by Terry Mixon
“Alan-a-dale is in position for the sensor sweep; she’s going live now,” Bogdanov reported. “We’re dark and quiet, drifting out of the convoy’s trail, towards Commander Olhouser.” The Slavic man paused. “If you’re wrong, boss, we’re leaving two ships to fight five on their own.”
Brad snorted. “Look at them, Konrad. Those are the worst of the worst, useless amateurs even by pirate standards. They’re not a unified force, they have no combined tactics—they’re a bunch of fourth-tier solo ships unified by fear of somebody bigger than them. And they’re getting more scared of Captain Andre by the second.”
Three of the eight pirate ships were gone, and while the remainder continued toward the convoy, what little formation and organization they’d had was long gone. They were still moving together, but an experienced eye could pick out that they were in no position to cover one other against torpedoes.
“They’ll break,” Brad told his tac officer. “And whoever sent them knew they would. They’re not the threat. They never were.” He shook his head. “They’re enough of one that we have to respect it, but the real problem is…”
“Bogies on the scopes!” Michelle barked. “Multiple bogies and one massive heat shield. What in Everlit?”
Brad looked at the data himself and echoed his executive officer’s curse. “Clever fuckers. I don’t know what that shield is, but it did a damn good job of hiding their heat signatures, and we still can’t see past it.”
The familiar cold smile returned to his face. He wasn’t nearly as much of a berserker as he’d once edged toward being, but he wasn’t going to turn up the chance to give some pirates—especially some competent pirates—a really bad day.
“Olhouser,” he said to Alan-a-dale’s Captain. “That shield is going to block their weapons fire until they get rid of it. I’m assuming they have a plan for that, but let’s make them accelerate it. Torpedoes down the center, if you please.”
Alan-a-dale rotated from her position parallel to the convoy to point toward the oncoming pirate force. The heat shield made it impossible for Brad to distinguish numbers beyond “multiple,” which meant the heat shield had to go.
Jace Olhouser’s ship had the tools for that, and the paired torpedo launchers in Alan-a-dale’s nose flashed alive in response to Brad’s orders. The kinetic weapons blasted toward the heat shield at an acceleration that would have killed any human crew.
The torpedoes wouldn’t make it to the heat shield with their engines still firing, but the multi-kilometer-wide umbrella wasn’t going to dodge very well, either. They’d have to accept the incoming fire or get rid of the shield. Personally, he had a strong suspicion which option they’d choose.
“And there we go,” Brad said in satisfaction as the heat shield suddenly started to shrink, the thin material—probably aluminum or mylar or something similarly reflective and flexible—rolling back into whatever package it had sprung from.
“Everlit preserve us,” Michelle half-whispered as the shield disappeared, revealing the Vikings’ enemy.
“I make three destroyer-sized vessels, four corvette-sized ships, and thirty of…something else,” Bogdanov reported. “Boss, I have no idea what those smaller ships are.”
Brad nodded, studying them carefully. “They’re going to be a problem,” he said softly. “That much I’m sure of.”
“Boss, something is not right.”
Captain Brenda Andre sounded stressed. More stressed than her own part of the engagement could justify. Bound by Law had racked up four more kills in the fight so far and the pirates didn’t look like they were going to live to reach firing range to strike back.
“There’s a few things not right,” Brad said calmly. “But I’m guessing you’re talking about the pirate squadron on our Solward flank?”
“Yeah, except they aren’t pirates. Have you IDed them yet?”
“Konrad’s working on it.”
“Run them against the Fleet listing,” his ex-Fleet officer told him. “I see four Invictus-class heavy corvettes, a Bound-class destroyer, a Corsair-class destroyer, and thirty Javelin interceptor drones.
“Which means the big-ass ‘destroyer’ hanging back from the rest is a Spearthrower-class carrier, and there are only eight of those in the Everdarkened star system, Commodore. Fleet wasn’t decommissioning any of them, I might add.”
Before he’d been a mercenary commander, Brad had been a spaceship-obsessed engineer and security officer. He’d kept up that knowledge base since, but a Javelin interceptor was new to him. “Why haven’t I heard of them?”
