason we got off schedule in the first place.”
Fraser frowned. “I don’t like the idea of getting right back onto schedule, Captain. If we return to Bursa now, we’ll arrive just in time for the end of our planned patrol. How much do you want to bet things are going to be suspiciously quiet when we get there?”
“I can’t say that you’re wrong, XO,” Sikander said. “God knows the first thing I’m going to do when we get back to Neda is tell Captain Broward that we need to either incorporate some randomness in our patrol schedules or sail under sealed orders so that no one knows when we’re coming. But we’ve stretched our mission parameters as far as they can go with this side trip to Tunis. I’m afraid it’s back to Bursa for us.”
“I’ll have the quartermasters work out a transit course as soon as we finish here,” Fraser said. As executive officer, she oversaw the ship’s navigation. “You know, by the time we get there, it’ll be time to move on to Dahar.”
“No one ever said the Navy was efficient, Amelia,” Sikander pointed out.
Giselle Dacey gave a snort of sour amusement, and Fraser grimaced. “I know, Captain. I’m not saying that we have any choice about it—I just don’t like the idea of going right back to what we know isn’t working. It rubs me the wrong way.”
“Me too, Amelia.” Sikander rose to walk Dacey back down to her launch in Decisive’s hangar bay. “Perhaps Harrier will have better luck in New Kibris.”
“We can hope,” Dacey said. She shook Sikander’s hand. “Thanks for lunch, Captain North. Good hunting to you.”
“And to you, Captain Dacey,” Sikander replied with a distinctly predatory grin. “We’ll catch our pirate sooner or later. I promise you that.”
8
CSS Decisive, Dahar System
Decisive lingered in Bursa just long enough to pick up the Carmela Día prize crew and the generator parts, and then set course for Dahar. This transit was a short one: thirty hours at the standard ten-percent warp gradient. Sikander’s navigation team cut the ship’s warp generators seventeen light-minutes from Dahar II—the major inhabited planet of the system, as well as the capital of the Zerzura Sector—and set course for the orbital station of Dahar High Port.
It turned out that Decisive wasn’t the only foreign vessel visiting Dahar at the moment: the Velaran cruiser Vashaoth Teh held station in a medium orbit above the Caliphate planet, as did a Dremish survey vessel named Polarstern. Sikander sent both commanding officers the customary compliments, and studied the Velaran warship with some interest. He hadn’t encountered any Electorate vessels in his previous Zerzuran patrols. Vashaoth Teh was either a poorly armed heavy cruiser or an oversized light cruiser—the product of some strange design compromises, perhaps—but she was one of the newer ships in the Electorate navy and certainly outgunned any of the destroyers in Pleiades Squadron. Polarstern, on the other hand, was an unarmed research ship registered under Dremark’s survey service: fast and roomy, with several large hangars to support the operations of workboats and beacon tenders.
“Make sure we capture some good imagery on both of those ships,” Sikander told Girard as Decisive drew near to the planet. “I don’t think we’ve seen much of the new Velaran cruiser yet, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Dremish ship doubles as an intelligence-collection platform.”
“Yes, sir,” said Girard. “I have to admit I’m not exactly sure what the survey ship is surveying out here, anyway.”
“What about the Zerzuran squadron? Any changes?” Amelia Fraser asked the ops officer. A kilometer-long arm of Dahar High Port reserved for the use of the Caliphate navy served as the base of the Zerzura Sector Fleet, a mismatched collection of half a dozen old corvettes, gunboats, and support vessels. Each of Zerzura’s major systems maintained its own customs and patrol craft, but those were meant for law enforcement, not defense … not that the Zerzuran fleet could seriously hope to defend the sector against a hostile destroyer, let alone an enemy battle line.
“Hasan Rami is absent,” Girard replied. “Out on patrol, I imagine. Other than that, no changes.”
“Hopefully she’s having better luck than we are,” said Sikander. Zerzura’s paltry squadron reminded him of the decrepit defenses of the Tzoru Dominion, but at least the pasha’s warships occasionally got under way. Some of the Tzoru fleets hadn’t moved in decades. He returned his attention to the mottled green-and-ocher planet ahead of Decisive and the wheel-like outline of Dahar High Port, now coming into view above the nightside. “Let’s have Reed take the conn for the docking maneuver. He’s due for a turn, isn’t he?”
