Rita Longknife - Enemy Unknown Book I of the Iteeche War (Jump Point Universe 5)

by Mike Shepherd

  “I’m not sure we’ll make orbit there,” Matt said. “We’re trying to find David and his granddad, and we have to move quickly if we’re going to find them.”

  “He has a good point,” the red headed singer had said.

  “Yes, I guess. Well, can I at least send them a message?”

  “If we get in the system.”

  As soon as Matt knew they weren’t going into the actual Santa Maria system, he called for Jon and Brennan to come to his cabin. He explained that they were headed back the way they’d come, hot on the trail of the starship David had flown on.

  The boy seemed to take it well. “At least auntie won’t think I came all the way to Santa Maria and didn’t even come by to say hi.”

  “She won’t even know we came this far,” Matt assured him.

  “Are we getting close to David’s ship?” the boy asked, eyes lighting up.

  “I don’t know. We think we’re on its trail,” was all the Matt could say.

  It took them two days at high gees to get to the farthest jump. Once there, they took it slow and careful. The sniffer sent them heading for the farthest jump in that star system.

  “This guy is really going for the distance,” Sandy said as they set their course and accelerated to two gees. “If the map Ray put together is right, this will put them about as far from human space as they can get on the route between Santa Maria and home.”

  “He was looking for nice, new land to sell,” Matt said softly.

  “I hope he found more of it than six foot by six foot by two foot,” Sandy said.

  It seemed to take the scientist a moment to get the jump master’s meaning, but when she did, she allowed herself a quick nod.

  Three days later, they inched their way through another jump point after Professor Qin determined that the Prosperous Goose had indeed passed through there.

  Matt held his breath as he waited for his science officer to say something.

  For a long, long time, she had nothing to say.

  A bit unnerved by the wait, Matt turned to Sandy. “Are we alone in this system?”

  “As best I can tell, skipper, we have it to ourselves.”

  “Let me know if that changes.”

  “You’ll likely notice me screaming before I get a word out you can understand.”

  The two old friends chuckled at the joke.

  Still, the science officer said nothing, although her fingers were moving over her station at lightning speed.

  “Professor Qin, I assume the Goose came out this side of the jump.”

  “Yes, captain, it did.”

  “And . . .”

  “And something happened to it here.”

  “What?” Matt demanded.

  “I am not quite sure what it was, sir,” she said, still tickling her board like a mad pianist.

  “Can you give me a hint?” Matt asked, trying to hold his impatience in check. If they hadn’t been in micro gee he would have been standing at her shoulder long ago. In micro gee, it was, well, undignified to float over someone’s shoulder.

  “You have to understand, captain, my sensors have been rushed out to your ship without any of the extra testing I requested.”

  “I understand. Are you faced with a problem your sniffer is unable to answer?” he asked softly

  “I am not sure,” she answered. “We tested it on engine exhaust because that was all we were chasing after. So far, all it’s had to sense was expended reaction mass. Here and now, however, I am picking up a whole lot more than that.”

  In a flash, Matt had undone his seat belt and pushed himself off for the sensor station. He caught her chair as he flew by and pulled himself back to look over her shoulder.

  “Talk to me. I don’t care if you can guarantee it as scientifically correct. I need to know what you suspect. If you’ve even got an educated guess, I want to hear it.”

  Qin pointed a well-manicured finger at one of her sensors. “That spike appears to be from steel. If I had had a chance to test my device against hull members, I suspect that is what it would show me.”

  “As in, if you hit a ship’s hull with a laser, this is what your machine would sniff?” Matt said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh, shit,” Sandy said and started working her board. “Ready to reverse ship and duck through the jump on your orders, sir.”

  “Fine. Hold that maneuver, Sandy. Keep talking to me, Professor Qin.”

  “These lines. I suspect they are what a reactor core dump would leave in this space.”

  “So, they got shot and dumped their core. Surrendered, huh?”

  “You could draw that conclusion, captain, but I will not do so. I only provide you what evidence I have of what happened here. You may interpret it as you please.”

  “Fine. Anything else?”

  “Could you edge forward? I’d like a sample of the space ahead of us.”

  “Sandy, forward. Very gently.”

  “No baby that ever has the misfortune of having me holding it will ever find me more gentle,” the jump master said, and the ship drifted forward a bit faster.

  “Yes, just as I suspected,” Liu said, her voice almost having a hint of unusual excitement in it.

  “And that would be?” Matt said to encourage this sudden chatty streak.

  “The ship is again underway, but it is burning its reaction mass very poorly.”

  “As if the people running the reactors weren’t all that familiar with them,” Matt said.

  “You could draw that conclusion. I am also getting different reaction matter.”

  “What kind?”

  “There is more water. And there is sodium in it as well.”

  “Salt water?”

  “No one would use salt water in a reactor,” Sandy said.

  “Somebody did here,” Professor Qin said with solid confidence.

  “This is crazy,” Matt said half to himself. “Where is this trail taking us?”

  “It appears to be headed in that general direction,” Qin reported.

  “Sandy?”

