Rita Longknife--Enemy in Sight

by Mike Shepherd

  But not too hard.

  “We kind of needed Alex to end that war, didn’t we?”

  “And a war was never better ended,” Ray agreed.

  His wife’s eyes got distant. She’d been ready to pay the highest price to end the slaughter. Or let him pay the ultimate price.

  Both of them shook their heads at the memory.

  “Anyway, by hook or crook, I’ve knocked together a crew for my ship, the Astute. Dan Taussig has the Artful. He’s a good driver and doesn’t mind that half his officers are women. Bessy Milard has the Alacrity. She broke into the transports before I did. Paid a high price to be the first. She deserves a warship. Nori Campbell will have the Arduous.”

  Ray frowned. “New ships. New crews. Are they safe in space?”

  “I’d prefer to have more time to shake down,” Rita admitted, “but I’d rather have them in space than not. We can put it all together on the way there. And once we’re at Savannah, maybe we can do more drills to work up while we figure out what those damn pirates are up to. Or not up to.”

  “Oh, they’re up to something,” Ray said. “Bad actors like that are always up to something. The only question is what?”

  Ray followed Rita aboard the Astute. Within three hours, they were under way.

  That night, as they settled into bed, Ray risked the big question. “You miss having Alex in the next room?”

  “You mean do I miss having Alex nibbling at my breasts? Right now, they feel like they’re about to explode.”

  “That shot to dry you out isn’t working as advertised?”

  “Whatever does? Anyway, I’m only too glad to have you sharing my room,” she said, nuzzling close to him. “And while my teenage self thought my mother was just the worst thing in the world, it’s strange how being a mother myself has changed my view of mom.”

  “She wasn’t so bad after all?”

  “Not nearly as bad today as she was a couple of years ago. Besides, Alex is so young, how bad can a grandmother do with a one-year old?”

  On that, the two of them concentrated on each other. Morning would come all too soon.

  Rita was a hard ship driver. She had her small squadron going through every drill in the book, and then invented a few more. Ray didn’t have time on his hands, either. He was finding out that being desk bound had not been good for him. Back with the line beasts, he was humping his twenty-kilogram rucksack up ship ladders and down passageways.

  It was good to fall into bed exhausted.

  Half-way to Savannah, the message traffic began to grab their attention. The pirates were still very much noticeable by their absence. It was the scout ships that were making life challenging.

  Two more private ventures had failed to return. More interesting, two of the scout cruisers, the ones that were only supposed to nibble at the unknown, reported back sightings of ball-type ships in systems not all that far from human space.

  In both cases, the ships, ours and the puff balls, had flipped ship and headed back the way they’d come. Still, if the aliens were scouting this close to human space, it was not good.

  No sooner had they docked than Izzy Umboto of the light cruiser Patton and the head of her Marine detachment, one Terry Tordon, Trouble to all, were asking to come aboard.

  Trouble was sporting the single star of a brigadier general.

  “What happened to you, Marine?” Ray asked as soon as he got a good look at Trouble’s uniform.

  “A brevet rank. I’m still just the major you got me promoted to after that shindig up on Black Mountain.”

  “He’s commanding the budding Savannah army,” Izzy said. “I still make him salute me. I figure a real Navy captain outranks a pretend Marine general any day.”

  “We try not to see each other until it’s too late to salute,” Trouble said with a grin.

  “What kind of an army does Savannah have?” Rita asked, getting past all the male testosterone vapors.

  “We’ve stood up six regiments of infantry with light support weapons,” Trouble explained. “Getting the necessary support elements is a bigger problem. Savannah supplied its old army right off the economy. There was never any intent to deploy it. Getting our own support elements is a bit of a problem. I’ve offered several commissions in the reserves to some good supply types. They’re still talking it over among themselves. It seems some of them have heard bad things about me,” Trouble said, buffing his fingernails innocently.

  “No doubt all true,” Izzy said. “But what brings the two of you to my town? Me, I was just thinking about taking the old Patton out for a couple of weeks. Do some scouting myself. I find the rumors coming in of strange ships a bit disturbing.”

