The Price of Peace

by Mike Moscoe

  One minute stretched by, followed by an eternity that only saw another sixty seconds pass. The third minute was longer, if that was possible. The final thirty seconds flew.

  “Activate all combat systems. Guns, we do not range the targets until all batteries are charged.” Assuming they all took a charge. Why not be an optimist?

  “Roger, ma’am.”

  Umboto watched the seconds pass. Twenty seconds into the warm-up period, the acting XO announced, “All combat systems on line. Performance is optimal. All batteries are charged. We are ready, ma’am.”

  “Sensors, how is Junior?”

  “All up and operational. However, countermeasures give my readings only a moderate confidence level.”

  Maybe they were working. “Talk to me about the targets.”

  “Three Daring class cruisers. Triple reactors active. No military systems on line.”

  “Guns, I want a firing solution on the first one, and a solution for the last one passed to Junior. Activate range finders.”

  “We’ve pinged the targets,” Sensors reported.

  “We have a firing solution. Junior has hers.”

  “Put on spin. Begin jink mode. Fire ranging shot,” Umboto ordered. The Pride of Portland cover vanished as the Patton took on a warship’s defensive spin and slipped into a random dance of up, down, and sideways zigs. A single shot reached out from the cruiser to the Hot Bottom Line. It sliced into the target just aft of amidships, and immediately winked out. The targeting solution was perfect. Without orders, Guns adjusted the remaining turrets and opened fire. The Patton’s lights did not dim, thanks to the yard’s work. Five laser beams cut into the stern of the Bottom Line, slicing engines, smashing plasma conduits. Misdirected plasma shot into space at all angles as the ship took off in a wobbling flat spin.

  “Check fire,” Umboto ordered. “Switch to second target.” She had only the three guns that the ship’s spin now brought to bear. One reached out for the middle ship. It wasn’t there. It had bounced up. The other two turrets tried for it, but missed.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sam Hill was back on the screen, holding on tight to his bridge chair as his ship continued its wild gyrations. Another captain came on screen, but didn’t bother identifying himself. His ship didn’t look any better controlled than Hill’s. Stan had done good.

  “This is Captain Umboto of the Society of Humanity cruiser Patton. You are ordered to cease all acceleration, close down all systems except basic life support, and prepare to be boarded.”

  “You’re crazy. You got no right,” the unidentified captain started.

  “You are charged with numerous counts of piracy and involuntary servitude, as well as conspiracy to commit same.” Umboto cut him off. “I repeat, close down and be boarded.”

  “I’ll see you in hell first,” Hill snarled.

  “That can be arranged. We know the location of your bridges, and you are sitting ducks. Comply with my orders.” Umboto cut off the two captains. “Comm, send to Junior. Two cripples are yours. I will engage the undamaged ship. Good luck.”

  All batteries were again charged, but the lone target was jitterbugging through space, never holding a constant course or acceleration. This one was going to be tough.

  “Comm, send a hail to the evading ship.”

  “He’s calling us, Captain.”

  A new face appeared on screen. “I am Johnnie Romijn, of the Diamond Cold Heart. What the hell are you doing?”

  If he’d monitored her last transmission, he knew the answer. “Cease your evasive maneuvering,” she ordered.

  “No way. Some crazy woman’s shooting up ships. I’m gonna do what I can to keep my hull from being made Swiss cheese.”

  “If you’re a normal businessman, boarding will cause you no problem.”

  “Don’t have the reaction mass to cruise around this system all week. I need to refuel at the station.”

  “You are not approaching the station without being boarded and searched.”

  “Listen, lady, I’m just a man trying to make money on a very slim profit margin. I got no time for this silly business.”

  That was the problem; there was a slim chance he might be telling the truth. Umboto had nothing to go on but assumptions and intelligence. But if he was a gunship, she could not let him near the station’s collection of troop containers and landing craft. Has my trigger finger gone off too quickly and too wrong, again? “Sensors, talk to me.”

