Without Mercy

by Eric Thomson

  “Heave to and surrender your ship. You’ll be well treated as our prisoners and set free in a neutral port. Alive. Resist and die.”

  “So it’s to be an act of piracy? How amusingly bold.”

  “You’re still within an area of space claimed by Kilia, and we represent the station’s management, so I’d call this a legitimate police action.”

  “In what way did we violate Kilia’s laws, pray tell?”

  “Not my concern, O’Donnell. I simply obey the orders we’re given.”

  “Claiming to obey orders hasn’t saved criminals from the noose since the mid-twentieth century. And the bonehead corsair with whom you’re keeping company? You are aware humanity is at war with the Shrehari, right? Consorting with them makes you a traitor.”

  A pause, punctuated by a derisive snort.

  “To hell with your damned Commonwealth. Kilia is a sovereign entity that has no quarrel with the Empire. We enforce our own laws, not those of the Commonwealth. And by the way, that insulting name you used for our Shrehari friends will be costly. It’s an affront to their sense of honor, something they don’t countenance.”

  “Sensitive souls, are they? Do they shrivel under the onslaught of put-downs?” Dunmoore’s mocking intonations drew a muffled guffaw from Chief Yens. “Maybe the Navy would do better to fire disrespectful nicknames at them instead of anti-ship missiles. It might save the long-suffering taxpayers a fortune.”

  Though her tone was light, her eyes held a deadly glint as they studied the tactical display. Sirico, like everyone else in the CIC and on the bridge, knew she was talking with their prey to let them close the distance so Iolanthe’s opening salvo would prove as devastating as possible.

  Her fingers tapped the controls in the command chair’s arm, and the icon marking the Shrehari corsair pulsed a deeper red than the others, a sign she was designating him Tango One, the target for that first salvo. If the corsair was an undercover Imperial vessel, it would be the most dangerous of the three.

  “I’m sure they’ll treat you with the sensitivity you deserve, O’Donnell,” the unnamed pirate replied. “Now what is it to be? Surrender and live? Or resist and die? Our superiors would prefer the former but will be content with the latter. It would be a shame to destroy your ship. Bulk haulers are useful in these parts.”

  “How about neither? How about you let us leave, and no one gets hurt? Enough sentient beings died in the last few years to make everyone sick of killing.”

  An ugly chuckle erupted from the CIC’s speakers.

  “You don’t understand, do you? Kilia’s management has ordered your arrest. Now make your choice.”

  Sirico raised a hand and pointed at the main weapons display. All three interlopers were entering optimum range.

  “Unfortunately, the misapprehension is yours, not mine. A shame, but please tell the Almighty when you see him that I gave you a fair warning.”

  Dunmoore made a cutting motion, and when the signals petty officer indicated the link was severed, she said, “Unmask and open fire. Shoot to destroy.”

  **

  “Holy shit.”

  Command Sergeant Aase Jennsen added something in one of the Scandian dialects, though to Cullop’s ears it sounded very much like the Anglic equivalent, a swear word with a centuries-old pedigree. What was, seconds earlier, a large bulk carrier, its armament hidden behind moving plates, was now one of the most potent battlecruisers in the Commonwealth Navy, a mass of plasma gun turrets and anti-ship missile launchers.

  “I second the sentiment,” Kattegat Maru’s relief captain said, eyes glued to the main display as a smile slowly spread across her face. “The Furious Faerie coming to life is a thing of beauty when Captain Dunmoore gets annoyed. I knew it was coming, yet the sight still gives me the chills. I’d pay good money to see the face of that Shrehari corsair’s captain right now, knowing his human buddies just led him to a premature death at the hands of the despised human Fleet.”

  Cullop and the rest of her tiny bridge crew had listened in on the conversation between Dunmoore and the pirate chieftain via a tight-beam link with Iolanthe, but seeing the Q-ship unmask struck them with awe nonetheless. Then, Iolanthe’s flanks, topside, and keel erupted with brilliant light as guns and launchers came online simultaneously.

  And though they wouldn’t see it until the pirates returned fire, Cullop knew the Furious Faerie was now encased in a cocoon of military-grade shielding, capable of deflecting anything the enemy could throw at her.

