“Number One, launch a probe towards the enemy ship,” the Captain ordered. I complied and launched the fast-boost probe towards the pirate vessel. “Ensign Gerasimos, transmit a stand-down and prepare to be boarded signal to the enemy ship.”
“Aye, sir,” Yianni said. She worked her console. “No reply, sir.”
The Captain leaned back in his chair. “Put the feed from the probe on the main display,” he ordered. “Stand by to engage.”
The probe’s signal vanished suddenly – the enemy point defence would have picked it off, given time – but it had lasted long enough to give us an image of our enemy. I almost came to my feet when I saw the enemy ship, feeling a mixture of astonishment…and shame. There was no mistaking the design. It was a starship of the same class as the Jacques Delors.
The Captain muttered a curse, barely loud enough to be heard. “Number One,” he ordered, “prepare to fire a warning shot.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I had heard of renegade starships before, of course – a case could probably be made that I was a renegade myself, or worse – but this was the first time I’d ever seen one. There was no mistaking it for a Heinlein Resistance starship, or a more mundane pirate vessel. This was a UNPF starship, armed and ready to press matters. “What did they want with Bellefonte anyway?”
“Unknown,” the Captain said. There was a dark tone in his voice. “We’ll find out when we ask them, afterwards. Open communications.”
“Channel open, sir,” Yianni said.
“This is Captain Percival Harriman of the UNS Jacques Delors,” the Captain said, coldly. “You are ordered to stand down your attack and prepare to be boarded. If you do not stand down, we will be forced to open fire.”
I scowled, watching the power fluctuations around the enemy starship carefully. If they were renegades, they wouldn’t surrender, not knowing that the UN would either send them to Botany or simply throw them out the nearest airlock without bothering with a trial. I wondered, absently, what their story had been. Had a Captain led a mutiny against the UNPF, or had his officers overthrown him and turned pirate? The latter seemed much more likely. Bellefonte was a small colony, yet it produced a considerable amount of starship components and other high technology. If it hadn’t been for the distance factor, the UN would probably have occupied it decades ago.
“They must be having problems maintaining their ship,” I muttered, skimming through the records of lost starships and eliminating all that had been destroyed by the Heinlein Resistance or other resistance forces. The database wasn't exact, but the UN had produced sixty cruisers like the Jacques Delors and five had vanished in deep space, without any known cause. “They won’t have any source of components.”
“Perhaps,” the Captain agreed. I flushed. I hadn’t realised that I was speaking aloud. “That does leave the other question. Why haven’t they run?”
I understood. No pirate in his right mind would want to tangle with a cruiser. They should have opened a wormhole and escaped, but instead, they were just finishing their bombardment of the Bellefonte Station. They’d be in missile range in less than a minute, unless they intended to escape by the skin of their teeth. They wouldn’t have time to move anything from the station before we were on them.
“Weapons locked, sir,” I reported. “All missile tubes are ready to fire.”
The Captain nodded. “Fire a warning shot,” he ordered. “Fire!”
“Missile away, sir,” I said. The starship shuddered as it launched the first missile. “Tracking now.”
I’d programmed the missile to detonate just short of their drive field, enough to scorch them, but unlikely to cause any real damage unless their drive field was completely wrecked. It was possible, I conceded, but there was nothing wrong with their point defence network. The missile telemetry terminated suddenly as they burned it out of space. A moment later, they began to move away.
“Helm, take us after them,” the Captain ordered. “Tactical, fire at will.”
I keyed the firing sequence into the console and, a moment later, launched a full spread of missiles towards the pirate ship. They turned away again, presenting their broadsides, and returned fire. Their missiles, I noted with a flicker of relief, were definitely older designs. That suggested that someone out along the Beyond had been building missiles for them; the UN had abandoned that particular design years ago. At least they weren't the damned missiles Heinlein had created. They would have made the engagement too unpredictable.
“Point defence network up and running,” I confirmed, as the missiles entered the point defence network. They had the advantage of being targeted on a starship that was closing the gap between them itself, but they were too old and slow to be a major problem. The pirates would have to fire hundreds of them to be sure of scoring a hit, let alone the numbers required to destroy us.
I turned my attention back to our own missiles. Four of the seven missiles we’d fired had been taken out by the point defences and a fifth had misfired, but the final two detonated against the enemy’s drive field. I hoped – prayed - that that had been enough, but a moment later I saw the enemy starship emerge from the blasts, open up a wormhole and vanish.
“Track the wormhole,” the Captain ordered, sharply. I realised what he had in mind with a thrill of excitement. “Engineering, bring the Jump Drive online, now!”
“Unable to track the wormhole,” the Pilot reported, grimly. “The disruption from the nuclear blasts confused the sensors for too long.”
“Nuts,” the Captain said, mildly. “Damage report?”
