Without Mercy

by Eric Thomson

  She examined the cabin with almost comical awe before carefully placing her duffel bag by the freshly made bed. Dunmoore showed her the closet then watched as she stripped off the pressure suit to reveal a dark blue merchant officer’s shipboard uniform, with an apprentice’s thin silver stripe at the collar. Once her gear was stowed, Dunmoore took Carrie in quick succession to the wardroom, the CIC and the bridge, introducing officers, petty officers, and ratings along the way.

  The young woman once again felt her head swim at the onrush of new names and faces, everyone friendly and welcoming. But few seemed particularly naval in their privateer’s guise, especially the bearded, rather bloodthirsty looking lieutenant commander who was Iolanthe’s combat systems officer.

  Or the even more piratical Commander Holt, with his eye patch and roguish smile He shook Fennon’s hand as if she were a full-fledged officer.

  “Welcome aboard, Apprentice Officer Fennon. I hope you’ll enjoy your time in Iolanthe.” Holt turned to Dunmoore. “Both ships are ready to go FTL for Kilia’s hyperlimit, Skipper. Since the CIC hasn’t picked up anything of note, perhaps in the interests of time we should jump now.”

  “Agreed. And since we’re already here, maybe our guest can observe how a Navy ship does it. Would you enjoy that, Officer Fennon?”

  Her eyes lit up with curiosity. “Yes, sir.”

  Dunmoore indicated unoccupied stations at the rear of the bridge.

  “Why don’t we sit there?”

  Holt went to stand beside Astrid Drost, the officer of the watch.

  “Are both ships synchronized?”

  “They are, sir.”

  “Then you may go FTL at your discretion.”

  Seconds later, the usual warning sounded throughout the ship, then, once the timer hit zero, everyone’s universe shifted.

  **

  “Iolanthe is impressive, Captain. Almost frighteningly so.” Fennon’s eyes, still darting everywhere as they had throughout the evening, tried to take in all of Dunmoore’s day cabin at once. “But it doesn’t feel like a Navy ship.”

  Dunmoore gestured at a chair by her desk.

  “Please sit. Not seeming as if we’re Fleet is the whole point of an undercover naval vessel, Carrie. If we can convince the bad guys we’re a scummy privateer whose only interest is making money, and to hell with the rest, or a helpless civilian freighter with a frightened crew, we can lure them close enough to land a fatal blow. Often, we don’t even go hunting for Shrehari raiders or human marauders. We let them come to us by imitating a big, fat, juicy target.”

  “That must be hard on the nerves.” Fennon cautiously sat on the edge of the chair as if afraid it might break.

  “Ours or the enemy’s?” Dunmoore gestured at the urn. “Can I offer you a coffee, or if you want something else, I can call the wardroom.”

  “Coffee’s fine, sir. Black, no additives. We drink it like that in Katie. Or at least we used to.” An anguished expression briefly replaced that of awe and wonder she’d worn since arriving. “I meant your nerves, waiting for someone to attack.”

  “It can become interesting, for sure.” Dunmoore busied herself with two cups, each bearing Iolanthe’s crest. “But by now we’re used to setting and springing traps on every species of nasty customer, so it’s become old hat. You may get a taste of it if we ever face a fight in trying to recover your crew and passengers. Here.”

  “Thank you.” She took a sip. “Nice. Much nicer than what I’m used to drinking.”

  “Emma tells me you’ve been to Kilia before, I mean inside the station.”

  Fennon nodded.

  “Not this time, but the time before that. Although no further than their hangar. Mother didn’t allow liberty on any of the unregistered outposts, so only she and another officer ever went beyond the docks, and then only on business if absolutely necessary.”

  “Wise woman. Tell me about Kilia’s hangar.”

  She nibbled on her lower lip, eyes staring down at the deck, as she formed words to describe her memories of the place.

  “Huge. It takes a bit of doing to match the habitat’s spin so you can fly in without problems because they have no tractor beams to help. It’s not pressurized, but there are cargo and people-sized airlocks inside. Passenger-only shuttles can connect via a pressurized gangway tube if they have the right sort of hatches. Otherwise, you wear a tin suit. Unless you make friends in high places, the sort that’ll see your shuttle admitted to one of the smaller, pressurized auxiliary hangars. Those are my mother’s words, by the way, that bit about friends in high places.” Carrie looked up at Siobhan. “Do you think she’s there? In Kilia? Along with everyone else?”

