Bound By Law (Vigilante Book 3)

by Terry Mixon

  Well, it seemed as if the computer center was no longer a primary target and this opportunity had slipped between their fingers.

  “Fire team four will remain on station with me,” he ordered. “Fire team two, find out where Lieutenant Phan wants you and get moving. We’ve got this under control.”

  “Copy that, sir,” the corporal in charge of the other fire team said. He gestured for his people to move out, and in moments, they were gone, leaving Brad alone with the prisoner while his people guarded the corridor outside.

  Brad stood watching over the prisoner. The mercenaries had bound the man’s hands behind his back. This one wasn’t in a vacuum suit. Instead, he wore regular shipboard coveralls. He looked terrified.

  He had every right to be.

  “Finally,” Brad said as he squatted down. “Alone at last. Why did you wipe the computers?”

  In spite of his fear, the man jutted out his chin in defiance. “To keep someone like you from using it against us.”

  Not exactly the kind of words Brad would have expected of an innocent spacer.

  “My name is Brad Madrid and I command the Vikings Mercenary Company. This vessel is supporting Cadre operations. You, sir, are a pirate. If you’d like to avoid a very brief trial resulting in your execution, I’d suggest that you start giving me reasons why I should let you live.”

  If anything, Brad’s words terrorized the man even more but he continued holding his defiant expression. “You’ll get nothing from me. Do your worst.”

  Brad smiled coldly. “Well, since you insist.”

  In spite of his ominous tone, Brad didn’t stick the man into a handy airlock. They found an area to hold the prisoners as they rounded the crew up. To keep them from speaking to one another, all were bound and gagged. Let them sweat things for a little while as Brad and his crew continued to clear the tanker.

  There was significantly more fighting than one would anticipate from a tanker, so that was additional confirmation that these were Cadre pirates fighting for their lives because they knew the fate that awaited them if they were tried.

  Both the bridge and Engineering were sealed when his people arrived, but the hatches weren’t sufficient to keep out determined troopers. A couple of shaped charges blew the hatches and got his men and women into the secured areas.

  That didn’t mean they captured them without bloodshed. Surrender was the exception rather than the rule. The butcher’s bill was going to be high once they started counting up how many people had decided to fight back.

  Brad’s initial impulse was to go to the bridge, but the corporal in command of his fire team seemed disinclined to allow him out before they’d secured the ship. It seemed that Saburo had given the man orders.

  While he was waiting, Brad examined the computer room in more detail. The units themselves might not contain any helpful information but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something to be found.

  And, in fact, he did find something interesting.

  On a shelf below the built-in desk was a small set of backup disks. They were labeled for previous flights, so it was unlikely they’d have any detailed information about the current mission, but they still presented an opportunity to perhaps get something from a previous run.

  He’d gotten a bit rusty over the last couple of years, but his computer knowledge was still good enough to isolate the station in the room and load the tapes for a manual review.

  A quick call to Falcone back on Oath of Vengeance got him the dates of a few previous supposed Fleet deliveries made by Draco Limited. Several of them were included in the backup tape set.

  As Brad loaded one, he wondered what the man who had wiped the computers had planned to do with the tapes. Had he intended to destroy them in some fashion? Probably. The fact that Brad’s assault shuttles had given them no warning hadn’t given him time to deal with them.

  There was a fair bit of operational data on the backup tape. Basically, readings from all the instrumentation and equipment inside the ship. Including, to Brad’s pleasure, some astrogation data.

  According to the tape, the tanker made a trip to the asteroid belt on the trip where they’d supposedly been making a Fleet run. The destination was an unnamed asteroid that only had a numerical designation. The data from the scanners gave him a decent look at its size and shape, but the tanker had turned the scanners off shortly after arrival.

  Based on the timestamps, they hadn’t turned them back on for another ten hours. At that point, they’d departed back toward Blackhawk Station.

  Rather than bug anyone back on Oath, he waited for Colonel Saburo to declare the tanker under control. That took another fifteen minutes.

  “I’m sending everybody looking for stragglers,” Saburo said when Brad called him. “On a ship this big, there’s an ass-ton of places someone might conceal themselves. You can move around now, but stay vigilant.”

  “I’ve done this before, Mother,” Brad said reprovingly. “I’ll be happy at this point if I can just move up to the bridge and double-check a few things.”

  “I’m serious, Commodore. It’s only takes one person popping out of nowhere at the wrong time to ruin someone’s day.”

  “I’ll be careful. Madrid out.”

  Brad gestured to the corporal, and they started out for the bridge. Because Saburo had been so adamant, Brad went slowly and allowed a bit more paranoia to color his actions than he normally would.

  That proved a wise decision when a supply locker burst open as he was passing by and an older man with a ragged beard lunged out at him, a bright blue monofilament blade snapping to life as he moved.

  The man was far too close for Brad to duck back, so he grabbed the man’s wrist in both his hands instead. The bright line flashed between their faces as each struggled to control where it went.

