Sydney Chambers

by B. T. Jaybush

  “Yes, Captain.” Ensign Stefan Womack, Morrigan’s navigator, began quickly entering commands into his console. “What vector do you want to use?”

  “We’re not close enough to pick out many details, Captain,” Garvey said quietly, for her ears only. “Reports on the various pirate armaments are sketchy.”

  Sydney considered for a moment, then shook her head. “We’ve got surprise on our side, XO, and we might as well take advantage of it. Mr. Womack.”

  “Yes, Ma’am!”

  “I want to thread the needle, navigator. Set a course directly between the pirate and the freighter.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Mr. Garvey, sound combat alert. Mr. Grelkin, uncap all weapons and stand by. Mr. Hellespont, in-system drive to flank speed.”

  Morrigan’s control room, always a busy place, suddenly seemed to take on a life and intensity of its own as the general lighting dimmed slightly and a klaxon sounded several times. The increase in tension was palpable, and seemed to deepen with each sounding of the combat alert. The usual buzz of conversation briefly rose to a din as all hands reported current status and settings to the Exec, their figures flowing both into his earpiece and onto his tablet screen. As Garvey stood silent beside his captain, studying the flow of information, a small smile of satisfaction settled onto his lips.

  “Looking good, Captain,” he reported in a soft voice as the klaxons stilled and the noise level returned to near normal. “Looks like all those drills we ran after the shakedown cruise have paid off.”

  “I would hope so,” Sydney replied. Before she could say more, though, Morrigan’s speed subtly changed as its sub-light engines kicked up to full.

  “ETA two minutes, Captain,” Hellespont reported from his post at helm.

  “Understood, Mr. Hellespont,” Sydney acknowledged, then turned back to Garvey. “XO, scramble a team of marines into a drop-ship. It looks like there’s going to be pirates on board that freighter before we can get there.” She gestured at Morrigan’s main viewscreen, which showed a small boarding vessel already heading toward the freighter from the pirate vessel. “I want to have pest controllers right on their tails.”

  Garvey nodded. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said, then began punching commands into his pad even as he turned to walk over to his own station. Meanwhile, Sydney kept her eyes glued to the situation as it developed on the screen in front of her.

  “Mr. Grelkin!”

  “Ma’am!” The responder was a very young-looking ensign named Sean Grelkin. The ink on his Academy diploma was still wet, but his performance in the series of combat drills Sydney had orchestrated before heading for 16 Cygni had been impressive enough to win him a slot in the bridge-crew gunnery rotation. Now, despite his lack of experience, his voice and demeanor showed nothing but confidence as he awaited instructions from command.

  “Mr. Grelkin, have two medium-yield missiles primed and ready for ballistic deployment on my mark.” Sydney said, allowing the slightest touch of irony into her voice as she added, “I want to send that pirate cruiser a bit of a love pat as we sweep by.”

  Grelkin made two quick motions at his board, then nodded in satisfaction as two spots of green appeared in response. “Locked and loaded, Captain, awaiting your order.”

  “Ninety seconds,” Hellespont reported from the helm.

  “Boarding contingent will be ready to drop in one minute, Captain,” Garvey announced as he returned to his place immediately beside the captain.

  “Good.” Sydney looked down at the left arm of her command chair, which boasted a small number of recessed buttons, and selected one with a quick jab. “Captain to marine boarding party,” she said, inclining her face slightly to the voice pickup condenser located near the button she’d just activated. “Be aware that you may have a bumpy ride — we’re launching ordnance the same time we launch you. But get yourselves on board that freighter — I want prisoners. Captain out.”

  Garvey gave Sydney a side-long glance as she sat back in the chair. “They’ll get it done, Captain,” he quietly assured her.

  “Of course they will,” she responded, adding a small chuckle for emphasis. “But they’ll be more effective if they know about the missiles.” Sydney’s attention was suddenly pulled back to the main viewscreen, and a frown darkened her face as she stared at the vessels poised there. “They’re surprisingly well disciplined for pirates,” she muttered after a few moments.

