And start fighting each other, she thought. Somehow, she doubted that multiple interstellar powers could co-exist peacefully for very long. The Unification Wars had come in the wake of massive interstellar conflicts that had killed billions of people and sterilised a few dozen worlds. Professor Sorrel had admitted that there was a great deal they didn't know about that time – the Empire had written the history books – but he had agreed that the pre-unification era had been one of massive bloodshed. The post-Empire era was likely to be the same.
It made her wonder if anyone else had seen the disaster coming. She’d had the advantage of not being immersed in the trader community from birth, but surely she wasn't unique. There were – or had been – trillions of humans in the Empire. It seemed impossible that she could have been the only person to see disaster looming and take precautions. What if some of the planetary governments had made their own preparations?
She shook her head. There was no way to know.
It was a relief when they finally dropped back into normal space, just outside Dueller’s Phase Limit. There was a long pause as the destroyers checked for enemy contacts, then escorted the freighters across the Phase Limit before broadcasting a message stating that they were going to take emergency supplies to the planet. Dueller needed the algae-production facilities, Sameena knew; it was the most convincing excuse they’d been able to devise for the destroyers to leave the convoy. She watched them go, unsure if she really wanted to encounter pirates or not. Giving them a bloody nose was important, but so was saving Dueller.
“Picking up a greeting broadcast from Dueller,” the communications officer said, as the convoy crawled towards the planet. It would be hours before they could enter orbit and start unloading. “The situation seems to have grown worse.”
Sameena gritted her teeth, feeling powerless. There was nothing they could do, apart from pray that the supplies on the convoy were enough to see the planet’s population through a very bad time. Jamie had wondered out loud, the last time they’d seen each other, if the disease striking Dueller was wholly natural. It really was astonishingly rare, he’d pointed out, for something to jump from one biosphere to another. Jayne had agreed when Sameena had checked with her.
“It would be easier for us to get pregnant off snakes and elephants than something from one biosphere affecting others,” she’d said. She’d winked at Paddy and made a remark about a gorilla having made her pregnant before returning to the topic at hand. “It is quite possible that someone gave it a little push.”
The thought made Sameena scowl. Whatever else could be said about the Empire, it had been careful to preserve and protect planetary biospheres. If someone had created a biological weapon to wipe one biosphere clean, it was easy to imagine it spreading to other worlds. Who would be so damn irresponsible? There were easier ways, she knew, to eradicate an entire planetary population, if someone happened to be so depraved that they wanted to try. Surely the population would be more useful alive.
There was a chime from the sensor console. “Captain,” the sensor officer said, “I think we have company.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Unsurprisingly, economic growth staggered and started to fall. This had disastrous knock-on effects. An empire that included trillions of human beings – with eighty billion on Earth alone – found it harder to find enough educated people to maintain its society. What newly-educated people there were found themselves being pushed into trying to keep the society running, rather than making new developments.
- Professor Leo Caesius. The Science That Isn’t: Economics and the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire.
“Show me,” Sameena ordered, pushing her morbid thoughts aside.
“Two contacts, possibly more,” the sensor officer said. “Both advancing towards us on intercept vector.”
Sameena peered over his shoulder, scowling inwardly. It was difficult to acquire accurate readings at such a distance, but there were definitely at least two starships heading towards the convoy. She worked it out in her head, then glanced at the main display to confirm her thoughts. The unknown ships would enter missile range in thirty minutes.
“They’re crawling,” Foxglove observed, thoughtfully. “They could be on us in less than five minutes if they pushed their drives a little harder.”
“Perhaps they can't,” the sensor officer suggested. “Pirate ships aren't always the best maintained in the galaxy.”
“We dare not assume that to be true,” Sameena said. It would be a very rare pirate crew that chose to operate such a ship. The freighters might be able to outrun them even without much of a head start. And an Imperial Navy warship would have no difficulty chasing them down. “I think they’re being careful.”
She sat back down in the command chair and studied the main display. Assuming that her convoy had had only civilian-grade sensors, they wouldn't see the pirates for at least another twenty minutes ... did the pirates know that they had military-grade passive sensors? But if they had known, they would surely have assumed that they had already been detected ... she scowled, realising just what the tactical manuals had meant when they’d talked about the burden of command. A wrong decision or a badly flawed assumption might get them all killed.
“One of them is definitely a light cruiser, judging by the power curves,” the sensor officer said, seven minutes later. “The other is smaller. I think it’s probably a destroyer, but one that has been heavily modified at one point. The power signature doesn't fit anything in the databanks.”
Sameena nodded. The Imperial Navy designed its ships for easy repairs and upgrades, something that had come in very handy as the Empire’s education and technical base had started to decline. They might be facing an old hull crammed with modern weapons, such as they were. Steve’s complaints about technological stagnation applied just as much to the Imperial Navy as they did to the Empire as a whole. There hadn't really been that many improvements since the first battleship had been launched into space, thousands of years ago.
