Cursed Command (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Roach frowned. “Will the settlers want them?”

  “Depends how much they need manpower,” William said. It was quite possible that the settlers would demand that the pirates were taken elsewhere. “But we’ll make sure to interrogate the pirates first. They’ll probably know a great deal we need to know.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roach said.

  “And see if you can do a preliminary valuation of everything we’ve captured,” William added. He had no way to be sure, but he suspected they were looking at around a million or more crowns. “We might as well share the good news.”

  His crew’s morale was about to skyrocket. Destroying a pirate base was a good deed in and of itself, but capturing one was even better. The starships could be put to good use, the pirates would be interrogated so that their recruitment agents and fences could be rounded up, the prisoners and hostages would be returned to their homeworlds . . . not a bad day’s work. If he and his crew were very lucky, they might find clues that would lead them to another pirate base.

  If Kat had just as much success herself, he thought, we will have put a major dent in pirate operations. That will do wonders for our reputation out here.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Two to three million crowns?”

  “It looks that way,” Julia said. She knelt beside the pirate computer, her face calm and composed. “Or at least that’s the valuation report our beloved XO put on the datanet.”

  Joel sucked in his breath sharply. He and a good third of the crew had spent the last two days supervising prisoners, assisting the former hostages, and searching the pirate base with a fine-tooth comb. It had been an interesting experience, he had to admit, but not one he was inclined to repeat. Whoever had originally designed the asteroid settlement had done a good job, yet the pirates had mistreated the habitat so badly that their life support was permanently on the edge of collapse. The few maintenance workers on hand were unequal to the task.

  Now a whole new problem had blown up.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can read,” Julia said testily. “The ships themselves aren’t worth more than a million, at best, but there are tons of supplies and various pieces of equipment stored in the base. Some of them will probably be returned to their owners; the remainder will be sold onwards, reaping the ship a great deal of money.”

  Joel had done his best to spread discontent among the newer crew members, but results had been minimal even before this windfall. Even a million crowns, shared among the crew, would boost morale into the stratosphere. There wouldn’t be any more grumbling about limited shore leave, or constant inspections, or endless series of drills. Hell, if he hadn’t been plotting to take the ship, Joel would have found the bonus very satisfying. Some careful investment would have made him a moderately rich man if he ever returned to Tyre.

  “Assuming they manage to sell the ships,” he mused slowly, but he knew it was wishful thinking. There was such a high demand for warships in the sector that all of the pirate ships could be sold with minimal effort. The dangerous ones could be cannibalized, if nothing else. “And what about the supplies?”

  “Enough to keep a small fleet going for a few months,” Julia said. She tapped the datapad meaningfully. “Plus a staggering amount of data.”

  The pirate networks were in deep shit. A whole web of fences, recruiting agents, and other scumbags was on the verge of being obliterated. There would be others, of course, as the pirates were hardly a unified organization, but losing so many illicit agents would deal a body blow to countless operations. If, of course, the planetary governments could be induced to cooperate.

  Sir William can simply threaten them into submission, if they’re unwilling to make even a token effort to round the bastards up, he thought. No one would say a word in complaint.

  Joel gave Julia a long look. “Can you hide the data?”

  “Not without being too revealing,” she said. “They’ll have already copied the entire database into a secure core. If they find too many discrepancies . . .”

  “They’ll know someone was playing games,” Joel said. “Time isn’t on our side.”

  “No,” Julia agreed.

  Joel rubbed his forehead in frustration. He’d planned to simply take weapons from the marine lockers and use them to seize control of the ship. Now that was impossible. The militiamen had taken over Marine Country and sealed the hatches. They didn’t expect trouble, Joel thought, but they’d neatly blocked his route to the lockers. Getting into the section would attract attention.

  Was there a way to take the pirate weapons? They’d had countless armaments stockpiled, ranging from crap that wouldn’t have been out of place on pre-space Earth to advanced core-world artillery. But the weapons had been secured by the militiamen to keep them away from the pirates’ former hostages. Who knew just how tainted the hostages had become?

  “Make a copy of the data,” he ordered. “We might be able to find a use for it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Julia said.

  Joel rose and paced the compartment. It was frustrating. His inner circle was as hopelessly compromised as himself, but everyone else . . . they could just swear blind that they hadn’t the slightest idea of what he’d been doing. It wouldn’t last, of course, and a person with even moderate intelligence would have to know it, yet . . . he couldn’t deny that hope sprang eternal.

  I told them that the Navy didn’t give a shit about them, Joel thought. I was right. The captain was a crook, the first officer was an asshole, the engineer was a drunkard, a quarter of the crew were either gamblers or druggies . . . the ship was falling apart. They knew I was right.

  He shook his head. It had been easy to build on such resentments, easy to convince his handpicked men that there was a greater destiny out there. It wasn’t as if the crew didn’t have cause for resentments. Now . . . whatever doubts the crew had had about their new commanding officer would fade, completely, once the prize money landed in their bank accounts. Even the youngest and most junior of crewmen would be looking at a cool ten thousand crowns. It would buy Sir William one hell of a lot of loyalty.

