Queen Anne's Revenge

by Blaze Ward

“I had considered if 405 could get low enough in the atmosphere to take pot-shots at the mine itself with the Type-1’s, but the risks are too great,” she continued. “And there’s not much there to kill, other than dump trucks that look like they weigh almost as much as Anna. I propose a strike team of a dozen or so on the ground, with a fast hit and fade, rather than trying to hold the city. Steal a truck or three, load them up with goods, and either drive them right onto Anna’s lower deck, or take the time to unload them and maybe go back for more, depending on the locals. We don’t know about gendarmes or army forces. Kiel never concerned herself with staging a planetary assault.”

  “I’ll let her know,” Phil said dryly, eliciting laughs from the group. “Make sure you update those notes, on the assumption we’ll be giving them back the ship later on.”

  More laughs. At least the group was motivated.

  “Should we be close by?” Phil continued. “405 has the one administrative shuttle, which we could land much closer to a target warehouse, after you have secured the ground defenses. Or were you planning to shift the prize physically into the city?”

  That got a blank look from all of them. Followed by furious eyeblinks from Siobhan, and a crocodile grin.

  “I keep thinking too small, Phil,” she exclaimed. “Thank you. I’m following proper navigational procedures and not racking up parking fines. Yes, we should definitely drop the shuttle closer, probably to this park here.”

  She pointed at the spot the Professor had already identified, a field that looked like a set of four rugby pitches put together. Phil had no idea what Buran did for athletic sports, but they would involve team events, and not individual things, such as track and field. That much he knew about The Holding.

  “Remember,” he said. “Everyone. We are polite to Lan and Kiel, because they are just innocents here. That is a military target, so any resistance it generates is an excuse to blow things up. Keller’s mission statement to us is to materially damage the economy of this sector. After we stop at the usual orbital truck-stop and steal everything we want, we’ll blow it up as well.”

  “Then, yes,” Siobhan said. “I would greatly appreciate it if 405 snuck close during the raid itself, providing us orbital coverage because we’ll be blind down there, and an administrative shuttle as a second transport, either for more loot, or in case something goes wrong.”

  Professor Kosnett nodded. He glanced at Heather, heretofore silent, and got affirmation from her.

  It dawned on Phil that he had suddenly become something of a Fleet Centurion by job description, if not rank. He was commanding a squadron now, and not just a single, lightly-armed escort.

  He wondered what First Lord Naoumov was going to say, when he next saw her. Petia had once promised him a cruiser command, back before the first war ended and budgets suddenly got tight. All that had been available when it came time was a scout.

  And now he might be becoming a pirate warlord.

  Phil laughed inside as he listened to the rest of Siobhan’s plan.

  Holding the Fort (April 19, 402)

  Kam was watching over the secondary JumpDrive like a mother hen with a single chick, while wolves howled in the distance. Bok and his teams hadn’t even bothered replacing the outer casings since they ended up spending nearly as much time inside, tracing wires that burned out and tuning things, as they did actually flying.

  Still, the little engine that could had gotten them this far. Creator willing, it would get them the rest of the way, if they could keep it from overheating constantly, and didn’t run out of wire when various power surges cooked things.

  There was one more jump today, and then hopefully they would have several hours of calm while the raiders did their stuff, down on the planet. And then tomorrow, everything would be holding just fine when they needed to escape.

  Yeoman Tuason approached with a tablet in one hand, probably needing her signature on something. By this point, she was considering just making them keep a log of all the times they had to go outside training and regulations in order to fix something or strip something else for parts. The College of Engineers was either going to pin a medal on her chest, or drum her right out of the service, when this was all done.

  “Sir?” Galin said as he got close, holding the computer out.

  She took it and quick-scanned the request. She stopped and looked up sharply.

  “This says you want to take the primary JumpSail controller completely apart, Yeoman,” she challenged him.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, almost sheepishly.

