Pirates. It was a pirate ship.
* * *
Coop was deep in battle mode by the time his squadron launched. Part of him was amazed that Pappy hadn’t hesitated to send them after her. But he knew why. Pappy had committed to her protection, too, when he gave Coop permission to marry her. He’d given his men an out, but they were all forming up around him. His men, his flyboys would help him get his girl back or die. Damn, he was proud of them.
At first it had seemed as if the ship would outpace them. When it stopped accelerating, he knew Arian was fighting back. If the dragon hadn’t done it, who had initiated the launch? All of their people were accounted for. The Phoenicopterians? But why would they steer the ship on a course for the array?
I am not the ship’s master.
She’d said that once. The dragon claimed he wasn’t the boss either. The ship? Had the ship snatched her?
“Alpha Sierra is slowing and possibly changing course,” came the voice of radar control on the Boyington.
Alpha Sierra. Alien ship. But Arian wasn’t alien anymore—
All hell broke loose as a bogey popped up on tracking. His ship screamed multiple warnings. There were more from the Boyington.
“Unknown bogey!”
“Unknown bogey has deployed a tractor beam against Alpha Sierra.”
Distantly he was aware of the Boyington demanding the bogey identify itself.
“Scan it! With everything you got while it’s visible,” Coop ordered tersely. “Eyeballs on it guys. It’s going to cloak as soon as it can.”
“Beacon is still active on Alpha Sierra,” Badger pointed out.
“Can we pick it up from inside a cloaked ship?” Tiger wondered.
No one had an answer until the ship cloaked once more.
Coop’s thoughts were racing. If that ship went ghost—when it went ghost—on them, it would be almost a reverse of the battle by the array. The storks had learned a few things from them, well, he’d learned a few things from the storks.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do, Bravo Flight…”
* * *
The ship scraped roughly against metal, before sliding to a stop.
She was not happy. The ship was not happy. That she could feel its unhappy was unsettling, but at least they finally had one thing in common.
“You should not have tried to kidnap me,” she muttered, but they were past that now.
She and the ship had fought hard, but these pirates knew what they were doing. They had reeled them in like a fish on a line. She paused to wonder where that thought had come from and what it meant, then pushed it impatiently away as the grind of hangar bay doors closing came to her ears through the hull of this ship. Trapped. She hugged her body as shudders shook her. Coop is out there. He was coming. He would think of something—if he could see them. This ship had arrived cloaked. It would cloak again. Her chin lifted, and her arms fell away.
The beacon.
“Can we boost the beacon’s signal?” Even as she asked the ship this question, she dropped to her knees and pulled off a panel, tossing it aside. She found the controls, looked around for her tools, found Rhubreak beside her, the bag suspended on his snoot. “Thank you.”
His beard fluttered a bit, and he might have nodded. She found the beacon’s power core. It still broadcast, but it could take more power. She diverted power from other systems, bringing it up to its max signal. She sank back, sweeping a forearm across her brow. It was something, but she could, she needed to do more. Think. She pounded her forehead. She scrambled up and flung herself into her seat.
“This ship must have weapons.”
It is not a ship of war.
“Protections, then.”
Mostly we run away.
“Surely you can’t run away every time.” When neither dragon nor ship answered, she added impatiently, “They’ll try to board us.”
She didn’t like the darkness that welled up, hated being trapped and feeling helpless. It carried her back to Bosakli, to every moment of her life there, up to and including, the pact bonding visits the day before the ship rescued her. Okay, so she might owe it something, but not her whole life.
“You should have asked for my help,” she grumbled and felt something that might have been an apology from it.
Dread knotted her insides, put a sheen of sweat on her skin that made her fingers slip on the controls and clogged her thoughts. Against her desire, her brain pulled up images of the Mycterian boarding parties. Would pirates be better or worse?
She was not sure she wanted to see, but she needed to know, so she pulled up the video views of the outside. No birds of any kind, but the line of men—though they looked more like fierce animals—pointed various lethal-looking weapons at the ship. At least they did not have razor sharp beaks. But that was only positive. They appeared both wary and excited as they circled the ship like it was their prey.
Because it was their prey. She was their prey.
With her new knowledge of men and women, and how they could interact, she feared she knew what they would do to her if they breached the hull. Suddenly getting stabbed and eaten by the Mycterians felt preferable.
Her blood chilled enough to qualify her for cold sleep, but she squared her shoulders. From Coop, from his people, she’d learned that waiting on the enemy was a swift path to defeat. What as it Coop had said after the battle? That one fights until there is no hope left in the hope that something would change, or the enemy made a mistake. Though, from what she’d observed, Coop had forced that change.
As had she, when she activated the comet drive. This ship did not have comet drive—did it? And if it did? From inside this ship, it was a fast flight to destruction. And it could take out Coop’s squadron.
She noted a change in the circling men. They did a caricature of coming to attention, their heads turning toward something out of her sight. For no reason she could define, the hair on her arms rose and a knot coiled in her midsection. The men fell back in two directions, allowing someone to stride into her view. He looked right at the video feed as if he knew it was there. As if he knew she were there.
