Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  One look at the heatscan readout told him that this was the Might of Teranor. It had eighty four engines and fifty six cargo towers, each of which held twenty containers. It was on course just where they’d predicted it would be. It was on a heading from Chartsey to Karadon, hanging twenty six minutes away from the central line route. There were no other ships on scopes at this range, though there might well be other ships in the region. Even the Minnow’s powerful Fleet scopes could only see for half a light year or so, and they were further away than that from the busiest part of the shipping route.

  Mako felt his stomach lurch, though there was a kind of inevitability about it. It would have been just too much to expect that the ship that picked up the drugs would either be heading to Chartsey or small enough for them to arrest with conventional force. Of course, naturally, it was going to Karadon, compelling them to have to do something before it got there.

  Mako looked at Alex, wondering if he regretted now not making the decision to seize the drugs and the shuttle when that would have been relatively easy. It had been a gamble letting the shuttle go on. It was legally important for them to be able to see the freighter taking the drugs aboard, but that had had to be balanced against the risk that it might be heading for Karadon and would be too big for them to tackle by conventional means.

  Alex, however, did not seem to be in the least bit perturbed. There was no surprise on his face as he saw that the ship was the Might of Teranor, and certainly no dismay. It was as if he, too, had seen the inevitability of this. Fate had thrown them the worst-case scenario, but he was untroubled, plans and decisions already made for this contingency.

  ‘Right,’ he said, matter of factly. ‘All officers to the command deck.’

  Mako was familiar with this protocol now. It meant that the skipper was about to give a strategic briefing of a nature which was open to the crew. If it was private or classified, he would ask to see them in the wardroom. Meetings on the command deck were actually intended to be listened in on by the crew, though officially only involving the officers.

  They were all there very quickly, taking up their accustomed places around the datatable. Dan Tarrance was the only one who looked excited. The older, more experienced officers were keenly alert but focussed, looking at the skipper for his decision.

  ‘My intention,’ Alex von Strada informed them, ‘is to mount a covert operation to arrest the skipper, secure the container, and establish a prize crew aboard.’

  Mako recognised that as the Moffat Solution they had been practising. It was a rapid tactical strike, securing what were felt to be the two most important things – the container of drugs, for a start, ensuring that it did not reach the streets, and the skipper who was legally responsible for his ship. It would be a matter for in depth investigation to establish which of the rest of the officers, crew and passengers had been actively involved, with decisions to be made about that by the League Prosecution Service.

  ‘I intend to make it a night attack,’ Alex told the officers, ‘between three and four tomorrow morning. We will run up ahead and double back, crossing paths with them as if in a chance encounter. We’ll offer them a gift box. If they accept, then we’ll send our snatch party under cover of delivering it. If they refuse, then we will appear to accept that and move on, coming back at them three minutes later with a direct boarding manoeuvre. Either way, we will send alpha and beta teams aboard the number one shuttle. Alpha team, led by Mr Burroughs, will secure the airlock area and mount a snatch on the skipper’s cabin, here.’

  He had called up a schematic of the Might of Teranor and indicated the location of the skipper’s cabin, which as usual on starships was near to the flight deck.

  ‘Beta team, led by Mr Tarrance, will secure the flight deck and impose lockout software on their systems to give us control. At the same time, gamma team, in the number two shuttle, will launch and lock grapnels to the target container,’ he indicated that, too. ‘I intend gamma team to be led by CPO Burdon.’

  That did not cause any surprise either, since they were not allowed to send more than two officers off the ship and Hali Burdon was a superb pilot with years of experience of handling freight. They had not just been practising for this, but making some structural alterations to the hull of their own ship too, to be able to carry the container. The Fleet, it seemed, was prepared for most eventualities and the order to break out the hull nets hadn’t amazed anybody.

  ‘It will be a silent strike.’ Alex told them. ‘Carried out as quickly and quietly as possible. We want the situation under control before they even realise what’s happening.’

