by Kalina, Mark
Once the pirate was gone to wherever he thought would be the best escape route, Ice Knife would be gone from this system too, back to Sigma Charybdis Waypoint Two. It would be hard work finding an intact sensors record of the Coalition raider, but Freya knew that in this case, failure was simply not to be allowed. Once that data was secure, Ice Knife would be able to report to the proper Central Throne Fleet authorities... and then the death of the Hegemonic assault ship Conquering Sun would not be in vain.
But there was one other matter to take care of first. One of her officers, the only survivor from the Conquering Sun, was aboard Captain Killick's Whisperknife. Freya needed her back.
"Captain Killick," Freya sent, "we'll be able to cut acceleration and drift in another one point three hours. Once we do, I expect you'll be setting up an FTL transit. We will as well. But before that point, I'd like you to send a shuttle over with my officer aboard. I guarantee that there will be no attempt to detain your shuttle or any of your crew."
There was a pause, and Killick replied, "We can do that." Another pause.
"We can do that," he repeated. "But before we do, I want to know where you're going."
"That's not--"
"I know why already," Killick said.
"You have no reason to know that," Freya said, "and I can't see how it affects your plans anyway. We're not going to pursue you, and I'm not asking you where you're headed."
"I need to know it, because I'm going along."
"What?"
"You're going to go after the Coaly bastards who started this mess. Those fuckers tried to kill me and my crew. They set me up, backstabbed me and mine. I've got crew dead down there on the planet because of those Coaly shits. I want in."
"That is out of the question, Captain Killick. I appreciate the help you've given me. I appreciate it enough that I'm aiding you in escaping from the Hegemonic authorities. So don't tell me I'm being ungrateful. But you have nothing to do with this operation, and you are not following my ship."
"Well. I suppose we'll have to see about that."
"If you mean to hold one of my people hostage for that information--" Freya said, voice cold with anger.
"Not at all," Nas interrupted. "I'll return your crewmate as soon as we cut acceleration, just like you asked. But I've been thinking. I figure I know where you're headed as is."
"I appreciate your willingness to return my officer, and I apologize for implying otherwise, but you are not following my ship," Freya said.
"How are you going to stop me?" Killick said. "Fire on my ship? Fuck that. You outgun me by a lot, but at this range, my lasers will rip you up pretty good even so. So you can't shoot me. And I can more or less figure out where you're going; it's got to be the little waypoint system where those freight-liners got ambushed. That's got to figure into this whole fucking mess somehow."
Freya said nothing.
There was no way she could allow this void-runner to follow her, but stopping him... She couldn't attack for several reasons. His ship was too close; unless her first laser salvo crippled him, his return fire would damage her ship. Then there was the fact that one of her people was on that ship; no matter that Neel wasn't part of the Ice Knife's crew, she was still part of Freya's command. And last, as a matter of honor, could she really open fire on a ship whose crew had just saved her life and her mission, some of them dying to do it?
A signal from Sensors called at her attention, interrupting her thoughts.
"Captain," Sensors sent, "we have an FTL emergence pulse."
Freya accepted the data stream, seeing what her Sensors Officer was focused on. The electromagnetic pulse of a wormhole emergence had flashed into being, almost directly in line with the Ice Knife's present vector. Precise range was hard to determine with only a single pulse of energy and no way to triangulate, but Sensors estimated it at some fifteen million kilometers away, which would make the data almost a minute old from light speed lag. Sensors was designating the new contact as Delta-Four.
"Sensors," Freya sent, "get me a read on Delta-Four. What is it?"
Freya waited for a second as the Ice Knife's sensors aligned and scanned.
"Captain," Sensors replied, "I'm getting a drive signature now," but Freya could see what her Sensors Officer saw.
The newly arrived ship had just lit her drive. From the output of the drive and the vector change in the target, Freya could see that the contact was another swift-ship.
"Sensors," she said, "is there any sign of an FTL initiation from Delta-Two or Delta-Three?"
That was a trick Freya had pulled herself, using a high precision FTL transit to maneuver against an enemy ship. The risk of such a high stress FTL transit was substantial, but if it worked the payoff was substantial too.
