by A. D. Bloom
"If they fire at us when we come, I'll have no choice but to destroy that ship. I don't want to do that. If I gave you more time, maybe...to convince them."
"I can hear them already coming up the shafts and cutting through the lifts. I fear we can only hold the bridge of this ship for so long before we are overrun."
"How long can you hold out?"
"Not long enough. And I can't stop them from firing as you approach. I can't even escape in a lifeboat; they'd shoot it. I and my similarly reasonable bridge crew are as good as dead. Please don't hesitate to destroy the ship. You'll quite likely save me some very unpleasant torture an the hands of my crew. Goodbye, Governor Devlin. You've skipped rope quite well, indeed. Tell Dana Sellis that from Hell's heart I pine for her."
There was no image, but her the purr of her voice was a treat. "That's some fancy talk," said Dana Sellis on comms.
"You know me, Commander Sellis." The conversation ended at the same time the flash above told him someone had located and destroyed Devlin's proxy.
He sighed when he heard the first hiss of plasma cutters melting their way through the lift doors. They'd be on the bridge in a matter of minutes. He rose from the chair then and turned. "Mr. St. John."
"Captain Fancy, sir?"
"Sit in the command chair please,"
"Yes, Captain."
Randall was surprised to see him rise from the deck as quickly as he did. He'd lost enough blood that his face had already turned gray as corpse skin. "You're in command now."
"I am?"
"That's right. I need someone to watch the ship. Misters Ho and Koont and Ricardo must focus on the lift doors for now." The paint blistered and burned before the metal under the center of the port lift doors turned red, then white hot and melted as the bright and rosy tip of the plasma cutter emerged. At the lift doors set aft, the paint began to bubble and peel and ignite as he took the few 1A-5 HE grenades he kept stashed under the chair and handed them out to his bridge crew keeping one for himself. "Make sure you don't throw them too far," he said as he pulled the pin. "Last one to hell buys the drinks."
"New contacts," said St. John so softly that Randall barely heard him. When he finally looked to Ho's tactical display he saw them. "UNS transponders."
"Closing fast," said Ho as he rushed to the console. "Three destroyers and a heavy cruiser. The Borneo. They'll be in range to fire in under a minute. She's got 560s and 860s." Ho shook his head. "They must have seen the dets."
"Voracious, come in Voracious. This is UNS Borneo. Your vessel is recognized as a pirate vessel. Deactivate all weapons systems and prepare to be boarded under Article 517, para-"
Randall shut him off and glanced at the ten centimeters of plasma blade now protruding into his bridge from both sets of lift doors. He thumbed the arm of the command chair for the squack to speak to the entire ship. "This is Fancy Randall, still on the bridge. We've got a UNS battlegroup bearing down on us now. ETA is less than one minute. They want to know if you'd like to surrender."
The tips of the cutting blades withdrew leaving holes, thin acrid smoke, and glimpses of figures in the lift beyond.
"More new contacts," said Ho. "Low on the horizon, five bearings, including a swarm of raiders. It's Devlin's ships."
Fancy Randal laughed out loud at that. "What unfortunate timing for the Devlins and the lovely Commander Sellis." He fished in his left thigh pocket and pulled out a flask. "A standoff like this deserves a 15-year Scotch," he said before he handed it to St. John.
Chapter 9
Absalom
Mesperyian
Absalom shot fast and low over the ammonia fields, and the ridges in the frozen lakes turned to a blur. Hank leaned forward in the command chair looking for the first sign of Voracious as she broke the horizon. "Mr. Kik?"
"Six seconds," his XO's translator said.
"All batteries, all tubes ready."
The corsairs, corvettes, and Shediri raiders of Devlin's Privateers approached the Voracious from five different directions and as they rounded the tiny planetoid, the cruiser rose from the jagged line of the surface like a 450-meter, fire-ringed satellite. The blaze at midships still burned and the ejected flames glomed onto her artificial gees, clinging to the hull.
