“We’ve scripted the encounter,” Lon said. “Nefertiti is embedded in a spaceship that is part of the Covert Operations arm of Galactic Justice. She’s bound by her covert status and can’t provide us with details of her situation, except to warn us that she is crewed. Thelma, your conversation with her will be monitored.”
“Hence the script.” Thelma skimmed it. “It’s basic.” It was pretty much a here’s the sequence, thank you, and good-bye.
“Less is more in a situation where every word will be analyzed,” Max said. He sat close to her on the sofa in the lounge as she read the script on her comms unit.
The script included Thelma confirming that her contract with Galactic Justice had been marked complete and that she was a free agent. “Okay, I can do this.”
She got her chance three days later, prior to their arrival at Forest. Nefertiti had been lurking on the fringe of the Saloon Sector and had made exceptionally good time to the rendezvous on the far side, the Badstars side, of the sector. When her spaceship appeared in visual range, the reason for her speed was obvious.
Max whistled. “That’s one sleek ship.”
“And only visible to the Lonesome’s sensors because the crew wanted to announce their presence,” Lon said. “I’m scanning and I’ll see about replicating some of the design elements. At a minimum, I want to be able to detect such spaceships.”
“Scan discreetly,” Max said.
“Of course,” Lon replied, offended.
Harry gripped Max’s shoulder. The two stood in the doorway to Thelma’s small cabin, out of range of her comms camera, even though the camera was meant to stay off when she communicated with Nefertiti. None of them wanted to give Galactic Justice any data they didn’t have to, and that included Thelma’s facial expressions. “No AI will disclose Lon’s and my presence on the Lonesome. Nefertiti’s professional commitment to Galactic Justice respects her loyalty to us.”
“Hush,” Lon said.
“Deputy Thelma Bach?” a crisp, contralto voice opened the communication.
“This is Thelma Bach.” She stuck to the script. When it came time to send the file with the sequence to Nefertiti, Thelma had to wipe her sweaty hands on her trousers first. “Please confirm that my contract with Galactic Justice is complete.”
“Thelma Bach is no longer employed by Galactic Justice. You are on your own, ex-deputy.”
“Thank you.” Thelma winced. That hadn’t been in the script.
Nefertiti ended the communication.
Thelma glanced across at Max and Harry in a silent question of whether things were okay.
Lon responded. “Nefertiti isn’t signaling that her crew are suspicious of anything. I suspect that if they weren’t Covert Ops and likely under orders not to reveal themselves, they’d probably have their own questions for you. We can’t risk surreptitious contact with Nefertiti yet. Her crew will be on high alert for any tricks from us—Covert Ops folk are mistrustful—or the return of the Kampia.”
What he could show the other three was a live feed of Nefertiti zooming away. She wasn’t yet out of sensor distance when her spaceship vanished.
“I need to recalibrate the Lonesome’s sensors in light of the data from my scan of Nefertiti’s ship,” Lon said.
“Are you okay?” Max asked.
Thelma caught his hand. She needed physical contact, his touch, to ground her. “I’m fine.” Just adjusting to life as a free agent. But that didn’t need to happen all at once.
She and Max had discussed their future. She’d stay aboard the Lonesome, devoting herself full time to her chosen role as an information broker. She gave a shaky laugh. “It’s almost anticlimactic for Nefertiti just to fly away.”
After lunch, Thelma dove into the discussion boards. Now that she was no longer a deputy with the Sheriff’s Department, she needed to change her status.
A message popped up when she logged into her account. “Stay away from Levanter.”
The private message was brief and to the point, but lacking in certain vital details, like why. She showed the message to Max, counting on Lon also being present during their conversation. “Could Elder Jakob or one of his cronies be trying to warn me off? Why? I haven’t said anything about Levanter on the discussion boards.”
Max stood behind her chair as she sat at her desk. He massaged her neck and shoulders. “I’ve no intention of returning to Levanter any time soon. It’s possible that someone in the space around the Deadstar Diner observed our departure and misplotted our course as leading to Levanter rather than to Forest. People tend to forget Forest exists. Anyone associated with the Pilgrims might want us to stay away. Elder Jakob and his patriarch cronies have a crooked set up there that’s working for them. I’ve reported them to the Colonial Review Board,” he added.
