Bound By Law (Vigilante Book 3)
Page 4
“We need to watch the convoy and we need to watch Law and Alan,” he continued. “Let’s get an S&R team in motion. I want to know if Alan-a-dale is an evac or a tow.”
Chapter Five
It took over an hour to get Alan-a-dale stabilized and a team aboard. The corvette had spun off on a chaotic course that left her getting farther away from the convoy by the second.
Thankfully, once they’d managed to link up to the little ship, the shuttle crew was able to connect Brad with Jace Olhouser.
“Commander, it’s good to see you alive,” Brad told the other mercenary. Today was a victory, but if they’d lost Alan-a-dale, it would have been a victory with more casualties than his entire previous career.
He’d still lost as many of his people today as in any other single mission he’d led. That stung.
“It’s good to be alive,” Olhouser told him. “The impact knocked out our coms—and most of the crew, including myself.”
The dark-skinned mercenary had a large white bandage wrapped around his shaven head, and the screens visible behind him were dark.
“I didn’t actually lose anyone,” Olhouser continued. “Damn miracle, so far as I can tell, but it’s true. What I did lose was my power core. Emergency systems scrammed the pebble bed when we were hit.”
Brad nodded his understanding. In the middle of the battle, Oath’s sensors wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between the debris from the hit and the debris from the safety protocol blasting Alan-a-dale’s radioactive uranium pebbles into space.
“Can you get it back up?” he asked. Even Heart of Vengeance ran a primary fusion plant and could restart her reactor from her fuel tanks, needing only a power boost from another ship in the worst-case scenario. Alan-a-dale was his only fission-powered ship, and even his own experience as an engineer and spaceship nerd left him only vaguely aware of a modern pebble-bed nuclear reactor’s emergency protocols.
“Scramming only blows about ten percent of the pebble bed into space,” the junior man explained. “The rest is just split up to make sure we don’t have an unintentional critical mass.” Olhouser shook his head. “Of course, I don’t have a power core to put them back into,” he quipped. “I have a wrecked mess of debris and cables that used to be a power core.”
“Is Alan-a-dale salvageable?” Brad asked bluntly. Fissionable uranium was relatively straightforward to come by, even out there. The skills and material necessary to rebuild a micro-pebble reactor core…Brad wasn’t so sure.
“We can rebuild the plant ourselves,” Olhouser told him. “The value of something like this is that it’s basically just pipes and water, boss. It’s not a fast process, but we can rebuild the plant.”
“All right. Do you have life support if we take you in tow?” the Commodore said. He’d salvage the corvette if he could, but he wasn’t going to risk his people. He’d lost enough of them today.
“I wouldn’t turn down a power cable along with the tow lines,” Alan-a-dale’s commander answered. “The environmentals are intact, but everyone over here will be happier if we’re not running them off the batteries!”
Brad chuckled, an honest if drained laugh.
“All right, Commander. I think we can make that happen.”
“Is there any assistance we can provide, Commodore?” Captain Garibaldi asked. The tall woman with the shaved head and the pale white skin was the senior captain of the Doctors’ Guild convoy, an employee of the Guild though not a doctor herself.
“I doubt it’s a surprise that we have medical supplies and doctors available if you need them,” she noted with a smile.
“We have medical staff aboard all of my ships and, frankly, space battle doesn’t leave a lot of wounded behind,” Brad admitted to her image on the screen. “That said, if you’ve got a medical team to spare to check out Alan-a-dale’s crew and make sure any of my stubborn idiots who should be resting actually do so, I’d appreciate it.”
“We can do that,” Garibaldi promised. “Do we need to delay the convoy any further?”
“No,” Brad told her. “Oath of Vengeance has Alan-a-dale in tow; we’ll be fine to get everyone to Oberon. A little late, but not too badly.”
He’d pass on the location of the wreckage of the pirate fleet to the Commonwealth Intelligence Agency once they were at Oberon. They had the resources to try and identify the source of the ships—and didn’t have a convoy to escort, either.
“We can afford to be late,” Garibaldi pointed out. “We can afford it better than we can afford losing your ships.”
“Further delay won’t make any difference,” he admitted. “Bound by Law needs serious shipyard time, and even Oath could use a few days with access to a decent repair slip. There’s a limit to what we can do in deep space.”
They’d continued coasting toward Oberon while the Vikings were sorting out the fate of their damaged companion, but bringing the convoy’s engines online would still cut over a day off their trip—and they could only go a few more days before they had to decelerate anyway.
“Of course,” Garibaldi allowed. “I’ll admit I’m out of touch around the refit-and-repair requirements of warships; I’m just a merchant captain.”
Brad glanced at the screen showing Garibaldi’s six-ship convoy, the vessels alone worth more than many well-populated stations’ annual GDP.
“So I see,” he said dryly. “I’ll warn you, Captain, that your employers may be less than happy with the ‘expenses covered’ clause in my contract when we’re done.”
The Guild captain shook her head sadly.
“Commodore, the only thing my employers are going to be unhappy with is that any of your people had to die,” she told him. “We can always make more money, but even we can’t bring back the dead.”