  Tuason was a man of average height, but extremely skinny compared to the rest of the engineers. But he was sharp, or Bok would have never let him stand watches, especially not with the Old Man himself over on Siobhan’s prize, getting ready to assault an enemy planet.

  “And?” she said.

  “So the fire cooked most of the controllers, sir,” he began carefully. “Without those, we can’t hold a matrix together. But a lot of the hardware itself, the grav-generator and such, might have survived, or at least be in good enough shape that we could fix things. We just gotta get all the way down inside where we can look.”

  “What’s it gain us?” she asked, seeing possibly where he was going. “And why now?”

  “The emergency system was never intended to be used for as long as we’re going to ride it, sir,” Galin replied. “You’re just supposed to limp to the nearest system and call for help. Drydock comes, fixes your JumpSail, and all is well. But the grav-generator on the backup is tiny, and overheats pretty easy. If enough pieces of the primary survived, we might be able to use that grav-generator instead, and maybe the cooling system, too. That would get us a longer flight time, and probably better control in JumpSpace itself. Right now, we kinda have to fly straight to a destination, drop out, and then tack into the wind when we go back in. That’s why the prize can outrun us everywhere. They don’t have cooling and tuning thrown in on top of the jumps.”

  “And you think this will work?” she pressed.

  Galin earned several gold stars for himself when he shrugged, rather than stating a categorical affirmative.

  “We aren’t using it right now,” he offered. “And it’s already partway opened up. Had the idea in the shower this morning, when my hot water allotment suddenly ran out ’cause I wasn’t paying attention. Asked myself where I could get more heat, and the brain kinda went sideways from there. Would’ve asked Bok, but he’s already busy. Figured I’d ask you. Worst you can say is no.”

  “Oh, no, Yeoman,” she smiled evilly at him. “The worst I can say is yes. But this goes on top of your other duties, because I can’t spare you from watches, particularly with a team off-boat. Figure out who else you need and let me know when you get the system fully cracked open. Then we’ll see if I go to Phil and ask him to let us turn engineering into a rat’s nest of cables and hawsers everywhere.”

  She signed the form and grinned at him. Galin had a look like he was having second thoughts, but if his idea worked, he would get lots of gold stars in the log. Might even decide he wanted to be a Centurion, one of these days. Yeomen like him got to pick if they would become Chiefs or Centurions, if they were good enough.

  Galin Tuason probably was, if he wanted to keep showing initiative like this.

  Now Kam just had to hold all the moving parts together long enough to get the ship home.

  Blackbeard (April 20, 402)

  “Barnaul Flight Control, this is Commercial Freighter DYWXK-345029, Ukok Registry, common name Anna’s Vindication. Requesting a landing window,” Siobhan said carefully, hoping her accent wasn’t too horrible. Ukok was a long ways from here, just barely still in the Altai Sector. And the registry number actually matched up with another freighter and a different common name, in Kiel’s extensive records of the competition. Markus had done a great job taking apart the transponder and making it programmable.

  With any luck, she could fool the locals, at least long enough.

 
Wasn’t like she was planning on coming back to this planet, ever again.

  The city below was in late afternoon. Hopefully optimum time to catch somebody tired after a long day, and just wanting to go home and have a beer.

  You just tell us a safe flight corridor, and then we become somebody else’s problem, landing either tomorrow morning, or, if we’re crazy enough, in the dead of night on a non-automated field.

  Siobhan grinned to herself as she waited. The bridge was tiny, so she generally had the place to herself, like now. Bok and Markus would be aft, watching the engines. Trinidad and his team were waiting in her cabin and the medbay for now.

  “DYWXK-345029, you are cleared,” a tired, bored voice finally replied, about the time she was thinking they had missed the first transmission. Guy was not on the ball. “Pick a spot. As you can see, the field is currently empty. What’s your cargo?”

  Siobhan hit the transmit button that Lan would have, were he here now, sending an inventory file down that had been accurate, three weeks ago.

