Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  All three pilots wheeled away, carrying out rapid evasive manoeuvres and darting out of range. The Delta shuttle, Buzz’s, was leaving a trail of flashes in its wake. It looked like a firework display, brilliant multicoloured bursts. Alex, however, knew that what he was looking at there was debris falling off the shuttle. In fact, he knew that what he was looking at there was gas escaping from a pinpoint rupture in the airlock. The gas particles were exploding as they fell out of the shuttle’s multidimensional superlight field, crashing out of wave space into the normal space time continuum. They were instantly converted to tachyons, with an energy per particle that would make a hydrogen bomb look like a firecracker. Those flaring lights were thousands of kilometres across. Any ship running into them would be flung about like a paper boat in a hurricane.

  Alex’s heart was pounding. Any monitor of his blood pressure would have seen it spike. There was a part of him, inside, that was yelling with shock, frightened for Buzz and the others. If there’d been an internal breach of the airlock, too, they’d be dealing with a tornado of depressurisation. Manoeuvring systems might have been damaged. If engine systems had been damaged as well, the cores could go into dephase.

  There was no sign of that anxiety on Alex’s face, though. His expression changed from watchful to a look of calm, cold severity, the look of a man totally in control.

  “Fire four,” he said, without hesitation.

  Guns number four and three, its equivalent on the starboard side, were the ones now equipped with the Maylard Calibration Systems. They were the latest attempt to solve an age-old dilemma. Warship guns were intended to destroy enemy ships, specifically, Marfikian ships. Freighters, however, were very fragile in comparison. One full powered blast from one of their cannon would rip through the thin duralloy layer of the Demella’s hull and the steel alloys and insulation beneath it, and tear the ship apart. This was felt to be unreasonable in law enforcement operations involving League ships. If power was taken down too much, though, the shots would have no effect at all. Dialling it in to get an effective shot without risking killing everyone aboard the ship was a perennial quest for weapons designers, made hugely more difficult by the complexity of wave space physics and the need to adapt the system for every kind of ship.

  Professor Maylard’s solution wasn’t perfect, as he’d be the first to admit. It required at least two seconds of perfectly matched speed between pursuer and pursued, and pinpoint accuracy in targeting their manoeuvring thrusters. The Heron’s gunners, however, had been practising that for hours at a time. The helm was maintaining a rock-steady match with the freighter. Two seconds after Alex gave the order, gunnery screens lit up with target engaged and their number four gun barked out a spear of superlight plasma.

  It hit the Demella’s amidships thruster, with a crow of delight from Professor Maylard as he saw the force and accuracy. He was the only one cheering, though. Everyone else was holding their breath, looking at the shuttles, the freighter and the skipper.

  “We’re good. We’re all right.” Buzz’s voice on comms got gasps of relief throughout the ship. “Outer hull breach at the airlock but we’ve depressurised and internal is holding. Heading back to the ship.” They could see that, in fact, the shuttle curving around carefully. It was no longer spilling a trail of explosions, but now that had stopped they could see the damage that had been done. The paintwork around the airlock was a charred mess, and part of a comms array was hanging off the shuttle on a wire. “Permission to dock at five, sir?”

  That particular shuttle was normally housed at airlock six. That, however, would mean it docking on its port side, the damaged airlock.

  “Granted.” Alex said, and on an internal comm, “I want a hullwalker team out there to clear that debris as soon as they’ve docked.”

  “We can do that,” Buzz had obviously heard that, over the open comline between them. “We’re in suits already.”

  “Just get back aboard,” Alex told him, in a tone that made it clear that that was not subject to discussion. Then, immediately, he hailed the other two shuttles. They had curved around to come back alongside the frigate, too, staying out of the way of any debris that might still fall off the Delta shuttle. “Damage report?”

  “No damage, sir,” both shuttles reported. Sam sounded calm, Jonty a little shaken but under control.

  The freighter had stopped firing. If the Maylard gun had done what it was designed to, nobody on that ship would be able to operate gun controls at least for a minute or so. Alex had been aboard a shuttle, himself, for the first live-firing exercise. When the Maylard stun-bolt had hit, it had felt like some giant had taken a huge sledgehammer and whammed it into the ship. Alex’s head had been ringing, his teeth jarred, and his hands and feet had felt numb. The intense vibration could make you pee yourself, too, if you had a full bladder. On a rustbucket like the Demella the impact would have generated some very scary noises as well, and might have popped the odd light. They would still be trying to work out what the heck had hit them.

  Alex did not want to give them time to figure it out.

  “Are you still good to go?” he asked, and the answer came back, firm and simultaneous from both shuttles.

  “Yes sir!”

  Alex looked at Martine. He didn’t need to tell her that he needed her to get out there and take command, as the next senior officer available. He didn’t need to ask her, either, how fast she and her team could suit up. There was a sense almost of déjà vu about this. Alex had run them through every kind of scenario he could think of in training, many times, and this was one they’d covered.

  “Sir.” Martine acknowledged, and was on her feet and heading for the hatch, immediately, “Eta team to launch.”

