Hegemony

by Kalina, Mark

  "Understood, Captain. Top priority," replied Communications. Communications Officer Aiven Macal was the Ice Knife's info-warfare specialist, and in normal circumstances, Freya would have expected him to advise her. But nothing about this current situation was normal; Macal was simply not used to thinking of Hegemonic System Defense Forces as a potential enemy.

  Ice Knife was climbing away from Yuro IV rapidly, getting close to the point where she would be able to use full acceleration without violating the ironclad rules for orbital maneuvers. Any ship that broke those rules was subject to immediate attack; a plasma drive could do devastating damage to a planetary surface or orbital installations with a full power burn.

  Ice Knife crossed out of the threshold of official "orbital space" and Freya signaled high acceleration, again feeling as the ship configured itself for high gee forces. A second passed and Freya pushed Ice Knife's drive to full non-emergency power. Nuclear fire lit up the vacuum as the swift-ship's acceleration soared to seven gees.

  A quick look at sensors data showed that the civilian ship, contact Delta-One, was past the orbital threshold as well, and boosting at five gees; astoundingly fast for a non-warship.

  "Contact Delta-1 is changing vector, Captain" came a vocalization from Sensors.

  "I see it," Freya said. Indeed, the surprisingly fast ship was burning to follow Freya's vector, burning to generate a vector parallel to the swift-ship, though rapidly falling behind.

  Communications chimed in abruptly. "Delta-One is signaling with a tight-beam comm laser. Shall I accept the communication?"

  "What do they say?"

  "They're sending a Hegemonic Fleet identity code: Deputy Wave Leader / Interceptor Pilot Alekzandra Neel; Sigma-99-Alpha-29-Theta-22, Conquering Sun."

  ---

  "Captain Killick, what are your intentions?" Freya vocalized. A tight-beam comm laser flashed her words across the thousands of kilometers that separated the two ships. It was a relief to know that Neel had escaped. But now there was this complication. The other faction that had been involved in the firefight had identified themselves, and now Freya had to deal with a void-runner captain who had the Hegemonic officer aboard his ship. And now he wanted to talk to Freya.

  "Well," came the reply, "...my intentions. I intend to get out of this system. And I'd like your help, figuring that you fucking owe me."

  Freya paused. This captain, Captain Nas Killick of the Whisperknife, he called himself, had, without doubt, saved their lives, intervening just when the hostile agents would have killed all three of them. And he'd lost at least one of his people doing it. On the other hand, he was almost certainly a void-runner, a member of the Brotherhoods. A pirate.

  A pirate who had rescued a Hegemonic Fleet officer aboard his ship; a quick comm-link with Interceptor Pilot Neel confirmed that. These pirates had saved her, not kidnapped her. And they'd saved Freya and Muir too.

  And that wasn't all of it. She wasn't sure if the data they had sent her was real, but if it was... If it was, then they had helped Hegemonic Fleet officers escape a trap set by a Coalition special operations team.

  "What do you need?" Freya asked.

  "Need?" came the reply. "I need you to run interference on the bastards that are going to be chasing me down any minute. I've got multiple demands to 'cut my acceleration and stand by to be intercepted.' I figure you can buy me some time."

  Freya paused again, contemplating her options. Aiding a pirate? Aiding a pirate who had helped her... had saved her, and two of her officers. Damn, what a mess. This whole thing was a mess of unimaginable proportions.

  ---

  Labeck Pyer --there was no need left for cover names now-- tried to control his breathing. The mission had gone as badly as he could have imagined. Worse... worse than he could have imagined. His team, all except himself and one other man, was dead. The targets, at least some of them, had escaped. The degree of failure would have been stunning, if Pyer let himself think about it. But that was a thought he couldn't afford.

  There was no way he could continue to operate here. And no way he could think of to escape. It was all too likely that local law enforcement was tracking him even now. Just a matter of time till they found him. His local agent might be able to interfere with low priority operations of the local System Inspectorate, but not now, with the smoldering remains of heavily armed men and dead civilians still warm in a laser-shattered mess at the damned atrium-mall.

