The Privateer

by Zellmann, William

  “I believe his inertial drives to be enhanced,” Tess replied. “His delta-vee rate exceeds the specifications of the standard Epsilon-class ship. That is why I added an arbitrary 20% to his maneuvering ability during the simulation.”

  Cale nodded. “The first thing a pirate modifies on a ship is larger inertial drives and a larger fusactor,” he said. “That comes even before adding weapons. There’s no sense having powerful weapons aboard if your prey can simply outrun you.”

  They spent the remaining few minutes of the countdown to jump using Tess’s entire sensor suite to try to analyze the capabilities of their pursuer.

  The jump went smoothly, and Cale breathed a huge sigh of relief. He had squeezed himself into the closet-like “control room” to monitor Tess’s computations, but found they scrolled up the monitor screen far too fast to permit reading. When the computations were complete, Tess displayed the final jump figures for him, but it had taken hours for him to verify their correctness. In fact, Tess tactfully pointed out two errors in his checking computations. The more Cale interacted with Tess, the more impressed he became. It seemed the advantages of a sentient ship were nearly limitless – as long as one remained on good terms with her/it. He considered himself moderately skilled in astrogation, but he had to admit that it was a huge relief to have a ship that had hundreds of years’ experience in conning itself!

  Chapter 6

  The initial jump was to be relatively short. They would have some 76 hours in the nothingness that was jump before emerging into the uninhabited system for recalibration and possible battle.

  Despite the danger hanging over them, time began to drag. Tess’s ever-present spider-bots took care of any chores that needed doing, meals were served in the lounge, and after a few hours, Cale and Dee were confident in their Tess-enhanced skills with the weapons systems.

  Surprisingly, though, Cale and Dee were not bored. They were getting to know one another, and discovering a growing attraction. What began as a nervous comparing of simulation scores evolved into an endless discussion about nearly everything. Cale found that he was coming to regret those occasions when Dee interrupted their seemingly endless talk to return to her stateroom for sleep. And Dee was finding it difficult to break away. By the time Tess warned them of the approach of emergence, Cale had on several occasions been forced to remind himself that he was no horny teenager, but an allegedly mature man facing an uncertain future. He found it increasingly difficult to focus on plans for that future, especially plans that did not include Dee. For her part, Dee was becoming determined to solve the mystery of this attractive but enigmatic man who seemed able to endlessly avoid or change the subject whenever she managed to bring up the subject of his background. For her part, Tess was fascinated by watching this mating dance and relating it to the thousands of volumes on human behavior she had consumed and the variety of others she had witnessed over the last four centuries.

  Finally, though, Tess began the countdown to emergence, and the two humans reluctantly returned to matters of life and death. When Tess announced E-minus five minutes, Cale and Dee stepped into an unexpected hug. For a moment, Cale was lost in the smell and feel of Dee’s hair, and then was surprised to find himself dipping his head and her raising her lips. For a long moment, time stopped as they shared a long, slow kiss that suddenly broke in a flurry of mutual confusion. With an embarrassed “Oh, dear,” Dee fled to the control room, trying desperately to control her breathing and focus on the quickfirer controls.

  A troubled Cale dropped into one of the lounge’s comfortable seats as Tess activated the laser fire control system and the familiar targeting grid appeared on the main viewscreen.

  “Time, Tess?”

  “E minus four minutes and counting, Captain,” came the crisp reply.

  Four minutes! That exciting hug and that incredible kiss had lasted less than a minute? Surely, that was impossible! “Are you sure, Tess?” he blurted before chiding himself. Of course, Tess was sure!

  “Now three minutes, fifty-one seconds, Captain,” Tess replied in a neutral tone.

  Cursing himself silently, Cale forced himself to concentrate on Tess’s countdown. “As soon as we emerge, change your attitude ninety degrees in any direction. Once you have inertial drives, boost max in that direction. If she’s already there, they may not be able to change course and attitude quickly enough to finish us off. If we get there first, you can cut your drives and swap ends as soon as you detect an emergence. They should be expecting us to continue our emergence course while we recal. Maybe we can just run away. But if not, with any luck we’ll get a few shots at her fat belly before she can adjust her attitude. Of course, we’ll need a full sensor scan as soon as possible after we emerge.”

