The New Space Opera 2

by Gardner Dozois

  “Aye, sir,” Reedu said out of his lowest foremouth, giving Danny the respect appropriate to his rank.

  In seconds, the Prankster went from drifting dead in space to leaping forward at an impressive seventy-eight g’s. On board, the crew suffered none of the effects such a killing momentum should produce, due to the remarkable efficiency of the Prankster’s internal field generators. Danny forced himself to show none of the discomfort he felt inside an internal field dialed up so high. He’d suffer agonizing headaches later, but didn’t mind it, since the alternative was to overtake the freighter at a slower velocity, thus subjecting the crew to enemy gunfire for a longer duration.

  “They’ve seen us, Captain,” Credogue said, from the defensive targeting station. He stood over the crewman seated at the console, glowering at the tactical display. He was the Prankster’s second mate and Captain Brodogue’s son. In the nine standard years Danny had known the boy, since the day he’d emerged from his second-stage trialpod, Credogue had never shown a hint of joy, humor, or any other pleasurable state of mind—quite unlike his nearly sybaritic father. “They’ve increased speed to thirty-seven g’s, and opened gun ports.”

  “They won’t last long at that velocity,” Brodogue said, from his command couch. “They don’t have the field generators for it. They must be shitting their pantaloons in fear.”

  “Gives them an extra few seconds to target us,” Danny said.

  “It won’t help them,” Brodogue said.

  “It might,” Danny said. “The Oeerlians believe in packing big guns. They’ll have tenth-power integrators on a bucket that size.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Credogue said. “Their targeting systems predate most civilizations. Who cares how big their hammer is, if they can’t aim it properly?”

  “We’re within gun range,” Reedu said, and on cue the ship was rocked with the first enemy integrator strikes against their shields.

  “Then they must have some lucky shooters on board,” Danny said. “Those were spot on.”

  “Launch attractions,” Credogue said. The second mate’s primary duty during ship-to-ship combat was to oversee defensive operations. Danny heard the muffled, rapid-fire thumping sounds caused by several dozen attraction pods being coughed out through the forward shields. The attractions would ride the bow wave of the shields, staying ahead of the ship for several vital seconds, before slipping off to one side or another. As implied by their name, the attractions’ purpose was to scream their heads off in many technologically sophisticated ways, hoping to attract the enemy integrator fire, thus saving the actual ship. Danny privately thought that Credogue had acted too soon in launching the pods. At this extreme range, the shields could easily absorb the integrator fire, no matter what their power. The second mate should’ve saved the expensive devices for when they were closer.

  Danny switched his private screen to the defensive tactical display in time to see several attractions instantly collapse in on themselves, as integration beams connected with them. Each integrator-hit pod briefly formed an unstable pinprick singularity, before winking entirely out of existence. Then he switched over to offensive tactical to begin his own role as the director of their offensive fire.

  “Commence fire,” he said to his forward integrator gun crews. “Target shields and weapons nodes only. And I better not see you boys falling for their attraction pods, or I’ll collect penalties.” Traditionally, “penalties” were ears, fingers, or equivalent minor appendages, surrendered for gross failures committed during desperate actions. Danny was serious in his threat—he couldn’t afford to make empty threats—but he knew he wouldn’t have to mutilate anyone later. The Prankster’s targeting systems were the best available, and each gun crew was trained to perfection. Any attractions the fleeing freighter spit out in its wake would tumble off untouched and ignored, unless the Prankster had time afterward to salvage them, to replenish their own expended stores.

  The two ships fired at each other as the predator rapidly overtook its prey. In short order, the freighter’s shields collapsed, after which the pirate crew made quick work of every gun node that bore on them. From the first shot to the last, a mere twenty-three seconds had passed. Now the Prankster had to act quickly so as to not overshoot the freighter, and thus allow its other, still-functioning guns to come to bear.

