by Terry Mixon
“Let’s look exclusively at what’s going on with Fleet,” he said. “Thanks to Kate, we know none of those deliveries ever happened. That means any deliveries listed for Fleet have to be going somewhere else. Let’s clear the chaff out and focus on the wheat.”
The data that Simon had acquired covered a six-month period starting four months earlier and projecting two months into the future. Falcone tapped on her tablets screen for a few minutes and the data on Brad’s and Simon’s tablet changed.
Virtually all of the entries disappeared. There were far fewer deliveries to supposed Fleet facilities than Brad had anticipated. Five spread out over the last four months and three upcoming.
Unfortunately, the next scheduled departure was three weeks in the future. The most recent departure was two days before.
Falcone rubbed her face and stretched her back. “Dammit. Two freaking days. That damn tanker could be anywhere. So much for the plan to get ahead of it and shadow the damned thing.”
“Let’s not give up just yet,” Brad said, his voice calm and soothing. “The tanker filed to go to the far side of the belt. That leaves a lot of the system to cover, but it also means they might really follow the course for a bit before they deviate.”
He opened a com channel to the bridge. “Michelle, have all the ships alter course to the coordinates I’m sending you. It looks as if our target has been in motion for a few days already. Full stealth, but have everyone looking for the bugger.”
“Copy that,” she said.
Brad ended the call and looked back at his two planners. “Rather than assuming we won’t catch them, let’s plan on what we need to do when we catch up with them.
“As someone working for the Cadre, they’re probably not too worried about pirates. That might mean they’ll keep a less stringent watch, but we can’t count on it. Any competent bridge officer will see us in time to start screaming for help. If they let the Cadre know that we’re coming, that’s going to make our work a lot more difficult.”
Falcone nodded. “It would if they were able to get a signal out. I think we can prevent that.”
He shot her a look, his eyes narrowed. “I’m not exactly certain how the Agency can derail the laws of physics. What do you have in mind?”
“Something we’ve been working on for quite a while. A powerful multi-spectrum jammer. If we can get it into the general vicinity of that tanker, they can scream their fool heads off and it won’t make one bit of difference.”
Brad wasn’t convinced. Radios on spaceships had to be very strong to get a signal across the Solar System. Jamming one might be possible, but it wouldn’t be subtle.
“Something like that needs to be more powerful than the ship’s radio. Everybody in the system is going to know that we’re jamming them. They may not know specifically what’s going on, but the Cadre has to have an idea of where their ship is. If they’re paying any attention at all, this is going to be like shooting off a flare in the middle of the night.”
Falcone grinned. “That’s not what the science geeks tell me. It doesn’t drown out the enemy’s signal. It subverts it. That’s why it has to be very close. They call it destructive interference.
“Basically, it acts like noise-canceling headphones. It senses an incoming radio wave and projects a counter-wave to wash it out. That means that if it works as advertised, there’s no signal to get out. Well, not beyond a fairly short distance, I suspect.”
Brad tapped his fingers on his desk as he considered what she’d just suggested. If a jammer pushed a canceling signal, it might severely blunt the range at which the original transmission could be detected as more than background noise.
The problem he saw was coverage. The jammer would be on one side or the other of the tanker. They had no idea where any Cadre vessels would be located. The coverage had to be complete or they risked ruining everything.
“Just how powerful is this jammer? he asked. “If it needs to be at close range, exactly how are we going to get into range to place it? This sounds like a catch-22 situation.”
“It’s a lot more powerful than one might think,” she said. “Still, you’re right in that it has to be almost on top of the ship. One might be sufficient for this, but two or more would be better.
“The units are small enough to fit inside a standard torpedo. If we can get two of them into the vicinity of the tanker, one on either side, I’d feel pretty confident that no signal is going to get out. I brought four units just in case.”
He rubbed his chin. “Just in case, huh? When exactly did you bring these on board?”
“When you called me out to the asteroid. By that point, I already knew that we’d be heading to Blackhawk Station at some point. So, I made sure to come prepared. It shouldn’t take Mike Randall long to get them installed.”