“Looks like a vanity project ship,” Foxglove observed. He pressed on when Sameena shot him a questioning look. “Every so often, one of the richer worlds starts its own building project, rather than borrowing designs from the Imperial Navy. Those ships are sometimes superior designs, but it’s more common to end up with a useless hodgepodge. They tend to be right buggers to maintain too.”
Sameena frowned. “How many have you seen?”
“There were a handful stored at the Academy,” Foxglove admitted. “Mostly used to show us precisely what we should not do, if we ever went into starship design.”
“Sensor sweep,” the sensor officer snapped. “They just pinged us.”
And now we’re allowed to know they’re there, Sameena thought. “Bring up our civilian active sensors,” she ordered. Even primitive equipment wouldn't have missed the pirate sensor sweep. “Scan them back.”
She scowled as the display sharpened. “One light cruiser, confirmed,” the sensor officer said. “One frigate ... I can't identify the class. Both picking up speed now and sweeping us regularly.”
“General signal,” Sameena ordered. “Alter course to head away from the incoming ships, then accelerate to maximum speed.”
They’d drilled endlessly in simulations, but she couldn't help feeling nervous as they tried it for the first time. The convoy was hardly uniform; the two q-ships had a lower maximum speed than the other ships in the flotilla. If the pirates came after them, they should run the q-ships down first. If ... she scowled, remembering all the times the simulations had gone wrong. The pirates might be trying to herd them into a trap.
“And send a general distress call,” she added. “They’ll expect us to call back the destroyers.”
“It will be an hour before they can get here,” Foxglove said, darkly.
Sameena nodded. The pirates would have an hour to capture the ships, get them back across the Phase Limit and escape into interstellar space, where the freighters coul
d be looted at leisure. If the q-ships hadn't been there, it wouldn't have been too difficult for them, even if the freighter crews wanted to fight. Resistance would have been largely futile. Besides, everyone knew what happened to people who were captured by pirates.
The range slowly narrowed as the pirate ships came after them. Sameena frowned; there was something odd about their motions, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. And yet it looked oddly familiar ...
“They’re new to their ship,” the sensor officer said. “I don’t think they quite know what they are doing.”
Sameena grinned. That was what she’d been missing.
Foxglove was more sceptical. “How can you be sure?”
“There are dozens of tiny little details,” the sensor officer reported. He sounded pleased with his deduction. “The drive field is baseline; they’re not even trying to squeeze additional power out of it. They’re not trying to massage their sensors to pull out more data, or even spoof our sensors. And their targeting is straight out of the manual. We could break their locks if we didn't care about revealing ourselves.”
His smile dimmed. “They don’t even understand the basics cadets are taught,” he added. “I don't think they really know what they are doing.”
There’s a lot of that about, Sameena thought, remembering just how hard it was to turn ignorant teenagers into mechanics and engineers. She’d had problems and she’d had much less to unlearn than the average child born in the Empire. But it was heartening, in a way. The pirates might have more firepower, yet her crews had more experience and understanding of their own equipment.
“Let us hope that you are right,” she said, out loud. “Time to intercept?”
“Seventeen minutes, unless they accelerate,” the helmsman said. “I ...”
“Missile separation,” the sensor officer barked.
“Warning shot,” Foxglove said, from the tactical console. “They aimed to miss us by a comfortable margin.”
Sameena nodded, but she couldn't help tensing as the missile detonated. A direct hit would cause considerable damage.
“Standard penetrator warhead,” the sensor officer reported. “Not a nuke or laser head.”
“They wouldn't want to waste those on warning shots,” Sameena said. Obtaining nuclear warheads was depressingly easy. Laser heads were trickier, but pirates always seemed to have few problems obtaining what they needed. It had puzzled her – the Empire seemed to take a dim view of weapons in private hands – until she’d realised that a pirate ship could easily bombard a planet with rocks rather than nukes. “I imagine that they will be hailing us in a few minutes.”
“Picking up a laser message,” the sensor officer said. “It’s audio only.”
“Put it on,” Sameena ordered.
The voice was utterly atonal, almost certainly produced by a computer and scrubbed clean of anything that might identify its origins. Not, Sameena suspected, that it would have mattered if they pulled a perfect voiceprint out of the signal. It was easy to fake someone’s voice, creating reasonable doubt in a courtroom. But then, few pirates ever saw a courtroom anyway. If they were caught, they were generally interrogated and then pushed out the nearest airlock.
“You are under the guns of a warship,” it said. “You will cut your drives and surrender immediately or we will fire into your hull.”
Sameena suspected that the pirate was bluffing. Sneaky Bastard wouldn't look like a warship, or anything other than a doddering old tramp freighter. Firing into her hull might cripple the drives, leaving her utterly helpless ... or it might destroy the ship completely. The pirate crews were held together by fear and the spoils of their raids. Wantonly destroying a possible prize wouldn't endear the pirate commander to his subordinates.
“Keep us on our current course,” she ordered. “And send another transmission to the destroyers. Make it sound more panicky than the last one.”
“They’re firing a second missile,” Foxglove reported. “This one is going to come far too close to our hull.”
