The Terran Privateer

by Glynn Stewart

  He matched his actions to his words, charging forward with an abandon that would have seen several of his instructors bust him back to first year at the academy. All of his training insisted that leading from the front was a bad idea—but in this case, every suit, every plasma cannon was needed.

  The kill zone was filled with smoke and debris. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew where the drones and defenders had been. He tracked his weapon across those points, white-hot plasma flashing out and triggering secondary explosions to let him know when he hit.

  The rest of Charlie Troop and his headquarters section were right with him. The enemy missed their charge at first, but they returned fire as soon as the first drones went down. Icons flashed yellow and red on James’s display, but he focused on the outlines his computer drew in front of him of where the targets should be.

  He heard one of the heavy launchers fire and a series of explosions lit up the room even through the smoke…and the firing stopped.

  The smoke dispersed slowly, several electrical fires that had been armed drones adding to the air pollution. It was clear before the smoke dispersed that the mad charge had done its job—the defenders and their drones were dead.

  Most of the wall behind them was gone, too. The outer hull was probably tough enough to withstand the firepower James’s people had just unleashed, but even a warship’s interior bulkheads would melt under that kind of exchange.

  “Sensors say the starkiller is just ahead and two decks down,” James told Sherman. “Leave someone to guard the wounded and secure life support control with the rest of your troop. I’m going after the weapon.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sherman replied shakily, looking around the space they’d just temporarily turned into hell. They’d lost five people in under twenty seconds.

  James was sadly certain they weren’t going to be the only ones today.

  #

  While there were almost certainly stairs or a ramp or some way of getting down the two floors to the blinking icon marking the starkiller weapon, James was getting twitchy about sharing space with the most literal weapons of mass destruction in existence and not being in control of it.

  And their power armor came with energy blades he’d yet to have his people try out in the field.

  Those blades extended into meter-long, nearly invisible force fields that easily cut through the hull plating to create holes large enough for his people and their power armor. There was a series of resoundingly loud crashes as his headquarters section dropped twelve feet to the deck below—followed a moment later by the same noise again as they repeated the process.

  The starkiller’s guard must have heard them coming, but they clearly had not been expecting this. Three power-armored A!Tol stood at the end of the corridor they’d emerged in, and they were frozen in shock for a long moment.

  Too long of a moment. Plasma fire from the first half-dozen troopers down, including James, cut the three squids down before they reacted.

  “Get that door open,” James snapped as his people closed with the hatch the aliens had been guarding. Two of his people ripped open the security pad, not even trying to guess the code before linking the system into their suits.

  “Give us a minute,” his information specialist told him. “They’ve locked this down tight, but…I think we can get it.”

  Seconds passed. James waited patiently but twitchily. The other side of that door contained the death of stars, the murder of billions. For all he knew, there was a member of the conspiracy in there about to punch a big red button and fire the weapon into G-KXT-357, killing them all.

  “We’re in!”

  The door slid open and James charged through, weapon sweeping the room for any occupant.

  He found no one. The room had started life as a general storage space that just happened to be next to the hull. Now it was empty of anything except a four-meter-wide cylinder that stretched back from the hull of the ship to the rear of the room: the launcher for the weapon.

  “Check the room,” he ordered. “Find the controls; make sure we’re alone.”

  His power-armored troopers swept the room, the two information specialists stopping when they found a hologram-based control panel and started going over it.

  “We’re clear,” the report came. “Nobody in here but us.”

  He pinged Sherman.

  “Annabel, are you in control of life support?” he demanded.

  “We are,” she said calmly. “No further resistance, though we’ve got a pair of Tosumi crewmen duct-taped to a wall. Surveillance is linked in here too; looks like we’ve got at least patrols, ten strong each, sweeping the pod. They’re heading our way now, but we’ve got the same choke point they did. I’ll be ready for them.

  “What about the weapon?”

  “It’s a big bitch, twice as wide our missiles at least,” James told her. “We have it secured. I doubt we’ll be able to fire it, but these bastards aren’t going to either.”

  “Sir,” his information specialist cut in. “The encryption on the weapon…well, it’s not that much stronger than the door.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded.

  “We’re in,” his hacker replied. “We have control of the starkiller. Transmitting the access parameters to the other teams—we own these weapons now.”

  A chill ran down James’s spine. Eight starkillers. Each small enough to be carried in, say, one of the scout ship’s external racks, instead of the normal size closer to a destroyer.

  Eight weapons any power in the galaxy would apparently kill for—and they were now in the hands of Terra’s exiles.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 56

  “We have secured all eight cargo pods,” Wellesley reported an hour later on a conference channel with Annette and Captain Lougheed. “All eight starkillers are under our control, and we have access to the launch systems. My infotech guys tell me they can copy the software to any of our ships, but it doesn’t look like the missiles will fit in our tubes.”

  “They’ll fit on Tornado’s shuttle deck,” Annette noted, studying the schematics the Special Space Service people had sent back. “It’s not the best launch system, but it’ll work. What about prisoners? And the slaves we were looking for?”

