Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga)

by Grant, Peter

  “My favorite kind of pirate, Sir!”

  Steve snorted with laughter, and the others roared at the quip. He turned back to his console as they closed on the ship, ratcheting up the magnification of his visual sensors.

  “I don’t expect anyone will try to interfere with our docking,” he advised. “Still, anything can happen, so don’t get complacent. Pilot, reverse ship and take us in backwards. Recover internal atmosphere while you’re doing that. We’ll go in with the ramp down.”

  “Aye aye, Sir.”

  As the air-pumps whined, drawing as much as possible of the shuttle’s atmosphere into pressurized tanks for future re-use, Bradshaw said, “Sir, I’ve got a bead carbine for you, plus a belt with four one-hundred-round chargers and half a dozen blast/frag grenades with a four-second delay. Unfortunately they’re meant for use with armor, so their lethal radius is ten meters. Don’t use ’em too close! I’ll leave them by the rear ramp.”

  “Thanks, Gunnery Sergeant. Hopefully I won’t need them.”

  Sergeant Higgs called, “Internal atmosphere recovered, Sir. Request permission to lower rear ramp.”

  “Wait one, Pilot. Everybody, check your straps again. Make sure you’re securely fastened into your seat. We don’t want you drifting out ahead of us as we go in, and getting squashed to strawberry jam between the shuttle and the ship.”

  The Marines chuckled, but double-checked their own and each other’s straps. In a moment Abha confirmed, “All checked and secured, Sir.”

  “Very good. Pilot, lower rear ramp, take us in.”

  The ramp whined down, the remnants of the shuttle’s atmosphere escaping into space. The light inside was now flat and dull, no longer having any air molecules to spread its radiance. Through the gaping doorway at the rear of the shuttle, the docking bay loomed closer.

  As the shuttle moved towards a vacant docking bay, Bradshaw called, “Designated shooters, take out that airlock!” Immediately two Marines sitting at the end of the rows aimed their beam rifles through the doorway at the airlock at the rear of the docking bay, and pressed their triggers. Beam after beam lanced out and smashed into the delicate electronics and metal framework. The airlock bulged at its seams, then disintegrated – but no air puffed out from inside. Clearly, the atmosphere in that part of the ship had already exited through the holes carved in the hull by the plasma cannon.

  With immaculate skill, the pilot brought the shuttle to a quivering halt under gravitic drive, the ramp projecting over the lip of the docking bay’s jetty. “In position, Sir! I’ll need to have the shuttle secured before I leave the controls. The bay’s docking arms would normally do that, but they don’t seem to be working any more.”

  Steve laughed. “I’m not surprised! Gunnery Sergeant, get mooring lines passed, please.”

  “Aye aye, Sir. Designated marksmen, take lines from the cargo lockers and secure the shuttle.”

  The two Marines who’d taken out the airlock clipped their rifles to their chest harnesses, released their seatbelts, took tie-down lines from a storage locker and stepped onto the docking platform, magnets in their armored boots holding them down. They clipped one end of the lines to eye bolts on the shuttle’s bodywork, then unrolled the lines towards protruding items of equipment on the dock’s bulkheads.

  Abha twisted in her chair, watching carefully. As soon as the lines were secured, she snapped, “The shuttle will be safe enough now, Sir. Permission to proceed?”

  “Very well, Lieutenant. Clear the area between the docking bay and the Engineering department, then stand by while I check the ship’s gravitic drive. While I’m doing that, reinforcements should arrive from OrbCon. I doubt they’ll be in armor, so divide them between your fire teams. That’ll give each team a couple of armored troops to lead any assault. After that, clear the rest of the ship. Wait for me to join you before you tackle the bridge.”

  “Aye aye, Sir. Marines, let’s GO!”

  The Marines and Rolla NCO’s slapped at their harnesses as one, releasing their straps and standing. In twos, they jumped down onto the dock surface and dashed through the shattered airlock, spreading out to provide cover for their team-mates. Steve heard Abha and the Gunnery Sergeant over his suit radio as they directed their fire teams. He nodded in approval. The Marines were typical of their Corps – trained to a hair, strong, smart, aggressive and tough – and the Rolla NCO’s were pretty good too. He’d hate to face any of them as enemies.

