Queen Anne's Revenge

by Blaze Ward

  “Whachathinkin’?” Siobhan glanced over and grinned.

  They had time to kill. It had taken another three days, before that humpback had announced that it was ready to depart, CS-405 having snuck in to hide behind Phil’s Dwarf Giant and watch.

  “Honestly?” Heather replied to Siobhan’s nod. “Pirate fashion.”

  “Indeed?” Siobhan’s dark face lit up with a grin. “Good.”

  “You want me to think like a bandit, and not an officer?” Heather asked.

  “That’s the plan, Heather,” Siobhan said. “Keller said she wanted to drive that computer god nuts with craziness. Can you think of a crazier thing than pirates suddenly running roughshod over the daisies in the back yard?”

  Heather didn’t have to force the chuckle. She could see the change that had come over the younger woman since Phil unleashed her on an unsuspecting galaxy.

  “Just nervous,” Heather admitted. “I’ve only ever commanded from a deck. Never taken part in a boarding action or such. This will be a new thing for me.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Siobhan reassured her. “Most of what I have to do is sit back and answer whatever strategic questions come from Stunt Dude or Bok, and then let their people handle things. You’ll be in the same position.”

  “And if we screw up?” Heather asked. “Then what?”

  “Then we’re put in a prison,” Siobhan shrugged. “Or hung from the highest yardarm. Nobody really knows, because Buran had never wanted to trade back for prisoners. Until Stanovoy, nobody had ever captured a warship intact to even take some.”

  “So what about Fribourg prisoners?” Heather wondered. “They just disappear?”

  “Don’t know,” Siobhan said. “Not in anything I’ve read or heard about.”

  “Make a note,” Heather ordered, her background coming to the fore. “We need intelligence on those people. What happens to a ship that Buran captures, at someplace like Samara?”

  “Will do, boss,” Siobhan lapsed into Second Officer to Heather’s First, for just a moment, before Lady Blackbeard smiled through. “Maybe we’ll need to convince Phil to raid a government office on some remote planet, sometime after this, so we can steal all their records and look it up. Emperor Karl VIII would probably reward us pretty good.”

  “We’re military officers, Siobhan,” Heather chided lightly. “We’re not supposed to be doing this for the money.”

  “And that’s where I need to work on you some more, Heather,” Lady Blackbeard replied. “We’re pirates, and we need to think like it. Officers are predictable. Pirates are black swan events that just mess everything up. Ruin everybody’s day.”

  “I shall take that under advisement,” Heather said with a laugh.

  Maybe she could be a bandit, after all. Lady Blackbeard would be a pretty good teacher.

  A light on the console between them cut the conversation.

  “Here we go,” Siobhan said.

  She opened the PA system to bring the two dozen other crew up to date.

  “Message from CS-405,” Blackbeard announced in a voice Heather could only quantify as hungry. “Humpback-1 has backed away from the station and aligned itself for the next stage on his road. Kosnett confirms that they will be headed to Kamchatka next, and taking three hops to get to their system departure. All hands to battle stations. Prepare for our first jump across.”

  Because Siobhan was commanding, Heather had been the one to plot the jump coordinates.

  It was weird, dealing with a civilian mindset. Because they had to follow a fixed pattern of stops, a sequence apparently being flown by several vessels like this simultaneously, Humpback-1 was in no hurry to get somewhere. Rigidity of schedule was more important that speed, apparently.

  From Laptev orbit, the first jump was straight up, relative to the plane of the other planets, just to get clear of the thicker disk of materials at the solar equator. Then a jump exactly across the system, like staying on a valence shell, so that they would be exactly above the spot in Laptev’s orbit where the planet would be in roughly eleven months, or half a circle. The third jump would take the great whale to the edge of the heliosphere, and only then would it head into deep space.

  But that gave Queen Anne’s Revenge a head start. And that was what all pirates really wanted.

  “All set,” Heather announced quietly, confirming the flight path and gravity lines.

