An Airless Storm: Cochrane's Company: Book Two

by Peter Grant

  Two weeks later, the freighter Pilot slid into orbit around Constanta, after another monthly resupply run to Mycenae. Doctor Moncrieff met Tom Argyll and his security team in the docking bay. After the usual greetings, she assured him, “Sub-Lieutenant Sejdiu is doing fine, considering what he’s been through. His mental functioning is at least ninety-five percent of what it was, and there’s still slow improvement. Therapy, and a couple of months of breathing good, thick planetside air, and some long walks on grass and dirt instead of steel decks, will do him the world of good.”

  “And the Kedan spacers?”

  She laughed. “They can’t wait to get outside, either! They’re like puppies or kittens, if you ask me, always playful and looking for fun. It’s hard to regard them as enemies. In fact, I don’t think they regard us as enemies at all. I think the Albanians hired them through their senior officers, without telling them they’d be fighting anyone or who their opponents were. I’ve grown to like them. They’re simple people, uncomplicated.”

  “I’ll brief our security people accordingly. We won’t get far with a harsh approach. That would just alienate them. Gentle treatment is more likely to get us the cooperation we want.”

  “Exactly. The same goes for the Sub-Lieutenant. He won’t speak of his service at all, but that’s more of an attitude of a prisoner of war. He doesn’t want to give away secrets. He doesn’t strike me as a bad man.”

  “All right.” Tom glanced over his shoulder at the guards who’d accompanied him. “You all heard that. Treat our prisoners gently, with as much kindness as possible. Make sure you pass that on to your reliefs planetside.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Staff Sergeant in charge of the escort acknowledged, as his guards muttered their understanding. “We’ll treat them like they were babies, and we were their mothers.”

  “Don’t take that too far, or they might expect you to breast-feed them.”

  Doctor Moncrieff blinked, while the guards guffawed. “If your people manage that, I’ll personally get your name into every medical journal in the settled galaxy! We’ll make history – and our fortunes!”

  The prisoners had no idea why the guards who escorted them aboard a cutter were laughing so much. They took it in their stride, though. Their anticipation at feeling sunshine on their skins, and smelling fresh, unprocessed air after so many months in space, was almost tangible.

  Later that afternoon, Tom reported back to headquarters planetside. Hui was with Cochrane when he knocked at the door.

  “Come in, Tom. Are our prisoners safe and sound?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re out at the farm. They were so excited to be planetside again, it took the guards almost an hour to herd them the hundred or so meters between the cutter landing pad and the farmhouse. They just wanted to stand there, kick off their boots and socks and walk barefoot on the grass, smell the flowers, all those things you just can’t do in space.”

  “I hope you let them?”

  “I didn’t have the heart to pull them away, sir. Those Kedans really are like children, just like Doctor Moncrieff said. It’s hard to dislike them. The officer’s a bit more stiff and stand-offish, but he was enjoying himself just as much – he just didn’t allow himself to show it.”

  Hui suddenly smacked her forehead with her palm. “That’s it!”

  The men stared at her in astonishment. “That’s what, ma’am?” Tom asked.

  “The eyes! That accountant’s eyes, that Antonia Whatshername that Matei Grigorescu hired! I knew I’d seen them somewhere before!” She turned to Cochrane. “Can you bring up that prisoner’s picture again – the one taken a few weeks after his surgery?”

  “Sure.”

  They walked over to the desk. With a few keystrokes, Cochrane brought up the Albanian officer’s file on his terminal. “Is that the one you meant?”

  “That’s it! Now, go to Grigorescu Shipyard’s site on the planetary network.”

  “Just a moment.” A few more keystrokes, and it was done.

  “Right. Navigate to the pictures of corporate officers, and find that accountant.”

  Another couple of keystrokes. “Is this her? Antonia Funar?”

  “That’s her. Bring up her picture, and display it next to the picture of that officer.”

  Cochrane did as she had asked – then goggled at the screen. “What the hell?”