  “Match velocity,” Danny barked, though he needn’t have bothered. Reedu Jillijon was a deft hand at the conn and had already made the needed adjustments. The Prankster shut down its main drive and coasted toward the slower freighter that was still under power. This was an especially tricky time in such actions. The crippled freighter could still do any number of things to make itself dangerous to the pirate ship. It could cut out its own drive and let the Prankster shoot by it, blasting it as it did so, or it could rotate, bringing its surviving weapons to bear—or any of a long list of other maneuvers. At this point, it was a game of nerves and anticipation, between Reedu at the Prankster’s conn and whoever was piloting the merchant ship.

  At the same time, the pirate ship’s communications director started broadcasting the “black veil” warning—a universal message promising that any further resistance on the part of the freighter would result in its immediate and total destruction. Every starfaring species in civilized space knew of the “black veil” and knew that it was no bluff. Once given, it was worth loosing even the richest prize ship, rather than let the warning lose one iota of its threat value.

  Apparently, the Oeerlian crew had no desire to sacrifice themselves, for they allowed Reedu to slave their conn controls to his station. Controlling both ships now, Reedu kept the freighter under power until it matched the Prankster’s greater velocity, and then cut its drive off, so that both ships coasted through space together, at rest relative to each other.

  “Have they surrendered?” Brodogue asked, when Reedu announced his control over the freighter.

  “No, Captain,” the communications director said.

  “So they still have some fight in them, eh?” Brodogue said. Under the accepted conventions of space warfare, a ship could still resist actual boarding, without risking its total destruction. The “black veil” only covered ship-to-ship combat.

  “They’ve signaled they’re prepared to negotiate terms, sir.”

  Now the captain had a decision to make. He could negotiate terms with the freighter, under which they’d only surrender a portion of their cargo, and then be allowed to continue on their way, or the pirates could board the freighter and fight them hand-to-hand for the chance to win all of the booty.

  “So what are these Oeerlians like?” Brodogue said. “Are they doughty warriors in a close-up knife fight?”

  “Not usually,” Danny said, “but they tend to hire Vuurick mercenaries to do that sort of thing.” Vuuricks were tough in a hand-to-hand fight. They had redundant major organs and decentralized nervous systems, which made it necessary to injure them thoroughly before they could be expected to stop fighting. They also had between four and eight viable weapons-using appendages, depending on their stage of maturation.

  “What do you think, Mister Wells?” Brodogue said. “Will we be content with a portion of the goods, or are you in a mood to risk your neck over there to win all of it?”

  “I’ll be happy to board her, Skipper,” Danny said, and meant it. “Will I be doing it in your name, or my own?” If Danny boarded the freighter in the captain’s name, which was a perfectly honorable request for Brodogue to make, then the captain would receive the lion’s share of the loot. But if Danny were allowed to board the ship in his own name, then he and his boarding crew would win the greater share.

  “I had it in mind to go myself,” Brodogue said. “It’s been a while since I took part in personally separating a few Vuurick scum from their souls. Do you think your crew of black-hearted cutthroats could beat me and my boat over there?”

  “Try me,” Danny said.

  “The ship is yours, Mister Credogue,” Brodogue sho
uted, already leaping from his couch.

  Danny was half a step faster than the captain, and beat him through the hatchway off of the bridge. He ran through the Prankster’s lush corridors, shouting frantic commands into his communicator ring as he did so. First he called the boat deck with orders to prep his personal boarding yacht for immediate launch. Then he called his quarters and screamed orders at his personal aide and bodyguard.

  “Kyal!” Danny yelled as soon as she came on the line. He had to shout to make himself heard over the sounds of his footsteps, his heavy breathing, and all of the noise Brodogue was making, close behind him. “It’s a boarding race! Get my crew on the Egg, now!”

  “Already under way,” Kyal said in her passionless voice. “And the boat is ready to go. All we need is you.”

  “Wonderful!” Danny screamed. “Then we’ll get the jump on him! You’re a dream!”

  “Who’re we up against?” Kyal said.

  “The captain!”

  “Who made the challenge? You or him?”

  “He did!” Danny yelled. “Why?”

  “Then we may not have a head start after all. Captain Brodogue’s a crafty one. He may have anticipated offering the challenge and had his boat prepped in advance, with his own prize crew already aboard.”