"Negative, Captain," said the Sensors Officer. "Both SDF swift-ships are still accelerating 'behind' us."
"Delta-Four is a new one, then," Freya said.
"Could be an SDF ship from somewhere else in the system," Muir said. "There's been enough time for outer system patrol ships to have gotten a communication about us. If he chanced an in-system FTL transit and got lucky..."
"Damn," Freya said. "That's unexpectedly good work for the locals."
"Never safe to underestimate them," Muir said. "We've got a serious problem now, don't we?"
"Yes," Freya said.
The new contact had positioned himself perfectly. He had managed his FTL emergence right at the edge of the safe threshold, and now, accelerating inbound, he would intercept the two fleeting swift-ships before they reached the threshold of safe FTL initiation.
Freya could risk an early FTL initiation, but the risk of failure was greater than she liked. The gravity of the local star was too strong for an ideal FTL initiation here, and the risk of trouble was non-linear. A few more million kilometers would not reduce the gravitational pull of the star by much, but it would fall below the safe threshold, reducing the odds of a FTL initiation failure by several orders of magnitude. Conversely, the local star's gravity was just above that threshold now, enormously increasing the odds of an FTL initiation failure.
And if the Ice Knife suffered an FTL failure, it would be at least a hundred hours before she could stabilize her singularity and try again. Unless it was a severe failure... That might cause a shutdown of the reactor and leave the ship helpless.
Freya could simply accept the engagement. One on one, she thought her elite Ice Knife had a good chance of beating a single SDF swift-ship. Of course, five minutes ago she would have never believed an SDF ship could have managed such a precise and complex FTL maneuver. The truth of it was, there was no way she could be certain of coming through an engagement without taking enough damage to compromise her mission.
The other thing Freya could do was convince the Whisperknife to split up. The new contact could only intercept one of them... the other would be free to escape. But that meant bringing the pirates in as... allies. She'd have to fully brief Captain Killick, telling him deeply classified information. And worse, she'd have to depend on him.
"Communications," she said, unable to keep her annoyance out of her vocalization, "get me an immediate secure laser comm link with the Whisperknife. Muir, set up a basic VR for us. I'm going to need to explain this 'in person,' if you take my meaning. Let's move fast. We don't have much time."
"So now what, Captain Tralk?" asked Killick.
"Now it looks like you get your wish after all," Freya said. "We're close to being ready to initiate an FTL transit... but not that close. We can't evade the intercept.
"But, only the new contact is in position to force an intercept and it can only intercept one of us. If it's Ice-Knife, I'm pretty sure of winning the engagement. But I can't be certain of coming through unscathed."
"You want me to split off and lure him away?" Killick said.
"No. Your ship would be outgunned badly against an SDF swift-ship. I'm going to burn to intercept him. I want you to vector away and avoid the intercept."
<
br /> "That's real nice of you," Killick said, "but I don't get it. Why are you doing that? I somehow doubt you're that grateful to me."
"True enough, Captain Killick," Freya said. "Like I said, I think I can win an engagement with one SDF swift-ship. But I can't take that chance.
"So." Freya paused for a second, then went on. "You wanted in, Captain Killick? You're in.
"I'm going to have to trust you, Captain Killick. A lot. Some things involved in this mission are classified well beyond 'top secret,' and if you shop this to some Brotherhood info market, I swear before God that I, and if needs be, the whole goddamn Hegemonic Fleet, will hunt you down and kill you, no matter how long or how far you run."
"Save your threats for someone who gives a shit, Captain," Nas said. "If you play it straight with me and mine, I will play it straight with you. If this secret info is what it takes for me to get even with those Coaly fuckers and you give it to me... and you don't try to backstab me and mine... then me and mine will not backstab you and yours. Not that anything I can say is going to convince you, but it's still fact. People who work with my ship and my crew get what they pay for."
"Like you said," Freya replied, "nothing you say is going to be convincing. But I don't seem to have much choice. So you're going to have to show me you're telling the truth.
