“Suit up, Mr. Jager. Bring along a security detail.” Captain Hallverson stands and clasps his hands behind his back. “Open channel.”
I stare with my mouth open.
Raj quickly deploys an antenna. Outside, it just barely pokes out from our cloaking gas. A sensitive photometer would pick up a slight increase in reflected light.
“This is the Stellar ConFed ship Orca. Drop your velocity to zero. Halt your vessel. Prepare to be boarded for an inspection. If you do not comply, we will open fire.” The captain’s voice is hard, stern—exactly like you’d expect a captain to sound.
This same message goes out on a dozen different channels, including a handful that are strictly digital with agreed-upon trade messages. If we know who they are, it is guaranteed that at least one channel gets through.
“Velocity dropping,” Raj calls.
Captain Hallverson turns to me and glances at the hatch off the bridge. “You’re the pugilist. Right, Mr. Jager? Go find me some weapons.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
By the time I’m ready to depart, the Hjonit freighter is at zero relative velocity. Colby vacuums out a thin patch of cloaking gas around the airlock, and we depart on a broomstick. Well, it’s not a broomstick, but we call it that. A simple propellant-delivery system with room for a dozen.
I have two with me. Huttola and a burly chef named Taunton. As far as weapons, I carry a polymer sidearm and a shock baton. Huttola carries a ball bearing sweeper along with a dozen shrapnel grenades. Taunton comes with a shotgun and an explosive charge big enough to split the hull wide open. He also has the portable scanner.
Knowing that Huttola is behind me doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. It feels like things are still kind of gray between us.
The freighter is old. Like, really old. The outer hull is dull brown from afar, but closer up I see that it’s just patches, corrosion, and the accumulated dust of centuries of space travel. Like a second-tier boxer running the beer leagues. One step from retirement.
An early retirement if we find anything.
About a hundred meters out, I spin the broomstick and flare the propellant toward the freighter. Conservation of energy doesn’t sleep, unfortunately. Once I’m at a crawl, we slide up to a blinking airlock.
I enter first and try to look big and mean. “Orca, I’m cycling the hatch.”
“Confirmed,” Raj replies. “You have fifteen minutes.”
If I need that long, I’ll be dead.
The airlock cycles. Inside, the light is a dim orange that borders on red. Three creatures wait. Each is rather humanoid but squat, wide, and decidedly alien. No weapons that I can see. One holds out a Covenant trade book.
Smart.
The Trade Covenant was first put into use by the Salem Corporation. It standardized basic communication between trade partners. While linguists were tied up deciphering entire languages, SalemCo focused on the most important thing: making money. So these fine folks have all the data I need in a handy-dandy little document.
It’s worth mentioning, in case you missed out on History 101, that SalemCo tried to go solo in this universe: no ConFed for them. They only recently came back into the fold once they had to fight the Tyroleans. A lot of people are still pretty upset about that.
I take the trade book. The first thing it notes is that their atmosphere isn’t breathable by humans. I scan further; it’s breathable by Tyroleans. Strike one.
The Hjonit shift where they stand. The lights flicker and dim.
Something just sucked up a few megawatts of power. Bounce drive spooling up? Strike two.
“Huttola, keep your weapon on them.” I scroll through page after page of commodity codes. It’s a mishmash of trade goods. Electronics. Raw materials. Machinery. Glassware. Ceramics. It’s a giant flying junk heap.
One of the Hjonit beckons with big sausage fingers. I can’t hear anything it’s saying, but I see the pudgy lips moving. I hold up a hand, the universal “wait a fucking moment” signal. In the back of the trade book is a translation wheel. I slide it open, select a question, and show him.
Where is the iridium?
Fat fingers push a few tabs.
We have none.
I roll my eyes. “Taunton, fire up the scanner.”
Taunton drops his pack with a thud, and all three Hjonit jump. A second later, the scan is complete. Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Strike three.