  There was very little time left. Pyer didn't understand how those void-runner scum had tracked him down, and he didn't have the luxury of time left to speculate. Maybe the Hegemonic Central Throne Inspectorate was involved. Maybe the pirates had been co-opted. The possibilities were numerous, and all of them were disastrous.

  His man looked pale, under a face set in an emotionless mask. The mission had failed, and getting safely off-world was going to be brutally hard at best. For now, though, there was still some time, at least a few minutes, before even the luckiest and most diligent pursuit could track them to this old factory. It had been scouted out at the very beginning of their mission here on Yuro IV, a last ditch, emergency location that all of them had deeply hoped would never have to be used. So much for hopes.

  Carefully, Pyer checked his laser pistol, feeding a fresh charge-clip into the grip. The other commando did the same. Next Pyer took a small black polycarbonate case out of his belt pack, keying the authentication codes and opening it. The encryption device lay within, a black glossy cylinder of metal with a single interface port.

  Pyer plugged a data cable into the port at the back of his neck, and then another cable into the single-use encryption device. He closed his eyes and activated his pers-comp. It took some minutes to compose the message and set up the encryption. That done, he prepared the message for transfer and then sent a high priority encrypted comm-code. There was a pause of several seconds, and the masked, distorted shape of his contact filled Pyer's optic-data pickups.

  "The situation has become unstable," the contact said without preamble.

  "Yes," agreed Pyer. "I'm sending you a data package, encrypted," Pyer said, and triggered the data transfer. "You must relay in via a deep space transmitter as soon as possible. Minutes count."

  "Why me?" the contact said.

  "You can get it done," Pyer said. "Do it. It's a quantum encrypt. Once you send it, your copy will decay into static. Send it and then do whatever you have to, to stay in cover. Escape if that's what's needed. Do not attempt to contact me again."

  Pyer killed the link before the other man could say anything else. It was done. Pyer had done all he could. The signal was sent, or would be, soon. It was a last ditch, desperate gambit to save the operation, to clean up the mess. Briefly, bitterness at the whole thing threatened to well up in Pyer, but he forced it down. He was a professional. And there was no time.

  Pyer unplugged from his pers-comp. The encryption device was beginning to dissolve, breaking down as the embedded nano-devices tore it apart. Pyer waited till it was nothing but dust.

  "Case Omega," he said to the surviving commando. The man's eyes barely had time to flare with surprise as Pyer leveled his laser pistol and shot him. There was a flash-crack of the laser pulse, and the commando's head exploded in a cloud of vaporized blood and brains. The body fell to the floor.

  Pyer exhaled, hard. Then he lifted the almost headless body and dragged it a few steps to the edge of the catwalk they had stood on. Faded warning signs marked the railing. When the factory had been operational, there would have been warning data-streams and holographic alarms as well. A pit of gray sludge lay four meters below. Pyer lifted the body and threw it in. It hit with a muffled thump and began to sink.

  The factory had once produced complex carbon-composite castings. The advanced control computers were long gone, stripped out when the factory had been decommissioned. But Pyer had made sure that the old nano-assembler feed stock was still there. In violation of any number of local laws, his team had primed it with the spec
ific chemicals it needed to remain active. Covert operations often needed things disposed of. The commando's body sank deeper, taken apart at the molecular level by the gray sludge of nanites. Only a fraction of those were still fully functional, and without the control computer, they couldn't build anything. But they could still break apart raw material into molecular sludge. Untraceable molecular sludge.

  Pyer picked up the dead commando's laser. He wasn't likely to need another weapon, but it was best to be prepared. He looked down into the pit. Nothing visible was left of the commando's body, sunken in the sludge, probably half dissolved already.

