by Terry Mixon
“We have a list of the ships already,” Brad continued. “None of them have more than popguns: a couple of six-barrel mass drivers for security. Keeping them all alive will be up to us. My current plan is to put Bound by Law in front, trail with Oath of Vengeance, and have the corvettes orbit the formation.”
Thoughtful nods answered him. The biggest question was always going to be where to put Bound by Law. Unlike the rest of the company, Law was a gunship-type destroyer.
Most of the weapons manufacturers in the Solar System had standardized around the fifteen-millimeter, five-hundred-kilometer-per-second mass driver with varying numbers of barrels in a gatling arrangement. The only difference, really, between the popguns on the freighters and the guns on Brad’s corvettes and Oath of Vengeance was the number of barrels. Oath and his corvettes had torpedo tubes as their main ship-killers.
Bound by Law didn’t carry a single torpedo. Instead, she had dorsal and ventral turrets with paired fifteen-centimeter mass drivers firing a seven-hundred-kilometer-per-second round. In addition, she had sixteen standard eight-barrel mass driver gatlings for defense.
Their lack of active tracking meant that heavy mass driver turrets were normally a mid-tier armament on cruisers or battleships, but the Bound class had been an experiment. Brad had one of them, with a line on acquiring others as they were decommissioned.
The Bound-class ships hadn’t really been considered obsolete so much as overly specialized, and in a Fleet that was cutting its hulls, a specialized ship-killer was less valuable than a ship that could do a dozen other jobs.
For the Viking Mercenary Company’s mission, however, a specialized ship-killer was exactly what the doctor had ordered.
“So, did you confirm that this Doctors’ Guild even exists?” Michelle asked Brad in their cabin later. Six months of marriage had put her influence all over the space, including a picture of her old diver ship from Saturn opposite his own complex nano-forged knotwork art.
She was even more used to austere spaces than he was, however, and the comfortable new furniture in the cabin had been installed by the ship’s builder, Saburo’s father, who had known Brad all too well by then.
One advantage of running a mercenary company was that no one particularly cared if the ship’s captain was married to their XO. It wasn’t particularly uncommon, to Brad’s knowledge—especially in the Vikings, where Commander Finley was married to his coms officer, and Bound by Law’s combat team commander, Trista Doary, was engaged to Law’s tactical officer, Lisa Simon.
The scars across Michelle’s back made Brad wince as she continued undressing. He’d done everything in his power to rescue her after the Cadre captured her, but they both knew she’d only lived long enough for him to do so because the Terror had wanted her as bait.
“It does,” he replied. “It’s actually in the files they give all of the platinum-rated commanders. It just hadn’t ever come up for me before, oddly.”
“It seems weird that a Guild as large and important as that is so secret,” Michelle pointed out as she sat at the small built-in vanity and began brushing her hair.
“They don’t need to be public,” he said as his eyes drank her in. “People know where to look for a doctor. They don’t necessarily need to know what kind of association or Guild is behind that doctor.”
“And some people aren’t willing to let others get proper care,” his wife said grimly.
“Or are happier to make themselves a buck, covered in blood as it would be,” he agreed. “I have no hesitation introducing anyone who decides to attack a medical convoy to the worst the Vikings can do.”
Bound by Law’s main guns had been fired in exactly one action for the Vikings so far, and the pirate corvettes that had tried to swarm the mercenary destroyer hadn’t lasted long enough to complete their charge.
“It’s been a weird couple of years,” Michelle said. “But I’m okay with that.” She shook her head. “Two years ago, I don’t know if I’d have said that.”
“I don’t think Shelly thought I’d be that bad an influence when she introduced us,” Brad replied, crossing the state room and wrapping her into his arms. They both had their regular therapist appointments, but theirs wasn’t a life that leant itself to stable hearts and minds.
“My best friend was a mercenary and I was okay with that idea,” Michelle reminded him. Shelly Weldon had been Brad’s communication officer then. Now she was Finley’s, keeping the married couple together aboard Heart.