  Almost without thought, Brad brought his knee up into the man’s groin three times in quick succession. That pretty much took the fight out of him. Moments later, Brad had possession of the mono-blade and the pirate was doubled over on the deck.

  Everything had happened so quickly that none of the mercenaries had had an opportunity to shoot the attacker. Once he was down, they had the self-control to restrain themselves. The embarrassed corporal in command of the fire team secured their newest prisoner and handed him off to one of his people.

  “Sorry, sir,” the man said over the command channel.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Brad said as he deactivated the blade and stuffed it into one of the outer pockets on his vacuum armor. “Let’s just get to the bridge before any more surprises pop out.”

  Everyone was on a hair trigger the rest of the way to the bridge. The corporal was visibly relieved when Brad stepped onto the bridge and was under the protection of two fire teams.

  The tanker’s bridge was smaller than Heart of Vengeance’s and in significantly poorer repair than the corvette had been when Brad had taken possession of it. In addition, a number of consoles had fresh holes in them and were smoking. The main screen was shattered. In addition, two Cadre bodies lay on the floor.

  Brad focused his attention on fire team one’s commander. “Report.”

  “There were three people in here when we arrived, sir. One of them was working on a console while the other two tried to keep us out. All three were hit during the exchange of fire. The survivor probably isn’t going to make it, but we shipped him off to what passes for a medical cubby on this tub.”

  Brad nodded his understanding and searched for a console that was still operational. The one serving as an engineering backup panel seemed to be undamaged, so Brad sat down and brought up the ship’s systems.

  With the computer wiped, there wasn’t much to see, but he could still determine their present course. The ship had dodged a little bit trying to lose them at the last moment, but that didn’t stop him from seeing their rough heading.

  He didn’t have a complete listing of asteroids in his back pocket, so he sent a request for the location of th
e asteroid from the tape back to Oath of Vengeance. It only took Michelle a minute to give him the information he was looking for.

  The tanker was headed toward the same section of the belt as the asteroid they’d visited on the previous trip. That was careless of them and provided him with an opportunity to surprise whomever they were coming to refuel.

  He grinned at Michelle over the com channel he’d opened. “We’ve got a break. Send over enough people to run the tanker and we’ll take it to the rendezvous they’ve already set up. If we play our cards right, we’re going to be able to ambush one of their capital ships.

  “Maybe the carrier. Maybe Lioness. Maybe only another ship that is going to move the cargo to a different location. In any case, we have a chance to catch them off guard. Did any signal get out?”

  His wife shook her head. “Falcone says the jammers worked as designed. No one heard them when they started yelling. She’s on her way over, by the way.”

  “That’s fine. She and I need to go over this ship with a fine-toothed comb, and I know she’ll want to intimidate our prisoners. I’ll give you a call when we have more information. For now, keep us on course for the rendezvous and get the ships back into stealth.”

  He leaned back in the battered couch after he’d disconnected and smiled. This was just the break they’d needed. Now he could make the Cadre pay for his uncle and so many of his friends.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It took Lieutenant Phan and Major Doary about an hour to completely secure the ship and search every nook and cranny for people and self-destruct devices. They found a few of each.

  The most important things they found were the explosives in critical areas meant to destroy the ship. On anything other than a tanker, they’d probably be in the engine room. And, to be fair, there were some in there.

  There were also a number of significantly-sized charges on the exterior of the tanker. Since helium, no matter its form, wasn’t explosive, that caused Brad to look a little deeper into what the tanker was carrying.

  Not all of the tanks were filled with He-3. A few had hydrogen. Others had oxygen. With an explosive device located on the hull between tanks containing each, that made for a rather large explosion if someone decided to destroy the ship.

  They had cleverly installed vents on the interior of the ship and no doubt planned to vent the tanks before blowing the charges. The mixture would act much like a fuel-air explosive, even in a vacuum, so long as they timed things correctly.

  Clever and deadly. Definitely not innocent bystanders.

  There weren’t that many tanks given over the potentially explosive mixture, and that made sense. This tanker still had to deliver a virtually full load of He-3, or the Cadre might as well not bother. Still, it was clever.

  To be certain they hadn’t missed any, Brad ordered that every tank be checked and anything that was not He-3 be vented slowly into space. A hit in battle would have almost as significant an effect as the charges.

  The haul of prisoners was smaller than he’d anticipated. The tanker had had a crew of thirty-two individuals. Twenty-one of those had died in the fighting. Seven more were in critical condition, with four not expected to survive.

  That only left four uninjured people. One of them was the man Brad had captured in the computer center. He’d probably be the best one to start questioning with, since they’d already developed a relationship.

  Once Falcone arrived aboard the tanker, Brad met her in the computer center to discuss strategy while she examined the backup drives for any other interesting tidbits he might have missed. Since there was only one chair, he stood off to the side, next to the wiped computer system, while she worked.

  “It doesn’t seem as if anyone really wanted to surrender,” Brad said as an opening. “I think we have one senior officer in custody. He was trying to do something on the bridge and got shot up by my people before he could finish.

