12
“Jesus, what a clown!” Dolph yelled. “Where’s his wingman, anyway?”
“Making a traffic stop?” I said, running calculations. No, we weren’t going to be able to slip past the Travellers to the ground.
“This is what they call defending the Heartworlds? Seriously, Mike. Look at that punk. I’ve seen GPS sats fly faster. These are the guys who dropped us on Tech D in the middle of triple-A fire? These are the guys who taught us to fly spaceships on a moon with more craters than surface?”
“Guess the Fleet ain’t what it used to be, after all,” I said, watching the Travellers.
“They’re catching up,” Irene said. “Better do something.”
I had a metallic taste in my mouth, like blood. I hit the ship-to-ship frequency. “Zane?”
I didn’t recognize the voice that responded. I was never going to recognize it. Its owner was using a voiceprint scrambler which transformed his / her voice into an eerie robotic quaver—a Traveller trademark. “Stand by to be boarded,” it said.
“Identify yourself,” I shouted.
“Stand by to be boarded,” the Traveller repeated, “or we blow your asses away in three … two …”
“Incoming,” Irene said. “Firing point defenses.”
A swarm of missiles streaked towards us. Our maser turrets swivelled and stabbed destructive beams at them. Where the masers made contact, they set off the explosive warheads, causing the missiles to expend themselves before they could do any harm. We left behind a fading ring of fireworks. But a few missiles got through. They always do. That’s what AI guidance is for. The impacts shuddered through the hull.
“Aft port aux radiator’s damaged,” Dolph said. “Efficacy down to seventy percent.”
I cursed. But we could still land on 70%. Ponce de Leon was getting bigger, closer. We were down to 1000 klicks, well into restricted-maneuvering space. Now Dolph had to focus on not hitting any PdL assets. Even orbital space is plenty big, and the computer had plotted a path that should keep us out of harm’s way, but the missile impacts had punched us off-trajectory by millimeters that could rapidly yawn into kilometer-scale errors. Rigid with concentration, Dolph tapped the auxiliaries to keep us on course.
The Garibaldi was nowhere in sight. But the Travellers kept right on coming. As we and they curved around Ponce de Leon, they shot past us and slipped into orbit ahead and below us. It now looked as if we were chasing the Traveller ship, not the other way round. But it was facing us, and it continued to burn, closing the gap further while gaining altitude.
“Incoming,” Irene said again. The radar broke out in missile-measles. Irene deployed our point defenses judiciously. More impacts rocked the ship. “Maser power reserves down to forty percent. For crap’s sake, Mike!”
Desperate, I looked down at Ponce de Leon. We were scudding over the cloud-dotted expanse of the Orozco Ocean, just 140 klicks up, so low that I could have counted the islands in the Millions. The continent of Tunja would come over the horizon in about two minutes. We were so close to home.
Irene fired again. This time she scored a hit on the other ship’s nose shield. Dolph and I cheered, but Irene’s voice was harsh. “That’s it, no more missiles.”
The radio crackled. “This is your last chance,” the Traveller on the comms said in his or her spooky scrambled voice. The ship’s tail began to curve over its body, radar flagging the change in attitude. I saw their plan. They were going to HERF us in low orbit, killing our electronics. That would paralyze us, as they thought. Then they would be able to board us at their leisure.
My head rang, empty. I punched our chaff launchers. Clouds of silver billowed from the St. Clare’s chaff ports. As I retracted our main antennas, I said tersely to Irene, “Railgun. Blow them out of the fucking sky.”
“Roger that,” she said.
The next milliseconds seemed to drag. Irene bent over the targeting console, her blonde ponytail spreading out like the petals of a daisy above her head.
And then a new voice broke into our comms. “Hold it right there! Hold your fire!”
A ship with a blade-thin, arrowhead profile screamed up past us, braking so hard that its exhaust plume caught the Traveller ship’s HERF mast. Lurid sparks arced out of the mast and sizzled on the Traveller ship’s own hull. Confused shouts and screams crackled over the ship-to-ship frequency.
“The Fleet!” Dolph yelled jubilantly. “Better late than never.”