  There was no way off-world, and his superiors would have expected him to suicide in this situation, but that, Pyer thought, would have been a waste. Getting off-world was impossible, but surviving on-world was not. The city was off limits, any place with a working computer network was off limits, but 99% of this planet was wilderness, and Pyer had secreted away survival supplies in case moving into the wilderness turned out to be required. There was only enough to supply the team for a half-dozen local days, but alone, he enough had supplies to wait, to disappear until the hunt for him cooled down. One man, alone --a man as well trained, as dedicated and motivated as Labeck Pyer-- might just make it.

  ---

  Two swift-ships; one, a warship of Central Throne Fleet, a sleek and gleaming black arrowhead; the other, a void-runner pirate ship, an improvised courier hull rigged with an oversized drive and festooned with irregular weapons and sensors pods --perhaps ungainly, but predatory looking none-the-less. Both were burning hard for deep space, leaving the inner planets of the Yuro system behind.

  By now they were pursued, but the swift-ships were too fast for the guard-ships stationed in Yuro IV orbit to catch, and their vector was carefully chosen to avoid any patrolling guard-ships in high orbits. Two System Defense Fleet swift-ships were accelerating behind them, but they were far behind, and not catching up.

  Freya had repeatedly signaled that her ship and the void-runner ship, the Whisperknife, were both operating on a maximum priority Central Throne Fleet mission, not to be interfered with. That had seemingly worked for a while. But now the local System Defense Fleet was no longer acknowledging her signals. And for that matter, she was no longer acknowledging theirs.

  In the normal course of things, it would have been no great task to outrun the SDF ships. Ice Knife was a Central Throne Fleet ship, designed for daemons, intended to operate without living human bodies aboard. She could maintain a maximum sustained acceleration of seven gees for as long as her reaction mass held out. Human crewed ships could not. Acceleration-gel-filled command pods allowed human crews to endure prolonged high gees, but every few hours human crewed ships would scale back to one gee or so, to let the crews recover, rest and simply move outside of the enclosing embrace of the acceleration gel.

  The Whisperknife presented a problem, though. Not only was she human crewed, she was less powerful than a military swift-ship, unable to match the Ice Knife's acceleration even briefly. For now, the two ships were running together, accelerating at 5.5 gees, but the SDF swift-ships were beginning to overtake their vector; at this rate, they would catch up.

  "Captain Killick," Freya said, "I think you see the same data as I do."

  "I see it," came Captain Killick's reply. Both of them were vocalizing, but Freya was sure that the void-runner captain was 'talking' via a data link; given the high gees, he would be immobile in his command pod, controlling his ship via direct interface.

  "Then you see what I see; the SDF ships will begin closing the range in just under three hours. They'll intercept about eleven hours after that."

  "They will if we keep to this acceleration schedule," Nas said.

  "I was under the impression your ship was at maximum acceleration."

  "Not quite," came Killick's response, with a tone of hard amusement. "Maybe your Hegemony SDF crews need a low-gee break every five hours, but my crew can burn hard for longer than that. And there's other ways to slow them down."

  "If you can up your acceleration, and maintain it, that would excellent," Freya said. "But I cannot countenance your firing against Hegemonic ships... that's what you mean by other ways, yes? Not even against those SDF ships."

  "What makes you think I care what you can countenance, Captain Tralk?"

  "Well, let me put it this way: if you fire on those ships, they will shoot down your attack as they overtake it... that's what you're thinking of, right? Drop a warhead, or a few, to decelerate down your own vector; force them to maneuver to avoid the shot, and buy yourself more time that way."

  "Sure," said Killick.

  "Well, Captain Killick, those ships have enough laser firepower to just shoot down your warheads before they get into detonation range... no need to alter their vector at all. More to the point, though, my ship will shoot down your warheads if you launch them."

  "Well fuck you, then. What do you suggest I do... or do you even care?"

  "Up your acceleration. If you can do that, that will hold them off. All we need is to get out of the inner system to initiate an FTL transit. There are at least a half dozen systems you can aim for from here. Also, if they do start overtaking, I'll drop a few warheads."

  "What?"

  "Those ships are trying to interfere with a Central Throne Fleet operation. If I have to shoot, I will. If you shoot, it's outright piracy against Hegemonic forces."