  “If you go,” Ray said, “I hope you’ll coordinate with us. Wardhaven has a half dozen Rambler class scouts out. They are, no doubt, the source of your rumors.”

  “I’d be glad to listen to any suggestion you might have,” said Izzy, the sailor who’d been a ship captain when most of those listening were still JOs, said.

  “Have you heard anything about Whitebred and his pirates?” Rita asked.

  Izzy shook her head. “Not a thing. No planets raided. No freighters missing in human space. If I didn’t know it couldn’t happen, I’d say hell opened up and swallowed every last one of them scoundrels.”

  “A nice wish, but not likely,” Rita said.

  “So, you going to drop down and do the party scene?” Izzy asked.

  “Not if we can avoid it,” Rita and Ray said together.

  “Well, I don’t see how you can, since I’ve been empowered by the president to shanghai your souls. He and a dozen business types want to see you about what’s happening on the heavy space industry front.”

  “Is there a problem?” Rita asked.

  “As I understand it,” Izzy said, “everything is going great. I think they want to tell you all about it. Maybe even thank you, hard as that may be.”

  “How’s the new gear working out at the yards,” Rita asked. “Dan Taussig’s Artful has one reactor that’s spent most of the trip out here going up and down like a yo-yo.”

  “If the work they just did for the Patton is any measure, they’re going great. I’ve had the Patton tied up to the pier so long, I was afraid to take her out without someone looking under the hood. They did find a few things I wouldn’t want to go sick, lame or lazy out there where no gal has gone before.”

  So the Artful was moved to the new Nuu Yards on High Savannah and Ray and Rita shuttled down that evening to talk shop over cocktails with some very committed shipbuilders.

  All of them wondered where the pirates had gone. Since the aliens were still not a subject for general conversation, Ray and Rita could only shake their heads in wonder at the pirates’ sudden loss of interest in human space.

  Rita and Ray found themselves exchanging glances with Izzy and Trouble as they wondered more and more if the smattering of alien ball ships had anything to do with the strange behavior from the pirates.

  14

  Captain Edmon Lehrer studied the problem of providing support for the troops on the ground and didn’t like the looks of what he saw. Even his own Queen Anne’s Revenge had two more lasers down. They were cannibalizing one to get the other one back up and it looked like a third was coming down with aches and pains.

  Fortunately, the chief gunner’s mate thought they could strip a subassembly from the cannibalized laser to solve that problem, too.

  But how many more problems will I have if I start using those lasers? And what’s the status on the other ships?

  He called a net conference with Anne Bonney and Grace O’Malley.

  “Yeah, I’m down a laser too,” Grace admitted. “Any chance I could borrow a cup of sugar from you?” she didn’t quite coo.

  “If that’s what it takes to get lasers up and in business, you can have the damn sugar bowl,” Ed said.

  “I’ll let you know what it is I really need. Who knows, maybe some of what’s on my dead lasers can help
you out.”

  “Are we going to have to do this on our own?” Anne asked.

  “Do you trust any of those other ships to have a hot laser and know how to shoot straight? We’ll need to juggle our places in orbit. I trust we three to provide support to Calico Jack on call. I’m not so sure about the others.”

  “Forget the ‘not sure,’ I’ll come out and say it,” Grace said. “Most of Billy Maynard’s crews can’t tell one end of a screw driver from the other, and are more likely to use it for a sex toy than a tool. I don’t know about Calico Jack’s two ships. He’s got most of his crew dirtside. Maybe we should lend a few gunners to his ships.”

  “But we can’t cut our crewing too close. We do need to get some serious dirt time to keep our health,” Anne pointed out.

  “So you see the problem,” Ed said. The other two nodded back at him.

  An hour later they adjusted orbits and by the end of the day the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the Happy Highway Wench and the Proper Daughter’s Revenge were spaced at thirty minute intervals around the planet with their orbits regularized enough so that the three of them would be in shooting range of the town and forts for at least twenty minutes of each ninety-minute orbit.