  “Done,” Julia said. “Shall we go?”

  Perhaps we are done, Joel thought. He watched absently as Julia cleaned up all evidence of their presence. If we were to leave the ship on Jorlem . . .

  He scowled at the thought. It would be easy to desert—he’d been putting together plans to do just that over the last few weeks—but it would mean abandoning the plan. And the remainder of his inner circle. They all had skills he could use, skills that would allow them to make a decent living, but would they stay with him afterwards? It wasn’t as if there was anything binding them to him.

  Furthermore, a whole party of deserters will be easier to track down than one or two, he reminded himself. But if we don’t go as a group, someone will betray us.

  He opened the hatch as soon as Julia was finished scrubbing their presence from the scene and led the way out into the corridor. The air was foul, far worse than anything on Uncanny. He couldn’t help thinking, as he walked down to the giant hangar, that there was something oddly eerie about the pirate base, as if someone or something was about to tap him on the shoulder at any moment. It could just be his sense of how poorly maintained the place was.

  They’ll probably vent the entire asteroid, once everything has been removed, he thought. It can’t make the problem any worse.

  “Thirty-seven of the former prisoners are in a pretty bad state,” Doctor Prosser said, “and require more . . . concentrated medical attention than we are able to provide. I’ve put them into stasis tubes for the moment, but they’ll have to be offloaded at Vangelis.”

  “Understood,” William said. He rubbed his heavy eyes. “And the remainder?”

  “Minor problems, ranging from malnutrition to various injuries,” Sarah said. “I’ve already started treatment programs for them, although it is pushing our resources to the limit.”

  She paused. “It’s the menta
l problems that bother me,” she added. “Many of the former hostages are traumatized, even the ones who weren’t physically harmed. The slaves . . . it may be a long time before they’re ready to reenter society, if they ever do. Such treatment always leaves a mark.”

  Roach leaned forward. “Should we consider putting them all into stasis?”

  “We don’t even begin to have enough stasis tubes,” Sarah said. “Frankly, sir, I would advise heading straight back to Jorlem and borrowing a colonist-carrier. They come with enough tubes to put everyone on ice until we can get them somewhere safe.”

  “Jorlem wouldn’t be good enough, of course,” William growled.

  “I wouldn’t count on it, no,” Sarah agreed. “However, we probably will need to beg medical supplies from them.”

  She sighed. “For the moment, I think most of the former hostages will just have to remain on the captured ships until we reach Jorlem,” she added. “I’ve detached medical teams to provide support to the crews.”

  Detaching more than a third of their medical personnel was against regulations, but William had no choice. If there was a medical emergency on one of the captured ships there would be no time to transport the doctor over from Uncanny. Really, he wasn’t too keen on detaching so many other crewmen from his ship either. Uncanny could be operated with only a tenth of her crew, but such reductions weren’t something he wanted to try during war.

  “Very good,” he said. “Major?”

  “We’ve got the prisoners into inflated life support bubbles,” Lupine said. He sounded pleased. His men had handled their first test well. “Most of them were happy to start blabbering as soon as they realized they weren’t going to be shot out of hand. My people recorded some of the more . . . interesting stories.”

  He paused. “We did find some evidence that the Theocracy is involved,” he added. “It’s nothing entirely conclusive, but apparently the pirates were told that taking captured ships to an RV point along the border of Theocratic space would garner twice the starship’s market value. I suspect they were meeting up with a shipping agent there and making the exchange.”

  Roach grinned. “Perhaps we should go there,” he said. “How far is it from here?”

  “Nearly four weeks,” Lupine said. “The pirates might well have found a shipping agent closer to their base.”

  William was inclined to agree. An eight-week round-trip would be frustrating for anyone, particularly pirates in dangerously unsafe ships. They might take a few prizes along the way or they might not. Then they’d be gambling that they could sell the ships. The Theocracy was desperate, but even they would have their doubts about some of the older freighters that might be passed in their direction. If the pirates earned nothing from the voyage, they wouldn’t want to make it again.

  “The potential interception would take us away from the sector,” William said. Uncanny could make the cruise with ease—there would be something hugely satisfying in blowing away whatever enemy ship came to collect the captured freighters—but their first priority was to patrol the sector and suppress pirate activity. “We’ll forward the details to the Admiralty when we return to Jorlem.”

  Roach looked at him. “We’re going straight back there?”

  “We need to start rounding up the pirate contacts before they vanish,” William said. He had a nasty feeling they’d dawdled too long already, as the two ships that had escaped had probably gone to warn their comrades, but there hadn’t been a choice. Leaving the prisoners behind would have been dangerous no matter how many precautions they took. “And we should link up with Lightning again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roach said.

  “Check and double-check that the pirates are going to be fine, for the moment,” William ordered. “Then we can drag the bubble a few light-minutes from their former base.”

  “Aye, sir,” Major Lupine said.

  Sarah cleared her throat in evident disapproval. “Captain, I really must protest,” she said, stiffly. “Leaving so many . . . people . . . in inflatable bubbles. The risk . . .”

