The Privateer

by Zellmann, William

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  THE PRIVATEER

  By

  William Zellmann

  Copyright 2012 William Zellmann

  Chapter 1

  "Goin' somewhere, Captain?"

  John Smith, alias Captain Emo Arror, alias "The Terror," started as the voice came from the shadows of the darkened boat bay. He suppressed an urge to spin around, instead turning casually to face Bob Smiley, his second-in-command. His hand slowly crept toward the butt of the stunner he carried.

  "As a matter of fact, Bob, I am," He replied in a casual tone. "I've had enough. I'm retiring. Consider yourself promoted to head Terror and admiral of the pirate fleet."

  Smiley resembled his name, though the smile was rarely genuine. John had seen the same smile on the big man's face as he tortured victims to reveal the hiding places of their valuables, and as he casually sank a knife blade into a woman's chest. Smiley was a heavyworlder, short and wide. On his squat frame, his large arms looked almost simian, reaching nearly to his knees. Since they had escaped slavery on Peltir IV together five years ago, Smiley had put on weight and added a paunch, but he was still a fast and deadly fighter, as John well knew.

  This time, though, the smile faded slightly as Smiley shook his head. "Now, that's real nice of ya, Captain, and I know I'll do the name proud. I figgered somethin' was goin' on when you insisted on grabbin' that fast yacht an' even its papers durin' the Atlantea raid.

  "But y'see, Captain, there's a problem. You're the one took a stolen freighter and two dozen escaped slaves and grew it into six armed ships and the biggest, toughest pirate fleet in known space. Ever'body in this part of space knows and fears the Terror.

  "And the crews, they're real proud to be part of the Terror's fleet." The smile widened again as Smiley edged closer to John, his hand moving casually toward the knife in its sheath behind his hip. John forced himself not to tense.

  "The problem is, Captain, we can't have the crews wonderin' if maybe you'll be comin' back someday. Sheol, I'd be wonderin' myself. So . . ."

  John dodged as Smiley drew the knife and stabbed it toward his belly in one swift move. Smiley kept coming, changing the stabbing lunge into a charge, the knife slashing wildly. John backpedaled as he grabbed for his own knife. He slipped smoothly aside, drawing with a lightning motion, his blade leaving a red line on Smiley's brawny arm.

  Smiley paused, his eerie smile widening even more. "I'm really kinda sorry about this, Captain. I always liked ya, an' ya done real good for alla us. But if I'm gonna take over, I gotta take over clean. The crews haveta know you're dead." he kept edging closer as he spoke.

  John smiled back, his eyes never leaving Smiley's. "I won't be coming back, Bob. I've had my revenge, and then some. Atlantea finished it for me. The things I've done, the things done by my crews, now make me sick. I can't plan another raid. It's time for me to retire. I'm sorry to have to do one more killing before I go"

  Smiley's smile didn't falter as he circled to John's left, opposite his knife hand. "I knew you was soft, even back on Peltir. Always whinin' about "injustice" and crap like that. Sheol, I was all that kep' you alive the first year. You're a fool to think ya c'n just retire and settle down among the groundhogs." He shrugged. "Oh, well." He lunged again, this time aiming slightly to John's left, hoping to intercept John's dodge to the left.

  John feinted left, but dodged low and right, twisting to leave another red mark, this time across Smiley's left chest and nipple. The big man roared with pain and staggered slightly before regaining his balance. Smiley was immensely strong, and fast as a snake. John had to keep the fight moving, keep mobile. If Smiley ever got his hands on him, there would be no hope.

  "Yeah," he temporized, as he tried to maneuver the big man toward a more open area of the boat deck, "I always wondered why you kept me alive all that time. I never would have survived without your help."

  Smiley put his left hand to his chest without taking his eyes from John. It came away bloody, and he flicked a glance at it before replying. He snorted. "You lightworlders think we're stupid just 'cause we're strong. I knew as soon as I saw ya that you was the one was smart enough to break us outta that hole. So, I played the dumb sidekick, an' sure enough, you was able to bust us out. An' ya made us rich, too! But we're set now; we don't need ya no more."

