‘Identity?’ Idris demanded.
Mikhain scanned his tactical display as he replied.
‘No identification squawks on any frequency, no registration codes or known colours broadcast.’
Sansin took his seat on the bridge and his practiced old eye scanned the charts, tactical displays and the radar tracks of the incoming vessels.
‘Launch the CAG with the alert-five aircraft,’ he ordered. ‘I want support for Reaper Flight out there right now.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Mikhain responded.
The captain surveyed the displays. ‘How many contacts now, exactly?’
The Atlantia’s communications specialist, Lael, replied moments later.
‘Twenty seven individual craft,’ she said. ‘Various exhaust readings from all of them suggesting varied types.’
Idris looked at Mikhain, whose expression had darkened to a scowl. ‘Brigands.’
The captain nodded.
‘No distinguishable formation,’ he observed of the onrushing craft, ‘no apparent colours or planetary flag, multiple craft types liberally deployed. They must have been here for quite a while.’
Brigands, buccaneers, corsairs, privateers and pirates were as much a part of Etherean legend as many other planets, first on terrestrial oceans and then upon the far greater canvass of the cosmos. By their very nature they were marginalised, their crews often comprised of escaped convicts and wanted felons, those who did not wish to conform but instead to disrupt, to profit from the suffering of others. Despised and despising, pirates had naturally migrated to the furthest known, least hospitable and generally uninhabited systems. Only the most pioneering of exploratory vessels had regularly encountered pirates in the farthest reaches of explored space, such as the mineral-rich Tyberium Fields, and they had generally been required to carry heavy weaponry to deter attacks from such marauders.
Three decades previously Idris Sansin had been the commander of a smaller vessel, the Ventura, a well-armed Colonial vessel manned by three hundred personnel and equipped with two full squadrons of Phantom fighters and the rather aptly-named Corsair bombers. The Ventura had been tasked by the admiralty with sweeping the shipping lanes of the Tyberium Fields, actively seeking out pirates after they had conducted several daring raids on massive but lumbering corporate merchant vessels.
During the course of the six-month cruise the Ventura had captured or destroyed seventeen pirate craft, many of them stolen years before from law-abiding crews who had then been set adrift in escape capsules in deep space. Not all had been found before their survival systems had exhausted their fuel.
There had been no quarter given to those pirates found guilty of causing the deaths of employees of the mining companies or of killing owner-operators. Vetoing the normal Etheran laws, the high court had deemed that as the killings had occurred outside of Etherean space, so the normal rights afforded convicted criminals did not apply. Thus were some forty eight pirates put to death for their crimes. Interestingly, given Etherea’s liberal society, there was minimal outcry at the sentences – one of the most feared ways to die in modern society was to be cast adrift in space, to tumble endlessly into the void and slowly freeze to death. By contrast, as it was noted in the media, a swift death by controlled plasma charge administered to the guilty pirates was virtually painless.
‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Mikhain asked out loud. ‘That star could destroy Chiron any moment if the planet’s magnetic field is overwhelmed.’
‘That,’ Idris said, ‘is a very good question. Lael, what’s the history of pirate activity in this system?’
Lael scanned the records.
‘The instability of the star and its distance from the core systems put it out of the range of almost all but military vessels, making it something of a haven for criminal enterprise. There are some charts based on a visit by a mining company that operated out here some decades ago, but they cleared out when the star became too volatile and their operating profits too low to justify this far out.’
Idris stood up from his chair and began pacing back and forth as he spoke.
‘They have a lot of vessels, a lot of firepower.’
Mikhain stared at the captain for a brief instant. ‘You’re not thinking of talking to them?’
Idris glared at Taron. ‘Who’s down there?’
The smuggler shrugged. ‘You want your people back, you’ll need me to liase with the brigand force down there. You don’t let me go, who knows what will happen?’
Idris ignored the smuggler.
‘Maintain an open channel,’ he suggested to Lael. ‘Let’s see who we’re actually dealing with here.’
