First Strike

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Enemy vessel is locking on,” Karla said. “They’re countering our ECM.”

  “Open fire,” Joshua said, quietly. That shouldn't have been a surprise; if the Hegemony had built the ECM systems, they would have at least some idea of how to counter them. “Take the bastard out.”

  Blackbeard shuddered as she unleashed a full spread of antimatter torpedoes. Their target did the same, but some of her torpedoes rushed after the sensor illusions rather than Blackbeard herself. Joshua took a moment to note that torpedo sensors seemed to be less capable of penetrating ECM than the sensors mounted on enemy starships, before the first set of torpedoes impacted on the enemy ship. Four direct hits knocked down her shields; the fifth struck her naked hull. The crew never stood a chance. Their ship vaporised in a blinding flash of light, agitating the unstable folds of hyperspace around her.

  One torpedo struck Blackbeard, shaking the light cruiser without inflicting any major damage. Joshua allowed himself a brief moment of relief, before triggering the message he’d recorded earlier, ordering the four freighters to surrender or die. Regular pirates saw no profit in destroying freighters either, but he didn't particularly care if they surrendered or had to be destroyed. Either way, the Hegemony would take a loss. He waited as the recording played out – he’d altered his voice so that he sounded like a Funk female – and smiled as the ships signalled their surrender. Their clans might ransom them, after all, if they were taken prisoner rather than being forced to walk out of the airlock. Or there might be a chance to escape when they reached the pirate base.

  “Send in the troops,” he ordered, as his small fleet took up positions around the freighters. “Remind Kang that I want the crews alive, if possible. No need to kill them when they can be interrogated.”

  “Of course,” Karla said, dryly. “And Kang is so good at leaving people alive.”

  Joshua shrugged. Ideally, the crew would never realise that their captors were human. They’d purchased armored combat suits designed for several different races, ones that revealed little of their precise proportions, but it was difficult to be certain of anything when the suits still had to be humanoid. Kang had been booted out of the Federation Marines for excessive violence, which had amused the hell out of Joshua when he’d first heard it. He’d thought that was how people got in.

  “Prisoners can be interrogated,” he said, sternly. It would be too dangerous to try to ransom them back to their clans, although they could be sold on to others who might try to ransom them. Galactic law forbade the slave trade, but it was coming back along the borderlands. “And who knows what they might have to tell us?”

  * * *

  “Quite a valuable cargo,” Kang said, an hour later. The freighter crews had been searched and then locked in their own holds while the boarders took control of their ships. “High-tech tools, several industrial modules and a ton of colony equipment. Their manifests record their destination as Hegemony-III, which suggests that they were working directly for one of the major clans.”

  Joshua nodded, thoughtfully. Hegemony-III was a major shipbuilding center, only a dozen light years from the dry world that had given birth to the Funks. Humanity’s research had suggested that the Funks had problems duplicating some of the more fiddly Association technology, but the items they’d captured was the first real proof anyone had found. Their raid would have caused problems for the Hegemony even if they’d had to blow the ships and withdraw without ever knowing what they’d destroyed.

  But if he recalled correctly, Hegemony-III was owned and operated by a clan that had ambitions to replace the Empress with one of their own. Given enough time, they might just have succeeded… particularly if they’d managed to put together a small fleet of their own. They’d have to suspect that one of their rivals had organised the intercept, even if they’d thought that their security was airtight. And their paranoia would do the rest.

  “Good,” he said, finally. Much of the cargo would be easy to sell onwards, pulling in thousands of credits to finance their private war. The fences would demand a share in the proceeds, of course, but it would still be worthwhile. He wanted to sell off the cargo and return to operations as soon as possible. “Did we find anyone interesting among the crew?”

  “Most of them are low-status males,” Kang said. “Even the females are lowly. None of them even tried to fight.”

  “Freighter crews,” Karla said. “Sheep, the lot of them.”

  Joshua snorted. He’d spent long enough trading with the Galactics to know that the Hegemony freighter crews were among the worst in the galaxy. It wasn't entirely their fault; the Hegemony treated warship crews like kings, while freighter crews were regarded as the worst of the worst. Their commanders were females who had been political failures, too insignificant to be taken seriously by their queens, or offered the choice between serving as a freighter commander or jail. The quality of personnel rarely rose above mediocre.

  It wasn't the only problem either. Where he’d been careful to give his freighter commanders a wide degree of latitude in how they commanded their ships, the Hegemony gave their commanders almost none. They were expected to follow orders and nothing else, even when it was obvious that their orders had been written by someone with no real appreciation of the situation, hundreds of light years away. Their maintenance was poor, leaving them to push their equipment until it finally failed; it didn't take much imagination to realise that their fleet train was likely to have all kinds of problems as they finally started to respond to the war. Or so Joshua hoped. Admiral Sampson had been confident, but Joshua knew too much about the crushing power of the Hegemony Navy to feel sanguine about the war’s outcome.