  Dunmoore put on a reassuring expression.

  “We’ll see soon enough. And if they’re not, I’ll turn the place upside down until someone tells us where to find them.”

  “Commander Cullop said you usually get what you’re after, sir.”

  “Did she now? I hope Emma also mentioned it’s always a team effort. Iolanthe has one of the best crews in the Navy, and we hold one of the highest kill records of any ship currently in commission.”

  Fennon gave her a solemn nod.

  “She told me precisely that, sir.” A shy expression took years off her already youthful features. “Everyone you sent to Katie seems really proud about serving in Iolanthe. Even the soldiers.”

  “Esprit de corps is a wonderful thing.” When she saw the blank look in her eyes, Dunmoore added, “it’s what we call the intangible spirit that lifts men and women above themselves for the good of the unit, or in this case, for the good of the ship.”

  “Oh. Like morale, then?”

  “Something of the sort.” Dunmoore took a sip of coffee while Carrie processed the notion, then said, “If this isn’t a bad moment, I’d be grateful to learn more about you and your family, Apprentice Officer Fennon.”

  “Certainly, sir. What do you want to know?”

  — Twelve —

  The door chime’s melody wrenched Dunmoore away from a world long vanished, and she reluctantly placed her book on a side table. Reading one of the pre-diaspora classics in her collection before turning in was a long-standing ritual. She suspected the visitor outside her quarters came for another, less frequent and more recent one.

  “Enter.”

  The door slid aside to reveal a smiling Ezekiel Holt. He held a green bottle in one hand and two small glasses in the other.

  “Care for a nightcap, Skipper?”

  “If that’s your eighteen-year-old single malt, you are most welcome. If it’s wardroom plonk, go away.”

  Holt stepped in.

  “Would I dare offend your delicate sensibilities with anything less than the best?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  She motioned toward the other chair, but instead of sitting right away, Holt handed her a tumbler and poured a healthy dram. He served himself and raised his glass.

  “To a successful infiltration.” Both took a sip. Holt smacked his lips appreciatively. “Good thing I bought several bottles the last time we touched port. Otherwise, we might need to cut this patrol short.” He dropped into the chair and crossed his legs. “How’s our guest?”

  “Overtired, overstimulated, overeager, and overly worried about her mother and Kattegat Maru’s crew.”

  “That’s a lot of over for someone who’s underage.”

  “Yet she’s remarkably steady and self-possessed for an apprentice yanked out of her comfort zone and thrust into a naval anti-piracy operation to recover her own family. I’m not sure the teenaged me would have been able to act like a junior officer rather than a frightened girl.”

  “As Emma said, starship kids grow up fast.”

  “True, but she’s been surrounded by her extended family since birth. From what she told me, the Fennons are strict but loving and took great pains to care for the crew’s youngest member. Knowing they’re in the hands of pirates is bound to cause trauma, yet she’s holding up remarkab
ly well.”

  “Then Carrie’s extended family also took pains to help her become resilient. It speaks well for them.” Holt took another sip. “That’s the good stuff. What do you intend once we reach Kilia?”

  “That’ll depend on what ships we find orbiting the place. Chief Day finally reconstructed fragmentary images from Kattegat Maru’s erased sensor logs. Yens is running them against Lloyd’s Registry and the threat database. Perhaps we’ll find a reasonable match.”

  “So I heard. No progress on the other logs though.”

  Dunmoore shook her head.

  “No. And Day’s not optimistic.”

  “What if we find no suspects orbiting Kilia?”

  She made a noncommittal gesture. “I go ashore with a landing party and ask questions.”

  Holt’s face turned to stone the moment he heard the words ‘I go ashore.’

  “Must we do this again, Skipper? A captain’s place is in her ship, not with a landing party.”

