by A. D. Bloom
"There's no evidence he's spotted us," said Biko.
"It's extremely unlikely," said Ram. "The torpedoes that followed us into the second spatial breach detonated inside it. He doesn't know we're here and neither does anyone else. Now, we've caught a few det flashes from the far side of the system and what looked like a Xihute reactor breach from the gammas. IR shows what's maybe wreckage on fire. I'd say a UNS battlegroup passing through the far side of the system caught some Xihute recon elements. The battle might be over and it might escalate, but in neither case will there be any more traffic in the lanes to or from Alcyone. It should stay quiet out here until we decide to make noise."
Hank said, "As you know, we're all missing more than a few shunting panels. The stealth isn't reliable on anything but the Ketok. Her shunts are in her spines and they survived just fine, but we're going to have trouble getting in close without being seen."
"He can't run," said Dana Sellis. "That's something."
"He doesn't have to run; look at all that firepower." Hank reached into the projection and gestured up an enlargement of the half-meter ghost of ship representing Voracious. He made a show of counting her guns. "Six batteries of big-bore railguns in armored casement turrets on the bow alone. One more pair of 560s midships and stern with four more small bore 223s just like ours and dozens of 6x140 turrets that are likely to shred incoming Shediri missiles and torps quite nicely."
"They understand that," said Ram Devlin.
Hank continued. "Compared to our ships, that ship of Randall's is a fortress in space. Effective range for those 223s against our ships' collective maneuverability is inside 4000 Ks. Inside 2000, we can expect the big guns to chase us. Meanwhile, our torps are a distraction at best and our 223s can't exactly penetrate Voracious' armored gun-turrets or the rest of her with any reliability. The Ketok's and Ariadne's ion cannon will take time to blast through that armor, time we won't have. On top of that, five out of eight of those freighters they converted to gunboats are in fine fighting shape with two add-on 6x560s apiece along with a few 223s and even more autocannon turrets."
"We understand, Hank," his father said. "We know what we're facing. Don't berate us with it."
"You misunderstand my intent. What I mean to point out is not the futility of our position given the strength of our opponent, but rather how little rational reason there is for Fancy Randal to feel alarmed even if he finds out we're still alive. He assumes we're only dangerous if we can take him by surprise. If he actually sees us coming, then we don't appear to be much of a threat. And he still doesn't know about the raiders we brought on the Marquis Blanc."
Dana looked incredulous. "Are you saying we can steam right up to him?"
"Even if he can move Voracious by the time we arrive, which I doubt, there's no obvious reason to flee. Understanding that and using it to our advantage is how we're going to kill him."
After Hank told them his plan, his father nodded grimly before the hint of a grin forced its way across his lips and he began to shake his head.
Hank said, "Do you see a problem with my plan?"
"I don't. But Captain Morey might. It isn't every day you sacrifice a ship."
Captain Morey shifted from where he'd leaned against a bulkhead and stood up straight to speak. "Me and my crew have run that hauler for the last fifteen years. We only own a third of it, but it's just about all we own."
Ram Devlin said, "I can promise you one of Fancy Randall's escorts. One is bound to be ours to salvage with any luck."
"My crew doesn't want a half-blasted pirate hull. I'll tell you what I want in exchange for my Marquis. I want a corsair. I want a ship like Absalom...one with at least three gun batteries, Shediri quiet-drive bow coils, and enough energy shunts that she can make orbit where she chooses without being seen."
"That's a pretty tall order."
Morey nodded. "We know you're building more. Otherworld's day is coming and we want to fight. You've been stockpiling parts, scoping our salvage. We all know you're planning on building a dozen more ships at least. If me and my crew get the next one, then you can have the Marquis Blanc today. Just make sure our ship dies well."
Chapter 6
ICV Voracious
4.6 Ks over the surface of Mesperyian
Five of the gunboats held a guard position above. The cruiser Voracious and her three, wounded escorts hung less than 5 Ks over a mercifully dark landscape, just past an oddly crimson line of shadow between day and night. On the far side of that line, the tepid sun's visible rays cut shadows from the planetoid's low hills and revealed wave patterns frozen into the ammonia lakes.