In the end, one of Alan-a-dale’s crew of fourteen didn’t make it. Bound by Law had lost twenty of a crew of sixty. Oath of Vengeance had lost three.
Twenty-four dead. For a “victory,” that left the taste of ashes in Brad’s mouth. They’d saved the new hospital for Oberon, but the enemy they’d faced was terrifying. Navy surplus in the hands of the Mercenary Guild was one thing.
Navy surplus in the hands of pirates was another—and of the ships that had attacked the convoy, only the two destroyers were of classes that were supposed to be undergoing decommissioning.
“They’re not going to magically come back to life if you keep staring at the names,” Michelle told him as she entered their quarters. His wife hadn’t even bothered to look at the screen to see what he was looking at.
Brad sighed.
“Would it help to admit I’m also studying the ships that came after us?” he asked. “This whole thing stinks.”
His XO dropped her uniform jacket with its blazon of a large Viking warrior over a chair, which she pulled over to him before straddling it.
“Yes,” she agreed calmly. “You’re not from out here, Brad. I am. We don’t see Fleet capital ships. Corvettes? Sure. But the only destroyers we see out here are either Guild or pirate.”
“When the Cadre attacked Saturn, there was a Fleet cruiser force nearby,” Brad pointed out. “It’s not like Fleet doesn’t get out here.”
“They’re out here, yes,” she agreed. “But they’re not seen out here. Odd distinction, but an important one. Plus, well…” Michelle shrugged. “Saturn isn’t really ‘out here’ as I mean it, love. Jupiter and the Belt are still civilization as the Outer System sees it. Saturn’s more of a gray zone—but the real Outer System starts at Saturn’s trojan clusters and Uranus’s moons.
“There’s six million people out here in the dark, same population as the Jupiter planetary system, but spread out to the Everdark and back again. Fleet might come out here, but even a dozen ships are a drop in the bucket against this much of the Everdark.”
Brad shivered. He’d been raised on a freighter that mostly did the Mars–Belt run and had never been farther out than Jupiter until he’d become a mercenary commander.
“Fuck, did anyone except Brenda even know the carriers existed?” Michelle demanded. “I sure as Everlit didn’t.
“Neither did I,” he admitted. “That’s the scary part. Almost scarier, though, are those Invictuses.”
“What’s one corvette versus another?” his wife asked.
“Not much. Except that the Invictus design is only six years old and Fleet is hanging on to every one of them that they built with both hands,” Brad told her. “Which makes five ships out here that shouldn’t have been outside of Fleet hands—and that’s ignoring the fact that Fleet is being damn careful about who they sell the surplus Bound-class ships to.”
Only Guild companies with long reputations and Fleet Reserve officers were supposed to be getting the Bound ships. As a Fleet Reserve officer, Brad wasn’t complaining—and he could see the problem with selling even reputable mercenary companies a ship designed to kill cruisers.
Michelle sighed.
“You know who needs to know about this,” she told him. “Falcone.”
He paused thoughtfully. His wife had been occasionally quite sharp about Kate Falcone, mostly since he’d spent a lot of time with the Commonwealth spy while trying to rescue her. Michelle wasn’t particularly jealous, but Agent Falcone had been an area he’d decided to step lightly around to be safe.
Which meant he hadn’t even thought of sending the Commonwealth Intelligence Agency operative the information on what appeared to be rogue modern Fleet units in pirate hands.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll make the call.”
“Of course I’m right,” Michelle told him. “Now, if you’re not going to sleep anyway, we need to discuss the guard rotation for…”
He threw a pillow at her. Things progressed quite satisfactorily after that, as he was sure had been her plan.
Chapter Six
Oberon had not improved in the year and a half since Brad Madrid had last been there. Still the most populated and wealthiest colony outside of the orbit of Saturn. Still a disorganized hole with fourteen different “cities” that depended on domes and caves to survive.
That wasn’t to say it didn’t hold some surprises. He’s been in such a bad mental space on his last visit that he’d mistaken Oberon City as the largest of the settlements. Boy, had he missed the mark on that one.
First Oberon, the actual main settlement, was home to just over fifty thousand people, a quarter of Oberon’s population. It was still just as run-down as Oberon City, though.
The government was a joke. There was, technically, an elected Governor on Oberon supported by the Commonwealth. The elections were even, so far as Brad knew, relatively honest.
That was because nobody cared. The Governor wasn’t even a figurehead. Outside of a tiny detachment of Commonwealth Marines and a few beleaguered bureaucrats, no one even paid attention to her.
Authority in First Oberon belonged to the Council of Speakers, a glorified “city council” made up of representatives from whoever could justify having a seat to the current Council. There were merchants and industrialists on the council, along with a representative of the non-Guild mercenary that ran the largest private security enterprise on the planet, and at least one person the Agency was convinced represented the local pirates.
The First Oberon Council of Speakers ruled Oberon. The arrival of the Doctors’ Guild’s planned hospital was probably welcome, Brad assumed, but it was also a change in the balance of power.
Which was probably why the entire convoy had sat in orbit for twelve hours while Garibaldi argued with the Oberon Security Enterprise and Brad ran tactical simulations.