*
‘Defensive break, go!’
Evelyn hauled her Raython into a hard right turn toward Teera’s fighter and was immediately caught by surprise by the immense G-forces that drove her into her seat. Even with the Raython’s on-board computers preventing her from over-stressing the airframe, she herself was unfamiliar with the strains of atmospheric flying and her vision turned almost immediately grey.
Evelyn broke off the turn as she saw Teera’s fighter sweep overhead, vapour trails spiralling from the wing tips and puffing in clouds above the fuselage.
‘Watch the G-forces!’ Evelyn yelled.
Teera’s Raython rolled onto its back and plummeted from the sky for a moment before rolling upright again and pulling out of its dive.
‘I blacked out!’ she called back.
Evelyn didn’t have time to reply as a flash of plasma fire rocketed past her Raython and the onrushing interceptors flashed by her. She glimpsed various types of craft including at least three dirty-looking Raythons amid a mixture of old bombers, modified survey craft and civilian transports.
‘Keep your speed down,’ Evelyn advised as she turned once more, keeping the G-forces low. ‘Try to out-turn them!’
The Raythons swept around their turns but Evelyn could tell instantly that they were at a disadvantage. The motley formation of craft turned wildly across the skies, less agile than Evelyn’s fighter but their pilots more experienced at atmospheric combat and able to push their craft closer to the limits of their performance.
The equation was simple: experience and numbers had put the odds in their attacker’s favour.
‘Cover the shuttle, stay between it and them!’ Evelyn ordered.
The sky seemed suddenly filled with enemy craft, their wings flashing with metallic brilliance against the cold blue sky as Evelyn rolled and pulled through a series of defensive manoeuvres, breathing hard and tensing her legs to keep the blood in her upper-body as the forces of gravity worked against her heart to drag it all down from her head.
Another salvo of shots raced past her canopy and she broke hard left and dragged her throttle back as she rolled inverted and looked behind her. Her head span as she did so but she spotted a small craft race by, overshooting her as she slowed. Evelyn rolled upright as she slammed the throttle open and the Raython accelerated in pursuit of the craft, which turned hard right in an attempt to shake her off.
‘Got you,’ Evelyn snarled.
Her plasma cannons locked onto the fleeing craft and Evelyn fired once.
Two blue plasma shots zipped away from her Raython and one crashed into the craft’s upper hull with a bright orange fireball and a trail of black smoke. The craft emerged from the blast and rolled slowly onto its back as it began diving toward the planet’s surface.
‘Splash one!’ Evelyn called.
She rolled away as a series of plasma blasts detonated off her port wing, rocking the Raython violently.
‘We’re outnumbered!’ Teera cried, and Evelyn looked up to see her wingman’s fighter twisting through a cloud of enemy craft all swarming to get a shot off at her.
‘Break left, full power!’ Evelyn called.
Teera veered toward Evelyn’s Raython and flashed by overhead as Evelyn aimed at the pursing group of craft and opened fire randomly at them all. Plasma blasts s
mashed into two of the craft as the rest of them scattered.
‘Where the hell did they get Raythons from?’ Teera asked.
Evelyn keyed her microphone.
‘Atlantia, Reaper Flight, do you copy?’
A hiss of static rippled in Evelyn’s ears.
‘We’re being jammed,’ Teera reported as her Raython opened fire on another of the attacking craft. ‘They can’t hear us!’
‘Where’s the shuttle?’ Evelyn called, a sheen of sweat now beading on her forehead, her hands clammy on the controls as a dull nausea spread through her stomach. ‘They alert fighters will be here soon enough if Atlantia can’t make contact! We just need to hold them off for long enough to…’
A new voice broke into the transmission frequency.
‘… to escape? That, I’m afraid, is no longer possible.’
Evelyn gripped her controls more tightly. ‘Who is this?’
‘The person targeting your shuttle craft,’ came the reply. ‘Surrender immediately or you will be blasted from the skies.’
