She refused her father admission to those meetings as well, despite the fact that his backing would have helped her cause. Borgol gave her full support. So did Cardin’s Paradise. Ostrieachia felt obligated, although their opinions carried very little weight. The single Vankovian representative had an interesting response. He argued for reason at the group meeting. “Listen, my friends. We are being warned by an Ackalonian of pending trouble. Not just any Ackalonian, mind you, but the Plicora of Ackalon. Am I the only one here who noted the extraordinary behavior of the Rose at the coronation? Bright flash? Hard to miss? After eight-thousand years of peace and stability, why does her pronouncement surprise anyone? Does anyone here believe stability is the natural state of life in our corner of the galaxy? If it were, none of us would have ever advanced beyond single-cell organisms.” He proceeded to point out that pirate activity was clearly on the increase again. More so than in past cycles. His last statement was perhaps the most penetrating. “What do we think the pirates have been doing while we’ve been ignoring them for a thousand years?”
No, although it was progress in the right direction, overall Jis wasn’t pleased.
***
Even with that much of a head start, the small Ostrieachian ship was easy to track. Urania had no problem catching up. “They stopped more or less dead in hyper after being holed by beam weapons,” Urania reported. “There they go dropping into n-space. The ship that fired on them is following.”
Both Kalia and Denem knew Urania was still having repairs completed on Ackalon. They knew she wouldn’t be leaving with them and were expecting to meet up with Aeolus on Ostrieachia after what was supposed to be an unremarkable trip. That would have been the case if this unscheduled rescue mission hadn’t been mandated. Now Flagon, her passengers, and her crew wouldn’t be making it to Ostrieachia at all unless Aeolus intervened.
“Full speed, hon,” Lexi commanded. “Get us there.”
Geena remarked, “Lucky for them we decided to follow them home rather than meet them on Ostrieacha.”
It took three minutes to reach the dying Ostrieachian ship. Sensors showed its fusion reactor completely destroyed. Whether or not its weapons and drives were still intact was irrelevant without anything better than emergency power to feed to them. The ship that attacked Flagon was standing by, uncloaked, almost certainly preparing to board. “Target weapons and fire,” Lexi commanded. “Narrow beam. Let’s not accidentally destroy them.”
The attacker was a larger ship than Urania. It carried a larger crew, more missile tubes, more missiles, and, like Urania, possessed two primary beams. More didn’t mean better. It was also a model the likes of which they had encountered before. They called it an Antagonizer-class. The pirates had a different name for it, calling them Raider-class. Antagonizer was the name of the third ship of that class they met several months ago. And shortly thereafter killed. The first two were so thoroughly destroyed they never learned what the pirates named them.
They racked up two more kills within weeks of the first one when Lexi telepathically read the coordinates of the two cloaked ships dispatched to support the pirate base from the minds of their navigators. That ability had already largely faded. She didn’t know whether or not to be relieved. After all, it made playing with Ron in their cabin different in an amazingly good way. According to the telepathic Grammins, what Lexi did at that time wasn’t possible. Their entire race had been telepathic for close to a hundred-thousand years. In that time, they never developed an ability to communicate with or pick up the thoughts of non-telepaths like Lexi was able to do.
Those prior pirate encounters took place a very long way from here, practically on the other side of the Accord. After raiding Anatagonizer’s data cores, the team had access to complete specs on Raider-class starships. This ship was the same design, suggesting that the pirates not only were extremely wide-ranging but that they had a shipyard as well. The general consensus had pirates capturing and subsequently weaponizing whatever ship they could hijack. It appeared that might not be the case.
This one had its shields up on full power although the cloaking capability built into the outer shield wall wasn’t activated. Lexi reverse-engineered one of the shield nodes captured from Antagonizer a few months back. Urania was now the only ship in Accord space, other than the pirates, equipped with the cloaking technology incorporated in those radically different shields. Lexi left plans with Jis, who had her technology people working on trying to penetrate the cloak. She promised to put her best people on the problem.