"Now, I'd rather do this 'in person,' as much as that's possible... and we have a few minutes we can spare before things get too busy. I'd like you patch yourself, and Interceptor Pilot Neel, into a VR. There's a lot you're going to need to know."
The VR meeting wasn't set at an impressive resolution; Ice Knife had nothing like the computing capacity of an assault-ship, and Freya did not see any need to devote more processing power than minimally necessary. The virtual avatars of the meeting's participants were seated around a narrow and featureless table. Muir "sat" at Freya's side, and Killick "sat" across from them. Zandy had chosen to "sit" at the end of the narrow table, side-on to all of them. Still, Freya was pleased that Captain Killick had agreed to join her in this VR.
Nas Killick was silent, for now. He had heard the story briefly outlined, had confirmed his own role in it rather briefly: the destruction of the empty freight-liner. Considering the property damage that the destruction of the 'liner had caused, and the possibility that there had been one or more deaths, Freya was on edge. She should be hunting ships like the Whisperknife, not cooperating with them.
On the other hand, she thought, this was very much a case of "an enemy of my enemy." Compared to a Coalition traitor on Yuro IV, and the deadly new Coalition lance-ships that had destroyed the Conquering Sun, allying with a self-confessed pirate was small stakes.
"So that's the goal of all this," Freya concluded. "We need a good sensors log of the experimental Coalition lance-ship."
"Yeah," said Killick. "I can see how you would." His voice was calm, but impressed. Even a void-runner pirate captain should be able to figure out the consequences of a Coalition whose lance-ships could destroy Hegemonic assault-ships.
"Now," Freya said, "we had records aboard this ship, but I suspect that is no longer the case; our enemy had too much opportunity to access that data..."
"I'm afraid it's more or less what we suspected, Captain," Muir interjected. "We ran a deep scan of the entire system and there's no trace of the data in storage. No trace of any data about the engagement at all. The log data has been replaced with random static, encrypted and formatted so that on a cursory scan the logs show up as being intact. But there's no actual data there."
"Shit," Freya said, with no surprise in her voice.
"We do still have the data in my portable data unit," Muir added.
"Which isn't going to be enough," Freya said. "What we have is a compressed download; no authentication, low fidelity. Even if there was no traitor at all, no other faction injecting an opposing view, Command might still not want to believe it. There's going to be plenty of people who wouldn't mind burying us anyway... just to cover the loss of the 'Sun. As it is, we have to assume the traitor has assets that can... oh, let's say, 'present an opposing view point,' when we deliver this data."
"Well, isn't that just keen, then," said Killick. "You mean to tell me that you can't actually do anything about these fuckers." He let out a contemptuous huff. "So now what? You and your crew want to join the Brotherhoods, maybe?"
"Not ever..." said Muir, cold voiced.
"No, Captain Killick," said Freya. "No, what we do now is, we get authenticated data."
"How?" asked Nas, echoed a fraction of a second later by Muir and Zandy.
"We get back to the Sigma-Charybdis Waypoint II system. Ice Knife made a close approach to the hostile ship to get this data in the first place. But we weren't the only ship to do so."
"The interceptors..." said Zandy.
"Exactly correct," said Freya with a sudden, hard smile. "And there were lots of sensor drones that I deployed when Ice Knife made the close pass. I'm willing to bet that not all of them were destroyed. And even if they were, some data might have survived in the hulls of the dead interceptors."
"I don't know about that," the interceptor pilot said quietly. "I know we discussed it, after you got me out on Yuro, but I'm not sure it'll work... My 'ceptor was blind, dead in space..."
"That doesn't mean the data wasn't there," Freya said. "It might have been, but with the damage you couldn't access it. Also, there might have been other partly intact interceptors out there, full of data... If their pilots linked back to the 'Sun right before..."
"Oh, God," said Zandy. A pause, and she went on, "it might have happened. They might have made it through the attack, and data-linked back aboard. Right before the 'Sun was destroyed." The tall woman's voice was suddenly husky with unshed tears.