As he spoke, the Travellers’ HERF hit us.
The comms cut out.
The lights on the bridge died.
So did the fans.
We floated in a sudden, sickening silence.
On our composite feed, the Fleet patrol ship parked itself right on top of the Traveller ship, at an angle to it, as if the arrowhead had precariously lodged in the cruiser’s hide.
Then the displays went dark.
My AR headset was now a blindfold. I ripped it off and found myself staring at the others in the sickly glow of the emergency lighting.
“That was way too close,” Irene said.
Dolph shrugged. “We’re still breathing,” he pointed out.
I ran my fingers through my hair. It was wet with sweat. “Everyone pray to St. Martin,” I said.
Two seconds later, the lights came back on. “Well, that was interesting,” Martin said. “Any more surprises I should be ready for?”
We all burst out laughing in relief. My tough-as-nails St. Clare had weathered the Travellers’ HERF pulse with flying colors. As a former warship, she not only had chaff launchers but retractable antennas and redundant backup circuitry. Where an ordinary civilian ship would have been paralyzed, we’d just suffered a power cut. The AM containment ring had never been in danger, of course—it was air-gapped, not connected to anything else.
“Get me power to the comms and sensors,” I entreated.
“Coming imminently,” Martin said. “I just have to finish resetting the circuit breakers.”
Seconds later, I had my displays back. The Traveller ship and the Fleet ship, still docked, were shrinking away from us towards the planetscape below. The comms carried incoherent bursts of static and shouting. The Travellers had left their channel open when they were rudely interrupted by the patrol ship. “Uh oh,” I said. “They’re boarding them. Shit, shit, shit.”
No one else had anything to say. We watched for long minutes in silence. The two ships were falling out of orbit. You can fall for a long time from these altitudes.
“Whoa,” Irene said abruptly. “Look at that!”
The two ships had separated. The Traveller ship was going down with its drive burning. Or else it was burning. A plasma plume is awfully hard to tell at a distance from a fireball … the kind of long-lived fireball you get in-atmosphere, where there’s oxygen to feed the flames ripping through decks and bulkheads and electrical circuits. The spark showed up brightly against the clouds over northern Tunja.
The Fleet ship soared away from it, burning back up out of the atmosphere.
“What happened?” I breathed.
“At a guess,” Dolph said, “they scuttled their own ship. I hear they do that.”
“Oh my goodness,” Irene said. “I hope all the Marines got clear.”
The jetstream drew a veil of cloud over the burning ship, and we saw no more, save a few glimpses of the lurid Tunjanese jungle.
The comms squawked. “Yo, St. Clare. Garibaldi here. Did you take any damage?”
I cleared my throat. “Nothing critical,” I said. “What happened there?”
“Their ship was on fire when we boarded it. Your missiles musta hit something crucial. We had to withdraw our men and cut ‘em loose.” The Garibaldi’s captain spoke accusingly, obviously getting ready to write a report that made it out to be all my fault.
Dolph snatched the comms mic from me. “Listen up, hotshot,” he said, contemptuously. “I was on Tech Duinn. 15th Recon. If our close air support ever screwed up a call lik
e that, theater command would’ve fed their asses to the Necros.”
“Tech what?”
I grabbed the mic back. “Never mind,” I said. “Before your time.”
“I am required to report this incident to the planetary police,” the Garibaldi’s captain said stiffly. “You’ll be hearing from them shortly. Do not attempt a landing until that time, or I’ll dust your ass.” Click.
Tunja passed beneath us and away. We circled the planet again. As we orbited back around to the dayside of Ponce de Leon, the radio blared, “Come in! Independent freighter St. Clare, respond immediately!”
“Right here,” I said, thumbing on the video connection. Forcing a friendly smile took everything I had left, and then some. Looked like we were screwed, after all.
13
They let us land. Small mercies. We didn’t even miss our landing slot. Following instructions from the police, I put the ship down squarely on the crosshairs of Freight Terminal 1028 at Mag-Ingat Spaceport.