  But there’s another reason for us, he thought, inwardly. If Earth loses the war, if most of humanity is exterminated, at least we can seek revenge.

  “We’ll drop them off on one of the isolated worlds,” he said, shaking his head. The clans probably wouldn't pay ransom for any of their crews, even though their cargo had been important to their clan’s long-term plans. They could have sold the crews into slavery, but he had his limits. Maybe the crews could find work on one of the other rogue ships. It wouldn’t be the first time freighter crews had turned pirate – and given what they had been carrying, it might be a safer career choice than going home to report to their queens. “Leave the boarders on the ships – we’ll take them directly to Shadow and offload their cargo there.”

  “Got you,” Kang said. He was a big man, a descendent of Korean immigrants to the United States. His record had suggested a man who was a perfect soldier, except for outright racism against the Galactics – and the Funks in particular. But it was hard to blame him when his sister had been killed during the occupation of Terra Nova. “And if they give us trouble?”

  Joshua didn't hesitate. “Kill them.”

  * * *

  The Shadow system had been dismissed as worthless hundreds of years before humanity had even dreamed that the lights in the sky were just like the sun. It had been a red giant in the final stages of expansion before collapsing back in on itself – and, to humans and even the Galactics, appeared unchanged over the years since it had been surveyed by the Association. There were Galactics, Joshua knew, who worshipped the stars themselves, believing them to be gods. It was easy to understand why when a dying system lived longer than some intelligent races. Only the Cats, with their immortality, could really watch over the millennia as the star slowly died.

  Maybe that explained a great deal about them, he thought, as Blackbeard and her freighters coasted in towards the pirate base. Few races lived longer than a hundred years naturally, even with the very best of medical care; to the Cats, humanity and the Funks had to look like swarming insects, living and dying so rapidly as to be almost unnoticeable. And compared to what the Cats had done, the younger races had created almost nothing. No wonder they didn't seem to realise that the races they’d helped rise to the stars might one day pose a deadly threat to their existence.

&nbs
p; Shadow itself was a mass of asteroids, the remains of a Pluto-sized planet that had shattered aeons ago. It had been inhabited for hundreds of years, first by refugees from the Association and then by pirates, smugglers and black marketers. Any of the Galactics – even Earth – could have taken the asteroid out, but it was simply too useful as a place to meet away from the eyes of law and order. Even the Hegemony had been known to send envoys to the asteroid, establishing links with races that might be able to trade them technology for raw materials or military support. Joshua had once heard that more diplomacy took place on Shadow than on Center. It was easy to believe when one considered just how many starships routinely visited the system.

  There was no formal procedure for docking at Shadow. The docks were operated by several private companies – formed by pirates who had retired from piracy to spend their ill-gotten gains, according to ONI – who charged a small fee in exchange for docking rights and access to the small tanks of HE3. Shadow possessed no gas giant and so all of the fuel had to be brought in from another system, smuggled in from one of the major galactic powers. Joshua had worked as a freighter commander long enough to understand just how tightly the galactic economy was bound in to HE3. Earth had had a similar dependence on oil, before First Contact, but the difference was that gas giants were so plentiful and readily-accessible as to be politically meaningless.

  Leaving most of the crew onboard to guard the ships, Joshua took Karla and boarded the asteroid, wearing encounter suits that should have concealed their origins. Like most multiracial structures, it looked larger than necessary to the human eye, a giant’s house simplified almost to the point of insult. No experienced spacer would complain, even if most races found the asteroid slightly disconcerting. Few races would have problems visiting or even living within the asteroid, and those that did could hire representatives or send remote-controlled machines in their place.

  Each of the asteroid’s giant chambers held a place for visiting crewmen to get drunk and spend their booty. Joshua rolled his eyes when he saw the virtual brothel, boasting about sexual programs from all over the galaxy, with a long line of clients awaiting their turn in the booths. It was cleaner than regular brothels, and they didn't have problems supplying precisely what the client wanted, but it still struck him as silly. There were people who became addicted to VR simulations and never wanted to leave and return to the mundane world. On Shadow, there were no precautions to prevent a customer from remaining so long in VR that they lost their mind.

  “Look,” Karla said. “Funks!”

  Joshua followed her gaze and saw a pair of Funk females heading away from them. Both of them wore dark tunics rather than the golden scales that represented the Funk aristocracy, nor were they escorted by small armies of males, showing off their power to their fellows. They were either political refugees or travelling incognito. It would be interesting to find out what they were doing on Shadow, but one of the few rules the asteroid’s operators did enforce was privacy. The Funks would be left alone as long as they didn’t threaten other patrons.

  “Ignore them,” he said, as they reached a particular booth. The entrance was blocked by a solid hull-metal door, forcing him to press his hand against the scanner to inform the occupant that they were waiting. There was a long pause, just before the door slid open, revealing a darkened chamber illuminated by a faint light shimmering in the distance. He stepped inside, followed by Karla, and the door hissed closed behind them. “I have come.”