  Steve moved to the rear of the shuttle, fastened the belt with ammo chargers and grenades around his spacesuit, picked up his carbine and checked that it was loaded, and stepped down. The deck of the ship felt strangely dead beneath his magnetic boots. The usual vibrations produced by the vessel’s machinery were absent.

  The two designated marksmen were waiting for him. One armored figure inclined its head. “Sergeant Jensen, Marine Corps, at your service, Sir. This is Corporal Bhayi from Rolla’s forces.”

  “Good to have you both along. First stop is the engineering section, to make sure the gravitic drive and capacitor ring are secured. It’ll be just forward of and below this position.”

  “Aye aye, Sir. With your permission, I’ll go first. Bhayi will bring up the rear.”

  “Let me secure the shuttle, then we’ll move.”

  Steve used the external keypad to close the shuttle’s rear ramp, ensuring that no pirate trying to escape would be able to get inside without knowing the access code; then he followed Jensen through the shattered airlock. He pushed a floating piece of debris out of the way with the barrel of his carbine, and looked around. The main corridor was pitch-black, all its lights out. He adjusted his spacesuit’s night-vision systems, and the scene came into focus. Forward of the docking bay the passage was a nightmare of torn, twisted metal where plasma bolts had blasted through the ship. The deck and high-speed walkway had vanished completely for several meters.

  “The engineering spaces will be down one level. Let’s try that companionway on the right.”

  “Aye aye, Sir.”

  Jensen led the way down the stairs, all of them floating in the vacuum, pulling themselves along by the handrail, the escorts aiming their beam rifles carefully ahead of and behind them, scanning for any movement. The Sergeant peered around the corner at the foot of the stairs.

  “Our people have been through here before us, Sir. It’s safe to proceed.”

  Steve emerged to see a magnetic beacon attached to the metal bulkhead, flashing an infra-red signal that was visible through his helmet filters. He knew it signified ‘All clear’. The assault force had already moved on to check other compartments.

  “That door there, Sergeant.”

  “Aye aye, Sir.”

  A large piece of wreckage had been blown right through one of the bulkheads of the engineering control room, scoring a direct hit on the control panel and reducing it to torn wiring, shattered plastic and warped metal. A human figure, face and eyes bulging from its final, fruitless efforts to draw breath, was floating limply near the console. Steve could tell it had been male, but only by the beard on its face, so gravely had its features been first distorted and suffused by blood, then atrophied by desiccation in vacuum.

  “The console’s out of action for sure. That wreckage came through from the drive compartment next door. Let’s check it out.”

  A plasma bolt had blasted vertically through the drive compartment from deck to deckhead, shearing off the right half of the gravitic drive unit and reducing the rest to slag. Its massive bulk leaned precariously, inert, useless.

  “They won’t even be able to salvage spare parts out of that,” Steve observed. “Very well, let’s head for the reactor chamber. It should be just forward of here.”

  The reactor control room was deserted. The reactor proved to have gone into emergency shutdown, as Steve had surmised. Its console blinked disconsolately, awaiting restorative input from its former operators that they would never again provide.

  “Nice shooting, Sir,” Bhayi o
bserved. “You nailed everything around the reactor, but left it intact. I find that very comforting.”

  Jensen laughed as Steve observed, “You and me both! Let’s make sure no-one else can start it up again.” He looked around, then pointed. “That cable trunk carries power from the capacitor ring to the reactor console for startup and shutdown purposes. Would you please shoot it in half, so it’ll never work again?”

  “Our pleasure, Sir!”

  His guards suited their actions to the word. Four shots from each of their beam rifles severed the cable trunk. The bulkhead to which it was secured, and that on the far side of the compartment behind it, also vanished in the fusillade. Distant stars glittered through the hole they’d shot in the hull.

  The radio squawked indignantly, cutting into the intercom circuit. “Orbcon Cutter Three to Outpost One-One! Someone inside the ship is shooting at us through the hull as we approach! They almost hit us!”