  Mako could see why. The Might of Teranor didn’t just outmass the little corvette, being more than forty times their size if you included the mass of cargo containers. It was a ship that was clearly geared up to defend itself from pirate attack. It had eight cannon. They were nowhere near as powerful as the ones the warship carried but they could still do some damage. Rather more importantly, as far as boarding operations were concerned, the Teranor had forty seven people aboard. Since regulations only allowed the Minnow to send twenty eight on a boarding party, they were clearly going to be outnumbered. If any of those people were armed and given the opportunity to make a fight of it, there were liable to be casualties on both sides.

  ‘Are there any objections?’ The skipper enquired, looking round at the officers. This was their opportunity to go on record with any concerns or doubts they might have about the wisdom of his intentions, but it would have been a pretty strange situation for him to have got this far with a plan, rehearsing and preparing for it, with no concerns being raised by the officers till now. He had their full support, in any case, though they all gave formal acknowledgement of the fact for the benefit of the log.

  ‘Thank you.’ Alex gave them a brief smile in return. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to details.’ He walked them through the operation, step by step, on the Teranor’s schematic, making sure that everyone knew where they were supposed to be and what they had to do.

  How much resistance they would meet, of course, was the unknown factor. There had been much discussion about the crew manifest of the Might of Teranor in recent days. Mako had seen ID pictures of its skipper and everyone aboard. The skipper, Marlon Steppard, looked like an ordinary kind of guy. He was middle aged, mousy haired, rather running to paunch. He had a reputation, Mako had been told, for running a safe, quiet ship, and for having a good eye to a profitable cargo, but nothing much more than that was known about him. The first mate, Kem Salmond, was considered rather more ambitious. He wore expensive suits and socialised at country clubs.

  ‘This is definitely one to keep an eye out for.’ Alex highlighted one of the profiles on a subscreen, with nods from the officers who had already spotted him as a potential risk. ‘Rikado Marsh. Supposedly a passenger and a friend of Kem Salmond’s. There’s nothing on record about him, beyond a vague background in ‘corporate security’, but it’s likely that he’s riding shotgun on the drug consignment. Any and all of the Teranor’s crew have to be considered potentially armed and dangerous, but this one…’ he tapped at Rikado Marsh’s profile, ‘may be a killer.’

  He paused, looking around at them appraisingly. They all knew the risks and were all taking them seriously. They all knew, too, that a ship the size of the Minnow could not be expected even to attempt the seizure of a ship the size of the Might of Teranor. It was apparent, though, that Alex von Strada had absolute confidence in their ability to do it, and that they had the same trust in him. Mako felt his heart quicken as it sank in that this was for real, they were actually going to do this.

  ‘So,’ the skipper asked matter of factly, ‘any questions?’

  ____________________

  Chapter Twelve

  Fourteen hours later, the Might of Teranor was cruising uneventfully on the shipping lane to Karadon when the corvette Minnow passed it. It looked so natural that neither of the two members of crew holding night watch on the freigh
ter thought anything of it, not even when the corvette span about and dropped down to cruise alongside them. This was a routine courtesy from Fleet ships, asking if they were in need of any assistance and offering to send over a courtesy gift box.

  This was accepted. Other than the fact that they had a container full of drugs instead of the tetracitrine it was declared to be on the manifest, there was nothing aboard the freighter to excite the interest of Customs. They were always careful, too, to maintain the image of a good-natured ship. They were friendly with the Fleet, helpful to other freighters and entirely unsuspicious. The crewman at the conn did not even consider it worthwhile to wake the skipper for a routine gift-drop to their airlock.

  So, the offer was made and accepted. Two minutes later, one of the Minnow’s shuttles detached and came over, docking to an airlock just aft of the freighter’s flight deck.

