“Weapons first, Marquis,” Jennings said. “And start thinking of a way to disguise our ship to sensors.”
Lafayette looked confused. “Why?” he asked.
Fix turned to the captain. “The girl,” he said.
“You want us to go after her?” Lafayette demanded. “All due respect, mon capitaine, but dat is insane. The Tryst is on her last legs, and we’ll be lucky to be able to get her to a safe port for some real repairs; there isn’t one among the crew who isn’t wounded; and by the time we get off this rock, assuming we can, the Gael will have a four hour head start or so. And you’re talking about going after her?”
“Do you remember the first thing I said to you when I took command of our platoon, Remy?” Jennings asked.
Grimacing but nodding, Lafayette said, “Oui. You told us that you wouldn’t fail us.”
“I failed her,” he said.
“You did everything dat you could,” Lafayette argued, crossing his arms. “Dying for her won’t do anything to help her.”
“I have to try,” Jennings said. “I can’t leave her at the hands of the Gael. You know that I would do it for any of you.”
Fix and Lafayette exchanged a glance. His back to Jennings, Fix held up a needle that Lafayette assumed was full of a sedative. He gave a quick shake of his head, and Fix shrugged, putting the drug back into his medical cabinet. Lafayette looked back to the captain, who still looked pale, but whose eyes were full of stoic resolve. Lafayette’s options were not many: he could betray the order of his captain and lose a friend and maybe his life depending on how angry that made Jennings, or he could listen to the man who had guided him through more than one narrow scrape over the course of all the years he had known him. The thought of saving the girl never entered into his mind. His decision all came down to whether or not he trusted the captain and whether or not he would do for his friend what Jennings would have been willing to do for him. There was no decision to make in the end.
“Merde,” he muttered. Shaking his head, Lafayette added, “I can’t believe I’m about to say dis, but I hope you have an incroyable plan, mon capitaine.”
“You might start with those canisters of core samples that I saw on the way back to the ship,” Jennings said. “Might be full of moon dust.”
Pondering that for a moment, Lafayette was not certain what Jennings meant. The core samples were probably just shattered rock, silt and dust, no different from any other lifeless lump of rock that passed for a moon, an asteroid, a meteor, or a comet. The realization struck him suddenly and he could not help but allow himself a smile.
“You are a crafty lapin, mon capitaine,” he said with genuine awe. “Dat might actually work.”
“If it doesn’t, we probably won’t live long enough to rue it,” he replied with a wry grin.
3
Two hours later, Jennings was back on his feet, thanking Fix and singing the praises of modern medicine. Lafayette had finished installing cans of rock dust onto the ship and rigged them to release on a signal from the bridge, so it was his turn on the table to get a fresh transfer of blood. The Cajun insisted he was fine, but while Fix was short on words and never really seemed to care too much about what was going on, he was strangely and persistently stubborn when it came to insisting on his recommended medical treatments.
While the captain was recuperating, Squawk had finished jury rigging the mining station’s power plant into the Melody Tryst and Jennings saw an insane number of wires, cables, and conduits running from the stolen power plant into the ship’s now defunct one. His engineer was busy chattering animatedly and punching commands into a diagnostic computer, testing that the modifications he had made to the crippled unit would allow it to function as an intermediary between the working plant and the ship’s systems.
“Almost ready?” he asked Squawk from where he stood in the doorway to engineering.
“Tests have finished testing,” he reported with a tired salute. “Power will drop in the transfer, but the engines will work.”
“What about weapons? Communications? Shields?” he asked.
“Time, more time,” Squawk answered tiredly as he pushed a series of buttons on his engineering console and the Melody Tryst’s engines sputtered and then roared to life.
“You’re bloody brilliant, Squawk, you know that?” Jennings said, a sense of joy and relief surging through him with the ship’s engines running again. “Not to throw more work at you, but Marquis found some electrical cabling. It looks like it has seen better days, but it might give us some weapons or comms.”
