by Eric Thomson
“True, but it still sounds amazingly stupid to a naval officer’s ears.”
“That’s why it took a Marine to figure it out. Anyway, as a wise man once said, if it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid. You might wish to record that somewhere for future reference.”
She gave him a playful tap.
“Smart ass. Give me an hour or so to prepare the systems, then you can play dumb Marine with the station’s controllers. Just make sure you win.”
**
“Kilia control, this is Chimera.”
Zack’s voice held a hint of panic, but he had a twinkle in his eyes when he winked at Talyn.
A bored voice came on.
“Yes, Chimera, what can we do for you today?”
“Well, we – um – have us a bit of a situation here, control.”
“Oh?” The voice didn’t lose an iota of its disinterest.
“Um, our magnetic bottles – how shall I put this? They seem to have developed a bit of instability. Nothing much, mind you, but we’re thinking...”
“What do you mean, instability?” The boredom suddenly vanished. “Don’t you have fail-safes?”
“Well, er, the fail-safes have...well, um, they failed, and we haven’t had a chance to replace them.”
“I’m scanning you now Chimera, stand by.”
Decker nodded at Talyn. She touched the helm station’s screen.
“Holy crap, Chimera!” The controller’s voice had gone up by two octaves. “You just burped some anti-matter.”
“Yeah, yeah, we felt that,” Zack replied, full-blown terror in his tone. “Can we like evacuate to the station and you guys kick the ship off.”
“Ah, wait.”
The radio went silent for almost twenty seconds during which Talyn vented a further spurt of anti-matter, creating a tiny, very bright sun aft of Chimera. Then, a new voice came on.
“Chimera, I’m cutting you loose and pushing you away with my tractor beams. Get yourself out of range pronto. Your presence is no longer welcome here. Any ship dumb enough to sail without working fail-safes on their magnetic bottles is barred from Kilia.”
The words were accompanied by a loud mechanical sound as the controller unlatched both grappling arms holding the ship to the docking tower. Then, they were pushed out far enough to engage the sublight drives.
“Now get out of here, Chimera.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Decker replied before cutting the transmission. “We’re free and clear, Hera.”
“And we’re on our way,” she replied, stroking the drive controls. The small ship accelerated with all she had, leaving the asteroid field far behind.
**
“Did you run the EMP yet?” Talyn asked once she’d turned the helm over to the AI.
“No, but those things have a pretty short range, so they’re nothing more than electronic dust right now, for all they’re worth.” He touched his console. “Done.”
“You know this kind of stunt could get us thrown in jail for reckless endangerment of a spaceport,” she remarked, stretching her slender frame to release the tension. “But I’ll grant you: it worked, so by definition it wasn’t stupid.”
“Told you. Now what?”
“We find a quiet spot away from any watchers, switch out the transponder, change names, and try our luck further along the rim.”
“Dump the Chimera identity so quickly?”
“The Jackals will make sure their Sécurité Spéciale sponsors take an interest in our ship.”
“Seems like a waste.”
She shrugged.
“At least we found out that someone is still looking for Syrah, and that means they don’t know what happened to Amali, which is all to the good.”
“Confusion to the enemy.” Decker mimicked raising a glass.
“My favorite toast.”
“I don’t like that the Sécurité Spéciale is using gangsters as enforcers.”
“With us breathing down their necks at every turn, it was inevitable. I wouldn’t be surprised to find full-fledged agents among the tattooed goons.”
“It’s a shitty universe when the military and civilian arms of government are waging a secret war against each other.”
“Imagine how much fun it would be if Admiral Kowalski hadn’t rammed through her reforms and insulated the Fleet from Earth’s dirty politics.”
“And yet, here we are, still playing intramural games at the retail level some forty years later.”
“It’s still more fun than the alternative,” she replied. “I’ve read the top secret, never to be revealed archives. The SecGen had drafted up orders placing political officers in every regiment and on every ship when Kowalski carried out her forcible reforms and wiped out the old Special Security Bureau.”
“Blessed be her name, in that case. Considering I barely survived dealing with the regular sort of useless officers, imagine me and a political in the same unit.” He nodded aft towards the passageway. “Buy you a coffee?”
Zack’s console suddenly chimed with an agitated rhythm that augured nothing but grief. He turned back and stared at the readout.
“We’ve been hit by a targeting sensor.”
“Shit.” Talyn dropped back into her chair.
“I’ll assume that’s spook speak for battle stations,” Decker said, turning on the ship’s defensive suite. “Shields are up, weapon systems are powering.”
“Where and what?”
“Give me a moment.” Then, “it’s coming from ahead, range unknown, but the signature is Shrehari. They have a fix on us.”
“The ones who made fun of your blaster?”
“Probably.” He scrolled back through the sensor log. “They left the station six hours ago. I told you their traders were part-time marauders.”
“Maybe they’re just screwing with us.”
“I doubt it,” he replied after a lengthy pause, “and I found them. They’re sitting athwart our course in a perfect position to run us down, and their emcon is not bad. If this tub still carried civilian electronics, we’d have been a sitting duck, which is what they’re expecting us to be.”