She swiveled around to stare up at him. “I thought the board was history.”
“Weakened, but not gone,” he said. “It hasn’t revoked a colonial license in over a century, and then it was for a moon, not a planet, but its power to do so remains. I would like one of its investigative teams to physically audit Levanter. Elder Jakob needs a reminder that there is no corner of Federation space so distant that Federal law doesn’t apply.”
She mulled over the likely the consequences. “It would break the Pilgrims’ sense of isolation, too. In a closed community it’s too easy to begin believing you lack options.”
Lon broke the small silence that had fallen as they contemplated the stresses and dangers of an isolated settlement, especially one that was essentially ruled by a sociopath. “I’m trying to track back the message to identify the sender. So far, I haven’t been able to. If this was from Elder Jakob’s cronies, I doubt they’d be able to hide their digital footprint from me. I’ll keep looking, but that in itself is interesting.”
Max agreed. “We’ll proceed with caution with regard to anything involving Levanter.”
Chapter 19
“Help! Help us, please. This is the trampship Scarab. We’re stranded. Our engine has failed. We need help, urgently. We hit an asteroid shower. Our hull was compromised. We repaired it, but we lost atmosphere. Now the air and filtration system is struggling, nearly gone.” The transmission came from the fringe of Levanter space. The mayday call was broadcast on all channels. It sounded as if everything that could go wrong with an old, badly maintained vessel had done so.
Max swore. “Another damn waddling duck.” He was referring to the decrepit spaceships the Pilgrims hired or bought to transport their immigrants and supplies. “There have to be spaceships nearer than us. We’re days away. Heck, Levanter itself is closer.”
A cold shiver went down Thelma’s spine. “The colony is focused on supplies. They’d come out to retrieve those, but…Max, am I stretching too far to suspect with the colony on Levanter having more citizens than resources, that this is the perfect opportunity for them to be a day too late to save the new Pilgrims’ lives, but still in time to scoop up the supplies they brought with them? How evil is Jakob Canute? Could he make that kind of decision?”
“Yes,” Max bit out the word. “Damn him. Lon, record the following message to transmit on all channels. Hopefully, the Scarab can pick up at least one of them.” He paused for a second. “Scarab, this is Sheriff Smith aboard the Lonesome. We are five days from you and adjusting course to render assistance. We can share atmosphere and water sufficient for your survival. Ration yours for a five day wait.” He ended the message. “If they can hang on that long. Ghost ships—” He cut himself short.
Ghost ships were those found with only the dead aboard. Space was treacherous and vast. Ghost ships were part of an interstellar sheriff’s life, although fortunately not common. Most people either stayed on patrolled starlanes or else, like the surveyors Theodor and Alex, faced the unknown only after exhaustive preparation and with religiously adhered to maintenance schedules.
The situation worsened as they neared the Scarab’s last known location.
There�
�d been no further transmissions from the stranded trampship, but…
“Battle stations!” Lon shouted.
Shocked, Thelma darted out of her tiny office, across the passage, and onto the bridge.
“Bogies ahead,” Lon continued broadcasting throughout the ship. “Less than an hour till we’re in range. Sorry! They were double-masked. They hid using the asteroid field and the auric shadow of the space storm.”
Max dashed up the ladder from the cargo deck and arrived on the bridge at a run. He studied the main screen which displayed Lon’s scan revealing the ten spaceships ranged ahead of them. The ships lurked along the route the Lonesome had to take to reach the Scarab in the five days in which he’d promised relief would arrive. His all-channels message had told their enemies where they’d be. “Bandits.”
Harry, who’d arrived quietly, withdrew from the bridge and disappeared into his private quarters.
“It’s a trap,” Max said.
