Silent Order_Fire Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  Having seen the videos, March could not disagree.

  “The Graywolves mercenary gang has been hired to kill her,” said March. “They’ve set an ambush for her somewhere around Rustbelt Station, and I expect one or more of the ships around the station belongs to the Graywolves.”

  “The Graywolves?” said Heitz, baffled. “Why would the Graywolves want to kill a historian with a nice ass? Does she owe them money?”

  “She pissed off the Machinists,” said March.

  Heitz’s expression darkened. He was a corrupt toad, but he was a patriotic corrupt toad, and he hated the Machinists as much as March did. It was his one redeeming virtue, and probably the reason that Bishop hadn’t had him killed or brought up on charges and replaced with someone less corrupt.

  “Fine,” said Heitz. “Wait a moment. I need to make another call.”

  The screen went blank. March settled back to wait, looking at the tactical display. Vigil’s analysis of the ships was coming up, and it wasn’t promising. Every single ship in space around Rustbelt Station had the firepower to take out the Shovel when it arrived. Of course, the Ronstadt Corporation gunships escorting the Shovel would make it harder, but not impossible.

  Ninety seconds later Heitz reappeared on the screen, looking more annoyed than before.

  “What did Bishop say?” said March. He had guessed that Heitz had called the head of the local branch of the Silent Order for confirmation.

  To judge from Heitz’s sour expression, March had guessed right.

  “What do you need from me?” said Heitz, unwilling to answer the question.

  “The Shovel’s scheduled entry vector into the system,” said March. Based on local conditions, those were often inaccurate, but it would give him a place to start looking and to wait for the Shovel. “Also, have the station’s missile launchers ready. If things get hot, I’ll need backup firepower.”

  “Maybe I should send out a general alert,” said Heitz. “See if we can spook them into showing their hands.”

  “Not yet,” said March, scrutinizing the vector data that Heitz had sent him. “If they don’t realize we’re onto them, we can hit them a lot harder.”

  “Your weapons and shields are running hot,” said Heitz. “They’ll realize that something is up.”

  “Every ship in the system is running with weapons hot,” said March. “Rustbelt Station is that kind of place.”

  He expected Heitz to take umbrage, but the administrator only grunted. “True. Well, it’s on your head if she gets blasted out of space.” He tapped some keys off the screen. “I told station control to give you an orbital slot near the Shovel’s approach vector.”

  “Is Karlman still in charge of the Ronstadt branch on the station?” said March.

  “No, he got reassigned after the mess you made the last time,” said Heitz. “His replacement is named Veldt.” His face darkened. “Unpleasant asshole.”

  If Heitz thought someone was an asshole, Veldt must be an unpleasant man indeed.

  “I’m heading for the Shovel’s approach vector now,” said March. “Be ready. I think we’re going to see some shooting in a few minutes.”

  “Bishop had better come up with a damned good bribe after all this,” said Heitz, and he ended the transmission.

  March scowled at the screen and then turned his attention back to the controls. He didn’t like dealing with corrupt officials, and he had assassinated a few at the behest of the Silent Order. Still, Bishop had a point. Heitz was useful when it came down to it. Best to work with whatever tools were at hand.

  He turned the Tiger towards the Shovel’s scheduled approach vector, and as he did, he asked Vigil for a new tactical analysis, checking for any ships that would be near the Shovel’s approach when it arrived from hyperspace.

  There was one.

  It was a smallish bulk freighter, only about five hundred meters long, a utilitarian-looking, boxy craft with a battered, scarred hull. It looked as if it had been designed as an ore hauler, or to harvest water ice from comets. The freighter had minimal armament, only point-defense laser turrets designed to deal with meteors and maybe capable of shooting down a missile or two. Yet the heavy armor plating on the hull could take a pounding, and the shield emplacements could generate a powerful defensive shield

  And the Tiger’s sensors picked up nothing from inside the freighter.

  March frowned. The Tiger was running only on passive sensors, save for the ladar and radar sweeps designed to pinpoint the location of nearby ships and the dark energy sensors for detecting hyperspace incursions. Yet even that should have been enough to register some trace of the bulk freighter’s cargo.