  The corsair might be a different story, but it quickly became clear Dunmoore designated him as the primary, and therefore the most dangerous target, the one destined to die first.

  — Twenty —

  “We are at full power and maximum shielding; the subspace radio jammer is active, and the first missile flight is away, heading for Tango One,” Lieutenant Commander Thorin Sirico reported in a matter-of-fact tone. He could have been announcing the opening strokes of the All-Commonwealth ProAm Golf Tournament.

  “Guns are firing on Tango Two and Three.” A pause. “Second missile flight is away, heading for Tango Two.” Soft vibrations from launch tubes reloading coursed through the deck again. Then, “Third missile flight is away, heading for Tango Three.”

  Three clouds, each made up of tiny blue icons, filled the void aft of Iolanthe in the tactical projection. Propelled by small but powerful sub-light drives, the missiles were accelerating toward their designated targets at a rate starships couldn’t match.

  The three pirates were themselves accelerating toward the Q-ship and thereby her missiles, and the gap between weapons and targets shrank with terrifying speed. Too much so for defensive calliopes that were not quite up to the task of dealing with saturation salvos.

  At this range, not even the Shrehari, though he probably carried Imperial Fleet ordnance, could prevent a dozen nuclear warheads from exploding against his shields — warheads capable of producing enough energy to overload generators via massive feedback pulses.

  A bright purple aurora flared, encasing the corsair in a cocoon of light. Then it collapsed with stunning suddenness, leaving the alien vessel’s armored hull exposed to streams of plasma from Iolanthe’s guns.

  “Bonehead’s firing back and veering off,” Chief Yens announced. “Hyperdrives are spooling up. He’s about to try a Crazy Ivan jump.”

  “No one leaves this battle without my say so,” Dunmoore growled. “Concentrate fire on the Shrehari, Mister Sirico.”

  “Concentrating fire, aye.”

  A foreshortened, light blue aurora briefly flared around Iolanthe’s aft quarter as the Shrehari’s guns struck home.

  “Tangos Two and Three kicked out half a dozen birds each.”

  Red dots separated from the icons representing two of the three pirates.

  “Finally woke up, did they?” Sirico asked through clenched teeth as he watched thick plasma streams eat through the corsair’s hull. The alien ship wavered as its drives tried to form a hyperspace bubble, but it was too late. “The bastard’s not leaving. One of our rounds probably struck part of his power system because he’s venting radiation through that hole like a damn geyser.”

  “Eight missiles struck Tango Two. His shields are wavering. Seven on Tango Three. Same result.” Deep purple auroras enveloped both human-built hulls as competing energies fought for dominance.

  Then, a tiny yet incredibly bright star flared up for a few seconds.

  “Scratch the bonehead,” Chief Yens said in a tone suffused with visceral satisfaction.

  “Engaging enemy birds.” Concentrated small-bore plasma rounds, pumped out by the belt of multi-barrel calliopes encircling Iolanthe’s hull and hyperdrive nacelles gave life to a curtain of destruction. Tiny red icons winked out of existence one by one in the tactical projection.

  A second purple aurora encircled one of the remaining pirates as Iolanthe’s main batteries struck hard but it also vanished without warning. “Tango Two lost his shields. Tango Three is also sp
ooling up drives for a Crazy Ivan. Concentrating fire on Tango Three.”

  But the latter didn’t make it into FTL either. His shields collapsed just as he tried to form a hyperspace bubble, and the rest of the salvo struck his starboard side nacelle, cutting through the antimatter feed line. Tango Three vanished in a silent explosion that created a short-lived miniature nova.

  “Hold your fire on the last survivor unless he spools up his drives. Signals, open a channel.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” No more than a few seconds passed. “Channel open.”

  “Unknown ship,” Dunmoore said, “I’m giving you one chance to live. Cooperate, and you won’t join your two mates in the fires of hell, or wherever Shrehari end up when we kill them. Further aggressive action on your part or any attempt to flee will be seen as trying for suicide by privateer. One which I will help along without hesitation. There is no way out of this.”

  With neither response nor return fire forthcoming after almost a minute, Sirico chuckled softly.

  “Stunned into a catatonic state, I’d say. One moment, cock of the walk, the next a bare step removed from becoming another deep space wreck. I do so love my job.”