“Because the drones are semi-autonomous and Fleet doesn’t like to advertise that there are computers out there fulfilling kill orders under their own auspices,” Andre said grimly. “They weren’t particularly efficient, all things considered, and require computer tech the pirates shouldn’t have.”
Brad considered what the woman was saying carefully. “Are you telling me that the squadron about to attack our convoy is Fleet?”
“I wish I could be certain they weren’t,” Andre told him desperately. “But every one of those ships is a current- or last-generation Fleet unit, and nobody else is supposed to have carriers. Whatever we do, we can’t open fire on them without confirming one way or the other.”
“I beg to differ,” Commodore Brad Madrid told his Captain coldly. “If these people are attacking a convoy under my protection, Captain Andre, I don’t care whose flag they’re flying.”
Andre paused, and he heard her swallow. “If they’re attacking the convoy, they’re in violation of their oaths,” she finally agreed. “But you can’t fight thirty Javelins and two modern destroyers with just Oath and Alan-a-dale.”
“We’ll have to see,” Brad admitted. “I need you to cover the convoy from that first bunch. What am I looking at with these Javelins?”
“A single set of quad drivers and kinetic torps. They’ll come at you hard and fast, using their own velocity to drop the torpedoes. They’ve only got one apiece, but those torps will come in faster than you’re used to because the launch platforms are closing at speed too.”
“Understood,” he said. “Deal with those pirates and swing over to join us. We’ve got work to do. Either these bastards are rogue Fleet or they’re Cadre.” His cold smile didn’t waver. “Either way, we are going to introduce them to the error of their ways.”
Oath of Vengeance picked up speed now, still keeping her acceleration down as she flew away from the convoy, but now that Brad knew where his enemies were, they could radiate heat away from them.
The destroyer would still be visible to radar or optics, but thermal sensors were the fastest and easiest method to spot anything in space. The oncoming pirates “knew” where the Vikings were, and were approaching at speed.
The carrier was hanging back, her velocity low enough to allow an easy escape. The other six ships and their escorting drones weren’t being nearly as cautious.
“The pirates in group one are breaking off,” Bogdanov reported. “Law got a glancing hit on the second destroyer, and the whole lot just decided they’re more scared of dying than they are of whoever organized this shitshow. Should Andre finish them?”
Normally, Brad would be tempted. Dead pirates ceased to be a problem, after all. This situation was far from normal, though.
“When the enemy has brought their own dedicated ship-killer, I want ours in play,” he said. “Let the amateurs go. They were only ever a distraction.”
“What about us?”
“Lay in your torps, Konrad,” Brad ordered. “Hold your first salvo until they see us and then pound that gunship until she stops twitching. Keep half of the gatlings on her; use the other half to discourage the drones.
“Olhouser.” He linked in to the corvette commander. “Use your torpedoes on the pirate Bound and cover yourself against the drones with all of your gatlings. Every Javelin we shoot down before she launches her torpedo is one less problem.”
“Even with that, we have a
lot of problems,” Olhouser said. “Time to even the odds, yes?”
“We’re going to try and sneak up on the gunship,” Brad said. “But for the rest of the flotilla: fire at will.”
Despite the steady growth of the Vikings Mercenary Company from Brad’s single ex-pirate corvette to his current small fleet, this was his first time actually commanding a multi-ship action—and he was only starting to realize how little control he could actually exert.
The limitations of weaponry kept the battle at a scale where he could give near-real-time orders to his ship commanders, but they knew their ships and positioning better than he did. He’d hired competent people. Despite his urge to micromanage, he knew it was a bad idea.
That still didn’t make it any easier for him to metaphorically sit on his hands and watch as Alan-a-dale opened fire and the other two ships flipped “over” the convoy toward the incoming pirate fleet.
Technically, Brad was required to summon any incoming force to stand off or surrender before firing, but he was counting this as the same force as the last one—and he knew the Guild would back him if someone harassed him over it.
