Annette took a moment to mentally translate the metaphor to “get started”, then returned his obviously fake smile. She was reasonably sure that Forel was calculating the best moment to betray her, but for now, he was treating her as the only equal partner in this endeavor.
“I do not,” she agreed. “Let’s be about it.”
She gestured for Chan to cut the channel, then laced her fingers together as she watched the formation begin to move toward the channels out of the gas giant’s rings.
“He is hiding something from you, Captain Bond,” Ki!Tana told her. “I am not certain what.”
“I think this deal is honest,” Annette replied, “but I agree. He’s only waiting for the best moment to sell us out. I can’t trust a slaver.”
“Forel is as crazy for his race as I am for mine,” the A!Tol said. “He will not hesitate to betray you, sell you into slavery, or attempt to steal your ship. Subjugator was a Kanzi vessel, built for cross-border slave-raiding. They were buying slaves from him when he broke the deal, murdered them all, and stole their ship.”
“I have no intention of trusting him,” Annette repeated. “But damn. He doesn’t like Kanzi?”
“He hates everyone,” Ki!Tana told her. “But the A!Tol and the Kanzi are at the top of his list. Watch your blind spots, Captain Bond. These are dangerous waters you swim in.”
“Murky ones too,” she told the alien. “He keeps faking human body language—badly, but how does he even know us well enough to do that? You’re right. He’s hiding something.”
Chapter 42
Of Course We’re Coming Back’s main viewscreen flickered with the radiation burst of the opening hyperspace portal, then stabilized as the scout ship slipped through the gap in reality back into regular space. Despite only having a minor upgrade to their speed, the two Terran scout ships were still the stealthiest ships in the pirate armada.
Of course, hyperspace portals weren’t particularly stealthy at the best of times. There were solutions to that.
“How are our decoying friends, Sarah?” Andrew Lougheed asked, studying the screens. Of Course and Oaths of Secrecy had cut their drives just before opening the portal, and were now moving entirely on cold gas jets. Compared to the interface drive’s near-instantaneous acceleration to large chunks of lightspeed, the jets’ single gravity felt glacial.
“Our pirate friends are screaming across the system at forty-five percent of the speed of light,” his tactical officer reported, directing a smile Andrew’s way that skittered the edge of professionalism. He probably needed to talk to her about that, but they were privateers now.
How much of the old rules really still applied?
For the moment, however, his focus was on the two pirate ships, each roughly two thirds the size of an A!Tol destroyer, screaming across the star system in front of him. They would get a clear initial scan of the system and its contents, but details took time—and so fell to the two Terran ships that could drift through the system without being seen.
“They have someone’s attention,” Sarah Laurent pointed out. “Check out planet four.”
The system, Lambda Aurigae on the old Terran charts and Orsav on the A!Tol charts, had no gas giants or asteroid belts. It did have fifteen small planets, ranging from the size of Mars to five times the size of Earth, that got icier and icier as you moved farther out-system. None were habitable, however, making Orsav spectacularly useless for everything except its location.
Planet four was the closest to being habitable, with an orbit that gave it liquid water on some parts of its surface for roughly one quarter of its twenty-three-month orbit. Without much in terms of atmosphere, however, that water didn’t do much other than sit there and boil off.
Right now, however, the main point of attention was that someone had just booted up an interface drive and gone charging out after the two pirate ships. Size was difficult to tell at this distance, but the ship was moving at a full half of lightspeed, rapidly closing on the slower pirate ships.
“Are they going to make it out?” he asked slowly.
“Scans make our new friend a destroyer,” Laurent replied. “She could take either of our decoys without even breaking a sweat, but against both of them…I’m not sure she wants to catch them. Just make them run.”
She shrugged.
“Either way, I’m not shedding tears for our local pirate scum,” she pointed out.
“Fair,” he admitted with a chuckle. “Just remember that category includes us now!”
“We may be pirates,” Laurent said softly, “but we’re not scum. You’ve seen this bunch.”
Andrew shook his head and pressed his finger to his lips.
“I have, but they’re our allies today,” he reminded her. “What do we have on planet four?”
“Focusing the passives as we close,” she confirmed. Laser linkages to Oaths of Secrecy allowed them to get data from different angles, dramatically expanding their effectiveness.
“Defensive constellation detected,” Laurent reported a moment later. Additional red icons started to flash onto the screen. “Estimating in excess of five hundred contacts, missile and beam platforms.” She shook her head. “I hope Forel isn’t lying about that code, sir. We’re resolving more contacts by the second. That constellation would eat the entire armada.”
“What about the base itself? And the ships, for that matter?”
“We got a big thermal signature on the planet,” she replied after focusing on her data. “Looks like half a dozen or more massive fusion plants fueling some kind of facility; that won’t be small, sir.”
“If it were small, this whole endeavor would be a waste of time and money,” Andrew pointed out. “And the ships?” he repeated.
“I’ve got two more heat signatures in orbit; I think they’re destroyers,” she reported. “No sign of the cruiser Forel expected.”
“Keep an eye open as we close,” he ordered. “We’ll need to relay everything to Captain Bond and the others when they arrive. If the cruiser is missing, no one will mind. If we miss her, the armada might be in for a world of hurt.”