  Seventy six seconds later she reported “Eta team ready.” They could not have done any better. Cyber suits were not easy to get into. You had to climb inside the bottom half and then have the top half lowered onto you, overlapping armour plates covering the seal. All its systems had to be activated and checked, too, with a complexity of life support, scanners and comms. They also had to be issued weapons from the armoury, power up and do pre-flight on the shuttle they were using. For the four of them to get there and do all that in three quarters of a minute was impressive. It felt like a very long time, though, waiting, knowing that every second gave the Demella’s crew time to regroup.

  At least it gave them time to recover their damaged shuttle. The pilot, Jace Higgs, brought it in to the airlock with such precision it didn’t seem damaged at all. They could not, however, open both doors of the airlock onto the shuttle the way they usually did for people to pass through. They’d depressurised the shuttle to minimise stress on the damaged airlock, so had to close the hatch and repressurise the airlock before they could come back aboard. Buzz sent the other two members of his team aboard first while he and Jace powered down the shuttle. The pilot had done a superb job, dodging fire, whipping them out of range, controlling the shuttle with an airlock breach and bringing it back into dock. He’d been totally on top of it, calm and focussed.

  Now, though, once the shuttle powered down, the shock caught up with him. He had turned very pale, and was shaky on his feet as he got up.

  “Is it too late to go back to prison?” he joked, wryly.

  Buzz gave a burst of laughter, and put an arm briefly around the crewman’s armoured shoulders. Jace Higgs was another of the “Cestus Three” and had become one of the most famous people in the League. He was often the focus of anti-Fourth campaigning, described as a violent convicted criminal, a dangerous and brutal man sent to prison for punching an officer in the mouth. At the other end of the anti-Fourth campaign spectrum, human rights organisations protested against him and the other “prisoners” being used as expendable cannon fodder in operations they believed were too dangerous for the regular Fleet.

  “I think you need a cookie,” Buzz said, leading him into the airlock and waiting there as it pressure-equalised with the ship. Jace laughed, nodding ag
reement. They would be able to de-suit in sickbay, where all four of them would be given a routine check.

  Well, three of them would, anyway. Buzz got out of his armour but put on a shipboard survival suit and headed straight for the command deck.

  As he arrived, Martine’s team had launched and taken up formation with the other two shuttles, with Martine acknowledging the skipper’s orders.

  This time, they moved to a position above the freighter, staying out of its gun range, and waited.

  “Fire four,” Alex commanded. The Demella’s guns were no longer firing but they had had time to get themselves together by now. He was not going to send his people into more fire, either from the ship or from hand-held weapons as they went aboard. True, the boarding party was heavily armoured, but gunfire on starships was especially dangerous, liable to hit and damage vital tech as well as risking innocent people unable to get out of the way.

  In fact, Alex had a pretty good idea who had been firing those guns. The skipper, Jervais Clemens, was unlikely to have ordered that. He might be a moody swine with a terrifying lack of care and responsibility in the maintenance of his ship, but he was not insane. It was unlikely to be Dusty Davies, the engineer, either, unless he was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing. It didn’t seem likely that either of the two teenage deckhands would even know how to operate cannon, let alone take it upon themselves to be firing at Fleet shuttles.

  The two other crew, however, were another matter. They were hard cases who’d both served time in prison, and Alex would have put money on it being the two of them at the gun controls.

  As it turned out, he was absolutely right. He was watching through Martine’s suit-cam as the boarding party went through both airlocks. Jervais Clemens was still on the flight deck, along with the engineer. They were both stunned, and neither of them resisted as they were put into tape cuffs and hustled onto a shuttle.

  Sam got straight to work, installing the arrest software, though making a wordless sound, eloquent of disgust, at the state the ship was in.

  He had good reason. Even messy starships were kept clean. Dust caused technical problems, and when your survival depended on thousands of complex bits of technology all continuing to work, dust became the enemy. Whatever cleaning was done aboard the Demella, though, was clearly superficial, since the vibration had shaken a visible haze of dust into the air, now settling onto consoles.

  Alex, however, was focussed on watching Martine as she and her team moved aft. Cargomasters were more spacious than whalebellies, with a mess deck separate from the flight deck and an engine room behind that. The gun controls on the Demella were just behind the airlocks, part of a tech-area. They were no more than wall mounted control panels with flimsy fold-out seats. Jame Jablenko was still seated at the starboard side, the one that had fired first. He too was stunned but he tried to get up and, incredibly, swung a wild punch at Martine. It was just as well for him she was too quick for him, as punching duralloy armour was a pretty sure way to break your knuckles. Martine caught his wrist, twisted and yanked, and he went down, cursing furiously. His wife, Misha Simone, was over by the portside gun but no longer at its controls. She had gone to grab a fire extinguisher, hurling it at them, screaming abuse.

  Why they even had a fire extinguisher on a starship was a mystery. Starships had, or were supposed to have, sophisticated fire detection and suppression systems. The fire extinguisher looked old and had Valentine Motel written on the side.