“But I didn’t expect to ever be the one giving the order to end lives. Now, though…” She shivered against him, and it wasn’t from any chill.
“Vengeance is unhealthy,” she concluded calmly, hugging him fiercely. “And everyone I’d want revenge on is already dead. That doesn’t mean I can’t make damn sure no one else ends up in the hands of similar assholes.”
“It’s a good life goal,” he agreed. “And as a nice bonus, people pay us to do it.”
Chapter Three
Brad kept an eye on the ships in the convoy as he sat on Oath’s bridge. The destroyer had been built from the ground up for the jobs it needed to do, which gave it a slightly different layout from Fleet ships. Brad’s command chair with its repeater screens sat on a raised dais at the back of the space, with consoles for ship control in front of him.
All of that was identical to Fleet. The consoles to his left side, where Michelle and Brad could provide overwatch to Saburo’s ground operations, would have been elsewhere on a Fleet ship, but the mercenary destroyer needed to be as capable in its attack-transport role as its warship role.
Six freighters with four warships in escort formation was one of the largest collections of ships Brad had ever seen away from the planetary systems or places like the trojan cluster that was home to Serenade Station. Only the Commonwealth Fleet usually had groups of ships moving around, and even that had been less and less of late.
Even regular pirates had been quieter in the eighteen months since Brad Madrid and his people had attacked the Cadre’s main base with a nuclear door-knocker, but he knew that couldn’t last. There was somebody behind the Cadre—the Terror had managed to produce an entire division of troops for the all-out assault on a Saturn refinery where Michelle had been captured, after all.
Until Brad had seen that “somebody” dragged out into the open and either shot or locked away, he knew that the Cadre would always be reborn.
“Boss, check this out,” Konrad Bogdanov, Oath’s new tactical officer, said. The dark-haired man was actually from somewhere on Earth—Poland or Bulgaria or Russia or maybe Brazil; Brad’s Earth geography was rusty at best—though the ex-Fleet officer never talked about why he hadn’t gone back after Fleet declared him “redundant to requirements” and placed him in the reserves.
“What am I checking out?” Brad asked, crossing his bridge to lean over Bogdanov’s shoulder.
“This here,” the older man told his captain, pointing at his console. “It could be a sensor ghost, but…”
“But it could also be a frigate or corvette ghosting us outside what they think is our resolution range,” Brad agreed, studying the data codes on the screen. Their shadow was on a ballistic course parallel to the convoy, but it was hard to hide your heat signature in space. “Can we get an optical on him?”
“Alan-a-dale is closest,” Bogdanov replied. “She could be able to get a line on her, but I can’t give Commander Olhouser orders.”
Brad chuckled. “We’re mercenaries, Konrad. Our chain of command is much more flexible than Fleet, especially if you ask nicely.”
“If you say so, boss,” the ex-Fleet officer said with a slight shrug. “She’s out of torpedo range, but we could probably introduce her to some gatling fire—if we’re smart about it, Captain Andre might be able to tag her with Law’s main guns.”
It was tempting. There was no corvette or frigate built that could survive a direct hit from Law’s heavy mass drivers, but…
“We’re mercena
ries,” Brad repeated. “That means we’re still technically civilians and operate under something closer to police rules of engagement than Fleet.” He shook his head. “We don’t get to shoot first unless we’re very sure. I’ll talk to Jace. Let’s see what our ghost really is.”
“Yeah, that is not a ghost,” Jace Olhouser agreed cheerfully. “It’s an old Barbados-class frigate. It’s a piece of junk with a single torpedo tube. What in the Everdark is she doing out here?”
“Scouting,” Brad replied as he studied their unexpected companion in the data the other man was sending to him via laser. “You only need one torpedo to threaten merchant ships, so pirates are about the last people still using anything we’d call a frigate. That makes our friend a scout for a heavier force that hasn’t revealed itself yet.”
“What do we do about her?” Olhouser asked.
Brad shared a long look with Bogdanov. “If we warn her off, he knows we’ve spotted her and her friends will come in expecting trouble. That would make our life harder.”