“How so?”
“The buggers are good fighters, but they’re not very imaginative. For example, the ones out there can’t imagine that we might actually be a Q-ship. They figure we’re easy pickings.”
“We’ll blow our cover if we go all out, Zack,” she warned.
“Not if we make sure to leave nothing but debris behind.” He sounded unconcerned. “What worries me more is why they thought they’d be good for a little piracy almost within sight of Kilia Station.”
“What does Kilia care about ships like ours? They’re too busy playing best pals with the Confederacy. That, or I’m back to the idea the Shrehari are having some fun.”
“If it doesn’t involve killing, drinking or singing dirty songs, it doesn’t qualify as fun for a Shrehari. Trust me on this. I’ve taken down enough of them in my time. These guys are looking for a little action.”
“We’re almost at the hyperlimit anyhow.” She glanced at her readout.
“They’ll pursue.” His console chimed urgently. “I guess we’ll have to fight before we can run. Ready to take maneuvering orders?”
She settled back in her seat. “Ready.”
“I think we should strap in. They knock out the artificial gravity, and we’re floating.”
“Done,” she replied a moment later.
“Unless they can defeat our emcon, they have no idea yet that we’ve spotted them and are ready to rumble, so stay on course until they unmask. Let ‘em believe we’re fat, happy, and stupid until it’s too late. I’d like to try out my new toys and pay the buggers back for all the years I spent hunting guys like them in the back of beyond.”
“Try not to enjoy yourself too much,” she replied in a dry tone.
“No promises.”
Decker went through the checklist again, more to kill time than because of any fear th
at one of the systems might not perform properly.
When the Shrehari finally lit up to intercept Chimera, it almost came as a surprise.
“Game on, baby.” A manic grin spread across Decker’s face. “Change course thirty-five degrees to starboard and zee minus fifteen degrees.”
“Thirty-five degrees starboard, zee minus fifteen, aye,” Talyn replied, entering the corrections. Thrusters fired almost immediately, sending the ship on an arc away from the oncoming Shrehari ship.
“A stern chase, Zack?”
“Yup. We have the legs on them, for sure. They’re bigger than we are and chock-a-block full of second rate Shrehari technology. They do maintenance when something breaks and not before. Also,” he chuckled, an evil sound that matched the light in his deep blue eyes, “we have as much ordnance facing aft as forward. I guess the engineers who reworked this tub are fans of running away to fight another day.”
“Why not just escape?” She asked, amused by his enthusiasm.
“And let them try a do-over on a ship that doesn’t have our hidden charms? Not likely, commander.”
“Just don’t shoot first, Zack. I mean it. There could still be a chance the bastards are screwing with us.”
“I know the rules of engagement. Just you wait. They’ll start with a few warning shots; then if we don’t decelerate and let them board us, they’ll try some trick shooting on our hyperdrive nacelles. After that, they’ll do the same to our sublight drive.”
“Is that what happened to Demetria?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged irritably, annoyed that he could still feel the sting of Avril’s death after so long.
“Would your enthusiasm at taking on these Shrehari instead of running be a form of payback?” Her tone was even, and her eyes remained glued to the tactical display.
“Why not? Turning marauders into a cloud of atoms is payback for everything done by every scumbag cruising the star lanes.” The sarcasm was heavier than usual, and she turned to glance at him.
“Just make sure you have the right motives for this, Zack. An agent can’t afford to indulge in personal vengeance during a mission unless it’s been sanctioned.”
“Like I said, we’re going to do local shipping a solid by taking these guys out. I seem to recall that we’re both part of the Fleet, and this ship is an armed Navy sloop, be it ever so small and well camouflaged.”
“Q-ship tactics now?” She snorted. “You read up on those?”
“No, though it can’t be too hard. I’ll make up the rules as I go along.”
“For someone who has a saying for every occasion and can reach back into history on command, I’m surprised that you’re not quoting Admiral Dunmoore at me. She wrote the book on modern Q-ship tactics during the last war. Maybe you’d like to tell her about your innovations in person the next time we’re on Caledonia. She still lectures at the Naval War College from time to time.”
“Really? She’s got to be what? A hundred and ten?”
“A spry hundred and ten, by all accounts.”
Zack’s console beeped at him.
“Ah. They’re powering up weapons. They might have had good emcon when they were lying doggo, but now that they’ve lit up, my sensors can make out every last fuel cell.”
“Remember, let them fire first.”
“And they’ve fired.” Decker sounded strangely satisfied.
Two streaks of plasma grazed the port shield, briefly lighting it up like an aurora borealis.
“Those were warning shots.” He touched his controls, chortling under his breath. “And we’re unmasking.”
The rumbling sound of hull panels moving aside made a counter-point to the sharper noise of the aft launcher pumping out a brace of anti-ship missiles.
The main turrets, one on each beam, rose from hidden recesses and swiveled to point their twin barrels aft, joined simultaneously by small multi-barrel guns emerging from the top and keel of the ship, just forward of the sublight drive nozzles.
“I wish I could see the look on the Shrehari captain’s face right now. Thought we were harmless, did he? How about a taste of our plasma to wash down those birds?”
