by Randy Dyess
It had taken Richard weeks to finally get the Candus Corporation to agree to the meeting. Sullivan Shipping was tired of losing ships and cargoes over Candus-controlled space, and he wanted Henry and the Candus Corporation to finally do something about the pirates plaguing their systems. The attack on the Rascal was the last straw; Henry would clean out his systems or Sullivan Shipping would no longer carry any Candus Corporation cargo, as well as make sure that no other shipping lines would carry their cargoes, either.
As Richard continued looking around the room, he went over his plans on how he would convince Henry and the Candus Corporation to not only agree to his plan to get rid of the pirates but to also agree to reimburse Sullivan Shipping for their lost cargoes. It was time to take a hard line against this outer-core corporation that thought it could simply ignore any rim corporation’s issues. Candus might have been larger than any rim corporation, but Richard knew its operations would fall apart without a rim corporation supplying their needs and transporting their outputs back to the rim. He was going to make sure Henry Candus understood that before they left today.
“Richard,” Henry said as he walked into the conference room with the same fake smile that all core world CEOs had learned to use during their rise to power.
“Henry,” Richard answered back. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you and your family, as well. I’ve heard great things about your shipping company and your family. How’s everything in the outer-rim?”
“Let’s cut the small talk and get straight to business.”
“Sure. How can we help Sullivan Shipping?” Henry asked as he took his seat across from the Sullivans.
“We’ve lost too many cargoes and ships in your systems and we want your security division to get off its butt and secure your planets. If you don’t, insurance rates are going to go through the roof in the Pegasus and Taurus systems, and we won’t be able to move any of your cargo. You wouldn’t even be able to supply toilet paper, because of the costs. I’m sick and tired of these damn lawsuits we have to file every other week, because of these pirate attacks.”
Henry smiled again, “I’m right there with you. I spend way too much time working on those damn things. I’m sure we can come up with something to take care of this piece of trash and end our lawsuits.”
Richard didn’t believe for one minute that Henry actually spent any time working on the lawsuits or that he’d even known about them before today. Henry was more of a hands-off CEO than himself. Richard thought it must have been because Henry had inherited his company from his father and hadn’t done anything with it since.
“That’s why we’re here. I know we’re not the only shipper you use—all of your shipping companies are getting hit. There has to be a leak in your shipping department because no pirate is lucky enough to be able to hit our ships as many times as they have lately.”
Henry looked at his head of security and nodded. “We believe the same,” Commander Wekesa said. “We’ve noticed a pattern and we think we have people on the pirate’s payroll.”
“Why aren’t you doing anything about it, then?”
“If we simply got rid of anyone we thought was on his payroll, then Florres would bribe someone else. It would be a never-ending game and we would be on the losing side.”
“Maybe if you paid your people a little better, they wouldn’t need to take bribes in order to stay alive,” Cheyenne retorted.
Commander Wekesa looked at her, but before he could reply, Henry interrupted. “It wouldn’t matter. No matter how much we pay our people, we couldn’t match Florres’ bribes. He simply makes too much credit off our cargoes.”
Henry turned to Richard and continued, “Look, I agree that we could do a little better in handling our critical booking agents and end some of this, but we simply do not have enough security vessels to take care of the entire pirate fleet. We need help.”
“What do you need from us?” Richard replied.
“We could use a few of your new armed freighters. They are actually better-armed than our patrol vessels.”
Richard looked to Dakota, who took over. “I have three Pride-class armed freighters we can use: Sullivan’s Pride, Taurus’ Pride, and Pegasus’ Pride. I’d stack Sullivan’s Pride against anything you can find. I’d even take on the Titan, if necessary.”
“I don’t know about the Titan, but I will admit that your freighters are stronger than our patrol vessels, from what I can see from the blueprints.”
Cheyenne started to say something, but her father gave her a look that told her to ignore the fact that Henry just admitted they’d stolen the designs for their new freighters. Now was not the time to bring that up.
Commander Wekesa spoke before the conversation took a bad turn, “I can add our Alpha Squad to the task force. Alpha Squad consists of three of our Orion-class patrol vessels: Castle, Rook, and Bishop. Captain Moore is the squadron commander.”
Captain Moore introduced himself and gave the Sullivans a brief account of his history with fighting pirates in the Taurus and Pegasus sectors.
“Why only three ships?” Cheyenne asked after Captain Moore finished.
“We lost two of our other patrol ships and haven’t replaced them. The last two ships are needed to patrol our space while Alpha Squad hunts the pirates,” Henry answered.
“It will be enough,” Robert said, looking at his dad and the rest of the Sullivans. “Six ships or sixty—it doesn’t matter unless we can find them in force and cut them to pieces.”
“Agreed,” Captain Moore replied. “The problem will not be defeating their ships. Except for the Anarchy, the rest of the ships are simply converted freighters with no armor and only light weapons.”