Freight Terminal 1028 was mine. That is, I rented it. It was a square of reinforced concrete, 200 meters a side, with a hangar at one end. Landing on that thing was like throwing a dart into the right space on a chessboard with a thousand squares per side, from orbit. I had done this hundreds of times, which didn’t make it any more fun with the knowledge that I had zero margin for a splashdown abort, and an unknown amount of electrical damage from the Travellers’ HERF. Everyone on board clapped when the St. Clare came to rest on the ground.
I sat for a moment, stroking the familiar metal surfaces of the consoles, and the toggles and switches my hands knew so well. I felt completely wrung out. All I wanted to do was crawl inside of a bottle of bourbon. But that was not to be. I now had to give the performance of my life … or we’d all be ending the day in jail.
As instructed by the police, we exited the ship. The sweltering heat of a PdL summer slapped us in the face. Ponce de Leon has two seasons: hot and hotter. We were now well into July, the hottest month of all. Sweat immediately prickled my skin under the Uni-Ex polo I’d pulled on in an attempt to present a professional image.
Leaving everyone else sitting and standing in the shade of the St. Clare, I walked towards the trio of police officers lounging in the entrance of my hangar.
The sea breeze carried rich odors of jet fuel and dead fish, and the sun beat down like a steel drummer’s palms. I self-consciously kept my hands open and visible at my sides, feeling sick with guilt.
The officers were standing in the edge of the shade of the hangar, which forced me to stop in the sunlight in front of them. I saw myself in the mirror shades of the nearest police officer. My hair hung in lank, sweat-caked spikes over my forehead. Pits of shadow hid my eyes. My cheekbones stuck out like doorknobs. My shirt obviously came from one of those print-your-own places. I looked like a hungry, shady no-hoper.
I forced out my threadbare professional grin. “Jose-Maria! Long time no see.”
“You crazy mofo,” the police officer returned, and pulled me into a hug. He may have regretted it when he got a whiff of me, as he let go rather quickly. But his grin, framed in the fat of his stubbly cheeks, looked genuine. “You still hunting for trouble, Tiger?”
The police officer was Jose-Maria d’Alencon, formerly known to the men and women of 15th Recon as “Bones.” Back in the day, Bones had been the sergeant in charge of intel at Red Hill, our forward operating base on Tech Duinn. Now he was a captain at the Cape Agreste precinct of the Ponce de Leon police department.
When I had badgered the police officer on the radio to give me the name of his captain, and that name turned out to be Jose-Maria d’Alencon, I had started to hope this would work out OK. Now my hopes rose tenuously higher.
“I ain’t hunting for trouble, Bones,” I said. “Seems like trouble has a hard-on for me. I never saw those guys before they started shooting at me in orbit on … shit, I can get you the name of the planet.”
“I don’t need to know the name of the planet,” d’Alencon said. “One of those alien mudballs y’all indies fly to. Natives don’t even try and act civilized. Insurance companies won’t touch it, even the EkBank holds its nose—right? Some washed-up buncha vets and rejects providing security, if you can even call it that? I know the kind of place.”
He clearly did. After all, we’d fought together in that kind of place, back in the day. I spread my hands. “I didn’t even catch sight of whatever security they got. There were Travellers selling stolen ships on the ground. I had words with them.” I was treading carefully here. “We got into a quarrel, and they ended up shooting one of my crew members.”
“Sorry to hear that,” d’Alencon said. “I assume you’re going to report it to the appropriate authorities.”
“Already done.” I had reported Kimmie’s death from orbit while we were waiting to learn our fate.
“And then they chased you back here, Tiger? That’s unusual. They don’t normally come within twenty light years of the Heartworlds. Did you do something to provoke them?”
I started sweating again. I remembered the Traveller’s spooky scrambled voice. Stand by for boarding … They hadn’t just wanted to destroy me. There had to be something on my ship they wanted. What?
“Nothing that I can recall,” I said, doing my level best to project sincerity. “Shit, Bones, they’re Travellers. They don’t have to be provoked. They’re nuts, anyway.”
“That’s what everyone says,” d’Alencon said in a neutral tone.
“I attempted to evade them,” I said. “The rest you saw.”
