Tyrant's Test

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Hammax nodded. “I’ll be skinned up in five to ten,” he said, turning away and ducking through the hatchway.

  “I’ll check in with Pleck,” Taisden said, climbing out of his couch. “Page me on the observation deck.”

  Even though he was alone, Pakkpekatt covered his right hand with his left as he entered his authorization code and switched the viewer to privacy mode as he read the notice.

  COLONEL PAKKPEKATT

  ACTIVATION OF FAIR LADY’S P’W’ECK COMPLEMENT RECORDED HERE. SINCERELY HOPE THIS PRESAGES RESTORATION OF PEACEABLE RELATIONS WITH HOST WORLD AND DIPLOMATIC RECOVERY OF EXPEDITION. PENDING DISPATCH CONTAINS LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION, RECENTLY ACQUIRED AT GREAT EXPENSE. TRUST THEY WILL OPEN DOORS FOR YOU.

  It bore an apparently authentic Fleet Intelligence watermark and seal but was unsigned.

  General Calrissian’s friends, Pakkpekatt thought. They should not know that I am in this ship, but they do, and they are still looking after him.

  He drummed his thumb-claws on his temples as he considered his response. ‘Letters of introduction’ can only mean the Qella genetic code—assistance that I requested through proper channels, which was denied when the task force was recalled.

  There was no real choice before him. With a few light touches on the display, Pakkpekatt entered his send authorization and returned a clear-to-transmit message to his unknown benefactor, noting the ship time as he did. At their present distance, the transit lag for a round-trip to Coruscant should be something more than forty minutes. If the reply came back too soon or too late, he would know what meaning to give it.

  “Colonel Hammax, are you ready?” Pakkpekatt called over the comm system.

  “Going through my weapons check now, Colonel.”

  “Very well. Agent Taisden, please return to the bridge. Agent Pleck, please assist Colonel Hammax at the airlock. Colonel, during the flyaround, did you identify where you would like to make your entry?”

  “Those open ports on the far side looked to be as good a place as any,” Hammax said. “I’m going to use a ring charge to cut in, and I can put some hull between myself and the blowback.”

  “Very well,” Pakkpekatt said, taking the yacht’s maneuvering yoke in hand. “I’ll notify you when we are in position.”

  Colonel Hammax did not stay aboard the hulk of the cruiser for long. A mere fifteen minutes after he disappeared into the maw of launching port eight, he reappeared at the opening of launching port four. Raising his right hand in a wave, Hammax squeezed the thruster controls with his left and started across the hundred meters separating Gorath and Lady Luck as they drifted together through space.

  Though Hammax’s foray suit had voice, holo, and biomedical comm systems in both open and conductive modes, Pakkpekatt had directed him to observe strict comm silence unless confronted by a threat, and Hammax had done so. So his early return was the object of sudden and intense curiosity. Pleck and Pakkpekatt watched from the flight deck and Taisden from the observation deck as Hammax jetted toward the yacht, knowing only that it was impossible under any conditions to thoroughly search a 450-meter-long warship so quickly.

  “He looks okay,” said Taisden. “Maybe he had some equipment problem. Or maybe he got lucky and found what he was looking for right off.”

  “If Colonel Hammax had found what he was looking for, he would be returning with two body bags,” Pakkpekatt said, tracking the spacesuited figure with the laser cannon.

  “You’re going to make him nervous, doing that,” Taisden observed.

  “Good. That will help him understand that I am,” said Pakkpekatt. “Go back to the airlock and hold Colonel Hammax there with the overrides until I have satisfied myself.”

  As soon as the outer lock closed, Hammax broke his silence, using his suit’s conductive transmitter. “Colonel, she’s well gutted. Definitely Prakith, though.”

  Taisden startled at that. “A long way out for a Prakith ship—a long way out. Are you sure?”

  “I could still read the blazons on bulkheads here and there. Colonel, it’s a derelict. Nothing’s functional, and there are no signs of life—a lot of bodies, but none of ’em are going to get any more use.”

  “Was there any sign of Calrissian?”

  “No,” said Hammax. “I checked both brigs—there were five bodies between them, none of them human. I also checked the bridge and the maintenance shop—no droids of any kind in either location.”

