The Terran Privateer

by Glynn Stewart

  Several small stations, presumably high-risk lab areas, orbited in a trailing cluster roughly eighty thousand kilometers behind the main station. As they drew closer, Annette realized that even the “small” stations were the size of Tornado, and reassessed her estimate of the main station size.

  The sphere was a little over two kilometers in diameter, with more than enough space for the thirty thousand human prisoners Annette knew had been headed toward it, plus room for at least that in crew and scientists.

  Someone had poured a lot of resources into building the station and funding its research. Given their intentions, however, Annette felt absolutely no guilt at tearing it all apart.

  “Send the surrender message,” she ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chan confirmed, hitting the button. Now they would wait and see what the response was…

  “What the…ma’am, look!” Rolfson exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

  The high-risk lab stations were the closest by a third of a light-second, so Annette saw them explode first, each of the five-hundred-meter spheres disintegrating in a bright white flash of antimatter explosions.

  Her gaze was inexorably drawn to the main station, the massive facility she knew still housed the rogue scientists and their fifteen thousand slaves. She hoped…but from the moment the high-risk labs went up, she knew what she was going to see.

  At most ten seconds after the lab station received their surrender demand, twelve fusion reactors went into forced overload and the entire facility vanished in an eye-searing ball of flame.

  Chapter 54

  Of Course We’re Coming Back rounded the forsaken ice ball of an outer planet they had emerged behind in time to pick up the two cruisers rounding the gas giant to, presumably, chase Tornado. The gas giant, almost a brown dwarf, was large enough that the scout ship’s sensors couldn’t see her heavily armed sister.

  “Do we have the base dialed in?” Andrew asked, studying the scanners.

  “Backtracking the cruisers’ courses now,” Laurent confirmed, crisp and professional. “I’ve got a group of space stations, one big one and a cluster of smaller platforms. Throwing them on the screen.”

  Andrew studied the complex as his ship drifted closer to it, cold gas thrusters allowing as much stealth as any ship could have in space while they snuck up on the people who were planning to start a war. He still wasn’t entirely sure this was their fight—but he was sure that Annette Bond had told him to make sure the human prisoners made it out.

  That was…enough, somehow.

  “Both cruisers are around the planet now,” Laurent reported. “The station probably has relays to watch what’s going on, but we won’t know how things end until someone comes back around the planet.”

  “Damn,” Andrew murmured. He wasn’t going to bet against Bond and Tornado, but those were steep odds for the cruiser.

  “Keep taking us in,” he ordered. “Prep the missiles and charge the laser. No matter what, we have to finish this.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  The survey ship continued to close, and Andrew skimmed the sensor take on the station further, studying it for any clues, any sign of either the slaves or the starkiller weapons. Ki!Tana had provided them with a radiation signature that would mark the presence of a starkiller, assuming the weapons weren’t entirely different from the larger bombs available to the A!Tol navy.

  They were too far away to distinguish it from the other radiation sources inevitable from any major technological society. The station was powered by a dozen major fusion reactors, and the signatures from their venting systems overwhelmed almost anything else.

  Except…

  “Sarah, check this out,” he flipped her a location on the station. It took her a moment to focus Of Course’s finely tuned passive sensors on the point he’d marked.

  By then, that level of resolution was unnecessary. A ship had detached from the station and brought up an interface drive at full power, blazing out-system at forty percent of lightspeed.

  “She’s a freighter,” Laurent reported a moment later. “Similar structure to the food ship we caught before we hit Tortuga. Central control module, eight surrounding cargo pods. Bigger, though.”

  “How big?” Andrew asked, a sudden thought hitting him. “Let’s say they were using the same cells Wellesley saw at Orsav. How many people could they fit aboard?”

  She was silent for a moment working, then met his gaze levelly.

  “A little under fifty thousand,” she told him. “They may have just evacuated the entire station.”

  As she spoke, the freighter shut down its drives. The interface drive didn’t exactly play fair with physics as written by Newton but the ship was still drifting along at a notable percentage of lightspeed.

  “I have Tornado on the scans,” Laurent reported. “Damn. I’m seeing atmosphere and radiation leaks even through her shields…but her shields are up and her drive is at full power.”

  “And those cruisers didn’t come back,” Andrew agreed. Without having seen the battle, they couldn’t be entirely sure how it had ended—but then, the people on that freighter likely had seen it. And they were running away.

  “Can Tornado see the freighter?” he asked, then winced as the stations suddenly blew apart, filling the gas giant’s planetary system with a wash of radiation.

  “They weren’t close enough before and they definitely can’t now,” Laurent reported. “I’m not sure we could even raise her with tightbeam comms.”

  The freighter’s drive came back up, at a lower power. Twenty percent of lightspeed wasn’t much by the standards of an interface drive ship, but Andrew did the math.

  “I have her well clear of Tornado’s intercept zone before that cloud dissipates,” he said quietly. “Do you have the same?”

  Laurent had already been running the same numbers and she looked up and nodded.