#
The two Terran scout ships continued on their slow way deeper into the system, watching with a careful eye as the A!Tol destroyer overhauled the two pirate ships.
The details of the logistics base resolved with further clarity as the ships approached. The constellation had been assembled to stand an attack by a full Kanzi battle group based around at least one ship of the line. It was impossible to get an exact count without getting far closer than Andrew or Captain Sade planned on getting, but it was somewhere between seven hundred and one thousand platforms.
“Datapulse from our decoys,” Laurent announced. “I’m incorporating it, but I’m not seeing anything new. A little bit more resolution: I’ve got a third destroyer in orbit. That gets us to four total.”
Which was about what Forel had told them and, apparently, a standard subunit used for A!Tol Imperial Navy light warships. That still left them missing a cruiser, a warship supposedly a match for either of their heavies—though Andrew had his suspicions about what Tornado’s upgrades would mean for any cruiser unfortunate to tangle with her.
“Destroyer is opening fire,” Laurent continued. “Missiles closing on one of our friends—she fell about a half-light-second behind the other, and it looks like she’s going to pay for it.”
His tactical officer didn’t sound particularly bothered by this at all. She hadn’t been one of the people grabbed by the Kanzi slavers, but she was good friends with Lieutenant Mosi. Mosi had recovered from her physical injuries, but that didn’t stop the entire flotilla being coldly furious with the very concept of slavers.
And too many of their erstwhile allies dabbled in slavery, for disposing of captives no one would ransom if nothing else.
Andrew couldn’t bring himself to rebuke her for her apathy regarding the fate of their allies. He didn’t particularly disagree with her.
“Are th
ey going to catch them?” he asked.
“Missiles will,” she confirmed. “Impact in sixty seconds, hyper portal safe distance in one hundred and thirty-six seconds. I don’t think our laggard friend will make it.”
“Turn the passive sensors up to maximum sensitivity,” Andrew ordered. “If she goes up, that will give us one heck of a hard radiation blast to bounce off everything in the system.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to be happy they were about to die?” she asked with a smirk.
“I am shocked and saddened by their imminent demise,” he replied virtuously. “But let’s use it to our advantage regardless.”
He settled into his command chair to watch the show. Laurent had estimated the time perfectly, and the first salvo of missiles slammed into the trailing pirate exactly on time. Like most ships this far out the spiral arms, apparently, the pirate ship lacked any kind of active antimissile defense, but her shields absorbed the impact.
The second salvo suffered the same fate, and Andrew mentally saluted the pirate captain. Whoever they were, they hadn’t skimped on the defenses for their ship. Those were impressive shields for a ship of its size.
The captain clearly didn’t trust their ship’s shields to hold through another salvo, and Of Course’s sensors announced an ugly burst of radiation as the pirate ship tried to open a hyperspace portal, still over a dozen light-seconds inside the safety zone.
The portal failed in a flash of light and energy that slammed back into the pirate’s shield, setting them to flickering with energy overload—and then the Imperial destroyer’s missiles arrived. The shields wouldn’t have held either way, but with the energy flare from the failed portal, they never stood a chance.
The scout ships were too far away for Andrew Lougheed to even be sure how many missiles the destroyer had launched, let alone how many had hit home. Enough made it through that the four-hundred-thousand-ton starship vanished in a ball of flame and hard radiation, energy ripping apart antimatter and fusion power plants in a burst of destruction.
“Hyper portal open,” Laurent announced. “Our other decoy is clear.”
“Is the destroyer pursuing?” Andrew asked. “And is that pulse giving us any data yet?”
“We’re a good two light-minutes away,” she pointed out. “We’re still waiting on the reflections from everywhere else.” She checked something in response to his first question as well, then shook her head. “Destroyer is not pursuing; she is coming about to return to orbit.”
Andrew nodded. No one—except the decoy ship’s crew themselves—would have minded if the destroyer had gone into hyperspace after the decoy. The prize wasn’t going to shrink if the defenders weakened themselves.
“Gotcha!” Laurent suddenly snapped. “Radiation pulse is pinging off artificial material in orbit of the fifth planet. I can’t resolve a lot of detail, but it looks like we’ve got a major starship hiding behind the moon.”
“Sneaky tentacled bastards,” Of Course’s Captain noted aloud. “Make sure it’s in the data packet and fire it at Tornado’s emergence time and location.”
“Data packet on its own way, sir,” she confirmed. “What now?
Chapter 43
Combining the exotic-matter arrays of the eight largest ships in the pirate armada allowed the fleet to rip open a portal over a hundred times bigger than the usual one Tornado created. Instead of being slightly larger than the opening ship, barely large enough for a second ship to slip through if you were clever, this portal was a full light-second across.
Fifty-four pirate ships, with Subjugator and Tornado in the lead, passed through the portal at forty-five percent of the speed of light. There was no subtlety, no attempts at tricks or stealth. With this many ships, it would have been wasted time.
“We are receiving datapulses from the scout ships,” Chan announced. “Relaying to Rolfson. Looks like four destroyers in orbit of planet four with the base and the defense constellation, and a fifth ship, probably our cruiser, hiding in orbit of planet five.”
