Shiver Me Timbers

by Chris Hechtl

  <()>^<()>

  Captain Hochi felt relief when he saw Fanny's video. He even had a good chuckle at her threat. “Good to see it really is you, Fanny,” he said with a smirk. “And for the record, you and I both know you can't get your stubby legs that high,” he said with a grin. “I've got some stories to tell you!”

  Chapter 44

  Long Sands

  Captain Fisher wanted to hiss and spit but instead kept her composure. She was a ship's captain, not an animal. She knew better. She needed to comport herself as a professional.

  Even if she wanted to ring someone's neck. Quite possibly her own given that she had only herself to blame for the position she and her ship were in.

  By the time she'd finished fitting the ship out the best she could, she hadn't had the credits to repaint her ship's livery and rename her. She'd gotten barely one pass to fine tune her instruments, nodes, and fire control before Captain Dab had kicked her out. She'd thought of all sorts of tricks to fine tune the sensors in the field, but she'd forgotten she'd replaced a lot of her equipment with civilian grade.

  Civilian grade hardware sucked. And it sucked even more that it had come from her old ship.

  It had taken an agonizingly long time to get to Long Sands. She'd thought that Gutt had spared some of the systems that he couldn't easily get to. He had, but a lot of those same systems were dependent on her shields and eyes. With their eyes being so short ranged and an inexperienced helm team, she was damn lucky to get to Long Sands at all.

  She'd finished counting her blessings some time ago. She'd made what repairs she could. She'd even managed to set up a watch on the distant jump point. But her shuttles were limited in range so she had to keep in an equatorial orbit so they could reach her.

  Getting her ship refueled had bought the locals' time to scramble up some supplies for her. Apparently, she hadn't made her point though, they'd begged for more time.

  She knew it was hard on them since the planet had been picked over badly less than a year ago. She was losing her patience.

  She listened to the lubber snivel and then cut him off with a growl. “I don't care what your problem is, I want them. Now. If I have to send more troops down, I will. But they won't ask as nicely as I'm doing now.”

  “We're working on it, ma'am. But I can't get the food out of the ground and have it ripe! Please! I'm just asking for a little more time.”

  “Two days, then your time is up, and I'll send the shuttles down. They'll no doubt demand payment for their time in the form of some quality time with your ladies. So you best figure it out,” she growled and then cut the circuit.

  That should have them scared out of their wits, at least for the time being.

  One ship. Just one good freighter would give her what she needed. To hell with bringing the ship in. All she needed was to board it and take what she wanted. Strip the damn ship. Okay, maybe then put the old parts in the other ship and escort it back to a safe harbor. Maybe. But one ship.

  And there was no way, no way in hell she was going to get one in Long Sands. According to her research, there had been several civilians who had come and gone through the star system. But they'd eventually been picked off. Many of the star systems along the chain only saw a pirate.

  It sucked that she'd accepted the job, but that had been the only way to get the parts and supplies she'd needed to get her ship into space. And, it had gotten her firmly seated in the command chair. She had been very much aware that someone could have come along and snatched it out from under her just as they were going to wrap it up or she went bankrupt. She'd seen it and heard about it all too many times before.

  But Seydlitz was hers now. She lacked spare parts, her supplies sucked, her crew wasn't the best or brightest, but she was hers. She had fuel, her systems sucked, but she was all hers. She had done what she could with the ship's systems, coding over what she could. It was what it was. Only time, luck, and a lot of investment would change that.

  <()>^<()>

  Captain Zeb was pursuing reports and considering pushing back the next scheduled round of logistics inventory for when they were in hyper when he got a call from the bridge.

  “Sir, we've got a bogey at the planet,” the XO reported.

  “A bogey?”

  “Yes, sir. CIC just got confirmation. Based on the size and mass readings, she's at least a heavy cruiser.”

  “I'll be right there,” the captain replied.

  By the time the captain had arrived on the bridge, the XO had steered one of the three recon drones they'd released into the star system to scout to get a good look. It took several anxious hours before they confirmed the ship and narrowed it down to a class.

  “An Admiral Hipper class?”

  “Aye, sir. The war book has a dozen in this sector.”

  “I see,” the captain said, focusing all four eyestalks on the grainy image of the ship in orbit of the planet. The planet had a lot of green desert below, so it was easy to make the black ship out on the yellow and blue below. “And they are just sitting there?”

  “Aye, sir. Her nodes aren't even warm. She's got active sensors, but they are relatively short ranged and aimed at the Tau-R1344 jump point.”

  “And we obviously missed them coming in,” the XO said dubiously. “Why do I find that so hard to believe?”

  “Luck. Never ascribe to luck where ignorance and stupidity may be the primary factor involved,” the captain quoted.

  “I've run it back, sir, to the time we came in. They were behind the planet when we jumped in. The flash didn't alert them.”

  “Okay, so, a bit of luck,” the XO stated.

  “No, more like stupidity on the part of that crew,” the captain stated. “A proper crew would have taken a polar orbit to get a clear view. This one chose an equatorial one. That tells me they are inexperienced and sloppy, which might give us an opportunity,” he said slowly.

