The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

  Shaking his head, he typed a message on his console, ordering the senior chief to have a few words with the gamblers. There were always one or two assholes at the center of the ring, he knew from bitter experience, one or two crewmen cunning enough to lure inexperienced young men and women into bad habits. Perhaps this ring would be smart enough not to take it too far, something that would require his intervention, or into criminal realms. The captain would have to become involved as well, and there would be a full investigation. And the Navy Police would start rooting through the ship’s internal affairs to find out just what had happened and why.

  His review of the remaining files passed without incident, much to his relief. The older hands, who had won that title by being assigned to Lightning as soon as she was commissioned into the king’s service, had been helping the newcomers grow accustomed to the ship. Meanwhile, the newly qualified officers were doing well, apart from one who might have become ensnared by the gamblers. He made a note to speak to her if the disturbing financial transfers continued, and perhaps offer a few words of fatherly advice. If there was one thing he knew from his pre-Navy life, it was that the game was always rigged.

  “I’ve completed the exercise, sir,” Roach reported, breaking into his thoughts. “It seems to work fine, Commander, but we really need more cruisers to form a full squadron.”

  “And a command vessel,” William noted as he strode over to Roach’s station. The Uncanny-class hadn’t been intended to serve as command vessels. Their designers had configured them more for independent operations, pointing out that they were heavily armed and fast enough to run away from anything bigger than themselves. Given that they’d said the same about battle cruisers, William wasn’t too impressed. “We’d need another ship to coordinate the datanet.”

  “We might be able to reprogram the tactical computers to handle a datanet,” Roach said. “It would be risky, because we don’t have as many laser communicators as a dedicated command vessel or a superdreadnought, but it could be done.”

  William considered it for a long moment. “We’d also mark ourselves out as a target,” he warned, finally. “Every ship in the enemy fleet would fire on us.”

  “Probably,” Roach agreed. He tapped his console. “But we could make the same modifications on every other starship in the squadron. We’d all look like command vessels.”

  “I’m sure that would endear you to their crews,” William said. No one liked being a target, even if they were inside a superdreadnought’s formidable shields. “But it would also make it easier to keep the datanet up and running, wouldn’t it?”

  “I think so,” Roach said. “Right now, losing a command vessel means losing the datanet, even for superdreadnoughts. It takes time to relink the ships together, which gives the enemy time to fire on suddenly-isolated vessels. But if we had multiple datalinks up and running, we could just switch command and control to a different starship.”

  “Work out a plan,” William ordered. “Forward it to me once you’re done; we’ll go through it and see how well it holds up in the simulator.”

  And then we will have to test it for real, he thought, tartly. There was no other way, short of combat, to know how well a theory would work in practice. If Admiral Morrison lets us do any exercises at all.

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Robertson said, “we’re picking up a distortion zone alarmingly close to us.”

  William walked over to her console and looked down at the display. No one had a real model for predicting energy shifts within hyperspace, which meant that starships might have to change course at unpredictable intervals. Flying through the distortion zone wouldn’t be as bad as flying through a storm, but it would disrupt sensors and communications. It was the perfect place for an ambush.

  “Pass the word to the freighters,” he ordered. The captain had given him blanket authority to change course if he deemed it necessary. “Order them to prepare to change course to”—he studied Lieutenant Robertson’s console carefully—“the following coordinates.”

  He walked back to the command chair as the small convoy started to alter course. The distortion zone was growing stronger, he noted, sweeping towards the clustered vessels like an ever-expanding storm. Scientists sometimes wondered if the starships in hyperspace actually attracted storms and distortion zones. They sometimes did seem to blow up out of nowhere and overwhelm passing ships.

  “There’s going to be some disruption,” Lieutenant Robertson reported. “I . . .”

  There was a ping from Roach’s console. “Commander!” he snapped, interrupting the navigator. He would only interrupt if he thought it was urgent. “I think we have company.”

  William took a look at the sensor display, then nodded. There was something out there, hidden in the distortion zone. It was impossible to be sure, but they had to assume the worst.

  He keyed the console. “Red alert!” he said. “I say again, red alert! Captain to the bridge!”

  Chapter Eight

  “Report,” Kat snapped.

  Her XO was already rising from the command chair. “One starship on intercept vector,” he said. “She’s coming out of the distortion zone.”

  She must have been lurking in ambush, Kat thought. It wouldn’t have been too difficult for someone on Tyre to ping a signal ahead of them, inviting a pirate ship to take up position and wait for the convoy to arrive. Not bad timing on their part.

  “Bring the ship to battle stations, but do not raise shields,” she ordered. Shields didn’t work well in hyperspace and their mere presence would almost certainly tell the enemy that they weren’t approaching a helpless freighter.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Roach said.

  “How close can they come without getting a hard visual of our hull?”

  “They probably won’t have a good look at our hull until they’re much closer, Captain,” Roach replied, “but it’s impossible to be precise.”

  Kat nodded, reluctantly. Hyperspace did weird things to sensors, even visual scanners and crude telescopes. It was possible the enemy ship would reach point-blank range before realizing that something was badly wrong—and equally possible they would get a visual from thousands of kilometers away and shy off before Kat could open fire. All she could do was hope for the former.