  Steve winced as his two escorts laughed aloud. He hurriedly changed transmission frequencies. “Outpost One-One to Orbcon Cutter Three, we’ve just dealt with the problem. It won’t happen again. Continue your approach.”

  He switched back to the intercom channel and looked at Jensen and Bhayi. “I won’t tell anyone what happened if you won’t, OK?”

  He couldn’t see Jensen’s face inside his helmet, but he could hear the grin in the Marine’s voice. “Our lips are sealed, Sir.”

  “Good! All right, let’s get back up to the main passage.”

  As they moved, Steve could hear Abha and Gunnery Sergeant Bradshaw marshalling the newly arrived spacers from Orbcon, dividing them among the fire teams. By the time he reached the main passage, the first teams had begun sweeping forward. It didn’t take long before they began to run into individuals or small groups of pirates, wearing emergency spacesuits and armed only with carbines or improvised weapons. Few surrendered, knowing the likely penalty that awaited them. All who showed fight were swiftly and lethally stopped in their tracks.

  As Steve and his escorts moved along the passage, Abha called him. “Outpost Six-Two to Outpost One-One. We’re at the bridge. We’ve met several pockets of resistance and dealt with them, but there may be stragglers here and there. Suggest you exercise caution as you approach. Over.”

  “One-One to Six-Two, understood, thank you. We’re on our way forward. Please sweep the area surrounding the bridge to take care of any other potential resisters.”

  “Six-Two to One-One, aye aye, Sir.”

  Steve listened to Abha directing her reinforced fire team in clearing the compartments surrounding the bridge. Her orders were crisp and clear, and the responses of the Marines and PSDF armored personnel were just as professional. They were working like a well-oiled machine, each element meshing smoothly with every other. The new arrivals from OrbCon took their cue from them, following in their footsteps, backing them up, learning as they moved.

  As they approached the bridge, Abha called again. “Six-Two to One-One. Sir, there are a few more survivors in a compartment forward of the bridge. It seems they had access to emergency survival suits when things blew up around them. They want to surrender, so I’ve told them to come out one at a time with their hands up and no weapons on their persons. Request you stay back until we’ve secured them and cleared their compartment, please. Over.”

  “One-One to Six-Two, I’ll stand by until you tell me the coast is clear.”

  Steve listened to the exchanges between Abha’s team as they took five pirates into custody. Further ahead, Gunnery Sergeant Bradshaw was leading more fire teams in a search of the forward compartments. So far, he’d dealt with a few resisters, but found no survivors willing to surrender.

  Finally Abha called. “Six-Two to One-One, the situation’s under control. Come ahead. Over.”

  “One-One to Six-Two, thanks. We’re on our way.”

  Sergeant Jensen led the way forward, still hyper-vigilant despite Abha’s reassurances, as was Corporal Bhayi behind them. They scanned their surroundings thoroughly before moving from one section to another, to Steve’s heartfelt approval. He knew that only fools took anything for granted in close combat. If you made even one mistake, you might not live long enough to make another.

  He came up to Abha’s fire team. They were spaced out along the main corridor on either side of the entrance to the bridge. Five space-suited captives were secured nearby, their arms lashed behind them with flex-ties. Abha stepped forward to meet him.

  “Glad you’re here, Sir. These are the prisoners. The senior among them says he’s Lieutenant Gazzarda.” She indicated the nearest figure. “His suit radio’s on our channel now, Sir.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.” Steve turned to the pirate officer. “All right, you! Who’s on the bridge? Is it still intact?”

  “I dunno.” The man’s voice was surly, hostile.

  “You address me as ‘Sir’! Where’s your boss?”

  The pirate paled at the lash in Steve’s voice, and stood more stiffly upright. “He – he was on the bridge, last I knew, Sir. From what we heard, I think it took a direct hit.”

  “What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He dropped out of sight after the Sebastian Cabot affair, and hasn’t been seen or heard of in Commonwealth space since then.”

  Gazzarda stood mute, face glowering. Steve pressed, “Come on, man! You must know the game’s up. There’s no way you can escape, and nowhere for you to go even if you could launch a lifeboat. Your friends aboard Mauritania are being dealt with as we speak by another combined team of Fleet Marines and Rolla forces. The only chance you’ve got for a better treatment and a lighter sentence is to co-operate with us.”