  “You’re probably right! Hang on, Kyal! I’m on my way!” That was when Brodogue, still sliding close on Danny’s heels, stretched out one of his prehensile tanglers and tripped Danny, who landed hard on the deck and skidded until the Plentiri captain’s massive body rolled over him. Brodogue’s laughter—a rapid series of wildly oscillating clicks, in his case—disappeared down the hallway, as Danny levered himself painfully off of the deck. Then he began running again, for the boat deck and his personal launch.

  The Raptor’s Egg, its exterior shell a featureless blue ovoid, fell toward the giant merchant ship. Danny was aboard, with Kyal and his prize crew—a dozen veteran killers from as many different races. But he’d arrived too late. The captain’s launch was a respectable thirty klees ahead of them, already breaking for soft contact with the merchantman’s hull.

  “Brodogue’s got us skunked,” Kyal said, frustrated but still delighting in her chance to employ the exotic human idiom. She had no idea what a skunk was, but knew she’d used the phrase correctly. She’d long been an avid student of xenolinguistics, and Danny’s native tongue, with all of its complicated and contradictory rules, was among her favorites.

  “Not yet,” Danny said. “We just need to come in a bit faster than they are, if you’ve got the nerve for it. Dial up our speed.”

  “You plan to ram it?” she said. She was at the helm. Piloting his private yacht was but one of her many responsibilities. Kyal was a Sendarian warrior, which was most likely why Danny first selected her as his personal aide, once he’d reached sufficient rank to rate one. Sendarians looked human—an incredibly voluptuous human, in her case—provided one ignored the average seven feet in height for an adult, the gold skin, or the fact that they were all female. Danny assumed male Sendarians existed somewhere, but Kyal would never discuss it.

  “Ram it?” Danny said. “Not precisely. I want you to prepare our way with a precision low-power integrator burp against that structure there.” He pointed out a specific area of the target ship’s hull on their tactical display. “Oeerlians need a lot of water to survive these long trading voyages, and unless I miss my guess, that plate covers one of their massive water tanks. Wink the covering plate out of existence, and the suddenly exposed water venting into vacuum should do a fine job of fast-breaking us. Assuming we survive such a ridiculous stunt, we’ll end up already deep inside the ship’s vitals, while Brodogue and his bullyboys are still setting up their phase door against its outer hull.”

  “And if the water tank’s empty?” she said. “This is the end of their voyage after all. They may have used it up.”

  “Then I might just have enough time to say ‘oops’ before we’re crushed like bugs against the ship’s innards. But our bounceback sensors seem to indicate there’s some considerable mass behind that section of hull.”

  “Compared to vacuum, even an empty tank’s going to show mass, if it’s pressurized.”

  “Why would they waste expensive air to pressurize an empty space? Makes no sense. Oeerlian merchants are the very definition of thrifty. They’d never spend their treasure so liberally, and uselessly. No, I think there’s water there and that’s good enough for me. How about the rest of you?”

  A quick glance at the rest of the boarding party indicated they were more than willing to take the risk. Winning the boarding race meant reaping the greater share of rewards. What sort of pirates would they be if they ever allowed caution to override naked avarice?

  With a half-contained sigh of resignation, Kyal accelerated the Egg. “Strap in,” she said. “Structural and internal fields are at maximum—not that they’ll do us any good, if we’ve miscalculated.”

  She extruded the small bow chaser gun from the Egg’s shell and fired.

  Part of the fast-approaching hull disappeared before them and the tank wasn’t empty.

  Brilliant crystals of pure water exploded into the void like a behemoth vomiting diamonds. The spray engulfed the Raptor’s Egg, pummeling it with a billion tiny impacts, as it plummeted toward the gaping hole in the merchant’s side.

  The launch slowed—some.

  Friction caused by impact with the ice crystals began to heat the Egg’s outer shell, which in turn affected the ice, flash-heating it into steam. And still they fell toward the gaping hole, surrounded now by a superheated geyser.

  Impact!