  What happened then would go down in spacer legend. As the unwitting crewman opened the hatch, instead of a friendly rating there handing over a gift box, he was confronted by four terrifying figures. They stood larger than human in their cyborg-like hullwalker suits, but these were like no hullwalker suits the Teranor crewman had ever seen before. Not only had their visors been blanked out so that the faces of the people within could not be seen but the suits themselves shone with a dazzling mirror gleam. They were all the more impressive because the lights in the shuttle they were boarding from had been turned up to maximum. They were armed with rifles too, and as they ran aboard, their duralloy boots strangely silent, all those rifles were aimed directly at the Teranor crewman.

  That was all the more terrifying because none of them said a word, or at least nothing that the crewman could hear. They were in fact talking to one another on their suit coms but that was not audible to anyone else. Within seconds, before he’d had time to do more than catch his breath, the crewman was on the deck, face down, with tape-cuffs snapping round his wrists and a safe-breathe tape pressed over his mouth. As his colleague came aft to find out what the odd scuffly noise was, he suffered the same fate. Before he knew what was happening, he was pinned to the deck with the business end of a rifle shoved in his back and a tape over his mouth. It let him breathe but its sound-suppressing qualities meant that his yelling emerged as barely audible.

  He was stunned. This was just not the way the Fleet behaved. The Fleet were so predictable, you always knew exactly what they would do in any given circumstance, all laid down by strict policy and procedure. There was nothing in any Fleet policy he knew about figures in weird shiny armour storming your ship without as much as a word.

  There was nothing in normal Fleet procedures about two of the weird figures in shiny armour bursting into the skipper’s cabin and hauling him out of bed, either. Or indeed about carrying him face down back to their shuttle, struggling and cursing into a gag-tape.

  They very nearly had him there when another man burst out of a bunkroom. He was large and unshaven, wearing lurid satin pyjamas and carrying a handgun. He was instantly recognisable as Rikado Marsh, the ‘passenger’ Alex had highlighted in the briefing as likely to be armed and dangerous. He was already aiming and fired immediately at the armoured figures. Two shots cracked out, blasting scorch marks onto the duralloy suits. Then in almost the same moment, three rifles gave silent flashes of stun-bolt fire and the gunman collapsed.

  Two of the figures grabbed him, half carrying and half dragging the unconscious form between them. A third suited figure collected the gun. More voices were shouting by then and an ashen, petrified face looked out of a door only to duck back in with a shriek at the sight of them.

  ‘Skipper and one other secured.’ Buzz Burroughs reported coolly as he and CPO Martins handed their unconscious prisoner over to six more members of the team waiting aboard the shuttle. The shuttle team were wearing ordinary survival suits. They were not as resilient as the hullwalker armour and Alex did not want them going aboard the ship until he knew for sure what they were dealing with. ‘One casualty. Appears to be Rikado Marsh. He took three stun shots,’ Buzz told the skipper, and seeing a paramedic checking the gunman out, ‘We’re keeping him under medical observation.’

  ‘Understood.’ Alex had tensed at the sound of gunshot, but was as controlled as always, his manner as calm as if this was another drill. ‘Go for phase two,’ he said, and got an acknowledging ‘Sir’ from the Exec.

  ‘Command deck secured.’ Eighteen seconds later, Dan Tarrance and Elsa Nordstrom had hacked into the freighter’s computer system. In moments, they’d installed a highly classified software that locked the Might of Teranor’s crew out of all systems while broadcasting a continuous feed of data to the Minnow. ‘Arrest programme imposed, sir, the ship is under our control.’

  ‘Good job.’ Alex said. ‘Go for phase three.’

  With that, they went back aboard the ship to carry out a methodical seizure. Buzz and the others in armour moved through the ship telling the Might of Teranor’s terrified crew that they were under arrest and moving them into the mess deck whilst at the same time checking them for weapons. As each area was secured, the backup team took over to carry out a thorough search and forensic procedures.

