Pirate Stars

by Andrew van Aardvark

  The Pirate Chief looked up at the ceiling hands spread as if beseeching divine inspiration. "Okay, right now I think the nominal balance of forces favors us. Favors us even once all of Task Force 39 reaches the system. They'll need to call in reinforcements from the Core to change that. They'll be reluctant to do that. Don't think they've done so yet. Believe I would have heard."

  "That sounds very positive for how gloomy you just were," the Doctor said.

  The Pirate Chief smiled at his friend. The Doctor assuredly knew the answer to his implied question as well as the Pirate Chief did. He also knew the Pirate Chief liked the sound of his own voice.

  "Problem is, though we can win, for some value of 'win', a toe to toe battle with the SDF Task Force pirates don't like battles," the Pirate Chief said. "Too much chance of getting hurt. Too little chance for valuable loot."

  "Retreat?"

  "Not all together. They'd just follow us to where ever we went."

  "Scatter?"

  "Then they pick most of us off piecemeal. Cheaply most likely. They'll prioritize our leadership."

  "Unfortunate that. So what would the best tactics be?"

  "Foray as one body so that they have to concentrate then leave a rearguard behind as the balance of the force runs for jump and to break contact. Disperse as soon as contact is broken."

  "But let me guess," the Doctor said. "No pirate captain is going to volunteer to be part of the rearguard. And you can't order any of them to do either. Not and expect to be obeyed. You should have let me condition at least some of them."

  "Pirate captains need to be able to exercise initiative," the Pirate Chief said. "Besides the others would have noticed. It would have got their wind up wondering who'd be next."

  "My bedside manner could use improvement no doubt," the Doctor agreed. "I'll have to amend that in my next iteration. It gets us to our real problem though doesn't it?"

  "Does it?"

  "Oh, yes. It's not the tactical dilemma, or what the SDF commander is going to do, that you need to worry about. It's your own followers."

  The Pirate Chief sat down in his favorite armchair. Looking at the Doctor he rubbed his face contemplatively. "I do believe you've found the nub of the thing."

  "Of course," the Doctor said. "You have to keep them together. As long they're concentrated the SDF forces will need to stick together too. We don't want the SDF ships splitting up to follow us when we do a rabbit."

  "My captains aren't stupid," the Pirate Chief said. "How do you propose I should convince them to do this?"

  "Details are your problem," the Doctor replied with a big grin. He was being deliberately difficult. "I'll give you two big hints. They overvalue their ships and being captains. They might think you're ditchable having lost the Historian's Revenge. They continue to undervalue the Chang girl and the importance of your web of informants. You can use those misapprehensions."

  "Right," the Pirate Chief said staring at some distant point beyond the Doctor and slowly nodding. "I can see how this might work. Send them off in a mass while staying behind on the base as a distraction. The SDF will be stretched thin, the fighting will be confusing, and somehow in the process we disappear. I think I can make this work. Thank you, Doctor."

  "You're welcome, Chief."

  * * *

  In the Pirate Chief's crowded compartment Jeannie was more than just alone.

  Not only was her only friend dead and her crew either dead too, or enslaved, she didn't really have even herself.

  Her body beneath her neck was following a program dictated completely by the Pirate Chief. All she could do was go along. All she had any control of was the thoughts in her own head, but she wasn't certain of even those. The Doctor might be a creepy bastard but he did seem to know his stuff.

  She smiled as she twirled once again for the Pirate Chief's followers. They'd been nervous at first. Her last presentation having ended with a number of bangs and having come close to ending a few pirates as well as Sheena.

  The Pirate Chief needed to convince them that he was in control of events. Showing them he'd got the better of Jeannie in the end was one step towards that goal. Also it provided an excuse to assemble them and pitch them his plans.

