Alex caught his breath as Buzz led the shuttles in to dock and Edrin Endell tried one more desperate manoeuvre. Buzz was taking four of the shuttles in in tight formation, directing them to double-dock at port and starboard airlocks while the fifth shuttle hung off as backup. At the very last moment the Pallamar span, deliberately rotating so that the cascading detonation streaming down its hull would whip around onto the shuttles. Buzz, however, was ready for that one, and so were all the pilots. They were locked on to the Pallamar, remaining in position relative to it no matter how the pirate ship might twist and turn. The shuttles span with it, the ribbon of exploding liquid curving harmlessly. Alex hoped that it was water. If it was coolant, at that rate, it would not be long before the Pallamar’s engines began to overheat.
There’d be extensive damage aboard the ship, too. Even with it depressurised so there was no possibility of fire, power and tremendous heat would have gone surging through all the systems connected to the guns and missile tube. One glance at the extensive list on his own damage-control screen told Alex how much more there would be on the freighter. There might well be casualties, too. Those operating the guns should be all right – there were always shock-breakers between guns and their operators, and they’d be in insulated spacesuits. Other damage, though, might have led to explosions on board, and shipboard spacesuits were generally not very resilient when it came to high speed shrapnel.
Alex watched through suit-cams as Buzz led his teams aboard. It was immediately apparent that the Pallamar was a mess. They had only emergency lights and debris was floating everywhere. Patches of fire-suppressant foam lay over partially melted consoles. A glittering hoar-frost had formed over surfaces, too, revealing that the hull must have been breached in at least one place. Sensors confirmed that the ship was not only depressurised but exposed to space, the temperature close to absolute zero.
Thermal imaging sensors also revealed the location of the Pallamar’s crew. Four of them were on the flight deck. Five were in the tech-space just aft of the flight deck, where the gunnery controls would be. The tenth was in engineering and the eleventh was in a rather odd position in a crawl space between decks, right at the nose of the ship.
The figure in the crawl space was obviously injured. It was writhing, hands clutching at its head. From the position of the figure, it seemed probable that he or she had been injured when the Fourth had taken out the scatter-missile launch tube. None of the others was making any effort to go and help.
Buzz dispatched two members of his team to go to the aid of the casualty while he led another six into the tech space. Sam Barlow was commanding the party that would storm the flight deck.
Both teams went in shooting. There were no vulnerable kids here to be considered, and every reason to believe that the Pallamar’s crew would fire on sight. Since it was evident that they must be in spacesuits, stun-shot and gas grenades would be ineffective against them. Buzz, therefore, ordered broad angle continuous flash-fire.
It worked. The Pallamar’s crew were wearing the kind of spacesuits that had transparent bubble helmets. The flash grenades going off in the confined space blinded them instantly. Even those who screwed their eyes shut and tried to protect themselves by putting their arms around their helmets were dazzled, and couldn’t open their eyes while the stabbing glare kept exploding on and on. Only one of them fired his gun, shooting blindly in the direction he thought the Fourth might be. He was rapidly overpowered, his suited wrists taped behind him, roaring silent curses at them as tears ran down his face. Their suit comms were obviously down, not responsive on any frequency, so there was no way to talk to them yet.
To Buzz and the others, the blinding flash-grenades were muted by their suit systems to a level where they didn’t impair vision. They worked quickly and efficiently, disarming the Pallamar’s crew and getting tape-cuffs on them.
“You okay?” The random firing from the blinded Pallamar’s crew had scorched across Able Star Jon Dubata’s suit. Buzz could see every member of the boarding team on mini-screens within his helmet. Jon Dubata was looking shaken, his movements mechanical as he helped to hold down a prisoner while another member of the team got the cuffs on them.
“Uh – yes sir.” Jon Dubata seemed hardly aware that his suit had taken a hit, though the laser fire had burned off the mirror finish in a charred gash from chest to shoulder. “It’s the casualty, sir. I think they just died.”