“Alan-a-dale could take her,” the corvette captain volunteered.
“Guild and Commonwealth rules say we challenge before we open fire,” Brad reminded Olhouser. This far out, Commonwealth authority was a polite fiction at best, but the Vikings had to go back to places where that authority was quite real, and breaking Guild rules was a rapid way to set the company on the road to bankruptcy.
“No, we’ll pretend we don’t see her,” Brad decided. “If her captain thinks he’s outside our useful resolution, then his friends will use that as part of their planning. So, if they’re wrong…”
“Then we’ll see them coming before they think we will,” Olhouser agreed. “I’d rather blow the bastard out of the sky, though.”
“And I’d prefer not to have to justify an unprovoked murder to the Guild,” Brad said firmly. “We’ll bring the flotilla to Ready Status Bravo and keep our eyes peeled. When this prick’s friends show up, I want to introduce them to the Guild’s finest hospitality.”
The pirates at least thought they were being clever. Their second group of ships came swimming up out of the dark twelve hours after Bogdanov had picked up the initial scout, coming in at a relatively high velocity but keeping their acceleration down as they approached the convoy.
Unfortunately for them, stealth in space was difficult, expensive, and relatively ineffective…and they didn’t have the heat sinks to even make it possible. “Sneaking up” on the convoy would have required Brad and his Vikings to not have been paying attention.
One didn’t become a platinum-rated mercenary company by not paying attention.
“I make it two big boys that are either heavy corvettes or small destroyers, and six corvettes or frigates, including the initial Barbados,” Bogdanov reported. “Range is about thirty thousand kilometers, and their overtake is about twenty kilometers per second. They’ve kept their acceleration under one meter per second squared, so they’re going to be a while closing the distance.”
“They’re probably going to cut even that shortly,” Brad replied as he considered the data on the screen. “Unless they’ve badly mis-assessed us, they have to realize that their only hope is to get to the powered range of their torpedoes and launch before we detect them.”
“Are we assuming competence on the part of pirates?” his tactical officer asked suspiciously.
“In this case, yes,” Brad said flatly. “I’ve seen too many Cadre flotillas in operation to expect amateur hour when it comes to the fight, though. Don’t confuse a weakness in strategy with one in tactics once the torpedoes start flying.”
“With that bunch of junk?” his wife asked from the pilot’s station, her tone derisive. “I’m pretty sure this is amateur hour.”
“Heart was a pirate ship once,” he reminded her. “You can do a lot with imagination, time, and money. Nonetheless, I think we can safely assume these are hostile.”
He slapped a key on his wrist-comp. “Vikings, battle stations.” He turned to his communications officer. “Xan, get me a comms channel.”
Xan Wong nodded once before pounding through a series of commands on her channel before she flipped her boss a thumbs-up.
Brad smiled thinly and faced his video pickup. “Unidentified vessels, this is Commodore Brad Madrid of the Vikings Mercenary Company,” he told them. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere, so you’ll have to forgive me, but I can’t trust your presence to be innocent. I have no choice but to order you to maintain a twenty-five-thousand-kilometer safety radius around my convoy. If you cross that line, I will regard your vessels as pirates and act to defend my clients. This is your only warning.”
At the practical ranges where modern spaceships could interact, time delay wasn’t really a factor. The pirate flotilla responded to his transmission almost instantly—but they didn’t respond by communicating or trying to run.
“All eight ships have brought their engines up to full,” Bogdanov reported. “They are now closing at twelve mps squared.”
Brad’s captains were linked in via videoconferencing to his command chair, and he shook his head at them. “I see no reason to get fancy or take risks. Captain Andre, the moment they cross the twenty-five-thousand-kilometer mark, you are to open fire with your heavy mass drivers. Anything that survives Bound by Law’s fire gets a full salvo of torpedoes from every ship as soon as they get into powered range.
“Keep your gatlings in defensive mode and set them to cover the convoy. We can all take a torpedo hit on the ablatives if we need to, but the freighters sure as Everlit can’t.”
