“Remain in command of gamma and delta teams.” He told Arie, with a copy of that signal to the other Sub. “Follow standing orders.”
“Sir,” Arie McKenna’s response was immediate and reassuringly confident. The Queen of Cartasay and three of the other liners in port were signalling their support, too, assuring the Heron that they would do everything in their power to assist them. Within moments, more liners and freighters would be adding their voices to that.
“Engage pursuit,” Alex ordered. The Pallamar was vanishing fast.
“Sir,” Martine Fishe acknowledged.
The Heron rose out of orbit, span about and dived after the fleeing Pallamar, hull lights blaring blue and yellow. The remaining snatch teams were preparing for launch, with Buzz on the alpha shuttle, in command. They would be ready within a minute, but Alex was not about to throw them into the line of fire till he was very sure he had the Pallamar under control.
His eyes were fixed on the freighter as section after section of his ship reported in ready for action. The Pallamar out-massed the frigate, though only because of the stacks of containers on its flat-topped hold. If their information from Therik was correct, it had a crew of eleven aboard, including the skipper. None of these were innocent, vulnerable kids. Though few of them had criminal records, that was only because the authorities had never found sufficient evidence to make a prosecution stick.
Intelligence was flashing an urgent advisory onto the command screens, and Alex took it in with a glance.
Hale Ardant had signalled the Pallamar as it came into port. The signal was encrypted but their computer teams had no difficulty reading it.
“The Fourth has Arad. He’s turned state’s evidence. We’re trapped here.”
Edrin Endell’s response was, obviously, to turn his ship away and depart at high speed. It was conceivable that he was attempting to lead the frigate away so that Ardant, Jorgensen and the others could make a getaway, but that didn’t seem very likely, somehow. It certainly didn’t seem very likely to anyone who’d read Edrin Endell’s psyche profile. Altruism was not one of his character traits.
Alex was rather more interested in the fact that Hale Ardant still didn’t seem to attach any importance to them having arrested Logan Tantrell. Could they still not have realised that he’d been keeping records? They were, evidently, far more concerned about what Leo Arad might have to tell them.
“Permission to launch?” That was Buzz, as the last of the snatch teams reported ready.
“Not yet,” Alex said. He’d spent months studying Edrin Endell, getting into his head. Buzz had profiled him too, both of them poring through every scrap of information and profiling available from other agencies. They were in full agreement that Endell would not go down without a fight. They also knew that he would already have his crew at action stations and his guns primed to fire, even though the odds against the Fourth already being at Karadon were so remote. His first option would have been to play the injured innocent, as he always had before, relying on his lawyers to protect him. As soon as it became apparent that the Fourth had sufficient evidence to arrest him, however, he would run. When that didn’t work, he would fight. Alex was so sure of that, he could feel the Pallamar’s guns locking on to target the Heron.
He was still not prepared for the attack that came, though. The instant that the Heron came into their visual range, the Pallamar swerved violently, swinging in front of the frigate. In just the same moment, with perfect timing, they dropped one of their cargo containers from the stack.
It fell sublight directly ahead of the Heron and exploded with the force of a superlight missile. As they ran into the blast the frigate slewed, span upward and tumbled. Deck plates groaned under the strain, lights popped and three small fires broke out around the ship, instantly suppressed.
The two pilots at the helm had the ship under control almost as quickly, hauling it back round and diving after the Pallamar as it changed course again. Their pilot today was Petty Officer Ali Jezno, assisted by co-pilot Leading Star Pera Banks, one of the secondees on loan to them. She had an exceptional gift for piloting, an ability to handle the ship so smoothly that she seemed almost to be mind-melded with it rather than working controls. Ali was laying in the course and doing tech-checks, leaving it to her to manoeuvre the ship.
Alex glanced at the damage control panel and then looked back at the Pallamar. His eyes had taken on a steely glint.
