The Princess & The Privateer

by Peter Rhodan

  Lena looked up as her father strode in and made to get up, but he shook his head and she subsided. Major Marsden left the officers he was with and approached the Baron, saluting as he came up.

  “Major,” Travgar said. “I take it from your unhappy expression we still haven’t found her?”

  “No sir. But the latest evidence suggests the bad guys don’t have her either.”

  “Really. So, if they don’t have her and we don’t have her, then where is she?”

  “That would seem to be the question, sir. If I may?” he said, indicating the two plain-clothes policemen.

  The Baron followed the Major over to the two men who stood and came to attention seeing the head of Imperial Security bearing down on them.

  “Inspector Jonas and Inspector Magwish. Baron Travgar, head of Imperial Security. They are aware of who we are looking for sir.” he added apologetically.

  “Gentlemen. What can you tell me?”

  Magwish was older than Jonas and clearly the senior officer and he spoke up confidently.

  “Baron. We discovered the site of a shoot-out in one of the parking areas. My forensic people are still combing the site, but the quick summary based on what we’ve found so far is that initially two men pursued the target into the parking area. She was hit and possibly injured and slumped to the ground.”

  “You are unsure if she was wounded why?”

  “There was a lot of blood at the scene but my forensic chief does not think any of it belongs to the target sir, bear with me.”

  The Baron waved a hand indicating for the man to continue.

  “My forensic chief thinks it likely the target was rendered unconscious, probably by a shock gun. Anyway, two men were standing over her when they were decapitated by a blast gun fired by a third person, almost certainly a man from the footprints left in the dirt. This man then proceeded to pick up the target and move to a vehicle that is no longer there.”

  “And you can tell all this from?”

  “Mostly the footprints and other marks in the dirt, sir. It is quite dusty in that area, but there was a fair amount of wind today and that cleaned the ground so to speak. My chief is not one hundred percent certain but this is his best guess.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well. Two more men came and stopped briefly at the site of the fallen men then continued towards where the unknown vehicle was parked. My chief thinks this was most likely an orbital shuttle of some kind, possibly armored from the depth of the indentations it left in the ground.”

  “Really. Interesting. Go on.”

  “These two men reached where we think the rear ramp of the shuttle was when they were shot from behind by two narrow beam blaster shots.”

  “And these deceased men were the ones that attacked my daughter and the target?”

  “Yes sir. Your daughter identified the first two men’s clothes.”

  “I see.” The Baron glanced to where his daughter sat. “You showed her pictures of the decapitated men?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m sorry sir but we needed to know what was going on and who was who.”

  “Yes. Very well. I understand. Continue.”

  “Sir. Well, whoever it was in the vehicle apparently decided the target was bugged so he stripped her and threw all of her clothes and jewelry out on the ground near the bodies of the two men. Shortly after several different people arrived and the vehicle left, being driven, at least at first. Unfortunately, their shuttle tracks get lost once they reached one of the main thoroughfares. Too much traffic there. Your Major has men making a log of all vehicles leaving that area in the time window.”

  “Good. How is that going?” he said, turning to the Major standing at his shoulder.

  “Nearly done sir. I have already sent a list of the orbital shuttles up to our office on the Fleet station sir. Security and fleet assets are moving to intercept them as we speak.”

  “Good. Anything else I need to know?”

  “Yes sir. Sometime after the shoot out two vehicles landed and about twenty men disembarked. They milled around at first then appear to have begun searching the area. At some point, they hurriedly returned to their vehicles and took off.”

  “Anything on them Major?”

  “Not yet sir but Orbital Surveillance should be able to help there. There were so many air capable vehicles leaving around that time which is making it very difficult to identify any particular one as being suspect.”

  “Yes of course. You’ve spoken to Admiral Gording?”

  “Yes sir. I have appraised him of who the target is and that he is to keep it to himself until further notice.”

  “Good.” he paused. “You have done well gentlemen. The Emperor will not forget. You two however will forget. Nothing happened tonight except some gang thugs shot each other. All your files will be copied to Imperial Security and erased. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly sir,” Magwish said and the other nodded agreement.

  “Good. Thank you, gentlemen,” Travgar said dismissing them. He turned to the Major. “Get all their files, Marsden, I’m going to talk to my daughter.”

  “Sir,” Marsden said and turned to the police inspectors.

  Lena had thought she was all cried out until her father came across the room to her, he said nothing but simply held out his arms to her.

  “Oh, daddy.” she whimpered, tears flowing once more as she threw herself into his embrace.

  Chapter 4

  Kimeria Orbital Space

  Karvon strode onto the bridge of the Kormorant and saw Krevis was already there, lounging in the Captain’s chair.

  “Hey, boss,” Krevis said casually.

  Then he got a proper look at Karvon’s face and quickly exited the command chair.

  “Start prepping to get underway,” Karvon ordered.