One glance told Buzz that he was right. The two boarders sent to assist the casualty were having difficulty getting through to them. The space the casualty was in was so small that it wasn’t possible for someone in hullwalker rig to get in. It would barely have been possible for another person to get into the crawlspace even if they’d been in an ordinary survival suit. Whoever it was was jammed in there, between decks, in a crawlspace that could only be accessed through a deck hatch half a metre across. The boarders – Petty Officer Hali Burdon and Able Star Trak Hobbs – were using the lasers on their guns to try to cut access through the deck. The figure below them, however, had gone very still, the frantic clawing at their helmet stopped now. Their heatscan image was cooling very rapidly, the outline already fading from rosy to blue.
Buzz knew that the only explanation for that was that the casualty’s spacesuit had been compromised. He grimaced. Whoever they were, whatever they had done, they did not deserve a death like that. Decompression was a nasty way to go. It would be too late by now to save them, even if they could be taken straight into the best equipped of medical facilities. Exposure to vacuum would have caused massive and irreparable brain damage. Hali Burdon and Trak Hobbs had to know that. They were still working urgently to rip up the deck, though, just as if they still believed there was a chance.
Jon Dubata was looking stunned. He was nineteen, a cheerful youth and the ship’s self-proclaimed champion at Cosmos Warfare, one of the most popular hologames on the ship. He looked close to shivering, and his voice was strained.
Buzz had quite a lot to be dealing with right then. The five prisoners they had just taken were now thrashing around in mid air, as the Heron was in freefall. At the same time, Buzz was aware that Sam’s team had the situation under control on the flight deck, four prisoners there already in cuffs while Sam and his assistant were at work imposing arrest software on the ship’s computers. Another pair of boarders had arrested the engineer and were bringing the engines down to a safe level of operation. They all had to stay focussed, now, to get the prisoners safely off the ship and back to the Heron, and to establish whether the Pallamar was salvageable or would have to go the same way as the Demella Enterprise.
There was time, though, just a moment, for Buzz to pay attention to the welfare of a member of his team. It was probably the first time Jon Dubata had ever seen anyone die. Up until now he’d been treating training for boarding ops as a live-action version of his favourite hologame. Now, reality had obviously hit home as it sank in that that was a real person there, actually dying as he watched. It was apparent to the spacers that whatever tech was in that crawl space was related to the concealed missile tube. That person had fired missiles both at their ship and at a shuttle they’d believed had people aboard. In that moment it hardly seemed to matter. Someone had died, and it would be inhuman not to feel any sense of shock, at that .
“See if you can get comms working.” Buzz knew it sounded cold, but he also knew that the best thing for the crewman right now was to stay focussed on something purposeful. Jon’s expertise was in comms technology.
“Uh…” Jon blinked at him, then understood, making a visible effort to keep it together. “Sir,” he acknowledged, and went straight over to a melted and frost-covered panel, levering it off to examine the tech within.
“Ship secured, sir,” Sam reported, sharing telemetry with Buzz through their suit comms. “Two hull breaches, comms, guns and portside thrusters down, and a lot of minor damage.”
Buzz could see that. Both hull breaches could be dealt with by temporar
y repairs. The remains of the guns and other damaged hull systems could be stripped off, and portside thrusters replaced. There were a couple of hundred other damage reports but nothing serious. Despite current appearances, the Pallamar was a modern and well maintained ship. It would take some work, but it was salvageable.
It would be important, too, if at all possible, to bring the Pallamar into port at Therik. Defence lawyers might well dispute footage of the Pallamar firing missiles at the Heron. They might try to dispute even the physical evidence of the missile and high powered guns found on the ship, too, alleging that the Fourth had put them there, but a jury was far more likely to be convinced by physical evidence than log records.