  "That's right, you don't. So why kill me? Why not just let me go?" Smiley was slowly edging closer, and John knew the attack was coming.

  Smiley put his left hand to his chest again, as though to relieve the pain, but suddenly he flicked his wrist in an attempt to flip some droplets of blood in John's face. He instantly followed this with a roar and a lunge.

  This time, though, John did not dodge. He dropped, deflecting Smiley's knife arm and slashing his knife upward across the lunging man's throat. The roar ended in a gurgle, as the big man crashed to the deck, arterial blood spraying from his neck. Smiley placed futile hands over the fatal wound, and tried to rise. However, the blood loss was weakening him. He struggled to his knees and tried to speak, but his eyes glazed over and he toppled to the deck.

  John walked over to the corpse. "Sorry, Smiley. You were a good friend, until you tried to kill me."

  He wiped his knife on the dead man's shirt and returned it to its sheath. He sighed. Another face to join in his parade of nightmares. He had liked Smiley. He rather wished he had been able to use his stunner instead of the knife. However, he could not be sure the stun beam would work fast enough on the heavyworlder, and besides, the energy discharge would have shown up on the bridge sensors. He had to admit it was a relief that the man was dead, though. Associating with Smiley had always been like living with a deadly wild animal. You always knew you were only one small step from death. Maybe the fact Smiley had been a multiple murderer and a sociopath would lessen the guilty nightmares. Maybe.

  He returned to his packing, what there was of it. He swung only two bags into the shuttle's small cockpit. One contained a few pairs of underwear and some hygiene articles. The other, much smaller one contained one of the largest collections of sunstones in known space, though he was the only one who knew it existed. He had accumulated the stones over five years of piracy, kidnapping, rape, and murder. He rarely looked at the stones. The memories they raised haunted and sickened him.

  He climbed hurriedly into a waiting space suit. Once secure, he clumped over to the boat bay door controls. Carefully, he disconnected the bridge indicators and the depressurization alarm. Then he used the manual controls to decompress the hold and open the boat bay doors. Smiley's corpse stirred in the outrush of atmosphere, but it became entangled in a cutter's landing gear, and was not swept out the bay doors. John smiled as he operated the hand pump to open the doors. Tomorrow would be an interesting day aboard Revenge. With any luck, by the time they got it all sorted out, he would be long gone.

  The tiny two-man shuttle clamped onto Azure Sky's small airlock and John kicked it free as he entered the yacht's airlock. When pressurization was complete, he removed the suit's helmet. "Good morning, Tess."

  "Good morning, sir." the yacht's AI replied in a pleasant contralto. "Is your business complete?" The seductive tones conjured up visions of a beautiful woman

  John smiled. "Yes, it is. Are you prepared for immediate departure?"

  "Yes, sir. Inertial drive is on standby and course to the jump point has been computed."

  "Good. You understand you are not to use the main
jump point?"

  "Of course, sir. The course is computed for the newly discovered jump point in the asteroid belt. May I remind you, sir, that the location of this jump point renders it some 19.238 percent more hazardous than the main point?"

  John's smile faded. "I know, Tess. But I am concerned about my business associates here. I suspect possible duplicity. It is important that we get out of here as inconspicuously as possible. How long to the jump point?"

  "Thirty-nine point one two hours, sir."

  John nodded. "That's what I thought. Okay. I don't want to be chased and possibly caught by them. Recompute your course to accommodate max boost for six hours, and then coasting the rest of the way. Will that make us harder to locate?"

  "If we go to no boost, minimum power use, and minimum life support, we should be undetectable except to specialized instruments, sir. Normal ship's sensors detect inertial engine emissions. Estimated time to the jump point is now 46.86 hours"

  "Good, Boost max, now."

