The Princess & The Privateer

by Peter Rhodan

  She fired the plasma cannons, rippling the fire, and then flipped the ship again to present the now recovered port side shields. The enemy was showing its undamaged side to her and the first plasma shot only damaged the shields but the second shot came so quickly that the enemy shield had little time to recover and the second salvo caused serious damage to the enemy ship!

  The enemy ship tried the same flip tactic, copying Gizel once more but the Thister, besides being slightly smaller, was also more maneuverable with more modern engines. Gizel settled into a focused mental zone and she began flipping and turning the Thister with such quickness that at times it mitigated the damage done by the pirate’s fire. Meanwhile, she continued to hammer the enemy trying to get the double volley attack off as often as possible without becoming too predicable.

  The trouble was that although the enemy ship was much older and less maneuverable, her updated weapons were bigger than the Thister’s, and when they scored a hit, the Thister took far more damage proportionally than the pirate cruiser did. The classic more fire versus heavier fire scenario. A popular debate amongst the Naval Academy students, but one which was a whole lot less intellectually appealing when it was your life depending on the result.

  One-on-one ship battles were something they practiced a lot at the Academy, both as part of their coursework and as unofficial practice outside of normal hours. There was an ongoing Battle League where students fought each other in identical ships. Gizel found this soon got very tedious, and she had largely dropped out of the contest. There were only so many ways to fight a single ship and tricks you could pull in a tactical sense. Many of which were just a gamble, the implication being they would only work if your opponent wasn’t expecting them.

  The one lesson she had learned during her time in the League was that one-on-one ship duels were almost invariably decided by whichever ship was the first one to lose a shield node. Losing one of the shield nodes imposed an immediate tactical restriction on the damaged ship. The tactical officer had to be very careful to keep the shieldless area away from the enemy, which meant they couldn’t flip ship and they had to be careful with other maneuvers. In probably ninety-five percent of one-on-one simulation battles at the Academy the first ship to lose a shield node died. Only the very occasional critical hit would save it. Such as damaging the enemy ship’s power plant or engines, or taking out both the bridge and the spare command center that most ships were equipped with. These types of hits were the ones most likely to render a ship defenseless or otherwise unable to fight effectively.

  Most of the smaller ships had eight nodes powering four shields, port and starboard, front and rear. The Kimerian navy had cheated with the River class and they had twelve weaker nodes powering six shields, having added a port and starboard middle shield. The trade-off was that each individual shield was weaker. The ship could only generate so much power and that power now needed to be divided by six instead of four. The upside meant that tactically the loss of one shield was far less disastrous.

  That had been the theory, and in practice, it had worked as predicted, although the improved results were calculated on a percentage basis. The six lighter shields had nearly a twenty percent better performance result than the traditional four shields. Against a bigger and stronger opponent, the twenty percent better performance merely meant they would last a fifth of the time longer!

  Unless they got lucky or were very tricky!

  So Gizel was fighting a desperate battle to do unto the cruiser before the cruiser did unto her, and despite her best efforts, she knew she was losing. The pirate’s shields were just that bit stronger and their plasma cannons just that bit more powerful. Although the older ship was not that much larger, she was more strongly built, so took less damage when Gizel did get a shot through their shields. Her ship’s ability to fire more rapidly was almost compensating for this difference, but the operative word was almost. Her only hope was to take out one of their shield nodes before they did the same to the Thister, and it was all coming down to luck and the skill of the tactical officer on the other side.

  Lieutenant Tremaine was awake and back on his feet, she noticed out of the corner of her eye. He resumed his seat at the main Tactical console but made no effort to take command back from Gizel. Whether he didn’t want to interrupt her desperate dance, or whether he was still too groggy to function properly, she wasn’t sure and she didn’t really have time to ask. Yet again she managed to move the ship sideways in space enough that the enemy fire partly covered the middle shield, rather than the entire blow falling on the forward shield. It saved that shield from failing again and so the desperate duel continued.

  She scored more damage on the enemy ship a few minutes later and began to hope the tide was turning in their direction. How long the battle had been raging she had no idea. Her whole focus was on maneuvering the Thister up, down, forward, and back, besides flipping it from port to starboard and trying to dodge direct hits by the enemy plasma. She continued to guess the enemy movement and fire accordingly. Normally such fire would be automatically targeted by the computer fire controls, but like several of the students at the academy, she had outperformed the battle computer by a significant margin, in her case around ten percent better. It was not the best score among her fellow students, but it was still better than most.

  She got another hit on the enemy forward section, but again the damage was apparently nothing serious. The exchange of fire continued with both ships targeting their opponent’s forward section. Finally, the enemy got a significant hit on the already depleted forward shield. The ship shuddered and she saw new lights flashing on the console in front of Lars. One of the forward shield generators went down meaning she had to flip the ship to protect that section, but worse, it meant she couldn’t flip the ship to give the targeted forward shield section a chance to recover by presenting the other side of the ship. Damn!