  That was going to take some time – several hours, in fact. That, however, was not the only thing that was going on. Alex wanted that container of drugs off the ship, just in case anything went wrong and they had to pull out. As soon as he knew that they had control over the freighter’s systems, he authorised the gamma team to go ahead and get the drugs.

  So the gamma team, in the number two shuttle, headed over to the freighter and attached magnagrip grapnels to the container. With Dan operating controls on the command deck, they were able to release the container and take it under tow. It was a heavy load for the shuttle but it didn’t have far to haul it, only a few seconds over to where the corvette was waiting.

  Fleet corvettes were not intended to carry cargo containers and they’d had to have hullwalkers out for more than twenty hours to make the necessary changes to their hull. They had rigged up more than twenty clamps and cables to receive the container on the half-deck in front of the hold. Adding seventeen tons up there was going to make the ship handle awkwardly but their powerful thrusters could cope with that.

  Mako was so focussed on watching the precision with which they were lowering the container into place that he missed the fact that Alex had authorised their number three shuttle to go over and bring back the prisoners. The first he was aware of that was when they were brought through the airlock. Rikado Marsh was on a stretcher being accompanied by a paramedic and he was taken straight through into sickbay. The Teranor’s skipper, still breathless and swearing, was still tape-cuffed but was set on his feet now that they were through the airlock.

  He was not, it had to be said, a very impressive figure. Nobody could really look their best snatched out of bed at that hour and certainly not a rather flabby middle-aged man revealed to have been sleeping in a pair of green underpants. As the crew escorting him hustled him through onto the command deck, he was gaping like a beached fish.

  ‘You *#^%...,’ he swore viciously and then, as he saw the skipper, fell silent.

  Alex von Strada just looked at him. Everything that he thought about the Might of Teranor’s skipper was eloquently expressed in that glance of icy, withering contempt. He didn’t even speak to him at first. His whole manner conveyed that he had rather more important things to do right now than to attend to the utterly unimportant man in the unsightly underwear.

  And so he did, indeed, as he was watching the container of seventeen tons of drugs being secured on the hull of his ship. Magnaclamps were engaging and as the shuttle was able to disengage, Martine Fishe reported, ‘Container secured, sir.’

  At the same time, Alex was monitoring events aboard the freighter as crew and passengers were being herded to the mess deck. Some were swearing, others blustering, demanding explanations, some obviously with no idea at all what was going on. Buzz was handling it calmly, reassurin
g them that nobody would be hurt but at the same time making sure than none of them were armed.

  ‘All on the manifest present and accounted for, sir.’ Buzz reported, and with calm certainty, ‘The ship is secured.’

  ‘Thank you, Buzz.’ Alex said. There would be time for debriefing and commendations later. There would be time, too, for blood chilling moments as they looked at the scorch marks on Buzz and Martin’s hullwalker suits and thought about what would have happened if they’d been wearing ordinary protective suiting. For right now, though, there was still a lot that had to be done so Alex contented himself with just one word. ‘Excellent.’

  Then he looked at the Might of Teranor’s skipper, his manner coldly impersonal.

  ‘Marlon Steppard,’ he told him, ‘I am arresting you on charges of being in possession of 16.72 tonnes of Class A prohibited drugs. You are entitled to all rights pursuant to the Carpane Convention, under which you are advised to make no statement until such time as you have independent legal advice and representation. I am required to inform you that your ship has been seized and that you, your ship, and your ship’s company will be escorted to Chartsey where you will be handed over to the authorities.’

  Marlon Steppard stared at him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked numbly.

  ‘I am Skipper von Strada,’ said Alex. ‘You are aboard the Fleet corvette Minnow.’

  Marlon Steppard went grey. ‘It’s true, then?’ His voice was shaking. ‘That’s what the prisoners were for?’

  Alex did not disillusion him. That, he knew, was what everyone was going to think and he would be wasting his breath to attempt to convince them otherwise.

  ‘Take him for processing,’ he said, and with that returned his attention to what was happening aboard the Teranor.