The Terran Privateer

by Glynn Stewart

  Of Course We’re Coming Back and Oaths of Secrecy were both drifting cold and silent in space. While the new ships were close enough they’d be able to pick up the two scout ships easily, there had been no active sensor sweeps.

  “Are they doing anything?” Andrew asked after studying the ships for a long moment. All of the ships so far were identical, though close enough in size to Tornado that he could see why Strobel had thought the cruiser might be there.

  “Not much,” Laurent told him. She’d only had a few seconds at her console herself—they hadn’t bothered to arrive separately, Of Course being far too small a ship for everyone not to already know—but it was apparently enough for a first-cut analysis.

  “They’re emerging from their hyper portals, matching angles with each other and then stabilizing speed at one percent of light,” she continued. “It’s station-keeping…it’s automated station-keeping.”

  “There were supposed to be robot freighters at Orsav,” Andrew said aloud. “But…this would be all of them. What happened?”

  “Last portals are closing,” Laurent announced. “I have fifty-one contacts…wait…confirm. Contact fifty-one is Tornado. We’re being pinged.”

  “Oh, thank gods,” Andrew sighed. “Put Bond on.”

  The main viewscreen flickered and then settled onto the image of Tornado’s two-tiered bridge, centered on the figure of the cruiser’s Captain. Annette Bond’s uniform was perfect, her hair braided and pulled off to one side, everything in perfect place…so it took Andrew a moment to realize that her right eye was gone and a raw red line cut down that entire side of her face around a plain black eye patch.

  “Captain Bond, what happened?” he demanded. A moment later, he heard Captain Sade ask the same question as a side window popped up on his screen, linking the other scout-ship captain into the conversation.

  “Our friend Forel turned out to have his own objectives,” Bond replied after a long moment. “A lot of his own objectives.

  “We’ve prepared a briefing packet for both of you, but the long story short is that Forel was involved in a conspiracy to drag the A!Tol into an outright war with the Kanzi by destroying several Kanzi core systems. Since his plan involved a war with Terra in the middle of it and using about thirty thousand human slaves as his key into Kanzi space, we had a disagreement.

  “The rest of the armada backed him and we blew them to dust bunnies,” she said grimly. “I left Subjugator with the A!Tol so they are fully aware of the conspiracy, but I am not prepared to accept any chance of that plan succeeding.

  “I’ll need both of you aboard Tornado for a planning session in four hours,” Bond ordered. “I don’t expect there to be any ships left in this empty corner of space in twelve.”

  #

  Even with the briefing packet, they’d been in the meeting for over an hour before Andrew and Sade felt they’d really caught up with everything that had happened in Orsav after they’d left. Shaking his head at the mental image of Tornado taking on the entire pirate armada and winning, Andrew leaned back in his chair and studied the room.

  All of Tornado’s senior officers were present, along with Ki!Tana and Jake Harmon. He and Sade were the only ones who weren’t attached to the big cruiser and permanently under Bond’s sway, and Andrew carefully considered how to phrase his question.

  He respected Captain Bond, but he’d also watched her destroy a career many would have given their left arm for in pursuit of justice. She hadn’t been wrong, but her determination to see things through could be excessive.

  “Ma’am,” he said slowly, addressing Bond directly, “I have to ask. Is this really our fight? No offense to Ki!Tana, but the A!Tol conquered our world. They are not our friends. And the Kanzi?” he shivered. “Blue-furred scum of the highest order. I’ll shed no tears for their deaths.

  “A war between them would weaken our conquerors and make liberating Earth easier. I’m no fan of atrocity, but there’s a difference between committing mass murder and not killing ourselves trying to stop it!”

  “The problem with that theory, Captain Lougheed,” Bond replied, her remaining eye focusing on him, “is that Earth is on the front lines of the war Forel’s sponsors want to start. The coreward border of both empires is with powers strong enough that flanking through their territory is impossible.