  “Tuna steaks from Surgut,” she said. “Plus some minor trade goods of the usual type. Looking to open some new markets here.”

  “Something other than pasta would be nice, DYWXK-345029,” he said. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Acknowledged, Flight Control,” she said. “Starting our descent now.”

  “There are no override controls, DYWXK-345029,” he hastened to add. “And no lights. If you come down now, you are on your own.”

  “Piece of cake, Flight Control,” she let the words drawl out some. Wasn’t every pilot a hotshot wanting to show off, even in an antique like Anna?

  “Stay put after you land, DYWXK-345029,” he chided. “The office will be closed until an hour after local dawn. We’ll make you fill out all the forms then.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Siobhan nearly giggled, once she cut the line. She pressed the PA instead.

  “All hands, this is Lady Blackbeard,” she called out in a merry voice. “According to the nice man on the ground, they are about to roll up the sidewalks and go home for the night. We’ll still hit the control tower first, just to make sure and disable anything that needs it, but there might not be anyone there to say hi. Starting the descent now. Everyone remember to potty before we land. Going to be coming in hot and heavy.”

  She pressed a button and let the autopilot take over the powered glide she had calculated. Not quite pushing the envelope, because she didn’t want to alarm anyone down there, but the fastest path down, to give them the most hours on the ground before the sun came up.

  One crazy pirate babe, coming your way, Barnaul.

  The landing field was a perfect square, seven kilometers along the sides, lined up exactly on the longitude and latitude. Plenty of space for megafreighters wanting to haul off ore, since they hadn’t built a smelter here to handle industrial loads of things.

  Siobhan always wondered why that wasn’t the second thing you built, after you dug your first hole in the ground. Of course, if the fools at Thuringwell had done the same thing, it wouldn’t be a Republic world today. Probably just more efficient to have a huge facility centrally located, most likely in a low planetary orbit somewhere, where the effort to transship ore across deep space wasn’t that much more expensive than just hauling the rock up the gravity well for processing in the first place.

  Folks here looked too cheap, anyway. Mostly-flat field smushed even more flat by massive ships landing. Not a single light anywhere except for those marking the tower and the gate. No roads at all, which suggested low-flying repulsorlift trucks, once you got it out of the ground and ready for transport. Plus those stupidly-huge dump trucks with ten-meter wheels.

  The monstrous sea of tailing piles on the south side of the pit testified to how much raw rock wasn’t even worth melting down somewhere. Most systems had some level of asteroid belts, composed of iron and nickel in moon-scale amounts. Doing a pit mine meant that someone had found something rare and valuable, reasonably close to the surface.

  After that bastard Buran had bombed St. Legier, Siobhan was just sorry she didn’t have a small nuclear weapon or two to drop in the middle of the mine and render everything five times more expensive to dig out.

  But that was an issue to discuss at a later date. Today, she needed to think like a pirate babe.

  The bridge was cozy as she dropped the last five thousand meters out of the night sky, swooping in on her target zone from the horizon like an owl spying a mouse in the grass. Trinidad had the other seat for now. She would be joining the raiders and leaving two of Bok’s men here to guard the ship shortly.

  Tactical Officer meant she was in charge on the ground, in combat. And had programmed an escape flight back to orbit, in case something happened and she didn’t make it back.

  “All hands, thirty seconds to ground,” she said into the PA. “Front bay doors will open as soon as we’re sure nobody’s shooting at us.”

  She figured she could get to within a couple hundred meters of the tower and attached office building without causing anyone to wake up. There was a small moon in the sky overhead, just far enough above the horizon right now that they could see by moonlight.

  Beside her, Trinidad drew his pistol, checked it one last time, and holstered it again. She figured it was a security blanket kind of thing, since that was the fifth time she had seen him do it since they left orbit.

  She glanced over.

  “Showtime,” he muttered, grinning back at her.