  “Based on what we found on the hull, my guess is that he was going to blow up the ship. It makes me really glad that we got as close as we did before they spotted us. If they’d known we were coming for much longer, they’d have blown the hull before we touched down.”

  “Or just as you touched down,” she added, glancing over at him. “It’s what I’d do. Take as many of your boarders with me as I could.”

  “Damned bloody-minded spies,” he muttered. “Still, you’re probably right. I just wish that we’d captured more senior people. The odds of anyone knowing where the important Cadre installations are go down significantly once we exclude the officers.”

  She nodded as she tapped on the virtual keyboard. “Maybe we’ll get lucky with the guy from the bridge.”

  Brad somehow doubted that.

  Based on the medical report he’d received, his medics were doing everything they could, but the guy was probably going to die no matter what they did. At this point, he’d ordered them to focus on trying to get him awake enough to question before he died.

  “We’ve got the guy we captured in this compartment,” Brad said. “He’s the one that wiped the computer systems. I suspect he’s got the best chance of knowing something interesting out of the people capable of talking, if we can convince him to tell us what he knows.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” she said with a cold smile. “I can be very persuasive.”

  He knew from experience that she could be damned scary when she wanted to be. “I’ve already set the groundwork for you. I told him that if he didn’t cooperate, we’d stick him in an airlock.”

  Falcone laughed. “I’m not certain you’d have done that even back before you got a handle on that temper of yours. There’s too much of a good guy deep down inside you.

  “You’re not going to execute someone because they’re uncooperative, no matter what they’ve done in the past. If you’re not fighting, you’re not going to kill them.”

  That was probably true. He’d have difficulty killing anyone in cold blood, even Cadre scum.

  Two years earlier, after the deaths of virtually everyone he’d known and loved, he’d come close to losing his soul. Even now, the therapy he went through when they were back in the Io Shipyards occasionally uncovered dark bits that he had to work through.

  Sometimes, his sessions were solo. Sometimes, he and Michelle were there together. Having her in his life made him feel a lot more stable. She was a rock.

  His Agency partner, on the other hand, would do whatever she felt needed to be done. If she decided the prisoners needed to be spaced, Brad had no doubt she’d carry out that sentence without a single sign of regret.

  That wasn’t to say that she was a soulless monster. He didn’t think that at all. She would regret it. She was just a lot tougher than he was when it came to doing bloody tasks that needed doing after the shooting stopped, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it, regret afterward or no.

  Falcone leaned closer to the screen and made a soft sound with her tongue. “Okay, I’ve loaded all the backup data into a general holding program that I brought over from Oath of Vengeance. Looking at the dates listed on these entries, this tanker is the one that made all the fake runs to Fleet bases.

  “I’m not certain that exonerates any of the other tankers’ crews, but it certainly means that everyone on board this ship is as dirty as Everdarkened shit. Referring back to your earlier comment, if I need to make some salutary examples to get people chatting, I won’t have any problem sticking one of these bastards through an airlock to get some cooperation from his fellows.”

  Brad leaned forward and examined the data on the screen. “It doesn’t look as if they always went to the same location, but they do their meetings in pairs. Every two trips, they switch locations. This is the second jaunt to that one asteroid. That’s sloppy. They should pick a different location every single time to keep people like us from tracking them down.”

  Falcone shot him a wry smile. “You pick some interesting times to fuss about other people’s professionalism. Why can’t
you just be happy that they screwed up and we have an opportunity?”

  “Oh, I’m happy. I just wanted to point out where they could improve, because at some point in the future, they just might. We need to be ready and we can’t count on them being sloppy. Is there anything else in there that looks interesting?”

  She shook her head. “No logs written by human beings, so everything is simply mechanical output. How the reactors were doing, life-support processing, various other internal stuff that might be useful for maintenance.

  “When they got on station, they shut off the external scanners. No data at all. It looks as if they wanted to make absolutely certain no one got a glance at who they were meeting.”

  He nodded. “That probably wasn’t to prevent the data from being captured by the logs. Whoever was in command of this tanker likely wanted to be certain none of his crew spotted some detail they weren’t supposed to know. There are various levels of involvement even for Cadre pirates, and loose lips sink ships.”

  His com signaled.

  “Madrid.”

  “Corporal Jimenez, sir. The prisoner from the bridge seems to be waking up. I think this is a last rally before he goes down for the count, so if you want to ask him any questions, you might want to hurry.”

  Brad looked at Falcone as she stood. “We’re on our way.”

  The compartment that passed for medical center on the tanker seemed as if it were only suitable for very minor injuries. What high-level gear it had was for poisonings, vacuum exposure, and burns, the major threats aboard a tanker. It wasn’t really up to the task of keeping someone alive that required surgery.

  His people had set up areas in the corridor where the prisoners could be cared for. There just wasn’t enough room for all of them in the compartment.

  It only took a glance to confirm what they had told Brad earlier. Of the critical cases, two seemed to have died, based on the sheets over their bodies.

  The last two with severe injuries—including the man they’d come to see—were in very bad condition. If they survived the next few hours, Brad would be very impressed with the medics’ skill.