The Terran Privateer

by Glynn Stewart

  In effect, the final arrival time would be decided more by their shuttle pilots’ skill and bravery than by the maximum velocity of their interface drives—and James knew his pilots.

  He watched the planet approach at a blistering speed, a tiny display inside his power armor’s helmet showing him the position of all of the several hundred shuttles descending from the remaining pirate ships. The division of targets was haphazard at best, with Tornado’s troops arriving at the opposite corner from Subjugator’s.

  Five thousand kilometers from the planet, the shuttles slowed dramatically, dropping from nearly half of lightspeed to a few kilometers a second at best.

  James grinned inside his helmet as his pilots blasted right past that mark, closing the distance with the earlier wave by the simple method of running the drive at full for a few seconds more. The other Terran pilots followed McPhail’s example in cutting speed right behind the rest of the pirates, and he nodded approvingly.

  Normally, he would disapprove of using his allies as ablative meat—but given that in this case those allies wanted to be first to steal the best of the portable loot, his sympathy was surprisingly limited.

  “Altitude three thousand kilometers; we are dropping at fifty kilometers a second,” McPhail reported. “We’ll have to slow for landing; estimated time to target ninety-two seconds.”

  “Watch for ground fire,” James ordered. “Evade as you feel necessary.”

  “Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, sir,” she replied. “If you want, I’m pretty sure that shiny suit would survive being dropped from this high; want to test?”

  “I’ll pass,” he said dryly. “I’m hoping for a nice, easy landing and some mass surrenders.”

  His pilot opened her mouth to reply but stopped as warning lights started flashing across her panel.

  “Shit! Interface missile launch!”

  There was no time to dodge. There was no atmosphere over the logistics base and no need for the missiles to slow down to avoid hitting the planet. The weapons shot up at over seventy percent of the speed of light, crossing the few thousand kilometers between them in fractions of a second.

  Shuttles started exploding, the defenders targeting each craft with three missiles to make sure they overwhelmed the tiny spacecraft’s shields.

  James’s shuttles didn’t even have shields.

  “Get us down,” he snapped. “I don’t care where; just put us on the ground!”

  “Hang the fuck on,” McPhail snapped back and the screen began to spin as she brought the interface drive back up to power.

  No matter how desperate, they couldn’t go down at top speed, but they could go down a lot faster. Fifty kilometers a second became a thousand and suddenly the ground was there, McPhail slamming the engine into a complete stop as the shuttle came screaming down at the roof of the complex.

  Only computers could try and judge that timing—and even computers couldn’t always get it right. McPhail cut the drive at the last moment, but the landing craft was still traveling at over a kilometer a second when they hit the armored roof of the base and crashed clean through the roof, the next two floors, and came to halt thirty meters into the base.

  The shuttle was silent for a long moment.

  “We’re in the ground,” McPhail finally noted. “Close enough?”

  #

  Fortunately, the exit from the shuttle had managed to align with the corridors of the station, and James’s headquarters section were able to shove their way out of the shuttle into the base. Checking his map, James realized they were on the completely opposite side of the base from where they were supposed to land, smack dab in the area Subjugator’s troops were supposed to handle.

  “Guo,” he pinged his Alpha Troop Captain. “What’s your status?”

  “We are down at the target,” Jie Guo replied. “Coming under fire from A!Tol security forces, but I’ve got three troops here. Where are you?!”

  “Opposite end of the complex,” he replied, bringing up a map showing his people’s drop zones. They’d been scattered across the complex—he wasn’t sure how Alpha, Delta and Echo had all managed to land at the hangars—but most of them were nearer to Guo than to him.

  “All troops, make your way to the hangars and rendezvous with Guo,” he ordered. “We need those robot freighters.”

  “What about you, sir?” Tellaki demanded.

  “We’re going to secure the local area and see if McPhail can pull the ship out of her new crater,” James told them. “I believe this is a storage section; resistance should be light.”

  “Don’t tempt fate, sir,” Guo told him. “We’ll see you when the dust settles—these tentacled bastards are determined to fight for these ships.”

  “Good luck,” James said.

  Cutting the channel, he looked around the empty corridor they found themselves in.

  “Well, folks, in the absence of better data, I suggest we go that way,” he ordered, gesturing in the only direction they could go. “Let’s see what trouble we can find.”

  #

  There was more trouble in this segment of the base than he’d expected. The maps that Forel had provided marked the region the alien had targeted his own landing in as a storage area, likely containing high-value but low-use items like computer parts—a logical place for him to claim first dibs on but unlikely to see heavy defenders.

  James’s people hit the first defensive position less than fifty meters “north” of their original landing site. It was a security checkpoint, four aliens—all Rekiki, he noted—with light body armor and plasma weapons guarding a set of scanners and a built-in barricade.

  A fusillade of plasma fire forced his point man back into the corridor, scorch marks on the front of his power armor. Without the armor, the man would have been dead, which made James very pleased with the expense.

  “Grenades and charge,” he ordered. “We have no time.”

  A dispenser on his wrist popped a small explosive device into his free hand. He quickly checked to be sure the rest of his team were ready and then threw it on a careful arc that bounced it around the corner.