  “Tornado might be able to shoot her down with missiles, but they won’t be close enough to hit her with anything that can disable as opposed to destroy,” she concluded.

  He bit his tongue gently as he ran a different set of numbers. The freighter wasn’t headed directly toward Of Course, but it was moving in their direction. If the massive vessel was armed at all, trying to intercept it would be suicide—the survey ship’s single laser and handful of missiles didn’t make up for the fact that she had no shields.

  “We can intercept her,” he said aloud.

  “Yes,” Laurent confirmed. “She has shields, our missiles probably won’t do much, but we could burn through with the laser.”

  “But if she has missiles, we’re dead,” Andrew admitted.

  “I can’t tell from here,” she said slowly. “What I can tell you is that she is carrying starkillers. We’re picking up the radiation signature Ki!Tana gave us. One on each cargo pod.”

  He sighed.

  “We let her go, billions die,” he concluded. “Plus, she almost certainly has the slaves aboard, doesn’t she?”

  “Can’t say, sir,” Laurent replied.

  “Karl,” Andrew addressed his navigator, “how close can you get us on the jets?”

  The navigator considered, running numbers on his own console, then shook his head.

  “Missile range but not laser range,” he concluded. “We need to bring up the drive inside the next ten minutes if we’re going to cut her off.”

  “Well, then,” Of Course’s Captain announced calmly. “Let’s not bother playing about. Bring up the interface drive, maximum power. Sarah, prep the laser. Target is that central command capsule—let’s burn them out.”

  #

  Geometry and velocity vectors meant that Of Course We’re Coming Back had closed a significant chunk of the distance with the fleeing freighter before her prey even realized she existed. With a combined velocity of over half of lightspeed, by the time the radiation signature from Of Course’s drive had crossed the three-light-minute gap, the scout ship had closed half the distance itself.

>   Andrew and his crew saw their response barely more than a minute later, with high fractions of lightspeed exerting their usual distorting effect on time. The freighter crew had been edging along quietly, with their attention focused on Tornado. It took them well over fifteen seconds to react—fifteen seconds in which the range dropped by over two million kilometers.

  Finally, the freighter brought their interface drive up to full strength, pulling away from Of Course at forty percent of lightspeed—five percent slower than the scout ship was pursuing them at.

  “She can’t directly vector away from us,” Strobel noted after a moment. “Not without giving Tornado a clear run at her. Net speed…nine percent of light.”

  Ten minutes to range. They were in missile range, though the freighter’s icon sparkled with the distinctive signature of an energy shield. It was possible their single salvo could disable the shield, but it didn’t seem likely.

  “How long until they can open a hyper portal?” Andrew asked.

  “A minute after we hit laser range,” Laurent said grimly. “That’s all we get, Andrew.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Launch the missiles,” he ordered. They weren’t likely to bring the shield down, but it was worth a shot. “Then try for a couple of long-range burns with the laser—we might get lucky.”

  Eight new icons flared on the screen, Of Course’s single salvo of externally mounted missiles blasted into space at three quarters of the speed of light. The computer projected white lines onto the screen as Sarah Laurent reached out with their single high-powered laser.

  The missiles flashed home in brilliant white sparks, vaporizing themselves against the energy shield with no effect. The long-range laser fire didn’t even connect, coherent light flickering past the freighter in the silence of deep space.

  “Cease fire,” Andrew ordered. “Charge the capacitors for a maximum-power shot.”

  He double-checked the numbers. Tornado was pursuing now, closing through the radiation cloud on the now-obvious signature of the freighter’s drive. She wouldn’t even reach missile range until over a minute after the freighter could open a portal.

  “We can’t risk games,” he finally admitted. “Once you have a shot, take it—rip that central capsule to hell.”

  “You know they’ve probably got all of their research in there,” Laurent pointed out. “Those warheads may not even fire without some code we won’t have if we kill them all.”

  That…probably wouldn’t even be the worst result, Andrew realized. The power of the weapons their prey carried terrified him. If the starkillers became useless, it would probably make everyone’s life even easier.

  “We’ll live with that” was what he told Laurent, though. “Fire as soon as you have the shot—Karl, make sure she gets it. One clean hit.”

  He held the arms of his chair tightly. Tornado could probably pursue the freighter into hyperspace—as soon as Of Course had blown their attempt to sneak away, it had been over—but he suspected these bastards wouldn’t surrender. If they realized they were being chased by humans, they’d start threatening their prisoners.

  One shot was all they’d get.

  One shot was all it took.

  Of Course We’re Coming Back flashed across the four hundred thousand–kilometer line, and Laurent paused. Andrew turned to her, about to yell at her to fire, for God’s sake, but then he saw. At the moment they’d crossed the normal effective range of an energy weapon, the freighter had started jinking to throw off an attack.

  His science officer gave them five whole seconds, absorbing their pattern—then fired.

  The big laser had been designed to punch through compressed-matter armor. The shield on the freighter was powerful but still a civilian system. The laser burned through it in seconds and continued to hit the rear of the crew capsule of the freighter—and kept going.