  “She’s a Daring. She’s got all three of her reactors going. I’m hearing no combat systems. Visual shows she’s got containers around her hull. They are not covering her gun turrets, but that could just be…”

  Right, everything or nothing. Umboto’s countermeasures officer was running a new package that covered the Patton’s emissions. Had this one bought the same gear? Time to choose. Attack, or allow the Diamond Cold Heart to pass. Umboto did not like that name, but that was no reason to shoot it out of space.

  “Captain, Countermeasures here. Something’s interfering with my systems. I’m getting spikes and valleys in my coverage.”

  “Like there was another system operating nearby?”

  “Maybe, ma’am, but no guarantee.”

  Life didn’t come with a guarantee. That ship might be innocent. Then again, it might be guilty as sin but crammed with innocent victims. “My ship will escort you into the station.”

  “No way I show you my stern. I’ll pull even with you.”

  “As you will,” Umboto said and killed the main screen. “Comm, send to Junior. Advise me soonest you get a report from your boarding parties. Must know if they are what we expected.”

  “Yes, ma’am” answered her, but she was already lost in her problem. If that was a pirate off her port quarter, how could she entice it to fire? And make sure it didn’t blow her out of space with the first broadside? That was the game they played. Death was the payoff. Her and her crew’s deaths. If that was a pirate, she still had to take it relatively intact. She would not slaughter hundreds of innocents. Not if she could help it.

  “Unknown is pulling aft,” the helm reported.

  “Match the unknown. Keep it right off our port quarter. Sensors, I’d really like to know more about our unknown.”

  “Captain, I got nothing new to add. Some emissions, but they could be background.” Igor shook his head. “I can’t tell shit.”

  Not a regulation report, but appropriate to the moment. “Is the unknown still zigging and spinning?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Let’s tempt him. All his systems should be up by now. Cease jink pattern. Reduce spin to five RPMs. Helm, you have discretion to return to evasive maneuvers if you perceive any threat. But for now, let’s see how good he is.”

  She was answered by “Aye aye”s and dubious glances. She would have been willing to wait this one out ’til the sun went dark, but the station was only twenty minutes from coming in range. She couldn’t afford for the bastard’s first broadside to take out half a brigade. Maybe the command post. No, time was on the bastard’s side. Umboto needed an answer, and it was up to the Navy to get it before the troopers bought it the hard way.

  She leaned forward in her chair. “Come on, you son of a bitch. Do something.” Nothing happened. Had she screwed up? Had she shot up two poor merchant ships that just happened to show up at the wrong time and place? The clock was in slow motion, stretching each second into hours.

  “Unknown has stopped evasive maneuvers. Hull rotation is same as ours, five RPMs,” Sensors whispered.

  “Take all rotation off the ship. Countermeasures, close down all systems.”

  Sweet Jesus. I killed two hundred innocent people on a pirate, and now I’ve shot up two ships for pirates that weren’t.

  “Unknown has closed to ten thousand klicks,” Sensors reported. “I’m getting something, ma’am. Very low band; nothing should be down there.”

  One thousand one, Umboto counted. “Jink! Down!”
<
br />   “Down jink,” Helm answered.

  “Enemy firing!” Sensors shouted.

  “Guns, fire.”

  “Firing A,” came the gunnery officer’s familiar twang.

  The Patton wobbled as the ship took on spin and absorbed hits in the same second. The helmswoman, good at her job, had rigged her board to put on rotation as soon as she zigged again. Pumps screamed, struggling to move reaction mass fast to balance the Patton as the spin increased. The ship bucked and danced until the pumps did their job, then settled on course.

  “Hull breach at frame forty-eight, radial two-eighty,” the acting XO reported. “We’ve lost number two bow thruster set. Ship is manageable. No loss of combat capability.”

  Umboto was glad for the damage summary; she stayed concentrated on offense. The Patton’s one shot had pinned the Diamond Cold Heart. “Take out her engines, Guns,” she ordered.

  “Full broadside, target aft,” Guns answered. Five slashes fixed the target, shattered its stern, left the ship cartwheeling through space. New turrets rolled into view on the hostile ship, reached out, but, unable to adjust to their own mad dance, came nowhere near the Patton.