  She ran through the tactical situation in her mind as her crew raced to battle stations. The enemy ship was coming up behind the convoy, which suggested its crew believed Lightning was at the prow of the formation. No pirate would dare tangle with a heavy cruiser if there was any way to avoid it. If they’d been right, the ambushers would definitely have a chance to pull a freighter away from the convoy before her escort noticed something was wrong.

  “All stations report combat ready,” her XO said. “Weapons systems are online, ready to fire; point defense datanet online, ready to go active on your command.”

  Kat smiled. They’d run exercises nearly every day since they’d left Tyre. They damn well should be at battle stations by now. She thought, briefly, of Davidson and his marines, taking up position to aid with damage control if necessary, then pushed the thought to the back of her mind. There were more important issues to handle.

  “Pass the word to the convoy master,” she said. She wished, suddenly, she knew the man better. But she’d resisted meeting with him after the endless barrage of complaints. “Inform him that we have company and that the convoy is to remain in formation. They are not to scatter.”

  The XO nodded without argument. Kat hadn’t expected one. A single pirate ship could be handled easily—Roach could blow their unwelcome companion out of space now, if she hadn’t wanted to take the pirate ship intact—but scattering would expose the convoy to any other pirate ships in the area. She looked down at the live feed from the sensors, trying to determine if there were any other vessels nearby, then scowled in irritation. It was impossible to be sure.

  But at least there isn’t anyone close enough to be noticed, she thought, relieved. We won’t have to worry abou
t multiple enemies.

  Kat settled back in her command chair and watched as the pirate ship slowly closed in on the rear of the convoy. The ship’s crew seemed to be playing it carefully; unless she was much mistaken, she was sure they could have caught up with her by now. But they had plenty of time to close in on their target, all the while bracing themselves to run or crash back to real space if Lightning put in an appearance. Kat allowed herself a cold smile. She wanted the pirate ship intact, she wanted prisoners to interrogate . . . but she wouldn’t shed any tears if the vessel was accidentally blown apart or destroyed by a hyperspace storm. Pirate crews had gone far outside any standards of morality. They deserved nothing less than death.

  An alarm buzzed. “They just swept us,” Roach said. “I think our ECM fooled them.”

  “Prepare to fire,” Kat ordered, sharply. If the pirates had realized what Lightning actually was, they’d have started to run. She’d only have a few minutes to kill them before hyperspace hid them from her sensors once again. “Lock weapons on target, but do not go active. I say again, do not go active.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Roach said. He would have kept a firm lock on the pirate ship as soon as they’d detected her, but the order had to be repeated. “Weapons locked; I say again, weapons locked.”

  Kat felt her heart thumping within her chest as the pirate ship seemed to hesitate, then glided closer. The pirates had been fooled! ECM was always tricky, even in real space. The slightest mistake could render one of the most expensive systems in the Navy worse than useless. But it had definitely worked. The pirates still thought they were crawling towards a harmless freighter.

  She thought, fast. Civilian sensors were rarely military-grade. What would be a reasonable time for the freighter they were pretending to be to detect the pirates? The pirates knew that anyone who detected them would alert their escort, which meant . . . the pirates would probably issue their demands as soon as they believed they’d been detected. Ideally, they’d want to do it before their target could scream for help.

  “Go active when they reach here,” she ordered, tapping a point on the display. By then, a basic civilian-grade kit should have located the pirate ship. “Sweep them, but make it look sloppy.”

  Roach turned to grin. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Kat looked up and saw the XO’s face. He looked as pleased with the situation as Kat felt—more so, in fact. Kat recalled his file and understood. Tyre had never been attacked by pirates—even during the worst days of the Breakdown, the system had been heavily defended against rogue starships—but Hebrides had been attacked several times. It hadn’t been until the Royal Tyre Navy had established a permanent presence in the system that attacks had died away, leaving a legacy of bloody slaughter and slavery. No one from the XO’s homeworld would show any mercy to pirates.

  Nor will I, Kat thought.

  But she knew she had permission to offer the pirates their lives in exchange for information. Life on Nightmare would be far from fun—the last report had suggested the exiles had set up small communities and were raiding each other—but it wasn’t death.

  We need the intelligence only they can provide, she reminded herself as she looked back at the holographic display. The red icon representing the pirate ship was drawing closer, while a wave of distortion was coming into view ahead of the convoy. Letting them keep their lives is a small price for actionable intelligence.

  Kat gritted her teeth as the distortion washed closer. If she’d been in command of the pirate ship, she would open communications once the distortion was close enough to make it difficult to signal Lightning. They’d get their threats in first, followed by promises few spacers would believe. But if the crew refused to cooperate, the pirates could simply launch a missile barrage and blow their ships into atoms, even though it would gain the attackers nothing. There was hope, their victims might think, even if the pirates took them as slaves.