Brenda Andre smiled evilly. “I don’t think we’re going to need to worry about that, boss.”
Eight spaceships charged toward Brad’s convoy and he watched them come with cold eyes. An amateur might look at the numbers—eight ships to four, equal numbers of destroyers—and think the Vikings were in trouble.
They’d be wrong. Oh so very wrong.
“Law has opened fire,” Bogdanov reported.
It was hard to miss. The destroyer had to be careful how she fired her guns: the four fifteen-centimeter mass drivers had enough recoil to visibly move the ship, and the energy signature spiked across his screens.
The big slugs crossed the space to the incoming pirates in seconds and, to no one’s surprise, missed the lead destroyer by about fifty kilometers.
The Vikings’ Commodore counted down in his head. Law’s guns were vastly more powerful than the regular mass drivers in the rest of his ships’ gatling drivers…but they also took a lot longer to fire.
Thirty-six seconds after the first salvo, Bound by Law lurched on his screens again, a second salvo of four rounds flashing across space.
Andre had the measure of her enemy now and had spread her fire perfectly. A multi-kilogram steel slug slammed into the second of the two destroyers. Armor could do a lot, especially the right kind of armor…but that was a four-kiloton impact.
And the pirate didn’t have the right kind of armor. The hyper-sensitive ablative strips covering Brad’s ships would allow them to survive a hit from one of Bound by Law’s heavy guns. Maybe even two hits.
The pirate destroyer didn’t have ablative armor at all, and Andre’s shot hit her about a quarter of the way back from her prow and proceeded to tear a hole through the rest of the ship.
“Second destroyer is down,” Bogdanov superfluously reported. “Looks like Commander Hunt is correct: this is amateur hour. Second-rate ships, third-rate crews.”
Something itched at the back of Brad’s mind as he watched the pirates.
“Then why aren’t they breaking off?” he asked slowly. “Pirates aren’t death-or-glory types; they’re here for profit and they know our mission is to protect the convoy. They can build enough of a side vector to stop us tagging them with anything except Law’s guns and extreme-range torpedo fire. So, why aren’t they?”
Seconds ticked by in silence on his bridge, counting down to the third salvo from Bound by Law.
&nb
sp; At this range, Brenda would still be taking measuring shots. Even that single hit on the second salvo was luck crossed with the fact that the enemy had no idea how to maneuver when dealing with heavy mass drivers.
As if to prove his thought, her third salvo went wide—but one round barely missed the surviving destroyer.
“They’re amateurs, all right,” his wife said softly. “So, either they somehow think they can still take us—unlikely—or they’re more terrified of whoever sent them than they are of dying.”
“Or they know something we don’t,” Brad pointed out. He looked at the link to Bound by Law and Heart of Vengeance’s commanding officers. “Brenda, Jason, hold this side of the convoy and keep these bastards occupied. They’re out of their weight class and they know it, which means they’re expecting a sucker punch. Jace, swing Alan-a-dale a thousand klicks out on the other side of the convoy and give me full active scanners. Assume you’re hunting Fleet cruisers, Commander Olhouser, because I’m betting someone’s got Fleet heat sinks.”
His COs responded with a series of surprised affirmatives, setting to carrying out his orders immediately.
“What do we do?” Bogdanov asked.
Brad’s expression might have been called a smile, if someone was being generous. “Michelle, swing us into the heat shadow of the biggest freighter in the convoy. Konrad—bring up our heat sinks.”
Chapter Four
Two of the pirate corvettes disappeared from the scanners as Michelle sneaked Oath of Vengeance into the shadow of the convoy’s freighters, the heavy slugs from Bound by Law’s guns obliterating the smaller vessels with crushing force.
Capacity charts flashed up on Brad’s screens as his tactical officer activated their heat sinks and his wife cut their engines to a minimum. The heat sinks could contain some engine heat, but every second of firing the engines used up capacity that could absorb hours of regular operations.
