by T. R. Harris
Robert gritted his teeth. Can’t that son-of-a-bitch at least pretend to be part of a military operation?
“They’re firing, Captain,” Moran reported.
“Evasive maneuvers—”
“Not at us, but at the flitters. I count over twenty missiles closing.”
“Lt. Sinclair, report!” Robert called into the comm.
“Here, Captain,” came the immediate reply.
“How many KST units do you have left?”
“Six.”
The answer sent a shiver down Robert’s spine. That would leave a lot of tearful widows back on Ione. “Sorry to ask this, but can any of your units intercept the fire from that cruiser? We have to give the strike crews more time to bunch up the cargo ships.”
“We’re on our way already.”
Robert watched his screen as six gravity lines appeared out of the upper left corner and on an intercept course for the tracking lines of the twenty Vixx’r missiles. Similar tracks began to extend out from the squad of KST ships, creating vector lines with the incoming enemy fire. It didn’t take a tactical genius to see that a third of the alien missiles would still make it through.
Suddenly the grav-sig of one of the KST ships flared bright and white as contact surged ahead.
“Who’s that?” Robert asked.
“Mercer, Captain,” Sinclair replied.
“What’s he doing?”
“He unfurled his light-speed sails….”
Within two seconds, Mercer’s ship was positioned in a direct line with the incoming missiles.
“That was stupid,” Drake’s voice said over the loudspeakers. “All he can do is take out one or two of them from there—”
Just then the contact dot that was Jarret Mercer’s KST ship grew to ten times its normal intensity and filled an area of space nearly equal to the spread of the Vixx’r missile tracks. The trails entered the brilliant white mark on Robert’s screen…and none came out the other side. The huge glowing dot began to quickly dissipate on the screen until there was nothing left but blackness.
The comm line was conspicuously silent as commanders and crew took in the significance of what just a happened. They didn’t have to vocalize it—they all knew. Jarret Mercer and his co-pilot had deliberately overloaded the gravity drive generators to create a massive nuclear explosion between the incoming missiles and the strikecraft. The missiles had been absorbed by the blast.
“Let’s get back in the game everyone,” Robert said into the comm. “They’ll be time to honor the fallen once the battle’s over. Drake, take out that bastard!”
“Yes, sir!” came the emphatic—and proper—reply.
The Kai Shek was faster than the Vixx’r cruiser and had closed to within a thousand miles when Drake lit off his cannon. A split second later Robert’s long-range visual showed the rear end of the cruiser as it opened up like the mouth of some strange sea creature. A jagged metal collar then folded back on the ship from the massive explosion. The energy readings for the warcraft fell to zero.
“Good job, Mr. Drake. Now break off and go freelancing. We still have five more escorts out there.”
*****
BRONSON’S strikecraft buzzed the long column of Vixx’r haulers, with the bulk of them concentrated at the forward end of the line. The convoy quickly fell apart as eight huge container ships turned in random directions in an effort to avoid their stalled sister ships ahead. Two of the ships bolted off at a ninety-degree angle from the convoy. They accelerated and were soon in contact with the wafting nebula material that made up the sides of the Channel. Robert could see their signatures brighten as sails unfurled and neutron collectors engaged.
“They’re going to jump, Chief!” Robert said. “I thought you said they wouldn’t?”
“I said they shouldn’t, not if they want to survive on the other side of the jump. Look, sir, they’re stripping out whole sections of the gas cloud just powering up.”
A squad of Bronson’s flitters gave chase and began firing at their engines and masts. Several bursts struck the topside of the one of the containers ships, ripping away the mainmast. The grav signature of the ship dimmed considerably. That one wasn’t going anywhere. Yet the other one suddenly flared bright and streaked, disappearing off the edge of Robert’s screen. There was a noticeable afterglow as nebula gas and debris trailed after the cargo vessel, energized by the massive dose of neutrons.
“They’ll be shredded the moment they dump out,” the Chief said. “And all to keep a cargo of shiny metal out of our hands.”