“Orca, we’ve got a positive.” Static crackles in my helmet. The hull of the ship is blocking our radio transmission. “Orca?”
“We need to get out, now,” Huttola says. “Before they start shooting.”
I turn to make sure Huttola doesn’t have a weapon in my back. He’s clear. “Right, we’re leaving.”
I key up the translation tab over to “wait for further instructions.”
Then we back away and enter the airlock. Huttola is itching to fire the entire time. He keeps that nasty launcher swinging from side to side, just to make sure the Hjonit don’t get any ideas. A firefight is a terrible place to be when you’re trapped between the enemy and someone who wants your job. Luckily, it doesn’t come to blows.
The airlock cycles, and we straddle ourselves onto the broomstick.
“Orca. Positive on the iridium scan. How shall we proceed?” I keep one hand on the freighter and the other on the broomstick. In a second, we can push off.
By all rights, we’re supposed to inspect and find the exact item containing iridium. Then we would give the crew time to launch an escape vessel. After that, we could blow it up.
“Return to the Orca,” Raj calls back.
I push off and gently coax thrust from the propellant tank. The freighter dwindles behind us. Before us is what looks like nothing. The Orca is one with the stars.
“Jager, go go go! We’ve detected an energy spike! We’re firing!” Raj yells over the comms.
There is a sudden blink in the stars, like someone ripped open a chunk of space put on a steel patch.
The broomstick isn’t designed for speed. It’s quick and efficient. Not much use to escape a soon-to-be-destroyed freighter. I hammer on the throttle valve. White-hot propellant jets out the ass of the broomstick. “Hold on!”
I never do see the kinetic charges zipping past us and into the freighter. Why waste a torpedo when you’re at point blank and the navy has seen fit to give you a shiny new pea-shooter?
Behind us, a starburst expands in silence. The freighter goes from a heap of rust and junk to a cloud of cargo. A cloud of cargo I’m hoping to escape.
I turn to look, and that’s when I see the debris.
Imagine your Aunt Ethel’s house suddenly exploding in a cloud of teacups, biscuit tins, and ceramic cats. This is way worse. Our kinetics burrowed deep, like right to the center, and then exploded in a cloud of oxygen gas followed by a wave of concussion. Think a miniature unguided torpedo with a tiny little soft center of explosives.
A piece of something flies past. I just lay on the throttle harder. Huttola could shoot me right then and there, and no one would be the wiser.
Something slams into my elbow. The broomstick turns, and I fight to bring it back it into line.
Taunton flips past. One arm is gone. Crimson droplets turn into wobbling spheres that slowly crust over with frost. His back is shredded, and a large metal beam sticks out from the top of his shoulder.
“Hold on!” I yell. Actually, it’s more of a shriek.
A chunk of bulkhead tumbles by. I can’t even dodge anything; if it hits us, it hits us. Those damned laws of physics keep me in line.
A line of electrical cable snakes by; at the last second, it whips and snaps me right off the broomstick. Alarms flare, and my radio is a jumble of static. No comms.
IThereisn’t much force, just enough to make me spin like a wicked top. There is no up and down. For that matter, I can’t even see. All I can feel is the tumble, spin, roll, and the sickly wet feel of vomit.
About then, it dawns on me
that I’ll probably die. The one person who could rescue me is Huttola, and here is his golden chance. My suit is wrecked, communications are dead. The distress beacon is likely fried too. Now I’m just one more piece of junk in a cloud of junk.
Then a line latches on to my foot, and I slam about like a bouncy ball. It’s hard to just kill that sort of momentum; all that energy has to go somewhere. So in my case, I just flail about.
Something crunches into my ribs, and I finally lose consciousness.
I open my eyes and scream. Except I’m not dead. Lights blink above me. Airlock lights. I struggle to sit up, but that isn’t happening.
Huttola leans over and pops my face shield open. The smell of the Orca floods into my nose. Good thing too, as the only thing I could smell before was vomit.
“You saved me,” I croak.