  Honestly, it looked like someone else was home, behind those eyes. Hopefully not a berserker. She wanted a quiet night.

  Siobhan passed them over the far fence, zipped across the field barely high enough to clear non-existent trees, and slammed the thrusters into reverse. Anna dropped on six legs, like the galaxy’s biggest scarab, and settled down to feed on the night grass.

  “Barnaul Flight Control, this is Commercial Freighter DYWXK-345029,” she called over a low-powered radio. No sense in waking anyone up over at the mine, if she didn’t have to. “We’ve landed.”

  Nothing.

  So far, so good.

  Siobhan linked the incoming channel to the PA, so the two men left behind could hear any calls, and then linked her helmet comm to the same channel, so she could pretend to be on the bridge or half-asleep if anybody actually answered.

  She rose a beat behind Trinidad and followed him down the steps to the main hallway. Like him, she was wearing a suit of field armor: segmented plates protecting the torso; other bits covering shoulders, arms, hips, and knees; greaves and bracers; boots and gloves. Everything was in marine green, as they liked to call it, including the helmet on her head and the holster for the pulse pistol.

  At the bottom of the first steps, Trinidad turned sharply and headed down another flight to the cargo deck, with her fast on his heels.

  The team waited there for her to give the command, lined up in two columns by the big mouth that would open like a ramp. Bok had moved the last few tons of tuna to the aft portion of the bay and dropped a bulkhead wall down to seal that area off. They could still open the aft bay doors from the outside if they needed in, but the tuna would move to CS-405 soon enough. That kept everything frozen, while most of the front was a staging area for a small planetary invasion.

  The kind Keller’s squadron was getting to be famous for.

  Siobhan counted noses, including Nakisha with the big rifle and Bok with a heavy toolbox on repulsor lifters, so that he could break into anything.

  “We are three hundred and twenty meters to the tower,” she said as she got in front of the right hand line, next to Trinidad. “Lights are off in the windows. Nobody is answering on the comm. Everyone set?”

  Nods and growls answered her. Hungry, angry, and ambitious. The best kind of pirates.

  “Opening the doors now,” Siobhan said, slapping the big, red lock button with a palm.

  It began to beep, and then moved, pivoting away from her and letting the sm
ell of Barnaul into the room. Dry. Almost desiccated. Vaguely burnt, but without the warm taste of cinnamon bread underneath it that she always seemed to smell in a desert.

  Warm, too. Middle of the night here and still above thirty degrees. She could only imagine what it would be like closer to the equator or in the middle of the day. Place felt kinda nasty, which might be why there were so few colonists here.

  Maybe you had to be desperate to take a job like this.

  The ramp grounded with a ping. Trinidad was already moving, so Siobhan went off two steps behind him. No way in hell she was going to run across this field, but she figured she could maybe jog with the marines. They trained for this sort of thing constantly.

  Siobhan just did her kilometers on the treadmill and the elliptical.

  Like all strange planets, the night sky was a confusing puzzle. None of the patterns she was used to, and far enough across the galaxy that none of the stars she knew were probably even visible from here.

  The city in the distance was lit, however poorly. Frontier town feel, if you could call it that. Lights on a few of the buildings towards the center. More sparse, the farther you got away. At least there were no farm houses out this way.

  And the ground was level enough that she wasn’t the first person to face-plant, tripping over something. Max got that honor. At least he hadn’t broken anything, when they got him upright.

  Finally, they struggled over to the building. Well, she struggled. It wasn’t fair that Bok wasn’t even breathing heavy, let alone the six marines.

  “We figure the door’s got an alarm?” Trinidad asked, pointing at the front.

  “If there is one, that’s where I’d put it,” Bok answered. “Probably better to take out a window and go through that way.”

  “I agree,” Siobhan said. “Smash a window.”

  Bok pulled a telescoping prybar from his toolkit, snapped it fully open, and stepped close to the big window that let office workers watch the sunrise.