  Water moved in the distance, revealing a sheet of transparent metal holding in the liquid and keeping them from drowning. The alien – no one could pronounce what they called themselves – lived in a giant fish tank, breathing water as naturally as humans breathed air. It – Joshua didn't want to even think about the details of their sex lives – reassembled a giant crab, complete with sharp claws and unpleasant-looking tentacles. The Association had given them the stars, but their limitations meant that they rarely participated in galactic politics. He had no idea why one of them had come literally thousands of light years to live on Shadow, but there was no better fence in the galaxy. Perhaps its race had started to spread themselves across the galaxy, hoping to ensure their long-term survival. Most races did the same when they realised how easily they could be exterminated if they remained on one single planet, orbiting a single star.

  “I have reviewed your message,” the alien said. The voice was completely atonal, betraying not a hint of emotion – if they felt emotion. No one knew for sure. “You have obtained valuable goods.”

  There was a pause. Joshua waited. The water-born aliens had their own sense of time, regarding most of the land-dwellers as hasty mayflies. He’d once asked around and discovered that this particular crab was over two hundred years old, unless another of its kind had replaced it when the first one had died. No one cared enough to ask.

  “I am prepared to deal for them,” the alien said, finally. Unlike most of its kind, it liked bargaining. Maybe that was why it had travelled so far to find a place it was happy. Joshua wouldn't have wanted to be separated from the entire human race, but the crabs took a different view. “My first offer is twenty thousand credits, in cash or kind.”

  Joshua smiled and got down to haggling.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “The scouts have returned, Admiral,” Commander Sooraya Qadir reported. “The only new Hegemony ships are a trio of light cruisers. They’re running an eccentric patrol pattern around the planet.”

  Tobias frowned. The Galactics had had thousands of years to dream up tactics for their militaries, but the pattern the Hegemony ships were following made little sense, unless they were hunting for cloaked ships. But any cloaked ship with passive sensors could have carried out its work far away enough from the planet to remain safe, no matter how determinedly the Funks searched. Unless…

  He smiled as it suddenly clicked in his mind. “They think that our quantum drives are much more precise than their own,” he said. “We came out of quantum space right on top of the fleet defending Terra Nova. Maybe they think we did it deliberately.”

  “We did,” Sooraya reminded him.

  “Yes, but we could only do that because their fleet was in a fixed position,” Tobias said. “We knew exactly where it was when we jumped in, but if they haven’t realised that we surveyed the system first…”

  He tapped his console. “It’s either an attempt to prevent us hitting them before they see us coming, or a first attempt at building an anti-gunboat doctrine,” he added. “Either way, it won’t save them from us. Alert the fleet. We jump into the system in five minutes; endpoint” – he tapped a position on the display – “here.”

  Sooraya started speaking into her headset, leaving Tobias alone with his thoughts. Deploying the gunboats had been a risk, giving the Funks – and the rest of the Galactics – a look at them before they could be deployed in overwhelming force. But there had been little choice. By the time there were enough gunboats to tear apart the entire Hegemony Navy, Earth would have been occupied for years. If they’d had more ships, or enough time to develop weapons far superior to anything the Hegemony possessed…

  And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, he firmly reminded himself. You knew the risks when you devised the operational plan. It’s a little late to complain now.

  “All ships report ready, Captain,” Sooraya reported. The gunboats had had to use the quantum gate, which might have been why the Hegemony had towed a number of OWPs to the gate and positioned them to block Formidable if she returned to the system, but his cruisers weren't so limited. “Quantum drives are online and ready to take us out into normal space.”

  Tobias took one final look at the last images recorded by the scouts. Most of the vast numbers of freighters observed by the gunboats had departed, but a number remained; ONI reported that some of them had been ordered to observe the battle and report back to their owners. It was difficult to trace public opinion among the Galactics, particularly among the races t
hat had less open governments than humanity, but their military forces would be very alarmed by the Battle of Terra Nova. Five invincible superdreadnoughts had been destroyed or captured by a handful of mere cruisers. And with the superdreadnought the yardstick - the former yardstick - for measuring galactic power…

  “Take us out,” he ordered, quietly. He’d already issued orders to his crews, reminding them to make damn certain they were shooting at the Hegemony before opening fire. There were too many neutral ships in the system for his peace of mind, even if most of them were in orbit around the planet, keeping their distance from the Hegemony ships. “We’ll aim right at the quantum gate and engage the OWPs as soon as they come into range.”

  He smiled at the thought. Charging transit fees was considered bad form among the Galactics, but placing actual defences near the quantum gate was almost taboo. There was too great a chance of the automated defences accidentally engaging friendly or neutral ships before they realised their mistake, if only because a hostile ship could engage the defences before the defences decided that they were allowed to open fire. Most planetary systems placed their quantum gates well away from anywhere that needed to be defended, giving their militaries time to react if the shit hit the fan. The Hegemony was not going to make itself popular by putting hair-trigger defences in the midst of a vital system.