Sameena watched as the missile flashed past them and detonated. “I think they’re getting more serious now,” she said. “Order the Lying Bastard to cut engines with us.”
She was tempted to broadcast their surrender, hoping to lull the pirates into overconfidence, but Jamie had been horrified when she'd mentioned it to him. If they used surrender as a ruse of war, he’d pointed out, no one would accept their surrenders. Her crews might one day face a honourable opponent, rather than pirates, and they might have no choice, but to surrender. But if the enemy believed the surrender to be a trick ...
“Cut engines,” she ordered. “Now.”
The pirates came on rapidly, altering course slightly to close in on the q-ships. Sameena ran through it again and again in her mind; timing was everything. If they fired too soon, the pirates might have a chance to escape or engage her in a long-range missile duel, while if they fired too late the pirates might be able to destroy her ships too. There would be a very brief window of opportunity to use the advantage of surprise ruthlessly. If she missed it ...
“They’re launching shuttles,” the sensor officer reported.
“Target them with lasers,” Sameena ordered. Her crew was armed, but she didn't dare risk allowing the pirates to board. “Fire as soon as we engage the enemy starships.”
She couldn't fault the pirate tactics, she decided, ruefully. The pirate commander evidently intended to scoop up as much of the convoy as possible; now that he'd cowed the two slowest freighters, he could go after the other freighters while his shuttle crews secured their targets. It actually opened up a new danger, she realised; they might accidentally evade her best window of opportunity without even noticing what they’d done. That would be ironic. The same luck that had kept them alive, if they really knew nothing about operating and maintaining their ships, would save them from destruction.
They could adjust their own course slightly, she considered, but it might seem like they were trying to flee ... or, if the pirate commander was feeling paranoid, get into firing position. He might flee himself or he might open fire on the entire convoy. She didn't dare allow him too much time to think. Her eyes tracked the display as the four starships converged ...
“Load up the firing patterns,” she ordered. “If you can take advantage of their poor sensor controls, do so.”
“Understood,” Foxglove said. “I’m programming the missiles for random evasive patterns. If they are actually trying to run their fire control manually ...”
Sameena smiled. No human brain could hope to keep up with the split-second decisions that were needed to handle a starship’s point defence. Even the Imperial Navy allowed the computers to control their point defence, rather than risk disaster. But the pirates might not have even realised that was possible. It was a curious oversight, one that made little sense.
Perhaps their tactical officer is trying to make himself indispensable, she thought. If she had been stuck on a pirate ship, she would certainly have sought some protection to keep her skin intact. Or maybe they’re just idiots.
“Entering firing range now,” Foxglove said. “Captain?”
Sameena braced herself. “Fire.”
Sneaky Bastard rocked violently as she unleashed her first barrage of missiles, followed rapidly by her second. The pirate ships were caught completely by surprise, unsure of what to do; she saw their crews hastily trying to reconfigure their point defence before it was too late. Their shuttles didn't even realise that they were under attack before they were blown into dust.
“Shuttles destroyed,” Foxglove said, with heavy satisfaction. “Cycling third barrage now.”
Sameena scowled. They’d drilled and drilled until the entire crew was thoroughly sick of it, but it still took five minutes to transport the missiles from the hold into the weapons pods and launch them out into space. In a real battle, she knew, they’d be in deep trouble. She looked over at the pirate cruiser and watched as its crew strugg
led desperately to survive. Their point defence fire was hesitant and largely ineffective. Five laser heads detonated near the ship, burning through the hullmetal and wreaking havoc inside the hull. Moments later, the entire starship exploded into a ball of superheated plasma.
“Target destroyed,” Foxglove said.
The pirate frigate had been luckier – and helped by the fact that they'd had to throw most of their first barrage at the cruiser. Her crew were clearly better trained, Sameena decided; they managed to sheer off and even launch a handful of missiles back towards the q-ships before the second barrage caught up with them. A nuke struck their drive section, crippling the ship. Sameena was mildly impressed that it had survived.
She winced as the enemy missiles closed in on her ship, but she should have had more faith. Foxglove’s computers tracked and targeted them all, then systematically wiped them out of space. They hadn't even tried any trickery, not even basic ECM. The sensor officer had been right, she decided. They didn't know the capabilities of their own systems.
“Launch shuttles,” she ordered, leaving the thought for later consideration. The pirate ship was effectively powerless. It was time to deal with it before the crew could perish – or try to escape. “And transmit our own surrender demand.”
She’d pre-recorded the message when they’d worked through possible scenarios for intercepting the pirates. Unlike the Imperial Navy, she’d decided to offer the pirates a chance at life on a penal world, if they surrendered without further resistance. It hadn't made her many friends – one of the few things that the traders and the Imperial Navy agreed upon was that the only good pirate was a dead pirate – but it might help save lives. Even a cornered rat could put up a fight against a cat or dog.
“No response,” the sensor officer said. “They may well be completely powerless.”
The Empire's Corps: Book 05 - The Outcast Page 35