  She could set those plans back if she wanted to. It would take deliberately breaking her neck to do so. She might survive that though the odds would be against it. She'd end up shelved in cold storage at best if she did. It depended on the latest communications with her father, and the current situation regards the SDF forces in system. If the Pirate Chief gave up hope of getting a ransom for her she'd end up mind wiped.

  The Pirate Chief needed her cooperation to make this show work. He'd made the consequences for its lack clear.

  She didn't mind really. It wasn't that hard to smile as required. It wasn't even that hard to follow the vigorous dance program the Pirate Chief had selected for her. At some considerable extra risk to her they'd practiced it repeatedly.

  It did take focus. She shouldn't let her mind meander. A leg of hers kicked high, and she stood on the toes of another. If she'd not anticipated that her head might have tried to go one way while her torso went the other. That would have hurt.

  She'd been very depressed. There were plenty of good reasons for such depression. The worst of it was past. The urge to suicide for its own sake had passed while she was unable to act on it.

  She followed her body as it bowed deeply to all corners of the room. She was on a well lite stage while the Pirate Chief and his followers were hidden by the gloom off stage. The Pirate Chief had recently been much more focused on those followers than her. That development was one of those providing her a glimmer of greater hope.

  In general that the pirates were now discounting her as a factor was positive. They acted almost as if they believed her mind, eyes and ears were as under as tight a control as her body. They weren't.

  Even now she could hear mutters among the pirates. "Chief likes to push the envelope he does," one was saying to another, "but it's never clever to bet against him. Man always has an ace or two up his sleeve."

  Pitched loud enough for the Pirate Chief to overhear, the sincerity of the sentiment could be debated, but still it wasn't bad news for him. Wasn't necessarily bad news for Jeannie either.

  Jeannie's body leapt into motion with a new round of music. It was classically beautiful, and it was easy enough to flow with it. Interesting that the good and beautiful could serve evil so.

  Even the ditties sung by the pirate rank and file that she'd over heard during her trips to the market had not been unpleasant. Odd but not important.

  What was important was that for his own reasons the Pirate Chief wanted to keep her alive. That he even wanted her mind to seem intact. He wanted her to appear in her right mind. He wanted her to be worth ransoming at the highest price. He wanted her trusted after being ransomed. Sane, rational, and not detectably programmed to act in his and not hers, or the Chang clan's interest.

  Except for not wanting to be undetectably programmed Jeannie wanted that all too.

  So odd as it was to do so with a man who had harmed and violated her to such a degree, it behooved her to co-operate with the Pirate Chief for the time being.

  To which end she flashed a brilliant smile at one of his captains whose eyes she had caught. The man's startled captivation gave her a genuine burst of unaccustomed pleasure. Nice to know that however constrained she might be she wasn't totally ineffective and unable to influence her world.

  The Doctor had made it clear the odds were against her survival, and higher against doing so mentally intact, but he'd made it clear she did have a chance.

  In some odd way he seemed to be on her side.

  Too bad really that she was less so. She'd come to the conclusion that she valued her own continued survival, physically and mentally, less highly than ending the Pirate Chief and his Doctor.

  Given that the Pirate Chief's dead man's switch meant nothing. She'd have to act quickly when he
wasn't looking and at a time when there were no guards. She'd have to do so despite not being able to move quickly at any time, and despite often not having full physical control of herself.

  The conditions were stringent but not entirely impossible. She'd bide her time until they were met. She'd strike then.

  She might survive the effort.

  It was most unlikely.

  Too bad.

  * * *

  The last few days had been very busy. The Pirate Chief by all rights ought to have been dead tired. He'd been able to snatch just a few odd hours of sleep in that whole time. He couldn't feel it for his excitement.

  His plan was coming to fruition. The next few hours would make or break it.

  The marketplace was a bedlam of misery. He could see it all from his perch on one of the access stairways from the higher levels. Long lines of manacled men, women, and the odd child filled the space that once been occupied by stalls full of merchandise.

  That merchandise, along with the merchants selling, it had been loaded on freighters, and haulers and dispatched out system in penny packets over the last couple of days.