Looking out from inside the exhaust vectoring assembly of engine #2, Fancy Randall decided the ball of rock and ammonia ice beneath them was a truly forsaken place, a world that none would visit by their own will. Whatever it was you wanted, there was an easier place to get it than Mesperyian. It was a fine place to make repairs.
Chief Mallory hung on to the forward lip of the ten-meter plasma vectoring ring and pointed to the damage. "You can see with your naked eye how these vectoring rings are bent out of shape. And if you go low-IR with your helmet, then the cracks in the mounts become all too obvious."
"I see," said Randall, and the Chief's fat, beaded face frowned in his helmet lights.
"You don' see. There's six or more rings like this in both exhaust assemblies," the Chief said before he pushed off to fly at the terminal ring. "Follow me," he said just before he caught the edge and swung himself around so that he left the engines and disappeared from sight, on course for the hole blown in the stern of the ship.
Fancy Randall made a point to execute the same zero-gee maneuver and do it well so that Chief Mallory's crew of redsuits wouldn't get the laugh they were looking for when a senior officer went off course. It wasn't much different than commanding a Staas Company ship in some ways. Despite a profit-sharing system that distributed profit more evenly, the old lines that had always divided spacers were still there.
Chief Mallory tucked and only needed a tiny puff from the gasbelt to set down on the lip of the vape crater. Fancy Randall needed a little more, but he tried not to use it. If Mallory hadn't have been there to put out an arm and catch him, his redsuits might have got their laugh after all.
The triple beep in his helmet let him know the Chief had gone off local comms and established a private channel. "See this?" Mallory gestured at the crater some three meters deep at its lowest point. "At the bottom there, the mines severed a main power and a feedback conduit between the two engines. They also got the control section for said conduit, the piping feeds to the aft maneuvering thrusters, and six other things we can't do without." Even though he could clearly see in the grain of the ablated remains the various layers the fusion mine had vaped from his ship, the metal and composites had all melted together into a single surface that shone in their suit lights, slick like glass in places and cracked with rapid cooling. "That's time you're looking at, Randall. A lot of time I need to fix the mess you made of my ship. I'll need six hours with crews and plasma cutters before I can even begin to repair anything."
"How long?"
"Fourteen hours."
"And after that?"
"After that we can limp at maybe 15% our best speed. It'll be enough to get home."
"Mr. Muccha seemed so bloody sure he could cut the mines away."
"He was sure of it. He never said he knew something when he didn't. That time he was just wrong."
"Pity. He was a good officer. I need those."
"Expensive trip," said Chief Mallory. "That's what they're saying on the lower decks."
"It had to be done. Sooner or later, Ram Devlin and his boy were going to be a problem. Rebellion will be coming to the third planet with or with out him. When it does, we want to be in position to take advantage of it. It's going to be a lot easier with him and his lot out of the way. Anyone who thinks this was a bad idea is myopic."
"I agree. Maybe your bridge crew even agrees
, too. But outside the command tower, they're thinking it would have been easier some other way...some way that didn't strand us out here."
"Deimos will send us what we need within three days. Nobody is going to lose a dime over this. Have they forgotten we just scored a Xihute freighter full of particle beam hardware? It's waiting back in the grinder. We'll all be rich off it."
"Watch your back, Randall. That's just advice from an old chief."
Spacers can be a nervous bunch, even old hands like Mallory. "We've got no less than five gunboats watching over us as we repair and may I remind you that with the exception of the Luna Scar all gun batteries on our disabled ships can still fire."
"Not what I meant."
"You have nine hours to affect repairs."
"Nine?! I need fourteen! At least!"
"None of us ever get what we need."
"I want a bonus."
"And I want nine hours," said Fancy Randall as he bent his knees, sighted, and launched himself up along the engineering section. Before he reached the closest airlock hatch, he heard the beeps in his helmet telling him the Chief had closed the private channel. "I suppose that's a deal then, isn't it," he said to himself as he landed the entry/egress platform and spun the wheel to open the lock.
