Rita Longknife - Enemy Unknown: Book I of the Iteeche War (Jump Point Universe 5)

by Mike Shepherd

  “Shut up,” Captain Quan spat, trying to get some quiet so he could think. “They were making ships all over during the war,” he said, half thinking out loud. “Who knows, somebody who didn’t know better might have made a few round like that.”

  “With its engines out on the edges?” Science didn’t sound convinced.

  Then the ship fired.

  One laser reached out from one of the pods on either side of the ball, but missed the Bucket.

  “What the hell,” the quartermaster said. She’d left her station to stand over Science’s board and kibitz. Now she had to hold on tight to his station chair as the navigator put the ship into a dodging and weaving pattern . . . without being ordered.

  “Keep up the jig,” the skipper snapped, then added, “Lasers, we got a fight on our hands. Shoot those damn pods.”

  “Give us a minute, sir, we ain’t got anyone standing by.”

  “Well get your dumb asses to those lasers. Nav, jig a lot more.”

  The Bucket threw herself to the right and left, up and down. It was approaching the ship at a half gee, but even Quan knew that turning his rear to those lasers to run away would be a dead man’s fool stunt. His ship didn’t have thick ice like a cruiser, but keeping the front of the ship between those lasers and his reactors seemed like a no brainer.

  “We’re ready to fire,” came back at him before the sphere got off another shot.

  The Bucket didn’t have a weapons officer. Hell, it only had four 4-inch lasers taken from other merchant ships. Captain Quan’s board had the targeting arrangement, such as it was. He laser ranged the alien, he got a good visual look at it, and fired Laser 1.

  He missed to the left a bit.

  “Nav, quit your jig for a second,” he snapped. Correcting his aim to the left, he set the cross hairs on the right laser pod and fired.

  The pod blew parts and pieces into space and the round ship twisted a bit off its course.

  Around him, his crew cheered.

  Then the other pod fired at the Bucket.

  This time the lights dimmed and alarms went off.

  “We’re hit,” the quartermaster screamed.

  “Shut up and have someone lock down compartments,” Quan ordered. The Bucket of Blood had been chosen to get the four lasers from three other captured tubs because whoever built this one had paid to have some pretty solid bulkheads built in between holds.

  “Nav, jig us good.”

  “Doing it, skipper, but if he just shot, ain’t he empty?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You gonna tell me which? Lasers, are we still in business?”

  “Number 1 is cut in half. Two is recharging. Three and Four are loaded, skipper. Let me get this bastard.”

  “Nav, when I tell you, hold us steady.”

  “You bet.”

  Quan did his best to set his cross hairs on the other pod.

  “Nav, steady.”

  The Bucket quit bucking. Quan chose the other pod as his target and pushed the button for Laser 3. He hit it, but there wasn’t a lot of crap flying. He did a minor adjustment and pushed the button for Laser 4.

  Something really got hit that time. There were sparks flying out into space. Wreckage for sure. Maybe even bodies.

  Again, the Bucket’s crew let out a cheered.

  “Reload the lasers,” Quan ordered. “Nav, keep up the jig, you hear?”

  “I’m hearing.” The Bucket danced its wild jig.

  “Everybody. Any of you that want to try your hand at boarding that round thing over there, report to the life boats section with any guns, knives or clubs that you got. If they don’t take another shot at us in a few minutes, I say we board her and see what we’ve captured.”

  The Bucket of Blood really rang with a cheer at that.

  For the next fifteen minutes, the Bucked did its dance and the sphere just drifted in space. Content that it wasn’t going to do anything more than that, Quan ordered the Bucket closer, but kept up the jig.

  They were only five klicks away, holding to the side where the forward part of the pod that spat lasers was well and done blown, before he ordered the lifeboats away with a boarding party.

  The boats were loaded thick enough to stink, few wanted to be left out. The Bucket’s Chief Master at Arms was a former master sergeant in the 1st Armored Division back on Savannah.