“What’s the Anarchy?” Cheyenne asked.
“It’s a captured Orion patrol vessel that Florres is using as his flagship. It’s an older design, but he’s beefed it up and uses swarm tactics that make it hard for another Orion-class ship to take him on alone. That’s one of the reasons we’ve had to start using a three-ship squad while on patrol.”
“We could just start using our armed freighters and raise our rates,” Richard told Henry. “Eventually, we would be the only game in town, and you’d have to use us for all of your shipping.”
“Maybe,” Henry said, “but I think you know as well as I do that Florres would simply move his operations somewhere else. Do you have enough armed freighters to protect all of your shipments?” Richard didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so. Our only choice is to take care of this Florres and his group once and for all.”
Richard nodded. “I agree, but we’re not a security force—just a simple shipping firm.”
Henry smiled and chuckled. “A simple shipping firm with some of the nastiest ships in Terran space and a commando unit.” Henry looked to Cheyenne, “I agree that your ships could probably take on the Terran Navy and win, and that’s why I agreed to this meeting. To make this meeting go a little faster, though, I’ll agree to reimburse you for any losses you’ve had so far and for any ships you may lose during this little venture.”
Richard looked at Henry and the rest of the Candus Corporation’s executive team. “I can agree to that. Let’s finalize this project, so we can get this Florres and his little band of pirates taken care of.”
“Agreed,” Henry said. “I think Captain Moore should command the task force. He has an impressive record.”
Richard looked to Dakota, who nodded. “We agree with Captain Moore leading the task force. Dakota will control the Sullivan Shipping ships under Captain Moore.”
“Candus Corporation will agree to that. What’s the next step?”
The whole group started discussing how they could actually accomplish their goal of destroying Florres and his pirates. So far, Florres had been able to keep his base a secret, and he never left the base without enough ships to overcome any target. His group of informants would keep him from attacking any system the task force was l
ocated in, and he also never stuck around long enough for any security patrol to come to the aid of the attacked freighters. After an hour of discussion, the group decided to break for lunch.
******
“Once again, we can’t go after them one at a time,” Captain Moore stated after the group resumed the meeting. “Even if we could get Florres alone, he is good at using his network to make sure any security patrol is not close before he attacks. We simply do not have enough ships to cover all of the planets in the Taurus and Pegasus sectors.”
“Why don’t we utilize your leaks?” Robert said.
“What do you mean?” Captain Moore asked.
“You have people on Florres’ payroll, so let’s create a fake shipment of extremely valuable cargo to get him somewhere we can get to him before he runs. They usually jump into the system before the arrival of our vessels, so let’s just be there waiting for him.”
“You might have something there,” Henry Candus said.
“We can do better,” Cheyenne interjected.
“What do you mean?” Dakota asked.
“I have a new tracker that will track anywhere in colonized space. Why don’t we tag the cargo and follow it back to the pirate’s base?”
“How would this tracker work over the distances we are talking about?” Henry asked.
Cheyenne looked to her father, who nodded for her to go on. “It uses proprietary quantum entanglement. I’m not going into specifics, but the theory is that there is no limit to the tracker’s range. The issue will be our ability to use an FTL tunnel. If Florres goes too far out of mapped space, we won’t have any endpoint calculations to use.”
“What would the latency be?” Captain Moore asked. “How long would it take a signal to get to us?”
“The signal is instantaneous,” Cheyenne replied. “It has two methods to determine the location. The first is through communication relays: the tracker can pick up the signal from the closest relay and use the strength of the signal to determine how far away from the relay it is. Since each relay’s location number is embedded in the signal, the tracker can estimate where it is. To make the tracker more reliable, I have included the ability to use these signals to estimate course and speed. Using these together, the tracker has an accuracy of one-thousand kilometers when in space covered by a relay, and twenty-thousand outside of relay space.”
“That would be close enough for our goals,” Captain Moore said. “How accurate is your tracker if the target goes into a long FTL? How does the tracker work, since it cannot get a signal through FTL?”
Cheyenne looked at her father again and when he nodded, she proceeded. “Quantum entanglement works at the quantum level and doesn’t rely on electronic waves.”
“Which means?” Henry asked.
“It means we can follow the tracker through an FTL tunnel. The location it gives us will be an estimate based on a few factors I am not willing to discuss today. My lab has worked on several versions, and we find that the tracker is almost as accurate in FTL as it is in normal space. Now, if the target spends weeks in a tunnel to get to some unmapped space, the accuracy would drop off.”
“By how much?” Robert asked.
“A flight through a tunnel lasting over one thousand flight hours would decrease the accuracy by twenty percent. I just can’t get you any closer without being able to give the tracker more specifics about the mass and FTL speed of the target. I didn’t build that in because I do not want the tracker transmitting anything. All of the tracker’s mechanisms are purely passive, so no signals will go out to alert anyone scanning the target that it has a tracker on it.”