  “Why did you terminate your search? A Strike-class cruiser has two hundred fifty-eight compartments.”

  “Colonel, with the conditions over there, I wasn’t going to find out any more in an hour than I did in fifteen ticks,” Hammax said. “I thought the best thing was to come back and leave it up to you whether to commit the time to take it further. If you want all two hundred fifty-eight compartments searched, I’ll turn around and get started on it.”

  “Is it your report, then, that Calrissian’s party is not aboard the cruiser?”

  “I can’t tell you with absolute certainty that the general wasn’t aboard when the balloon went up,” said Hammax. “But in my opinion, it’d take a forensic salvage team the better part of a week to be any more certain. Your call.”

  “Stand by, Colonel Hammax.” Pakkpekatt rubbed his temple crests as he checked the comm queue. The “Fleet Intelligence” dispatch was still spooling into Lady Luck’s comm buffers, pouring in at 94 percent efficiency of the highest available error-checking transfer rate. But even at that rate, the counters predicted it would take another twenty-three minutes to complete the transfer.

  “All stations, conference,” Pakkpekatt said.

  “Hammax here.”

  “Taisden here.”

  “Pleck ready.”

  “It is my belief that the most probably scenario to explain our findings is that this vessel was destroyed by the vagabond by means of a weapon not previously seen. The vagabond is likely to have been damaged in the confrontation, prompting Calrissian to recall his yacht. Concur or dispute.”

  “Concur,” said Pleck.

  “I concur,” Hammax and Taisden said simultaneously.

  “Proposition: The degree of damage sustained will dictate the current location of the vagabond. If not seriously damaged, she will have jumped out. If seriously damaged, she will have moved off in realspace, perhaps to make repairs. If mortally damaged, she may still be present as an undetected debris field.”

  Pleck and Hammax agreed.

  “Or she may have tried to jump out and broken up in the process, in which case there might be very little debris to find,” said Taisden.

  “Yes,” said Pakkpekatt. “Disposition: We will remain at this location while we conduct a maximum-aperture deep scan for the vagabond, and until we examine the debris field more closely. Colonel Hammax, stand by for possible debris recovery operations. Agent Taisden, please return to the second seat to supervise the deep scan.”

  As Taisden reached the flight deck Pakkpekatt was turning the bow of Lady Luck away from the cruiser. “You said there was a possible body?”

  “Let me locate it for you,” said Taisden, reconfiguring the displays. “Twelve hundred meters, bearing two-one-zero, plus four-four, relative. A lot of smaller stuff between us and it, though.”

  Pakkpekatt responded by reactivating the particle shields so that they could shoulder aside any debris in their path. “Please begin your scan.”

  “That’ll scatter the field,” Taisden said. “Standard recovery protocol calls for deflectors only, with particle shields at zero.”

  “I know that,” said Pakkpekatt. “But this is not a junker, Agent Taisden, and we are not scavengers.” He pushed the yoke forward, and Lady Luck eased away from the shattered cruiser. Within a minute, it had entered the cloud of debris.

  The “body” proved to be a curious object—a rough-surfaced sphere two meters across, carbon-scorched over one third of its surface and encrusted with a thin layer of fragile, long-crystal ice.

  P
leck had come forward to the flight deck for a closer look. “Could it be some sort of escape pod?” he asked. “I’ve heard that spaceliners used to be equipped with something like the ferry bags S-and-R units use—you know, not much more than a soft-sided ball with a rebreather, so you can move people off a disabled ship without having to try to get them into spacesuits.”

  Taisden shook his head. “I’m still on passive sensing only, but the thing looks solid to me. If the colonel will let me strobe it—”

  “No,” said Pakkpekatt.

  “Colonel, if it’s something interesting, let me go out and get it,” said Hammax. “At two meters, I should be able to bring it in through the cargo airlock.”

  “No,” said Pakkpekatt. “I do not want it inside this ship. But I do want to know what it is made of. If it is not part of the cruiser, it may be part of the vagabond.”

  “You say it’s iced over?” asked Hammax.

  “To a depth of approximately one centimeter,” said Taisden, recalibrating his displays for fine detail.