  Faced with a pirate fleet in being the SDF forces in system had not dared dispatch ships to intercept the fleeing former residents of the pirate base.

  Tactically it would have been too risky. Legally it was problematic. Just by the dint of those ships being filled with people who had freely associated with pirates it was clear they must be vessels full of criminals. Smugglers, slavers, traders in illegal goods, and providers of illegal services filled those ships and the SDF knew it.

  Unfortunately for the SDF it had no specific proof available that would stand up in court and justify firing on unarmed civilian ships. Ideally it would have boarded, searched and ascertained the individual cases for each ship. There were too many of them for that even if the SDF forces could have spared the ships and marines. As it happened the SDF leadership dared not spare even limited forces, not in the face of a pirate force that more than matched it in sheer combat capability.

  The Pirate Chief was proud of himself. He couldn't imagine anyone else having kept the pirates together in the face of the SDF fleet.

  He turned from watching his men situate the last of the explosives, directional mines, and autonomous machine guns among the hostages below towards the small party behind him. "I do believe we're over the hump here," he said to the Doctor.

  The Doctor was standing beside an immobilized Chang girl along with a couple of his burliest and most reliable bodyguards. "Close," he agreed. "I know you want to see to the finishing up of the set-up here, and to final boarding of the fighting ships as much as I'd wish you'd delegate. That done you should take at least a short nap. You've been burning the candle at both ends for days now. The human body needs sleep."

  "I promise if there's time," the Pirate Chief said. "At least twenty minutes, probably at least an hour if our sensors data regards the Fed forces are correct. The SDF does get a vote here. We need to distract them once they start moving. I have to be the one who threatens the hostages. The threat must be credible."

  The Doctor nodded. "I understand," he said. "Remember though judgment is the first thing to go when we're tired."

  "Don't worry, old friend. This'll go like clockwork," the Pirate Chief said. "The SDF missed their chance. They were depending on defections from our ranks and we kept that from happening. Now they have no good choices." He turned and waved widely at the mass of humanity in the former marketplace. "Their political masters will never accept their sacrificing all these innocents here. Nor they will accept their just letting our fighting fleet go. They'll follow the fleet. The base isn't going anywhere. They'll at worst leave a covering force. They'll also want to negotiate before attacking. They may believe it's pointless but the reporters, bureaucrats, and politicians reading their after action reports won't all agree."

  "You're certain of this?" the Doctor asked. "You're certain the situation will be so confused we can escape?"

  "Yes," the Pirate Chief asserted firmly. "You might be the expert on individual humans and the dynamics by which populations evolve, but I know organizations. The SDF commander might magically have a perfect understanding of the situation and still organizational imperatives will force him to act in a predictable way. Sub-optimal from his point of view, very desirable from ours."

  As the Doctor frowned in reply to this, a man festooned with weapons, wearing scuffed black armor, and the red bandanna of a pirate sub-leader climbed up to them. "All set to go, Chief," he said handing the Pirate Chief a remote detonator.

  "Thanks, Black Bob," the Pirate Chief said. "You and your men better hurry to board your rides out of here."

  "Fer sure," Black Bob replied waving a parody of a salute at the Pirate Chief as he scrambled back down the stairs to his men. He began to shout and wave at them as he did so. They began to run and jog towards the docks where the remaining fighting ships waited for them.

  The Pirate Chief's party made its way in the same direction. They arrived to watch the last few pirates board their ships. Shortly afterwards without any ceremony the pirate ships severed their docking links and departed.

  "You seem certain of how the SDF leadership must act," the Doctor said continuing their earlier conversation. "Doesn't their commander have the authority here and now to do what he thinks right despite the later political ramifications."

  "Theoretically, very theoretically," the Pirate Chief said. "In fact, no officer who thinks its not better to live and fight another day and that his continued possession of higher office corresponds to the greater good ever rises to such rank."