  “Forward port shield generator needs priority damage control.”

  She heard Tremaine say to Lars although she was sure that Lieutenant Lars, who appeared to be the acting Captain now, was aware of the need to get the forward shield back up as quickly as possible. Gizel was left with no choice but to rely on subtle changes of angle and speed to spread the enemy fire, which now turned to the rear of the ship. The loss of the forward port shields meant that she had to avoid the enemy getting a shot at that section of the ship at all costs. With no shield to absorb the energy, the blast of their plasma weapons would impact directly on the Thister's hull. Such a clean hit would likely result in the destruction of the whole ship.

  The battle continued as each ship fired salvo after salvo. Gizel was fully in the zone now, her fingers flying over the controls moving the ship up, down, left, right, faster, or slower in a maniacal dance that she was still losing as the rear shields weakened. Somehow, she avoided the pirate gaining a good solid hit on the rear shield for far longer than she had believed possible, but finally her luck ran out.

  She moved the ship the wrong way and the pirate caught the rear starboard shield dead on, having already weakened it from a previous salvo. The plasma tore right through the shield and smashed into the hull of the Thister, causing the ship to buck. The rear wall of the control room shredded from the force of the blast further back in the ship. Lieutenant Tremaine, who for some reason had still not strapped himself in, was thrown to the floor yet again. Looking across at Lars she nearly threw up. Part of the metal from the wall had decapitated the Lieutenant, her head landing on the floor near Tremaine while her headless body sat in the command chair spraying blood into the air. Precious air was rapidly escaping through the gaping shredded mess where the rear wall of the cabin once stood.

  Gizel’s clear canopy clamshell helmet mounted on the collar of her suit snicked into action automatically with the drop in air pressure, sealing her into her suit. She looked over at Tremaine and his helmet had done the same. Good. He was also starting to move so Gizel yelled at him.

  “Take the c
ommand chair, Lieutenant!”

  She flipped the ship while she was speaking to him and the next pirate salvo hit the now fully charged opposite shield. Somehow the shields there were still up, God knew how!

  She jinked the ship using the reaction thrusters and the next salvo hit the middle shield, mostly. Lieutenant Tremaine’s expression soured as he took in the headless body still strapped into the command chair. At least the blood wasn’t shooting up out of the neck stump anymore. He gingerly reached in and unclipped the restraints and then pushed the body off the chair. It landed on the floor with a boneless thump and he eased himself into the chair despite the blood. Fortunately, most of it had missed landing back on the chair. She could hear him talking to the damage control people but couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  How the ship still had power, she had no idea. She got off another salvo at the pirate and dodged another incoming blast while Tremaine settled into the command role. She managed to mostly avoid the next round, catching another hit on the port middle shield, mostly. It also resulted in some more damage forward, where the shield was completely gone, unfortunately. It was getting harder and harder to keep the ship from taking serious damage from the continual barrage. The strength of all six shields had now been significantly weakened or reduced to nothing, and it wouldn’t be long before even more were destroyed. The pirate took some more damage when she managed to get a double hit on the same section of their shields, but then their counter blow caught her half-turned and the rear part of the ship got hammered again.

  This time the secondary command center was barely affected but the ship shook violently and the gravity went out. Unfortunately so did most of the shields and all of the weaponry. The control room switched automatically to the yellowish internal battery emergency power. The shields came back up weakly, using their own internal battery power. Their only saving grace was that the pirate now needed to re-charge the capacitors before they could fire again so they had a few moments while the enemy weapons recharged before they would be fired upon again.

  “Well, that was fun,” she said to Lieutenant Tremaine across the short distance between their stations.

  He smiled at her bravado.

  “You put up an amazing fight, Your Highness,” he said.

  He didn’t normally use her title, and she sensed he was doing so as a sign of respect at the tactical mastery she had shown, even if it hadn’t been enough to save them in the end. Like her, he knew their fate was sealed by the loss of power.

  Then she caught something on her display. The cargo ship! Her attention had been so focused on the pirate she hadn’t noticed how close the cargo ship had gotten. Its trajectory had kept the Thister largely between it and the pirate so she doubted they were aware of the ship’s presence at all, and even if they were, like Gizel, they would have been too focused on the Thister to pay it any attention.

  Now it rose up out of the Thister’s shadow and a salvo of extremely powerful plasma hit the pirate. The cargo ship had two plasma turrets and one hit the enemy ship in the forward area and the other hit it in the stern area. Unlike the Thister’s small bolts the cargo ship carried weapons that were preposterously huge. Something normally found on a heavy cruiser, if not bigger. Gizel laughed with sheer relief.

  “Yes!” she let out.

  Tremaine was watching the tactical display, which was repeated on one of the command chair screens, as the two bolts simply smashed straight through the pirate cruiser’s shields and did immense damage to the vessel. The pirate’s shields dropped and its weapons stopped cycling, which indicated the main power supply had been hit, just like their own had, Gizel thought to herself.