  "Yes, sir, boost is max." There was no sensation of movement. Azure Sky was the largest and most luxurious yacht John had ever seen. Even so, he had never been aboard a ship the size of the Sky that had gravity compensators.

  John watched as the pirate fleet shrank in the rear screen. Revenge was the flagship of the pirate fleet, but it was not the best armed. That honor went to Hellraker, a 400-year-old frigate of the Old Empire. The pirates had found her drifting in space, her crew long dead. If any of the Terror's ragtag fleet could locate the fleeing yacht, it would be Hellraker, with her military-grade sensor suite. Luckily, pirates are not military-grade crews. Her captain was a drunken brute who did not trust his crew and was afraid to let them learn most of the ship's capabilities.

  Captain Reg Townley of the Bastard's heart was another story. A renegade nobleman from Rackham, he was intelligent, urbane, witty, a true sadist, and a complete psychopath. John was sure Townley would eventually win the leadership struggle for command of the pirate fleet, if the fleet didn't simply disintegrate in the absence of John and Smiley. Like Revenge, Bastard's Heart was a DIN-class freighter with a few space weapons crudely installed on her. Since a DIN-class was the largest ship that could routinely ground, her usual mission was to transport the boarders in space and raiders on the ground that did the actual hand-to-hand combat.

  Nomad, a tiny five-man fast courier, was his scout and spy. Her captain was John's youngest, at 24 years old standard. That did not mean he wasn't already a hardened killer, of course.

  The other two ships of the fleet were fat freighters, used to haul booty from planetside raids. They were no threat to John.

  Let's see, he thought. Things will be pretty confused aboard Revenge for several days, as the officers fight for the captaincy. They'll probably be too busy to chase me. Hellraker's people can't handle her well enough to be effective.

  Townley is the biggest threat. I expect he'll kill Franks of the Hellraker and take her over. Luckily, he won't have time to train his people in 47 hours!

  If I were Townley, he considered, I'd take over Hellraker and use her to threaten my way to seizing control. Then I'd send Nomad to look for me.

  Or would I? Could Townley trust young Turlow? He would want to make sure Turlow didn't just take off with Nomad. No,Townley couldn't trust anyone but himself to keep Turlow from running; and he'll be 'way too busy!

  John grinned. He had a pretty good chance of getting away. For the moment, at least. Once he cemented control of the pirate fleet, Townley would see in John the same problem Smiley did; a threat to his solid control. He would put a bounty on John's head, and come searching himself. John would have to run fast and far.

  John had planned his escape with the same care with which he had planned raids. He was heading for Ilocan, an Old Empire world, but he could not go directly there. He had several stops to make first.

  Since the Empire had collapsed three hundred years ago, nearly all of its 1100 inhabited planets had begun a decline into barbarism, some slow, some not so slow. Interstellar trade was becoming sporadic, and pirates were becoming more common.

  On Peltir IV, the decline had been almost a collapse. Peltir IV was a mining world with little manufacturing capability of its own. Once the mining machinery began to fail from lack of spare parts, the tyranny that had replaced the Empire government had instituted slavery to keep the mines operating.

  After two horror-filled years, John and some two dozen other ragged, starving slaves had revolted and killed the overseers that worked them to death in the mine. They had then overpowered the crew and stolen the ore hauler that had arrived to load the ore. An old ex-free trader had sworn to John that he knew enough astrogation to get them to Outpost, an independent station circling a moon that had become a no-questions-asked trading center in the sector.

  He did, but just barely. The ore hauler arrived full of germanium ore and ex-slaves that were starving and running out of air. Almost anything was available on Outpost for a price. John had initially planned to sell the ship and its cargo, split the proceeds among the escapees, and go their various ways. However, most of the ex-slaves were uneducated and unimaginative. They had no place to go, and no saleable skills. They begged John to keep the ship and keep them together under his command.