He pops open his starburst-cracked face shield. A triumphant smile goes to a frown. “What do you think I am, a monster? I’d not leave someone to die. I’ve lost enough.”
“Thank you,” I say in as sincere a voice as I can manage.
The airlock pops open, and Huttola stomps out past the waiting medical team.
Way to go, Karl.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Once I watch the footage of my rescue, I realize I was an ass. An even bigger ass than I’d imagined. When the big boom went off, Huttola risked his life to latch on to me. That thing I crashed into? That was Huttola. I broke his arm, in fact.
It was some impressive piloting of a vessel that was basically a tube of gas, a burner, and a few maneuvering jets.
Taunton is dead. And with him went our portable iridium detector. No more boarding parties for me. I’m sure the detector’s still squawking out in that eternally expanding debris field. I’ll also miss Taunton’s cooking; it seems he was the only cook we had with any real talent.
I hobble around the tiny sick bay with a bone regrowth serum piped into my chest. Sitting still is sheer agony; moving is just slightly better. The doctor is forward doing wellness checks. That little sick bay really feels small.
Huttola sits on the edge of his bunk with a hefty cast anchored to his chest. His eyes follow me like a cat’s. Not exactly who he wants to be stuck with. There isn’t any small talk between us.
I hoped I’d have a chance to mend things, but Huttola isn’t the talkative type. Nothing breaks the ice like asking someone why they didn’t kill you.
“Huttola. What do you want out of the navy?” I figure going the professional route is a safe bet. It’s the one thing we all have in common.
Huttola snorts. “Is this a reenlistment speech? I don’t need none of that bullshit from you. What, you get a bonus if I sign up?”
“No, really,” I say as I pace past him. His eyes follow.
“Revenge.”
“For?”
Huttola tries to straighten up and grimaces in pain. “For what they did to us!”
“Why do you have a monopoly on revenge?”
Huttola cracks a wicked smile. “Because I volunteered for it. The navy owes me that.”
“And when the war is done?”
The smile fades off his face. He can’t quite bring himself to look at me. I’ve seen that same look on some of the others’ faces. The future is murky to them. They are so focused on dying that none of them have thought of living.
“What about you, Jager? What do you want out of the navy?”
Before I can answer, he keeps talking. “Some cushy commission? Maybe a port posting with your own cute little secretary? Or, God forbid, a teaching position so you can schmooze with your old fraternity?” Huttola lays it on thick, his tone telling me exactly what he thinks of me.
If he’d asked me that same question before I was on the Orca, I wouldn’t have had much of an answer. In fact, all those three would have sounded good. Especially the bit with the secretary…
“A command of my own. A chance to make a difference in this war. And…”
“And what?”
“A nicely stocked liquor cabinet too.” I end that with a smile.
Huttola’s facade of granite finally cracks. He looks down to the floor and shakes his head. One hand comes up, and he tries to hide a smile. “You got balls, Jager.”
“Thanks for saving them, Huttola.”
Huttola looks up and gives me a slow nod. “I might think you’re an asshole, but I don’t leave a man to die.”
“And why do you think I’m an asshole?”
“Simple. When the time comes, I don’t think you’ll make the same decisions I would.”
I cock my head. “Like what?”
“Like laying it all on the line for revenge.”
“You’re right. Duty before revenge.”
We look at each other for a moment. There is no more discussion on that point. Those are core beliefs. The very essence of our souls. Certain things you don’t debate, at least not sober.
A day later, we’re both back on duty and on separate shifts. While I can’t say we’re friends, we have a sort of bond. At the very least, I owe him about a dozen good hard drinks. It’s not often someone saves your life.
We continue deeper into the system. From the start, we’ve watched the bounce patterns. Traffic tends to enter a system about the same spot, bounce to a few of the same midpoints, and finally depart about the same area.
It’s a safe route that way. You don’t suddenly drop into the middle of a nickel asteroid or onto a defensive minefield. Most importantly, as a merchant, you have some protection. The system should have a few pickets roaming about those spots.