  Spacer Morthon spoke up. “We have an incoming call from that cargo ship, sir.”

  He sounded more surprised than relieved.

  Tremaine hit a button on his display. Listened to something then replied.

  “This is the Imperial warship Thister, Lieutenant Tremaine acting Captain. Thank you for your timely assistance.”

  He listened some more. “Right. One moment.” He did something on his console. He glanced over at Gizel.

  “They have an encrypted file for us, straight from the head of Imperial Security. I wonder if I can access it?” he shook his head as he punched keys. “Ah. Apparently, it seems acting Captain is good enough. Right.”

  He was silent for a moment then looked over at Gizel again. “It appears your orders to join this ship were fake and we are instructed to head back to New Melbourne immediately and wait in orbit there for a task force to arrive.” He looked around the room. “A bit late,” he commented.

  Gizel nodded. “That’s the Kormorant?”

  “Yes. How did you know?” he looked puzzled.

  “By the size of their plasma cannon,” she responded with a giggle.

  She didn't normally giggle like this! It had to be some sort of reaction to them surviving. Tremaine looked like he wanted to say something but then obviously got a message through his comms.

  “The pirate has surrendered,” he said flatly.

  He looked over at her. “No.” He said, deadpan.

  She smiled. “Yes. Sorry, sir, but not only am I the designated boarding officer, but this is clearly a matter of Imperial Security. It is not easy to change the deployment orders for an officer, especially the orders of an Imperial Princess. It would require someone with pretty high-level access. Over there on the pirate ship I might find some answers, answers that I may need to sit on until we are back at Kimeria before acting upon. If you see where I am heading. Sir.”

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  “Shit!”

  He rarely swore in her experience.

  “Whatever I do will be wrong.”

  He paused and looked at her then shook his head in resignation.

  “Right. The port shuttle bay is intact and the shuttle is in working order. Take your minions and as many marines as can fit and let them do the dangerous stuff. Understand?”

  When she nodded, he looked at her for another moment then said softly.

  “Do not get killed over there Gizel. Please.” He had never used just her first name before that she could remember.

  She nodded. “I’ll be careful. Truly. And the guys from the Kormorant are pretty good. Given the damage she did I imagine most of the fight has gone out of the pirates now anyway.”

  He shook his head. “How did you know it was the Kormorant?”

  She smiled. “I’ve been on her before. And no, I can’t tell you about it. Not without permission from someone higher up. But she is a privateer, crewed by a small but pretty elite force. And now sir, I will go and see if my armor is still intact.” As she rose, she forestalled his next comment. “And no, no rank badges or other identifying marks. Just another marine.”

  He shook his head but waved her out. As she left the ruined command room, she heard him mutter something about getting out of prison sometime in the next century. Then he was back to business talking to engineering about getting some power back on.

  The Marine’s section had taken some damage but not the combat suit storage area. None of the Marines had been killed but two had been injured and were being taken to the sickbay. The rest had been helping with damage control, but her call to Dockson brought him and four others hot-footing it to the storage room where they joined her and her two Imperial Security minders in donning their battle armor. When everyone was suited and double-checked they grabbed weapons and headed for the port shuttle bay.

  It took some time to get there, passing though several damaged areas, although only one area was deemed critical enough to have repairs being affected. It took longer than normal but eventually, they reached the shuttle bay. By some weird roll of the dice, the bay was essentially intact and with the local emergency power working, they depressurized the bay and launched the shuttle. There would probably be enough power to lock and repressurize the bay when they got back, there was supposed to be enough charge in the local powe
r storage unit. No matter. The pilot, who sported the almost unbelievable name of Ace, was a bit leery about flying to the enemy ship at first but did a fine job. Both shuttle bays on the pirate ship were intact but only one was operable it seemed. Anyway Ace flew them into the open hatch they could see.

  Chapter 21

  Family matters.

  There was a shuttle hovering off the pirate ship that had clearly dropped people off and then exited the bay to make room for them. Ace landed the shuttle in the bay with a quiet efficiency. Karvon and his people were waiting as her shuttle docked. She could tell it was him just from the way he stood, even in full combat armor. They trooped off their shuttle with the Marine and ImpSec troopers first and her last as per instructions she'd been given.

  “Who’s in charge?” Karvon asked over the general channel.

  “I’m the boarding officer.” she replied.

  “What’s your medical status over there?” Karvon asked.

  His voice was still the same.

  “Bad. All the medical personnel are either dead or at least wounded.”

  “Right. Corinne. Jump on their shuttle and head over to the Thister first. These clowns will just have to suffer.” Karvon ordered, waving his hand at the ship behind him.

  Corinne hesitated, then nodded and headed for the Imperial shuttle.

  Gizel swapped to the Imperial channel.

  “Ace? Transport our rescuer’s medical person to the ship please.”