  The XO looked at him. “Are you thinking what I think you are thinking, sir?”

  “If we're on the same wavelength, most likely, number one,” the Veraxin captain replied. “Let's do some planning in my office.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Guns, we'll need you to come along for this,” the captain stated. The TAO nodded and came with them.

  <()>^<()>

  It took several days to alter their course and sneak in. Near the last one hundred million miles they dropped to a ballistic course and ran ultra-silent. They were coming in from a different heading than the one the enemy was looking at. Still, Captain Zeb didn't leave much to chance.

  Along the way the computers refined the telescope screen grabs to confirm the class of ship. Not only that but they also identified her as Seydlitz from her markings.

  “I love it,” the TAO stated with a malicious grin. “Finally getting some real payback,” he said.

  “For all the hurt and suffering they've inflicted, this is too good for them,” the XO agreed.

  “I'm wondering if it is the same crew,” Captain Zeb replied. They turned to him. “Her sensors do not match what we have on file for them from their encounter with Puglia. And look at their inexperience! I'd say this is almost too easy, but I don't want to jinx us.”

  “I don't think it matters, sir. We've less than two minutes from point William Tell,” the TAO stated.

  “You've got the ship, Guns, on the tick.”

  “Aye, sir, on the tick,” the TAO stated formally.

  When the countdown got to ten, he flipped the plastic shield up and put his thumb over the big red button. Everything had been tied to a single macro. When the missiles launched, the A.I. would bring them to battle stations, and they'd clear for action. Before the missiles got halfway to the target, the ship's shields and weapon systems would be up and ready for a follow-up salvo.

  Something told him it wouldn't be needed. The enemy ship was just sitting there with cold nodes. It would take them a minimum of two minutes to get the nodes up in order to generate shield. His mis
siles would be on top of them in that time.

  “Three … two … one, fire!” the TAO stated sharply, stabbing down on the button.

  <()>^<()>

  Alarms screamed, waking Captain Fisher from her slumber. She rushed to the bridge, assuming someone had jumped in and arrived in time to see missiles in their final acquisition mode on the main plot. In the distance an enemy ship was clearing for action.

  Her crew was scrambling to their stations desperately. Their shields were still down. She threw herself into her chair and ordered her command override to bring them up while also initiating an emergency burn. The burn was not completely synced with the ship's inertial dampeners; it threw her to one side of her chair. Only her claws managed to keep her in the hot seat. She saw at least one luckless crew member go flying over her head, but she didn't care.

  “We've got twenty missiles incoming at five hundred thousand kilometers out! They are in final acquisition now! Time to impact … twenty seconds!” CIC barked.

  Captain Fisher saw the missiles coming in and cringed. Her ears were back as her crew practically screamed at her, demanding she do something.

  The ship screamed in her own way, but no amount of twisting and turning could get her away from what was coming. “Captain, what do we do??!?” someone demanded plaintively as the twenty missiles began to spawn submunitions and ECM. Jamming turned their sensors into hash and snow.

  “We've got to do something! Raise the white flag! Tell them we surrender!” another sailor said.

  “All hands, man the lifeboats!” another called out.

  The Neocat shook her head. It was useless. They can't stop the missiles, and they couldn't run. “We're dead,” she moaned as she felt the ship shake with the first thunderous hit.

  <()>^<()>

  Zeng He's bridge rang with startled cheers as the enemy ship twisted and tried in vain to get her shields up and then just exploded as the missile's submunitions rammed home. Nuclear charges went off, battering her shields down easily. The remaining munitions finished the job.

  “Target destroyed!” CIC crowed.

  Zeb sat on his saddle heavily with surprise. They had a bloodless victory on his part all right; they'd achieved what they'd set out for. He realized that they'd gotten total surprise; the enemy hadn't stood a chance.

  And that was the way it should be, the small tactician part of his mind reminded him. You don't fight fair in combat. Never give the enemy a chance to fight back and kill you or your crew.

  “Away the SAR. CIC, I want a head count on emergency beacons soonest,” the captain ordered. He wondered if he'd ever get confirmation that Seydlitz had been under different management. It didn't really matter anymore he supposed.

  It did bother him a little that he might have been able to force them to surrender. But it was too late for that sort of second guessing.

  “Aye aye, sir. Away the SAR gig,” the bosun echoed the order.

  “Like stamping out a spider,” the XO said with satisfaction. “Sir, what of any pirates remaining on the planet?”

  “Leave them,” the captain replied. “We don't have the time or resources to hunt them down. They can stay there, marooned. Let the natives deal with them.”

  “Aye aye, sir. They might like to get some payback.”

  “True. When SAR is complete, we'll get back on mission. We'll leave the usual messenger buoy for Remarkable's people to find. We don't have a lot of lead time on them, and this little diversion put us even further behind. So let's get moving.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you think you'll get any flack over this engagement?” the XO asked quietly.