  Tom said slowly, clearly as stunned as his boss, “If that’s not a family resemblance, I’ve never seen one, sir.”

  “That’s for sure. He’s got the chin and jawline of a strong man, determined, set, but his eyes… they’re so like hers, it’s uncanny. That color, too, a sort of gray-green. That’s not very common.”

  “There’s something else you should know,” Hui told them, her voice vibrating with excitement. She told them of the accountant’s reluctance to undergo a truth-tester examination. “I thought at the time it was just a strong desire for personal privacy, but what if it was something more? What if she has something to hide? Could this be it – that she’s related to the prisoner?”

  They stared at each other wordlessly for several moments. At last Tom asked, his voice filled with concern, “If she’s related to him, why would she have come here? Could it be she heard he was our prisoner, and thought she’d find him here? If so, why would she be working as an accountant, instead of looking around? There are so many questions, I don’t know where to start asking them.”

  Cochrane said, “Let’s do things a step at a time. Have some of your people keep her under surveillance. She may be trained – in fact, let’s assume she’s a highly trained agent, right from the start, to avoid making mistakes. Your people will have to watch her very discreetly, if necessary at a distance. Others can start checking her background. When did she arrive here, and why? What did she do after that? When and why did she start working at Grigorescu? Meanwhile, send a couple of your investigators to Onesta – that’s where her bio says she was born and raised. I’ll give them a courier ship to make a fast trip. Make sure her flight plan doesn’t mention Onesta at all, in case this ‘Antonia’ is watching for that. Tell them to find out everything they can about her there, and to work fast. I want them back here as quickly as possible, certainly inside a month.”

  “What should we do about the prisoner in the meantime, sir?”

  “I think he’s safe enough out at the farm. She won’t know he’s there, and your surveillance team can alert the guards if she drives out that way. That’ll give them time to get the prisoners under cover and out of sight.”

  “Aye aye, sir. I’ll get right on it.”

  20

  Intrusion

  MYCENAE SYSTEM

  Frank was at Jean Bart’s docking bay to greet Commander Darroch as he boarded the depot ship from his gig. “Welcome back, Angus!” he called, as Bobcat’s commanding officer came through the airlock.

  “It’s good to be back, sir.” They shook hands firmly.

  “Come on down to my office.” As they headed for the high-speed walkway, Frank added, “I take it Bobcat didn’t need to go back into the dockyard for any more modifications?”

  “No, sir. You seem to have identified all the problems during her first tests. They fixed everything you found while they lengthened her. She’s passed every test with flying colors, and the Commodore has approved the start of frigate production using her modified design. The next two corvettes, Wolfsbane and Aconite, will be delivered soon, and two frigates, Caracal and Jaguarundi, will take their place on the production line. You should see them here to work up in about nine or ten months from now, sir.”

  “It can’t come too soon for me! Once they’re ready for service, I’ll be the new Officer in Command of Hawkwood’s First Frigate Division.”

  “That’s great, sir! Who’ll take your place here?”

  “I don’t know yet, but there are a couple of candidates. A lot depends on whether we sign another system security contract. If we do, that’ll need another senior officer to command that s
tation. He’ll have a depot ship, a courier vessel and four corvettes under his command.”

  “Sounds like Hawkwood’s going to be expanding even more, sir.”

  “It does. Those of us on board now can look forward to lots of hard work, and good prospects to make lots of money.”

  Darroch snorted. “What was the old toast in the wet-water Royal Navy before the French Revolution? ‘A bloody war or a sickly season’, I think it was. They had far too many officers as the result of previous wars. A lot of them were put ashore on half-pay, because there were no berths for them, what with so many ships being placed in reserve. The only openings for advancement, or even just a seagoing appointment, were if a more senior officer died or retired.”

  “I hadn’t heard that one. I’m glad we don’t have that problem. Is Bobcat ready for duty?”

  “She is, sir. Her crew had already gained a lot of experience under your command during her first trials, so we combined the second series of trials with working-up exercises. We’re fighting fit and ready to go.”