  She shuddered at the thought. She’d seen pirate slaves—men and women liberated after HMS Thomas had captured a pirate base. They’d been broken beyond repair. The lucky ones had skills the pirates could use, so they’d been press-ganged into joining pirate crews, but the unlucky ones had been raped, then put to work as manual laborers. Human slavery and trafficking was alive and well on the edge of explored space, despite the best efforts of the more civilized powers. Even the Theocracy cooperated when it came to hunting down pirates.

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Ross said, “I’m picking up a tight-beam radio signal.”

  “Put it through,” Kat ordered.

  “. . . under the guns of a warship,” a harsh male voice said. There was so much static that it was hard, even with computer enhancement, to be entirely sure they were hearing the entire message. “You are ordered to cut your drives and prepare to be boarded. Do not attempt to alert any other ship in your convoy. If you cooperate, your lives will be spared.”

  Kat’s lips twitched. Few spacers would believe promises from pirates. If she’d been a merchant skipper, she might just have tried to ram the pirate ship. It wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of working in real space, but it would definitely have had a chance in hyperspace. And even if it failed, the pirates would have been forced to blow their own prize rather than take it intact. It might cost them dearly, in the long run. Pirate economics demanded a constant supply of prizes just to feed their market.

  “Tell them that we will cooperate,” she said, “as long as our lives are spared.”

  Her smile grew wider. “And try to sound scared when you say it,” she added. “Let them think we’re feeling vulnerable.”

  She could imagine the reaction on the pirate ship as someone young, female, and apparently helpless begged for mercy. They’d probably find it funny, she knew, as well as a lure pulling them closer. If their crew hadn’t been psychotic before they’d boarded their ship, they probably would be by now. Some of the men they’d tried to rescue, the ones who had been forced to work onboard the pirate ships, had been just as bad as their enslavers by the time they’d been found. Others had zoned out completely.

  “They’re ordering us to fall back from the convoy slowly,” Lieutenant Ross reported. “And not to signal anyone else.”

  “Unsurprising,” Kat commented. She looked at the helmsman. “Comply with their directive. And remember we’re posing as a freighter.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Weiberg said. “Reducing speed . . . now.”

  “Establish a tight-beam link with the convoy master,” Kat ordered. “Inform him of our situation and order him to keep his ships in formation. I don’t want anyone to come looking for us.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Ross said.

  “And order him not to reply,” Kat added quickly. “We don’t want the pirates to hear it.”

  “They might pick up our signal,” the XO warned softly. No one else could hear him. “This is hyperspace.”

  Kat nodded. Hyperspace did weird things to radio signals, no matter how carefully they were transmitted. It was quite possible that a tight beam signal would be scattered, allowing the enemy to pick up on it despite being on the other side of the transmitter. If that happened . . . the pirate ship would probably open fire, intent on punishing the freighter that had dared defy orders. Kat would have no choice but to kill the attackers as quickly as possible.

  Seconds ticked away. It rapidly became clear that the pirates hadn’t picked up the signal.

  “Picking up another signal,” Ross said. She sounded rather surprised. “They’re ordering us to hold position and be ready to greet them. All weapons are to be stowed in lockers; any onboard security systems are to be disabled.”

  The XO snorted. “Who do they think we are?”

  Kat had to smile. It was common for passenger liners and select shipping freighters to have onboard security systems, but rare for standard freighters to have anything beyond a safe and security locks on the computers. The pirates might have assumed the worst, though; it was a logical precaution. And the
order to stow all weapons suggested they didn’t intend to take additional risks.

  Or perhaps it will give them an excuse to break their agreement, she thought, grimly. But they don’t really need the excuse.

  “They’re entering approach vector now,” Roach reported. “I don’t think they’re interested in maintaining plausible deniability any longer.”

  “Good,” Kat said. Her lips curved into a tight smile. The game was about to come to an end. “Neither am I.”

  Pirate crews had never impressed her with their intelligence, but it was unlikely they would get much closer without taking a hard look at her hull. Roach’s passive sensors were already filling in details, suggesting that the pirate ship was an old frigate, probably one dating all the way back to the Breakaway Wars. A number of such ships had gone missing after the wars had come to an end, although no one was quite sure how many. The UN had kept extensive records—every little thing had to be detailed, according to the bureaucrats who actually ran the government—but the records had been destroyed on Earth. Speculation over just how many ships remained in existence had been a common topic of conversation at Piker’s Peak.

  “I have hard locks on their drive section,” Roach reported. He sounded pleased with himself. The locks had been established without needing to run an active sensor sweep. “I can pop a hammerhead missile into their ass, no problem.”

  “Excellent,” Kat said. In normal space, she would have used energy weapons, but they were dangerously unpredictable in hyperspace. There was a reason most people preferred to avoid fighting battles outside real space. “Prepare to fire on my command.”

  She braced herself. One of the other reasons why fighting in hyperspace was so dangerous was that explosions tended to attract energy storms. They could score a damaging hit on their target, allowing them to board the hulk, yet an energy storm could blow up around them and destroy the crippled vessel before it could be claimed. Even a hammerhead missile, a warhead designed to inflict limited damage, ran the risk of drawing a storm to them. But there was no real choice. The only other option was blowing the pirate ship into dust.