  “I very much doubt it,” the captain replied, signaling first-degree emphasis. “We got it done, the ship didn't escape, and no one saw us do it, time to move on.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Chapter 45

  Tau-1252 New Tau Metropolis

  Boni noted the arrival of a new ship, the first ship salvaged from Tortuga. It was making the local news though she doubted it would make the Federal news. What was of more interest to the navy was the logs the ship had transmitted, which included news that a pirate destroyer had been caught and captured and would soon be following the ship.

  That was indeed welcome news. As was the news from Lebynthos that the courier Runner had passed through the star system and was on track to arrive at the capital soon.

  If it only balanced out the basing fiasco, things would be looking up. That was still bubbling over, though the Horathian front had distracted the government from the problem for the time being.

  There was one bit of other good news; the paperwork had come in that morning from the ansible to make a change in station designation official. Tau Sector Command had been re-designated as Fourth Fleet. They didn't have a ship larger than a heavy cruiser, but they were officially designated as a fleet.

  Well, as the admiral had said, it is a goal for them to achieve now.

  She was checking her files for any more problems when a security bot flagged a Xeno virus fragment attached to the file from the bulk freighter. Her emotional module began to activate, but she bypassed it. After all, there was no sense getting annoyed or angry about a fragment.

  Even if Lieutenant Prometheus should have debugged the ship's mainframe.

  Her emotional module kicked on again though when a report of a tablet attempting to upload a virus came to her attention. Cyber security was on top of the problem. It was the second virus attack in a week. Each of the pieces had been from a Xeno virus.

  Xeno viruses could lurk anywhere in code and had the ability to self-assemble when enough of the pieces interacted with one another. The hack raised the profile enough for her to bring it to the admiral's attention.

  Shelby stopped what she was doing when Boni blinked her avatar. “Yes?”

  Boni liked her principle. The woman was polite and worked with her. She'd heard some nasty stories from Enki about trouble with the Bekian flag officers. “We've had a third Xeno viral fragment found. That's two today,” she stated.

  “A third? I didn't know we've been finding them,” Shelby stated.

  “Most of the fragments are old, and the firewalls can screen them out. These are the more advanced version. We're always finding pieces of Xeno viruses in tech. Usually in civilian tech.”

  “Understood. I just didn't know this was going on.”

  When she checked her internal files and found that the admiral hadn't been briefed on the subject before, Boni realized that the admiral was concerned or annoyed. “My apologies, Admiral, I thought you knew.”

  “No, I didn't. Continue.”

  “The cyberists studying the Xeno A.I. believe that the viruses can live in a very distributed network with little A.I. support or hardware. They may not even rise to the level of a full consciousness. Some of the viral fragments might have even been preempted by bots to use without realizing their original source code.”

  “Understood. How concerned should I be?”

  “Well, I honestly cannot say. They could be in a civilian network … except we haven't run into any that can support a distributed A.I. to a high level. And we've cleared the network here. The good news is as we add networks on other worlds we're essentially building most of the infrastructure from scratch. Which means we'll have our own firewalls in place from the beginning.”

  “I sense a but coming,” Shelby said, knitting her fingers together.

  “But, when someone plugs in hardware or software, we'll continue to encounter fragments or sections of source code. And if some idiot organic overrides a firewall to watch a video or play a game that has been infected, it could get into a network.”

  “Ah. A civilian network I'm assuming?”

  “A network is a network. Build it big enough and any A.I. can occupy it. They just won't function well unless the distribution is tightened.”

  “Clustering?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, what can we do?”

  “We n
eed to educate the public here of the dangers. The public in Rho is aware, but they lose interest and 'forget' over time. We also need more A.I. and firewalls to monitor for hostile activity.”

  Shelby nodded. “All right, make a note of that and that we may need a dedicated cyber team here in the future. Bring it up at the next command conference if we have the time.”

  “Understood, ma'am,” Boni stated, making a note to do so.

  “Anything else?”

  “The Tauren bulk cruiser's ETA to port is seventy-one hours. She brought dispatches, including news about a recent brief combat in the star system. Puglia has captured a destroyer.”

  Shelby nodded. “Understood. My commendations to Puglia. I take it the full report is in coming in?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that's just the hot wash. They are on track to salvage ships, no other problems.”

  “Good. I'm looking forward to Cynthia's report.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Boni said as the admiral went back to her reading.

  <()>^<()>

  Governor Adrienne noted the news of the salvaged ship but grimaced when her lieutenant governor and several corporate backers started to put calls in. Even her new treasurer put a call in, further complicating matters.

  She didn't need or want the distraction. She was still annoyed with the crap going on with the basing issue. Mister Muggs did have a point though; they didn't have a planet or large habitat to put the Marines and other ground military units on. She was still grudgingly coming around to his point of view that spreading the military around was good for the sector, even if it didn't directly benefit her star system.

  “You know, it's not polite to ignore my calls,” her lieutenant governor growled, coming into her office.

  “Well, hello and a fine day to you too,” she said flippantly. “I'm avoiding them because I'm busy. I can't control the navy or what it does with its property.”