  Finally, “What do you motherfucking assholes want?” A rough voice barely recognizable as female demanded.

  “Your surrender, and answers to my questions.”

  “So you can hang us as pirates?” Contempt oozed from every word. “Not a chance, darling.”

  “Surrender, and I will spare your lives. Don’t surrender, or worse, pretend to surrender and play me false, you die. Instantly. Your ship is forfeit that goes without saying, but I’ll release you in a suitable port at my first opportunity.”

  “And what the hell does suitable mean?” The woman sneered.

  “One with a breathable atmosphere. Which is more than you’ll get if I fire another salvo.” Dunmoore paused. “Sixty seconds. I have business elsewhere. I’ll take you with me as detainees or leave you behind as corpses. And I’m not particularly fussed about my options. But perhaps you should be. Or if you don’t care, maybe your crew does.”

  The unknown woman snorted.

  “If you think they’ll mutiny, it’s a bit late. I already shot the dumb jackass who dragged us into this mess.”

  “So you are looking for a way out.” Dunmoore ran a gloved finger down the faint scar decorating her jawline. “Otherwise, you’d have gladly died alongside your heroically stupid comrades. I’ll bet Kilia isn’t paying you enough to make the ultimate sacrifice and Tarrant doesn’t strike me as the type who’d so much as pay for a miserly flag to cover your caskets.”

  Another pause, then, “What are your terms.”

  “Load every living being into your shuttles and run them out a hundred kilometers. We’ll scan those shuttles and your ship to make sure you’re not screwing around. If both are clear, the ship becomes my prize, I recover your shuttles, and you live in my brig until I put you ashore. If you mess with me, you die. Understood?”

  “Yeah? How many have swallowed your brand of bullshit so far and lived to tell the tale?”

  “More crews than you might think. Someone fires on me, I shoot back. But once you stop fighting and surrender, you’re entitled to the full Aldebaran Conventions treatment.”

  A sound reminiscent of someone spitting on the deck came over the comlink.

  “Are you telling me you’re Fleet? Did that idiot Tarrant send us after the fucking Navy?”

  “No. We’re privateers, but a letter of marque comes with an obligation to respect the Conventions, just like regular Navy ships. Now tell me this. Why do I think you’re not one of Enoc Tarrant’s fans?”

  That spitting sound came through the CIC speakers again.

  “No one else ever drove me to shoot my captain so I could live. And definitely no one else ever sent me after a fucking Q-ship, regular or privateer.”

  “Did Enoc Tarrant send you after a freighter by the name Kattegat Maru?”

  A long silence followed Dunmoore’s question.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I want to know what happened with the crew and passengers.”

  A note of challenge crept into the woman’s voice, but it sounded false to Dunmoore’s ears.

  “What makes you think anything happened with them?”

  “Call it a hunch. We found Kattegat Maru abandoned but otherwise fully functional close to here. She was outbound from Kilia, meaning Tarrant might well have planted a subspace tracker on her. He certainly didn’t hesitate to plant one on us.”

  “How do you know she was outbound from Kilia?”

  “We checked her logs.” A half-choked inhalation greeted Dunmoore’s assertion, proof the unnamed woman and her crew took part in seizing Kattegat Maru. “Is something wrong? Or are you wondering how we reconstructed the logs her attackers wiped, thereby finding enough evidence to connect the piracy to both Kilia and your ship? And the other two we destroyed.”

  “No comment.”

  “Where are Kattegat Maru’s crew and her passengers? Remember, what I said about cooperating? I want your surrender and answers to my questions or I open fire one last time.”

  “If I talk out of turn, we’re dead anyway.”

  “Tarrant isn’t the forgiving sort, is he?”

  The woman cackled.

  “He doesn’t know what forgiveness is. But he knows how to uphold omerta. I’ll surrender my ship and crew, but none of us will say a word.”

  “You know there are interrogation techniques no one can resist.”

  “Yeah, and they’re illegal as fuck, even for Special Security Bureau assholes.”

  “Inside the Commonwealth perhaps, but as Tarrant seems to believe, this area is beyond the accepted Commonwealth sphere. What about that Shrehari corsair, or whatever he was? Is information about him also covered by omerta?”