  “Okay, you maggots, stand aside and let me get some real soldiers to the head of the line,” Master Sergeant Nemanja shouted.

  His cronies from the 1st moved forward, several in battle armor, none in space suits, and the rest fell back. On his order, the life boat dropped loose and covered the distance to their first capture. A sailor with some experience had arranged to get himself in a space suit and was hanging on to the outside. He had a boat hook to help with the lifeboat matching locks.

  “I can see some sort of space lock,” the sailor reported on net, and gave the bosun at the helm of the lifeboat directions to get closer. He hooked a metal loop, but almost had his arm ripped off, trying to get the way off the lifeboat and pull it up to where it could match locks with the ship.

  Sergeant Nemanja was there, at the head of the line, as the locks matched enough to get a seal and the lifeboat’s hatch opened.

  “Strange airlock handle they got here,” he reported to the skipper.

  A moment later, he shouted, “Hey, I got it open. We’re in, me buckos.”

  Captain Quan found himself listening to silence for way too long after that.

  “What are you seeing, Sergeant. Don’t you have a camera you can turn on, or something?”

  “I don’t know, skipper, this place smells of fish, and there’s something wrong with its life support. It’s cold as a witch’s tit, and wet, too.”

  “Well, spread out and see where they’re hiding the good stuff.”

  “We’re looking, don’t you worry, boss.”

  Quan grinned. Everyone on the bridge was grinning.

  Then shouts started coming over the commlink. Shouts. Screams. Rifle fire.

  “What’s happening, Sergeant?”

  “Oh hell, get back, get back. Everyone back,” came in screams that sounded like Sergeant Nemanja, but Quan would never have taken the mean old cuss for such panic.

  “What’s happening,” Quan demanded, but he might as well have saved his breath.

  “Nav. Science, can you tell me anything?”

  “I’ve got something,” the science kid said, and the main screen lit up. It showed their intended victim. Only now, the lifeboat that had been docked was pulling away. It rammed the other lifeboat, but the two just bounced off each other with no apparent harm done.

  The same couldn’t be said for the two sailors riding outside them. One got crushed in the collision. The one that had helped the first boat dock had been knocked loose in its hasty withdrawal. He was cussing mad as he drifting off in space.

  “Damn it, everyone shut up,” Captain Quan shouted on net. “You bosuns on the two lifeboats. There’s a sailor loose, somebody snag him. Sergeant, what the hell happened?”

  “They were waiting for us. They had rifles, or something like them. And they’re huge. Monsters. Ten feet tall. Four eyes. Four arms. Four legs and way too many elbows and knees. I swear to God, skipper. Monsters. Shoot that thing out of space!”

  “What?” Quan shouted.

  “Monsters! Huge! Too many eyes. Way too many arms and legs. I swear to God!”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “I ain’t had a drop all day, skipper. Here, didn’t you shits see them?”

  “Yes.” “Hell yes.” “Monsters.” “Horrible,” and the likes filled the open mic.

  “Did any of you get pictures?” the skipper demanded.

  That brought dead silence.

  On the screen, the second lifeboat managed to collect the drifting sailor and both boats set course for the Bucket. Quan started thinking about organizing a second boarding party, with him leading it, but that got cut short.

 
The damn ship shot at them.

  After it was over, no one was quite sure what had happened, but something flew out from the ship to slam into the Bucket and explode. That happened just as the second life boat was about to hitch back in and it knocked it into the Bucket hard.

  Its hull ruptured and the bridge crew got to listen to a lot of screaming until the air was too thin to carry sound.

  The silence was almost as bad as the screaming.

  “Blow that thing to hell,” Quan ordered.

  No one argued that their prize was worth more risk.

  They backed off a couple of hundred klicks and then used the lasers to slice it in half, then quarters, then smaller. That done, they coasted back up to the wreckage and took a good look at it.

  Sergeant Nemanja was on the bridge by the time they did.