  “Five of the pods had humans in them,” the Major confirmed. “Still sorting out exact numbers, but it looks like sixteen, maybe seventeen thousand people. Most…well, most of the ones we’ve identified so far are from a couple of Kuiper Belt outposts that went dark about five years back.

  “We’ve got about a thousand prisoners and we took down about three hundred enemy troops along the way,” he continued. “Our prisoners are…techs and maintenance guys. We’re talking janitors and button-pushers, ma’am. The researchers, the leaders—the core of our conspiracy—were in the command module, and Captain Lougheed sent them to hell.”

  Lougheed looked tired to Annette’s eye. Almost as tired as she felt.

  “Can we slot Of Course into the command module spot they way we did before?” she asked.

  “It looks like it,” Lougheed replied. “We’ll need a couple of hours to be sure, but even if we can’t, we should be able to tow her into hyperspace regardless. You have a plan, ma’am?”

  She realized she did. Not much of one. Not one with its most important decision made, but she had a plan.

  “Major, I want you to remain on the freighter with the rescuees,” she ordered Wellesley. “Work with Andrew; take these people home. But first, I need the starkillers transferred to Tornado.”

  Both of her juniors swallowed hard at those orders.

  “Once the starkillers are aboard Tornado, Captain Lougheed is in command,” she continued. “Andrew, I want you to return to Centauri and pick up Sade. From there, you are to proceed back to Sol with our rescuees and our prisoners.

  “Get those people home,” she said simply. “And then once you’re there, you are to surrender to the Imperium.”

  “Ma’am, I…”
/>   She held up a hand to cut off Andrew.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew, James,” she said quietly. “What happens next will be on me and me alone.”

  “And what is that?” Wellesley asked.

  “If we are to use these weapons to gain our freedom, we need to deliver that demand in person,” Annette told them. “Once you are on your way, Tornado will proceed to the Kimar fleet base. There…” She sighed.

  “One way or another, people, our exile ends there.”

  #

  The starkillers looked so prosaic, so harmless, sitting in Tornado’s shuttle bay that night. The crew was giving the things a wide berth regardless, leaving Annette alone in the cavernous space with her eight deadly new toys.

  They didn’t even really look like missiles to her. Interface drive weapons were long cylinders, a meter and a half wide by three to five meters long, depending on how advanced the missile was.

  The starkillers were, technically, interface drive missiles, but they were perfect spheres just over three meters in diameter. Their drives were slower than a modern missile’s, too, though they still matched the point six cee missiles Tornado had been built to fire.

  Their casings were the same calm white metal the A!Tol used for all of their ships. Nothing about the immense white marbles suggested their deadly, terrifying power.

  Annette’s one warship now held more firepower than many entire fleets, and she wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with it.

  Threatening the A!Tol with the weapons was pointless without a demonstration. She’d picked Kimar for two reasons: firstly, it was a military base with a hyperwave communicator. Tan!Shallegh was likely there, and he could transmit whatever threats or demands she delivered to the Empress directly.

  Secondly, it was the military base closest to Earth, the fleet base from which the force that had conquered Earth had launched. It was a system she could almost convince herself was a legitimate target.

  “I wondered if I would find you here,” Ki!Tana said behind her, her voice distinctive with the translator overlaid over the hisses and clicks that made up the A!Tol’s actual speech. “They are so normal for something so terrifying, are they not?”

  “They’re not what I expected,” Annette allowed, gently rubbing at the scar above her eye. Her socket hurt, but she suspected Jelani would start making very unpleasant suggestions if she rubbed at that.

  “You know, the A!Tol Imperium only has about fifty starkillers,” the old alien told her as she stood beside the Captain. “You now command more weapons of mass destruction than any of their regional fleets. Almost a fifth of the weapons the entire Imperium has at its disposal.”

  “I am now a power in this galaxy in my own right, am I?” Tornado’s Captain whispered.

  “Indeed. Once the galaxy knows what you command, your name will be fear. Your reputation, death.”

  “Enough that I’d never need to fire one?” Annette asked.

  “No.” Ki!Tana’s tentacles shivered, a long, convulsive gesture very different from the usual shrug. “No. To know you have the weapons, the galaxy would need to see one used. Then they would believe. The galaxy would know your name then.”

  “And ‘Bloody Annie’ would be more appropriate than ever,” she said, looking at her reflection in one of the shiny weapons. The eyepatch certainly went with the name.

  “Yes.”

  Annette shook her head, eyeing the weapons.

  “I hated your species, you know,” she said quietly. “I wish I still could. If we’d taken these weapons the day we boarded Rekiki’s Fang? Kimar would burn. The Imperium would kneel at my feet and beg my mercy.”

  “I have told you that I am not representative of my race,” Ki!Tana replied.

  “Not just you,” Annette replied. “There is a saying among my people that you can judge a man by the measure of his enemies. The A!Tol’s enemies? Slavers. Pirates. Murderers. The Kanzi—madmen like Forel.