"I'm sorry," Freya said. "But that means there are two possible data sources in the waypoint system. And with Captain Killick's cooperation, we'll have two ships to get at them with."
"At the speeds of that engagement, would they even be in the system anymore?" Zandy asked, still brittle voiced.
"Yes, though just barely," answered Freya. "It's been something like three hundred hours since the battle. It was a very fast intercept, but a lot of that vector was generated by the enemy ships. Our vector was high magnitude, relative to the system, but not that high. So the... packages that might have the data will be in the outer system by now, maybe even out in the system's Kuiper belt, and we'll have to cover a lot of volume to find it, even with the best tracking estimates... But it can be done.
"Interceptor Pilot Neel... Zandy, I need you to stay with the Whisperknife. We're going to split up so the inbound SDF ship can't engage us both. I think Ice Knife will come through the engagement well enough, at which point we'll have two ships to search with. But if we don't make it, or are damaged too badly, then it will be up to the Whisperknife and you... And you, Captain Killick.
"I will authorize a bounty... call it payment for assistance rendered to a Hegemonic Fleet vessel in distress. I'm not sure how easy a time you'll have collecting it, but if I'm still around I'll do what I can to help. Captain Killick, if my ship doesn't make it to the waypoint system, you have to find that data, and then get it and Interceptor Pilot Neel to a representative of the Central Throne Fleet. Or else the Coalies --the people who set you up-- will win this one. And maybe a lot more than just this one."
"What are we going to do?" Muir asked, as Freya went over the vector projections again. The VR meeting over, the Whisperknife was now accelerating at 90 degrees to their base course, forcing the inbound SDF swift-ship to commit to intercepting one ship or the other. Captain Killick had listened to the plan, and agreed. Now it only remained to see if he would do his part.
If there had been more time, if the inbound ship had emerged from its FTL transit further away, Ice Knife could have escaped. Over the long run, no human-crewed ship could match the sustained acceleration of a ship crewed by daemons who were inside the ship's command 'nets, indifferent to high
acceleration. But a human crewed ship could endure maximum acceleration for long enough to manage an intercept in the time they had left.
"Let's see which one of us he goes for, Muir," Freya said. "Fact is, I don't actually want to get into a shooting exchange with that ship. She's an SDF ship; part of the Hegemonic Fleet, if only barely. Her crew aren't traitors, and I don't want to kill them. For that matter, I don't want to risk damage to Ice Knife.
"Not much choice, is there?"
"Well, if they go for the Whisperknife, we might be able to coordinate our maneuvers and get them exactly between us. That would make their tactical situation more or less hopeless."
"Hard to manage," Muir said. "Lag time is already up to about a second, send-and-receive, between us and Whisperknife. I don't see how we can coordinate that closely. Besides, if we do manage, that means making simultaneous attack runs against the SDF ship... and like you said, Captain, we don't actually want to kill anyone."
"Captain," came a call from Sensors, "Whisperknife has changed her acceleration. She's now vectoring directly reciprocal to our base vector."
"Confirm that," Freya said sharply, but the data was clear.
"What is he doing?" Muir asked.
"Not sure," Freya said. "Giving up?"
"Shit," Muir vocalized.
"No!" Freya exclaimed, as the vector lines became clear in her mind. "Son of a bitch! That's... clever."
"Captain?"
"Look at this," Freya said, showing Muir the vector model she had just run. "He's reducing his vector, increasing the time to intercept with the SDF ship. The two ships behind us will catch him sooner this way, but not nearly soon enough. With this new vector, Whisperknife is going to reach the safe FTL threshold about twenty minutes before the inbound SDF ship can intercept. That's enough time for an FTL transit, if his crew is fast."
"Damn. Damn that's sharp," Muir said. "This Captain Killick is..."
"Very clever, Muir," Freya said. "Not perfectly clever, though. If the SDF ship launches warheads early, Whisperknife will be forced to maneuver to evade, and that will keep him from initiating an FTL transit, at which point the intercept happens anyway and he's dead. But I bet the SDF swift-ship won't think to fire early. It's seriously non-obvious."