  They came to rest three bulkheads beyond the original tank structure.

  After too long a time, Danny’s eyes began to focus again. He shook his head to clear the last of the cobwebs and realized that Kyal was standing over him. She was outfitted in her battle exoskeleton, which magnified her already impressive strength.

  “Are you okay, boss?” she said.

  “I think so. How’re the others?”

  “Boze is dead. Harness snapped and he smacked headfirst against the inner hull. Instantaneous. I doubt he had time to feel anything. Peeker’s leg is broken, but he’ll live. Everyone else is good to go. Your nose is bleeding pretty bad, by the way.”

  Danny absently wiped at his face. His hand came away with a disturbing amount of blood on it. “I’m fine,” he said. He popped his crash harness open and grappled himself out of his chair. The deck was canted a bit under his feet, indicating that their internal field was off—including the boat’s six artificial gravity projectors—and they were now subject to the merchant ship’s internal field. He could hear a distant siren wailing from somewhere beyond his own ship.

  “We’ve powered down,” Kyal said, anticipating his question. “Ready to go to dampers. The Egg poked a nice hole in the final bulkhead, forming a nearly airtight seal. There’s a little leakage around the edges, but not enough to worry about. We won’t need full pressure suits out there.”

  “Good to know,” Danny said. “But let’s carry emergency pressure bubbles anyway, in case the enemy panics and starts purging sections of the ship.”

  “Of course,” she said, with an expression that scolded him for even thinking she’d forget to issue such an order herself. Danny noticed belatedly that his crew already had bubble packs clipped to their belts.

  A few minutes later, the pirates crowded out of a hatching hole that opened in the Egg’s blue shell, and then oozed closed once again, featureless, behind them. Danny took the lead, as always. Each of them wore damper packs, dialed up to full dispersion. No energy projection weapons would work inside their overlapping fields, nor any other advanced forms of powered technology. All fighting in this action would be hand-to-hand.

  In one hand, Danny carried an old-fashioned novaplast shield, one of the kind he called a “pie plate” because of its small diameter. He preferred to move the smaller shield to intercept oncoming weapons strike
s rather than have to lug a larger one that might offer a greater scope of protection, but at the price of added weight and bulk. In his other hand, he carried his anyweapon. It was the pride of his personal arsenal, grown specifically for him, at considerable cost, by the mysterious Inomo Crafters of Core Polon.

  Danny had his anyweapon formed into the shape of a short-bladed cutlass. Once they’d cleared the Egg’s small hatch, emerging into one of the merchantman’s considerably more roomy corridors, he thought it into a longer-bladed version and it instantly responded to his desires.

  Like a pack of prowling wolves, long practiced at working together, they hunted the ship’s compartments. Stripped to the bare minimum of equipment, they were able to move silently. Their damper packs ensured that none of the ship’s internal sensors could detect them.

  At a bend in a corridor, they encountered their first group of defenders. As Danny had predicted, they were Vuurick mercenaries, each one of which was outfitted in state-of-the-art powered battle armor. Because of the damper fields, the armor was frozen to immobility, as were their unfortunate occupants trapped inside.

  Kempee the Vraal peered through one of the defenders’ faceplates. He said, “The Vuurick thug sure looks surprised in there, Danny. And a bit scared too, if I read his barbaric alien expression correctly. Should we kill them, while we have them at our mercy? Their armor will reactivate, once we’ve passed them by, and I’d hate to leave live enemies at our rear, cutting off our avenue of retreat.” Kempee placed the tip of his fighting dagger at one of the more vulnerable joints in the defender’s armor.

  “No need,” Danny said. “Having foes at our mercy occasionally merits showing some—mercy I mean. We’ll just strip the guts out of their power packs. Then they’ll continue to be frozen in place long after we’ve moved on. It’ll take an engineering team hours to cut them out of those shells. We’ll be long dead or long gone by then.”

  Neither Danny nor his crew wore powered armor, for obvious reasons. Even Kyal’s exoskeleton worked primarily off of more basic pneumatic-hydraulic systems, needing one with her size and natural strength to operate it.