The Mercenary Guild’s two dozen platinum companies brought in a fifth of the Guild’s revenue despite only being roughly a twentieth of their people.
The incoming force didn’t pretend to be anything other than what they were, though. Almost at the same moment as Alan-a-dale’s torpedoes launched, Oath of Vengeance’s sensors picked up the energy spike of the pirate’s Bound-class destroyer firing.
“Everlit keep them from hitting the convoy by accident,” Michelle breathed. “Even one hit…”
“Get us closer,” Brad ordered.
“How close do you want?” his wife demanded. “We’re in extreme torpedo range.”
As she asked, six of the drones dropped out of their attack formation. Their new vectors took a second to settle down—and they opened fire with their gatling mass drivers before Oath’s computers had dialed them in. Alan-a-dale’s lonely pair of torpedoes disintegrated under their fire.
“As close as they’ll let us get,” Brad ordered. Alan-a-dale’s mass drivers were opening fire on the closing drones now. Brad wasn’t a huge fan of Fleet’s general standard of the eight-barrel mass driver, but he had to admit that the Bard class had a lot of the things.
Olhouser’s command probably wasn’t going to be killing destroyers today, but she was a solid counter to the fragile and expendable drones.
A second flash of fire from the enemy gunship destroyer warned him of the corollary: Alan-a-dale had to survive to counter the drones—and the drones, in turn, weren’t coming after the corvette.
With Oath still in stealth and Bound by Law on the other side of the freighters still, the drones were going for the convoy.
Brad watched Alan-a-dale charge into the teeth of the interceptors, gatling drivers blazing as Olhouser did his damnedest to protect the convoy. Thirty drones, however remote-controlled and stupid, versus one corvette was not a winning equation.
Two of the drones blew apart, and four dove directly at the corvette to intercept the second salvo of torpedoes. For a few seconds, it looked like they were going to successfully ram the corvette, something Brad wasn’t sure the ex-Fleet ship could survive.
Then all four vanished in matched balls of fire as Bound by Law cleared the convoy and demonstrated why flying in a straight line around a gunship was an extremely bad idea. Four heavy mass-driver rounds hit four separate drones and the enemy was down a fifth of their force.
But not before two of them fired, and even desperate last-ditch gatling fire couldn’t stop the weapons at that close a range. Ablative armor detonated, pushing the torpedoes away and reducing the impact, but Alan-a-dale still took both torpedo hits.
The mercenary corvette spun away from the impacts, mostly intact but clearly no longer properly under control. Brad sent the Everlit a silent prayer for his crew as he tried to assess the situation, feeling as if his failure to keep on top of things was getting people killed.
The second wave of drones collided with Law and Heart, gatling fire flickering between the two mercenary warships and the smaller robots. The drones seemed to be saving their torpedoes for the freighters, but their gatlings were enough to strip armor and external sensors away from the warships.
And then a salvo from the pirate gunship caught Bound by Law. Two of the fifteen-centimeter rounds missed completely. A third scored a glancing blow that the ablatives flicked off into space.
The last slammed dead-center into Bound by Law’s dorsal turret, ripping the structure apart and scattering debris and bodies into space.
“There goes hiding,” Brad snapped, even though Oath of Vengeance was being more successful at the stealthy approach than they had any right to expect in this mess. “Konrad, engage the pirate Bound.”
He didn’t need to give any more orders; he’d already told the tactical officer how he wanted to engage. Oath shivered as the destroyer’s weapons spoke, her heat sinks venting as well as torpedoes and gatling rounds were flung into space.
They took the pirates by surprise. They shouldn’t have, and that was the first confirmation Brad really had that whatever ships they might be flying, his opponents weren’t Fleet. Fleet wouldn’t have lost track of a destroyer in the fight.
Mass-driver rounds hammered into the hostile gunship, slamming her off course as she tried to redirect her heavy guns toward Oath. Her defensive fire was late and off course—and then the dazzler rounds in Oath’s salvo lit up.