  “And the people who conquered my world?” She sighed. “The line between. The only people I’ve met since I left Sol that I respect are the Laians. And they…they are exiles lost without a cause.

  “But the only people I’ve met are the A!Tol’s enemies,” she continued. “What does that tell me about the empire I opposed? About the Imperium I have been handed the sword to destroy?”

  “I do not know, Captain Bond.”

  “Bullshit,” Annette swore. “Dammit, Ki!Tana—I’m sitting here deciding whether to kill a hundred million of your people, and you don’t have an opinion? You don’t know what to say?”

  The big A!Tol was very quiet for a long time.

  “The Ki! are very careful in what we say and do,” she said finally. “We remember very little of our lives before the madness took us, Captain. We emerge from our mountain retreats little more than children, but our species looks to us as wise ancestors.

  “So, we learn quickly never to command, never to suggest. We ask questions. We challenge. Where possible, we do. But we do not lead and we do not tell people our desires.”

  “Even if I ask? What does your contract say about that?”

  “The contract I agreed with Kikitheth truly only said that she commanded my life, my knowledge and my skills,” Ki!Tana admitted. “It was a short paragraph, nothing more. It transferred to you because I was curious, Captain Bond.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “No.”

  Annette almost punched one of the weapons, settling instead for gently smacking it with her hand.

  “What would you do?” she demanded.

  There was silence again for a long moment.

  “Destroy the starkillers,” Ki!Tana admitted. “But I have a disadvantage you do not, Annette Bond.”

  “And what is that?” Annette asked, realizing that this was the first time the alien had ever addressed her by her full name.

  “I have seen a starkiller fired. I have watched a world burn in the aftermath of my command and known that my will and my voice had set into motion the death of billions,” the alien said flatly. “I do not even know who I was before the madness, but I remember that, and I could not find it in me to fire these things.”

  Annette exhaled, letting air and energy and rage flow out of her.

  “Thank you,” she said simply. “And if I were to fire one, to free my world with the death of another, what would you do?”

  “I have never been the last exiled soldier of a fallen world,” Ki!Tana admitted. “I cannot judge your choices. I do not know if I could continue to serve a captain who had done so, but I will not judge you for the action.”

  Annette stared at her eight deadly prizes.

  “Ridotak said you would make me a king, an outlaw, or a corpse,” she said quietly. “I don’t see a way to be king of anywhere. I think I’m done with being an outlaw. That doesn’t leave me many choices, does it?”

  “I think, Annette Bond, that you cannot see past the choice in front of you,” her alien friend replied. “No one can make it for you.

  “Only you can decide what you are prepared to sacrifice.”

  “It’s not sacrifice if I ask someone else to die for it.” Annette shook her head again. “I need to think,” she told Ki!Tana. “Alone.”

  With a small gesture of her manipulators, the A!Tol withdrew, leaving Annette Bond alone with her deadly prize, her conscience, and her choice.

  Chapter 57

  “Emergence in twenty seconds.”

  Amandine’s words echoed in the deathly quiet of Tornado’s bridge. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Annette hadn’t told anyone what she planned to do at Kimar, but her crew all had their guesses.

  The simple fact that they were here with the starkiller missiles reduced the options dramatically, though Annette still hadn’t made up her mind.

  “Metharom,” she said quietly into her communicator. “Did you make the upgrades I asked for?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” her chief engineer
replied. “Exactly as requested.”

  “Thank you. Carry on.”

  Annette closed the channel and surveyed the screens and plots around her. Her crew kept their gazes focused on their screens, none of them prepared to meet her single eye. Perhaps they were afraid that eye contact would contaminate them.

  The portal opened as she tried not to snarl, Tornado slipping through the tear in space into the Kimar system. A few moments of lag, and then the sensors started to propagate the details of the star the A!Tol had launched their conquest of Earth from.

  Tornado had emerged well above the ecliptic plane, well out of the line of interception of any of the Imperial warships. Annette knew she’d be detected quickly, but that was part of the point. They were here to be seen.

  “What have we got?” she asked aloud.

  “Seven planets, one habitable, one gas giant,” Rolfson announced. “Gas giant is home to the fleet base. I’m reading…thirty-two capital ships, eight of them what I’m guessing are super-battleships because they are monstrous, and about a hundred and fifty lighter warships.”

  “Are any of them in range to intercept us or the starkillers?”

  In the silence of the bridge, she heard her tactical officer swallow.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Amandine, set your course for the star,” she ordered. “Rolfson, open the shuttle bay.

  “Ma’am…”

  “That was an order, Lieutenant Commander,” Annette snapped.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said quickly.

  Seconds ticked away and millions of kilometers disappeared with them.

  “Hold us at six light-minutes from the star,” she ordered. “Any response from our squid friends?”

  “No…wait,” Rolfson replied. “Yes. I have two squadrons of destroyers leaving orbit of the planet and heading our way. I wouldn’t see any reaction from the fleet base, but…”

  “Interesting,” Annette murmured. “So, every warship in the system is going to head right for us. I guess they know what we’re carrying.”