by Kalina, Mark
"Navigation, coordinate with Tactical. Burn to generate a vector to set up the shot. Sensors," Filjon continued, "keep a close watch on that pirate. Navigation, Tactical, as soon as our warhead is away, vector to engage that void-runner son-of-a-bitch."
"Stand by for acceleration," came the warning from the navigation officer.
"Launch warning!" The alarm from Tactical managed to surprise Filjon again. The data feed showed the details.
"God damn them!" exclaimed Filjon, half in disbelief. The pirate swift-ship had launched six more warheads, on ballistic courses towards another civilian ship. A moment's focus on the data feeds showed it to be the Sunrise Unlimited, an old FTL passenger-carrier carrying almost two hundred passengers.
---
"Fuck," hissed Nas Killick. The faster response of the guard-ships was costing him more and more of the profit from this job. Only one of the guard-ships was a problem; that one must have skimmed the gas giant's atmosphere, compensating for atmospheric drag with carefully managed bursts of its drive, to get here this fast. The other guard-ship was just barely over the horizon, a bit too far away to have any chance of affecting what was going to happen here.
And no matter how much profit Nas lost, it was going to happen. It was more than a matter of pride; Nas and Whisperknife had to succeed, to keep their reputation. That was worth more than the whole of the payment, to Nas. The presence of the guard-ships was enough reason for most Brotherhood ships to break off; if Whisperknife succeeded in spite of this, the benefit to their reputation would be worth more than the payment.
It had been rather nice of the captain of that guard-ship to broadcast that warning. If the bastards hadn't warned him, his own plan might have failed there and then. It still could. It turned now on psychology. He'd fired a full salvo of warheads. They were far out of effective range, ballistic, but they were still a threat. The guard-ship could just let them come, trusting that the passenger-carrier could handle it; between the civilian ship's limited defensive armament and evasion, it might be able to stop the six warheads. Or might not. Or the guard-ship could maneuver to engage the warheads: It would be easy for the warship to shoot them all down; the warheads' flight time was more than long enough to ensure kills, so long as the guard-ship maneuvered to engage them. But that would keep it from vectoring to get its own warhead to intercept the first shot he had fired at the 'liner. Nas had no intention of letting the warheads actually hit; killing the passenger liner was of no use to him. There were void-runner crews who would have reveled in the atrocity of it, but even though the Whisperknife would not be deterred by collateral damage, neither would Nas cause collateral damage needlessly. But the guard-ship couldn't know that...
---
Demi-Captain Gabrayal Filjon of the Hegemony Yuro System Defense Fleet guard-ship Interdiction watched six enemy warheads closing in at the passenger-carrier and wondered what to do. In all his tens of thousands of hours in the System Defense Fleet, he had never personally been in anything approaching this sort of situation before. If he made a mistake, people would die. It was an unsettling feeling.
The fact that the pirate had fired the second salvo meant that the first shot, fired at the drifting freight-liner, was important to the pirates. They really wanted to destroy that ship. And there might well be hostages aboard her. But now they had endangered a second ship too. The Sunrise Unlimited was not drifting helpless; in fact, she was doing her best to get out of the way. But the six warheads had been fired with a wide and carefully plotted spread, and the passenger-carrier was slow. She could not use her main drive to evade; there were too many other ships too close. The radiation from the exhaust plume of her main drive would be like a blade of nuclear fire, causing catastrophic damage to at least three other ships "parked" close to the passenger-carrier. Those ships were moving as well, but all that took time, and the warheads were getting closer.
The passenger carrier had point defense lasers, protection from small space debris and some defense against pirates, but not a reliable defense against a salvo of anti-ship warheads.
"Tactical," he said, "run the point defense sim again based on the latest data. What are the odds the Sunrise Unlimited can intercept all the warheads that come within detonation range of her?"
"Sir, the sims come up at 62%, using the defense plan we sent them and counting limited evasive action using maneuver drives. If they use their main drive the odds go up to 88%, sir, according to the sims.