‘We have a frigate supporting us and several squadrons of fighters all ready to…’
‘So do we,’ came the reply. ‘Surrender now! If your supporting fighters don’t turn back, we’ll blast them from existence too.’
Evelyn rolled her Raython level and searched the skies around her. She saw at least twelve craft all manoeuvring to shoot her, six of them trailing Teera’s Raython as a salvo of plasma blasts showered past her craft.
Almost immediately one of them struck Teera’s Raython and a plume of flame and smoke erupted from her tail.
‘I’m hit!’ Teera yelled. ‘Shutting my starboard engine down!’
The voice returned to the radio.
‘You’re running out of time.’
Evelyn spotted the shuttle high above them and surrounded by four craft, one of which had manoeuvred into position directly above it to prevent it from climbing away any further. A large, X-winged vessel with a cruel, hooked nose like a beak, it dwarfed the shuttle it was shadowing. Two smaller vessels were sitting in a perfect firing position, directly behind the shuttle.
Evelyn made her choice.
‘Reaper Flight, weapons cold, stand down.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Teera snapped. ‘I can handle these…’
‘Weapons cold, now!’ Evelyn bellowed at her wingman, and instantly Teera’s Raython stopped manoeuvring, the cloud of craft around it settling into firing positions behind her as the voice called across the radio once more.
‘That, my young friend, is the first good decision you have made this morning.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘You will be guided to land,’ the voice ordered. ‘Deviate from your assigned flightplan by so much as a wingspan and your flight will end in a real hurry, understand?’
***
XV
‘What the hell’s happened?!’
Captain Idris Sansin stormed across the bridge toward the XO, Mikhain.
‘We’ve lost contact,’ Mikhain reported. The ambush was successful, captain. It looks like Reaper Flight has stood down.’
Idris whirled and approached Taron Forge.
‘You knew they were down there,’ he growled. ‘What else have they got?’
‘A lot more than you think,’ Taron replied.
‘I knew he was dirty,’ Mikhain snapped as he rushed out from behind his console at Taron.
The XO swung a punch at Taron, but the pirate batted it aside with one hand as he turned and rammed one flat hand under Mikhain’s jaw. The XO’s momentum sent him flying past Taron and he sprawled onto the deck in time for Yo’Ki’s pistol to aim down at his head.
‘Manners, Mikhain,’ Taron smirked at him.
The captain grabbed Taron’s arm. ‘I want my people back.’
‘I want a place in the sun and more money than I know what to do with,’ Taron replied, ‘but that’s not going to happen right now, is it?’
Mikhain got to his feet, his features twisted with fury.
‘I told you that this was a bad idea!’ he snapped at the captain as he pointed at Taron and Yo’Ki. ‘These scum cannot be trusted! We should have blasted them the moment we laid eyes on them, not invited them up here!’
‘Noted,’ the captain growled back.
‘Is it?!’ Mikhain demanded. ‘Is it really?!’
The bridge fell silent as the crew watched the XO glare at the captain.
‘Secure that,’ Idris replied. ‘This isn’t the time or the place.’
‘And what is the time and place?’ Mikhain snapped. ‘We’ve lost two Raythons, their pilots, a shuttle and a platoon of Marines, all because you didn’t listen to what I or anybody else advised!’
The captain peered at Mikhain. ‘I listened to all of the advice.’
‘And rejected it!’
‘That’s my job, if needs be!’
‘It’s the work of a dictator!’
The two senior officers stared at each other for a long moment across the bridge, and then Lael stepped in.
‘We none of us have time for this right now,’ she insisted. ‘We have people to liberate from that planet and likely not much time to do it, if that star is anything to go by.’
The captain appeared to shake himself from his study of the XO and glanced at Taron Forge.
‘Who’s down there, exactly?’
‘Cut me loose and I’ll go down and talk to them,’ Taron suggested. ‘Maybe negotiate the release of your people.’