  Krevis departed to help Lothar check the cargo hold while Juxton and Corinne followed Karvon onto the bridge and went to their stations.

  “Orbital Control, this is freighter Moonlight Five requesting clearance to get underway, over,” Corinne said, after donning her comms headpiece.

  Corinne was their backup communications specialist and often manned the bridge when they were getting underway. Most of the other crew members were too busy disconnecting the shore connections or checking the cargo was secure as they made the ship ready to depart.

  “Moonlight Five this is Orbital Control I do not have you on my list at this time.”

  “Roger that Orbital Control. We have decided to get underway early. We are requesting departure clearance and a course for warp point two. Over.”

  “Roger that Moonlight Five. Wait five. Over.”

  Corinne raised her eyebrows at Karvon who was listening through his interface. He just smiled back at her as he was half expecting an even longer delay as Orbital Control fitted them into the traffic flow. The ship started to vibrate or hum; Karvon could never decide exactly what to call it, as Moxton got the engines powered up.

  “Freighter Moonlight Five. We will be releasing clamps in five minutes. Please bring your autopilot online now.”

  “Roger that Orbital Control. Moonlight Five autopilot online… now.” Karvon replied after pressing several colored buttons to give control of the ship to the Imperial world’s traffic controllers.

  “All hands check that the hatches are secured. Undocking in five minutes.”

  “All secure.” Came back from Moxton in engineering and then from Lothar in the cargo bay.

  A few seconds later Andreas, who was in the shuttle bay, acknowledged they were all buttoned up there as well. The timer he had displayed on the heads-up display in front of him counted down to zero without anything happening. Then after maybe another minute, there came clunking sounds as Orbital Control released the clamps.

  The ship was slowly backed out of the dock by the automated system until they were a good five hundred meters from the station. The ship then rotated until it was lined up on the invisible warp point. At leas
t it was invisible from this distance. Up close they could be quite intimidating if looked at with the naked eye. In fact, most heavily populated systems like Kimeria had regular tourist runs for planetside people so they could watch ships come and go through the warp points from close range. Well. watch on magnified screens. The warp point itself could be seen with the naked eye but the distances were such you couldn't see an actual ship arrive or depart unless you were far closer than safety regulations allowed.

  Once lined up the ship was accelerated rapidly using the grav accelerated ion drive engines mounted at the stern, which allowed for an easy acceleration of twenty gravities without putting undue strain on the ship. At least so the controllers thought. Most freighters could accelerate at up to around forty gravities at a pinch if they were in good order. Couriers and mail packets often did as much as sixty gravities on regular services and specially designed models could do well over double that for emergency messages. Naval vessels varied depending on their size but even the most bloated battleship could normally get up above the fifty gravities mark while fast frigates and patrol ships could do well over a hundred, at least for short periods when they were in close combat.

  The Moonlight Five, which was really the Kormorant, was built more like a cruiser under her freighter exterior and on one memorable occasion had managed one hundred and three-point six five gravities. Of course, in their innocent freighter disguise mode, they would never take her much above twenty gravities. No sensible penny-pinching freighter captain would stress his ship or engines unnecessarily and most simply lacked the engine power to do the sort of speeds the Kormorant was capable of. The downside was the Kormorant had a significantly smaller cargo hold than a regular freighter of her size but the hold was cleverly shaped to disguise this fact it was smaller and so far no one had ever noticed

  Although they were only puttering along, as Karvon liked to call it, the ship soon built up a decent velocity. After about twenty minutes the ship was called again.

  “Moonlight Five, this is Orbital Control. We will be releasing you to local control in three minutes, copy.”

  “Roger that Orbital Control. Three minutes to local control. Roger.”

  The changeover went without excitement and they continued to accelerate until they reached the halfway point between Kimeria and the warp point they were heading for. The Kimeria system boasted three warp points trailing behind the star. The first, discovered by the explorers who found the system, was only three light minutes out, just outside the orbit of the small rocky inner planet of the system. The second was a more normal five light minutes out, and like the first was currently on the opposite side of the star from Kimeria. The third, however, while nearly eight light minutes out, was currently on this side of the star and that was the one they were headed for. It was also high on the ecliptic unlike the other two who were both low. As it had been the second warp discovered it was listed as Warp Point Two on the charts despite its distance from the other two warp points.

  With Kimeria, whose orbit was nearly nine light minutes out from the star, being on this side of the star at the moment, it was not long before they were slowing down to align on the jump point and that was when the first signs of trouble occurred. Corinne looked up from her console. “I’ve got emergency flash traffic headed for the naval comms buoy and lots of comms traffic is suddenly happening in the system.”