Squawk whistled sadly, the Pasquatil equivalent of a sigh. “Do what I can, do what I can,” he muttered.
“You’re going to have to do it in the air though,” he said. “We don’t have time to stick around and make more repairs.”
“Life support will support life,” Squawk said, clearly confused. “Don’t need station’s life support. We can stay and repair.”
“We’re over two hours behind Michelle and the TGF forces that took her,” he said.
“The girl,” Squawk grumbled. “Aye, aye, captain.”
Turning to leave and head up to the bridge, Jennings called, “I’ll send Lafayette to help you as soon as I can.”
Leaving engineering, Jennings walked briskly across the cargo bay, feeling an odd sensation in his side from the bio-engineered adhesive that was holding his insides together while expediting the healing process. Stepping past the cables that Lafayette had managed to salvage from a derelict and damaged cargo shuttle, he headed up the gangplank in the direction of the bridge.
“Minerva, are you online?” he called as he walked into the bridge.
“Standing by, captain,” replied the computer. “It is nice to see you walking around again.”
“Don’t get used to it,” he replied as he sat in the captain’s chair. “I’m about to do something stupid again that will likely get us all killed.”
“Charming,” Minerva replied.
“Do you have a reading on the TGF runabout that took Michelle?” he asked.
“Not any longer,” she replied. “The TGF runabout left sensor range approximately one hour forty-seven minutes ago.”
“But you can hack into the military channels and find out where they are taking her or at least find out where Ounimbango’s ship is,” he pointed out.
“With no communication systems available, I cannot access the Nucleus and therefore cannot make any effort toward that endeavor,” she reported.
“Good point,” Jennings admitted, feeling somewhat dejected. They could not go after Michelle if they did not know where she was or where she was going.
“I can, of course, give you probabilities based on their attitude and trajectory at the time they left sensor range,” she said. “Based on all available information, there is a sixty-three percent chance that the TGF Intrepid, flagship for General Ounimbango, is still located at Barnard’s VI.”
“Minerva, I could kiss you,” Jennings said.
“You could,” she agreed.
Why would they wait at Barnard’s VI though and why did the TGF just bring a runabout to come after the girl. A TGF cruiser had a more powerful FTL engine and would have been able to get here faster than the runabout. Jennings took a look over his shoulder to make sure that Lafayette was not around and then moved over to the navigator’s seat.
“Should you not leave the calculations to Mr. Lafayette?” Minerva asked.
“I’m not calculating our course,” he responded. “I’m curious about theirs…”
His voice trailed off as Magellan spit out the telemetry for traveling between the asteroid they were on and Barnard’s VI. Now, he knew why they took the runabout. The positions of the asteroid they were on and the current location of the carrier would have entailed jumping around a lot of planetary bodies. Although the TGF carrier would be faster if it could travel in a straight line, it was less maneuverable and was far more likely to have to make multiple FTL jumps i
n order to navigate to the asteroid. Bigger ships needed a longer recharge time on their engines with each FTL jump. The runabout would be able to take a shorter, less circuitous route and it would have shorter recharge times on its jumps.
“Minerva, talk to Magellan and show me what the likeliest course the TGF runabout is taking,” he said. “Assume Barnard’s VI as a final destination.”
“Of course,” she replied. After a moment, she responded, “Magellan is now displaying the most likely course, a seventy-two percent chance.”
“Time to Barnard’s VI, based on that course?” he asked.
“Six hours thirty-nine minutes,” she said.
“Sacre bleu!” Lafayette exclaimed. “Qu’est-ce que faisez-vous?”
Jennings jumped out of the navigator’s seat and into his own. He flashed an apologetic look at Lafayette and held up his hands. “I swear I wasn’t programming any jump coordinates,” he said.
Lafayette sank into his seat. “What were you doing?” he demanded.
“Trying to figure out what way Ounimbango was going,” he said. “So that you can get us ahead of them.”