“I believe so,” said Fraser. She nodded to the petty officer of the watch. “Pass the word: Mr. Hollister, your presence is requested on the bridge.”
Sikander relaxed at his station, keeping half an eye on the bridge team’s conduct of the docking maneuver. One of his duties as commanding officer was to make sure the ship’s junior officers qualified in a variety of ship-handling operations, but like many engineering officers Hollister spent most of his watch time in main control and rarely got the opportunity to practice. He was pleased to see that the young engineer managed the delicate maneuver competently with only a point or two of advice. “Well done, Mr. Hollister,” Sikander said when the cradle arms thumped into place to secure Decisive’s hull. “You could have used just a bit more thrust to close up those last few meters, but there’s nothing wrong with the way you did it.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Hollister said, obviously relieved that he’d handled the docking properly. “I’ll remember that for next time, sir.”
I still need to decide what to do about Shah’s letter, Sikander reminded himself. In Decisive’s flurry of transits and the excitement of the chase, he’d let the reprimand sit on his desk. He was inclined to soften Shah’s reprimand to a letter of admonishment—something that would put Hollister on notice that his department head was unhappy and establish documentation in case something else came up but wouldn’t follow the young officer to his next ship or station. It wasn’t fair to either of them to leave that unresolved … but then again, a little time for reflection might provide Shah with a better chance to evaluate Hollister’s ability and Hollister with a chance to show what he could do. In fact, Sikander rather hoped that Shah would reconsider the reprimand without any help from him. That, however, was a problem Sikander could put off for a little longer. Now that they’d arrived at Dahar, it was time to pay attention to some of his diplomatic duties.
“Secure from docking detail and set the in-port watch,” he ordered, stretching as he got up from his acceleration couch. He was scheduled to meet Special Commissioner Darrow when Decisive made port, followed by a visit to the pasha’s palace. “The ship is yours, XO. Standard liberty schedule for the crew.”
“Aye, sir,” Amelia Fraser replied. “I’ll see to it. Who do you want to bring along today?”
Providing his officers with opportunities to participate in diplomatic missions was another one of Sikander’s responsibilities. “Mr. Girard, you’re with me,” he said. Since operations officers handled intelligence functions on board small warships such as Decisive, Michael Girard was the closest he had to a dedicated intelligence officer; his recent study of Zerzura’s piracy troubles might be useful. One more should be enough, he thought, and made his decision. “And let’s ask Dr. Ruiz to join the landing party. Since this is her first visit to Dahar, we’ll let her play diplomat today.”
“Very good,” Amelia replied. “I’ll call over to the station and reserve you a shuttle.”
* * *
An hour aft
er Decisive secured herself in High Port’s docking cradle, Sikander and his officers, accompanied by Darvesh Reza, caught a public shuttle down to the city of Mersin. Below their shuttle, the morning sun painted the clouds veiling the planet’s lowlands a pale gold-orange hue. The view was impressive, but the details of Decisive’s weeklong visit occupied most of his attention—social occasions, attending various civic gatherings as a guest of honor, hosting tours of the ship, and more meetings with the Aquilan consul. Formal port calls served as an important tool of diplomacy in remote sectors such as Zerzura, and as commanding officer of an Aquilan warship, Sikander was expected to represent the Commonwealth in a positive light—and take careful note of what he saw or heard during his visit.
So much for chasing pirates, he reflected. Instead we’re going to spend the rest of our scheduled patrol in the one spot in this whole sector that doesn’t have a piracy problem, going to the same parties and speaking at the same events every Commonwealth crew attends when they pass through Dahar. Don’t we have more important things to do?
“It’s orange!” Carla Ruiz said, openly gawking at the spectacular view. “How is this world even habitable?” As a rule of thumb, the more exotic a planet’s coloration, the less likely it was to harbor the sort of atmosphere humans could breathe.
“An altitude-segregated atmosphere,” Girard told her. “The sea-level atmosphere is several times denser than standard, and tainted by nitrogen dioxide and more exotic compounds. That orange you see is more or less permanent cloud cover above low-elevation areas. But once you get about three thousand meters above sea level, the air pressure’s close to standard and the heavier compounds are all below you. The highlands are actually quite terran.”
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