  Tess’s tone was patient. “Yes, Captain. Your previous instructions were quite clear.”

  Cale cursed himself again, but failed to reply as the time hack on the viewscreen showed less than a minute to emergence.

  As the time flicked from “00:01” to “00:00,” the familiar twisting sensation of illness passing too quickly to be felt told Cale they had emerged. Space beyond the laser-targeting grid assumed the star flecks of normal space. Cale started to ask Tess about her sensor scans, but her voice forestalled him.

  “Initial scan complete, Captain,” Tess reported in her crisp no-nonsense tone. “No traffic or hazards in range.”

  “All right, Tess. Change attitude and let’s boost max and put as much distance as possible between us and that jump point.” The starfield slewed around dizzyingly.

  “Boost is at max, Captain,” Tess reported. “Stellar index shows jump point for Angeles to be approximately 30 degrees around the plane of the ecliptic. We are driving ninety degrees to solar south of our emergence course at 1.52 G pending recalculation and reorientation.”

  Then she continued more conversationally, “Long-range scan will be complete in 38.3 seconds, but so far, no sign of our pursuer.”

  “Great,” Cale replied. “But keep your sensors hot and be ready to adjust attitude. Let’s build up as much delta vee as we can, but be ready to shut down the drive and swap ends.” He could almost see an affirmative nod accompanying her calm “Yes, Captain.”

  Tense silence settled in as Cheetah drove away from the jump point.

  It was some five minutes later, just as Cale was beginning to relax that Tess said, “Captain! I show an emergence at the jump point. I am cutting the inertial drive and beginning attitude reversal.”

  Cale watched the star field slew around again as Tess reversed her attitude, then freeze. The jump point through which they had just emerged was undetectable by normal instruments, of course, so the star field now filling the viewscreen seemed identical to the previous one.

  “Can you ID the ship?” Cale asked.

  “The ship has no beacon running,” Tess replied. “However, she is Epsilon class.”

  “That’s our pirate,” Cale replied. “Lack of a beacon is the final verification. What is our present velocity, and is there any chance he could catch us?”

  “We are coasting at 0.012 percent of light speed. His capabilities are unknown, but if he has the standard sensor suite, he may have difficulty locating us, since we are no longer emitting drive traces.”

  “Captain,” Tess continued, more urgently. “Our sensors now have a side view of the pursuer. His hull is greatly enlarged in the engine room section.”

  Cale snapped to attention. “Then there’s no choice. We cannot run; he probably has engines from a delta or Din-class. Tell Dee to fire on the bridge area. I’ll concentrate on the engines.” He punctuated the sentence by mashing the ‘fire’ button on the laser control. At almost exactly the same time he felt, rather than heard, a thrumming vibration through Cheetah’s hull as Dee opened fire with the quickfirer.

  Tess displayed the track of the otherwise invisible laser beam as it impacted the bulging engine room of the pirate. She also displayed the tracks of the quickfirers’ rocket projectiles as
Dee walked them across the sensor array marking the ship’s bridge.

  The pirate still had no shields; he was apparently still spinning down his jump drives and powering up the inertial drives that would provide power to both shields and weapons. Antennas severed by the stream of collapsium-plated rockets began drifting away from the enemy’s hull.

  Cheetah’s inertial drives were idle, so Tess could route all their power production to the weapons. The laser recharged in less than three seconds, and Cale again slashed the beam across the pirate’s engine room. There was a few seconds’ pause in the thrumming vibration as Tess’s mechs reloaded the quickfirer.

  The thrumming resumed, and suddenly the bridge area of the enemy belched instantly freezing atmosphere. Dee’s shots had penetrated both the outer and inner hulls and opened her bridge, and perhaps the whole ship, to vacuum. Cale fired one last slashing beam, and then called, “Cease fire.” The thrumming stopped, but his finger rested on the firing button as he assessed the damage to the pirate.