That would be all the more important with a member of the Pallamar’s crew having died. If they destroyed the ship now, there would be widespread belief that they’d done so in order to cover up evidence of what had “really happened”, with belief about what that was limited only by imagination. Some degree of conspiracy belief was inevitable, given public opinion about the Fourth, but at least they could do their best to minimise it.
“All right. Let’s get the prisoners back aboard,” Buzz said. Even as he spoke, he was watching as Hali Burdon and Trak Hobbs pulled away the section of deck plate they’d cut free, moving in quickly to the casualty. One glance through Hali’s suit-cam confirmed that whoever it was was dead. There was a visible rupture in the top of the helmet. That couldn’t have happened instantly or the crewmember would have been dead long before Buzz and the others came aboard. There must have been a slow leak, perhaps a hairline crack which had burst open under pressure of the air inside the suit.
“Casualty status eight, sir,” Hali reported, her voice calm as she and Trak worked together to get the suited figure into a stasis bag. There was no point. All of them knew that. Still, it was a tenet of faith amongst spacers that you weren’t dead until you were in warm air and dead. However remote they knew the chances of survival in vacuum were in reality, every spacer knew the legends of a handful of people said to have miraculously survived because of some freak condition in the circumstances where they lost air. In any case, regardless of the fact that the person was obviously dead, they would put them into stasis and leave it to a doctor to decide that officially.
“Understood,” Buzz replied. They would confirm the identity of the dead crewmember later, too, with DNA tests. It was evident, however, which of them it was. They knew what crew had been aboard the Pallamar when it had left Therik a month before. Buzz could have named every one of the prisoners they’d taken, just from familiarity with the intel files he and Alex had spent so many hours poring over. The only one missing was Second Mate Jalia Albert. She was thirty four years old, and had been a lady with a taste for the high life. Buzz remembered reports of her expensive apartment on Dortmell, the casino hotels she frequented, the yacht parties. His twinge of regret, however, was moderated by awareness that, as Second Mate, she would have had an active role not only in the drug trafficking that killed so many teenagers and in the piracy that had made this region so dangerous in recent years, but in cold blooded murders. More than one ship had gone missing around here, like the Jackpot. The authorities might never be able to bring that home to the Pallamar, but Jalia Albert had certainly been a drug trafficker and pirate and probably a killer too. She’d tried to kill them, after all. So regret, while it was there, was a small part of Buzz’s satisfaction in having captured the Pallamar.
It was an even smaller part of Alex’s emotions, as he watched the feed from the boarding party. The Pallamar had fired on them first and had kept firing at them, destroying one of their shuttles. They had only fired, themselves, in self defence, doing everything they could not to kill the Pallamar’s crew. The fact that Jalia Albert had died because she was operating the controls that were firing missiles at them was not going to trouble Alex’s conscience. He was far more concerned about the welfare of his own people. He was also having to make decisions about the damage on his own ship and that on the Pallamar.
“Blue watch standby crew report to airlock three,” he ordered, over the PA, and spoke to Andy Carrington-Miles directly, “Take blue watch standby over as a repair team. Take two blowout kits and whatever parts we can spare – liaise with Mr Burroughs on that.”
“Yes sir,” Andy replied at once, his manner crisp and professional. It was as if he had come into focus, all his apologetic uncertainty burned away in the flame of adrenalin.
“Buzz, I’m sending you Mr Carrington-Miles and blue standby,” Alex signalled. “Can you manage without extra hullwalkers once you’ve got the prisoners off?”
“Absolutely, dear boy,” Buzz came back to him a few seconds later. “It’s all under control.”
It was, in fact, the best part of another hour before it really was all under control. They were still hurtling away from Karadon for some minutes, the Pallamar still spinning and somersaulting till they managed to stabilise it. Then, with a clearer understanding of just how much damage had been done to both ships, Alex ordered the pirate ship brought onto a long, slow arc that would bring them back to Karadon in about an hour. He wanted to get back as soon as possible, but the Pallamar had to be safe to manoeuvre amongst other shipping before he took it back into port, and it would take them that long to do all the necessary repairs.
