“Captain Bond of Tornado,” he returned the greeting. “You have made quite an impression on Tortuga. I always fear when I return that I will find the entire star system gone, but the havoc this time is almost as impressive! I wanted to meet the spawn-source of such chaos.”
“I’m certainly not able to destroy stars, Captain Forel,” Annette told the pirate captain. “Otherwise, I am as you see: a privateer in command of a handful of ships. Beyond that”—she smiled—“my secrets are my own.”
Forel’s long tongue flickered in a twisting spiral accompanied by a sharp barking noise. She thought he was laughing. It was always hard to tell, and the translator didn’t tend to concern itself with anything but words.
“It is the A!Tol I fear would destroy this star,” he warned her. “It is within their power and they wisely fear the Laian exiles of the Crew. I do not mean to swim into your secrets, Captain Bond. Your ship and her exploits are impressive.”
“We have worked hard and achieved much,” Annette said carefully. The A!Tol could destroy star systems? She was going to have to find out if the alien was being metaphorical. If not…that was something else to consider in her strategies.
“Indeed. Wisdom and firepower create many opportunities, do they not?” Forel asked. “My…wise friends in the A!Tol Navy have delivered such an opportunity to me, Captain Bond, but I fear I lack the firepower to fully swim the currents.”
“There are many ships here open for hire, I presume,” she pointed out. “Tornado is but one ship. My scout ships aren’t worth much in a fight.”
“And most of the pirates here are not worth much more,” the Indiri agreed. “With Tornado matched to my Subjugator, they will be useful, but without Tornado, every ship in Tortuga would not be enough.”
“Unless you could recruit the Crew.”
“Unless I could recruit the Crew,” he allowed. “Which we both know will not happen. Tradition says the heavies split half the spoils, Captain,” he told her. “The other pirates share the rest amidst them, but you and I would walk away with a quarter of the prize each. Hear me out, Captain Bond.”
She wanted to shut the disturbingly moist alien down and send him on his way. Forel was a slaver, the type of sapient who would capture others and force them into servitude for his own profit—the name of his ship said as much.
But.
The sales of their cargo and prizes had ended lower than she’d hoped or Ondu had predicted. They’d covered the payments to the Crew, but only because Annette’s senior officers didn’t have much more use for the money than she did. They’d pooled their funds, made the last payment on the upgrades, and covered the maintenance fees, docking fees, and food resupply.
But now not only was Annette broke and the flotilla account empty, she owed her senior officers over a million marks. She wasn’t, quite, desperate—but a score large enough that Forel would accept a quarter would rebuild their accounts, enable them to buy the tech to deliver to Earth so that Tornado wouldn’t stand alone against the A!Tol.
“All right,” she said finally. “You have my attention, Captain Forel.”
The wide mouth opened even farther, thick lips pulling back disgustingly to reveal rows of deadly sharp teeth in a disturbing attempt at a smile—and how did Forel know humans well enough to make even that pathetic attempt at the gesture?
With a gesture of a hand she half-expected to be webbed, Forel brought up a star chart of the region.
“The A!Tol maintain a series of logistics bases along the border with the Kanzi,” he explained swiftly, highlighting a number of stars in green. “This one is their newest in this sector, positioned to support their operation against your system.” The farthest green star along the spiral arm flashed.
“They have completed the full supply loadout for the facility,” he noted. “Food, missiles, repair parts, molecular circuitry cores—everything you captured on your way to Tortuga, in even vaster quantities. Because piracy in this sector has grown worse lately, with some high-profile captures, they have pulled a lot of ships back to the main Navy base in the region, here at Kimar.”
A star flashed red. It was the same one their intel said was the Navy base where Earth’s conqueror, Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh, was based.
“The logistics base has significant fixed defenses, but I have acquired the codes for the orbital constellation,” Forel noted. “There are also a cruiser and several destroyers. Even with the control codes, I cannot take even the cruiser on my own.
“But with two heavies,” he gestured to Annette, “we can blow the constellation, trap the defending ships, and take control of the system. The loot from a Navy logistics depot will set up every being involved as a king, swimming in females or jewels or whatever they choose!”
He was practically…no, he was salivating at the thought. She wasn’t sure if it was Indiri in general or just Forel who was this disgusting. She had her suspicions, though, and they were relatively complimentary to the species.
“That’s a lot of cargo,” she pointed out carefully. “That won’t fit on the pirate ships.”
“The choicest loot will,” Forel replied. “For the rest, the base is supplied with a small fleet of automated ships, designed to deliver cargo to formations in need as quickly as possible. We will load the rest onto those and send them to Tortuga to be sold and divided.
“Even a quarter of this will make you and me rich beyond dreams, Captain Bond,” he told her. “But if you need more incentive…”
She waited in silence. It was a lucrative operation, one that could set her up to pull a lot of resources Earth’s way, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to work with Karaz Forel.
She wasn’t sure she could work with Karaz Forel.
“I’m listening,” she said shortly.
“I know from Yardmaster Folphe that you are looking for schematics of military hardware,” he noted. “Shields, missiles, proton beams—I’m guessing you humans have a hidden shipyard somewhere.”