  “See, I told you! Four arms. Four legs. Four eyes,” he said as sensor boy’s cameras focused on just such a body as it drifted by.

  “Damn,” Quan said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Me neither,” grumbled the sergeant

  “Skipper, I don’t think that ship had anything on it that ever came from Earth,” the nerd at the science station said.

  “Kid, I think you just might be right,” the skipper said. “Nav, give me a course for home.”

  “Which home? Human space or Whitebred?”

  “Whitebred, I think.”

  Chapter 23

  For the next four jumps, the Bucket of Blood ran straight back to human space, retracing the jumps it had made. After that, Captain Quan recovered a bit of his lust for gold, or something to show for this trip, and he deviated their course to cover some new systems.

  They found two planets that might have promise. They didn’t land. What with only one lifeboat left, no one wanted to take a chance on being stranded on a strange planet. Besides, faced with the reality of landing, everyone pretty much funked out.

  With what they had for a science team, there was no way to tell if the planet had given them the crawling heebie-jeebies until important parts of their anatomy began falling off in a month or two.

  They recorded the interesting planets and left them to others to do something about later.

  Their new course left them with several options for their reentry to human space. Captain Quan talked them over with the navigator and then called a meeting of the crew.

  “We can make a beeline for Admiral Whitebred’s loving arms, or we can see what kind of loot we can scare up ourselves. There are a half dozen out-of-the-way planets that we can check out, cruise their approachs, and maybe catch a fat freighter. What do you say?”

  That actually got a cheer; everyone wanted to make at least one more try for some loot.

  No one got any loot at the first four systems they passed through. They had just jumped into their fifth one when the science geek let out a whoop.

  “We got one. Maybe a big one. It looks like this honey has one big reactor, but she’s strutting across the system at .6 gees.”

  “Payday,” Nav said.

  “Let’s not scare her,” the skipper said. “Nav, set a course for the jump she’s headed toward. Set it up so that we can change course when she’s about an hour out and jump her there.”

  “Doing it, boss. Oh, happy day! Are we going to show them! They sent us to scare up some dirt and we’re coming home with a bigger bag a of loot that any of them have got.”

  “Concentrate on your job, Nav,” Captain Quan said, but not too sharply. Nav was only saying what they all felt.

  The merchant skipper must really have been a stickler for the bottom line. Even with a strange ship in the system, it didn’t accelerate or make any attempt to get to the jump out before the Bucket of Blood got close.

  The crew went about their duties with a light air. Several could be heard to whistle. It was nice to finally have a happy ship.

  An hour short of the jump, Quan ordered the change in course and cut deceleration to .45 gees. That would have him in a position to take station astern of the merchant, with his lasers up her fat bottom.

  No skipper would resist when resistance meant death.

  The stupid captain of that fat ship just kept on her course.

  Captain Quan was right where he wanted to be, now again slowing at .7 gees, when he stood before the ship’s main screen, sucked in his gut, and announced, “Merchant ship in my cross hairs, this is the pirate ship Bucket of Blood. Vent your reactor core to space and prepare to be boarded.”

  Around him, his bridge crew grinned and pumped fists. It was nice to be a pirate, wasn’t it?

  “Pirate ship Bucket of Blood,” came from the screen but with no accompanying picture. Then it came up. “This is Captain Rita Nuu Longknife of the Society of Humanity cruiser Exeter. I have six 8-inch lasers bore sighted on your bridge. I suggest you dump your reactor to space, stow your personal arms and prepare to greet my Marines very, very peacefully.”

  “Holy shit!” The science nerd looked fit to piss his pants. “Ain’t she the wife of that Longknife guy? The one who offed President Urm?”

  “Oh, God,” Captain Quan said, collapsing into his captain’s chair.

  He heard a buzzing. “What’s that?”

  “I just started a program,” Nav said, “to wipe the nav computer. The main one,too. Ain’t no evidence we’re pirates.”

  “Geeze, kid, we just told her we was pirates, you idiot,” the quartermaster said. “Oh, what a pile of shit!”