  It took eight seconds to fully discharge the capacitors and end the beam. When the computer erased its artificial white line, the freighter was no longer evading.

  The entire central capsule was simply gone.

  Chapter 55

  James checked the telltales on his company one final time as the shuttles swarmed toward the crippled freighter. The six troops of his Special Space Service and alien soldiers were his entire first wave—while they’d easily pulled together plasma weapons and unpowered armor out of Orsav’s stocks for the three companies of mixed troops he had for backup, they didn’t have the power armor of his main strike force.

  They were also inexperienced with their new weapons and hadn’t had time to exercise together as units. The freighter he was boarding probably had as many sapients aboard as the station he’d pulled together his battalion to attack. He’d need those troops, but putting them on the point of the spear would be murder.

  Plus, he only had enough shuttles to deliver a hundred and fifty soldiers at a time at most. Two of the freighter’s eight cargo modules would be missed this time: the next wave, made up of his intact US Army and People’s Army platoons, would hit those.

  “Landing in ten seconds,” McPhail announced. “Get off my ship, boys and girls! Faster you’re off, the faster you get reinforcements!”

  “Move, people!” Annabel Sherman echoed.

  James followed along as Charlie Troop and his headquarters section left the shuttle in an orderly swarm, four-man patrols sweeping out into the corridor McPhail had cut her way into.

  The initial entry went quietly. The cargo pod was a kilometer long and a fifth of that around; unless the defenders had an entire division hidden, there was no way they could have had troops ready to intercept the landing.

  “Which way?” Sherman asked. James might technically be a supernumerary on this operation, but she apparently wasn’t going to ignore him.

  “The control center for the pod’s life support was at the front last time,” he noted. “That’s also where the scans show the starkiller being located. We need to secure those straightaway.”

  “Roger,” she agreed. “Second Patrol—you’re on point. Move!”

  #

  Their trip forward was creepily silent. James knew they were moving through the outer sections of the pod, well away from the cargo compartments that likely contained any passengers or prisoners, but the complete lack of resistance or, well, anyone was disturbing.

  The ship was clearly A!Tol military in build, smooth white lines and covered panels everywhere. Slick, elegant, efficient, and expensive. The calm white walls didn’t help with the creepiness factor.

  It was almost a relief when the shooting started.

  The distinctive hissing crack of plasma fire echoed down the corridors from the point team, and the entire troop and headquarters section went to ground against the walls. Sensor nets interfaced, reaching out to see just what was in front of them.

  “Defensive drones,” Second Patrol’s Sergeant reported. “Haven’t seen anything like them before—look like wheeled trash cans with plasma guns. Watch it!”

  A flurry of new plasma fire echoed, followed by a pair of explosions.

  “They suck at taking cover,” the Sergeant noted, “but damn, do they take a lot of killing. Could use a heavy launcher.”

  “Ral,” James ordered. He didn’t need to say anything more. The Yin, the tallest member of his company even in power armor, scooted along the wall as he unlimbered his weapon.

  “Clear!” he barked, checking angles through the sensor network, then fired.

  Four smooth black spheres emerged from his weapon in less than a second, following a carefully calculated trajectory that bounced them past the point patrol, around the wall, and into the midst of the defending drones.

  A sequence of booms came echoing back around the corner—first the deep sounds of the four heavy plasma grenades, then the somewhat quieter sounds of secondary explosions as the drones’ ammunition and power cores blew up.

  Any of the drones that survived the grenades didn’t survive Sherman’s Second Patrol sw
arming around the corner, plasma cannons firing into anything that moved.

  The drones went down—and then two of the four green icons representing the patrol flashed blood-red on James’s command display.

  “Son of a bitch,” the Sergeant snapped. “Falling back, there’s a defensive position behind the drones, they have power armor!”

  Another icon flashed yellow, and then the two SSS troopers made it back around the corner—Sergeant Wei Lin carrying her sole surviving subordinate, power armor and all.

  James pulled the visual and scan data from the Patrol’s short encounter. The area past the corner where the drones had stopped them opened out, a carefully designed defensive choke point ahead of the control center and its terrifyingly deadly companion.

  There were another dozen of the ugly defensive drones, a pair of oddly crystalline devices he suspected would shoot down further grenades, and ten power-armored soldiers, all Rekiki.

  “Suggestions, sir?” Sherman asked. She was looking at the same images he was.

  “Mass grenades,” he replied. “I think those are anti-projectile systems, but we might be able to overwhelm them.”

  “Let’s give it a shot,” she agreed. “All right, folks, grenades out on my mark! Three. Two. One… Mark!”

  Ral and two people in Sherman’s troop had the heavy launchers and fired four-grenade bursts around the corner. James’s suit dropped a grenade into his hand and carefully precalculated the throw for him.

  Over thirty grenades went flying around the corner in a coordinated salvo, bouncing along the floor and walls toward the defensive position—and the entire room lit up with lasers and grenades started detonating. The beams weren’t enough to penetrate armor of any kind, but armoring a grenade was counterproductive.

  It wasn’t what James was expecting…but it would work.

  “Go now!” he snapped.