  “Sounds like draw-frost,” said Hammax. “You only get that on biologicals, and only for a little while, until the remains are desiccated or deep-frozen. See, the pressure differential pulls the water in the epidermal layers toward the surface, but it starts freezing on the skin before it can evaporate. The residual body heat can keep things pumping for a while, but eventually the ice evaporates, too, one molecule at a time.”

  “Maybe it is a body, then,” said Pleck. “Just not a human one. Colonel?”

  Pakkpekatt glanced at the counter on the comm display. “Very well, Colonel Hammax. See if you can move it to the fantail observation deck. I believe there are cargo tie-downs there, and we will not have to concern ourselves with turning the cargo deck into a hypothermic cooler—”

  “Hold everything,” Taisden said, sitting forward sharply and frowning at the displays. “I have a deep-scan contact alarm. Colonel Pakkpekatt, there’s something coming in fast.”

  “You are acquiring Colonel Hammax’s bad habits,” said Pakkpekatt with a hiss. “What sort of contact?”

  Taisden shook his head. “She’s bow-on to us and still a long way out—nine hundred thousand kilometers,” he said. “It’ll be a little while, even for this rig.” He paused, tapping the console with his fingertips. “On the other hand, if she’s related to the late Prakith cruiser behind us, she’s probably coming in with her don’t-shoot-me lights on.”

  “Combat transponder,” Pleck said. “Yes. Scan for it in the high forties—that’s pretty common for Imperial-class designs, and I don’t think the Prakith are likely candidates for a lot of field modifications.”

  “I’ve got it—forty-four two, for future reference. Uncoded, but in Prak.” Then he grunted. “Looks like General Calrissian went for all the options when he bought this yacht. The system’s giving me an on-the-fly translation—ha!”

  “What?”

  Despite the seriousness of the moment, Taisden was briefly consumed by a spell of deep, closed-mouth chuckles. “We are heading for a rendezvous with, and I quote verbatim, ‘The gallant and eternally vigilant patrol destroyer Tobay of the Grand Imperial Navy of the Constitutional Protectorate of Prakith, in grateful and loyal service to His Glory, the potent and courageous governor for life, Foga Brill.’”

  “And you thought your section commander had unreasonable expectations,” Pleck said, clapping Taisden on the shoulder. “Do you think the Prakith navy holds public fawning competitions?”

  Pakkpekatt parsed the puffery for the one detail that mattered to him. “Patrol destroyer, Imperial Adz-class. Primary armament three class-D quad laser cannon batteries, three class-B dual ion cannon batteries.”

  “Sounds like we definitely don’t want to be here when they arrive,” said Hammax. “Colonel, do you still want me to go after the floater?”

  Pakkpekatt looked to Taisden. “How long?”

  “Not quite six minutes, though she’ll have to start knocking her speed down pretty soon. Call it eight.”

  “Not enough time, Colonel Hammax,” said Pakkpekatt. “Come back inside. I need you to take over weapons control.”

  “Pardon me, Colonel,” Taisden said.

  “What is it?”

  “Colonel, this other ship coming in may not be ignorant enough to think that we’re the ones who rearranged the furniture on the cruiser, but they’re sure as sweat going to be curious about what we know. I strongly recommend we jump out before they get anywhere near here.”

  “Recommendation noted,” said Pakkpekatt. “However, inasmuch as we are currently receiving a mission-critical dispatch from Fleet Intelligence, we will not be able to jump out for another”—he leaned forward to read the display—“ten minutes.”

  Pleck and Taisden exchanged glances. “Anyone know the top speed of an Adz-class patrol destroyer?”

  “Point-five-five,” said Pakkpekatt.

  “And this yacht?”

  “Unknown to me,” said Pakkpekatt. “Agent Taisden, tell me when the contact’s velocity changes.”

  “We could hide in the scan shadow of the cruiser,” Pleck said.

  “I intend to,” said Pakkpekatt, handling the yoke with a light touch that nudged the yacht sideways to port. “But I won’t be able to do so for long.”

  “They might come in more slowly if they see us,” said Taisden. “We only need a couple of minutes.”