  “Yes, we must. Navy captains can afford to stay on their thrones and work via remote control. Civilians, especially privateers, not so much. It would look strange if Shannon O’Donnell sent her first officer or anyone else to represent Persephone. If we’re to play the game, we play it properly, and that means I go ashore, not you, or Thorin or Tatiana. But I will take a few of her finest with me. If I’m surrounded by hulking, foul-tempered Scandian mercenaries, I’ll be less of a target.”

  Holt knew better than to take this discussion past a pro forma objection but felt someone must say it. He nodded once.

  “I don’t enjoy the idea, but I suppose your point is valid.”

  “There’s no suppose about it, Zeke. Though I understand you wishing to stick with the first officers’ union rules.”

  “And returning to our original subject, did you learn more about Kattegat Maru from young Carrie? Such as why someone targeted them?”

  Dunmoore grimaced.

  “Not much of use. She mentioned her mother seemed no more nervous than usual when they visited Kilia just before the pirate attack. No one save Captain Fennon and the second officer, responsible for cargo handling, went ashore. They stayed maybe an hour and came back with a half dozen containers and four new passengers.”

  “Let me guess. Fennon put those containers in cargo hold C, the one emptied by the pirates.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Finally, a glimmer of a clue in this murky mess. Want to bet one of the containers she took aboard hid a subspace tracker?”

  “It’s plausible.”

  “And perhaps one or more of the new passengers worked as insiders for the pirates, which would explain how they seized her so easily.”

  “Again, plausible, Zeke. But why would someone use a complex plan to set Kattegat Maru up as a victim of piracy by infiltrating people and equipment at Kilia, then wait until she was in interstellar space to seize her?”

  “If we knew that, we’d know who and why. Mind you, it could be something as prosaic as the masters of Kilia forbidding piracy in their realm on pain of excommunication or death.”

  “True.” She drained her glass and yawned. “We won’t solve those questions tonight. Thanks for the drink. I’d better turn in and catch a few hours of sleep before we jump toward what Yens assures me is a spinning asteroid with unnaturally high power emissions.”

  Holt climbed to his feet, collected the glasses, and gave Dunmoore a formal nod.

  “Enjoy your rest, Captain.”

  “Try to grab a few winks yourself, Zeke. First officers don’t run on coffee and professional pride alone.”

  “I will. After my usual tour of the ship.” He grinned. “Union rules. A first officer doesn’t go to bed unless he’s made his presence felt to discourage shenanigans while he sleeps.”

  **

  Holt found Iolanthe’s chief engineer, a gray-bearded, stocky man in well-worn black coveralls munching on a sandwich in the otherwise empty wardroom. It was just past one bell in the night watch, thirty minutes after midnight, and the other officers were either at their duty stations or in their quarters, asleep.

  Though in space the concept of night and day was academic, the human body still craved a regular cycle. Except for Commander Renny Halfen, who cheerfully worked at any hour, sleeping here and there when the need overtook him.

  The chief engineer looked up at Holt and nodded once. Then he swallowed and said, “Shouldn’t you be in bed by now, Zeke?”

  “I could ask the same.” Holt opened the cold storage pantry and pulled out a juice bulb. He held it up. “I’ll hit my rack after this.”

  “Worried about Kilia Station?” Halfen shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and chewed as he patiently waited for Holt’s reply.

  “Only a fool doesn’t worry about the unknown, Renny.” Holt sat across from him and sighed. “Our Siobhan intends to go ashore with an escort from Tatiana’s mob.”

  “Did you talk her out of it?”

  “This is one of those times where she’s right. Unfortunately.” Holt drained half of the juice bulb in one gulp.

  “Then you’ll not thank me for giving you another thing to worry about. I studied the images and sensor readings Chief Yens posted on the threat board just now. You can probably expect Kilia to have heavy ordnance hidden away under fake rock lids.”

  “How so?”

  Halfen made a face.