‘Over my dead body,’ Idris snapped. ‘Where are the alert fighters?’ he asked Mikhain.
The XO mastered his anger and marched back to his tactical station.
‘Descending, but they’re not going to get there in time to make a difference. Evelyn would not have surrendered lightly, even against those odds.’
Idris stared at the tactical screen for a moment. He could see the shuttle surrounded by enemy craft.
‘Call the alert fighters back,’ he ordered. ‘Lael, transmit a dialogue request on all open channels to the planet’s surface.’
The XO and communications officer relayed the commands, and almost immediately Andaim’s voice spoke from the cockpit of his Raython.
‘We should maintain a presence captain,’ he advised. ‘If they’re taking hostages we should do what we can to keep pressure on them. Regular patrols to prevent anybody from leaving the surface. It’ll keep their craft on the ground too.’
Idris nodded.
‘I agree, make it happen. Then get back aboard the Atlantia immediately, I need you here.’
‘They’ve taken Evelyn, captain, and if we get a chance to…’
‘They’re not going to make any mistakes, Andaim,’ the captain insisted. ‘Evelyn made her call and stood down, and besides there are thirty other hostages down there too. We need them all back alive and I won’t risk their lives with a reckless rescue attempt. Land immediately, is that understood?’
‘Aye, captain.’
The communication channel to the bridge shut off just as General Bra’hiv marched onto the bridge and saluted the captain.
‘We have a prisoner, sir.’
‘A what?’
‘My Marines found one of the civilians hoarding Devlamine down in the sanctuary. He’d placed his stash up in the treetops, which was why we didn’t find anything during the initial searches.’
Idris rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. ‘He talking?’
‘I haven’t got started on him. I thought you might want to have an ear in on the conversation.’ The general looked at the tactical displays and frowned. ‘Where’s my platoon?’
‘On the surface,’ Mikhain reported, ‘as hostages.’
‘Hostages?’
‘They were ambushed,’ the captain explained. ‘It looks like our new friend here found himself a get-out clause.’
Bra’hiv glanced at Taron and Yo’Ki without interest. ‘I’d prefer them both to be locked up in the brig,’ he s
aid.
‘That might be the safest place for everyone,’ Taron murmured as he looked at the captain and the XO with interest. ‘You guys are likely to destroy each other long before the Word shows up.’
Idris stared at the pirate for a moment.
‘Win, lose or draw Taron, you’re a human being and that makes you just as much of a target for the Word as we are. If there are people down there then they could have been tracked, so why isn’t the Word here?’
Taro smiled, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows?’
Bra’hiv’s sidearm snapped out of its holster so fast it seemed as though it were alive, the pistol pressed against Taron’s jaw before Yo’Ki could pull her own weapon.
‘You know,’ Bra’hiv snarled. ‘It’s up there in that head of yours. Either share it now or I’ll share the contents of your head in a totally less pleasant way.’ Bra’hiv activated the plasma magazine and the pistol hummed into life. ‘In your own time, captain.’
Taron glared down at the shorter, stockier man, but he made no attempt to draw his own pistol. His idle tones carried across the bridge to the captain.
‘You want me to help you, captain?’ Taron asked Idris. ‘Get this little squirt out of my face first.’
The captain forced himself to keep a lid on his anger at the pirate’s flippant insults, and nodded to the general.
‘Stand down general, and let him speak.’
‘You can’t trust a word he says unless there’s a weapon pressed to his head,’ Bra’hiv warned. ‘His kind knows nothing but lies and theft.’
‘He knows what’s down there,’ the captain said, ‘and for now that will have to be enough.’
Bra’hiv held his position for a moment longer, and then he deactivated his pistol and stood back from Taron.
The pirate smirked at the general.
‘What’s down there is Salim Phaeon,’ he said simply.
A silence enveloped the Atlantia’s bridge at the mention of the name.
‘Salim,’ the captain echoed as though spitting out something unpleasant. ‘He is alive?’
Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor Page 11