Inside, while he waited for it to cycle, he noticed the letters scratched into the bulkhead with a sharp tool. The raw metal gleamed without a hint of corrosion or dirt; the gouges were new. 'PEBOAT'. He knew those letters and he knew what they stood for. It was the punchline of a joke, part of a redsuit's report to a chief. PEBOAT.....Problem Exists Between OPS And Tactical.
Between OPS and Tactical is where the command chair was; that's where the Captain sat.
A redsuit scrawled it. It wasn't just a complaint. It was a signal that the time was now, perhaps. One of his own bridge crew would probably be behind it. He didn't take it personally. He himself had waited years and years for promotions he thought he'd deserved when working for Staas Company. He'd thought about mutiny to advance his career many times. Only rule of law prevented it then. How could he blame his officers for wanting the same thing and attempting it now that workplace rules were a bit looser?
Fancy Randall decided he'd rather not change into a wool suit after all. His exosuit had armor and when sitting in the command chair, he'd found it was always easy to reach the wide-beam maser he kept in the suit's thigh pocket.
*
The doors of the lift opened to a bridge that reeked of guilt. Randall stepped out and said, "What are we here for, Mr. Ho?"
"Captain?" Ho looked over his shoulder from the command chair he'd been keeping warm.
"What are we here for?" he repeated as he strode across the meters of belt-iron steel deck straight towards his chair. "Profit!" Randall barked the word out as if he was using it to physically move a laggard Mr. Ho out of the chair. "We are here for profit. And we have found it."
"Over an ammonia covered rock?"
"I meant the contents of the hauler waiting for us back in the Grinder as well as the future profits we have secured by eliminating Governor Ram Devlin and his band of exiles. It would be short sighted to think a few hours repair and the opportunity cost of a few lost days of raiding are too great a price to pay."
XO Ho looked to 2nd officer Belcher at OPS who looked to Ricardo at NAV. The two of them looked back at Ho. "I agree," said Ho. He honestly seemed to, thought Randall. There's a twinge of fright from some guilty men. Mr. Ho was a killer and an opportunist, but not a mutineer, at least not today.
"Can any of you tell me what a PEBOAT is? PEBOAT..."
Ricardo at NAV shook his head back and forth trying not to laugh. Even stern Mr. Ho found it was alright to let a bit of a grin out in the company of his senior officers. Carlos at comms and Gito at the EW console didn't bother to stop themselves. Only 2nd officer Belcher gave a bit of a fright from his right side where he loomed tall over the ship's OPS console. A moment later, he laughed like the others, but without mirth.
Belcher. It was Belcher. And he'd bring people up here to take the bridge when he finally got his balls up to act. Randall said, "What is PEBOAT? None of you can tell me?"
Ricardo at NAV pretended to study his console's projections while he respectfully informed his Captain what PEBOAT meant.
"I see," said Randall.
"It's only a joke, Captain."
"Of course. It was only a joke. The Chief says it'll be nine hours until we're underway."
Mr. Ho said, "Warborn and Sweet Bogg say they'll have an engine to limp on in under seven hours, at least according to their Captains. Their chiefs say longer. I'd bet on nine hours. Maybe more."
"What about the Golden Ass?"
"The sabot from the privateers' railguns cracked the reactor. The engineering compartment is half slag. They're lucky it didn't cook off. I recommend we strip the guns and anything else and jack another hauler to replace her, maybe one of the hulls hanging 'round that floating bug-nest they call the Doxy."
"I can always count on you for something to look forward to, Mr. Ho." Randall thumbed internal comms from the arm of the command chair. "Bridge to brig. Mr. St. John to the bridge please. Mr. St. John."
"Sinjin?" said Ho. "What do you need him for?"
When the lurching, lantern-jawed goon arrived from below, Randall turned the chair halfway 'round to see him.
"Captain Fancy, sir, did I do wrong?"
"No. If you did wrong, then Mr. Ho, the new XO would have summoned you." Fancy Randall pointed his gloved finger at the weapons' locker on the bulkhead. "I'm going to open that for you in a moment. I'd like you to arm yourself with an MA-48, close the locker, and stand there by the doors of the primary lift where you can watch the lift on the starboard side as well."