"All batteries, hold your fire!" Hank barked as new contacts from the passive arrays got parsed by the tactical console.
"New contacts!" Kik Sin's machine translator left out the Shediri expletives. "Three UNS destroyers. One is Gazer class."
Millet paled. "They've got arrays that can spot a firecracker at a billion Ks."
Hank said, "What's the fourth contact...the big one?" It was 475 meters long and the arrays were feeding enough data now that he could make out the guns on the bow, midships and aft. "860s and 560s. That's a Thunderbird class cruiser."
"UNS Borneo," said his XO as he read the transponder.
Hank's Shediri pilot swayed so hard with agitation the bug nearly fell off his seating mound. He chatter clacked an untranslatable storm until Mr. Kik shut him up with a whistle that didn't translate either. A second later, his pilot said, "No safe course. Please advise."
Ram Devlin's voice reached out over comms. "This is Ariadne to all ships, kill the Newtonian mains and go to bow coils only. Rig for quiet running and power up the energy shunts you still have. Make for the transit at best speed. If pursued, we'll split up. The raiders won't be seen. They'll meet us at the transit. You know the way home. Going comms dark now. Ariadne out."
Millet said, "We're missing a full third of our shunts and so are Split Aces and Ariadne. We'll never slip by; the arrays on that Gazer class destroyer will see us for sure."
"Mr. Millet, kill the mains, power up the bow coils and rig for quiet running. Full power to the energy shunts...NAV, come to...281 mark 18. We'll swing wide around them and give ourselves the best possible chance."
"Shunts are engaged. We're leaking emissions all over the starboard side. They've got to see us."
Mr. Kik pointed to a pair intermittent contacts rising from the surface of the planetoid. They blinked in and out every few seconds.
Millet said, "That's Ariadne and Split Aces. I hope like hell we're better hidden than they are....Goddamit, those destroyers are waving search beams around....K-band emissions are bathing the hull. They might see us. We need to get farther away and change course immediately."
"Helm," said Hank, but the bug at the NAV was already vectoring thrust to set them on a new line.
The transmission from the UNS ships came faster than Hank thought it would. "Unidentified small ships around Mesperyian, this is UNS Borneo. Disengage your illegal stealth rigs, power down, and prepare to be boarded. Repeat..."
"Shut him off."
"What are we going to do?" said Millet.
The UNS ships were still well outside what even Hank would have considered effective range for the topside 4x560 and 6x360 railgun batteries on Voracious, but three batteries sparked on her burning hull and sent streaking salvos into the path of UNS Borneo. The heavy cruiser was nearly 20,000 Ks out and dodged that first salvo, but now, whether Devlin's Privateers had been spotted or not, all focus was on Fancy Randal. Voracious launched a dozen torpedoes and her gimped escorts followed suit. More salvos of railgun fire forced the UNS ships off line, but only briefly.
The UNS destroyers launched torps as well, and after the two groups of Mk 5 warspites had passed each other, their topsides and keels lit up with 6x140s stitching the black with fire as they hunted for the incoming warheads with strings of high-explosive dets. UNS gunners found the first of Randall's torps 550 Ks in front of the incoming ships. A moment later, three main turrets on UNS Borneo fired. The six barrels on each block of 860s lit up. The salvo covered the 17,000 plus Ks between Borneo and her well-nigh unmoving target in the space of a few heartbeats. Sabot impacted high on the command tower and at midships.
It seemed like the ejecta rocketed out in fiery geysers even before the impact flash had faded. The two sabot tha
t hit the command tower ripped through the outer and inner hull high up and blasted down through several decks leaving the entire starboard side of the tower shredded and venting. Secondaries cooked off near the base of the tower as the next salvo from UNS Borneo smote Voracious with a lethal blow.
Millet said, "I've got gammas on the arrays! Her reactor is spiking...possible breach...". The green fire briefly vented in a jet that began to bend in the wildly fluctuating magnetic fields. "She's going to blow!"