  They had certainly had time to spin up their inertial drives, but they still showed no shields, and seemed to be drifting, not under control. If any of the pirates were still alive, Cale guessed their entire attention would be on survival, not on their former victim.

  Cale watched for a few more moments for signs of life aboard the pirate, and then said, “Okay, Tess, adjust your attitude and let’s boost max for the jump point. You can recal on the way.”

  Unfortunately, Dee entered the lounge in time to hear his instructions. Her face reddened. “NO!” she shouted. “What are you talking about? There may be injured or dying people aboard that ship! We have to try to help them!”

  Cale shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. What we have to do is get away from here before the survivors get drives or weapons operational.”

  Dee snorted. “Ridiculous! I insist that you let me go aboard and offer my help!”

  Cale again shook his head. “If we stay here, or even worse, go aboard, any survivors will either kill us for our ship, or carry on with their plans for torture or enslavement. These are pirates we’re talking about, not traders. Consciences and gratitude are not part of the package.”

  “How can you know that? You can’t know that!”

  Cale sighed. “Actually, I can know that, and I do. I’ve dealt with pirates before.” He noted that the star field in the viewscreen was wheeling about as Tess adjusted her attitude, but he knew better than to mention it to Dee.

  He was thinking hard, trying to figure out how to explain to Dee without revealing too much. “I know how they think,” he continued. “If their ship is badly damaged, they’ll simply take any other ship available. There are few places a pirate can get a badly damaged ship repaired without many hard questions. Chances are that captain has already slit the throats of any badly injured crewmen, and has all the survivors working on getting engines and especially weapons operational. Piracy is a capital crime on almost any inhabited planet in the universe. The evidence aboard that ship would hang everyone aboard. So, any good Samaritan that stops to help them will regret it.”

  “No,” concluded, “We’ll report encountering a derelict when we get to Angeles. They can investigate if they care to. But we’re going to put parsecs between us as quickly as possible!”

  Dee opened her mouth to reply, and then the red faded from her face as she forced herself to calmness. “It’s wrong and I still don’t like it,” she replied, “but it’s your ship. How’s your conscience holding up, Captain?” She stormed across the lounge and slammed the door to her stateroom. Since ship bulkheads and doors are made of lightweight alloy, the slam was not particularly impressive.

  Cale winced as her parting shot hit home. He stared at the viewscreen, seeing other scenes than the star field. “Not too well, Dee,” he murmured. “Not too well at all.”

  Dee remained in her stateroom until they emerged in the Angeles system, refusing to come out for meals or anything else. Tess reported that she responded to conversational attempts with silence or monosyllables for most of the weeklong period. But as their emergence neared, Tess reported that Dee was questioning her about Cale, his background, and how he had ‘dealt with pirates before’. She warned Cale that her questions would be harder to deflect this time.

  Cale spent the entire week in misery. He had spent a fortune and countless hours of planning and acting to escape his past. To Emo Arror, there was no problem; just tell Dee whatever she wanted to hear, any story that seemed suitable. But Emo Arror was dead. Cale had killed him off ruthlessly and with malice aforethought. No, it was Cale Rankin and through him, John Smith experiencing the agony; John because of his highly developed moral and ethical sense and his conscience, and Cale for those same reasons but with the added factor that he was afraid he was falling for Dee.

  Nothing he could say would make her understand about the Terror. In fact, he didn’t understand it himself. The years since Mina’s death seemed shrouded in a dark haze; as though he had been a dispassionate observer, watching through a dark curtain as Emo Arror was born in fury and became a monster and John Smith faded until he disappeared.

  How could he explain to Dee what he didn’t understand himself? How could she understand the overwhelming hatred that had driven his hunger for revenge?

  Okay, try a different angle. How would attorney John Smith conduct a defense for defendants John Smith, Emo Arror and even the comparatively innocent Cale Rankin?