  It clanged harmlessly off Petty Officer Jezno’s armour and he had her on the deck in seconds, wrestling her into handcuffs, while the other two members of the team went straight to tend to Licia Simmington. She was on the deck, unconscious, with a livid bruise forming on her forehead. The paramedic on their boarding team put a life monitor on her wrist and started head injury assessment.

  “Get them to the shuttle,” Martine ordered, as Jame Jablenko and Misha Simone were kicking and swearing. They were no match for the crew who took them away, however. Hullwalker gear translated body movement into high powered cybernetics. Jablenko and Simone might as well have tried to struggle with trucks.

  Martine left them to it as she looked for the last remaining member of the crew. He was nowhere in sight, but thermal imaging located him. He was hiding in the shower on the freighter’s mess deck, curled up in a ball on the floor of it, sobbing hysterically.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right.” Martine activated her face plate so that he could see, at least, that she was human, her expression and tone concerned. “It’s all right, Zak. We’re not going to hurt you. It’s all over now, you’re safe.”

  He took some convincing, and Martine made the humane decision to treat him as a casualty, too. He was helped aboard Jonty’s shuttle, still sobbing, and talked to kindly as they brought him and Licia over to the frigate. She was conscious now but hardly seemed aware of what was going on, moaning and trying to hold her head.

  Alex kept an eye on that, and on the prisoners being held aboard the other shuttle, and on Sam’s team, still working on the flight deck. He was also aware of the two hullwalkers who’d gone out to do emergency work on their own damaged shuttle. That debris hanging off it could break loose at any moment, and several kilos of metal exploding sublight would give the ship a jolt.

  On top of all that, he had the media to contend with. Both ABC and TNN’s space-broadcast units had chased out of Karadon after them. They’d caught up easily, keeping a safe distance back while the gunfire and explosions were going on. They had, however, been close enough to film it. Even their powerful hull-mounted cameras would only give a fuzzy image at that range, but they would use software to sharpen it up.

  There was nothing Alex could do about that. Space was free to all, and so long as they didn’t violate the frigate’s security zone, they could go, and film, wherever they liked. They had learned from their previous encounter with the Heron, at least, and were keeping their distance. Seeing that shuttles were now going back from the freighter to the frigate, though, they ventured close enough to start trying to signal them, asking for a statement, was the Demella Enterprise under arrest, were there any casualties, how badly had the Fourth’s shuttle been damaged?

  Alex ignored that, leaving it to the flight control station to be alert to them getting too close and to the comms station to blank them out with “off comms”. He had casualties, prisoners and a ship under arrest to deal with.

  Of these, the Demella Enterprise was the most problematic. Licia and Zak were very soon in sickbay and being taken care of. The other four were very soon in the brig, too. A paramedic would check them out, there, and one of their super-Subs would do the paperwork, providing them with copies of their rights and issuing emergency kit.

  The Fourth no longer had to keep their prisoners in airlocks. There’d been huge rows over that as details had gone out about their seizure of the Might of Teranor, with its skipper and the passenger they had arrested being held aboard the Minnow in separate airlocks. Both had alleged that this amounted to mental torture, claiming that the Fourth had repeatedly threatened to open the outer airlock doors and space them.

  The Fleet had never seen a problem using airlocks as brigs on the rare occasions they were needed. Airlocks were always survival pods too, equipped with a shower and lavatory unit. With clip-in bunks, they were as well equipped and actually more spacious than officers’ accommodation. The judge at the Might of Teranor trial, however, had commented that he did not feel this was ideal, and recommended that the Admiralty look into providing “more appropriate” accommodation for prisoners in future.

  That was, in fact, one of the reasons Dix Harangay had chosen a Seabird 37 for the Fourth. They were designed primarily for use in convoy escort and rescue operations, with two carrier decks capable of carrying either passengers or supplies. That made them amongst the roomiest ships in the Fleet, which had enabled them to give the old wardroom to the Second, constructing a bigger one on the carrier deck along with a brig fa
cility and a training gym.

  As Belassa Torres had mentioned, the League Prisons Authority had helped them out with the brig. They had been delighted to do so. They were never normally allowed involvement in military facilities and were constantly campaigning for access to the military prison on Cestus, so actually being invited to have a say in custodial facilities aboard the Fourth’s ship had had them falling over themselves to help. They’d assisted with the design and with the installation, creating a facility that was the best that could possibly be achieved aboard a starship. It had eighteen individual cells around a communal dining and exercise area, all under high security monitoring and with cell facilities nobody could complain about. Once they were taken in there, as far as Alex was concerned, they were no longer a problem.

  The Demella Enterprise, however, was. Sam had had no difficulty imposing the arrest programme on the freighter’s systems, but he was having great difficulty getting it to stop shrieking alerts. The software was running diagnostics, and had so far reported four hundred and thirty seven technical faults. The most serious of these was a failure in telemetry between the flight deck and engineering. Communication between flight controls and engines was dangerously erratic.

  The reason for that became apparent when one of the techs working with Sam tracked down the fault to an under-deck cable connection. What he found when he opened up the deck plate was so appalling that he took a picture of it and sent it to the frigate for them to be able to see it for themselves.