  Every jump point in an inhabited system had at least one communications buoy at the warp points and in an important system like Kimeria, there were usually several, both government owned and privately owned. They would not be able to decode the messages but their specialized communications equipment could at least pick up the amount of traffic being communicated. In heavy traffic systems such as Kimeria, there were automated communications drones that jumped through the warp point frequently taking communications from this system to the next. The outgoing messages would be downloaded to the buoy there for dissemination onwards, while the incoming messages were collected from the buoy before the drone jumped back through into the original system and forwarded the incoming messages it had received. The cost of such automated drones was enormous, mostly in the computer systems, which limited their use to high traffic areas.

  Karvon looked over at her. “Any idea of what is going on?”

  “Not yet boss. Most of the traffic seems to be between Kimeria and the military station. Also, I think the two destroyers out near the asteroid belt have just changed course in this direction.”

  “Krevis, talk to me.” he looked over at that man’s station.

  “I’m looking boss. I may be able to decode the flash traffic. Too early to tell yet.”

  Krevis had returned to the bridge and manned the other side of Corinne’s station where he was trying to dissect the communications streams. He grunted, paused, and pressed some buttons. A second halo screen popped up showing a large object with several smaller objects around it. The objects showed a growing orange glow in them, all except one, the very big one.

  “I’ve got grav generators coming online in the entire Imperial Fleet, Captain. Estimate a minimum of ten minutes before the smaller ships get underway. Those two destroyers out at the belt are definitely headed this way. I’ve got both at over one hundred gravities.”

  “Shit!” said Karvon. “Stand by to translate. Three minutes.” He paused to alter some settings on his console. “All right everybody, hang on! We’re going in hot!”

  Normally a ship reduced speed to just a few meters per second before using a jump point. The translation process placed a lot of stress on a ship’s structure and the consensus was that the higher the entry speed the more chance of a bad jump. Karvon had once flown a Brython destroyer through a jump point doing close to two percent light speed and survived. He never wanted to repeat the experience, however! They had been subjected to horrible shaking and strange light patterns appeared in their vision, which he and the crew had continued to see for days afterward.

  Despite this bad experience, Karvon had taken the Kormorant through several jumps at higher than normal speed without any problems. He was slowly developing a theory about the subject that he might write a paper on when he retired, but at present he was more concerned with navigating the ship correctly for this jump. He stopped the deceleration and the ship plowed into the warp point at a constant speed of nearly two hundred meters a second. Ships that hit warp points accelerating or decelerating simply never arrived at the other end, but instead went elsewhere, which was how the people who lived in this part of the galaxy came to be here originally. The translation went smoothly despite the relatively high speed and they found themselves in the Juniper system.

  The system had one marginal planet that supported a small population of miners and two industrial complexes making specialist electronic parts using the rare minerals the planet had in relatively plentiful supply. There were several mining bases on the moons surrounding the huge gas giant the system boasted, and a serious Kimerian naval station floating off the jump point that led to the Iskander held worlds further out.

  The jump point that led to Lennister Station sported a much smaller combined customs and military station. They lined up on it and headed that way at a slightly higher than normal twenty-five gravities as Karvon was growing increasingly concerned about the sudden naval activity.

  “I’ve got the message cracked, boss,” Krevis said.

  Karvon turned his way and raised his eyebrows.

  “It wasn’t a fully encrypted message which made it easier. It’s an alert to all fleet units to recall their crews and to make themselves ready for action.”

  “Interesting. Nothing else?”

  “No. That’s it. Has the Empire just gone to war or something?”

  Karvon shook his head. “No idea. We’ve had no hint of imminent war between the Empire and anyone as far as I know. Keep watching. There may be more yet. We’ll look pretty silly if we jump into the middle of a battle.” he grinned.

  Se
veral of the crew smiled. Space warfare was generally held to be uneconomic unless you could surprise someone and get through their jump point before they realized you were coming. Otherwise, the jump points were death traps for invaders who had to come through singly while the defenders massed their defenders at the arrival point.

  The ship had accelerated almost halfway to the target jump point after only forty minutes and then began decelerating. As they approached the Kimerian station they transmitted details of their registry, the Moonlight Five, along with their cargo, and given they were outbound from Kimeria, the Kimerian customs were not particularly concerned and didn’t bother with a physical check.

  Just before they reached the jump point Krevis spoke up. “Got another flash message. Same code as the first one which is pretty slack of someone.”

  “And…” Karvon prompted as Krevis seemed to be lost in contemplating the sins of the unknown comms officer responsible for the sloppy security.

  “Oh. Yes. Sorry boss. They are locking down the Kimeria system and instructing their fleet to hold any ships that translated from the Kimeria system in the last five hours.”

  “Thanks for the quick warning,” Karvon muttered, but before he could say anything else Corinne broke in.

  “We’re being hailed by the Kimerian military station. They’re demanding we heave to.”

  “I have tracking systems coming up on the station sir. The power plant is warming up.”

  Karvon killed the deceleration so the ship would reach the jump point sooner, if traveling a good deal faster than he would like.

  “We’re going through hot. Corinne tell them you don’t understand and ask them to repeat the message.”