“Second cruiser to starboard, sir!” Ryan Grossman shouted across the bridge.
Kincaid focused his attention back on the battle. “Gunners, standby,” he ordered. “Target has just angled up twenty degrees. Be expecting a dive of forty.”
A brief five seconds later the Vixx’r starship did change course, diving down abruptly—but at only thirty-eight degrees. The Malicious jerked several times as missiles were launched, their tracks focused on where the cruiser would be in a matter of seconds. An impressive number of missiles hit their target, which was about four times the firepower necessary to vaporize the enemy ship.
“How did you know, sir?” Grossman asked with admiration.
‘Classic Vixx’r move; fake to one direction and then cut to double that in another. Seen it a dozen times.”
“Impressive…Captain,” Drake said through the speakers. Robert could almost hear the smile in the man’s voice.
While the Malicious was busy taking out the Vixx’r cruiser, Javon Steele and the Revenge had been busy, too. The gigantic warship had managed to eliminate three of the destroyers, which left only one remaining. That ship was now at least a light-year away and about to link up with the ten other Vixx’r ships closing on the battlefield from a direction outside the Darius Nebula.
Still relatively new to the Reaches, the Vixx’r pilots had been delayed in their arrival by half an hour as they encountered current turbulence approaching Darius. This was the Morpheus Rift, which was well-known to the locals, but nothing more than a notation on the alien charts.
The delay allowed Robert and his forces to regroup and prepare for the coming attack. Bronson and his strikecraft had fourteen of the twenty cargo ships corralled and under guard; one of the ships had escaped, while five had been inadvertently destroyed in the battle. Still, the haul would be impressive.
When the alien re-enforcements arrived, an energized Javon Steele sent his mighty dreadnaught right up the middle of their column, firing from all sides with an accuracy that improved with each shot. All his crew needed was a little on-the-job training to master the controls like old pros.
The Malicious and Kai Shek did their part, as well, with Drake clicking off another kill and Robert adding four more notches to his mental score of seventy-eight—counting the time he’d spent in the Shadowlands. The way he saw it, a kill was a kill, as long as it meant one less Vixxie warship able to fight.
With all opposition eliminated in the region, Robert and his pirates next turned their attention to the huddled mass of Vixx’r container ships now surrounded by Bronson’s flitters. This was the real prize, and they were all anxious to find out what was behind door number three.
On his screen, Robert watched as two large shuttlecraft—formerly part of the inventory of Kincaid Shipping and Transport—snapped onto the dark hull of a container ship as remote monitors on the exterior of the shuttles showed thin red beams of intense laser light slicing through the skin of the hauler. Kincaid switched to an interior view of an assault shuttle, where he saw a gathering of twenty armed men and women ready for boarding.
Kincaid fingered a comm switch on the arm of his command chair. “Assault teams, remember plasma swords only. Projectiles can penetrate the hull, and you know how flimsy these things are.”
Aboard the shuttle, Chief David Olsen looked up into the camera at the forward edge of the ceiling. “I hope the Sludgers follow suit, sir.”
Tha
t had been a major concern of his senior staff—whether or not the Vixxie would simply destroy their own ships when they saw that the cause was lost? But these were civilian aliens aboard the cargo haulers and it was decided that they wouldn’t be in as much of a rush as the military to commit suicide just to keep the cargo out of the hands of pirates. Kincaid felt the sweat on his palms as he waited out the final seconds until the hull was breached. He hoped the overmatched aliens would simply surrender their ships. He would soon know which direction the battle would take.
*****
A large slab of alien hull fell inward and Kincaid’s pirates stormed aboard. At first they met no resistance, but as they moved farther down the corridor several of the Vixx’r sprang out, their own plasma swords leaving brilliant streaks on the video image Kincaid watched from the bridge of the Malicious.