  “To flank the defenses and the fleets each has prepared along their border, they would come through Sol. To pick an example from our history, Sol is Belgium—and the Kanzi will invade through us.

  “Even were we to somehow convince ourselves that it was moral to stand by and watch—what, fifty billion Kanzi and as many slaves of a dozen races?—die, our homeworld would be ground to dust in the war to follow. We could easily see Sol be among the first targets of the Kanzi’s starkillers.”

  Her single eye somehow managed to hold his gaze, looking into his soul before Andrew finally blinked and bowed his head.

  “We still don’t know what kind of defenses they have in place at this lab,” he pointed out. “We could hand the coordinates over to the A!Tol and let them handle it. They have squadrons of capital ships, armies, all of the things we don’t have.”

  “There are two things we have that the A!Tol don’t,” Bond told him. “We know where the lab is. We could tell the A!Tol that, but it wouldn’t be easy for us and would cost time. And time is the other thing we have; we don’t know how long the attack will be delayed if Forel is overdue. Even with the delay here, we will arrive only a few days at most later than he would have. An A!Tol force would be weeks behind.”

  She shook her head and Andrew nodded slowly.

  “We are the only force in position to intervene, Andrew,” Bond told him, her voice soft but firm. “It is possible, yes, that their defenders will be more than we can handle. But we are talking one hundred billion or more lives within weeks. Trillions inside years. We’re talking about Earth herself being burned to a cinder as one more collateral casualty of a galactic war.

  Bond’s eye flashed as she looked around the room, and Andrew knew he wasn’t the only one being measured.

  “We were sent into exile to save Earth,” she reminded them all. “Ordered to abandon our world so that when the time came we could liberate her. Protect her.

  “This isn’t the mission we were sent into exile for,” she allowed, “but we knew nothing about galactic society when we left Sol. We didn’t even know we sat on the border between two great powers, let alone that someone would try and turn their cold war hot.

  “If we let this happen, there may be no blood on our hands, but we will always know we could have stopped it. Earth might survive. But are we prepared to gamble on that? Are we prepared to bet the lives of our entire species on those odds?

  “I am not,” Bond said flatly. “And even if I was, there are fifteen thousand humans held captive in that base. We are going to free them. We are going to stop this goddamn war. We are going to make sure that our homeworld is safe.”

  Andrew wasn’t leaning back in his chair anymore. He was leaning forward with everyone else. The one-eyed woman who led them knew exactly how to yank on her people’s strings.

  “All right,” he told her. “I’m in.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where this ends, Captain Bond, but you’re right: we have to free those people.”

  The room was silent for a long moment, tension slowly releasing. Andrew doubted he was the only one who hadn’t been sure, who’d questioned taking on what really should have been the A!Tol’s fight.

  But Bond was right. It might be the Imperium’s fight, but their home was still in the line of fire.

  Which made it their fight, too.

  #

  Annette waited out the silence after Lougheed’s statement, meeting each of her senior officers’ and junior Captains’ eyes, making sure they were all in. She saw some hesitation, some uncertainty, but no objections. They’d come this far together; it seemed they’d go the rest of the way.

  “Our other c
oncern is the robot freighters,” she reminded them all. “Ki!Tana—if we send them to Tortuga, is anyone going to raise a fuss over our claiming them all as our own?”

  “Tortuga regards possession as ownership,” the A!Tol pointed out. “While we cannot send the ships unescorted, once they are delivered as ‘ours’, no one will question it. Anyone who does will do the math on what must have happened to Forel and the others and not make a fuss about it.”

  “Do we need to wait until Tornado is available?” Kurzman asked. “With us going after Forel’s sponsors, it could be a while before we’re in a position to guard them.”

  “The only ships that regularly visit Tortuga that would require Tornado to intimidate them died at Orsav,” Ki!Tana said calmly. “The remaining pirate ships are only barely a match for Of Course We’re Coming Back or Oaths of Secrecy. Even with this rich a prize, the handful of ships left at Tortuga would hesitate.”