Annette said nothing. He was far closer to the truth than she liked, though she did like where his hint was going.
“I have the latest schematics of A!Tol military hardware, acquired from my…wise friends in the Navy,” Forel told her. “While those schematics are worth much, let’s be honest, copying them doesn’t cost much. If you sign on to this operation, I will back your twenty-five percent share, I will bring the codes for the defense constellation, and I will give you the full schematics for the latest generation of A!Tol weapons, engines, power generators…and the cruisers and super-battleships they mount them on.”
His horrible fake smile appeared again as she blinked at that.
“You have not even met their super-battleships yet,” he pointed out. “Just their battleships. Just one super-battleship would make everyone hesitate to tangle with Earth. I do not know if whatever yard you have hidden in murky waters could build it, but the designs may have value regardless.”
She sighed.
“You make an offer I would be a fool to refuse, Captain Forel,” she admitted. “Very well. Tornado will need another day to finish her yard work, but we’re in.”
“Warm waters!” he exclaimed. “I will reach out to the other Captains. This will be a pirate armada such as this corner of the galaxy has never seen!”
#
James Wellesley had no idea what kind of creature the egg was from. Even cooked, his little portable scanner told him the things would easily kill him. It was a pretty thing in speckled blue, a little under five centimeters long, and it shivered slightly in the fingers of his power armor gauntlet.
“Good job, Major,” Ral told him. The Yin who’d attached himself to the Special Space Service Fifty-Second Company’s headquarters section was something of a lucky find. While he hadn’t been formally trained as an armorer, he’d apparently done enough of the tuning of previous sets that he was able to handle the final calibrations for Tornado’s troopers new power armor.
“Now,” the sharp-beake
d blue biped continued, “rotate, walk over to the bench and put the egg down.”
James grimaced. The floor of the room was covered in little blue eggshells where troopers had lost control of the gauntlets, or dropped the egg while turning, or failed to hold tightly enough while walking, or… There was a cleaning bot in the closet of Tornado’s armory. Ral was leaving the mess on the floor intentionally, to make the apparently simple challenge even harder.
Carefully, ever so carefully, he turned. He felt the servos and powered musculature shift with him, moving the hundred-and-fifty-kilogram mass of the suit of armor while putting only the slightest of strain on his own muscle.
He crossed the room, put the egg down amidst the others there—and then twitched, crushing the egg into a thousand pieces as the communicator in the armor helmet buzzed. He sighed.
“I should have left the communicator turned off,” he complained to Yin, then glanced at the icon on his heads-up display. The suit read his eye motion, confirmed his hold to make it an order, and then opened the channel.
“Wellesley,” he said snappily. “What is it?”
“Major,” Captain Bond’s cool tones responded, and James swallowed the rest of his tirade. Things were getting flexible aboard Tornado, but not that flexible.
“I need to know if your troopers are ready to deploy,” she asked calmly.
James surveyed the room covered in eggshells. They’d expanded the armory by the simple expedient of cutting out the walls for several other surrounding rooms and welding their doors shut. This section, with the power armor, had been nicknamed the morgue—and next to it, just clear of the egg debris, were the racked plasma cannons, automatic grenade launchers, and multi-drum shotguns that were designed to link to the suits.
They were still fine-tuning the suits, but every member of his company was now rated on one of those weapons.
“We’re at seventy-five percent on the suits,” he admitted. “Some fine-tuning work to do, but my company can drop and my company can fight. What do you need, Captain?”
“We appear to have signed on for the biggest pirate raid in recent history, Major,” Bond told him. “We’re getting a quarter of the loot and all of the schematics we need for Earth out of it,” she continued, “but I don’t trust our partners.
“I want your company ready to make ground landings and make sure we get our share of the goods,” she continued. “I also want you to have at least a troop prepped for a boarding action, just in case we need to make sure our friends keep their promises.
“Can you do it?”
Inside the helmet, James grinned as he continued to look at the weapons, each of them flickering up ghostly overlay data in his screens as their encrypted chips responded to his suit.
“We can do that,” he confirmed. “Not a problem.”
“Good. I’ll have more data soon. We’ll be on our way within seventy-two hours.”
“We’ll be ready,” James promised. Letting the channel close, he removed the helmet and met Ral’s gaze.
“What do you need?” the Yin asked.
“Everyone in the company to the highest calibration you can get as quickly as possible,” James ordered. “Speed prioritized over hundred percent, understood?
“Tornado is going back to war.”
Chapter 41
“Dock reports all umbilicals retracted,” Amandine reported. “I confirm. Tornado is floating free, ready to activate the gravitational-hyperspatial interface momentum engine.”
Annette felt a huge sense of relief sweep over her and stretched with a rare brilliant smile at her bridge crew as her ship finally edged its way free of the construction slip that had been her home for the last thirty days.
“Take us out, Lieutenant Commander,” she ordered.
“I have a clear entry zone; bringing the drive up at one kilometer per second,” Amandine said calmly. There was no perceptible change on Tornado’s bridge—indeed, none of the work done over the last month had noticeably changed the bridge—but the gantries of the yard disappeared almost instantly.
