Heris blinked. They had mounted phase cannon in a shuttle? "Have you ever fired them?" she asked.
"Not yet. But we think it will work."
"I think perhaps my engineers should take a look." Quickly. Before anyone tried it and tore the shuttle apart.
"Of course, Captain Serrano." The man beamed as if she were conferring a great favor. "Does this mean you'll take the commission?"
"Let me confer with my . . . er . . . staff," Heris said. "And if you have any engineering specs on those vessels—?"
"Right away, Captain," he said.
Koutsoudas received the scan cassette with a curl of his lip that made Heris want to smack him. Oblo, she saw, had a sulky look. Fine. Let Oblo work it off on Koutsoudas.
An hour later, Koutsoudas called her with no sneer at all in his voice. "Good data, Captain. The kid knew what she was doing, whoever she is. Recruit her."
Heris had already asked. Regret edged her voice: "Can't, I'm afraid. She died a year back, of some local disease. So what do you have?" She didn't mention the younger sister she'd been told about, who seemed to have similar talents. Time enough for that later.
"Aethar's World, but I think the ship ID's falsified. It'll be Aethar's World, just from the flavor of it, but not that number. It's in the commercial sequence, probably midsize trader . . . too bad that girl didn't build a wide-band detector as well."
"I'll ask," Heris said. "Maybe she did. But only one ship?"
"So far. I'll let you know."
Heris put in a call to Petris, who had gone to take a look at the cannon-loaded shuttle.
"Just got here," he said. "But you were right. They assumed that only the mass mattered. They've got them bolted into the frame—the unreinforced frame—with homemade ports cut in the hull plates." He sounded less contemptuous than she expected as he went on. "Quite a job, really—they put some thought into it. Pity they didn't know more about phase cannon. To make this thing operational, we'll have to dismount them, reinforce, and remount. At best, that's five weeks of work with the equipment available—"
"Downside or orbital?" Heris asked.
"Downside—they've no orbital facilities at all. Anyway, that'd give you a slow shuttle that could fire a couple of bolts every five minutes or so. Not worth it, unless we're desperate."
"That will depend on how bad the old escort is."
All along Heris had wondered who crewed the two escorts. When she swam aboard the remaining Desmoiselle, she found out. Anyone who wanted, it seemed. Oldsters retired from space, youngsters desperate to get above atmosphere, balancing a complete lack of proper training with intimate knowledge of their single ship.
"Grogon's not a bad ship," its elderly captain told her. "She takes a bit of easing along, that's all. . . ." Petris raised his brows but said nothing; he'd explain later. Heris could see for herself most of its problems.
Back with Captain Vassilos, Heris showed him the recommendations of her engineering staff. "Can you tell me why you think the raider's due?"
"It's more a guess than anything else," he said. "It's come twice before in our springtime, and now it's late spring. It feels like the right time."
Heris had heard worse reasons. "Those phase cannon in the shuttle can't be used as they are—and five weeks of downtime, if your planet-side yards can do the work, still give you only a very minimal weapons platform. If you have the resources to start that work, go ahead, but don't count on it to do much. I do have another suggestion. . . ."
"It's a little thing, whatever it is." Esteban Koutsoudas and Meharry bent over the displays. "Let me just tinker a bit here—ahhh." He signaled Meharry with one stubby finger. "That cube I had—put it in here—" Another screen came alive with numbers that scrolled so rapidly Heris couldn't see anything but lines. Then it froze, with one line highlighted.
"Hull constructed at Yaeger, registered with Aethar's World as a medium trader . . . but Aethar's traders are everyone else's raiders."
That much any of her own crew could have gotten, but Koutsoudas wasn't through. The screen wavered and steadied on a new display: the other ship's design details, shown in three-dimensional display. Colored tags marked deviations from the listed criteria. Where Sweet Delight's other detectors merely showed blots of warning red for weapons on active status, this one showed the placement and support systems for weapons not otherwise detected as live.
"Where'd you get this stuff?" Meharry asked, her voice expressing her lust for that equipment.
"You know how it is," Koutsoudas said without taking his eyes off the display. "A bit of this, a bit of that. It's not exactly standard, so I can't mount it in any Fleet craft—"
"But you can't get that resolution that far away," Meharry said. "Thermal distortion alone—"
"You need an almighty big database," Koutsoudas said. He sounded almost apologetic, as he tweaked the display again and an enlarged view of the distant vessel's portside weapons appeared, with little numbered comments. "I've been sort of . . . collecting this . . . for a long time." He tapped the cube reader. "Had to design new storage algorithms too. And the transforms for the functions that do the actual work . . ."
"Magic," Meharry said. Koutsoudas grinned at her.
"That's it. Got to have my secrets, don't I? If I teach you everything, who's going to care about my neck?"
"Nobody cares about your neck now, Esteban. Other parts of you—"
"Are off limits," he said. "Besides, that ship's no good."
"Can you tell what it's getting?" Heris asked.
"It won't have us now," Koutsoudas said confidently. "Not with the last batch of little doodads Oblo and Meharry and I installed. We're in no danger, and we can sit here and read their mail if we want to."