  “It could be either Jump Point Beta or Gamma. But both of those would take you deeper into unknown space. The only jump for home here is the Delta Jump. The furthest one.”

  For a long moment, silence spread its soft wings on the bridge.

  “Skipper,” Sandy said, “do we want to follow the trail, see which jump it takes us to?”

  Matt was shaking his head before he knew he’d made up his mind. “No. General Ray Longknife told us to chase after the Goose. See if we could find out what happened to it. We have found out enough today, boys and girls. I say we head home and tell Ray what we found. Then, he can decide what to do with this nice big hot potato that we’ll drop in his lap.”

  Even Professor Qin was smiling at him when he finished.

  Very cautiously, they flipped ship, and using as little reaction mass as possible, drifted the Second Chance back through the jump they’d just come through.

  Once they were back in known space, Matt ordered, “Sandy, head us for home. Lay in the fastest and most direct course.”

  “Helmsman, you have your course loaded.”

  “Make it so. Two gees,” Matt said, and brought his feet down to the deck before he fell there.

  Chapter 9

  Admiral Horatio Whitebred was amazed at how fast a plan could come together when everyone worked with a will. No doubt, they were encouraged to make hasten by the fact that all they had to do was take a gander out the yard’s front gate. There they would get a good view of armed and alert Society Marines just waiting to take most of them into custody for all the crimes that they had something to do with.

  The problem was, however, that there wasn’t all that much of value to load. The food services in the yard had not been cut off. But somehow their suppliers never delivered more than about a weeks’ worth of food to them. That wouldn’t last long if they headed off into deeper space.

  However, one of his people kne
w someone who knew someone and for a bit of extra cash, extra food started finding its way up to the station and into the yard’s larders.

  Beyond that, most of the ships had six months’ worth of dry rations squirreled away somewhere onboard. Among the many rules and regulations that bleeding hearts had passed was to prevent people from starving if their ship took off on a bad jump. As a business man, Whitebred found all that government interference and red tape a drain on his bottom line.

  Just now, he liked it.

  There was also the problem of supporting twenty-three ships when they got to Horatio. People liked gravity. Whitebred had even heard that they needed gravity to stay healthy. He supposed he ought to find some.

  Space stations were designed to provide just that feel of down. His problem was, he couldn’t take this station with him. So, he went looking for one that might be available with the application of the right amount of force.

  And wouldn’t you know, he found it in the business pages.

  The thing about a business is that you need customers. So, if you’re in business, you let folks know that you are there, and you’ve got satisfied customers. In the Commerce and Business Report, he found just what he was looking for.

  New Eden Docks was just fitting out a portable, expandable space station for Far Pusan, a colony drawing its initial population from some place back on Earth. The first wave of colonists had survived and a second, larger wave was due in. So, the backers of the colony had decided they’d get more business if they had a station in orbit.

  But the story just got better. They were shipping out two boatloads of farmers in cryo-sleep. People took up space and food and life support. Icicles didn’t. Now, most people resented being bedded down with frozen blood in your veins, but it was the cheapest way to travel. Earth to Far Pusan was enough distance that the cost of the cryo-beds was nothing compared to the cost of life support.

  So, a whole lot of farmers were going out to Far Pusan stacked in like logs.

  And if a ship with loaded lasers got in their way, why the crew would just naturally go where the guns said to.

  No doubt, some might call it piracy, but Whitebred was not among them. How many fortunes in years past had been made with a bit of chicanery here, a bucket of blood there. You’d not hear a word about it from the few wealthy scions that Earth supported in such luxury and comfort.

  Whitebred liked to think of it as making his fortune the old fashioned, traditional way off someone else’s blood, sweat and tears.

  When the main convoy headed for Horatio, Whitebred lead a small fleet of his best warships in the other direction. He’d already decided on the system and even the jump where the convoy to Far Pusan would change management and change course.

  Things were going rather nicely.

  Chapter 10

  Major Terrance Tordon, SHMC, Trouble to his enemies, Trouble to his superiors, and, well, Trouble to just about everyone, including himself, was not happy. From the looks of it, things were about to go ass over teakettle, as his farm girl wife would say.

  And the more pregnant she got, the more farm girl she was becoming.

  But his home problems were delightfully minor compared to the trouble he was facing on the space station.

  Trouble and his Society of Humanity Marines had the job of keeping Whitebred and all his criminals bottled up in the yard in High Savannah’s space station. The admiral and all his criminal associates were dodging their date with a judge, jury, and, very likely, executioner, by hanging out where they couldn’t be collected by some very eager police. They, however, couldn’t go anywhere either.

  At least, everyone said the ships in the yard were in no shape to get underway.

  Of that, Trouble was becoming less and less sure.

  His Marines checked everything going into the yard and food deliveries seemed to have gone up.

  More food in, but no spike in the sewage out.

  Trouble had checked on that.

  So, where was the food going?

  Trouble had been around enough Navy ships to know what a departure looked like. Yes, a ship like the Patton, with its load of hydroponic gardens under his wife’s management might not need fresh fruit and vegetables. Most other ships needed to take on board a whole lot of food stuff from the local market.