"But Captain," the tactical officer went on, "if we don't make the burn to give our own warhead a base vector in the next eight minutes, we will not be able to intercept the warhead heading for the freight-liner."
Time, thought Filjon. Time was not on his side. The inbound warheads were fifteen minutes from the passenger carrier. The first pirate warhead was seventeen minutes from the more distant freight-liner. And every minute he waited was more time for the pirate to do something else.
"Navigation, you're sure there's no way we can maneuver to engage both sets of warheads?" Filjon asked again.
"Certain, sir."
"Alright. I don't think we have a choice," said Filjon. "Those pirates really want the freight-liner destroyed, and that means we do not want that to happen. But there can't be more than a few hostages on the 'liner and there are almost two hundred innocent people on the passenger-carrier. Navigation, boost to bring us into range of the warheads aimed at the Sunrise Unlimited. Tactical, engage with lasers. I want those warheads vaporized. As soon as that's done, get us in range of that fucking pirate!"
13
"Muir, what the hell are you doing here?" Demi-Captain Freya Tralk asked as she watched the terrain roll by beneath the skimmer's stub wing. The acro-telestos' estate was receding rapidly behind them, and as the skimmer climbed Freya could see the distant tops of the city's towers blinking red and white with navigation warning lights, and, rising from among them, the silver thread of the orbital elevator, bisecting the sky.
Muir had not answered her on the ground. He had simply pointed into the skimmer, and climbed into the pilot's seat. Freya had sat beside him, and he had lifted the skimmer into the air with practiced ease. The howl of one of the skimmer's lift fans, ill-tuned, had drowned out conversation at first, but as they gathered speed and the stub wings began to take over the job of generating lift, the lift fans no longer needed full power and speech became possible again.
"What are you doing here?" asked Freya again, putting a tone of command into her voice.
Muir said, "Piloting this skimmer for you, Captain."
"Don't evade the question. Why aren't you aboard Ice Knife?
"I left a Demi-Captain Persios Talso in command. He seemed a decent fellow, a telestos of good lineage, who joined the local system defense fleet from Yuro Government Service. Very patriotic, you know," said Muir, with a light tone. "He's got a warrant as an exchange officer to the Central Throne Fleet, and who knows, he might even be qualified. But I don't want to serve under him.
"Captain," Muir went on, "the orders we got... I just had to see what was going on. There were just too many 'red flags.' For one, Ice Knife has been in the refit docks for too long, and the excuses the refit crews were making were getting too strained."
"Oh, really?"
"Even accounting for the hard use we put her to, the ship shouldn't have taken more than twenty or thirty hours to refit, refuel and rearm. Instead they keep 'finding problems in the supply chain,' or running into things we need that 'they just aren't used to dealing with.' And then some System Defense Fleet functionary decided that the reactor needed to collapse the femto-singularity and restart, according to Yuro System Defense Fleet standard operating procedures, and never mind Central Throne Fleet procedures.
"There is just no way a system defense fleet base doesn't refit Fleet swift-ships coming in from patrol. Yuro ought to see something like two dozen patrols every tenkay, all of them wanting nothing too different from what Ice Knife needs. If it was incompetence, which was m
y thought at first, the Fleet would have taken issue with it before this. So that leaves something funny going on... in the 'no one is laughing' sort of way.
"And then there's the Skyrunner. She came in better than a hundred hours before us; Demi-Captain Meryl had to top off reaction mass too, and deal with some damage. I tried to find the refit logs for that, while you were on the station and Ice Knife was waiting for things that ought to have been ready at hand... and the records aren't there. Oh, there are records of the Skyrunner coming in, and leaving, but no records of the repairs, or even of refueling."
Muir's voice was suddenly very earnest, no lightness in it at all. "So something is going on here. And then I got a very brief report on a pirate raid, in this system. Seems that someone attacked and destroyed a freight-liner called the Ulia's Flower... the same 'liner that escaped from the Waypoint system and reported those raiders...