St. John looked confused as if he'd been given too many instructions at once. "You said all I was good for was the brig and sitting in the chair when we was at anchor at home."
"Today, I'm hoping you're a good bodyguard."
The great cranium nodded slowly. "I won't let you down, Captain Fancy, sir," he said as he stepped with surprising speed to the weapons locker. Randall barely had time to open it from the chair before St. John was there waiting for his rifle. "MA-48 over-under. Fifty cal railgun on top. X-ray laser on the bottom." The blocky bullpup was no small gun and it was stuffed thick with batteries, but in St. John's massive hands it looked in danger of being broken. St. John handled it with unexpected dexterity, packing the clip and priming the caps without any wasted motions. It looked like he'd done that fifty thousand times. His thumb found the fire selector switch without looking for it - railgun, auto.
Ho and Lt. Ricardo showed genuine bafflement. Posting guards was the 2nd officer's duty, but Belcher at OPS didn't say a word in complaint. Fancy Randall smiled and said, "I don't mean to do the second officer's job, Mr. Belcher. I just want a man I can trust watching my back."
"No offense taken, Captain," the 2nd officer said with effortless restraint.
*
Six hours later, while the first hopeful reports came in from their two repairable escorts, Mr. Ho interrupted. "Contact! New contact!" A new projection appeared over the tactical console. "Single contact. It's solid. Bearing 031 mark 087. It's currently 187,000 Ks out and heading right for us." As the console assembled the image from the LiDAR and radar arrays, it took shape before his eyes. "It's a freighter, a...550-meter hauler...wait. there's an active transponder broadcasting...No. That's impossible."
He saw the words appear next to it on the display. "ICV Marquis Blanc," said Randal. "One of Devlin's ships..."
"She's not very maneuverable and she's coming at us belly first. Effective range will be over 20,000 Ks for the railguns, maybe further."
"Very good, Mr. Ho. Inform our gun captains." Fancy Randall thumbed the ship's squack so he could put his voice into every compartment and helmet on the ship. "This is your Captain speaking. We've spotted an inbound craft. It appears to be the Marquis Blanc, the hauler that was sail
ing with the privateers when they suffered their unfortunate accident near the terminus of the Alcyone-Eridani transit. It is coming directly at us and will be in range of our guns very soon. Stormy Sky, Talmo, No Reserve, Luna Scar, and the Preston B. will intercept it now and destroy it. That is all."
"That thing is coming in at over 5000 Ks a second. Wherever they came from, they must have been building up speed for a while. They don't look like they're about to turn and burn."
"We need another hauler," said Ho. "We should capture it."
Randall shook his head. "No. If it has anything at all to do with Ram Devlin and that son of his, I don't trust it. No matter what that hauler says on comms, we obliterate it."
Chapter 7
Absalom
Behind ICV Marquis Blanc
Including the command section that cost-conscious architects had centered on the hauler's bow like the head of a turtle, the Marquis Blanc sprawled for almost 600 meters. Hank wished it had been built wider. It had looked big enough to hide behind considering the slender craft they needed to shield, but the freighter's hull suddenly seemed like a pathetically small aegis against the incoming fire from the first five of Fancy Randall's gunboats. Their torpedoes landed first.
That first spread impacted down the freighter's length and from the bridge of Absalom it looked as if the hull in front of them darkened as it eclipsed the expanding fusion blooms. The hyperaccelerated plasma shock wave made of vaped torpedo casings and hull expanded outwards in a hemispherical bubble in a few thousandths of a second, so quickly that to the human and even Shediri eye, they didn't seem to expand as much as burst into being spontaneously on the other side of the doomed freighter. While the clouds of it grew in bulging curves, the highly efficient fusion warheads delivered by the Mk5 warspite torpedoes vaped out craters in the outer hull, the inner hull, and into the Marquis' cavernous holds. The topside of the hauler's outer hull that faced Absalom's bow swelled perceptibly as the hellstorm filled her. She didn't come apart, but small maintenance ports and hatches blew out and jetted pink and orange across the width of the belt-iron expanse in front of them.