This Raider didn’t know Urania was here. Urania flipped off her inner e-shield and fired both of her primaries at separate points on the pirate’s hull. Despite the advanced shield technology of the pirate, the primaries punched through it in nanoseconds, taking out power feeds to the ship’s weapon systems. Suddenly weaponless, facing an unexpected, again invisible enemy, the ship cloaked and vanished into hyperspace. Somebody over there had a remarkable reaction time.
Chapter 11
Rescue
“What’s the Ostrieachians’ situation?” Geena asked from the navigation console. In a combat situation, no matter how brief, the team was always positioned to take manual control of the ship in case something crippling happened to Urania.
“We need to get them off of that ship quickly,” Ron replied, examining the tactical panels. “Flagon is pretty far gone. The hull is breached in multiple places.”
“They don’t have atmosphere,” Urania added. “I can’t even take command-comp control. There’s nothing left to take control of. All of Flagon’s systems are dead. I’m pulling them in tight with tractors. We’ll be docked in under ten minutes.” Flagon, in addition to the two ambassadors, carried a crew of four naval personnel. Two were pilots, two were engineers. “I’m only picking up five life signs on board. There should be six. By the way, Lexi, even through the Raider’s shields, I got eight life sign readings.”
All three of Urania’s crew hurriedly got dressed in skin-tight undergarments and suits. When he felt the two ships bump together, Ron sealed his suit and closed the inner airlock hatch. Once vacuum was established, he released the outer hatch and began the laborious process of manually sealing the two ships together. That process, usually handled by computers, only worked when both ships still had computers.
He opened the Ostrieachian’s outer hatch. That permitted him to open the inner hatch on Flagon. The interior of the small ship was in total vacuum. Urania’s airlock was small. He had to cycle it through five times to get all five survivors passed through to Geena and Lexi. He didn’t allow them to come through until they abandoned the weapons strapped onto their suits. Flagon only experienced one causality from the pirate’s attack. One of the beams tore through both the Flagon’s control bay and her on-duty pilot.
Denem came through last. Before cycling him through, Ron closed the smaller ship’s outer hatch and disconnected it from Urania. Once he had Urania’s outer hatch sealed as well, he commed, “We’re all on board. Flagon is disconnected and floating free.”
Hearing that, Urania asked, speaking now only through the comm-gear worn by the team, “What next, Lexi?”
“Let’s follow that Raider. We want the location of its base.”
Geena remarked, “This assignment might turn out to be easier than I imagined. We made a not entirely warranted decision that these peoples’ problem was pirate-related. I wasn’t expecting a means of finding their nest to fall into our laps like this.”
Lexi looked pained. “Something is definitely going on out here, Geena. I don’t know exactly what, but it’s more than just a pirate base.”
Urania picked up the trail the marauder left through hyperspace with little difficulty. Twenty-eight hours later, she followed it as it dropped into n-space. The ship had taken a very roundabout course, apparently in order to elude any trackers. Urania had originally been built as a scout ship for the Vankovian navy. Now sentient, with her sensor suite somewhat upgraded by Lexi, it was
very hard for any ship to “elude” her tracking ability. It didn’t matter that her prey was cloaked. She wasn’t following the ship, she was tracking its trail through hyperspace. Long before they arrived at the ship’s destination, Ron and Lexi had two of Urania’s three temporary cabins unfolded with the five grateful Ostrieachians settled in them.
The star system they emerged into was barren. The star itself was a main-sequence red dwarf circled by five rocky planets. The innermost planet was five times the size of Earth. The other four, including the third planet, which held the pirates’ base, were each approximately the size of Mercury. Despite its small size, the third planet was dense, with enough gravity to retain small lakes of liquid nitrogen on its surface. The team and their guests sat in silence while each observed the base. It was a much larger installation than the one they destroyed near the water world of Grammin several months back. Ron remarked, “Looks like they’ve been here a while. That wasn’t built overnight.”