“We are clear of Tortuga and inside the rings,” he stated a moment later. “Self-tests on the drive are showing clear and green, but we don’t have the space in here to test them out.”
Tornado’s drive was now supposed to be able to reach half of lightspeed, but the space Tortuga was hidden within was only a hundred thousand kilometers or so across.
“That’s all right,” Annette told him. “I don’t like it, but we’re going to have go on self-tests and the Crew’s word. We don’t really want to show off in front of our new friends. Rolfson—weapon and defense status?”
“Beams, launchers and shields all show green on self-test,” he confirmed. “Self-tests on the plasma antimissile suite are showing some cyclic issues on the hydrogen feeds. Metharom is looking into it.”
Annette threw a readiness display up on her command chair’s miniscreens, studying her ship’s status. Everything checked out, though her only source on the capabilities of her upgraded command was the Laian Crew themselves.
“So, Ki!Tana,” she said conversationally, turning her head to look at the big A!Tol’s now-permanent bench in the nook beside her, “have the Laians played straight with us?”
“I have been going over the work with Metharom as everything was installed,” her alien companion told her. “They have installed technology on your vessel I have never seen outside of their own ships. They have held some things back, but they have installed everything they promised you. You would likely lose against a modern ship from the Core powers, but against the empires in the spiral arms? They will never see you coming.”
Annette glanced at a collection of icons on her screen.
“So,” she murmured, “do we think they sold our new specs to our Indiri friend?”
Ki!Tana clacked her beak, her skin streaking red in amusement.
“My dear Captain, I know the Crew didn’t sell Karaz Forel the specs for your ship, because I sold him the specs for this ship,” she told Annette. “They may have been the specs before the refit, but he did not specify—and he paid richly.”
Tornado’s Captain stared at the strange, apparently potentially immortal alien on her bridge in surprise as a round of chuckles went around the bridge.
“You had a powerful ship when you reached Tortuga, Captain,” Ki!Tana finished. “He underestimates you now. He also lacks the experience to understand what the armor means: few outside the Core had seen armor such as yours in action.”
“Well, then, let’s not keep our new friends waiting,” Annette said with a smile. “Amandine, take us out to join them. We have an armada to lead!”
#
Annette watched with cautious eyes as Amandine skillfully cut around the massive bulk of Tortuga to join Karaz Forel’s fleet. With shares in as massive a score as the amphibious pirate was promising, he’d managed to talk almost every ship in the pirate station out of their hiding places for this operation.
It was more ships than Annette had expected. Subjugator and Tornado were the heavy hitters, Forel’s ship half a megaton heavier than Tornado’s own two million tons.
The Indiri ship was the first big pirate ship they’d seen since Rekiki’s Fang, and it was clear that unlike Fang, Subjugator had been built for this purpose. While she was heavier and wider than Tornado, much of her mass was focused in a heavily armored central sphere, with three interlocked rings holding much of her weaponry, while the central structure protected her cargo and engines. Part of the sphere was a massive hatch, clearly designed to scoop up smaller vessels like a swooping bird of prey.
If Annette had built a ship to be a privateer and a raider, it might not have looked much like the Indiri ship, but the same points of “protected cargo space”, “capture capability” and “heavy armaments” would have been ticked off.
The rest of the pirate fleet was a far more motley mix. Fifty-six ships, including Annette’s two scout ships, formed a rough sphere around the tw
o heavies. They varied from ships even smaller than her scouts, mostly designed to ram and board slower ships with their entire crews, to ships the size of old UESF battleships with significant weapons and armor that were still barely a match for an A!Tol destroyer.
There was no uniformity, discipline or organization to Karaz Forel’s pirate armada, but the fifty-eight ships represented an incredible amount of firepower. Annette was impressed.
Her cruiser finally slotted into its place at the center of the rough formation, alongside Subjugator, and Annette reviewed the whole situation grimly. This wasn’t what she’d envisaged when she’d been sent away from Sol. She hadn’t known enough to plan for victory, but she certainly hadn’t expected making allies with a slaver and a fleet of pirates.
The attack would provide resources to help liberate Earth and weaken the A!Tol presence in the area around Sol, both high on her objectives, but she couldn’t help feeling they were missing something when these were the allies they found in their quest.
“Ma’am, we have Forel on the channel for you,” Chan reported.
“Put him on the main screen,” she ordered, swallowing her discomfort as she faced the disgusting creature she’d tied her mission to for now.
Karaz Forel appeared on the screen, his face split in his grotesque imitation of a human smile. The camera was surprisingly tightly focused, showing only the Indiri and his command chair. A faint mist sprayed down from above the alien, slicking his fur with moisture and somehow managing to make him look even less clean and organized.
“Captain Bond. Your ship is most impressive,” he smarmed at her. “Is your dock work complete?”
“It is,” she told him. “Are any of this collection going to break down before we leave the system?”
He laughed, his tongue twisting in that disturbing spiral again.
“If any of them do, we’ll leave them behind!” he told her. “With your Tornado and my Subjugator, the rest are just to keep the small fish off of our backs while we finish the job. If you’re ready, I see no reason not to find the current, do you?”
The Terran Privateer Page 30