  “One minute,” the helm reported.

  Garvey’s eyes snapped to the viewscreen, and he stared at the tableau for a moment. “What do you mean, Ma’am?”

  “Hmm?” It was a moment before Sydney realized she’d commented aloud. “Ah. You can bet they’ve seen us by now, Mr. Garvey, but they haven’t flinched yet. I’ve never heard of pirates holding station when they see a Noble-class cruiser bearing down on them.”

  “Huh.” Garvey frowned as he also studied the pirate and freight ships. “Neither have I, now that you mention it.”

  Hellespont piped up again from helm. “Thirty seconds.”

  Sydney briefly shook her head; the time for speculation was past. “OK everyone, here we go,” she announced to the bridge at large. “Mr. Grelkin, target their engines and weapons with all available guns; blast ’em if they so much as twitch. Otherwise, give them a general strafing as we pass by. Drop ship and missiles, launch on my mark —”

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “Mr. Hellespont, give me a second-by second count, please.”

  “Twelve,” the helmsman immediately responded to his captain’s order. “Eleven ... ten ... nine —”

  “Drop ship, go!”

  “Seven ... six ... five —”

  “Missiles away, Mr. Grelkin. On your toes with those guns!”

  The pirate ship and the freighter appeared motionless in relation to each other, roughly a mile apart — far closer than ships of their respective sizes usually approached, but still more than enough clearance for the Morrigan to flash between them. At such close range even a barely competent gunnery officer could hardly miss, and Sean Grelkin was far better than that; even as Morrigan’s nose began to enter the zone between hunter and prey the two missiles homed on the pirate’s tail with unerring accuracy, quickly closing to detonation range.

  Which was exactly when the pirate ship’s sub-light engines roared to life.

  The blast of superheated plasma from those engines set off both missiles before their own detonators could engage and acted as a cushion against the missiles’ energies, turning them into booster rockets rather than engines of destruction. The ship leaped away much faster than its engines alone could have pushed it from a dead stop. Grelkin tried to strafe the jack-rabbiting vessel with Morrigan’s guns, but hitting a moving target is no easier in space than anywhere else; the pirate suffered little more than a hit or two before disappearing into a newly-formed hyper window.

  But even while the pirate was vanishing in the flash of FTL, Morrigan rocked as fire from an unexpected source smashed into it. While Morrigan’s crew had been concentrating on their own approach, two small pirate vessels had lain in wait, hidden in a sensor shadow cast by the massive freighter they had intended to victimize. Now those two drew point-blank beads on the warship as its momentum carried it past the bulk of the freighter. The explosions sent hull plates flying and caused Morrigan to slew in its course. The pirates, apparently content with having stung the TSM ship, quickly scuttled to a safe distance and just as quickly disappeared into newly-formed hyper windows, all before Morrigan could swing its guns around to reply.

  3

  “Damage report!”

  Sydney’s voice snapped out like a whip over a team of horses. The crew responded with quick, decisive movements everywhere, all hands efficiently performing their tasks at double normal speed, but with little fuss. The only unusual noise was provided by the red alert klaxon, which had been automatically triggered by Morrigan’s sensors when they detected incoming ordnance. A slight hint
of smoke and ozone lingered in the air, the result of several brief electrical surges and one small fire that the ship’s automatic suppression systems doused within seconds. On the main viewscreen, the escaping pirates’ hyper windows could just be seen to wink out after their brief existences.

  “All hands report safe, Captain,” Comm Tech Peter Rieger reported, pressing his earpiece close to better hear the reports incoming from all over the ship. “No injuries beyond a bumped elbow.” Rieger was still an ensign, but had caught Sydney’s attention with his outstanding performance in six months on the Tecumseh. When the young man had joined her in exoneration at Courts Martial she had requested he be assigned to Morrigan, one of the few specific crew choices she’d made on being appointed Captain.