They were speaking the Ostrieachian language called Trakish out of consideration for their passengers. The first rubric Lexi absorbed with the Wraixain educator device covered the languages of the Accord, including Trakish, the most widely spoken language of the dozens spoken on Ostrieachia. Over the years since they made the surprise discovery that an educator device was installed on the ex-Vankovian scout Geena and her life-mate purchased at auction, Geena gradually used the same rubric. With both her and Lexi fluent in Trakish, they taught Ron the language during the eleven weeks after Flagon left Ackalon. Kalia and Denem were their sole passengers fluent in Ritue, the most common language spoken in the Accord. The other three didn’t speak it at all.
Five large ships in stationary orbit above the base were obviously waiting for trouble to arrive. While Urania couldn’t be seen when her shields were up, it was impossible to suppress the small blip made by a ship exiting hyperspace. All five ships were now heading for that telltale. Using the n-space drive to shift position was also detectable if these guys were vigilant. The evidence was mounting that they were excessively so.
Ron, recalling Jis’s caution that she didn’t trust Denem, said to the Ostrieachians, “This might get rough. Please get back into your suits and strap down in your cabins. You’ll be locked in until this is over or we lose power.”
All four males grumbled but headed toward their assigned cabins. Kalia hesitated. “I’d like to observe if I may be permitted.”
Geena, exchanging quick glances with Ron and Lexi, said, “Get into your suit and get back here. Quickly.” Technically, Kalia represented their client. They did have four command chairs on the bridge.
***
Unexpectedly, all five pirate ships dropped shields simultaneously for long enough to fire randomly in the general direction where they suspected Urania must be. The second time they tried it, they got lucky. One of those shots scored a hit. The shield handled it and the beam did no damage. Unfortunately, the corona generated by the energy beam deflecting off of her e-shield pinpointed Urania’s location.
When Accord-type primaries hit a shield, the beam shatters, breaking down across most of the electromagnetic spectrum. The corona produced around battling starships is beautiful, although no one is usually in the mood to appreciate it at the time. Sufficient punishment can overwhelm a ship’s shield nodes causing the shield to collapse, consequently leaving a ship naked. With Urania’s location identified, all five ships opened up.
“Impressive tactics,” Ron commented. “They found us more quickly than I would have expected.”
From the tactical console, Geena said, “The shields are handling the load, with a small margin to spare. Shouldn’t we be hitting back with missiles?” While their e-shield prevented the enemy’s primaries from getting through and would fry their own ship if they tried to use Urania’s primaries, missiles could punch through both the radiation shield and the solid shield wall, which only blocked matter from getting in. The wall shield was gravity-based, wrapping the ship it protected in a shell with an adjustable toughness ranging from barely there to diamond-hard. It didn’t keep objects from getting out. Having an armed ship was still a new experience for all of them, but Geena knew at least that much.
“No, Mom,” Ron said. Both he and Lexi were a little more savvy about their weapons than Geena. Urania was the expert, though. “The spread on their beams is too wide. A missile would detonate as soon as it passed through our shields. If they got lucky, we could destroy ourselves with our own missiles. We don’t carry enough of them to deal with five ships, either.”
“Heads up, guys,” Urania announced, still sticking to speaking over the comm-gear. “We’ve got dozens of small ships lifting from the surface. Frankly, they look like one or two-man fighters. They’re not large enough to carry missiles. Assuming they’re packing primary-beams, because otherwise, they’d be pretty useless, we’re in trouble, guys.”
Chapter 12
Crashing at Full Burn
Surrounded by five Raider-class warships mounting a steady barrage of primary-beam fire, with fifty-two of the smaller, one-man fighters only twelve minutes out, Urania was beginning to feel helpless. No single ship could keep up a continuous, sustained barrage from energy weapons, but with coordinated fire from five ships, someone’s primary beams were always on her while the others recycled.