“Let me get this straight,” Henry said. “You have built a prototype quantum-level tracker that instantaneously gives us its location within a few thousand kilometers without transmitting anything, and with the ability to track in an FTL tunnel. Oh, I almost forgot: the tracker will be able to estimate its location after a thousand hours’ flight time in an FTL tunnel, with the exit endpoint being in unmapped space, and be off no more than five- to ten-thousand kilometers.”
“Yes,” Cheyenne replied.
Henry Candus and the rest of the Candus Corporation representatives looked at her with incredulous eyes and gaping mouths. The Sullivan Shipping representatives just stared ahead, like they heard similar claims from Cheyenne all the time, which they did.
“Good work with the trackers,” Richard broke in. “We can use one of our Nebula-class freighters as bait.”
“Tell me about these freighters,” Captain Moore said after recovering from his shock.
“The Nebula-class freighter is one of our smaller and slower designs. We use them to supply asteroid miners. These ships use external, detachable cargo pods. When the destination doesn’t have a spaceport or cargo dock, we just jettison the pods in orbit. Our customer then uses whatever ship they have available and grabs them. We barely have to stop.”
“Those were the same class of ship you used during your first battle?” Commander Wekesa asked Dakota.
“Yes. They are a common design we use for outer-rim shipping. In fact, using one of those ships might make Florres believe we are not trying to trick him, rather than using some other design. It might allow him to take the bait a little faster.”
“What about the crew, if the pirates decide they want to board her?” Captain Moore asked.
“I doubt they will,” Dakota replied. “He should know that the Nebula-class has no internal holds, so there's nothing to gain by taking the time to board it when the cargo pods are all floating in space. All he has to do is rake them in and take off. He’ll think it will be the easiest cargo heist he’s ever had. In fact, if we make it seem like we are replacing the cargo that the Rascal lost, he’ll probably fall all over himself when he hears about it. All reward and no risk.”
“I’ll go,” Robert joins in. “My team can serve as the crew, in case Florres is stupid enough to board. We can take them out while still making it look like he’s taken us by surprise.”
“You think it’ll fool them? You might change your normal procedures, if you go,” Captain Moore said.
“We’ll act like a panicky freighter crew and try to run, first. Once the pirates get close enough, we’ll start dumping pods one at a time until all the pirate ships stop following us, and then we’ll jump out the instance we clear all gravity wells.”
‘That might work,” Henry said.
“You’re sure your tracker will work?” Captain Moore asked Cheyenne.
“I’m sure. I’ve tested it over long distances. Like I said before, it will not be the range of the tracker, but our ability to create FTL endpoints.”
“And if we can’t create one?” Henry asked.
“Chances are that they’ll head straight to their base and it will be in mapped space,” Robert said. “Most pirates would not risk going into unmapped space—they’re not explorers. Besides, if we lose them, we can either patrol further out on their escape line or put a temporary relay in at the point we lost them and try to locate them again in unmapped space with another cargo. It might get a little expensive to lose more than one or two cargoes, but if we don’t stop them, we’ll lose more.”
“My crews can handle the ships, but I’m not making them assault any base or board any ship to rescue hostages,” Dakota said.
Henry and his staff were glad the Sullivans were the first to bring up an assault team. They did not want them to lead those teams either, but they didn’t want to cause the Sullivans to question them.
“My team can jump into the system with you,” Robert said.
“We won’t have time for that,” Captain Moore said. “If you play the part of bait, you may still be in an FTL tunnel when we find them, and we will need to immediately go into our own FTL tunnel to attack the pirate’s base once we locate it. We might not be able to get a message to you, and I don’t want to base our attack plan on your availability out of FTL.”
“I can agree with that if you hav
e an alternative,” Robert replied.
“I know a Terran admiral. I think I can get him to supply us with a marine assault force,” Henry interrupted. Everyone agreed to the use of a marine assault force for any assaults on pirate bases or boarding actions on pirate ships. “Let’s leave the details to the others,” Henry said to Richard. “I have a bottle of Brunian brandy I think you’ll like.”
The group watched Henry and Richard walk out of the conference room.
“I like brandy,” Cheyenne said.
“You’re too young for brandy,” Dakota replied with a smile. “Even if you do have three PhDs.”
The rest of the group laughed and settled in to work out the details of the task force.
Chapter 4
Six ships hung in orbit over Taurus Prime. Captain Moore wanted the inhabitants—especially the Candus Corporation staff—to see the three Candus Security vessels and the three armed freighters making up his task force. He had ordered Robert to take the Seraphim to a nearby planet that was still within easy communications range because he didn’t want to have informers on any Candus planet to associate the freighter with the task force.