  Just how important that was became clear when Ed distributed his shooting plan for burning off the jungle around the settlement.

  His, Grace, and Anne’s ships met their assigned shoots. Calico’s ships met about half of theirs. The rest of the crews were worse. A few didn’t even manage to get one shot off.

  “It’s bad,” Ed said when the three again met on net.

  “We’re pirates, Ed, not Navy ships,” Anne pointed out.

  “We’re pirates that have bit off one huge mouthful of snakes,” Grace said. “Ed, are you thinking about pulling up your coattails and running?”

  “Not yet, I’m not. But I certainly am keeping it front and center in my mind,” Ed admitted. “If I have to run, I’d sure like to have some more gold in my chest.”

  “And I damn well don’t want to run when all we got to worry about is some simpletons that are throwing nasty seed pods at us,” Anne said, with vehemence.

  “No, I’m not going to run away from some super coconuts,” Ed agreed.

  Two days later, after burning a lot of jungle from orbit, Ed found out what he might just want to run away from.

  15

  Black Bart was hollering as soon as Your Bad Day was in the system. “I found out where they’re taking the gold, and boy was it easy picking getting it back.”

  Ben Hornigold was just as excited . . . and uninformative . . . when his ship, now named The Golden Mist, jumped through.

  As soon as Bart made orbit, all the captains shuttled down to meet at the Captain’s house. It was the old governor’s house with the new name over the door. Ed caught Annie and Grace’s eyes, and together they settled in at the end of the table close to the door. With them there, the other skippers who had followed Ed from LeMonte took their places around them as if it was the head of the table.

  That left Billy Maynard at the other end of the table with Black Bart at his right and Ben Hornigold at his left. The rest of the captains from Port Elgin took over the other end of the table and seemed to think they were at the head.

  Calico Jack arrived late from an expedition he’d been leading into the jungle. He smelled like it too, but pulled up a chair at Ed’s right, between him and Grace.

  Despite the stink, she flashed Jack an encouraging smile, not that he needed one.

  Black Bart called for drinks all around, then stood as bottles were passed out. “This drink is on me. I’ve found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  Bottles clinked, heartily at one end of the table, more cautiously at Ed’s end.

  “So, how’d you find this end of the rainbow?” Billy Maynard asked.

  “I spotted this ball ship just before it ducked through a jump,” Bart said.

  “We spotted this ball ship,” Ben cut in.

  “Yeah, I guess we did. Anyway, we followed it real careful-like. If we did a jump and it was still in the system, we would duck back fast.”

  “Though we’d stay long enough to figure out which jump it was goin’ to,” Ben added.

  “So, we did this for four . . .”

  “No. Five jumps,” Ben insisted.

  “And there was that ship, headed for this lovely little planet when we jumped through the fifth jump.”

  “We headed down there,” Ben said, taking over the story, to Bart’s clear disapproval. “When that puff ball caught sight of us, it forgot the planet and took off running. Real cool-like, we sauntered up to that planet, and damned if there weren’t several towns.”

  “We picked the biggest burg,” Bart said, taking back over the story. “There were these same big dudes. Some had guns this time, so there was a bit of a fight.”

  “The big fellows back here had guns,” Calico Jack put in. “Some of us remember fighting them.”

  “Well, we did remember you lazing them from space,” Ben said. “’Cause that was what we did to them. We fried them good.”

  “All but the center of town,” Bart said. “We left it pretty much alone, and it was a good thing we did, ‘cause that was where they had all the gold and jewels. God, did they have a shit load of that nice stuff. I think they really like it. Maybe as much as us. So, we loaded up the Bad Day and the Golden Mist and here we are, rich as God. You ought to head over there and collect up some of what we left behind.”

  There was a lot of cheering, and clinking of jugs, at least at that end of the table. Ed folded his hands across his chest and just stared at Billy.