  Well, attorney John Smith would talk about defendant John Smith’s spotless reputation, his moral and virtuous behavior. Then he might talk about Smith’s discovery of corruption high in the government of Peltir IV, and the injustice of his arrest, his secret trial, and the sentence to slavery in the mines and certain death.

  ‘Ah’, the prosecution would say. ‘But the defendant had escaped from the mines. They were no longer a threat. No, this virtuous man voluntarily gave up his virtue. Nothing gave him the right to pursue a career of theft, kidnapping, and murder. He created Emo Arror from his own hate and vengeance.’

  ‘But wait!’ Smith would say. ‘Do not forget the loss of his beloved while pursuing an honest career. The defendant made two sincere attempts to pursue honest gain. The second attempt cost him his beautiful Mina! There must be understanding . . .’

  Cale pulled himself out of his reverie. No, there would not be understanding. Other men had broken the chains of slavery without resorting to piracy. The ever-faithful Yan Carbow back on Jackson, who offered John Smith half of what his own labors had earned, was exhibit A.

  Moreover, other men had lost loves without becoming murderers. True, John Smith and Emo Arror had personally killed only three men, all in fair combat. But every life ended or ruined by The Terror’s pirate thugs could be laid at the feet of John Smith. The blood on his hands was no less real than that on the hands of a Bob Smiley.

  Again, Cale forced his thoughts away from his musings. He dropped his head into his hands, and discovered tears coursing down both cheeks. Tears of guilt? Tears of shame? Or perhaps tears of despair, the hopelessness of making Dee understand, the realization that he might never escape Emo Arror? Before he could decide, he drifted into fitful sleep.

  On the morning of the last day before their emergence, Cale summoned all his courage and asked Tess to invite Dee into the lounge for a conference.

  She came, wearing a plain shipsuit. This one had not been tailored, and was several sizes too large. She wore no makeup, and her hair was in a tight bun.

  “You wish to see me, Captain?” she asked coldly. Her face could have been carved from granite.

  “Yes, Mistress Raum,” he replied in an equally cold and formal tone. “We need to have a serious discussion before we emerge in Angeles’s system. Please sit down.”

  “If you’re planning to try to talk me out of screaming my head off about that ship,” she replied, still standing, “You can forget it. If you don’t report that fight to the authorities as soon as possible, I certainly wil
l.” She stared at him grimly.

  He grimaced. “You’re being ridiculous. We know nothing about Angeles but what is in the stellar index. Namely, that it is class C, with active star travel and trade, ship maintenance and repair facilities available, and that it is one of those hereditary monarchies you fear so much.

  “What we don’t know is whether it is a tightly controlled police state that will lock us up just for having an armed ship or maybe a wide-open, lawless place with gang bosses and a powerless figurehead for a king. All I’m asking is that we feel things out a bit before we start bragging about what great and powerful warriors we are.”

  “I’m not talking about boasting,” Dee replied heatedly. “I’m talking about possibly saving lives. Now, that may not mean much to you,” she continued acidly, “But it certainly means something to civilized people!”

  His temper started to flare. “Enough that you’re willing to risk spending months or years in a cell being ‘interrogated’?” He asked. “All I’m trying to do is keep us alive and free, and perhaps even keep Cheetah in our possession. We’d be fools to jump into an unknown situation and start yelling about pirates!”

  She put her hands on her hips and smiled grimly. “So first I’m a braggart and now I’m a fool,” she said, acid dripping from every syllable. “I don’t know what you’re concealing or what you’re running from, but I don’t care. It is obvious you aren’t the honest trader I thought you were. I think you’re a pirate yourself, and I think you tricked me into helping you get rid of some competition.” Her glare was deadly. “And I hate you for making me a murderer. No, Captain, I will not lie for you and I will not keep silent. Are you going to kill me, too?”

  Cale’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “No, Mistress,” he replied dully. “You’re in no danger from me. I hope Angeles is as civilized as you seem to think.” He straightened and returned her glare. “And I sincerely hope that you never find out just how uncivilized the universe can be!”