Voracious shuddered with small internal detonations up and down her length. The fire at midships ceased and then, a second later, the greenish flame shot out of every hull breach like it had flooded every deck. Hank blinked, and the stern of Voracious was engulfed in light as all the energy in her burst reactor tried to escape at once. Her aft end blew apart, and the shock broke her spine at midships. Fancy Randall's command tower augured in and impacted, leaving a field of hull fragments and pieces of shredded bulkhead that stretched for 50 Ks across the sunny side of the planetoid.
"The UNS search beams are sweeping in the wrong place now," said Millet. "The warhead dets blinded their arrays."
"You can thank Randall's hotheaded crew for that. NAV, Give the UNS battlegroup a wide berth," said Hank. "Set a course for the Eridani-Alcyone Transit. Take us home."
Epilogue
Zevo's Tour Boat
Alcyone System
Lane 61 inbound for the third planet, Otherworld
Hank Devlin and his father rode in the front row of multicolored seats. Even without putting his helmet on to zoom in, it was easy to spot Staas Company Cutters patrolling the lanes of the inner system. Their engine flares and blue plasma trails streaked together in pairs across the paths of the inbound and outbound haulers, passenger liners, and local craft. "Think they're scanning us on the close passes?" asked his father.
"I would," said Hank.
"That worries me."
"Mr. Zi'vt's boat is a legally registered vehicle out on appropriate business following its usual pattern of operation. Those Staas Cutters don't have any reason to look twice at us. What worries you, I think is not having any control of it. You're accustomed to thinking you're in control or at least pretending to be."
"Is that what you think of me?"
"I'm not mocking you. The person sitting in the command chair has to at least pretend for everyone's sake. I believe I taught you that when my name was Harry Cozen."
"They're stopping that hauler." Ram Devlin's gloved finger tapped at the porthole as they watched the longboats leave the cutters' bays. "They've got boarding parties for her."
"The Company's monopoly on imports and exports is expensive to enforce." Hank said, "I've counted almost a dozen cutters out already today. There's more docked at Bofor's Station."
The orbital station was just becoming visible to the naked eye now, like a disc-shaped, patchwork moon over Otherworld. The third planet and its clouds were still only a bright spot a few centimeters across and mostly showing only its night side. but the towers and development at the center of five-kilometer-wide Bofor's Station caught Alcyone's rays like mirrors. The induction forges that dotted her skirting shipyard docks lit its shadows with the warm hues of molten steel.
Hank heard the audio warning from the cockpit at the front of the boat when the dyad of Staas Company Cutters passing to starboard of the inbound lane queried their transponder and gave them a once over with a search beam. "It's a legal boat," he said as his father got up from his seat and moved away from the porthole as if he could be seen and recognized through it. "This craft runs through the inner system at least once every three days."
"Action is truth," said the bug's translator from the cockpit.
It was Zi'vt, Hank's pilot, that came up with the idea, formed the company, and traded the refined Brendon's Metal stolen from the Xihute for the javelin-hulled tour boat. He'd named the company Zi'vt's Tours, but 'Zee-vot' was the closest likeness Human mouths would produce and no other species paid to be tourists, so the bug took Hank's advice and settled on Zevo's Tours.
His boat took charters from Otherworld tourists more often than any of them had expected. The primary function of the company itself wasn't laundering funds from the sale of Xihute cargoes as Hank had presumed it would be. The bug and his gaudy, golden-hulled boat actually turned a profit ferrying xenophile Earthers on Otherworld vacations around exotic Alcyone once the beaches of the third planet had lost their charm.
The vessel herself had been built to seat and serve 16 for short hauls deep in big gravity wells where the tourists got the best views of the gas giants and the lightning storms in their atmos. The hold was large and had external doors. The mains on the aft end and her oversized reactor hid unexpected power for such a small ship. Her Earth-made, Shediri-style bow coils were narrow just like the field they produced to propel the slender javelin hull. After a few modifications, she'd likely become one of the most successful smuggling boats in the whole system.