  “Good. I’ll start you on patrols tomorrow, to let you practice working with the system surveillance satellite and the minefield around Secundus Two. We’ve got almost three hundred in place now, patrolling out to five million kilometers from the planet, but leaving the approach and departure lanes clear.”

  “We’ll be ready, sir.”

  BROTHERHOOD SHIP SARANDA

  The courier vessel Saranda was moving relatively slowly on this pass through the Mycenae system. Her previous visit had yielded some worthwhile intelligence, but her maximum velocity of four-tenths of light speed had made it very difficult for her sensors to take accurate readings. This time, she was forgoing the greater security of speed in favor of the higher precision of slower movement.

  Lieutenant-Commander Malaj called the ship to general quarters as it approached the planet known simply as Mycenae Secundus Two. He took his seat at the command console, and prepared to supervise the collection of every emission from every ship in orbit around, or on patrol near, the Hawkwood base. He concentrated on that, to the exclusion of almost every other activity on board.

  In the Engineering Department, Lieutenant Belushi hovered over the dials and gauges on his monitoring board. The gravitic drive was, of course, shut down, to avoid emissions that the enemy could track. However, if sudden maneuvers were needed, it would have to be brought up without delay. What’s more, the gravitic shield, also produced by the gravitic drive and designed to deflect debris in the path of the ship, was still in operation. It would be far too dangerous to proceed without it at any speed worthy of the name. Even a pea-sized piece of debris might penetrate Saranda from end to end, if struck head-on at a significant fraction of light speed. What the colossal kinetic energy released by that impact would do to the ship, and everyone aboard her, didn’t bear thinking about.

  He scowled across the room at the four Kedan spacers – ‘technicians’ in name only, as far as he was concerned – who stood against the bulkhead, ready to act on his command. He turned to the Petty Officer beside him at the console. “Keep an eye on those monkeys. Make sure they don’t do anything except what we tell them. I don’t want them screwing up this pass, and us having to carry the can for it!” He didn’t bother to lower his voice.

  “I will, sir,” the NCO assured him.

  The senior of the four Keda men bit his lip to stop himself making a very rude remark in Albanian, learned the hard way from the NCO’s who’d bullied and prodded his men into learning their jobs over the past year. It hurt to be treated like an animal, dismissed contemptuously as worthless or uncivilized. However, there was nothing they could do about it… yet.

  He glanced at the entrance to the ship’s minuscule docking bay, where a cutter and a gig waited. It offered a potential reprieve from the stifling atmosphere in the engineering control room. He asked, in broken Albanian, “Sir, should we clean out the cutter while we have nothing else to do? I noticed it was dirty, the last time we were inside.”

  “Then why didn’t you clean it right away? You know where the cleaning gear is. Get on with it!”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  As the officer watched the four men hurry out, he said to no-one in particular, “At least they’ve learned enough to take the dirty work off our hands, even if they haven’t got the sense to do it without being told.”

  The NCO grunted. “Suits me, sir. I’ll save my time and energy for more important stuff.”

  The electronic ‘brain’ of an autonomous orbital mine cannot be said to ‘think’ at all. If it could have felt emotion, it would have been utterly astonished to find a spaceship bearing down on it, and shoving it rudely out of its way as it rushed by.

  As Saranda passed close to Secundus Two, keeping five million kilometers away from the planet to avoid even the slightest risk of detection, its gravitic shield deflected one of the outermost of the mines protecting the vessels orbiting the planet, that had strayed too close to its path. The ship broadcast no emissions at all, so the mine could not ‘see’ what had disturbed its peaceful vigil; but its onboard computer knew that only one thing could have done this. The mine instantly switched its array from passive to active mode, bathing surrounding space in a torrent of radar energy.