The capabilities of the fighters were unknown, but she strongly doubted they had been sent out just to record her death throes. They were too small to throw missiles at her. So they had to be energy-beam platforms. None of the Accord worlds used ships like these. Urania got her knowledge of them from Lexi’s movie collection. Star Wars came readily to mind. Oh, crap! I wouldn’t put it past these people to use kamikazes.
Whoever was manning the Raiders was good. Urania’s shields were continuing to handle the load, but she needed to drop them to fire her primaries. For reasons Ron already noted, missiles were not currently an option. When the fighters arrived she could be in serious trouble. True, Lexi wanted to stress test the new shields. I guess we can check that off her list, although somehow I don’t think this is what any of us had in mind. The problem was obvious to everybody. She called out, using their comm-gear, cognizant of Kalia sitting on the command bridge, “They’re not drones. I’m picking up one life-form in each. The fighters might only be armed with beam weapons, but they could also be kamikaze. I definitely do not want them crashing into our shields. Even if that isn’t in their battle-plan, that much firepower will hurt us badly. Anyone have any ideas?”
Lexi had been silent since the start of the engagement, watching the shield read-outs, analyzing the strength of the pirates’ primaries, and watching the approaching fighters. Now she asked without subvocalizing, allowing Kalia to hear, “Urania, what happens if we hit the planet’s surface with the n-space drive full-on?”
“I’m pretty sure you can do the math as fast or faster than I can, Lexi,” Urania replied, somewhat acidly, sticking to the comm-gear. “We make a very large crater.”
Ron and Geena exchanged glances. Kalia simply gaped at her, wondering who Lexi was talking to. “And if we bored a tunnel in front of us?” Lexi prompted.
“Get to work reconfiguring the primaries, honey,” Urania said, no longer bothering with the comm-gear. After the terrorist attack on Grammin, they all discussed the feasibility of revealing Urania’s sentience to others. They decided it should be OK on a case-by-case basis. Lexi apparently decided this was one of those cases. “They’re sure not going to make a tunnel as wide as I am with the current settings.”
Lexi said, “Ron, set up a missile for me. Remote detonation. Wide dispersion. I need it no more than ten feet above the surface. If it’s actually on the surface that’s even better. It needs to be outside the ship on the other side of our shield by the time we enter the tunnel.”
Lexi’s fingers were already flying over the master console, her formulas and calculations flashing on the heads-up display faster than either Ron or Geena could keep up with
. Lexi wasn’t even looking. While she worked, she said, “I need the hyper-bubble up with a nano-second burst on the hyper-drive to get us out from under their beams. As soon as we’re back in n-space, give us full power on the ion drive. At that point, switch control over to my program. I’m almost done.”
“Urania,” Ron said, also forgetting Kalia was there, “can you clue us mere mortals in on what the two of you are cooking up? It sounds disturbingly like we’re going to be hitting the surface of that planet at full speed.”
Kalia was sitting wide-eyed in her assigned chair, almost wishing she had done as she was originally told and strapped down in the cabin she was sharing with Denem. She understood very little of what she was seeing and hearing. She took what little comfort she could from the words of Jis Boc Seckan that these people could do anything.
Still, it wasn’t really that much comfort. Lexi sounded insane. Two of them were talking to someone who wasn’t there. Except, she heard their imaginary crewmate responding. No one was trying to stop Lexi from doing whatever it was she was doing. Kalia wasn’t a fighter. Despite her claws, she wasn’t sure she could stop Lexi either unless she tore out the woman’s throat. She wasn’t sure she should try. As far as she could tell, they were in a no-win situation. Her breath was tight in her chest, her fur was standing out from her body and her claws fully extended into the arms of her chair. This just plain sounded insane. If they survived, her people might need to add the cost of a refurbished command chair to the agreed-on Aeolus fee. She wished she could be sure Aeolus would be able to collect.
Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens Page 6