  “Why don’t you trigger it, Heather,” Blackbeard seemed to growl back. “You’ll need the practice.”

  Heather shared a grim grin, feeling a new doorway in her career open before her. One she had never imagined.

  She pressed the button, and Queen Anne’s Revenge twisted sideways into JumpSpace.

  I have become a buccaneer.

  The Stalk (June 5, 402)

  The first jump had gone well. Siobhan had even gotten lucky with the second, drifting Heather’s target zone just a wee bit as she first lined it up. Something about the local hydrogen density had suggested she come in a little shorter than planned, before shutting down all the external systems and going as dark as they could.

  Little things that went into being a bad-ass pirate babe.

  That damned whale had come out less than six light minutes away, almost directly in front of them. Pinged the vicinity with a searchlight that let everyone know where he was, and who.

  Hopefully, Anna had appeared to be just another ugly lump of iron in the distance. Certainly, Siobhan’s electronic eyes would have resolved the whale as nothing more than an asteroid at this distance, even after Evan and Bok had done so much work to tune them better. Anna was still a civilian freighter, like the other. The whale might not even notice they were here.

  Still, nothing moving on a dangerous vector. Nobody close that might represent a threat. Just little old us, hiding over here in the bushes.

  Siobhan turned to Heather, patiently waiting in the co-pilot seat.

  “If they follow form, it will take them a minimum of three more hours until they’re ready for the next jump,” Siobhan said. “That’s why we could nap in between things here. Now it gets exciting.”

  “You have a fascinating definition of excitement, Blackbeard,” Heather replied with a smile that showed just how nervous the woman really was. “Sometimes I wish we could have done this from 405, instead of Anna.”

  “Yeah, but there was no way to be sneaky about CS-405,” Siobhan answered. “Here, we’ve got crazier options.”

  “I’m glad you phrased it that way,” Heather’s laugh still had a touch of hysteria under it, but she was getting better. More grounded. “I’m not sure I would have thought to try something this insane. This desperate.”

  “We’ll make you a pirate yet, lady,” Siobhan smiled.

  Now, time to get completely insane, by any standards you wanted to measure.

  “All hands,” Siobhan keyed the mic. “Stand by for the assault jump. Gimme green lights everywhere before I commit, because there’s no backing out at that point.”

  She watched Heather take a moment to check her lifesuit, including the pistol on her hip. A moment later, the Senior Centurion picked up her helmet and locked it down, faceplate still open so she could talk, but all set for walking in space. A green light appeared as Heather pushed the button to check in.

  Siobhan did the same, just to double check. She stretched all fingers and made fists, imagining Trinidad checking his gun for the eighth or eleventh time. That brought a smile to her face.

  Across the board, twenty more lights went green.

  “Stunt Dude,” Siobhan said. “I show everyone ready.”

  “Affirmative, Blackbeard,” her stunt man sidekick replied.

  Siobhan reached up and latched her helmet shut. The internal systems kicked in and pressurized. Heather joined her a second later.

  She was on the internal comm now.

  Keller wants crazy? Top this.

  “All hands, prepare for death pressure,” Siobhan ordered over the private channel. “
Bok, you are clear to open us to deep space.”

  Red lights came on everywhere as Anna grew nervous around them. They were in the depths of space, and someone was telling the ship to suck all the air out of the corridors. She wanted everyone warned that bad things were coming.

  On Siobhan’s helmet’s HUD, the pressure began to drop, and her suit stiffened ever so slightly. She confirmed the course she had plotted, and that her suit had a good communications link to the ship’s piloting system.

  She nodded to Heather, pivoted her seat, and rose. Heather was a step behind her down the stairs, and then down to the cargo level.

  Technically, one of them was supposed to remain behind on the bridge in order to pilot Anna, but Siobhan didn’t want to be left behind on what she thought of as her mission, and Heather needed to be there, learning the ropes.

  And what was Phil going to do? Court Martial them for acting like pirates?