“We’re not that much smaller than that runabout,” Lafayette mused as he punched commands into Magellan. “I don’t see how we’re going to find that much quicker of a route.” After another few minutes of tapping, he shook his head and said, “Sorry, mon capitaine. Not possible.”
“Minerva,” Jennings said. “Lay in the other possible routes for the runabout to have taken.”
“I cannot comply,” the NAI said. “Magellan safety protocols eliminate the third highest probability.”
Jennings looked at Lafayette. “Override the safety protocol, I want to see this,” he ordered.
“Not a good idea, mon capitaine,” he muttered, but he did as he was ordered.
A much straighter course appeared on Magellan’s screen. “Time of that route?” Jennings asked.
“Three hours thirty-seven minutes,” Minerva responded.
“All right then,” Jennings said as he strapped into his chair.
“Mon capitaine, pas possible!” Lafayette protested.
“Squawk!” Jennings barked into the intercom. “Engines warmed up?”
“Engines are hot,” came the excited reply.
“Fix! Get up to the bridge or get buckled in!” Jennings warned as he started pressing buttons on his console.
“En route,” Fix replied.
“Minerva, depressurize the hangar,” Jennings ordered. Fix came in and grabbed a seat next to Jennings as the captain said, “Engaging repulsors. Repulsors functioning. Everyone strapped in?” He received affirmations from all the crew on the bridge and Squawk, who was probably strapped into his small chair bolted to the wall of the engineering section. “C’mon, darling,” Jennings whispered to the Melody Tryst. “Show me what you’ve got.”
He engaged the aft thrusters, and the Melody Tryst started forward slowly until she cleared the hangar. Jennings then pulled back on the stick while engaging the sublight engines. The ship shot forward with ease without any atmosphere to overcome, and there was a quick feeling of acceleration before the inertial dampeners kicked in. Jennings studied his readouts for the engine functionality for a moment: they were green. Immediately, he started charging the FTL engine.
“Lafayette, are you ready?” he asked.
“Mon capitaine, you are going to get us killed,” Lafayette protested.
“Not if we get the shields repaired in time,” he said.
“Chance of succeeding is thirty-three percent with the assumption of shields being fully restored,” Minerva chimed in.
“See,” Jennings said, clapping Lafayette on the shoulder. “Minerva says will be fine.”
“Dat’s not what she said,” Lafayette protested.
The two continued their arguing as a warning klaxon sounded and the viewscreen suddenly became filled with a dozen ships. “We might have a larger problem,” Fix pointed out.
Chapter 24
1
Salvador Rocca stood with his arms locked behind his back as he stared at the viewscreen, watching the starlines as the Claymore flew through space at the speed of light. Vesper Santelli’s lieutenant was in his late fifties and had let himself go slightly from the fit, muscular man who had been a simple crewman on Santelli’s first ship, back when he was a simple smuggler and not the kingpin of both the largest legitimate and criminal shipping enterprises in the nine systems. In those days, Rocca had been good in a fight, a hell of a deadly shot, and someone who had saved Santelli from arrest or death on multiple occasions. Those actions had earned the amity and respect of one of the hardest men he had ever met. He was godfather to Santelli’s children and was his most trusted councilor, not because he offered sage like advice, but because Santelli trusted him to be honest and because Rocca trusted Santelli not to kill him for being so. (Criminal masterminds, like any corporate executive, did not like being told the truth if it reflected negatively on them. CEOs just fired you; men like Santelli killed you.)
Now, Rocca had the belly of a man who enjoyed a good meal a little too frequently, the white hair of a man approaching retirement, and the wrinkled skin of someone who enjoyed sun bathing in the tropics a little too much. However, there was an aura the man projected, a sensation of power that he radiated. Santelli was one to shout, scream or gesticulate wildly when he became angry. Rocca spoke quietly and calmly at all times, and only by listening to how deliberately he spoke, could you tell how furious he was.