"Not and let them run amok in this system," Heris said. "Not if we can stop them, that is."
"Oh, we can stop them." Koutsoudas pointed to his display. "Their weapons look impressive on scan—or will, when they go active and light up the station's warning system. But this is old tech, slow and stupid stuff. Good for scaring the average civilian, though I'll bet they never take on any of the big commercial carriers. And when they refitted that hull with new engines, they made a big mistake." He brought up a highlighted schematic, and Heris saw it herself. They'd wanted more performance, and they'd mounted more powerful drives . . . but without reinforcing the hull or mounts. If they used those engines flat out, they'd collapse either hull or mount. Even worse, they could do structural damage by combining a lower drive setting with missile firing.
"I'd bet they never have fired many shots in anger," Heris said. "At least, not while under any significant acceleration. That's a beginner's mistake." If only she had a real Fleet warship, she'd simply chase them into their own fireball.
"With any luck, they won't live long enough to learn better," Meharry said.
"Not luck," Koutsoudas said. "Skill. Knowledge."
Heris wasn't sure if that was an attempt to flatter her, or to brag about his own ability. "How long before you can strip the rest you want off them?"
"Twelve to fourteen standard hours, Captain," he said. "With the captain's permission, I'll put one of the juniors on scan, and plan to be on the bridge in four hours for a check, and then in ten hours—"
"Of course," Heris said. "We'll use the Fleet scheduling for this. Firsts, give me your interim schedules, and make sure you are offshift enough for real rest before then."
Koutsoudas smiled. "I didn't know if we'd have the crew for that—"
"Not quite, but better than they have, I expect. As long as we don't let them get past us—or get the first shot—we'll do very well."
After she had the schedules for the next twelve standard hours, Heris went to see Cecelia.
"I don't know how that man does what he does, but we're damn lucky Livadhi wanted me to run off with him. With my people, I'd have a lot less margin to play with."
"So we're going to fight again?" Cecelia looked as if she were trying to project eage
rness. But she would be remembering that other battle, in which she was trapped in her aged and disabled body, unable even to speak clearly. She had to be scared.
"Yes, we'll fight—but it won't be anything like the time before. They won't have detected us—and they're unlikely to do so until we blow them away." She used Cecelia's desk display to diagram what they intended to do.
"It's not very sporting, is it?" Cecelia asked.
"It's not 'sporting' at all. It's not a game," Heris said. "Lepescu made that mistake; I don't. This is a band of ruffians who have terrorized this system repeatedly, and I'm going to destroy them. True, their homeworld may send more—I can't help that. But if Koutsoudas is right, Aethar's World may have more to worry about than a missing allied pirate. These people will have months—maybe years—of peace and a chance to develop their own effective defense. So yes, I'm going to destroy them with the least possible risk to us."
"How can you be sure they're the right ones? What if you're about to blow up an innocent ship?" She didn't sound really worried about it, but Heris considered the question seriously.
"By the time we do it, we'll know what brand of dental cleanser they use," she said. "Right now we know they are running with a falsified ID beacon—which doesn't necessarily mean criminal intent; we had one. But they've also got a whopping load of armament. And they're from Aethar's World, which is always suspicious. About the only time those barbarians leave home, it's to cause trouble for someone. They fit the profile of the trouble your friends have been having. . . ."
With the enemy ship only a light-second away, Koutsoudas continued to pour out a torrent of information about it. "Not only Aethar's World, but one of the Brotherhood chiefs. Svenik the Bold, I think—certainly he had this particular ship a while back, and this sort of raid is his specialty."
"I'm surprised he's lasted this long with that hull/engine combination," Petris said.
"So am I," Koutsoudas said. "But he hasn't been up against anything that made him redline it. Yet." He grinned at Heris. "I know you want to do this the quick way, Captain, but I wish we could push him to it."
"Not worth it," Heris said. "I know—it would be fun, but none of our friends can match our scan capability, and if we made a mistake—or he got lucky—"
"He's gone hot," Arkady Ginese, on weapons, did not look up for anyone else's conversations.
"It's not us," Koutsoudas said. "He isn't side-scanning—that's just preparation for hitting the station. He should be transmitting his demands—yes—there it goes—"
"Go ahead, Mr. Ginese," said Heris, feeling that familiar sensation in her belly. Plan, plan, and plan again, but at the moment, there was always one cold thrust of fear. Arkady and Meharry both touched their boards, and their own displays lit. Now, if the raider were looking, they could be seen. The weapons boards flickered through the preparatory displays, then steadied on green, with the red row at the top showing all the weapons ready. It had definitely been worth it to get that fast-warm capability, though it cost half again as much. Or would have, if Ginese and Meharry hadn't done the conversion themselves.
They had the raider now, though he didn't know it and might not before he died. They had calculated their ideal moment to attack, but from here on, the conclusion wasn't really in doubt.
"Screens warm," Heris said. Their puny screens wouldn't deflect much, but better a little protection than none. Second by second they closed.