  “All right, you bastard.” Umboto mashed her comm button. “Diamond, close down all systems, or the next target is your bridge. You’ve got five seconds.”

  The Patton continued its jink pattern. Gunnery, thanks to the refit, adjusted for each dance step beforehand and modified its firing solution accordingly. If Umboto ordered that bridge peeled, it would be open to space before the broadside was done.

  “Fuck you” was the Diamond Cold Heart’s response.

  “Fire!” was Umboto’s. The Patton’s guns obeyed, catching the hostile in her wild dance, slicing into the ship’s heart.

  “I repeat my previous order, Diamond. Close down all systems and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Captain, Comm here. There’s no carrier wave from the target vessel.” Now would be a good time to shatter their reactors, let their own plasma turn them to atoms. Unfortunately, Umboto could not take that easy out again.

  “Sensors, what’s target’s status?”

  “Countermeasures are gone. Forward batteries are armed. Amidships are not there anymore. Aft batteries appear to be uncharged.”

  “Guns, check fire. Target forward battery for full broadside on my command.” God willing, she wouldn’t have to give that command.

  “Dear God, make them stand down.” The whispered prayer came from somewhere on the bridge. Umboto concentrated on her target.

  “Sensors?”

  “No change, ma’am.”

  “Recommendations, Guns?”

  “She’s wiped. But as long as she’s got power and loaded batteries…”

  Right. She’s deadly. Umboto would hate herself for the next order she gave.

  “Sir,” Sensors barked. “Target is powering down her reactors. I repeat, one reactor is off line. Second one is dropping off. Third is at eighty percent. Make that seventy.”

  “Somebody wants to call it quits.” Umboto sighed. “What about the forward battery?”

  “Still loaded.”

  With plasma being dumped, the wild cavorting of the target slowly became tame. The message of surrender was loud; it also simplified the firing solution for the forward guns. Umboto held her breath.

  “Target is firing,” Sensors shouted.

  “Guns…check fire. They’re firing away from us. They are discharging their lasers on their disengaged side,” Izzy sighed. She had fought the bastard, and he hadn’t made her murder innocents. Well, maybe not. They’d have to board and find out how much damage they’d done.

  “Comm, message from Junior. First boarded hostile had crew from a pirated ship and slaves. Repeat, they are pirates and slavers.”

  “Now you tell me, Stan.” Izzy laughed with relief. She’d done it. She’d gone into battle, beat two bastards, and killed no more than she had to. And she had not risked her crew to do it. Damn fine ship handling! Now let’s see what Urimi and I can do on the ground.

  FOURTEEN

  THE ASSAULT LANDING craft rested in the farm compound in front of the barracks. Trouble sat in its command center, surrounded by his noncoms and civilians. Tom would keep his next date with Senate investigators. Trouble wouldn’t let Steve out of his sight; Ruth, he didn’t want to.

  “That’s all we’ve got on Richman.” Major Urimi finished updating Trouble on the situation. It hadn’t taken long.

  “They didn’t want info out on the place.” Steve stepped forward. “I had my suspicions as to why, but I never guessed at anything like this.” Trouble would give Steve the benefit of the doubt because of what he’d been through. Still…

  “They started a major new city hall a year ago. That really got me wondering. Most buildings go up. This one went down, twenty-five stories. Only two above ground.” Steve’s fingers roved the map, then stopped. “This place, the one you’ve got labeled ‘Country Club ??.’ That’s the place. A lot more underground than above.”

  “It is on a hill,” someone behind Urimi observed.

  “Then it’s more a command bunker than a city hall.”

  “A fallback position to hold until they can get some kind of relief force through,” Trouble muttered.

  “They’ve already got a call out,” Tru Seyd added. “Half an hour ago a coded message came up from the surface, shot through the station’s comm service using hidden protocols, then headed out to all four of the jump point buoys and caused them to make immediate pass-throughs. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”

  “Elevate things to the political realm.” The skipper joined them on line. “Then thumb their noses at us when observers arrive and tell us to back off by a seventy-five, seventy-four Senate vote.”