The two groups came together, but only briefly. The Vixxies abruptly turned tail and retreated farther into the ship. The aliens separated down three passageways, with Olsen and his boarding party following, five or six combatants to each corridor. As Robert’s men and women moved ever deeper into the alien ship, tiny camera drones flew upwards at regular intervals to attach themselves to the corridor ceiling and began to relay images of the battle onto the bridge of the Malicious.
Soon, most of the enemy was dead or in hiding in other parts of the ship. That was when one of his split-screen images showed Jimmy Harper, the young mail carrier volunteer from Anchorage, standing alone in a passageway, his fiery plasma sword held out in front him. Kincaid manipulated the camera angle of the drone until he could see down an adjoining corridor. Three Vixxie were there and moving toward the solitary Human. Each of the aliens wore rubberized breast shields over their adornments to keep the necklaces from jingling, and their swords were dark. It was obvious they meant to sneak up on the unsuspecting man.
“Jimmy…on your right!” Kincaid screamed into his comm.
Robert’s unexpected outburst startled the nervous kid. He shuddered violently and dropped his plasma sword. The split image showed the Vixxie take off in a sprint as their swords flashed to life. Jimmy bent over to pick up his weapon, still unaware of the aliens a mere fifteen feet away.
Robert opened his mouth to speak again, but shut it abruptly as a flash of blue light streaked across Jimmy’s path, heading for the aliens.
Chief Olsen shot through on his jet pack, crashing headlong into the trio of Vixx’r. He slapped the emergency release button on the pack and jumped to his feet, his sword flaring. Alien body parts quickly littered the metal deck, the blood splatters adding an almost artistic touch to the light gray walls of the corridor.
It was over in an instant, yet when Kincaid swept the camera view back to Jimmy, he found the young man slumped against the wall, a wide swath of red covering his left side.
“Chief, check on Jimmy! He’s been hurt.”
Olsen’s image swept into view, and the large man knelt down. He pulled away the bloody fabric and surveyed the injury. After a moment’s hesitation he placed the cloth back over the wound and took Jimmy’s face into his huge, bloody hands. The desperate eyes he peered into didn’t stay desperate for long. Instead they froze, capturing the last calm moment of the boy’s short life.
Chief Olsen scanned the ceiling until he spotted the camera drone. He slowly shook his head.
Kincaid had lost men in battle before, but this was different. He had known Jimmy Harper his entire life and it was at his insistence that the young man leave the safety and security of his home to join Kincaid in his crusade against the Vixx’r.
“Secure the ship, Chief, and then bring Jimmy back to the Malicious. Any other casualties?” He was afraid to hear the answer.
The Chief queried his internal comm unit before answering. “Three more wounded, one seriously. No other casualties on this ship. Don’t know about the others.”
“Roger that. I’ll be coming over as soon as you give the all-clear.”
*****
ONLY two other men had died aboard the other haulers, one of Kincaid’s military crew and one of the kitchen staff that had left the Vixxie prison with him. The final tally was still to be tabulated, but it looked as though he’d lost thirty-two men total, mostly within the KST contingent. When a commander’s total force numbered fewer than two hundred that was high a percentage. But it was also more than just a number.
When he was in the regular Navy, Robert had fought alongside men and women who would eventually join the growing list of KIA’s. Yet those people were professional military personnel. He had gotten to know a fair number of them, yet in the throes of war there was an unwritten rule against getting too close to your shipmates. It made it easier to move on…afterwards.
Yet the bulk of Robert’s current crew consisted of ex-KST employees he’d grown up with. These were his friends, people with whom he had a depth of existence seldom shared in normal combat relations. He knew their wives, husbands, children and neighbors, which added a dimension to the sense of loss he felt that he had never before experienced.
And now, as the Malicious sent out an umbilical tether to the first alien cargo hauler, he was about to find out if the price they’d paid for all this loss was worth it.
Reports began to filter in from the other cargo ships: some gold, but not much, mainly industrial minerals and metals. Robert had the sickening feeling that he’d been set up; that the main reason for assembling such a large convoy was so a trap could be set. As a consequence, the twenty cargo ships didn’t have to carry any real cargo. And that was just what they were finding.