  William shrugged, dismissively. He wouldn’t have treated Theocratic POWs in such a manner, but pirates had no rights. They’d survive in the bubbles, at least until the squadron could return with a prisoner transport to ship them to their new home. He had a nasty feeling that discipline would break down quickly, that the pirates would tear each other apart, but that was their problem. He’d seen the medical reports; he knew what they’d done to their helpless victims. It was hard to feel sympathy for pirates who’d looted, raped, and destroyed their way across an entire sector.

  “The risk is tolerable,” he said. The only real danger, as far as he was concerned, was the pirates being rescued by some of their comrades. One of the fleeing ships could have managed to sneak back into the system without being detected. He’d had an antimatter mine rigged, just in case. “If the pirates survive long enough to be recovered and sent to their new home, well and good. If not . . .”

  He turned away. “I’m not going to shed any tears over them.”

  “As you wish, Captain,” Sarah said. She sniffed, then rose. “With your permission, I will attend to my other patients.”

  “Of course,” William said. He understood her reason for being irked. “We’ll discuss them later.”

  He watched her leave the room, then looked at Major Lupine. “Your men did very well.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lupine said. “We’ll be conducting post-battle assessments as soon as we depart the system.”

  “Let me know what conclusions you draw,” William said. He had a feeling that Major Davidson would be impressed even though the marines could probably have taken the base quicker. “What did you make of the base itself?”

  “A poor design in many ways,” Major Lupine said. “Our best guess is that it was originally an unregistered black colony, but the pirates put a stop to that. None of the captured pirates seem to know anything about whoever actually built it.”

  William sighed. “But probably not the Theocracy.”

  “I doubt it,” Major Lupine said. He nodded towards the display. “Dating scans tell us that the base is at least forty years old, predating the Theocracy’s rise to power. I suspect the poor bastards who built it were simply killed or enslaved when the pirates arrived. There’s nothing to suggest they had any real defenses.”

  “They might have wanted to limit their exposure to high tech,” Roach added.

  “Idiots,” William said. One could survive in space on a low level of technology, assuming you could get to space, but it struck him as insane. Technology made life so much better that he found it hard to imagine why anyone would want to leave it behind. “We’ll see what, if anything, we can dig up in the records on Jorlem.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roach said.

  “We can sell the ships too,” William added. Taking them away from the pirates was one thing, but putting them to use would do wonders for the Commonwealth’s reputation. “A dedicated patrol vessel in each system would be more than enough to put a damper on pirate activity.”

  “Maybe we can pay the bastards to go after the Theocracy,” Lupine suggested.

  William had been privy to rumors that Operation Knife had merely been the first of a series of raids into enemy space. While he’d heard nothing official, he had reason to believe that was actually true. The more effort the Theocracy was forced to expend on defending its convoys, the less effort they could put into hammering the Commonwealth’s defenses. Sending the pirates into enemy space might well be overkill.

  Either they hurt the enemy or they get wiped out, he thought. It sounded perfectly satisfactory, even though the thought of paying pirates was anathema. Either way, we win.

  He tapped the table, meaningfully. “Mr. XO, slave the captured vessels to our command datanet, and then prepare them for the trip to Jorlem,” he ordered. “We’ll try to depart within the hour, once the base has been secured and locked down.”

  “Aye, sir,” Roach said.<
br />
  “Major Lupine, make sure the base is rigged to blow if someone tries to board it,” William added. “We don’t want to lose the captured supplies to the enemy.”

  “Aye, sir,” Major Lupine said. “There’s no need to use an antimatter mine. A standard nuke should suffice.”

  “Good,” William said. Anyone stupid enough to disregard the warning signal wouldn’t live to regret it. “Any other issues?”

  “Goodrich was talking about trying to refurbish some of the captured starship components for our use,” Roach said. “We should take what we need before we go.”

  William frowned. “Is he sure he can integrate them into our systems?”

  “Some of the basics would be very useful, he thinks,” Roach said. “But they’ll all need to be checked carefully.”

  “Yeah,” William mused. “Let him take some of the supplies, but make sure they get checked and rechecked thoroughly before we try to integrate them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roach said. “Goodrich is well aware of the dangers, sir. Everything will be checked completely before it’s even brought onboard.”

  He beamed. “Shore leave on Jorlem is going to be a blast,” he added. “The crew is already looking forward to its bonus.”

  “Remind them we have to sell the ships first,” William said. The Admiralty would pay a bonus if the ships couldn’t be sold, but it would take time to get it through the system. “Also, that it will take time to get back there.”

  “Aye, sir,” Roach said.

  “But on the whole, they did well,” William added. The crew had in fact done very well. They deserved a few days of shore leave. “Perhaps we’ve broken the Uncanny curse.”

  “Or perhaps there’s worse to come,” Lupine said.

  William gave him a nasty look. “You’re not allowed to talk anymore.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Captain,” Weiberg said as Lightning slid back into realspace, “Glory of God is still holding position over Jorlem.”

  Kat had expected as much, but she’d hoped otherwise. “Tactical analysis?”