  “The hull didn’t fare as well, Captain,” Hailey Kristoff announced, still studying the readouts flooding her own screens. “Nothing crippling, as far as I can tell from the remotes, but we took some damage. We certainly lost a few hull plates.”

  “Acknowledged,” Sydney said, a grimace briefly twisting her mouth. “Get some eyes out there to take a look as soon as possible, Ms. Kristoff, and keep Mr. Garvey informed as to what you find. Everyone else, stand down from red alert — and would somebody please shut off that damn klaxon?”

  Garvey, who had personally visited each station during the fast-moving situation, sidled back up beside Sydney’s command chair as the noise of the alarm abruptly halted in mid scream. “That could have been a lot worse,” he said in a low voice, for her ears only.

  Sydney looked around the room, her eyes glittering slightly with pride. “The crew did fine. I would expect no less. What concerns me more is where those damned little birds came from.”

  The exec briefly examined sensor logs on his hand-held. “Sensors show they emerged from behind the freighter, Captain. Apparently they were lying in wait for just the opportunity we gave them. If I didn’t know better I’d say they expected us, right down to what our incoming vector would be.” He grunted quietly. “You were right. Those are amazingly good tactics for a bunch of pirates.”

  Sydney laughed humorlessly at the comment. “Yeah, this is one time I’d happily have been wrong. It certainly doesn’t bode well for what we’re going to face in the next while.” She shook her head. “For right now, XO, you keep tabs on the repair folks while I wrap things up with the freighter. We’ll escort them on to Outpost Station as soon as the marines report everything in hand and the civilians are buttoned up and ready to go.”

  Garvey had just nodded and headed back toward engineering when Rieger spoke up again from the comm station. “Captain, I’ve got Marine Sergeant Saans calling for you.”

  A twitch of a smile touched Sydney’s face — leave it to the Marines to call with good news just when it’s needed! “On the main screen,” she told Rieger. The stars disappeared from the huge screen at the front of the bridge, to be replaced a moment later with the rugged face of Gunnery Sgt. Morrie Saans, the ranking NCO of Morrigan’s Marine detachment. Saans gave a vicious grin when his equipment showed him his call was live.

  “Everything here is go, Captain,” he reported, glee palpable in his voice.

  “Give me a quick summary, Gunny,” Sydney prompted.

  The grin spread. “We’ve got the pirates accounted for, Ma’am — three in custody, two casualties. No injuries on our side. The freighter crew had locked the ship down and gone to ground in a safe room so no one hurt there, either. The civvies are in the process of unlocking their systems — apparently it’s local policy to lock down when pirates swoop in and just let them have whatever cargo they want. They say they’ll be ready to boost in about five.”

  Sydney nodded her understanding. “Good work, Sergeant. Leave two of your people on board as a liaison, the rest of you pack up the vermin and get back here — we’ll be underway as soon as the freighter’s ready.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Saans acknowledged, and was barking orders to his team even before the link to Morrigan blanked.

  “You heard that, everyone,” Sydney announced to the bridge at large. “We’re underway in five minutes. Rig for in-system transit. Mr. Womack,” she said to the navigation tech, “plot us a nice, straight course to Outpost Station at whatever that freighter’s best speed is. Ms. McInerny!”

  “Captain?” The young scan tech looked up, wondering at the captain’s tone.

  “I need you to keep an eye on the freighter as we go, since we’re going to be in close formation with them. At the same time I want you to keep every parsec of this system under observation. If any more pirates dare show their faces I want to know about it yesterday.”

  “Yes, Ma’am!”

  “Course laid in, waiting your order, Captain,” Womack reported.

  Garvey returned to her side at that moment. “Nothing our own repair crews can do, Captain,” he reported in a low voice. “More plates gone than the sensors initially showed — we’re going to need replacements, and best to do that much work in a spacedock.”

  Sydney turned a sour look at her executive officer. “If there is such a thing in this wild west system,” she said, her voice leaving little question she doubted the possibility. “I guess we’ll find out real quick just how ready 16 Cygni is for TSM support.”

  “Surely there’ll be something at Outpost Station,” Garvey said, though he sounded doubtful.