  “That’s the best we can pull off,” Annette concluded. She’d have preferred something more definite than “hesitate”, but she was also confident in the ability of either of her scout ships to blow the first pirate to come after them to hell. The second ship to attack them would have an easier time, but the pirates wouldn’t know that.

  “We’ll need one of the scouts with us at G-KXT-Three-Five-Seven,” she said aloud, considering. “Captain Sade—you’ll take the freighters back to Tortuga. The computers will respond to you. If it looks risky, hold off on going in, understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the ethereally tall woman replied. “Should we wait for you at Tortuga?”

  “No,” Annette decided. “Ki!Tana—Ondu will honor the existing agreement and sell all of the freighters and their cargos?”

  “He would be a fool not to.”

  “All right. Sade, I want you to return to the Alpha Centauri rendezvous point once everything is set up with Ondu,” she ordered. “If we haven’t shown up after one month from today, it’s up to you what you do. I would suggest getting in touch with the Weber Network—the proceeds from these freighters should suffice to purchase multiple heavy warships to help liberate.”

  “You may have a problem finding someone willing to sell them,” Ki!Tana pointed out, “but unless Ondu does dramatically worse than I expect, the proceeds should suffice to buy one, possibly even two, ships of the line.”

  Annette checked the value on her communicator. She hadn’t looked at it in that light, but Ki!Tana was right. Even her most pessimistic valuations would enable Earth to acquire a capital ship with a full escort—a force potentially capable of kicking the A!Tol out.

  “This raid may have enabled us to achieve our main objective,” she finally allowed. “We will attempt to return to Alpha Centauri with the rescued prisoners before that month is up. If we do not, it will be because, for whatever reason, we are unable to.”

  She turned to Lougheed.

  “Captain Lougheed, Of Course We’re Coming Back will accompany Tornado to KXT,” she ordered. “I’m thinking we’ll have you drop in on the opposite side of the gas giant from us to act as a second set of eyes. With everything these people are trying to pull, I have to assume they have a contingency plan for being discovered.

  “We are talking about a level of scum that kidnapped thirty thousand people to enable them to murder a hundred billion sapients,” she continued, her voice firm. “We will not allow them to escape. We will not allow them to run. I want our people rescued. I’d like to get my hands on those starkillers. But we will not let these sons of bitches escape.

  “Is that clear?”

  Chapter 52

  “Admiral Villeneuve?” a voice interrupted Jean’s thoughts.

  His thoughts weren’t much to write home about. While his hosts had been wonderfully polite and respectful, it had been strongly suggested that he not return to the planet beneath him. Jean’s impression was that if he really forced the issue, Governor Medit! would let him return home, but the Imperial government of Earth didn’t feel he would be safe.

  He rose from the comfortable chair in the simply appointed quarters they’d given him aboard Medit!’s battleship flagship and crossed to the door, opening it with a tap on the control pad.

  “Yes, what is it?” he asked. He’d given up on trying to get the A!Tol personnel not to call him by his old rank. They seemed determined to give him more respect than he felt he deserved.

  “Captain Lira sends his compliments and requests for you to join him on Shield of Innocents’ bridge,” a junior Tosumi officer told him. Jean didn’t have enough exposure to the four-armed species to judge, well, anything about the officer, but he suspected they were both young and nervous.

  “I am not busy,” he admitted. He was also curious—even now, he had yet to set foot on the bridge of an A!Tol warship. “Lead the way.”

  The Tosumi made an odd swirling gesture with all four arms and set off at a gentle pace, one Jean could easily keep up with. Modern medicine meant he was far haler than he might have been at his age even a century earlier, but he was still seventy, not thirty.

  The pristine white walls and corridors of the Imperial warships were still mentally jarring for him. He’d now seen the small robots that scurried along floors and walls, cleaning as they went, but the ship was still too smooth and too clean for his brain to process as a warship.