  "And if they shoot?" came Killick's caustic reply.

  "If they shoot at me, I'll shoot back. If they shoot at you, bring your ship in close under my lasers, and I'll tie you in to Ice Knife's point defense plan. But they're nowhere near in range, and they're chasing us. How many warheads can your ship salvo?"

  "You'd like to know," Killick said. Then, after a pause, "call it a dozen."

  "Damn," Freya said, unthinking, "that's a lot of firepower for a..."

  "For a pirate?" came Killick's response. "Damned right it is. Whisperknife rates as a swift-ship by most military specifications... maybe not up to going toe to toe with your Ice Knife... unless we get clever... but we are not an improvised warship." Now there was obvious pride in Killick's voice. "I like the name of your ship, by the way," he added.

  "Right," said Freya. "Thanks. A dozen warheads might even make them evade, but I can salvo two dozen without needing to cycle my launch tubes. So can the ships chasing us. Of course they're accelerating up our vector, accelerating towards any shot we launch, so that gives us a big edge on range. But that's beside the point. I'll engage if I have to, but you are not to shoot at those ships."

  "All right," Killick said after a pause, amusement in his voice. "You just volunteered to use your ordinance to defend my ship, which lets me save my expensive warheads. Now that I think about it, that's fine by me."

  Nas Killick let himself go from the command data link for a moment. He could feel his body encased in acceleration gel within his command pod. His eyes were closed and even if he had wanted to, he could not have opened them. A life support mask pressed against his face with a liquid feeling. The smart material of the mask sealed against his face, forcing oxygen into his lungs, drawing out CO2. He could feel the acceleration of his Whisperknife, five gees plus, like the pressure of deep water. The command pod was helping his lungs draw air; without it, just breathing would be an strenuous effort.

  Nas plunged back into the data link. "Everyone, heads up," he said, subvocalizing and sending the data into the links of his crew, trapped like him in the acceleration gel of their command pods.

  "We're going to open the drive up all the way. Senny, what can you give me, flat out?"

  "Flat out," came Senny's 'voice,' actually a data stream delivered directly into Nas' interface implant, "flat out I can give you maybe six point two, maybe six point three."

  "Set it up, Senny," Nas ordered. "Maximum sustained emergency power burn. Baby-sit the reactor, get the self-repair swarms ready, maximize the pressure in the radiator coolant loops, everything. We
're going to burn at six point three gees for as long as it takes, people. No breaks. We live in our 'pods for a hundred fucking hours if that's what it takes...

  "And let's see those Hegemonic assholes match us," Nas finished.

  Whisperknife was accelerating at a sustained 6.28 gees, Freya noted, though her radiator fins were glowing red with waste heat and her plasma drive had to be running at redline to manage it. Still, very impressive for a non-military ship. Ice Knife was matching that acceleration, keeping the two ships together. The two SDF swift-ships (Freya had their identifications now: the Greyhound and the Silverdart) were keeping to an acceleration schedule of seven gees for four hours, and one gee for one hour; an average of 5.8 gees. They were falling behind, but seemed unable or unwilling to subject their crews to the severe discomfort of prolonged high acceleration.

  That was impressive too, Freya thought. Captain Killick and his crew were willing to subject themselves to sustained high gees. It had to be having a detrimental effect on them by now, but none of their communications suggested reducing acceleration to give the crew a chance to rest. It was a surprisingly formidable crew and ship, Freya thought. Uncomfortably so, given that they were pirates.

  In another seven hours, Freya thought, the lead they had over the two SDF swift-ships would be large enough to let them cut acceleration and drift. There would be time to set up and execute an FTL transit before the pursuing ships could intercept. And that would be that.

  The pirate would escape, of course, but Freya was willing to see that happen, if only as payment for his crew's very timely help on the surface of Yuro IV. Granted that Captain Killick had been after his own revenge and had had no intentions of helping the Hegemonic Fleet; he had still saved Freya, Muir and Zandy.