“Fire at will,” he authorised the Maylard guns. Throwing a cargo container into the path of a Fleet ship very definitely counted as attacking it. If their shuttles had been flying free, rather than in the shelter of their airlock docking bays, they would have taken serious damage. As it was, the Heron’s for’ard hull cameras had been taken out and there was significant damage to their hull.
Significant, but not critical. They had lost paintwork and some of their hull lights were gone, but structural integrity was still reading as sound.
“Stay out of the blast cone,” Alex told the crew at the helm, and got a fervent, “Yes sir!” from them both.
The Pallamar did not make that easy. The pirate ship kept swerving in front of them, trying to get ahead of them again to drop another container in their path. Another few seconds and they obviously thought they had a chance of that, loosing another container.
It exploded with tremendous force, but this time the Heron curved around the expanding cone in which they’d have run into the blast wave, slicking around it just half a light second away and leaving it behind them. The Pallamar was pushing all its engines to the max. Heatscan readout showed the twenty eight mix cores blazing white hot. The cargomaster was touching L18 at times, much faster than it was intended to go. At that rate and with such violent manoeuvres, the ship must be juddering and creaking as if in a launch run.
They were no match for the Heron, though. The frigate could cruise effortlessly at L18 and could hit L24 for high speed pursuit. Having got around the danger zone of the freighter hurling containers at them, they came up rapidly alongside them, matching their every move.
For three long seconds they ran alongside the pirate ship, firing ahead of and around it with their other guns while the Maylard cannon team tried to lock on to the Pallamar’s manoeuvring thrusters. They had to maintain that lock for two full seconds for the Maylard system to calculate the force required to deliver a disabling but non-lethal shot.
In the meantime, however, nothing was preventing the Pallamar firing at them. The Pallamar had only the standard armament for a cargomaster freighter, six apparently short-range and relatively low powered laser cannon. They had no missile tubes, either. That had been one of the decisive factors in the court’s decision to issue anti-harassment orders in Edrin Endell’s favour. The pirate ship so notorious in the space around Karadon was often reported to have fired scatter missiles and fired at a range that would be beyond the capability of the Pallamar, as inspected by the Fleet and Customs.
Now, however, it became apparent that those inspections had not looked deep enough. An airlock had opened at the Pallamar’s nose and some kind of launch tube was protruding from it. As the Heron drew up alongside, that tube spat tiny missiles that curved at the frigate on controlled trajectory. Their gunners took them out before they could hit, but as they exploded they sent micro-shrapnel hurtling in all directions at superlight speeds. Each bit of it was only a few molecules across, but they were molecules of duralloy. At that speed, they could strafe through hull systems.
Alex heard the machine-gun noise of his hull taking damage from the hail of micro-shrapnel at the same time as the Pallamar’s guns opened fire on them. They should not have been able to reach them at that range but they did, clearly a lot higher powered than they appeared. Bolts of superlight plasma came hurtling at the frigate, striking at their comms array, their guns, their thrusters, their airlocks. The frigate was shuddering under the impact and the damage control screen was flickering with new reports, but Ali and Pera held the helm stead
y.
The Maylard cannon fired, striking a spear of plasma directly into the Pallamar’s amidships thruster.
The Pallamar stopped firing.
“Wait,” said Alex. He was not convinced. Some instinct told him that things were not right. Later, reviewing the footage, he would see that the Pallamar had ceased firing raggedly, more as if the gunners were responding to an order than as if they were all being simultaneously stunned. At the time he only knew that it didn’t feel right. He certainly wasn’t about to send his shuttles in yet. Their number four shuttle had taken damage already, even though protected by the docking bay. The damage control screen was showing it as having lost its starboard thruster, unsafe to launch. Alex could see that Buzz was redeploying its team, sending them to join other shuttles. “Fire again,” Alex told the Maylard gunnery team, and again, a spear of plasma lanced across to strike directly at the Pallamar’s admidships thruster.
The ship continued, neither firing nor changing course. It looked as if everyone aboard it was stunned, as if this would be the perfect time to board. Some fool somewhere was cheering, as if he thought it was all over.