  But the Tiger’s sensors picked up nothing at all.

  March frowned, watching as the bulk freighter moved along a route that would put it right in the path of the Shovel and her escorts when it arrived. Granted, that was all relative. In the vastness of space, a course correction of a few degrees would let the Shovel and the bulk freighter miss each other by tens of thousands of kilometers. It happened all the time. Yet the freighter was nonetheless moving into the Shovel’s expected path.

  The ship had no obvious heavy weapons, but the sensors could not read anything on the ship’s interior. What did it carry? A fragmentation bomb in the right place could destroy the Shovel. Missile launchers, perhaps?

  “Vigil,” said March. “Can we get better sensor resolution on that bulk freighter?”

  “Not without an active sensor focus,” said Vigil.

  “Right.” March hit the communication controls and called Heitz back.

  Heitz’s scowling, jowly face reappeared on the screen. “What have you got?”

  “Maybe trouble,” said March. “The station’s sensors are better than mine. What can you get on that bulk freighter near the Shovel’s scheduled exit vector?”

  Heitz grunted and started typing. “Let’s see…ship is named the Bucket. How clever.” His frown deepened. “Registry and flight plan is crap. Obviously forged, but we don’t ask too many questions around here so long as people behave.”

  “Right,” said March, unwilling to pursue that line of conversation. “Can you get anything on the cargo?”

  “Flight plan says they’re carrying a load of water converters for a colony,” said Heitz. “But…hmm. They’re actively shielding their cargo hold. Between their hull armor and the shielding, I can’t get anything on their cargo.”

  “Order them to lower their cargo shields and let you scan their ship,” said March. “I think they might be the one.”

  “A bulk freighter?” said Heitz, surprised. “They’re shit in a fight.”

  “Do it anyway,” said March. “I…”

  One of the sensors trilled an alarm. The Tiger had just detected a nearby surge of dark energy. The Shovel and its escorts were about to exit hyperspace.

  “Cancel that,” said March. “Get a missile lock on the Bucket. I think the shooting is about to begin.” He canceled the video display and switched the screens to tactical configuration. “Stay on this channel.”

  Heitz swore at him but followed instructions. March swung the Tiger around, heading for the surge of dark energy. The Bucket followed suit, altering its vector so its nose pointed at the dark energy radiation.

  Then the dark energy spiked, and a hyperspace vortex opened about a hundred and twenty thousand kilometers away. It was invisible to the naked eye, but the computer rendered it as a whirling vortex of harsh purple and blue light. An instant later the vortex closed, and the Shovel and its two escorts appeared.

  March’s displays lit up with new information. The Shovel was what he expected, a medium-sized freighter with heavy shielding and armor but minimal armament. The hull had been painted with the logos of the Kingdom of Calaskar and the University of Calaskar, no doubt to help with branding Dr. Taren’s videos. Two sleek Ronstadt Private Security Corporation gunships escorted the Shovel. Both gunships were about the size of the Tiger, but carried more armaments,
including missile racks and torpedo launchers and had heavier shielding. Though the Tiger’s thrust-to-mass ratio was far better, and if necessary the Tiger could fly rings around the gunships.

  The tactical display chimed an alert. The Bucket had changed course, moving to intercept the Shovel and her escorts. March swore, and pushed power to the Tiger’s drive.

  “Heitz,” he said. “Are you seeing this?”

  “Yeah,” said Heitz. “That freighter’s got no business heading towards the Shovel. I’m going to warn them off.”

  “Do that,” said March. “I’ll warn the Shovel.” He tapped commands into the communications panel. “This is Captain Jack March of the Tiger, calling the Shovel with an urgent warning. Shovel, please respond.”

  A moment later static crackled over the speakers.

  “Captain March, this is the Shovel,” said a woman’s cool voice. March recognized Dr. Taren’s voice from the videos. “What is the nature of this urgent news?”

  “You’re about to come under attack,” said March.

  There was a pause. “From you?”

  “No,” said March. The Bucket continued its drive towards the Shovel and its escorts, picking up speed. “I’ve received advanced warning of an attack on your vessel. Very strongly advise that you power up shields and arm weapons and that your escorts do the same.”