  At first, John was reluctant, but he came to realize that he, too, had no place to go, and his skills as a lawyer under Peltir IV law would be useless elsewhere. Oh, he was sure he could survive, but the feelings of helplessness helped him understand the attitudes of the others. Then there was the seething hatred he had come to feel for Peltir IV and the people that had condemned him to a slow death in the mines. He had sworn to avenge the harm and injustice done him and the others.

  Still, even after he had agreed, he'd intended only to use the old ore hauler for trade. They had used the proceeds of the old nameless ore hauler's cargo of germanium to buy a mixed cargo on Outpost, and set off on a trading voyage.

  Unfortunately, John was no trader, and neither were the other ex-slaves. The old free trader had signed off on Outpost. Within a few months, they found themselves with an empty ship, no money for a new cargo, and port fees threatening to wipe out the little money they had left.

  That was when they had voted to turn pirate, to attack ships from Peltir IV and steal their cargoes. They would simultaneously gain operating capital and revenge on their former owners.

  They waited at a popular recalibration point not far from Peltir IV. Jump engines permit supralight travel, but they function in a straight line. Interstellar travel is therefore made in a series of jumps, with stops in between for recalibration and recalculation. These "recal" stops can last from a few hours to several days, depending upon the location of jump points within the system. The system they staked out was uninhabited but was a common recal stop between a number of systems.

  Within a few days, an ore carrier emerged. Heavily loaded, it was unable to flee John's empty ship. Men in suits used mining explosives to force the air lock. They were inexperienced, however. They used too much explosive, and the blown airlock decompressed the entire ship, killing the crew. They transferred the ship's cargo to John's still-unnamed ship and left the other ship a drifting hulk, after wiping the sensor logs and destroying the ship's AI.

  The deaths weighed heavily on John's conscience, and he was not alone. Eight of the ex-slaves took their shares of the cargo and discharged on Outpost. However, he let himself be convinced that it was vengeance, retribution for the deaths of thousands of slaves in the mines.

  Their second attempt to become traders also failed. Indeed, they were forced to flee Jurgen's World, swindled by a planet-wide trading consortium, and pursued by corrupt planetary authorities.

  They limped back to Outpost, nearly broke and furious. His beautiful Mina, the woman he had come to love, and several of his friends from his slave days had died. Cold hatred overwhelmed his conscience. John now wanted vengeance on two planetary systems – indeed, on all mankind. A grieving John
Smith, peaceful attorney, was transformed, and Emo Arror, pirate, thief, and murderer, soon to be known as The Terror declared war on the universe.

  John traded the still-nameless ore hauler for a smaller, DIN-class combat cargo hauler that had had its original armament reproduced. She was perfect for a pirate, and they renamed her Vengeance.

  He might have failed as a trader, but John was a very successful pirate. Over time, most of his ex-slaves were killed or moved on, replaced by brutes and thugs from the gutters of dozens of worlds. He was driven now by an all-consuming hate and vengeance. He ignored the atrocities being committed by his men, taking a perverse pride in the fact that he committed none personally. Oh, on some level he was aware of his own descent into barbarism. A tiny, nagging voice continually reminded him of his shame and guilt; that hatred and revenge could not be a long-term basis for a life.

  Partly in response to that tiny voice, he'd had plans for the future, of a sort. Almost three years ago, as a surprise for his beloved Mina, he had begun sending money under an assumed name to a representative on Ilocan, a largely pastoral Old Empire world where the pace of decline was very slow. The representative was supposedly buying John a villa that he had seen only in holos. Even after Mina's death, he had kept up the payments. He wasn't exactly certain why; he had only a vague reluctance to give up his last contact with his lost love. However, Mina was dead; there was no urgency to his plans.

  Until Atlantea.

  It was almost unheard of for pirates to attack entire planets. But Atlantea was a minor trading center, with a few medium-sized cities and the rest of the planet only sparsely settled. Except for a disorganized militia, the planet was virtually unarmed.