"Second scan," Koutsoudas said suddenly. "Jump insertion, low velocity. Preliminary says it's a medium-size cargo hull; weapons minimal."
It had always been a possibility that the raider would have a companion. Or rival.
"Koutsoudas on the new one; Meharry, you take main scan on the raider. Ginese?"
"Any time, Captain."
"It's hours out," Koutsoudas said. "And it's not in any hurry. Could be tramp cargo—I'm just getting the beacon ID—but the timing's suspicious."
"That's why we have backup. Meharry, give me a replay of the raider's transmission to the station." The station, as agreed, had rebroadcast that narrowbeam transmission in omni, which allowed the Sweet Delight to pick it up—and enter it in the log, for evidence. It was about what she'd expected, the wording varying only slightly from the previous raids. Koutsoudas glanced up briefly.
"That's Svenik the Bold. I recognize his voice; it was one of our voice-screen samples on file. Want a verification?" Heris nodded. He reached over to Meharry's board, and flicked a switch on the module he'd added.
"Transmit our authorization," Heris said. Koutsoudas grinned, and hit another switch.
Half a light-second; the raiders should be startled to receive a transmission from a source they hadn't spotted, giving them official notification that they were unwanted and about to be fired upon. The question was, what would they do next?
"There's Grogon," said Ginese. "Right on time." The old escort had been given a special set of electronics and now lit up the scans as if she were studded with more armament than the yacht. Positioned as she was, on the far side of the intruder's path, she limited its possible maneuvers. He would have to assume a coordinated attack plan.
"Now," Heris said to Ginese. He ran his thumb down the firing controls, and the green telltales flicked to red, the red ready lights to yellow. The Sweet Delight shuddered at launch, even though the missiles were shoved out of the tubes at low velocity, to light outside. Red to orange to yellow to green, as the weapons reloaded automatically, and the red row at the top reappeared.
Meanwhile, Ginese and Meharry tracked the launches. "Five—eight—all lit," Meharry reported. Half a light-second still left over 90,000 miles between the two vessels, though that distance was closing as the raider approached. Certainly it was enough time for them to maneuver. But which way? They should be worrying about the old escort; they should be wondering what other weapons she would launch.
"Koutsoudas?" Heris watched the back of his head. "What's our friend up to?"
"Dumping vee. With the lag, still a safe distance out. Very interesting ID, Captain."
"Yes?"
"In the FR registry as an independent hauler, crew-owned. But I've got a flag on her in the Fleet database for suspicious activities, and a personal flag . . . she's been in the same system, but remote, during raids by Aethar's World pirates and by the Jenniky gang." He cleared his throat. "My guess is she's either a spotter or a paymaster. Maybe both. Not in her own right, of course, but for someone else. My guess there is the Black Scratch; she claims to trade with Xolheim and Fiduc, and you know the Benignity has a strong presence there."
"Agreed. Keep an eye on her, then. Arkady?"
"Nothing—there. They've launched at us, and kicked up another ten gees acceleration. It's within our pattern, and I could stop their salvo with my bare hands, just about. Old stuff."
"A rock in the head will kill you just as dead," Heris quoted; Ginese laughed.
"Yes, Captain, but Aethar's prefers bang to finesse . . . look at my scans." Already the Sweet Delight's elegant ECM had confused the enemy missiles; Heris would need to order no evasive maneuvers at all. She worried more about the old escort, with her novice crew and her faked signatures. If they fired anything much at her . . . but the raider seemed intent on getting away.
"A lot of screaming on their bridge," Meharry said. "I can't understand their ugly language, but it's loud."
"Let me—" Koutsoudas switched back to that channel, and then grinned. "Svenik cussing out his scan tech for not seeing us first . . . someone's left the main speaker open; the station should be getting all this too. Handy for court, if we ever want to pursue it." If there was any court to pursue it in, Heris thought.
The Sweet Delight's missiles carried guidance systems normally found only in military weaponry. Whatever ECM the pirate vessel had didn't affect them; on Koutsoudas's enhanced scans, the missiles closed inexorably. Heris wondered if Svenik's ship had shields of any quality, or if he'd try to outrun them. She almost hoped he would; if he r
edlined his ship and blew it himself, it wouldn't be her fault. That was thinking like a civilian, though.
"Got him." Koutsoudas, who had seen the inevitable an instant before any of the rest. The pirate ship and the missiles merged, and exploded.
"Easiest kill I ever saw," Oblo said, as if affronted.
"I don't trust it," Heris said. "What's that other doing?"
"It'll be a while before they get it on their scans," Koutsoudas said. "They're still dumping . . . ask me again in a couple of minutes."
"Just tell me, 'Steban," Heris said. She felt itchy all over; like Oblo, she was almost irritated that it had been that easy. It felt unreal, like a training exercise. Something picked at her memory. The raider had been there before—that same raider—destroying things but doing less damage than such raiders could. So they'd expected the raider, and they'd gotten the raider . . . and all this time the second ship hung out there and watched. "Weapons off," she said abruptly. Meharry gave her a startled look, but shut her board down. " 'Steban, signal Grogon on tightbeam—shutdown, as dark as possible."
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