Trajan Bester.
She flinched back, her breathing turning to panicked gasps.
No…
There was no sign of the careful pact bond seeker now. She’d known, hadn’t she? She’d sensed what he was. To avoid facing him, she’d walked onto a space ship to anywhere, with only a dragon as a companion.
Her communications buzzed.
“You will lower your ramp and surrender yourself and your ship.” His lips had twisted up in a grotesque smile. “If you don’t cause us too much trouble, we won’t hurt you very much.” He licked his fat lips, and a gleam of anticipation made her stomach lurch. “Who knows, you might enjoy it. You can’t have had much fun on that backwater planet.”
She fought to slow her breathing and unclenched her hands before she looked at Rhubreak. “What does he know that I do not?” Her companion’s reluctance to answer was so strong, she almost reached out a hand to push it away. “Tell me.”
He is known as a collector of rare artifacts.
Artifacts. “I’m an artifact.” A thing. An it. A commodity to be traded. She glanced at the video. She was something to be played with like a toy. If the thing got hurt or damaged, why should they care? An artifact could not feel.
“Is that what I am to you? To the ship? It’s master?”
It was clear Rhubreak did not know. Like her, he’d been caught in someone else’s trap.
He must not take possession.
The ship did not want to be captured? How ironic. Will you sacrifice me for the ship?
The ship protects the contents.
Contents. Well, that was something.
He must not board this ship.
Arian searched for a response to this blindingly obvious remark. She massaged her temples, her mind going over the defensive moves they’d made during the battle at the array. Most of their moves had inv
olved the deployment of weapons. But if this ship had them, it wasn’t talking. Perhaps because it feared to destroy itself and its contents? They’d certainly come close to that when she used the comet drive. But…
The drive was propulsion—really fast propulsion, but in the end it was just movement. “We shouldn’t have to hold out forever,” she murmured, “just long enough for Coop to help us.”
The ship that holds us has many defenses.
She stiffened. Of course. They were inside. “Let me see them.” As she read through the list, she almost lost hope. What chance did Coop’s fighters have against all this? She knew the Phoenicopterians had fighters. How would Coop put it? Skin in this game. They needed her. She had to hold out long enough and maybe help them from the inside.
And if they failed?
“Does this ship have a self-destruct?” She was startled at how calm she sounded. She felt the mental jerk from the ship and Rhubreak. “You said this ship must not fall into their hands.”
There was a long pause.
“You are taking too long. I need answers and I need them quickly.”
It does.
“Okay, so what else do you have that we can use to keep these…men…from boarding this ship?” Time. Would it work for or against them? Why did the word resonate inside her head? “I need to see anything and everything we can use to keep them out.” She felt the ship’s uncertainty. “Let me see all systems that require special controls. That can blow up or burn.” As data began to appear on the screen, she felt Rhubreak’s gaze and looked at him.
You are not an artifact to me. You are not a thing or an it.
She finally nodded. “I wish…” she stopped and turned back to her screens.
You are valuable to the master, the ship said.
“When you value someone, that involves respect. And true respect means you give them a choice.” She pushed away the memory of choosing to board this ship and was grateful when Rhubreak did not remind her of it. There was choice and then there was choice. She knew the difference. Did they?
31
The beacon vanished when the bogey cloaked, and Coop cursed silently, even though he’d expected it.
“All right, let’s execute Whiskey. I say again, execute Whiskey.”
The ships in his squadron were assisting the Boyington by doing close flybys of the last known position of the bogey and also targeting possible escape vectors, hoping to pick up signs of unusual sensor data that could indicate engine thrust. If you knew what to look for, total cloaking was not possible. Based on scan data before it cloaked, they knew what to look for. The geeks on the Boyington were some of the best at finding crap like that. Once they had possible vectors, then they’d execute India.
By dropping their cloak, the bogey had unzipped its fly. Bogey had two options, in Coop’s opinion. Try to flash out fast, which would leave a nice subspace disturbance for them to follow, or try to creep away, in hopes of minimizing subspace disruptions.
Coop’s money was on the slow creep. If the bogey tried for a fast exit, well, it had to end at the weakened portion of the array. That was the only way out of this place. The Garradian shuttle was ready to do a comet drive jump to block their exit from the system. And they were prepared to harass the bogey all the way to the array.
He was assuming a fair bit, and if he was wrong—Coop’s gut tightened—but he wasn’t wrong. The ship must have slipped in with the storks when they breached the array. There’d been so sign of an anomaly since the Boyington got dumped here. The only way out was that weak point. The last question, did that bogey know how to open it up? If they did, well, the shuttle would be an unpleasant surprise. They’d be trapped between the array and the Coop’s flyboys.
“Our assessment is that the bogey is playing possum, Banshee.”
Coop had to agree with that assessment. The other purpose of their flybys was to lure the bogey into opening fire, which would also help expose their position. So far, the bogey was refusing to play.