He felt rather than heard autoloaders feed pure copper discs to the guns, ready to be turned into plasma by a power spike from loaded capacitors.
“Give us zee plus twenty, Hera.” He shouted excitedly, watching the Shrehari open fire on the oncoming missiles. One vanished in a bright flash but the second exploded against the marauder’s shields, giving birth to a bluish-green flare as the energy of the warhead fought that of the force field surrounding the ship.
“Yee haw! A hit on the first try.”
He stroked his controls again, and a stream of plasma erupted from Chimera, aimed straight at the enemy’s weakened shields. The one-two punch proved enough to collapse them entirely, and the next salvo landed on the ship itself, eating through the tough metal armor. Decker kept firing until he saw streams of rapidly freezing gasses escape from the blackened holes he’d ripped into the hull.
“Kick it, Hera. We need to get out of here.”
She lit the sublight drives without argument, then glanced over her shoulder at Zack.
“Why?”
“That thing’s done for. The buggers are going to self-destruct and hope they take us with them.”
“Experience talking?”
“Yup. Shrehari don’t let themselves be taken prisoner. It violates their honor code.” He slumped back in his seat and wiped a few beads of sweat from his brow. “Space battles are short but intense, aren’t they?”
“They get more intense when the enemy actually has a chance to fire back.”
“I’ll pass on that. Surprise is my favorite principle of war and this little beauty is tailor-made for it.” He patted his console like a proud papa.
A bright spark suddenly lit up the view screen.
“Hang on. We might still be a little close.”
An energy wave washed over Chimera moments later, buffeting the small ship, then their little corner of the galaxy was quiet again, save for an expanding cloud of debris, destined to float through space until the heat death of the universe.
“One less to worry about.” Decker rubbed his hands with glee. “That was fun.”
“Remember to turn us back into a harmless trader again before you go sleep off your gunnery orgasm. We can jump any time now.”
He touched his screen, triggering the faint noise of the turrets slipping into their recesses followed by the slightly louder sound of the hull plates settling back into place, hiding all evidence that Chimera was, in fact, a well-camouflaged, pocket-sized man-of-war.
“Done. Now I have to see to my missiles and make sure they’re ready the moment we need them.”
Talyn cocked a quizzical eyebrow at him.
“We have to manually load the launchers,” he explained, undoing his seat restraints. “An autoloader would be too big for this tub. We get a single shot from each before one of us has to go down into the hold and reload. I’m kind of surprised they actually managed to fit those full-sized tubes into that tiny space, but as I like saying if it works...”
“I guess caressing those birds is as close to a wet dream come true as a Marine master gunner will ever have, eh?” She chuckled at his beatific smile.
“You said it, sister.”
SEVEN
“Fighting usually gives me an appetite, but this is ridiculous for the amount I actually did. No wonder you swabbies get fat in shipboard billets,” Decker commented around a mouthful of vat-grown beef. “What now?”
“I have us programmed to emerge in interstellar space. When we get there, and the coast is clear, I’ll reprogram the identification beacon. While I do that, you get to go outside and shift some of the hull panels to change our silhouette.”
“And change the markings,” he added before shoving another forkful into his mouth. “Great times will be had by all.”
“Then I’ve got to think of our next steps. I
was hoping someone on Kilia might help us trace the Garonne rebels’ suppliers, so we could work our way to whoever’s behind the funding, but that’s no longer an option.”
“We might find it just as challenging wherever we go. Considering they had goons breathing down the chandler’s neck, I’m not sure we’ll get lucky anywhere else along the Rim.”
“That leaves me wondering whether there’s still a leak at HQ or whether some people are just extra paranoid, and I don’t necessarily mean about the things we’re after. The Jackals might be in the Sécurité Spéciale’s pockets, but that doesn’t mean they’re not running their own operations. I can’t see government work, even if it’s for the SecGen’s pet spies, paying enough.”
“What kind of a universe is this anyways,” he replied, picking a strand of meat from his teeth, “when honest gangsters get in bed with the secret police? At least the Shrehari have enough honor to blow themselves up. I’ll take boneheads over mobsters any day.”
“You mean take on, don’t you?”
“That too.” He burped contentedly. “How long is this leg?”
“About ten hours.”
“That means I have time for a nice cold one.”
“I’ll join you. It might help me figure out our next move.”
“Good plan. It always helps with my moves.” He leered at her, then he reached into the cold box and grabbed two bottles.
“I’ll bet, you incorrigible lecher.”
“Ever heard the one about the hooker and the Marine?”
“Yes, and I don’t want to hear it again. Thanks,” she said accepting a bottle. “Hanging around with you is giving me some atrocious habits. I used to hate this stuff.”
“Honey, hang around with me long enough, and I’ll make you love just about anything.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She raised her bottle. “Congratulations, Zack. That was a half-decent Q-ship surprise you pulled on the Shrehari, for a Marine, I mean.”
“I’ll let Admiral Dunmoore know next time we’re on Caledonia. Mud in your eye, swabbie.” He took a healthy swig and sighed. “The water of life, this stuff.”
**