  “All right,” said Taren. The tactical display changed as the Shovel’s defensive shields came on. March checked the power ratings. The shields were strong for a vessel of the Shovel’s size, but a sustained bombardment of either energy weapons or missiles would take them down. “We’ll inform…wait. What are they doing?”

  In perfect unison, both the Shovel’s gunship escorts turned.

  For a grim instant, March was sure that he had misjudged the situation, that the escorts would turn and fire on the Shovel. His sensors picked up a surge of energy from the gunships, but it was dark energy. Hyperspace vortexes swirled before the gunships, and the ships vanished as they jumped away.

  “What the hell?” said Taren, her voice sharp with anger. “Where did our escorts go?”

  “Best guess is that they’ve been bribed to abandon you,” said March, watching the tactical display. The attack would likely come at any moment.

  He would have expected more anger or maybe panic, but instead, Taren’s voice turned cool.

  “I see,” she said. “And I suppose you’ve come to help us?”

  “That’s right,” said March. He eyed the Bucket on the tactical display. “Get ready to…”

  The Bucket blew up.

  March frowned in surprise. There had been no warning, no surge of power, no sign of engine instability, nothing.

  “Heitz!” he said. “Did you blow up that ship?”

  “What?” said Heitz. “Jesus, no. We haven’t fired. I’m…wait. We’re getting multiple contacts from inside the debris field.”

  “So am I,” said Taren. “It’s like there were smaller ships inside its cargo bay.”

  All at once March saw the shape of the trap.

  “Shit,” he said, throwing power to the drive and sending the Tiger hurtling towards the Shovel. “It was a pocket carrier. You’re about to come under starfighter attack.”

  The pocket carrier was an old, old idea, but one that had proven its worth in interstellar warfare again and again. Normal fleet carriers and escort carriers could serve as a base for multiple wings of starfighters, but between their size and massive energy signatures, it was nearly impossible to hide a carrier. Pocket carriers, however, were usually built out of other ships – old ore haulers, ice miners, and bulk freighters. They didn’t have room for many fighters, but they often could carry at least a squadron of heavy starfighters. Pirates used pocket carriers, as did mercenaries in need of cheap carriers, and state militaries for covert operations.

  As the debris field that had once been the Bucket scattered into the void, the Tiger’s tactical display lit up with new contacts. The ship’s sensors picked up a half dozen smaller vessels moving from where the bulk freighter’s cargo bay would have been.

  “Shit,” muttered March, looking at the tactical readout.

  The Bucket had been carrying six Owl-class heavy starfighters. The starfighters were sleek gray craft with wide wings and fins, equally capable of handling in atmosphere and the void of space. Each fighter carried twin plasma cannons and ship-to-ship missiles and torpedoes. Any one of them had enough firepower to blast the Shovel out of the sky.

  And six of them were heading towards Taren’s ship.

  “Tiger,” said Taren, her voice colder than before. “Are you reading this?”

  “Yes,” said March. “Get your point-defense lasers ready.” The six Owls had launched themselves on an intercept course towards the Shovel. The heavy starfighters were quite obviously moving for a torpedo run on the Shovel. If they ripple-fired their torpedoes and missiles, they would overload the Shovel’s defenses and destroy the freighter…

  Then something else caught March’s attention.

  The Bucket hadn’t only been carrying heavy fighters.

  Two smaller, boxy craft followed the Owls. They were standard passenger shuttles, built by hundreds of different starship manufacturers across the human worlds. Yet these two shuttles had been modified heavily, with additional armor plating, weapons emplacements, and plasma cutters mounted near the nose.

  The shuttles had been modified into troop carriers.

  Which meant the Graywolves intended to board the Shovel.

  But that didn’t make any sense. Censor had been sure that the Machinists intended to assassinate Taren, not capture her. While March knew firsthand that the Machinists were capable of any cruelty and did not care about collateral damage, they also took a practical approach to their enemies, and they would most likely simply kill Taren.