Before returning to the Malicious, Chief Olsen gave his Captain a tour of the cargo hold of the hauler where Jimmy Harper breathed his last.
Olsen and six other sailors were already in the hold and standing near a cluster of four-foot high by ten-foot long cargo containers, probably eighteen in all. The lids were off half of them. The look on the Chief’s face didn’t bring any comfort to Kincaid.
“Gypsum and some bauxite, Captain. But these nine have security markers.”
“Crack ’em open, Chief,” Kincaid ordered. He could have sworn his voice cracked as he spoke the words.
The men set to work and in two minutes all the lids were removed. Kincaid and the officers moved in to take a look.
It was gold! Huge, three-foot by nine-foot ingots of the precious metal…but only in three of the nine containers. The others held just worthless dirt, as far as Kincaid was concerned.
Olsen looked embarrassed, as if it was somehow his fault that the hauler he’d secured contained such a small amount of treasure. “Yo ho, yo ho… a pirate’s life for me!” the Chief sang out. “Nobody said we’d get rich being pirates.”
“Yeah, someone did—me.”
“Don’t worry, Captain, I’m sure when everything gets counted it will still be a good amount.”
“Maybe for the crew, Chief…but not for the loss.”
“When is it ever? We’ve both been through some shit; when is it ever worth the loss?”
“Get these containers aboard the ship and then scuttle the hauler. I don’t want to leave a way for the Sludgers to carry away any more of our wealth from the Reaches. Heaven knows we have so little of it left.”
*****
BONDEL Drake tapped Claudia Damon on the shoulder and pointed. “That one looks different, doesn’t it?”
The hauler in question was the last one to join the convoy and had been assigned to Drake and his crew to survey and secure. “Looks like a former combatant,” Claudia observed. “Look how the turrets have been removed and the cannon hatches welded shut.”
“That’s a four-master,” Drake said. “Why would they convert a heavy-duty vessel like that into a freighter? Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, it gets stranger.” Claudia was bent over one of the monitor screens on the bridge of the Kai Shek. “The interior is reading minus forty degrees and internal energy output is barely registering. The beast looks to be empty.”
Drake was livid. He could hear the reports coming over the comm regarding the contents of the other thirteen haulers they’d captured. Scraps, dregs, peanuts—whatever you wanted to call it, the entire raid was turning out to be a near-bust. And now Claudia was saying their last best hope of finding a shipload of treasures was just a huge, unmanned decoy.
Bondel slipped into the pilot’s seat.
“You’re not even going to take a look inside?”
“You just said it was empty.”
“Empty of people—of Vixxie. But you don’t need heat and an atmosphere to transport gold and silver.”
Bondel climbed out of the pilot’s seat. “Fine, then grab Steve and the others and let’s go take a look. After that I’m having a talk with Kincaid. I doubt if our share will even cover the fuel cost getting here. And we lost a stabilizing fin; that’s going to cost over two grand just by itself.
“Stop your whining,” Claudia said. “You can be such a baby at times. Now let’s get on some thermal suits. It’s going to be as cold as your mood in there.”
10
“THIS place is so weird,” Claudia Damon whispered into her microphone. She looked over at Steve Nash, who nodded back at her. Before the battle, Steve had come to Claudia for help on how to re-energize a Vixxie computer set-up they had captured during one of the earlier raids. Claudia was pretty sure she’d won the argument when she got the computer to at least turn on and show some signs of life. The Kai Shek’s so-called computer whiz wasn’t happy, but he should have known not to come to her with his problem. She always did have a nasty habit of being better at everything than anyone else.
Steve nodded. He gave her a lopsided smile despite the fact that she was sure he was scared out of his wits. The kid had never been in a firefight before—not that this was supposed to be one. The Vixxie hauler was as dead as a rock and as cold as a stone.