Two of the torpedoes disintegrated, spending themselves in sparkling bursts of chaff and energy that covered the rest of the salvo. The pirate ship hadn’t been ready for that—hadn’t been ready for Oath of Vengeance to enter the fight at all.
Four torpedoes slammed into the Bound-class destroyer, punching through her ablative armor and sending her careening away from the fight in a dozen pieces.
“Yes!” Brad hissed. “Well done, Konrad. Now hit that Corsair and let’s clean up this mess!”
In Brad’s experience, one of the best ways to tell the difference between serious pirates and their amateur cousins was to watch how they reacted when the battle turned against them. The first wave of pirates, the distraction, had pushed harder and longer than they should have, but had lost all coherency and organization along the way.
Whoever was in command of this new squadron—and unlike the first group, Brad was certain someone was in command, probably aboard the carrier—clearly wasn’t prepared to throw good money after bad. They’d lost a destroyer and half a dozen drones, none of which could be easily replaced.
As Oath lunged toward the Corsair and her Invictus companions, they all launched torpedoes at her. That was a lot of torpedoes, but Brad’s flagship was within range to be covered by the rest of his flotilla now, and it was still extreme range for the torpedoes. He had better than even odds of surviving the salvo.
His opponent clearly agreed, because all five ships turned as soon as they’d fired and went to emergency acceleration. They flung themselves away from him at over thirty meters per second squared, falling back on the carrier that was already vectoring away.
Most of the Javelins followed, but ten of the drones followed the torpedoes in. Brad closed up his vac-suit helmet and strapped himself in. This was going to be rough.
“Any orders?” Bogdanov asked quietly.
“You know your job, Konrad. Link your systems to Heart and Law, and coordinate your fire. The priority remains the convoy. If it’s between letting Oath take a hit and letting a freighter take a hit, you know what to do.”
His tactical officer nodded silently, turning his attention back to his screens and focusing on the gatlings. With a few keystrokes, Brad assumed direct control of the destroyer’s torpedoes.
Michelle was dodging them around on their original vector, confusing the incoming fire as best she could. The torpedoes were smart but not that smart. Between the gatlings, the electronic countermeasu
res, the supporting fire from the rest of the flotilla, and the fact that Brad’s wife was one Everlit star of a pilot, the incoming fire wasn’t the big threat.
The ten Javelins closing the distance with their own torpedoes aboard were. They were receiving orders from their mothership, and their onboard computers were a lot smarter than a torpedo’s.
How much smarter, Brad hoped not to find out.
He re-sequenced his loading queues, the first salvo blasting into space almost as an afterthought. He needed to clear his tubes for the specialty munitions he was loading, so he flung eight torpedoes at the drones.
It bought his people time if nothing else, forcing the Javelin drones to evade and shoot down the incoming fire. To his surprise, he actually hit one, the remote-controlled space fighter vanishing in a brief fireball.
Two more died under the guns of his flotilla and then his salvo was ready. Eight of the stupidly expensive dazzler ECM torpedoes blazed into space, charging toward an enemy that he hoped wasn’t bright enough to work out what Brad was doing.
“Drones are launching!” Michelle snapped. “Seven more torps incoming and they are moving fast.”
“And now they’re blind,” Brad replied calmly as he triggered the dazzlers. The drone fighters had better sensors than their torpedoes, but he’d flung the anti-sensor weapons directly into their faces, disrupting their sensors and their coms.
Heavy mass-driver slugs from Bound by Law’s remaining turret smashed half of the survivors to pieces, and then Heart of Vengeance slashed into the middle of the drones’ formation. Brad’s old ship obliterated the remaining drones in a single pass.
“Are we clear?” he asked after a moment.
“We’re clear,” Michelle confirmed a few seconds later. “Enemy force is out of range, opening the distance fast.” She shook her head. “We’ll have them on thermal for while, but there’s no way we can catch them.”
“We can’t chase them in any case,” Brad said regretfully, checking Oath’s damage reports. The ablative armor had dealt with most of the fire they’d taken, but that only meant that he had a lot of ablative strips to replace. Bound by Law and Alan-a-dale were much less lucky.