  One. Two. Three.

  On three, ten hundred-gram hypervelocity fragmentation grenades went off, spraying the security checkpoint with deadly shrapnel.

  A moment after the weapons detonated, James started forward with his team, following the explosives around the corner with his weapon extended. The computer in his power armor flashed analysis of the targets: one guard down, the other three wounded but still up.

  His people opened fire, a spray of plasma bolts that ripped the barricade to pieces along with the guards behind it.

  “Clear!” James snapped. “Confirm!”

  Two of his people carefully stepped forward, covered by the rest of the team while they checked to be sure there were no automated defenses and examined the security door.

  “The door is locked down,” Ral, his Yin trooper, reported. “Tight security code—I’m not sure even the guards would have access.”

  “I’m not slowing down to hack it open,” James replied. “Kara—set charges.”

  Kara Hughes was his headquarters section demolition specialist, and she leapt forward with a will to examine the door.

  “I can blow it, but it’s going to be one hell of a boom,” she said quickly. “Clear the zone; I’ll need a couple of minutes.”

  “Everybody back,” he ordered. “Let us know if you need anything.”

  “I’ve got the charges; just need to be sure I won’t blow anybody I don’t mean to, sir.”

  That was about as blatant a hint as she could get away with, and he nodded as he stepped back with the rest of the team.

  “Space Service troops, report,” he ordered calmly once he was clear of the checkpoint room.

  “This is Guo,” Alpha’s Captain replied. “I have Alpha, Bravo, Delta and Echo with me. We have secured four of the ten hangars for these robot freighters. They’re impressive-looking ships, everything we we
re told they would be.”

  “How many are we looking at?”

  “I’m seeing five per hangar so far,” Guo confirmed. “Each Tornado’s size; these hangars are huge.”

  “Take ’em and hold ’em, Troop Captains,” James told them. “They’re the key to us getting paid for this stunt.”

  “Sir, this is Sherman,” his Charlie Troop Captain reported. “We have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem, Annabel?”

  “We’re moving through the admin section of this base,” she told him. “Civilians, some uniformed, some not. They’re all dead and we didn’t kill them.”

  “Someone was there before you?”

  “One of the pirate ships closest to Forel,” Sherman confirmed. “I don’t recall a ‘no prisoners’ order, boss.”

  “Because there wasn’t one,” James said flatly. “Tellaki, your status?”

  “Echo is with me now, Honored Major,” the Rekiki replied. “Apologies for delay; we were discussing that exact lack of order with some of our pirate friends.” He paused. “We may need support from on high. Am I authorized to terminate our ‘allies’?”

  James winced.

  “That bad?” he asked, then sighed. “That’s the Captain’s call, not mine. I’ll bounce it.”

  #

  “Explain,” Annette ordered as soon as she’d been updated and linked to Tellaki.

  “My honor does not permit me to allow the slaughter of surrendered enemies or the unarmed without direct orders,” the Rekiki vassal who’d ended up sworn to her told her. “The pirates we are sharing this section of the complex with have no such honor. We are…in disagreement.”

  Tellaki’s helmet started relaying his footage to her. The space looked like a cafeteria with an attached atrium, though the plants in the atrium were purple instead of green. There had already been a firefight of some kind, as scorch marks marred the pale blue walls.

  At least fifteen aliens with no armor or weapons had been herded along one wall, guarded by four of Golf Troop’s Rekiki soldiers. The other members of Golf Troop were standing with Tellaki and had their weapons trained on an eclectic group of aliens, including several Yin and a Tosumi led by an Indiri, who had their own weapons trained on Tellaki’s men.

  “They have no armor,” the Rekiki said calmly. “I can end this disagreement immediately with your permission.”

  All of the prisoners were in Imperium uniforms, which did make them enemy combatants. For a moment of dark rage, Annette was tempted to simply tell Tellaki to walk away. If they’d all been A!Tol, she might even have given in—but only two of the prisoners were the tentacled aliens. The rest were a mix of other species, including at least two she hadn’t seen yet.

  “No,” she told Tellaki. “Nobody dies; do you understand me?”

  “I am sworn to you, Honored Captain,” the alien replied. “Your command?”

  “Tell them that we are taking these prisoners and they will receive a portion of any sale or ransom,” she ordered.

  The saurian alien turned his attention back to the pirates and snapped at them, a hissing and sibilant speech her translator confirmed as roughly what she’d said.

  “Our orders from Forel are no prisoners,” the Indiri replied. “No slaves.

  “Relay me?” Annette asked Tellaki, and a flashing light informed her that he had linked her to her speakers.

  “Forel passed no orders to me and has no authority to command me,” she told the Indiri coldly. “These prisoners belong to Tornado, and my troops will kill you if you defy me. Do you understand me?”

  The amphibious alien wilted and slowly backed away, leading his troops out of the room.

  “Don’t pick fights, Tellaki,” she told him quietly. She wasn’t willing to order her people to stand by and watch murder, but stopping all of them would start a fight with the rest of the pirates they didn’t need. “I won’t ask you to stand by, but don’t go looking for fights. We still need to work with these…people.”