There are none.
For the first few days, it was a bonanza. The freighters raced through the system. The ship-mounted iridium scanner dinged like a brass bell. There’s no sweeter sound to our ears.
The first few freighters Hallverson took himself. He points out the methods, tactics, how to watch for hidden weapons, when it’s prudent to just let them go, and, of course, how to dispatch them with one torpedo.
My first kill on the bridge comes in the middle of the night watch. I ring up Captain Hallverson. “Freighter inbound. Iridium positive.”
“Take it,” Hallverson replies sleepily.
My heart beats fast and my mouth goes dry. It’s like the first time I stepped foot in the boxing ring.
The ship is a meager thousand tons. Tyrolean design, plump in the bow with a slender ass that’s nothing but propulsion. It’s the old style like you see in the vids, but hey, it has iridium.
I study it from head to toe. Pick out every detail to make sure it isn’t a surprise gunship. Katzen grumbles, and Raj eggs him on. Hartford stands at the back of the bridge and watches.
“Gonna pop yer cherry,” Katzen says loudly.
That freighter doesn’t have a chance. None. One torpedo flies out and hammers into them right in the center of that hull. I doubt they even saw it coming.
One part of me feels triumphant, the other disappointed. It’s too easy. Like boxing a man with no gloves. But that’s the point, isn’t it? I spend the rest of my watch mulling it over and decide excitement is bad. Excitement means we’re being hunted.
Then the flow of freighters dries up.
I come onto the bridge an hour ahead of my watch.
Captain Hallverson chews on his stylus with furrowed brow. Calculations ring his tablet. A few star maps are scattered at his feet. Whatever he’s trying to do, it hasn’t worked out yet.
I stand behind him and watch the display. I know better than to bother him while he’s plotting things. He’ll tell me what it’s for when he’s good and ready.
So far this day, we’ve watched three Tyrolean military freighters transit. A single fifty-year-old destroyer loitered about, and then it left too. The destroyer was barely space worthy. It was a mess of upgraded weapons and leaked radiation like a spaceman’s whore.
That says something. The best ships are out fighting; the junk is left behind to screen for us.
The crew is sull
en. Raj taps on her display with jabs and thrusts. Colby comes on the bridge and swears when she sees the plots. It takes me a while, but then I understand—they aren’t used to letting ships go. For them, it’s revenge, destruction, and indiscriminate hate. Now they have to hunt and let some quarry slip by.
None of those freighters give any indication of iridium.
We find a nice juicy midpoint with a minefield covering one flank. It gives us decent cover, and the radiation off that blue star is a bit less due to some shadowing effects of a far-off planet. These are the tricks I’ve learned from Hallverson and Yao, things you don’t get taught in the universities.
“Contact, inbound solo,” Raj says.
Captain Hallverson looks up over his tablet at the incoming data stream.
“Raj,” Hallverson says in a low voice, “scan it. We won’t sound the alarm until we get a positive. Plenty of time.”
I feel the tension on the bridge. Everyone is watching the display. Everything hinges on whether or not a few stray bits of radioactive iridium ripple off that detector.
Raj hunches over with her fists balled on either side of her display. Her head bobs from side to side like a hunting eagle’s. Instead of watching the display, she listens. The human ear is quite amazing at picking up a very subtle pattern.
I hold my breath until I can’t. Then I hold it again. In a split second, we could come to battle stations, launch a torpedo, and be off to watch our target fall apart.
“It’s Tyrolean,” Raj says in a whisper. “Six thousand tons, maybe seven—big bastard. Picking up speed. Drive must be new. There’s…” Her voice trails off.
I want to scream and send a torpedo out. Fire! Fire! Instead, every sense is taut, like a leather cord.
The freighter crawls across the gap before us. Closer. Closer. Finally, it passes just before us and into the arc of the detector.
Cloak of War Page 13