One of the other officers said, “Sure did. Was rooting for you.”
“Next time you do something like that, give the Fleet more time to respond,” d’Alencon said, with a rueful half-smile that said he was aware of the Fleet’s shortcomings. I was, too, but our adventures today had really brought it home to me. The simple, brutal fact of the matter is that spaceflight makes planetary protection next door to impossible. Not all civilian ships are armed, but every one carries the equivalent of a city-flattening bomb: its antimatter drive. With that kind of power in the hands of everyman, the Fleet has no real firepower advantage, and their hands are tied by responsibility for millions of innocent hostages on the ground. So their usual m.o. is to sit in orbit, watch the traffic, and report incidents to the police. Who then file charges leading to life-destroying lawsuits against the unfortunate few.
That’s real power. If d’Alencon chose to file charges against me, even if I didn’t go to jail, my business would trickle away like a handful of sand into the pockets of the lawyers.
But I knew that, if he hadn’t changed, he was a good man who gave his all to punishing the guilty, not the innocent.
And he knew that I had only done what I had to do. He didn’t know what had happened on Gvm Uye Sachttra. With any luck, he never would.
“Didja see where the dickwads came down?” I said, mentally crossing my fingers.
D’Alencon shrugged. “Somewhere up north. We dispatched a search and rescue crew, but you know as well as I do they ain’t gonna find anything.”
I spat sideways and watched my spittle sizzle on the concrete, disguising my desire to shout hallelujah. D’Alencon was right, of course. Even supposing the Traveller ship had not burned up, there was nowhere for it to land in northern Tunja. The thickest, cruelest jungle any human being ever saw covered the continent. There was nowhere for a chopper to put down, let alone a spaceship. The only chance would be if the Travellers had bailed out before their ship crashed. Even then, their parachutes would get hung up on the trees, and they’d be hundreds of klicks from civilization, surrounded by the natural wonders of Ponce de Leon. And when did you last hear of a Traveller having an emergency radio beacon, much less activating it?
No. If Zane had been on that ship, he was dead. And dead men don’t sing. I was in the clear.
“Bones!” Dolph arrived at my side. He had known d’Alencon in the old days, too. They hugged and back-slapped.
<
br /> “Psycho!” d’Alencon said. That had been Dolph’s nickname in the forces. No comment.
Dolph stuck out one thin, sweaty palm. “Where’s our reward? That’s one bunch of Travellers that won’t be preying on the innocent again. All thanks to Uni-Ex Shipping. We should be collecting a paycheck from the government, not y’all.”
D’Alencon laughed. “Might be able to get ya medals.”
“Only if they got a 100 on one side and a KGC on the other,” Dolph said.
The other police officers laughed sourly. Their annual pay probably amounted to less than 100 KGCs.
“Don’t worry about it, guys,” I smiled. “All in a day’s work.” I wanted to get Dolph away from the officers before he managed to insult them again.
“But for real, Mike,” D’Alencon said, and my heart sank. “I keep thinking about the fact that they followed you back here. They may be nuts; they ain’t suicidal. What the actual fuck?”
“It’s like they’re recklessly stupid criminals or something,” Dolph said. He was trying to minimize the whole thing. I understood the impulse, but I could also see that d’Alencon wasn’t buying it.
Our old friend took his sunglasses off. He twirled them by one earpiece. His eyes were baggy and tired. He looked shockingly old. I wondered if I looked that old to him. “You underestimate the enemy, you’re hurting yourself,” he said, echoing a slogan from our army days. “Are you aware of the Travellers’ history?”
“Sure,” Dolph said. “Monkeys see spaceships. Monkeys take spaceships. Dirtsiders cry boo-hoo. The Fleet sits on its collective ass.”
I winced. D’Alencon did not react to Dolph’s flippancy. “The Travellers are the biggest criminal organization in the Cluster,” he said portentously. “In fact, they’re the most serious threat facing humanity today.”
Dolph shifted his weight. I knew he was about to scoff at the notion that the Travellers could be that big of a threat. After all, they bled and died like everyone else. I accidentally-on-purpose stepped on his foot.
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