Thelma stared at the enemy spaceships showing on the screen. “The Scarab is registered in the Navcom database. It scraped through its spaceworthiness test. Its emergency could be genuine.” Her hands twisted, pulling at one another. “Their mayday call sounded real.”
Could she live with herself if they left stranded Pilgrims out there?
This was the sort of horrible decision Max had to make as sheriff: whether to risk his crew and himself on the chance that the Pilgrims on the Scarab truly needed help. The bandits certainly wouldn’t render assistance.
“This has to be Gua’s work,” Max spat the senator’s name.
The confident tone of his assertion tore Thelma’s attention from the bandit fleet.
Max scowled at the screen. “I expected a double-cross. Her kind believes in revenge and in obliterating opposition in sly ways. She has links to organized crime. One of those must have reached out to the bandits, although this is more than the Badstars fleet. Lon, can you identify the better maintained spaceships? I’d like to know which crime lord has thrown in with Gua and is using this chance to try and take us out.”
“Does it matter?” Thelma asked, struggling with the idea that a Federation senator could hop into bed with bandits just to see Thelma dead.
“We might be able to apply other kinds of pressure,” Lon said mysteriously.
“And when the fight is won, we’ll know who to go after.” Buckled into the captain’s chair, Max switched its screens and controls to Gunnery. “Thelma, you have the helm.”
“Me? What about Lon?”
Lon answered absently. “I’m hacking multiple ships.”
“Huh.” She didn’t ask what Harry would be doing. She switched her station to piloting mode. She hadn’t flown in ages and she’d never piloted the Lonesome.
“Autopilot.” Max’s focus was on the screens in front of him. “Harry will give you a target. We can direct the autopilot to it, but to override it for random ‘walking’ you have to have the helm.”
“I could jink us into a missile’s path,” she protested.
“The shields will handle it.”
She frowned at him. “Couldn’t we outrun them?” The Lonesome was fast, but at the moment they were using that speed to close with the bandit fleet.
“No fun in that.” Harry’s voice came over the comms.
Max was blunt. “I promised the Scarab we’d provide aid in five days. I keep my promises. Also, a reputation for biting harder than our enemies keeps the Lonesome safe.”
She took a deep breath, understanding his reasoning, both professional and personal, and agreeing with it. She rested her hands near the controls. “Where do I aim the Lonesome?”
The answer appeared on the screen in front of her before she finished her question, overlaying a real-time map of local space with a route through it. The enemy had set up a classic star ambush. The three primary points were taken by two destroyers and a light cruiser. The other seven spaceships were smaller: two corvettes, three cutters, and a couple of gunboats.
Harry filled her in on the game plan. “The Lonesome is the distraction. You are to aim for the cruiser and ram it.”
Thelma bit her lip to stop an “eep!” of protest escaping. She wanted to question the order, as in “actually ram a cruiser? are you crazy?”, but although the Galactic Justice academy hadn’t taught space battle strategies, leaving that to the naval academy, she knew better than to enter into debate when they were approaching the hot zone.
Forty minutes later, the counter on the side of her main screen showed that the Lonesome would be in missile range of the nearest destroyer in one minute and six seconds. Of course, all the ships would be moving, but the algorithms could make an informed prediction since the star ambush stratagem worked on locking a single enemy in the center of the star. The Lonesome’s enemies would maneuver to achieve and maintain that position until they destroyed the spaceship.
The autopilot, meantime, had to weave past a gunboat and cutter to reach its programmed target, the cruiser.
“And what did he mean we’re the distraction?” she muttered to herself, watching the screen show the readjustments as the star ambush closed in.
“First array deployed,” Max barked.
Head in the game, Thelma told herself. They hadn’t drilled for naval-level space combat. Or rather, she hadn’t. Max, Harry and Lon were obviously falling into familiar roles. All I have to do is follow orders. She jinked the Lonesome randomly at forty degrees right.
The autopilot adjusted the flight path to continue the suicidal plan of ramming the cruiser.
A male voice blared over an open channel. “This is the Bonanza Bullet reporting engine failure. Captain Hardwick, sir, sorry but we’re out.”