  “I will see these prisoners safely to the hangar, where Guo can protect them,” he replied. “We will take what prisoners we can, but I accept your command, Honored Captain.”

  Annette felt strangely dirty. This very base had enabled the conquest of Earth. There was no question that these people were her enemies. It still felt wrong to let her “allies” carry out mass murder so long as it wasn’t directly in front of her people.

  Right now, however, she needed the allies more than she needed to feel clean.

  Chapter 46

  “Fire in the hole!”

  The moment after Hughes gave the radioed warning, James felt the ground and walls shudder from the impact of the explosives—and keep shuddering for several seconds.

  “How big a charge was that?” he demanded.

  The demo specialist shrugged, the gesture barely visible in power armor.

  “It was a very secure door,” she replied.

  Shaking his head, James gestured Ral forward, the Yin back on point as they moved deeper into the A!Tol base. Despite the impact of the explosives, Hughes’s charges had only managed to detach the door itself. It lay on the ground, a disturbingly intact, if warped, hunk of metal.

  Beyond it was some kind of administration and control center, half a dozen seats for various races in front of computer screens, and a few desks with organized stacks of paper-like flimsy computers. There was no one in the room, however, and the screens were disabled.

  It had been neatly shut down, not a result of the attack—and yet this calmly shut-down control center was behind a highly secured, guarded checkpoint and door.

  “What the hell?” he murmured. Three exits. “That way,” he ordered, picking the one directly ahead. “Let’s see just what Forel’s people were looking for.”

  Stepping through the door at the end of the short corridor gave James part of the answer—and sent a chill down his spine. The door opened out onto a catwalk that wrapped around a massive storage warehouse, easily a quarter-kilometer on each side.

  The floor was full of…cages. Portable cells of some kind, with opaque walls but open tops to allow guards to secure them from above. Thousands of them.

  “That is wrong,” Ral said slowly. “This is a slave-holding facility. It does not belong in an A!Tol military base!”

  “Which is why it’s secured and the control center is unmanned,” James said grimly. “Are they occupied?”

  All ten men, women and aliens of his HQ section were now out on the catwalk, their power-armor scanners linking together to sweep the thousands of cells for life.

  “No,” he finally concluded. “That makes no sense.”

  “If they were prepared for more prisoners from whatever source than they got,” Hughes said slowly, “then there are other warehouses like this.”

  “We need to find them,” James ordered. “There’s an exit that way,” he said, gesturing toward a door leading off from the catwalk. “Something is very wrong here.”

  Ral led the way once more, with the rest of the section following him—closer than doctrine called for, but James’s people were picking up the same vibe he was. Not only was something wrong, but it was important.

  The corridor linked them to another control station. This one clearly had still been operational when the attack began, with two bodies lying on the floor—both A!Tol, both clearly shot at point-blank range.

  “Look at where they fell,” James said softly. “They were shot in the back while at their workstations. They weren’t killed by troops from the armada. They were killed by their coworkers.”

  “As soon as the defenses were gone,” Hughes commented. “Someone was waiting for our attack.”

  “Check these screens,” James ordered. “One of these spaces has to be occupied. Find it.”

  His helmet could translate the A!Tol text on the screen into English, but it was a slow process and he wasn’t practiced at it. Pophe and Ral, his two alien teammates, were far more practiced at it and got to wo
rk immediately.

  “There are four cargo warehouses behind the security seal,” Pophe reported after a moment. “The one we passed through is the only one without life signs.” The strange mobile fungus turned its eye stalks toward James. “The other security door is open; it was not breached,” it continued. “There are power-armor units moving toward warehouse C.”

  “I suspect our red-furred friend knows exactly what’s going on,” James observed. “Let’s go break up his party.”

  #

  They found the rest of the team that had been running the warehouse sector before they found Forel’s people. Five aliens—two Tosumi, two Yin, and one A!Tol—had clearly met up with Forel’s people—and then been shot down by surprise.

  Unlike the execution-like murders in the control center, these were plasma bursts to the front from high-powered weaponry—plasma cannons equivalent to those James and his people were carrying.

  “They were not expecting that,” Ral said softly, the Yin kneeling over the bodies of the Imperial technicians. “All were armed but never drew their weapons.”

  “So Forel was working with people here and betrayed them,” James agreed. “The order wasn’t ‘no prisoners’ it was ‘no witnesses’.”

  “That’s not good for us,” Hughes noted.

  “No.” James gestured for the team to move out. “Let’s catch up to Forel’s people. This whole thing stinks, and the more we know, the better informed the Captain is.”

  “Can’t be far,” Ral noted. “The bodies are still warm.”

  They moved, another door falling behind them as they traced the path the map said would lead to one of the occupied warehouses. An icon on his helmet marked the likely location of the other pirate group as James’s people moved as quickly as they could.

  Finally, they reached another catwalk, standing out above another massive array of portable cells. This time, they weren’t alone. A dozen power armored bipeds, potentially any one of a dozen or more two-legged races inside the armor, stood on top of the cells and turned to face them as they stepped out onto the catwalk.