Alex stared at the pirate ship and knew that they were playing dead, hoping to lure in their shuttles and take them out in one deadly blast. It could have been described as gut instinct, or as the result of the many hours he’d spent studying his opponent and planning for this battle. Whatever you called it, though, he knew that Endell was leading him on, laying a trap.
The question of why the Maylard cannon hadn’t worked would have to wait till later. Most likely, Alex knew, it would be because everyone aboard the ship was wearing spacesuits and they’d depressurised the ship. Professor Maylard had warned that the stun-cannon wouldn’t be nearly so effective without the presence of air aboard ship to carry the pressure wave. Alex would only have the time later to work out that Edrin Endel had known about the Maylard cannon and had depressurised his ship so it wouldn’t work on them. It was a ruthless strategy – while it might help protect them from stun shot, it would kill any member of the crew who took puncture damage to their spacesuit.
Whatever the reason for it, though, Alex could almost sense the other skipper staring back at him, watching, waiting, telling his crew to hold their fire.
“Give me remote flight on shuttle four,” Alex said.
“Sir, it’s…” Martine started to tell him that four was unsafe to launch, then saw from his glance that the skipper knew that already, and changed that to a brisk, “Sir!”
Buzz, watching the command deck feed, already understood what the skipper intended. He made no comment, and nor did he interrupt him with any alternative suggestions. There was a time and a place for discussion and this was not it.
“Remote secured, sir.”
Alex looked at the flight control screens that had appeared in front of him. They used a similar software to the one they used when arresting other ships, giving him remote flight control. The screens were telling him that the shuttle had no starboard midships thruster and should not be launched. Alex overrode it, forced the launch, and piloted it towards the pirate ship as if intending to send a snatch team aboard. The shuttle was clumsy with the thruster down, but Alex used an old pilot’s trick, shifting air and coolant between tanks to help with the turn. He was totally focussed on it, trying to make it seem a natural line of flight and not give away either that the shuttle was damaged, or that it was under remote control.
Edrin Endell allowed the shuttle to get within a thousand kilometres and then blew it out of the stars. The three guns the Pallamar was able to bring to bear on it all fired simultaneously with two rapid pulses of scatter-missiles. Less than a second later their number four shuttle tore apart down the starboard side. Alex lost the control link with it and could only watch as it ripped open like a tin can being hit with a laser-saw. Moments later there was a glare of blue-white light as the engines dephased. Then there was nothing but a spreading cloud of tachyons already falling behind them.
That settled it, Alex decided. Shuttles were no good. If they were going to do this kind of operation they needed fighters. As soon as they got back to Therik he’d fight that one past the Admiralty and have the necessary upgrades made so they could carry at least three heavily armoured fighters for this kind of mission.
For right now, though, he could only work with what he had.
The Pallamar span away, firing at them again. They were, very clearly, not the slightest bit disabled by the Maylard cannon.
“Live fire authorised,” Alex said, for the benefit of the log, as he operated the controls that freed up their big guns to fire directly at the freighter.
They fired immediately, not at the ship itself but at its cargo. This too was something they had practiced extensively. They’d had to be tactful with Professor Maylard, as he hadn’t liked it much that they spent so much time practising scenarios where his stun-cannon didn’t work, but Alex had run through every worst case scenario he and his officers could think of.
This was undoubtedly one of those. They were in a dogfight with a ruthless and desperate pirate, armed with weapons that rivalled their own. They were also down to five shuttles, which they couldn’t launch anyway while gunfire and shrapnel were hurtling about.
There was a part of Alex that would have been pleased to see the Pallamar destroyed, along with everyone aboard it. Edrin Endell was undoubtedly a murderer and a drug-trafficking pirate. Every member of his crew was a willing accomplice. The universe would be a cleaner place with them gone.