“Forward the data on to the armada,” Annette ordered. She studied the tactical plot as Rolfson started to update it. The defensive constellation was the joker in the deck. The defensive plan, if she were generous enough to call it a plan, was clearly to pin any attacker between the cruiser and the constellation.
“New orders for the scout ships,” she continued after a moment. “They are to exit the system as soon as practical and proceed to Rendezvous Point Sigma Three.”
Sigma Three was a rendezvous they had not shared with Forel or his friends, a point in deep space on the route back to Alpha Centauri. An easy spot for Annette to swing through on the way to Tortuga or back to their cache in Alpha Centauri system.
Somewhere safe from any treachery or betrayal Forel had planned.
“Now get me Captain Forel,” she instructed. “Time to get this show on the road.”
“A moment, ma’am,” Rolfson interrupted. “I should note that our own sensor sweeps cannot confirm the presence of a ship at planet five.”
“Lougheed and Sade did say it was hiding,” Annette pointed out with a nod. “Better to assume they’re trying to sneak up behind than that they don’t exist, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he conceded.
A moment later, Chan opened the link to Subjugator. Once again, Forel sat moistly at the center of a very narrow view excluding the rest of his bridge. She knew, intellectually, that his race was amphibious and his fur and skin had to be much more comfortable damp.
It still felt like she was looking at a sweaty used car salesman with a damp comb-over.
“Captain Bond.”
“Captain Forel. If you don’t have those constellation codes you promised us all, this is going to be a very short and painful operation,” she reminded him. “Shall we open the dance?”
“I think we should give our tentacled overlords time to feel the water heating up,” Forel told with his horrible fake smile. “Let us see if we can lure our cruiser friend out to play before we demonstrate our toys.”
“It’s your code,” Annette said sweetly. “I’ll just remind you your ship is in proton-beam range of mine if I think you’ve lied to me.”
She smiled at him, an expression that none of her crew would have thought was genuine for a moment.
Forel sucked his tongue fully into the back of his mouth in a convulsive gesture, pausing for a moment before responding.
“I do see your concern,” he finally said. “But such actions will not be necessary.”
“Of course not,” she told him. “Your lead, Captain Forel.”
She made a sharp gesture and Chan shut the channel.
Moments later—probably enough time for Forel to unswallow his tongue—Subjugator turned in space, shaping a direct course for planet four and the logistics base. Over the course of the next several seconds, the rest of the armada began to follow in a disorganized gaggle.
“Keep us on Subjugator’s flank,” Annette ordered. “Watch for the cruiser and keep an eye on that constellation. Let me know a minimum of ten seconds before we enter its weapons range.”
The pirate fleet continued on its course, barely in anything remotely resembling a formation to Annette’s eyes. She sighed. There was only so much competence or discipline she expected from a set of pirate ships, but at least some basic station-keeping would have been helpful.
“Forel is transmitting to everyone,” Chan advised.
“On screen.”
Once again, Forel appeared on the screen. This time, only his face was visible, in a screen-within-a-screen as the rest of the transmission was a tactical view of the defensive constellation. Proton-beam satellites and missile launchers filled the sky over their target, each satellite surrounded by a force field stronger than many of the smaller pirate ships.
“This is the moment you have been waiting so impatiently for,” he told them all. “Look at this. An A!Tol Imperial Class Four Defense Constellation. Capable of standing of
f a ship of the line. We have mustered one of the most powerful collections of pirate vessels ever seen in this arm of the galaxy, and that constellation alone could fight us to a standstill.
“But you came because I promised you an answer, and so I shall deliver the rising tide of our victory!”
Forel did something out of the scope of his screen and the lights representing the constellation flickered on the display for a moment, and then returned to full strength.
“Wait for it,” he ordered calmly. “And when the shields go down, target the constellation and fire every missile you have. The A!Tol are perfectly capable of overriding the code, given enough time.”
“Now, that is something I’d like to have known in advance,” Rolfson snapped, his hands suddenly flying over his controls as he queued up Tornado’s missile batteries.
“And…now,” Forel announced. A moment later, the constellation satellites icons flickered again—and this time stayed dark. “Their shields are down,” he informed his followers. “Take them out.”
“Kill the channel and confirm that,” Annette snapped.
The screen cut back to Tornado’s standard tactical plot as Rolfson and his computers tore through their scanner data, seeking the tiny imperfections and twists of light that marked the presence of an active energy shield.
“He’s right,” Kurzman confirmed. “Constellation shields are down. Launch when ready, Commander Rolfson.”
Subjugator had fired first, but Tornado’s computers and sensors were the best in the armada now. Many of the other pirates apparently took Tornado firing as proof of Forel’s claims and joined in. Moments after Forel had declared the constellation disabled, hundreds of missiles were flashing toward planet four and the defensive constellation.
There were multiple different speeds amongst the missiles—in fact, Annette was relatively sure some of the missiles she was seeing fired were the Terran-built point six cee weapons she’d sold at Tortuga—spreading the attack out over almost a full minute.
The Terran Privateer Page 31