“Roger that, home plate,” Coop said. “Lima and Tango squads execute India. I say again, execute India.”
The two squadrons of his wing began their maneuver, tracking ahead of the last known vector so they could lay down countermeasures chaff. If the bogey was attempting to creep away, it would have to change course or risk the chaff debris exposing its movement.
“Kilo and X-ray, execute India.” He studied the screen. “Victor and Yankee, execute India.”
These squadrons were creating what he hoped would be a 3D box of chaff, to either reveal or trap the bogey. It was out there. All they needed was—he gave a jerk when the beacon reappeared on their tracking, almost dead center of their chaff box. Good girl, he muttered to himself. They didn’t have the fancy power-sucking weapons the storks had, but if they deployed the right weapons, at the right time, they could force the bogey to fight or be damaged. Or destroyed. He faced that. Knew it was one of the risks. But it had to be done. They couldn’t risk the bogey escaping with Arian. She’d rather be dead than trapped. He may be a guy who didn’t know much about women, but he knew this about her.
She was done with being trapped.
His gut clenched, he knew this in his mind and his heart. These were pirates. They would show no mercy. She’d done what had to be done during the last battle. He could do no less for her now.
* * *
Their tractor beam hadn’t released yet.
“What range of motion can we manage?” And more importantly, “Can we fire engines, lift off at all?”
All roads of inquiry seemed to lead back to propulsion, though she did not give up hope of shaking out more than that.
The ship felt almost thoughtful at her question. We can fire and achieve some lift. It secures us opposite of engine thrust. There are risks.
“Really? Risks worse than being boarded by pirates?” The ship did not answer this. She activated the control to split the screen so she had a view of all angles of the hangar bay. One group of men was working on something that she assumed would be used to breach the hull. One of them, wearing protective head gear, manipulated a valve and fire shot out of the tube he held, a narrow, flexible-in-appearance tube that led back to a large tank on wheels. He began to apply this fire to the hatch seal.
A fire that could cut through metal. Interesting.
“They are attempting to cut through the hatch seal,” she mused. She looked for and found a way to lock down bridge access. Unfortunately, the bridge hatch was not as well armored as the hull. They needed to stop them before a breach or they would not be able to escape. Escape. Apparently she still had hope. She finished assessing the system’s file, set it aside, and pulled up a schematic of the ship. “Isn’t there a release vent close to where he is working?”
The ship—she presumed—highlighted the vent on the schematic. “Okay, let’s shut down all the vents but that one.” The ship might have twitched again. “I know, there are risks. Flame and oxygen are unstable when combined. But if we’re boarded…”
How many times was she going to have to explain this basic truth to the ship? On the feed she watched Bester pacing away, then stalking back to bark at the man trying to breach their hull. He was not a patient man. His head turned and he snapped at his…men did not seem the correct term for creatures who appeared barely human.
Scalawags?
That seemed not nearly evil enough, but it would suffice, she supposed. As Arian continued to comb through ship’s systems that had been hidden from her before, she felt and saw, the sparks of light flashing and moving under the surface of her skin. Without looking at Rhubreak, she asked, “What are they?”
They are nanites. It was the ship who answered.
“Why haven’t I seen them until…”
They were dormant in your system until you chose to come aboard.
Apparently, she’d hurt the ship’s feelings. “Sorry, but choice comes with knowledge. A choice without that is not a real choice.”
; She, who had endured years of “choosing” on Bosakli, knew this better than either of them. She studied the lights, flowing along her arms and hands. It almost seemed as if they went in and out of the console, too. Items on the systems were highlighted, as if the tiny lights had asked her, “will these cause the scalawags problems?” She half smiled. She and the nanites might get along very well. If they lived long enough.
Other than the sound of the hiss of the cutting fire outside, it was oddly quiet.
They are not fighting Banshee’s ships.
Okay, why would they wait? But the answer was obvious, even to a former farmer. If they could breach the hull, they had a hostage to use to negotiate their way out of the system. The only way to help Coop right now was to not get caught.
They will breach the hull soon.
“All right, here goes…something.” She looked at the broken straps, grabbed the edges and tied them together as firmly as she could. Something was better than nothing if things got bumpy. She wiggled her fingers, then settled them on the controls, watching for the moment Bester got close to the man with the fire. “Prepare to fire the engines on my command. Wait…wait…decompressing corridor…”
She heard the rush of air leaving the ship. A pillar of fire shot toward the upper bay, followed by a flash. The ship skidded sideways impacting with something firm. She could not be certain. The impact took out the video feed on that side.
“Fire engines.” She lifted off, with a shriek of metal to metal, then slewed the rear of the ship around, aiming at the largest concentration of scalawags. Screams and yells penetrated the hull of the ship.
She skewed around the other direction, partly because of the tractor beam still holding onto the ship, her body pushing against her less than secure restraints.
Her nanites highlighted something in her systems search.
The tanks of cold sleep fluid. They, she noted, must be highly flammable. Each tank had an eject control.
That’s—
“For me? Well, I won’t be needing it.”
Found Girl Page 26