  She laughed to herself.

  “What’s so funny?” Heather asked.

  “What Phil’s going to say when he finds out,” Siobhan replied.

  “We are the officers on the scene,” Heather quoted primly. “We need operational authority to meet situational requirements.”

  “That sounds so much better than making this shit up as we go,” Siobhan laughed again.

  “I agree,” Heather joined her.

  The front bay door on the cargo deck was down, a ramp into infinity, or the mouth of a killer whale sneaking up on a humpback to take a bite. The target was invisible at this distance, but Siobhan could see him in her mind’s eye.

  Right there, just waiting for us, basking in the solar wind.

  Bok greeted them at the bottom of the stairs. Handed them each a grapple line to latch themselves onto the side of the bay.

  You were not supposed to be open to deep space while in Jump. The theory said that if you passed outside of the envelope of the Jump matrix, you should just drop back into RealSpace at the mathematical point that matched the JumpSpace coordinates.

  Siobhan didn’t feel like testing the theory out today, so everybody had a physical attachment, hooked at both ends, so they couldn’t somehow go out that door into eternity.

  Bok touched faceplates with her when she was latched. Heather was as well.

  “Ready to go,” he said.

  Siobhan pulled out a small tablet computer and triple-checked that she could talk to the bridge. All good.

  She braced herself, facing forward into the black depths. Glanced around to see Heather matching her posture.

  Humpback-1was six light minutes away, more or less at rest, relative to Anna. They would be in JumpSpace for less than two seconds.

  Siobhan nodded and pressed the jump button.

  Black space turned to a mottled, gray, like a badly-tuned vid channel picking up cross-interference.

  It was gone so fast that she might have imagined it, but over the last two months, Siobhan had spent a lot of time on the bridge, staring out into the infinite void that existed between universes. Something she never did aboard CS-405. Nobody did.

  It was her friend now. Or at least, not as inimical an enemy.

  And there he is.

  Siobhan grinned fiercely at the outcome of her jump. She had programmed the coordinates she wanted, and then set the grav-sensors to home in on any dimple. A ship that big had enough mass to warp space-time, just the slightest bit, if you put the sensors on paranoid.

  He was less than a kilometer away, at about a forty degree angle, more or less at rest.

  Siobhan turned to the crew of pirates who would be accompanying her, including the newest pirate in their ranks, Senior Centurion Heather Lau.

  “Radio silence from here,” she said simply. “See you on the other side.”

  Siobhan unlatched the grapple from the ship and tucked it into her belt. They could always use them over there to stay attached to the enemy hull.

  She took three, running steps and threw herself into space like a diver entering water.

  Backpack thrusters came live with compressed gas, pushing her hard forward, towards the Spanish fort her crew needed to capture.

  Blackbeard’s coming.

  Buccaneer (June 5, 402)

  Heather watched Siobhan jump into her destiny with both feet, like a kid with a fresh mud puddle. It set a good example. Jarred Heather’s mind loose from wanting to stop and think about how crazy this was, or reconsider a better approach angle.

  They were in the chute now, no going back.

  Heather’s training surged to the fore and drove her after Lady Blackbeard. Into the cold, lonely depths of space.

  Around her, the other twenty pirates on this suicide mission followed, riding forward on compressed gases and their own craziness.

  In the screen slaved to a rearward view, Heather watched Anna’s Vindication wink out of existence, like a soap bubble. She had been physically present for all of about eight seconds, and now was bouncing out to her next stop, where Phil could find the vessel, waiting patiently empty if all this failed.

  Hopefully, the ship over there hadn’t noticed the brief aberration on her flank. Or, if she had, it had been gone again so fast that they would log it as a sensor failure and nothing more.

  Who would bip into RealSpace just long enough to throw a boarding party at an enemy ship, and then disappear?

  Crazy-ass pirates, like her.