Onscreen, a gunboat began drifting slowly out of the ambush set up. Or rather, the ambush moved, trying to lock in the Lonesome, and the Bonanza Bullet remained where it was.
“Open channel?” Thelma asked. “Misinformation? Feigning retreat?”
“The Bullet’s captain is Robert Silvers. I recognize Mazod’s destroyer. The bandit leader must have forced Silvers into the fight—” Max broke off as the Bonanza Bullet exploded. The missiles that obliterated it came from the unnamed destroyer. “Punishment. Silvers gave us Hardwick’s name to prove his sincerity so we didn’t target him. Hardwick’s just put the fear of plutonium into anyone else who was thinking of dropping out.”
“So we have to nail Hardwick’s destroyer,” Thelma said.
“We stick to the plan,” Max responded. The Lonesome shuddered. “Debris mines deployed.”
She figured that was as good a time as any to jink their spaceship. The autopilot brought it back, aimed at the cruiser. Thelma jinked it, again.
Thanks to her maneuvers, the second gunboat found itself closer than expected to the Lonesome. It could have opened fire. Instead, it angled out of the ambush structure and put the Lonesome between itself and Hardwick’s destroyer.
Thelma waited for one of the other ships in the fleet to fire on it, on Hardwick’s orders, but a debris mine took it out first.
“Disabled, not dead,” Max said tersely. “Unless Hardwick finishes it off. Harry?”
“Another seventy seconds.”
Onscreen, Thelma saw missiles flash from the Lonesome.
Max was buying time for some action on Harry’s part.
“Thelma, random walk. Three direction changes. Now!” Harry ordered.
Since it didn’t matter where she moved the Lonesome, Thelma directed it abstractedly. Her attention was for the action onscreen. The enemy spaceships had locked into the star ambush structure, minus the two smallest vessels, the gunboats. Her random walk disrupted the pattern for a few seconds, and spooked the nearest destroyer into a barrage of missiles.
Lon was populating the screen with data as he identified the enemy spaceships and analyzed their capabilities. The destroyer that fired on them was the Hornet, captained by Isadore Mazod. It was the Badstars bandits’ most fight-capable ship. Compared to the other dest
royer, the Elegant Dame, it was a bucket of bolts.
The Elegant Dame was owned by Elliot Keele, one of the handful of CEOs who owned mercenary corporations that edged the line between legal and illegal. In effect, he headed up a crime gang, but that had yet to be proven to a court’s satisfaction, and so, he continued to infest the Saloon Sector.
“The Elegant Dame was the destroyer involved in the Selene Massacre,” Thelma said.
“Never proven,” Max snapped.
Elliot Keele’s lawyers might have gotten his corporation declared innocent by virtue of the “not proven” verdict available under Federal criminal law, but everyone and their space bot knew that he’d done it. Yet the politicians still glad-handed him and he continued to socialize with the social elite of the Reclamation Sector.
Senator Gua represented the Reclamation Sector in Federation Parliament.
“I have control of the bandits’ spaceships’ systems,” Lon said. “The Elegant Dame and the cruiser, Guinevere, have multiple and reacting firewalls. I suspect they possess a team of hackers, probably located on the destroyer.”
Harry acknowledged his report with a terse order. “Lock down the bandits after my move.”
His move happened in the next three seconds. A plasma lance pierced the Elegant Dame on the far side. Captain Hardwick had left the rear of his destroyer unguarded, confident that the trampship Scarab had lured the Lonesome to a solitary doom.
They hadn’t counted on Harry, who was somehow independent and weaponized in space. Whatever he hid in his private quarters, he was lethal. And smart.
The plasma lance cut through the Elegant Dame’s shields. The destroyer fired at the lance’s point of origin, but Harry had already moved, witnessed by the fact that the plasma lance directed its terrifying power at the Elegant Dame from a new angle.
Thelma barely had time to note it before the destroyer exploded. A ball of light and power set the spaceships nearest it rocking as they took damage. “Harry?”
Space Deputy (Interstellar Sheriff Book 1) Page 18