  “Not if we take that bunker apart before the observers get here,” Trouble pointed out.

  “Might not be that easy,” Urimi noted. “We’ve looked over the station. It’s got a hell of a lot of remote machine guns. Tru closed down the security center before they used them. If they’ve got the same stuff covering that bunker and the ‘golf course,’ it’ll be damn costly to do a frontal assault.”

  “Then maybe we better take the redoubt tonight,” Trouble suggested.

  “Too late,” came again from off Urimi’s screen. “It’s active, making music like a division in full combat kit. Lots of people headed in. If we dropped tonight, we might keep some out, but we might also run into other stuff. I’m reading an antiair envelope stretching fifty miles out around that town.”

  “If they’ve got missiles to back up the radar.”

  “You want to guess which garage or condo hides the SAM?”

  That seemed to exhaust that idea.

  “Might be some advantage to letting the bunker fill up,” Urimi muttered. “Not everyone here is into the illegal side. We got the station when the computer geeks took a better job offer. If they don’t know enough to run and hide, they probably aren’t guilty of anything worse than failing to ask around about the company they hired on with. In this mission, we got to separate the sheep from the goats.”

  “And if all the bad guys dig into the bunker, all our sour apples are in one barrel,” the skipper said, mixing her metaphors.

  “That might be a good idea,” Steve said slowly.

  “Because?” Trouble egged him on.

  “There’s a lot of water around here. You may have noticed the frequent and excessive rainfall.” Steve grinned at Trouble.

  “Not lately,” Trouble countered.

  “Even Riddle has to have a dry season. Anyway, when they started digging city hall, they ran into all kinds of springs in the hill. Had to work out a whole series of drains, or the ten bottom floors would have been flooded half the year. Anyway, there’s a major drain pipe running from under that bunker directly into the main city sewer. Since it hasn’t rained for a couple of days, it might not be underwater at the moment.”

  “Worth a try.” Trouble glanced at Gunny. He w
as grinning as he nodded his head.

  “They’ll have sensors covering that access,” Tru opined. “Can I go dirtside with you boys?”

  “If we put a load of explosives in there, then give them thirty minutes to surrender and evacuate.” The skipper spoke slowly, weighing each thought as she said it. “I like it. At oh-four-hundred, I’ll drop the brigades to surround the city and begin moving in toward the center. By noon, we ought to have the bunker isolated. I could drop a demolition team and full countermeasures squad to support you. Think your engineers could map that sewer system between now and then?”

  “We got sixth squad with us,” Gunny said.

  “I think we can,” Trouble assured his skipper.

  “Any questions?” Umboto asked.

  There were none.

  “Hell of a slim brief. You know the objectives. Keep in touch with the units on your flanks. Let’s not kill each other, or any civilians we can avoid. Good luck to us and Godspeed.”

  Trouble turned to Gunny. “Sergeant, mount ’em up. We’re moving out.” Gunny did that with his usual ease. The civilians were Trouble’s problem. “Steve, you’re coming with us. Tom, I got to keep you safe. You and Ruth stay here.”

  “I don’t think all the guards bugged out with Zylon.” Tom shook his head. “I’m not hanging around here.”

  What was safer, the frying pan or the fire? “I’ll send you topside with this lander once we’re in town,” Trouble decided.

  Ruth took a seat like a mountain settling onto a tectonic plate. “You too,” Trouble said. Ruth gave him a wide-eyed look that neither agreed or disagreed.

  “Thought we might need some extra gear, sir,” Moss said, handing out weapons and battle suits to the civilians. “Just like on Hurtford Corner.” Trouble had no choice about having civilians in that fight. Here, it seemed he had none either.

  • • •

  Zylon Plovdic did not like being turned away at the front door of company headquarters. “You’ll have to park that rig in the garage down the hill,” she was ordered. “We can’t have a lot of cars in our parking lot here.” Zylon dismounted her entire staff and led them into the rambling two-story building while Mordy disposed of the vehicle. Above-ground, all you saw was a health club. As with so much of her life, it was what you couldn’t see that mattered.