  The pirate hesitated, then heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right… Sir. Cap’n de Bouff got as far away from the Commonwealth as he could after you guys put that huge reward on his head. I dunno where he actually lived – he made sure most of us never knew where he’d stashed his family or fortune. He set up an operating base in a disused star system. We travelled from there to other planets to sell our prizes or go on liberty. They were hard years – pickings were real poor compared to before he tangled with Cabot – but he said those were the breaks. We had to stay out on the fringes of the settled galaxy, or else we’d be found.”

  “So what made him come here?” Steve demanded.

  “He never raided into Lancastrian Commonwealth space, ’cause he reckoned it was too dangerous; but he changed his mind when he learned about this Group o’ 100 shindig. He reckoned it’d be a perfect chance to get his own back. He said Rolla had very little system security, and the ransoms for a bunch o’ fat-cat investors would be worth billions – enough to make up for all the bad years, and then some.”

  “Uh-huh. Who mounted the diversion?”

  “That was his son Constandt. He brought his ship in on the far side of the system and sent out a fake distress signal. He was supposed to go quiet and creep away as soon as he sent it, heading for the system boundary on minimum power so he couldn’t be tracked. The Cap’n was watching your patrols as we headed in. If they hadn’t responded to the distress call, we were still far enough away to have time and space to escape; but he said they’d taken the bait hook, line and sinker, so we could go ahead.”

  Steve made a wry face. He remembered Constandt’s name from his first encounter with de Bouff senior. He made a mental note to pass the information to Orbcon as soon as they got back to the shuttle, so it could be forwarded to the destroyers. They’d doubtless head for the point on the system boundary nearest to where the distress signal had been issued, hoping to catch Constandt de Bouff before he could escape, but he knew they had little chance of doing so. The younger pirate had too much of a head start, and was surely monitoring the warships’ gravitic drive emissions. He’d change course to evade detection as they maneuvered.

  “Right. Lieutenant Sashna, I suggest a couple of your people secure the prisoners here while we enter the bridge and check it out.”

  “Aye ay
e, Sir.”

  She detailed two of her people to guard the pirates, then ordered the rest of her fire team to perform an assault entry to the bridge. She clearly didn’t trust Gazzarda’s assumption that the bridge had been hit. The team blew open the door with their beam rifles, then covered each other as they hustled through the gaping hole their weapons had made. One of them stuck his head out almost immediately. “He wasn’t lying, Ma’am. It’s a charnel house in here.”

  The Marine hadn’t exaggerated. It looked like Steve’s target designation had been spot-on. At least two plasma bolts, possibly three, had torn through the bridge – it was difficult to tell for sure, so great was the damage. There had been several pirates in the compartment at the time, but they’d been blasted into so many scattered body parts that it was impossible to tell at first glance how many there’d been. The detritus was now floating in zero gravity, along with sticky globules of body matter. It spattered on Steve’s spacesuit and the Marines’ armor, no matter how they tried to avoid it.

  Behind where what Steve presumed had been the command console had once stood, the remains of a tall, burly figure were still strapped into his seat. A plasma bolt had erupted through the floor at his feet. The blast had vaporized most of the console and his lower legs, leaving only the stumps of his thighs; the furnace heat of the bolt had seared his face and torso, briefly igniting his clothing, hair and beard before the ship’s atmosphere vented to space; and his remains were rapidly desiccating through exposure to vacuum. He was not a pretty sight.

  Steve looked at the dead man for a long moment. Vince, if you can hear me, you can rest more peacefully now, he thought to himself. I gave the bastard who ordered your death what he had coming. I hope his soul – if he had one – passes near you on its way to hell, so you can piss on it!

  He thrust the thoughts away. “Lieutenant, would you get that pirate officer in here, please?”

  “Aye aye, Sir.”

  A Rolla NCO shoved Gazzarda ungently onto the bridge, using his flex-tied arms to control his movements. Steve cut off his protests by indicating the figure in the command chair.