OSE’s defenses probably looked formidable on paper. Six combat frigates and two dozen manned interceptor fighters hung above the planet, supported by a trio of immobile gun platforms.
Of course, with the frigates weighing in at barely two thousand tons apiece, Oath of Vengeance outmassed Oberon’s “fleet” all by herself, and the interceptor fighters were worse than useless. Unlike the Javelin drones, these had people aboard, which meant they couldn’t accelerate any faster than a regular spaceship.
And they were small enough that a single round from a gatling driver would end any threat they represented. The tactical simulations Brad was running suggested the fighters wouldn’t survive the first six seconds after his people opened fire.
The immobile gun platforms were dead meat to his torpedoes, trapped in fixed orbits and unable to dodge. The combat frigates were actually worth their mass, relatively decent little ships, but even Heart of Vengeance was double the mass of any of them.
“You know, boss, I’m sure there are ways we could be more obvious about the fact that we’ll blow their little squadron to Everdark if Garibaldi gives the order,” Bogdanov snarked. “Bring up active targeting radar, flush the air from the torpedo tubes, that kind of thing. Gunports open, so to speak.”
Brad chuckled and eyed the frigates.
“Don’t tempt me,” he told his subordinate. “We all know those are, at best, ex-pirates. This isn’t a place that normally sees multi-ship convoys, let alone multi-ship Mercenary Guild companies. I suspect we make OSE nervous.”
“Garibaldi’s calling,” Xan Wong reported. “I guess she’s either made them see sense or she is very done.”
From the exhausted expression on the Doctors’ Guild Captain’s face, either could be true.
“Commodore, I think I’ve finally cleared us to land, but the locals are being twitchy about your fleet,” she admitted.
“Do you need me to blast my way through?” Brad offered brightly. “From what I know of the OSE…”
“We need to work with these people,” Garibaldi replied. “The facility is already sorted out and these ships are designed to land, but…”
“Yes, Captain?”
“They don’t want either of your destroyers coming any closer to Oberon,” she admitted. “I know Alan-a-dale can’t fly yet, which leaves us—”
“With Heart of Vengeance,” Brad finished for her. “I know my job, Captain Garibaldi. Heart will accompany your ships in and provide overhead cover until you’re all down and clear. Our ground troops, however, will go in first.
“Your people don’t get within shouting distance of the landing pad until Colonel Kawa has cleared it, understood? Until our replacements arrive, we’re responsible for your security…and I am not trusting it to the Oberon Security Enterprise for even one second.”
“I can live with that,” Garibaldi replied. “Believe me, Commodore Madrid, I can live with that.”
Saburo Kawa was in command of the ground contingent—that was a lesson Brad had learned the hard way—but Brad was still on Oath’s third shuttle as his troops went down. Saburo would be in command, but Brad was responsible.
He was also just as good a shot as most of his troopers and a better swordsman. He could hold his own in a ground fight, and he’d at least been to Oberon. As Michelle had carefully not pointed out, however, he’d never been to the city of First Oberon.
As he arrived, however, he realized his presence was a better idea than he’d thought. The black-jacketed Viking troopers were setting up a perimeter around the landing site picked out for the Guild freighters, but there was a squad of red-uniformed locals getting in the way.
“I’m going to guess the locals are trouble?” he murmured over the command net.
“I could probably convince them to back off if the twit in charge would stop staring at my tits and listen to me,” Lieutenant Trista Doary snapped. She commanded Bound by Law’s trooper detachment and had been with Brad and Saburo from the beginning.
“Though he might just be an idiot,” she added in a considering tone. “Rules of engagement?”
“Polite,” Brad told her. The ROE under their contract didn’t call for them to fight the local rent-a-cops. “I’ll be there in three. Keep your guns and blad
es sheathed.”
“Can I gouge his eyes out with my thumbs?” Doary asked sweetly.
Brad suspected that being aboard a spaceship that had taken some serious hits had been bad for Doary’s calm.
“That would be impolite,” he replied, accelerating his pace. If the local was managing to stare at Doary’s chest—despite combat armor!—that noticeably, there was a risk of serious stupidity.
And not on Brad’s people’s part.
“The site was authorized for the freighters, no one else,” the red-uniformed man was repeating as Brad arrived. “There are additional docking charges and oxygen costs for your shuttles and personnel.
“Right, this is Oberon, land of the outstretched palm,” Brad observed as he stepped into the conversation. “Lieutenant Doary, meet up with Colonel Kawa and get our perimeter organized.”
He “graced” the local with a cold smile.
“I don’t want anyone who isn’t ours within line of sight of the site,” he continued. “We wouldn’t want any accidents, after all.”
“Who in Everdark are you?” the local officer demanded.
“I am Commodore Brad Madrid, commanding officer of the Vikings Mercenary Guild Company and the man responsible for the safety of the convoy that’s coming in,” Brad told him. “Which means you and your people need to get clear of this site, officer…”
“I am Command Constable Athanasius Stanislav Daskalov,” the man reeled off with the ease of long practice. “You have no authority to give me orders.”
“Are you Commonwealth?” Brad snapped. “Because the Guild acknowledges the authority of the Commonwealth government of Oberon, not…whoever you are.”