  Saranda was well past the mine by the time it detected her, and out of range of its laser cone. That did not stop the mine broadcasting the position and course of the intruder at full power to every other mine nearby. Its warning was also picked up by the mine control console in the Operations Center aboard Jean Bart. The message was instantly relayed to every Hawkwood ship in the Mycenae system. Light speed delay meant that many ships would not receive it right away… but it was propagating at ten times Saranda’s velocity.

  As more mines received the signal, they, too, switched on their active sensors. Several of them also obtained readings of Saranda’s course and speed, and relayed them to the OpCen. Now the intruder’s trajectory and velocity could be plotted more accurately, and more precise warnings issued – along with orders to intercept her.

  The contact between the mine and Saranda’s gravitic deflection shield was very light and very fleeting, over almost before it had begun. Nevertheless, it shook Saranda hard, taking everyone on board completely by surprise. Those not strapped into chairs or bunks were sent flying as the deck heaved beneath their feet. Several were injured as they slammed into bulkheads, furniture, and each other.

  The ship’s hull whiplashed slightly as the energy of the deflection was passed down her length, like a ripple passing through water. The sliding cover over the docking bay, presenting a smooth, stealthy surface to protect against radar or lidar detection, buckled as its frame twisted around it. It popped out and flew away from the ship, moving outwards as it began to diverge from her base trajectory. It would leave the system in due course on its own path, to be lost in the trackless wastes of deep space and never seen again.

  The ship’s gig and cutter, secured by locking bars holding them against the airlocks in the docking bay, were rocked back and forth. The smaller, lighter gig withstood the flexing of the hull, and remained in place. The larger, heavier cutter did not. Her inertia snapped all but one of the locking bars securing her. In an automatic reaction to the suddenly unsafe condition of its connection, the concertina tunnel extending from the ship’s hull to her rear ramp withdrew into its housing. As its sensors recognized that the tunnel was unlocking from around it, the ramp’s emergency system kicked into action. It slammed closed and sealed itself with a sudden hiss, preventing the cutter’s internal atmosphere from escaping.

  The four Kedan spacers were tossed about inside the small craft as if they were rag dolls. One broke his neck against a storage cabinet as he slammed into one of its sharp corners at just the wrong angle. The others were knocked unconscious as their heads struck the inside of the hull. The cleaning materials they were using splashed and splattered all over the interior.

  As Saranda sped onward, the cut
ter swayed and tugged against the restraint of the sole locking bar still holding it in place.

  Lieutenant-Commander Malaj cursed violently as he struggled to make sense of what had just happened. Saranda had clearly suffered a near-miss with something big and heavy, but what? There were no gravitic drive emissions anywhere near her. Worse, there were now small active radar emitters lighting off from several point sources nearby. He knew they would obtain reflections from his ship’s hull. If the enemy could track them and work out his course and speed, they might be able to intercept him.

  He hit the release buckle of his harness, thrust himself to his feet, and hurried across to the Plot, where the operator – who had not fastened his harness – was groaning on the floor, holding his right arm. “Stand up, man!” he snapped as he stepped over him. “Return to your duties at once!”

  “My arm, sir – I think it’s broken!”

  “Then call for a relief at once! You can’t go to sick bay until someone’s taken over your post.”

  “Yes, sir.” The man struggled to his knees and crawled over to the Communications console.

  Malaj scanned the three-dimensional plot carefully. Anything behind him was no longer a concern. It would take them too long to catch him, and even if they tried, he could always increase speed and outrun them. The problem was the three ships ahead of him, on inner and outer system patrol. Could any of them possibly change course in time to reach him, before he could leave the system?

  Muttering in aggravation at having to do it himself, he instructed the Plot computer to calculate the odds of interception. Almost at once, it highlighted an icon in the display. Only one enemy ship, with a gravitic drive signature resembling that of a destroyer, could get close enough to Saranda to threaten her. He made up his mind at once. He would have to take evasive action. Fortunately, a destroyer could achieve about one-third Cee at best. He could exceed that comfortably. Combined with a ten-degree change in trajectory, it would be enough that even her missiles, building upon her base speed as she drew closer, would not be able to reach Saranda.