  “Tarrant is good friends with the boneheads. Apparently, it dates back to well before the war. They’re always welcome in Kilia so long they’re not Imperial military.”

  “Does Tarrant always send a corsair out on raids along with his human-crewed ships?”

  “No. This is new crap. Last couple of sorties. But don’t ask me why. We’re told what to do, no explanations given.”

  “I suppose the Shrehari helped you seize Kattegat Maru?”

  She cackled again.

  “Nice try — O’Donnell, is it? I know nothing about this Kattegat Maru. Now do you intend to sit around all day talking smack, or will you accept our surrender?”

  “Evacuate your ship, fly at least one hundred kilometers out, and wait for orders. We will scan you, so forget about playing dirty tricks.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  “By the way, what’s your name and that of your ship? And how many are aboard?”

  A snort.

  “Skelly Kursu at your service. This useless tub goes by the name Bukavac, and there are thirty-five of us still breathing. Forty when we started out. You’ll find the bodies on the hangar deck. Toss ‘em out into space, burn ‘em in the plasma tubes, or sell ‘em to resurrectionists. I don’t care.”

  “How the hell did Tarrant intend your wolf pack to take my ship if your crew numbered only forty, presuming the others didn’t carry much more?”

  “Boneheads. There was over a hundred of them, warriors who could do the boarding party dance really well. Some jobs, we bring extra. This one, there was no time to round up more muscle. It meant Shrehari shock and awe again, just like — well...” Kursu’s voice trailed away.

  Dunmoore glanced over her shoulder at Carrie Fennon and gave her a significant look. That explained the alien scent Fennon picked up when she came out of her cubbyhole after the attack on Kattegat Maru. An icy mask froze the young woman’s features, and she nodded wordlessly.

  “Leave your ship and remember, there’s only one punishment for misbehavior. Death.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I hear you, O’Donnell.”

  Dunmoore made a cutting mot
ion, and when the signals petty officer gave her the nod, she said, “Zeke, ask Chief Trane to prepare the brig for our guests. Tatiana, the usual brig chasers to the hangar deck when we pick up those shuttles. Chief Yens, do your magic on them and Bukavac once they’ve launched.”

  After three almost simultaneous “Aye, ayes,” Holt asked, “What about a prize crew?”

  “I thought Bukavac might serve us better as part Trojan horse and part guided missile.”

  — Twenty-One —

  Dunmoore, ensconced once more in the hangar deck control room with Petty Officer Harkon, watched Bukavac’s former crew walk off the pirate ship’s two shuttles with hands on top of their heads. Most carried a small pack of some sort containing their worldly possessions and resembled typical star lane rogues: rough, mean-faced, widely individualistic in their dress and appearance, and of every human phenotype.

  As a precaution, she’d ordered the two craft brought aboard under control of the hangar deck tractor beams after Chief Yens’ sensors gave the all-clear. Skelly Kursu and her people seemed more interested in survival than making a grand gesture for Enoc Tarrant’s sake now that the brief, violent battle was over.

  They obeyed Major Salminen’s soldiers, armed and menacingly anonymous in their powered armor, without demur as the troopers directed them into three evenly spaced ranks. There, they subjected the prisoners to an extensive search, looking for weapons, drugs and other proscribed items. Chief Petty Officer Third Class Marko Trane, Iolanthe’s master-at-arms and non-commissioned officer in charge of the brig, looked on from the open door leading aft to his domain.

  One of the pirates, a rangy woman in worn leathers caught her eye. Dark complexioned, with a hatchet face framed by thick black hair plaited into a queue at the nape of her neck, the woman was almost an exact match for Dunmoore’s mental image of Skelly Kursu and her raspy voice. She was about to leave the control room and make her way across the hangar deck when her communicator buzzed for attention.

  “Dunmoore.”

  “It’s Holt, Captain. Renny and his crew finished their survey of Bukavac, and he figures we can turn her into a drone without too many difficulties. She shows no hull integrity problems and her drives are undamaged. Astrid still needs to commune with the ship’s AI and confirm that it will not only accept the necessary navigation instructions but carry them out in the absence of a human supervisor. Fixing the shield generators is another matter altogether. That will take time. We gave them a massive overload.”