  “One can hope,” Sydney said, shaking her head for emphasis. “Mr. Rieger,” she then called to the comm tech, “get me a link to the Outpost Station manager as soon as we’re in range, please.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Rieger acknowledged. “Also, Captain, the marines on the freighter report all secure to resume course.”

  “Thank you Mr. Rieger,” Sydney acknowledged. “Tell them to get a move on; we’ll be right behind them. Mr. Hellespont, follow that freighter.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  4

  “Director Rudolph?”

  Outpost Station Managing Director Walter Rudolph looked up from his desk as a young station security officer knocked timidly on his door. Lieutenant Camilla Ann “Cami” Frye wasn’t really timid, the director knew — she had been his full-time assistant a mere six weeks before, until she had joined the station’s defense forces in response to the growing threat of pirates attacking the station.

  Seeing her now, bright and happy in her new uniform, Rudolph once more experienced the sense of kinship that Cami’s presence always triggered — she was the closest thing to family he had on the station, essentially a foster daughter since her parents and his wife had died in the same accident, ten years before. It was that deep, emotional connection that drove him to believe she had been conned into joining Security, despite knowing it was something she’d not-so-secretly wanted for a long time.

  He grudgingly admitted to himself that his opinion derived, in part, from the fact that Frye was now able to work for him only part of the time — her new commitments to drilling, training, and other station security duties took up the majority of her schedule. He sorely wished that those duties could be done by someone else. Not that station preparedness wasn’t important, he simply couldn’t live with the thought that Cami might be harmed.

  With a sigh, he shoved those thoughts aside, once again facing the present’s harsh reality. “What is it, Cami?”

  The young lieutenant took a step toward his desk and held out a data pad for him to look at. “We’ve detected explosions in the system, sir. They seem to be weapons fire. About six AU out.”

  Rudolph took the reader but scarcely glanced at its display, instead tapping a request into his desktop terminal. He studied the answer to his request for a moment then sank back in his chair with a sigh.

  “Today’s the day the Terran Space Military contingent is supposed to show up,” he muttered, more to himself than to Frye. “Looks like they’re here with a bang and a boom.”

  “Sir?” Frye looked confused by the manager’s remark. “Who would they have to shoot at?”

&n
bsp; Rudolph grunted derisively. “Pirates, what else?”

  “But it’s been ages since the pirates have bothered us here at C!”

  “Neglecting us doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten us,” Rudolph grunted. “My guess is that they arranged a special welcome for our new TSM guardians.”

  Frye was taken aback at the thought. “But how would they know when the military would be arriving?”

  “How do they know and do a lot of what they know and do?” The question was rhetorical; both manager and lieutenant knew that pirate behavior in the 16 Cygni system had become far more organized, far more ominous over the previous three years. The pirate successes reeked of inside information, though a leak had yet to be found in Outpost Station’s systems or personnel. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t one. Rudolph sighed again.

  “Doesn’t matter, TSM is here now and it’s their problem. Hopefully we’ll all be able to sleep a bit better for it.”

  Frye only shrugged.

  “Cami, do me a favor if you would. Keep a watch on incoming transmissions. If the military is four AU out it’ll be a while before they’re in range to check in. I want to know the moment they contact us, even if they don’t specifically ask to talk to me.”

  “Of course.” She accepted the data pad back, but paused before turning to leave.

  “What?”

  Frye seemed to hesitate a moment before speaking. “I was just wondering if they sent everything that we asked for,” she finally asked in a soft voice.

  Rudolph snorted. “A full squadron? Not likely. We’re too far out to rate that kind of firepower. But I was very clear that we need at least one boat for each star system. Three ships would be enough to make a big dent in the problem.”

  “I hope you’re right,” was all the young lieutenant whispered in response, but there was a frown on her face as she turned to finally leave the director’s office. Rudolph stared after her retreating form for a long moment.

  “I hope I’m right as well,” he finally muttered, then returned to the report he’d been working on when Frye had arrived.