“No damage,” I reported. “There are mild fluctuations in the drive field, but nothing significant. The Engineer would like to spend several hours examining the generators before we jump out, but he reports that we can jump out now, if necessary.”
“There’s little point,” the Captain said, coldly. I felt guilty, even though it hadn’t been my fault. “Helm, take us back to Bellefonte. Number One, stand down from battle stations, but I want ready watches in all of the compartments, including the bridge. If they decide to come back while we’re here, I want to be ready to greet them.”
“Aye, sir,” I said. I didn’t disagree with the sentiments, although double watches would make it harder to send anyone over for shore leave, or even go through the engagement with the Ensigns. They’d have to study it and identify mistakes, even though it would be a brave Ensign that accursed the Captain of making a mistake.
“Yianni, open communications with Bellefonte,” the Captain continued. “We may as well carry out our actual mission while they might be grateful.”
It was a day before I was sent, as the Captain’s representative, to Bellefonte. Bellefonte’s government, for reasons of its own, had insisted on holding the discussions on one of their orbiting asteroids and the Captain, for reasons of his own, had agreed without demur. I’d been on asteroids before, but Bellefonte’s asteroids hadn’t been spun up to generate gravity, leaving everyone floating in zero-gravity. I’d grown used to it at the Academy, but even so, it had been a long time and I felt a little unwell as I floated through the airlock to meet their representative.
“We wanted to experiment a little with his asteroid once we’d mined it of all useful materials,” the representative explained. Her name was Jade, or so she claimed; a vaguely-Chinese looking girl, barely older than I was. She was pretty, in a way, but reminded me too much of the girls from Luna City. “We thought about creating a gravity field through proper generators, but then the government decided to send the elderly into orbit to make their final years a little easier.”
I blinked. “You can’t cure them?”
Her voice hardened. “The regeneration therapies are very expensive,” she said, coldly. “We cannot produce them for ourselves and we cannot purchase them from you or anyone else. They have to grow old naturally.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Earth’s regeneration treatments were normally saved for the very wealthy or the very well
politically-connected. It was true that elderly people were entitled to a dose for a reason that no one had ever explained to me, but most of them received nothing. At least one person I had known as a child had died shortly after receiving her treatment, which suggested that the treatment hadn’t been produced properly, or had been nothing more than boiled water. Earth’s companies were set production quotas and…well, they had to struggle to meet them. A planet like Bellefonte, without even the resources of Heinlein or another world, wouldn’t be able to produce it for itself. “Why were the pirates attacking you?”
“They came four months ago and demanded that we hand over vital components for their ship, or else,” Jade explained. I realised that she was glad of the change in subject. “The Government realised that it had no choice, but to comply, so it handled over everything the pirates wanted. Three months later, they returned and demanded more components and – this time – women as well. A month later…”
“They returned again?” I guessed. “Why didn’t you produce defences?”
“We did,” Jade explained. “We opened fire when the pirates arrived and tried to drive them off. It didn’t work and they were on the verge of destroying one of our stations when you arrived and chased them away. Why didn’t you destroy them?”
“They just opened a wormhole and escaped,” I explained. I felt as if I had failed personally, even though I knew that there had been no chance of catching the pirates. They hadn’t chosen to fight for long – hell, it was still a mystery why they had even fought at all. Perhaps they had wanted to make the point that they couldn’t be scared off so easily. It wasn't as if the Jacques Delors could remain at Bellefonte forever. “They’re going to be back.”
“I know,” Jade said. Her voice softened slightly. “I was going to be one of the women going to them this time.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I seemed to be apologising a lot while talking to her. “We saved you from that…”
“For a while,” Jade said. She grinned suddenly, a grin with no humour in it. “I’ve been infected with a particularly nasty sexually-transmitted disease. If we lost the fight, I’d have gone willingly and fucked as many of them as I could, just to see them rot away within the year. I’m immune to it myself, of course.”
I shook my head in awe. I couldn’t understand how someone could think of such a plan, and how someone else could tamely accept her fate as part of a desperate operation. It was the work of a desperate mindset, one that saw no other choice, but to sacrifice some of the young women of his planet to make the plan work. It was beyond my comprehension. Not even Heinlein had gone so far, although there had been whores who had killed and mutilated their customers.
“This is the Cabinet,” Jade explained, as we entered a larger cavern. “I believe they want to thank you personally.”
The discussion didn’t take very long. I think they were a little surprised that the Captain himself hadn’t come, although I explained that the Captain was busy supervising the repairs to the ship. The Engineer had decided that several components needed replacing and had decided to do it while we were at rest. The Captain had agreed and also decided that it would be a good exercise for the Ensigns, although for once I wasn't going to be supervising them. Lieutenant Carolyn Lauderdale would do that almost as well as I could. She had a good touch with the Ensigns as well – and, even though it pained me to admit it, she might even have been better than me.