  “Can you stop it?” the skipper asked.

  Nav did several things to his station. “No. I thought you’d want me to.”

  “There went our last chance to plea bargain,” Science said.

  “Engineering,” Quan said, with a sigh, “vent the reactor to space. All hands, we’ve got company coming: Marines. I strongly suggest you put your weapons away. You don’t want to mess around with these guys.”

  Chapter 24

  Captain Rita Nuu Longknife was grinning from ear to ear as she listened to her Marines on net. The boys with guns were quickly collecting these pirates.

  “I want to talk to that skipper when you’ve got him over here,” she informed the head of her Marine detachment.

  “He’s docile as a little lamb . . . that’s been clipped,” he added with a laugh.

  “Skipper, you really want to take a look at this,” Hesper said from where she sat at the science station.

  “What have you got?” Rita said, drifting over to float above her shoulder.

  “Look at that ship. It’s been in a fight. I make that out as a laser hit there, amidship,” she said, stabbing a finger at a rip in the ship’s hull plating. “I don’t know what to make of that big black burn mark, but it looks like some sort of explosive, not armor piercing, just something blew up on the ship’s plating and sprung a few.”

  Rita eyed the closeup picture and frowned. She had never seen anything like that in the war.

  “And here,” Hesper added, moving the view again. “One of their two lifeboats is missing. It looks like here something pranged into the hull close to the lifeboat mooring. It might have been the boat?”

  “That’s interesting,” Rita said, stroking her chin in thought. “Someone said something about giving up the content of their computers for a plea bargain. Who’s over there looking at their computers?”

  “A Marine technician. He says they’re pretty wiped. He’s found evidence of the wipe program. It’s one of the best. He doubts we’ll get anything out of them.”

  “Tell him to take real good care of those things. I’ve got a specialist who might be able to recover something.”

  An hour later, after feeding Alex, an exercise in zero gee that the fellow didn’t like but was getting better at, Rita coasted into the ship’s brig. It was small. Too small to hold all the pirates. Most were being held on the docking bay in cages welded together just for them. The captain and the bridge crew had drawn the few brig cells.

  “Wardhaven hangs pira
tes,” she said as an opener.

  “We ain’t pirates,” one of the kids in the next cell shouted.

  The captain just held on to the cell’s bars and stared at Rita, his knuckles going white as his grip on the bars tightened.

  “Pirates may be the least of your worries,” he finally said.

  That was not the defense Rita expected. She canted her head at him. “What makes you say that?”

  “Tell me, captain, is there any ship in your database that is just a big round ball? Round all around?”

  “Except for two pods opposite each other,” one of the others added.

  “Shut up, kid,” another young man, hardly older than the other said. “Let the old man tell this story.”

  “Okay.”

  Rita thought, then she tapped her commlink. “Hesper, do we have any round ships in our starship database?”

  “Round, ma’am?”

  “Like a ball,” the pirate captain said.

  “Round like a ball. Maybe with blisters or pods opposite each other.”

  “Nobody builds anything like that, ma’am.” came back from Rita’s bridge.

  “No,” Rita said. “Did you see something like that?”

  “We were about as far from human space as I was planning on going. We were headed for one more jump further out. We were supposed to hunt for new planets. Scouting for humanity’s future,” he said, putting the best shine on his crimes. “When what comes through the jump we were aiming for is this ball thing. We tried to hail it, but it fired on us. Hit us. You can see the damage.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen where you were hit by a laser,” Rita conceded.

  “We fired our own 4-inchers. In self-defense, see.”

  Rita made no effort to see.

  The captain gave her a bitter scowl. “Anyway, I took out their lasers. They seemed to be in the front of those pods. We think there were reactors behind them. Engines behind the reactors. Anyway, we drew its fangs and decided to go see who was shooting at us.”

  “You decided to board and capture, you mean. Like you tried to do to us,” Rita shot at him.

  “You going to let me tell you what happened or shall I just shut up?”