  Nonetheless, he could tell when they passed beyond the small area around his quarters he was familiar with and into the deeper core of the battleship. The translator they’d given him did a good job of reading the signs and iconography, and he thought he could make his way back to his quarters.

  Finally, though, the Tosumi brought him to an immense, triple-layered security hatch. The hatch was currently wide open, but its presence was obvious and intimidating as Jean stepped through onto the bridge of the Imperial battleship Shield of Innocents.

  In many ways, the circular bridge resembled the ones the UESF had built for years. There were two semicircular balconies rising up above the main floor, occupied presumably by the same kinds of analysts and backup teams that filled them on a UESF ship, and main consoles on the lowest level for the senior officers to coordinate their departments for the captain.

  The bridge was a busy place, with members of at least six different species swarming over the consoles, chattering in at least as many languages. Each member of the crew wore the earbuds of translators, actively translating between their native languages as they worked.

  In the center of the chaos, a raised dais held a command chair occupied by a tall alien with blue skin. As Jean approached, the figure rose and turned to face him, revealing a face with no hair, small dark eyes, and a flattened beak instead of a nose or mouth.

  “I am Captain Lira of Shield of Innocents,” the figure introduced herself. “Welcome to my bridge, Admiral Villeneuve. I hope your stay aboard my vessel has been pleasant?”

  “So far, Captain,” Jean allowed. “I was surprised to be asked to join you. Is something going on?”

  “Look to the screen, Admiral,” Lira told him, gesturing to the massive holographic tank occupying the easily fifteen-meter-tall front of the bridge. The view was focused on a group of ships, and Jean studied them carefully.

  He couldn’t read the A!Tol iconography without using his translator, but from his studies of his world’s conquerors, he could tell he was looking at a full Imperial battle group. Eight battleships—a half-squadron, the same size of force that had conquered Sol—plus escorts and transports.

  “That’s a lot of ships to be here,” he said carefully. “What happened?”

  “Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh wanted to be absolutely certain his passengers reached Sol safely,” Captain Lira told him. “We have retrieved many, though sadly not all, of the humans kidnapped during our occupation of Earth. Those transports Tan!Shallegh escorts are carrying over fourteen thousand rescuees.”

  Jean stared at the screen in shock. He’d believed Medit! when the Governor had said they would find Earth’s missing
souls, but this was…unexpected. The sheer scale of the rescue boggled belief.

  “How?” he asked.

  “It is a long story and it appears we cannot take all of the credit,” Lira told him. “My understanding is that the Fleet Lord wishes to speak with you personally, both to explain where we found your people and to deliver his apologies for failing your world so badly.”

  #

  It was over two hours later when Tan!Shallegh’s shuttle finally made it over to Shield of Innocents and the A!Tol Admiral joined Jean in a plain visiting officer’s office. The Fleet Lord’s uniform didn’t hide the mixing and shifting hues of his skin: green mixed with orange and blue.

  Jean had managed to find some information on A!Tol skin hues. The Fleet Lord was determined to see this through, but was also angry about something and curious about something, enough so in both cases to at least register through the determination.

  He could see why Earth’s new overlords tended to be an honest species. Successfully deceiving each other had to be impossible; they wouldn’t have even learned the skill before meeting other races.

  “Admiral Villeneuve,” Tan!Shallegh said quietly. “Is Miss McQueen still aboard?”

  “Unlike me, Medit! allowed her to return to Earth,” Jean told him dryly. “She needed to get back to work.”

  “I would have liked to speak with her directly, but I do not believe I will have time,” the Fleet Lord admitted. “I owe you an apology, Admiral. I swore to you, personally, that something like this would not happen. I failed to prevent it.”

  “I am not who you need to apologize to, Fleet Lord.”

  “I know,” Tan!Shallegh agreed. “I have spoken to many of the rescuees we are returning in person and via communicator. I will shortly be going on your—Global News Network, I think it is?—to speak with your Jess Robin and present my apologies to your entire world.”