  It took a while, but Billy Maynard finally seemed to feel Ed’s gaze and looked down the table at where he and his captains sat.

  Billy rapped the table with his empty rum jug and got silence. “Ed, you don’t look all that happy. You got a problem with this?”

  “Kind of. Yes, Billy. As Ben and Bart tell this, they followed a big fellow’s ship back to that planet.”

  “Yep,” Bart said.

  “So what’s to say that they didn’t follow you two back here?”

  The room got real quiet.

  “It don’t matter if they did. Them big fellows got no fight in them,” Black Bart said.

  “Did anyone follow you?” Ed demanded. He didn’t miss the fact that Bart hadn’t said a word about being followed.

  “We did see a ship,” Ben admitted, “but it didn’t follow us.”

  “How often did you see the ship?” Grace O’Malley demanded. “Twice? Three times?”

  “Two, maybe three,” Bart admitted.

  “Oh, shit,” Calico Jack said.

  “But what’s it matter?” Billy said. “They got no balls for a fight. Just look at what we’ve got here.”

  “These people are miners. Mere peasants,” said Kim. He spoke as a captain for the farmers back home and pike men here. “You killed their soldiers and have conquered peasants, men of the earth that have no more interest in fighting your wars than I do. Maybe less. But when you talked of gold, me and mine chose to fight. Are you sure these peasants of the earth are not waiting for their soldier class to come back and stomp you into the mud?”

  That started an uproar in the room.

  Some looked ready to take Kim out and lynch him. The thin man moved over to stand behind Ed’s chair. Ed and Calico Jack pulled pistols from their holsters and laid them flat on the table.

  And kept their hands close to them.

  When the room quieted down to a dull roar, Calico Jack said, “The man has a point,” in that quiet, deadly voice he had.

  The room got a lot quieter.

  Then Jack’s commlink buzzed. Without taking his eyes from the other end of the table, he tapped it. “Yes.”

  “Boss, all hell’s breaking loose,” came in a half-hysterical shriek that Ed recognized as Maggie’s.

  “What kind of hell?” Jack demanded.

  “These bastards, th
ey got us in an ambush. We got several guys that tumbled into pit traps when they tried to take cover. Now these big fellows got explosives and they can really throw them. Boy can they pitch ’em.”

  That was punctuated on net by an explosion, quickly followed by two more.

  “They got those damn bending trees, only they’re using them to shoot sticks at us,”

  “Arrows,” Kim provided beside Calico Jack.

  “Yeah, it’s like bows and arrows,” Maggie agreed. “We’re shooting but we ain’t got no targets to shoot at.”

  A glance out the window showed full dark.

  There were more explosions on net. “We’re running. Oh!”

  There was a shriek and other noises from the commlink. “Oh, shit,” Maggie said matter-of-factly. “I fell in one of their damn pits. Right on a big sharp stick.” What started as a groan shot up into a shriek. “Shit, it hurts, Jack! Help me!”

  Then the commlink went dead.

  “Jack, I’ve got a report on explosions about ten klicks out of town,” Ed said, passing along what his Number Two who was manning the wall had just told him on net.

  “That’s where I left them when I got called back here,” Calico Jack said, already heading for the door.

  Then he froze. There were shots coming from outside the Captain’s House.

  16

  Captain Edmon Lehrer grabbed for his pistols on the table. With one in each hand, and Anne and Grace as well armed at each elbow, he followed Calico Jack.

  He paused at the door to look out. There was a flash somewhere, then the sound of an explosion loud and soon.

  “That wasn’t ten klicks out,” Grace said.

  “No,” Calico agreed, then he shoved open the door and dashed for a pile of boxes a couple of meters away.

  Ed came up to the door. He looked both ways. In the dark, figures were moving. Some bigger, some smaller. Rifle muzzles flashed . . . and not all of them were from the smaller figures. Ed dashed for a spot beside Calico.

  An explosion flashed not a hundred meters down the street. The screams were human, but in the flash of light, Ed could make out big fellows. Lots of them.