"After that, when we were told you had requested an exchange duty in the Yuro System Defense Fleet... well, that was the biggest red flag of all. At that point, I had to know what was happening with you.
"So I managed to get planet-side," Muir went on, a bit more lightly. "I took the Ice Knife's shuttle to a little orbital factory station, 'to requisition some parts,' and then rode a civilian shuttle down. From there I tracked down where you were going to be and thought you'd need a driver. "
"Which makes you AWOL, doesn't it, Muir?" asked Freya.
"That depends on whether you're asking about the letter or the spirit of regulation, Captain. There were a lot of routine requests for Demi-Captain Talso to approve, and one of them happens to be an indefinite leave for one of his officers. Of course that's not what it looked like when he approved it, but that's what it looks like now, if anyone checks."
"Holy shit, Muir! You've committed yourself pretty far here. If that comes up in an investigation... But OK, under the circumstances, I suppose I approve. And yes, I do know something is going on here," said Freya. "I just got pushed into accepting a detached exchange-service post in command of a system fleet guard-ship. And believe me, I did not request it. The acro-telestos told me Ice Knife had already been assigned a new captain."
"Alright then, Captain, since it seems there's something going on... I suppose it now falls to us to figure out just what in the hell is going on."
"Yup," said Freya and smiled. It was an undeniable boost to have Muir here with her.
"It could just be system politics," she said. "Or it could be the acro-telestos trying to bury us under a rug. I'm not sure what losing a Fleet assault-ship would do to his position, out here. Yuro wasn't showing any hints of rebellion last I checked, but maybe the local Throne Fleet representatives are nervous. Or, more likely, the acro-telestos himself. He's the only direct Central Throne representative who's actually assigned here on Yuro IV on a permanent basis, and if someone starts looking for political scapegoats, he has no one to hide behind."
"Hmm... That's not a bad analysis, Captain," said Muir, with a smile in his voice.
Freya winced silently. No doubt her multi-generation-aristokratai-lineage executive officer could read this political situation better than she could. Muir was only a acro-hetairos in social rank himself, but he was still young, just starting his social climb, and his lineage was one of the most noble in the Hegemony. When she had entered the Fleet Academy, going through the pressure cooker of Basic Selection, she had resented the aristokratai-born cadets who had only to pass the Examinations and progress straight to their advanced training. But in all the time she had had Ice Knife, Muir had proved to be a solid, skilled officer, someone she trusted to cover her back whatever the situation. And over the last few thousand hours, Muir had also become a friend.
The city was growing closer. The orbital elevator tower was visible from so far away that there seeing it gave no sense of distance, but now the cluster of kilometer-tall towers of the city's central district was clearly visible as well. This far out from the city, the skimmer was still outside the traffic control zone and Muir could fly as fast as he pleased. Still, there were the beginnings of some air traffic. Another aircar was following the same course towards the city, flying above and behind them. The ground below was forest of some sort, spiky green-blue "trees" with no leaves that Freya could make out, though the tangle of spiky branches gave the look of foliage from this high up. Freya did not know much about the ecology of Yuro IV. It was human-habitable, and had been colonized directly from old Earth during the Escape, not as a secondary colony from one of the initial colonies.
Abruptly there was a loud banging sound and the skimmer shuddered, like a ground car hitting a pothole.
"Muir, what are you doing?" asked Freya.
The skimmer's cabin was suddenly saturated with a flash of blinding light, almost too brief to register, but bright enough to hurt. The skimmer lurched again, and began to rattle loudly and shake.
"Laser! We're under fire!" Freya shouted. Muir nosed the skimmer down into a diving turn before she finished her shout. Freya craned her head around, fighting the suddenly tilting cabin to look back. There was another flash, not as bright, but this time Freya could see the faint ionization trail left by a laser pulse as it tracked past the skimmer.
The rear section of the skimmer, just behind the cabin, was burned. The plastic hull panels had been ripped open and peeled back by a laser pulse. The skimmer was trailing a faint stream of smoke.