  Heather wondered if Keller’s folks, her other people back in Corynthe, ever did something like this. Or perhaps they would add it to their repertoire after this, unwilling to be upstaged by the RAN.

  She laughed in the confines of her own, little world.

  And just like that, twenty-two little guppies came to rest near the side of the humpback whale. This wasn’t a ship anymore. It was a wall, a station in deep space, but they should all be inside of a Jump envelope now, if the locals panicked and triggered a jump early.

  Just in case, Heather joined Trinidad in attaching her line to the side of the ship, not far from what appeared to be a ventral airlock, a bit forward from the engines.

  Radio silence. Just her and her morbid thoughts about how insane this plan was. To steal a freighter by secretly boarding it in deep space, between jumps. One for the record books, most likely.

  Now, the truly dangerous part started.

  This was an enemy vessel. Damaging or capturing it would materially impact the economy of this sector. They kept repeating that mantra. The folks aboard were all civilians, rather than professional warriors, but they were between Heather and the success of her mission.

  And time was more important than pretty.

  Bok was recognizable by his bulk and compact frame. Heather wasn’t sure who the other engineer that went into the airlock with him was. Trinidad was the third, in case the people up on the bridge woke up suddenly and were able to react fast enough.

  Highly unlikely, but you have to assume competence on the part of the other guy, and then work against that. Of course, there wasn’t much those folks could do at this point.

  Even jumping blind would just prevent CS-405 from coming to the pirates’ aid. It wouldn’t stop Siobhan or Heather.

  Three bodies piled back out of the airlock quickly, pivoting around helpful hands held out to swing them clear.

  Heather was across the opening from Siobhan, not far from where Bok and Trinidad ended up, so she was able to see the Boatswain give the thumbs up.

  And that was that. Nothing the defenders could do now.

  Hand signals conveyed readiness to everyone, bodies pressed flat against the cold, gray hull.

  In space, there is no atmosphere to convey sound, nor to diffract light and create shadows. Bok pressed a button on a comm attached to his belt, and all that changed.

  Heather felt the sharp double-spike in the hand she had resting against the hull.

  A moment later, air began to rush out of the airlock opening, where Bok and friends had attached explosive charges to both the outer and inn
er doors to destroy them.

  She could imagine death-pressure warnings going off all over the crew sections of the vessel, followed by airlocks slamming tight to keep the ship from depressurizing. How paranoid the crew was would determine the next phase.

  If they were lazy, they might have immediately tripped every airlock, dividing the crew into small chunks, separated by frames from each other, and possibly isolating them from suits. Heather could imagine how frightening it would be to wake up to pressure alarms and be trapped in your cabin.

  Those people, however, would be the safest from what was coming. They were no threat to anyone.

  Trinidad went back into the hole first. From the curves in the fieldsuit, the next figure had to be Nakisha Onks, although holding Dunklin’s homemade grenade-rocket-gun would have also been a giveaway.

  Siobhan went next, followed by the other four marines, Bok, and the rest of the boarders, in that sequence.

  Heather counted bodies and cleared the outside of the ship, entering last. She had the least experience with something like this, compared to many ahead of her, and having her at the back put command officers at both ends of the snake.

  At some point, Siobhan expected someone to come up from behind them.

  Inside, beyond the destroyed airlock, she found a large room filled with EVA suits of various flavors for the crew. All were locked down and attached to the bulkheads, out of the way but easily accessible for someone just entering or just leaving the now-shattered airlock behind her.

  “Blow the next hatch hard,” Siobhan’s voice came over the comm somewhat thin and attenuated. Low power beam, inside rugged, metal walls. “Keep them away from these suits unless they go into another airlock and then come back.”

  “Everyone take cover,” Markus Dunklin hollered over the radio.

  Heather stepped back into the airlock and to one side, hiding behind the solid walls. Another breach was imminent, and things would be flying around at high speed, especially trying to get by her into the cold vacuum outside.

  “Three, two, one, go,” came the call, followed on the last beat by another earthquake quivering through the hull.