  "So you're sure?"

  "So I'm sure," the Pirate Chief said. "We'd have this in the bag even if the other guy's forces weren't far too weak for his tasks. Don't worry. It's going to go like clockwork."

  13: God Disposes

  Where the army marched

  Grow thorns and thistles

  Sven Torson had believed he'd long ago learned calm under the worst of stress. Gang fights. Boot camp. Hazing on his first ship. Extended high speed flight operations while responsible for crew lives and multi-million credit spacecraft. Odd man out in officer training as a mustang. Several anti-pirate boarding actions and staff appointments advising officers many ranks higher, he'd thought he'd seen it all. He'd thought he'd learned to take it in stride.

  Yet the data was incontrovertible. He'd sucked down two tubes of bland pudding in as many hours in an effort to calm his stomach. He just couldn't help being agitated by his intense frustration.

  "We're all feeling it, Sven," Eva Agner, standing close beside him, said quietly. As a Lieutenant-Commander she was a rank above him, but they were of an age as he'd started as a rating. She was the Commodore's Chief of Staff and bore an more direct responsibility for the outcome of the current campaign than he did.

  Sven wouldn't have blamed her if she'd been showing the strain worse than he was. Just as he wouldn't have blamed her for resenting his presence either. She could have seen him as an unwelcome intrusion on her turf by an agent of their commanding admiral. She didn't, and she hadn't.

  They'd built a tight and respectful working relationship over the course of the last few months, and the last couple of weeks in particular. Enough so that they were supportive of each other not rivals.

  "It's just so frustrating," Torson said. "Several freighters and a multitude of smaller craft all doubtless jammed full of criminals, ill gotten loot, and like as not slaves and we've just had to watch them get away."

  "I know you understand the tactical situation," Lieutenant-Commander Agner replied looking at him sympathetically, before returning her gaze to the huge screens dominating the Casablanca's bridge. The bridge that the flag deck they stood on formed part of.

  "I do," Torson agreed. They dared not sacrifice the element of surprise their hiding place behind the gas giant the pirate base's moon orbited gave them. Even with that advantage their odds in any fight with the pir
ate's fighting fleet would be poor until such time as the remaining destroyers of Task Force 39 arrived in system.

  "It's not my place to comment really," Torson said quietly almost to himself. Quietly as his words were quite literally true. An SDF officer was expected to give his honest input to his superiors prior to a decision being made. Once a decision was made he was expected to support it fully. Visible public disagreement with a superior's decision once made was akin to mutiny. "But I really don't see how the Commodore could have acted differently. It's just damned frustrating to see this scum escaping."

  Agner nodded. "We all feel the same," she said.

  Torson dipped his head in acknowledgment of the implied rebuke as mild as it was. They all felt the same but most of them were also managing to keep their feelings to themselves. The Commodore's own intent surveillance of the Casablanca's information rich screens suggested he was aware of their conversation but deliberately feigning ignorance of it.

  Less than an hour later the event they'd all been waiting for occurred.

  "Multiple fighting ships leaving the pirate moon's atmosphere," the sensor officer's voice intoned. "Three, four, seven, all ten of them, sir," he said looking past the flag captain straight at the Commodore.

  "Bring the ship to readiness state yellow," Flag Captain Doria ordered his officer of the watch. He turned towards the Commodore. "Sir, the pirate fighting fleet is sortieing in full strength."

  "Thank you, Flag Captain," Commodore Zanjani replied with clear calmness. "Keep me apprised of its movements."

  "Yes, sir," Flag Captain Doria returned. He turned back to resolutely face the Casablanca's forward display screens. It was theater, but necessary traditional theater in the circumstances.

  The minutes passed as they all watched the pirate fleet sort itself out. Soon enough it'd found a rough formation, at least by pirate standards, and set out on a discernible course.

  "Pirate fighting fleet on course for jump point Delta," reported the sensor officer.