  But if they wanted to capture her, perhaps they intended to use one of their Wraith devices on her. The Machinists only had a limited number of Wraith machines, but maybe they thought Taren influential enough to use a Wraith on her. If the Owls destroyed the Shovel’s drive, the troop carriers could storm the ship and take prisoners.

  “Heitz!” snapped March. “Do you have any anti-fighter missiles?”

  “Some,” said Heitz. “Mostly MIRV boosters. The station’s main anti-fighter weapons are point-defense laser turrets.”

  “Start shooting MIRVs at the Owls on my mark,” said March. He had been heading towards the Shovel, but he altered his trajectory, putting his ship on an intercept course with the heavy starfighters. “Taren?”

  “Any advice would be appreciated, Captain March,” said Taren in a tight voice. She had spun the Shovel to present a smaller target profile to the starfighters, the point-defense lasers powered up and ready. It wouldn’t make much of a difference, but it would help.

  “Can you get to hyperspace?” said March.

  “Not for another twelve minutes,” said Taren. “The dark matter reactor is still cycling.”

  “Then get ready to shoot down any missiles or torpedoes,” said March, watching the tactical display. The Owls had formed into a standard attack run. To judge from the position of their targeting lasers, they were aiming at the Shovel’s fusion drive. Based on Vigil’s tactical analysis, the Shovel’s point-defense lasers could handle the missiles from one heavy starfighter. Six would overwhelm the freighter’s defenses in short order.

  “Then I hope you’ve got a clever plan up your sleeve, Captain March,” said Taren. Her voice was still calm, but March heard the increasing tension. “There’s no way my ship’s defenses can handle that many missiles at once. Which was why I hired those Ronstadt Corporation scoundrels to escort my ship.”

  “We’re about to find out,” said March. He switched channels. “Heitz, start shooting at those Owls.”

  He didn’t wait for an acknowledgment but turned his attention back to the tactical display. The Owls and the two troop shuttles so far hadn’t noticed the Tiger’s presence, t
heir attention focused upon their prey.

  It was time to change that.

  March looked at the firing solutions Vigil had calculated, locked onto the nearest Owl, and squeezed the firing triggers on the flight yoke as the Tiger came into range.

  The ship shuddered as the railgun mounted along its keel spat out a tungsten rod. The Owl on the starboard side of the attack formation never saw it coming. The rod struck the fighter’s kinetic shields, overloaded them in a billionth of a second, and ripped through the heart of the fighter. The Owl’s momentum kept it moving towards the Shovel, but when the tungsten round ripped through the heavy fighter’s core, the starfighter tore apart in a field of debris.

  Even as the tungsten rod hit the Owl, March squeezed the triggers on the flight yoke. The Tiger’s four forward-facing plasma cannons opened up, hammering at the next Owl in the formation. The volley of plasma bolts collapsed the starfighter’s radiation shield and ripped into the hull armor, burning through to tear into the fighter’s guts. The Owl tore apart in a spray of debris and radiation.

  The remaining four starfighters broke formation, scattering to face the new threat. The Tiger shot past the two troopships, and March put the ship into a sideways turn, hoping to get a shot lined up on the shuttles. One of the Owls continued towards the Shovel, while the other three starfighters turned towards the Tiger.

  The shrill warning of weapons locks filled the Tiger’s flight cabin.

  March wrenched the Tiger into an evasive pattern, dodging and twisting as the three starfighters pursued him. He had hoped to shoot down at least one of the shuttles as he passed, but he didn’t dare level out long enough to use the railgun or the plasma cannons, and the shuttles’ radiation shields were strong enough to deflect the laser turrets. One of the Owls shot off a pair of missiles at him, and March dumped out a cloud of flak particles, the turrets switching over automatically to point-defense mode. One of the missiles hit the chaff cloud and exploded, while the turrets got the second, burning off its maneuvering thrusters and sending it tumbling uselessly into the void.

  The Tiger came out of its spin, and the tactical display flashed red as Vigil calculated a firing solution. March fired the railgun, and this time the tungsten round ripped through the starboard wing of the nearest Owl. The starfighter shuddered, its maneuvering thrusters gone, and March unleashed a volley from the plasma cannons. Half the shots missed, but the others overloaded the Owl’s shields and tore apart the fighter.