  So, if Whitebred was going to make a run for it, who and how many could he fit into his getaway ship? Or ships?

  Trouble had tried to slip some eyes into the yard. Drones got IDed and smashed before they got past the gate. He’d tried sending in a machinist, a yard hand who’d been dirtside with his bride when Whitebred took over the yard. No joy. The thugs at the gate roughed him up a bit and did it quickly before the Marines guarding the gate could come running and send the poor fellow back to his bride.

  Captain Vu’s idea of sending a tiny spy in through the air ducts had been burned before it got three meters into the yard spaces.

  Trouble was considering putting something together that might paddle in with the water supply. The problem was, how to convert it from sub to air vehicle.

  Metal just was so lacking in flexibility and resilience.

  Someone ought to do something about that.

  Trouble was making the rounds of his guard stations when it happened.

  At one station, his Marines were facing off with an equal number of plug uglies.

  In the time it took him to walk from one yard entrance to the next, the thugs were gone. Vanished. They’d slipped away.

  “Think we ought to go take a look?” Gunny asked.

  “If they really have taken off, it would be just like them to spot this place with a few friendly explosive devices,” Captain Vu said.

  “I’m afraid, Gunny, I agree with Captain Vu,” Trouble said. “Let’s send for the tech team and have them see what they can see.”

  What Trouble saw was another of his remotes burned out of the air. And when they tried rolling a remote bomb sniffer through the gate, it quickly dropped into reverse and came right back out.

  “The bastards,” Trouble muttered, and ordered in the bomb squad.

  “We’ve got ships departing,” came from the Captain Izzy Umboto of the good ship Patton, now one of the best light cruisers in the Society of Humanity Navy. “What’s the yard look like from your station, Trouble.”

  “The guards are gone, but they left some pretty nasty presents behind. We’ve got the bomb techs doing what they can to safety the place, but it’s going to take some time.”

  “Understood,” Izzy said. Whitebred and his crew had a really bad street rep. What they’d tried to do down on Savannah had been nothing short of crimes against humanity and that was over and above the drug development project.

  “Do what you can there, Trouble,” Izzy ordered. “It looks like he’s running. Man, is he running. Fifteen. No, twenty. No, make that twenty-five ships heading out with him.”

  “A major fleet maneuver, huh,” Trouble said.

  “No fleet and no maneuvering,” Izzy answered. “A bunch of rag pickers and junkies if you ask me. It’s amazing there hasn’t been any collisions. I’d offer to render them assistance during their disaster, but some of those ships have lasers loaded and at the ready. Where did that bastard get 6-inch lasers? Hell, a couple of his ships are armed as heavy as the Patton.”

  “More of that Navy surplus that fellow, what’s his name, Commander Uxbridge, was selling to the highest bidder for his personal account.”

  Trouble remembered Commander Uxbridge. Trouble’s wife, not as the ship’s contract farmer, but in her other job, Alcohol, Drug and Explosives Enforcement Special Agent, had made the commander’s acquaintance one fine afternoon, and, over drinks, shots had been exchanged as he made his way out the door and out of their control. With any luck, Commander Uxbridge was one of the fugitives on Whitebred’s little fleet of fools.

  “Yep,” Izzy agreed. “Sensors tell me he’s got two Daring class cruisers from the Unity fleet and a pair of General class cr
uisers from ours. I hope his cruisers are in worse shape that the old Patton was when I got her.”

  Trouble cringed. He’d been on a lot of ships. None had been worse than the Patton the day he come aboard her. After a couple of refits on Wardhaven, however, he’d take her up against any ship double her tonnage.

  It took him most of the afternoon to take care of all the booby traps on just that one gate. And when his troops moved cautiously into the yard, they found it pretty much empty. Not so much as a dog or cat.

  “What you want to bet me them bastards slaughtered the poor things and have their carcasses on ice,” Gunny muttered.

  “What do you want to bet me that they’ll soon be hungry enough to eat the rats,” Trouble said, then wondered which rats would go into the stew pot first and cringed at his own joke.

  “They took everything, even what was welded to the deck,” Captain Vu said, pointing at places where major equipment had been but was now gone. “I don’t think they are planning on this being the last we see of them.”

  “No doubt,” Trouble agreed, and reported to Izzy.

  Done, he asked the important question. “Captain, will we be trailing them?”

  “I don’t think we will, Trouble. Twenty-five of them, with four equal to our fire power and no telling what’s on the others. I wouldn’t put it past Whitebred to have mines waiting for me on the other side of the next jump out of here. I think we report what just happened and let higher ups figure out what to do about it.” She paused for a moment to think.

  “Trouble, you get your best tech over to Whitebred’s quarters and go over it with a fine-tooth comb. I’ll get the local cops dirtside to look into any contacts he may have managed to keep down there. We haven’t seen the last of this bad actor, so we better get as much information as we can about him and his.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Trouble said, and turned to do what he always did, his duty.

  Chapter 11

  General Ray Longknife was discovering that being a father and a husband was not all it was cracked up to be. Alex was now nursing fine, but his little tummy didn’t much care for the results.