The Claymore was one of the newest transport ships in Santelli’s fleet and like all of his ships, they were designed more for illicit cargo transportation than for military uses, but that meant they were fast, carried a lot of shielding and enough firepower to be intimidating. Certainly enough to deal with Petrova and Jennings, Rocca thought to himself.
“One minute to the asteroid we tracked Petrova too,” the helmsman said from his position in front of Rocca, just in front of the viewscreen.
A half dozen other men sitting at stations making a rough rectangle around the captain’s chair which Rocca stood in front of all looked to him simultaneously. “Full power to the weapons and raise the shields,” he said calmly. “Prepare to drop out of light speed and pass the word along to the other ships.”
A flurry of activity from the crew preceded the Claymore’s FTL engines cutting out and the sublights activating. “Mr. Rocca, I have a contact leaving the asteroid’s surface,” one of the crewmen reported.
“Is it the Grey Vistula?” he asked. He had studied Santelli’s file on Petrova during the journey from Earth.
“Negative,” the man replied. “It identifies as a ship called the Starlight Minstrel.”
“It’s a fake,” Rocca said confidently. The Starlight Minstrel was one of the fake ship IDs that Matthew Jennings had used in the past.
“Confirmed,” the crewman agreed. “We have a confirmed match for the Melody Tryst.”
Nodding with the slightest hint of approval, Rocca turned to the ship’s gunners on his right. “I want her crippled, but not destroyed,” he said calmly. “Mr. Santelli wants the pleasure of killing Captain Jennings himself. I would hate to have to tell him that it was any of you who prevented this.”
Most of the crew knew the wrath of Vesper Santelli far too well.
“Remind the other ships of the same,” Rocca said. “And by all means, commence the assault.”
2
“Now, who the hell are these guys?” Jennings muttered.
“Based on the hull registries, they are vessels belonging to Vesper Santelli,” Minerva reported.
“Merde,” Lafayette muttered.
Jennings took evasive action as the lead ship opened fire with a plasma cannon burst, which the Melody Tryst narrowly avoided. Fix hit a control to raise the shields and felt slightly concerned that they were only at nineteen percent. Jennings rolled over hard to the left as more ships joined the attack.
“Our defenses are minimal,
” Fix pointed out.
“That’s why I’m not letting them hit us,” Jennings fired back. He chanced a look over at Lafayette. “Is Magellan ready?” he demanded.
“Need a minute,” he responded.
“Don’t have a minute,” Jennings retorted.
Santelli’s ships were cutting off every avenue of escape that Jennings tried and had formed in a near perfect half-circle around him. Normally, Jennings would make a charge at one of the ships, pound them with fire and then use the Melody Tryst’s superior speed to flee. Without any functioning weapons, that was not going to be possible.
“They’re cutting us off,” Jennings muttered.
“Magellan can’t calculate a course with you jumping all over the place,” Lafayette countered.
“You and that fucking computer are really starting to get on my nerves,” Jennings spat as he wrenched the controls hard over again and narrowly avoided being splashed. “Dammit!” he swore, before he took in a deep breath, had a sudden idea, and demanded of the first mate. “How much of that rock dust did you load onto the ship’s hull?”
“Four canisters,” he replied. “Connected to two triggers.”
Jennings turned to Fix. “Trigger the first one,” he ordered.
“Triggering,” Fix replied, not exactly impressed that they were launching dust at the enemy.
Suddenly, the firing stopped, and Jennings was able to straighten out his course and take a straight path away from Santelli’s ships, which continued to hover in space as if they could no longer see the Melody Tryst. Lafayette let out a cry of triumph as Magellan was able to finish calculating their course and Jennings engaged the FTL engine.
“Ha-ha!” Jennings yelled. “I knew that would work.”
“What the hell just happened?” Fix demanded. “Why did they stop firing?”
Jennings leaned back in his chair with a satisfied look on his face and asked, “Do you have any idea how much interstellar dust there is out in the galaxy?”
111 Souls (Infinite Universe) Page 24