  Hammax appeared at the hatchway, finger-combing his helmet-matted hair. “Patrol destroyer carries six fighters,” he pointed out. “They can have it both ways—send the fighters in hot after us, and take a nice safe, slow approach to the wreck.”

  “Anyone know what kind of fighters the Prakith have?” Pleck asked, frowning. No one answered him.

  “Contact is decelerating,” said Taisden. “Looks like she’s spotted the wreck. Colonel, the wreck’s going to eclipse the contact in a few seconds.”

  “Tell me when.”

  “Coming up—damn. Fighter launch, two birds.”

  “Excellent,” said Pakkpekatt, pushing the yacht’s throttles forward to the limit. The sudden acceleration knocked Hammax back into the companionway and sent Pleck tumbling against the flight deck’s rear bulkhead. “I suggest you both find a flight couch and strap in. We may need to discover not only how fast General Calrissian’s yacht is, but how agile she is as well.”

  Pleck picked himself up and squeezed past Hammax, heading aft. Hammax came forward and reached for the weapons controller.

  “You may store that,” said Pakkpekatt. “I have retracted the laser cannon. This is a race, not a fight. I will jump us out before I let us be caught—but I am willing to take some risks in order to receive the complete dispatch.”

  “What’s in it that’s so important?” Hammax asked.

  “The code that allowed this ship to pass through the vagabond’s shields at Gmar Askilon—”

  “But we have that.”

  “—and the code that would have allowed D-89 to follow it in,” Pakkpekatt continued. “The next time the vagabond asks us a question, we should know the answer.”

  “If we ever see her again,” Hammax said with a lopsided frown.

  “We will.”

  “Tobay is hailing us,” said Taisden.

  “I have nothing to say to the Prakith,” said Pakkpekatt.

  “You might be able to get them to give away some information—like whether the vagabond was here.”

  “We do not need confirmation of that,” said Pakkpekatt. “And I will not take the risk of giving some information away to them.” He glanced down at the display. “General Calrissian has a very fast ship. Range to fighters?”

  “One hundred thousand meters and opening quickly,” Taisden said. “Someone on the Tobay forgot that TIEs have solar-electric ion boost engines. Not much out here for them to eat. They won’t catch us. Someone else has figured that out, too—Tobay is accelerating now.”

  “Too late,” Hammax said. “Their captain made the wron
g choice.”

  “Yes,” said Pakkpekatt, his pride teeth gleaming. “He did.”

  “Three more minutes,” said Taisden. “I’ll set up the jumps if you’ll tell me where we’re going next. Back to Carconth and Anomaly Ten-thirty-three?”

  “No. I have been thinking about what happened to us, being brought here by an automated system override,” said Pakkpekatt. “I find myself asking what the Qella would have done if, once having launched this vessel, they found reason to recall her.”

  “Sounds like a card you’d want to keep in your hand,” said Hammax. “What do you have in mind, Colonel?”

  “I have in mind for us to go to Maltha Obex, the vagabond’s point of origin,” said Pakkpekatt. “We will set up a hyperspace beacon there and transmit the sequences we just received.”

  “You mean to call her home,” said Hammax.

  Taisden’s face was lit with sudden optimism. “We can use the entire communications grid of the New Republic as a repeater to send out the signal in realspace, on the frequency the vagabond used to interrogate our ships at Gmar Askilon.”

  Pakkpekatt nodded, human fashion. “And then we will wait for her. Who knows? If this yacht is as well named as she is outfitted, perhaps the vagabond will hear our call and come to us. The odds of that can be no longer than the odds of our stumbling on her in the dark—and I am weary of chasing shadows and echoes across the light-years.”

  Lando Calrissian cursed under his breath as he dragged himself through the narrow inner passage toward where Artoo indicated Lobot could be found.

  The cyborg had stubbornly refused to return to where the droids were waiting, forcing Lando to shed his contact suit and come in after him. But the passages were twisty and claustrophobic, and it was difficult to find enough elbow room and enough purchase on the surface for fingertips and toes to keep him moving. The maze would have been impassable in gravity, at least for a human.

  “Lobot!” he called ahead. “How about a little help?”