“I believe that the Captain will visit as soon as possible,” I said, at the end. “However, with a pirate ship in the area, he wishes to make sure that his starship is ready for battle before he leaves her.”
“Quite understandable,” the President agreed. There were undercurrents I didn’t understand. The Cabinet might even be considering seeking a closer relationship with the UN and I didn’t have the heart, or the nerve, to explain to them that that might be a dreadful mistake. The pirates were limited by what they could carry away, but the UN would reshape their society and absorb it into their system. Even if that weren't the case, the UN would have real problems stationing a task force out here permanently. If Bellefonte had rated as a serious concern, the planet would have been brought into the UN’s system of garrisons and governors a long time ago. “Your crew will, of course, be welcome for shore leave at any time. We have some quite fantastic sights for you to see, if you would like.”
That, as I had expected, turned out to be largely impossible, although Carolyn agreed to escort the Ensigns on a pair of brief excursions into the asteroid and down to the planet. I was tempted to go, but there was too much work for a First Lieutenant to do, not least writing my share of the report on the engagement. I was tempted just to write ‘we won’ or some thing along the same lines, but the Admirals in the UNPF High Command would demand at least seven pages, in triplicate. I hadn’t realised how much paperwork had to be completed for each missile we had fired, let alone everything else. It was a mystery how we were supposed to get anything done.
“You can just copy the paperwork from one missile and use it for the others,” the Captain pointed out, when I finally took it to him. I’d made a private resolution that if our plan succeeded I was going to cut all of the paperwork down as much as possible. I could see the value in accounting to each missile, but surely I didn’t have to do so much paperwork for each of them. “No one ever looks at it anyway.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, seriously. That made it a lot easier. Even the vast UNPF bureaucracy would have had problems trying to absorb all of the paperwork. Yianni might well discover that Engineering had tons of paperwork of its own. I wondered about giving the Ensigns a taste of my paperwork, and then decided that horsewhipping them would be kinder. “I’ll see to it at once.”
We spent another five days in the system. The Engineer’s determination to have everything checked out before another encounter with the pirate ship, or even to use some of his copious selection of spare parts, meant that we had to go through everything. The Captain didn’t discourage him; indeed, I rather think that he encouraged him. I couldn’t fault him for that. If I’d learnt one thing in my career, it was that components rarely lasted half as long as they were guaranteed to last. The Engineer even dismantled the shuttles and carefully replaced all of their components as well. It was an insane level of attention to detail.
“I’ll have to pay Bellefonte a visit before we depart,” the Captain said, finally. It had been a week of watching and waiting for the pirates, but they hadn’t shown themselves. It was possible that they had emerged from the wormhole somewhere in the outer system and were waiting for us to leave, but there was no way to find them. A powered-down ship was impossible to differentiate from a harmless asteroid, unless we carried out a visual inspection, and they could hide indefinitely. “If they do show themselves, get after them at once. Don’t wait for orders.”
“Aye, sir,” I said.
I returned to the bridge to take command as the Captain’s shuttle departed. It was easy enough to have the Ensigns run basic tracking exercises on the shuttle, checking and rechecking the shuttle’s course to ensure that it docked safely at the asteroid. We’d tried to teach them the skill without having something real to practice on, but the Captain had firmly believed that the best experience came by doing. I couldn’t disagree with his logic…after all, look where it had gotten me.
”Lieutenant,” Yianni said, suddenly, “I’m picking up a power fluctuation from the Captain’s shuttle!”
I came to my feet quickly. “Report,” I ordered. The icon representing the Captain’s shuttle was beginning to flash alarmingly. I brought up the visual feed and saw it spin out of control. There was no way that that was a standard manoeuvre, or even a pilot showing off. It was bad enough to threaten the internal compensator. “What’s happening…?”
Before my eyes, the shuttle came apart and exploded in a ball of plasma.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The UNPF’s problem – one of its many problems – is that it is
unable to guarantee a suitable supply of components for its starships. Each manufactory is given quite unreasonable quotas for production and, if it fails to meet them, is penalised heavily. The net result is that corners are cut everywhere and defective components are very common. Sometimes, when not discovered in time, the results are lethal.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
“Scan for life signs,” I snapped, against all logic. He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be dead. “What happened?”
“No life signs detected,” Yianni said. She sounded as shaken as I was. “The shuttle has been completely destroyed.”
I keyed my console. “Engineer, Pilot, I want you to find out what happened to the shuttle,” I ordered. The Captain was dead and that made me Captain, but I couldn’t assume command just yet. I should declare myself Captain at once, according to regulations, yet it would have felt like a betrayal. How could I usurp Captain Harriman? “Yianni, did the station open fire?”
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 31