Behind, just behind, Freya could see the other aircar, turning and diving to follow Muir's evasion. The other aircar looked like a civilian skimmer, small, gold colored, with the canopy retracted to make it open topped. Its single pilot wore a bright red racing helmet with a polarized face shield.
Muir was fighting to pull up now, still continuing a spiraling turn, but the skimmer shook and shuddered as he tried to bring the nose up. The damaged hull panels rattled loudly in the splitstream.
The pilot of the gold skimmer leveled off and raised one hand, aiming a sidearm pulse laser. It seemed to Freya that the weapon was leveled right at her. She threw herself down onto the seat, and again the cabin flashed with the glare of the laser pulse. The rear window shattered into a spray of half-molten plastic. Freya shouted as bits of the plastic landed on her back, burning hot even through the protective material of her uniform. She twisted and brushed at her back to get them off, burning her hand a bit as well. Freya hit the mental overrides to shut off the pain and tried to get up again, shaking the last bits of windscreen off of herself. The uneven tilt of the cabin made her stumble a Muir tightened the skimmer's turn.
There was another flash of laser fire, and the left stub wing flared with painful brilliance and started shedding bits of debris into the splitstream. The damaged wing's plastic structural panels started burning with a thick white smoke.
"Get us down!" shouted Freya.
"We're going down, alright!" said Muir. "The super-conductor coil is overheating and we're losing power. Strap yourself in."
Freya hurried to get herself back into one of the seats, fumbling with the safety restraints. Muir had pulled out of the steep dive now, and the skimmer was flying straight, losing altitude slowly as its lift fans lost power. The ground was getting very close, and Muir was trying to aim for a clearing among the spiky blue "trees" below. The other skimmer was hard to see through the smoke pouring from their skimmer's left wing and rear. Freya hoped that the smoke would also make it hard for the shooter to see them, though she knew it would not be enough to seriously weaken the laser.
"Hold on!" shouted Muir. There was a brief floating feeling as they lost altitude and then the skimmer hit the ground. Freya was thrown forward into the restraints with stunning force. The pressure of the restraints against her breasts was like a punch and she hit her pain override again to keep from screaming.
The skimmer skidded on the rough ground until the right wing struck a tree trunk and sheared off. The skimmer spun, throwing Freya back into her seat, then sideways against the restraints again as it came to a sto
p. For a moment, Freya could not move. She could taste her biosim's artificial blood in her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be full of white light. Then her vision began to clear, and the smell of harsh chemical smoke filled her nose. Freya moved to unlatch the restraints, and felt sharp pain in her shoulders and across her chest. Another override shut down the pain, but she began to worry about the condition of her biosim body. The cabin was filling with dark smoke from the seat padding, which was starting to burn. The smoke made her cough, sending new sharp pains, not yet screened by her overrides, through her chest. Freya flailed for the emergency escape lever, striking at it blindly, and the door popped open with a high pressure thump. Freya stumbled out of the smoking skimmer, falling and rolling to the ground. She tried to stand up, but her biosim body seemed off balance. She thought that, had she been human, the pain in her shoulders and chest would have made her eyes water.
After a moment, she began to crawl away from the skimmer. She did not think it would explode, but if fire reached the superconductor power coils and they still held some charge, even that was possible. At length she steadied herself up against one of the blue trees. There were no spines or spikes for the first five meters of trunk and the bark was strangely smooth and waxy. Freya ran a simple diagnostic of her body. That was always a disorienting feeling, but surprisingly she found that she was not badly hurt. A lot of her artificial musculature was bruised, but, except some small burns on her back, nothing was damaged beyond her biosim body's ability to quickly heal. Freya looked about and tried to take stock.
The skimmer was burning; black and white smoke merged into a thick gray plume rising up into the forest's "canopy" of interwoven spines. The cabin was filled with black smoke that poured from every opening, while the still smoldering wing panels gave off a ribbon of white smoke. She could not see Muir anywhere. Her gaze went back to the skimmer, but there was no way to see into the pilot's seat through the smoke.