It would be even cleaner, however, if they could be captured and at least some of them persuaded to give evidence that would bring the drug trafficking on Karadon back to the Landorn gang on Dortmell. With his eyes on that big picture, Alex watched carefully to ensure that his gunners did not get too enthusiastic and blow the Pallamar up.
They came pretty close. Containers burst apart as lasers flicked over them, spilling their contents into space. They detonated the moment they fell out of the Pallamar’s superlight field. At the speeds they were hurtling, those explosions fell away behind them even as they happened, doing no damage in themselves. As containers began to tear away from the hold-deck, however, the ship span out of control. The sudden loss of so much mass was too much for automated mass-balance compensators and the pilot was taken off guard. The Pallamar went into a complex spin, somersaulting and rotating while sliding off sideways. Still the frigate’s great guns blasted out, pounding at the remaining cargo. A trail of explosions was falling behind them, a wake of fiery light blazed across the stars.
Still, the Pallamar fired. On and on, relentless, blasting at the frigate. Again the staccato rattle of micro-shrapnel hit their hull, and Alex looked annoyed as he saw the damage report. The Pallamar had taken out their emblem, the great blaze of paintwork and lights that announced their status as an active warship. It was the starship equivalent of ripping down and burning a flag, and got a howl of fury from the Heron’s crew.
“Get that missile tube,” Alex instructed, and several gunners obliged.
The Pallamar somersaulted again, this time going tail over nose in response to the explosion at the nose of the ship. There was little left of the airlock area, certainly nothing of the missile tube that had been firing shrapnel at them. There was no evidence of blowout – sufficient proof in itself that the ship had already been depressurised – but they were leaking a stream of liquid from a broken pipe. This time it was falling sublight right beside them, the detonation like a bright ribbon running over the ship, hurling them off into another tumble.
With anyone else, Alex might have considered that a good moment to hail the other ship and discuss their surrender. Knowing Edrin Endell as he did, however, he told his gunners to keep firing.
“Target the guns,” he ordered. That was risky. The Pallamar’s hull had already been punctured at the nose. Twisted metal curled around where the airlock had been. For all its ferocity, the Pallamar had only the hull of an ordinary trad
emaster freighter. If it was punctured in the wrong place, causing a dephase, the entire ship could blow up. On the other hand, Alex was not about to let the Pallamar continue to fire at his ship.
Their cannon pumped out plasma and all three of the guns on the Pallamar’s port side were obliterated, flaring like bright flowers along the hull.
“Lay us to starboard,” Alex told the helm.
“Sir.” Ali Jezno and Pera Banks replied simultaneously. As Ali laid in a course that would take them up and over the tumbling freighter, Pera span them through it in a graceful pirouette. Alex felt a fierce joy as the Heron swung through that elegant, effortless turn and their guns fired a stunning broadside at the Pallamar’s starboard cannon. He had no particular feeling for the frigate in itself, but the sense of the crew all pulling together, of one mind, one purpose, was exhilarating. In that moment, he would have liked to go around the ship shaking hands with every single member of his crew and telling them how brilliant they were. As it was, he only grinned like a tiger, giving a nod to show his appreciation of the manoeuvre.
Two of the Pallamar’s starboard guns had exploded like the portside ones, leaving ugly scars with bits of smouldering debris falling off the ship. The third was partially melted, its barrel twisted and drooping.
A great cheer went up on the Heron. The Pallamar had now lost all their guns.
All the ones on the hull, anyway. They were certain to be heavily armed with personal weapons, and unlikely to surrender, even now, without a fight.
“My turn, I believe,” said Buzz, speaking through the skipper’s headset.
“Tag, you’re it,” Alex agreed. The words be careful were on the tip of his tongue, but went unspoken. Buzz did not need to be told that.
Even approaching the Pallamar would be hazardous. Broken containers were still hanging dangerously off the deck, spilling an occasional crate. Bits were falling off the remains of the guns, too, and nobody had yet stopped the liquid spilling out from the damaged airlock at the nose. Pilots would have to be agile, going in, not to run into that continuous detonation or be hit by falling debris.
Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 32