The Company Cutters moved on to query ship transponders behind them and eventually they stopped and boarded an outbound hauler suspected of carrying illegal ore exports. Only the company got to sell Otherworld's rocks.
Ram Devlin said, "They let us go."
"What? Back there? No, I think they thought they had a good tip on that hauler."
"No. I mean back at Eridani. We could have slipped past UNS Borneo's arrays maybe...with luck. And if her destroyers had been looking the wrong way, then maybe we could have eluded them too, but one of Borneo's escorts was a Gazer class destroyer. You know the omnidirectional arrays and meter-wide peepers on those things. Not a particle gets by them. When we slipped away after the fight with Fancy Randall was over, with all those panels missing our stealth on Ariadne wasn't working at any more than 45 or 50% efficiency. We were radiating and reflecting plenty," his father said. "Sure, the Borneo and her destroyers got flashed up close by HE and torpedo reactors cooking off under fire. But the Gazer class was in the back. It didn't get flashed. They saw us. They saw us and they ignored us. They let us go."
"Is that why you secretly composed and sent a report to the UNS Admiralty?"
"I wasn't aware you knew about that."
Hank said, "I know about all transmissions that utilize any of the comms proxies surrounding the Grinder. That's why I didn't mind paying for them and deploying them. It's been a very good deal so far." Hank felt the point of his father's gaze without looking. "I didn't know the message was yours before I decrypted it." His father didn't say anything else on the matter while they watched the atmo, oceans, and clouds of Otherworld grow closer over the bow. "Don't ever let me catch you thinking the UNS won't come after us if they get the chance. That's how people die. Staas Company still has a bounty on all of us. Did you really think offing one band of pirates would change how the Admiralty think of us?"
"I honestly thought if we took some kind of official responsibility for taking Fancy Randall out of play they'd see we're not the enemy."
"But?"
"Nothing."
The words Hank said next seemed to impact his father like a blow. "There will be no letters of marque for us ever, Mr. Devlin."
"I told you not to call me that. You're not Harry Cozen. You're my son."
"You call yourself a privateer, but they will always call you a pirate. I have known this from the beginning and I knew the only way you would ever believe it yourself was if we came to this point. The reason is quite simple. Any power not under their control is considered a threat no matter what it does. To Earth, we're pirates and we will be marked as such until we have a world to call our own...until Staas Company is driven from Otherworld."
Ram Devlin looked out on the planet and nodded. "And after we drive the Company out? What will we be then but pirates?"
"No, Mr. Devlin; you don't understand. You're thinking small. On the day we rebel and Otherworld becomes ours, we will no longer be pirates or even privateers. We will be a navy...a patch-welded ragtag navy of bitz
er hulls and add-on deck guns to be sure, but on that day, the Otherworld Navy we shall be."
Books in the War of Alien Aggression series in chronological order:
Hardway (Book 1)
Kamikaze (Book 2)
Lancer (Book 3)
Dreadnought 2165 (Book 3.5)
Taipan (Book 4)
Combat Salvage 2165 (Book 4.5)
Cozen's War (Book 5)
2166 - Force Liberty (Book 6)
2166 - Battle of Shedir (Book 7)
2166 - Devlin's War (Book 8)
Pirates of Alcyone - 2180 (Book 8.5)
The Otherworld Rebellion (Book 9)
$2.99 box set, books 1-5 The War of Alien Aggression (550 pages, the complete war with the Squidies from the first shot to the last) available now.
$2.99 box set, books 6-8 The Liberty Fleet Trilogy (377 pages)
$2.99 The Otherworld Rebellion (275 pages)
War of Alien Aggression - Audiobook coming 01/2016
Click author link to see all books.
About the Author
A.D. Bloom types loudly on a 1998 IBM M13 (13H6705) and other fine mechanical keyboards.
amazon.com/author/a.d.bloom
Table of Contents
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
Epilogue