So, while hullwalkers clomped about the hulls of both ships and tech teams worked within, Alex reviewed reports and kept an eye on everything that was going on. It was some relief that the media ships hadn’t managed to keep up with them this time. In fact, all four of the media ships now in port had come chasing after them as they pursued the Pallamar. They had, however, been obliged to dive sideways to avoid running into the blast when the Pallamar had thrown a cargo container at the Heron. Since then, the chase had twisted in so many different directions that the media ships had lost them. They would search for about twenty minutes and then head back to port, able to report only that they’d seen a massive explosion.
That hour they spent working their way slowly back round to Karadon while carrying out the most urgent repairs to both ships also enabled Alex to get his first impressions of the Pallamar’s skipper and crew.
They stopped fighting, once they were aboard the frigate, their spacesuits removed, each of the prisoners formally arrested and processed. A few of them were still snarling and cursing, others clammed up and refused to say anything at all. Edrin Endell adopted an air of contempt. He was a small, dark-haired man with cold eyes and a mouth like a rat trap.
“You will regret this,” he told Martine Fishe, who’d gone down to the brig to supervise the processing of the prisoners. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. And I’ll tell you this, now,” he pointed at her, his fingers curled into a gun-shape, “it will not be hard to find your family.”
Martine took no notice of that at all.
“If you would just sign here,” she requested, holding out a comscreen on which there was an inventory of the belongings taken from him. Edrin Endell refused to sign it, sneering, but Martine merely made a note that the prisoner had refused to sign and got another officer to witness it.
Alex smiled a little to himself, watching as Edrin Endell was put into a cell, still swaggering and menacing. If he was expecting that to intimidate anyone aboard the Heron, he had no idea who he was dealing with.
“Do you suppose he even cares about Jalia Albert?” Rangi Tekawa wondered. He’d come to the command deck to report that he was unable to carry out more than superficial examinations of the prisoners, since none of them were willing to cooperate with a full medical. He had already, to nobody’s surprise, confirmed that the person in the stasis bag was indeed Second Mate Jalia Albert, and that she was dead.
“I doubt it,” Alex said. His own impression, from all the files he’d studied, was that Edrin Endell was a sociopath, with little empathy for others and no deep bonds of loyalty or friendship with anyone. “Thank you, doctor,” he said, with a nod that combined
thanks and dismissal.
Rangi nodded back and left, glad that the skipper was evidently too busy right now to remember that he’d set a deadline for this afternoon about Mako the gecko. With any luck, Rangi thought, optimistically, the skipper might be so preoccupied that he’d forget all about it.
Alex hadn’t forgotten, but it was not high on his list of priorities right now. He was giving most of his attention to how things were going on the Pallamar. He smiled with some relief when he saw that both hull breaches had been sealed. Duralloy covers had been riveted on both outside and inside the hull, tested and safe, and before long the ship was repressurised. It took about half an hour to rig an emergency thruster. It would need a spacedocks to fit a replacement properly, but the emergency one was clamped onto the hull with duralloy cables connected to the ship’s systems. All loose debris had been cut away, making the ship safe, though it still looked awful.
Things were going well aboard, too. Edrin Endell’s decision to depressurise the ship and deactivate all non-essential systems might have been callous – it had certainly cost his Second Mate her life – but it had protected most of the ship from taking damage. Life support powered up again without any problems, and a tech team had comms working again within half an hour. There were still a couple of hundred repairs that needed doing; blown lights, damaged console covers and some burst shower pipes, but nothing urgent. The secrets of how the Pallamar had managed to conceal their missile capability and the true power of their guns had been exposed, too. As they’d already realised, the missile systems had been hidden between decks. Further examination had revealed that, when not in use, they’d been disguised as waste water pipes. The high power generators and cables connected to the cannon had also been discovered, laid through gas pipes.
Karadon (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) Page 33