  “The place has one big mama of a power plant, and what I believe are four auxiliaries, each of which puts out twice, if not more than what our fusion reactor can manage at full rate. More than enough to feed whatever you want — plasma cannon, lasers, grasers, masers, you name it — on top of environmental systems and everything else. And high-powered versions too. Putting large reactors and big guns on a spinning asteroid is easy as pie, compared to balancing out the mass-power-ordnance ratio of a starship. After doing the hard work of turning a big rock into a space station, giving it adequate firepower is child’s play. And they’ll likely be protected by kick-ass shield generators to cover the most vulnerable spots, which shouldn’t be hard since the habitat cavern only occupies a tiny fraction of that oversized lump.”

  “I doubt the captain intends to storm Kilia with guns blazing, Renny.”

  “Aye, but Kilia might take exception to the captain and greet us with guns blazing. Best think of it as a Fleet orbital station. Too tough for anything less than a full task force and capable of hammering even Iolanthe’s shields into overload before we can move out of range. Since Kilia survived this long where few honest spacers venture, two things are sure.” Halfen took a sip of his coffee before continuing. “First, they’re well protected. Enough to discourage the most ambitious reiver or the most aggressive Shrehari corsair.”

  “And second?” Holt asked when the chief engineer paused for more coffee.

  “There’s more money out here than you or I can fathom. Kilia must be raking in millions per day merely in docking and transaction fees. It’s the only way to finance that sort of habitat. Trying to imagine the quantity of ill-gotten plunder that passes through there must be mind-boggling. I hope the captain’s ready to plunder our precious metals reserve.” Halfen drained his cup. “I’ll post my observations on the threat board.” Then he stood and sketched a salute with his calloused right hand. “That’s me heading back to my dungeon. Enjoy your night, Zeke.”

  “You too, Renny.”

  Holt finished his juice bulb but didn’t immediately get up to leave. Instead, he stared at the Furious Faerie crest dominating the starboard bulkhead. A delicate faced woman in a knee-length coat of mail, armored leggings and a spiked helmet, she had diaphanous wings that seem incongruous, more so than the flaming crusader’s sword held high in her right hand.

  Iolanthe, condemned to death by the Queen of the Faeries, a sentence the latter commuted to lifetime banishment before lifting it altogether, started off as a romantic operetta character six hundred years earlier. How she ever ended up as a warship’s namesake, loo
king anything but romantic, still puzzled Holt. He stood and stretched before tossing the empty bulb into the wardroom recycler.

  The coming twenty-four hours would be interesting indeed, even for a ship and crew that experience more than their fair share of unusual situations as a matter of course.

  — Thirteen —

  Dunmoore, no longer resembling a merchant officer, never mind a Navy captain, entered the bridge shortly after four bells in the morning watch, or oh-six-hundred according to Major Salminen and her soldiers. Like the rest of her crew — but not Salminen’s company — she’d gone full privateer.

  In Dunmoore’s case, it meant a rakish, silver-trimmed quasi-uniform of black trousers tucked into knee-high boots, a black tunic with a hem reaching halfway down her thighs and a white, collarless shirt. A menacing blaster in an open holster at her hip and intricate earrings, among other jewelry items, complemented her distinctly non-naval appearance.

  Lieutenant Magnus Protti, Iolanthe’s assistant combat systems officer, and currently the officer of the watch, jumped out of the command chair and nodded politely at the captain. In his late twenties, with longish black hair, a black chin beard, and dark, hooded eyes, Protti appeared even more villainous than Dunmoore although his privateer’s clothing wasn’t quite as stylish.

  “All systems are green and nothing else to report, sir.”

  “Thank you, Magnus.”

  She took the command chair and opened the overnight log entries. Renny Halfen’s comments on the threat board caught her immediate attention. She silently chastised herself for not giving Kilia’s defensive potential more thought. But that’s why she had instituted a threat board, among other public fora. So that many minds could cover the senior officers’ inevitable blind spots, including hers.

  The door to the bridge opened behind her, and a tentative voice asked, “Permission to enter, sir.”

  Dunmoore swiveled her chair around and gave the serious-looking young woman standing at attention on the threshold a warm smile. She still wore her merchant officer’s tunic with the thin silver apprentice stripe, making her the only one present in any sort of uniform. When she saw Dunmoore’s privateer disguise, her eyes widened. Lieutenant Protti’s amused chuckle caught Carrie’s attention, and her eyes grew even larger at his disquieting appearance.