“Do you have anything else to declare?” he asked sternly. “I might be working for the Agency on this matter, but these are still my ships.”
She smiled, unrepentant. “Not at this time, though I reserve the right to change that answer if I need to.”
He threw up his hands in surrender. “Some things never change. Let’s just hope that we have a chance to try out your new tech.”
Eighteen hours later, Alan-a-dale spotted the tanker. It had altered course, but the deviation was relatively small. It still seemed to be heading for somewhere in the belt, but much closer than the original course would have called for.
It took two more hours to get all of his ships onto parallel courses outside of the range that the tanker could pick them up with the crap scanners they probably had.
All four of his ships were basically sitting at cardinal points around the tanker and shadowing her. If they had to accelerate toward the slower vessel, they could get into weapons range in less than fifteen minutes.
He was sitting in his chair on the bridge of Oath of Vengeance in his combat armor when it came time to execute phase one of the plan. When they’d spotted the tanker, they’d distributed the jammers out to all of his ships. Now each of them would fire a torpedo at the tanker.
Mike Randall had stepped down the acceleration of the torpedoes so that they would close at a much slower rate. That should make them significantly more difficult to detect, though useless as weapons now.
“All right, Konrad,” Brad said. “Signal the other ships via tight beam. Execute phase one in sixty seconds from my mark. Mark.”
“Copy that,” his tactical officer said. “With the reduced torpedo acceleration, it will take about half an hour for them to drift into position. They’ll remain in coverage range while our shuttles close after that for about another half-hour, so our window is short.”
The launch was so gentle that Brad couldn’t tell they’d fired. The ships were on passive scanners, so the tactical repeater on his chair only had an estimated position for the four torpedoes as they crept in toward the unsuspecting tanker.
Every time Brad glanced at the time, only five minutes had gone by. The thirty minutes felt more like three hours.
To his relief, the torpedoes arrived on station without incident. They wouldn’t begin transmitting any signal-canceling radio waves unless the tanker transmitted something. That basically meant he wouldn’t know if this was going to work until it was too late.
“Signal Law that we’ll launch shuttles in five minutes, Michelle.”
“On it,” his wife responded. “Be careful.”
Brad rose and made his way back to the assault shuttle Saburo had assigned him to. Technically, he was along solely as a passenger, but they all knew just how intense the fighting could get if things went sour.
Besides his combat armor, Brad was armed with his mono-blade, pistol, and a rifle. All of the bullets were low-powered so that they wouldn’t risk blowing holes in the side of the tanker. Explosions on tankers tended to be somewhat large affairs and to be avoided at all costs.
Saburo was on one of the other three assault shuttles Oath carried, but would be close enou
gh to communicate via low-powered lasers for the entire flight.
Each shuttle had enough room for a dozen combat troops, give or take, so that drove the size of the ground combat forces on the destroyers. At Saburo’s recommendation, each shuttle carried a squad of nine—basically two fire teams of four each and a noncommissioned squad leader—and an officer. Add in Saburo and Phan, and you had thirty-two people with room for four more.
Once Brad was strapped in, he linked his com to Saburo’s. “What’s our status?”
“We detach in thirty seconds,” his combat team commander said. “I’m letting Lieutenant Phan command our prong of the attack and will only take over if something goes wrong. Pretend I’m not here.”
Brad snorted. He doubted Phan would forget her commander was looking over her shoulder.
He felt the shuttle detach from Oath and begin thrusting. It was light for that sort of thing, but they weren’t using much acceleration. The goal of this exercise was to use the assault shuttles’ stealth to get as close as possible to the tanker before they had to board.
In a perfect world, they’d make it all the way to the tanker’s hull, but that wasn’t realistic. He’d settle for getting within five minutes’ hard burn.
It had been a while since Brad had gone along on a mission like this, but he had to confess that he was looking forward to the action. Commanding a quartet of warships was satisfying work, but taking a personal hand with pirates always gave him a rush.
The timer inside his helmet was counting down, but not with their actual arrival time. Instead, it listed how long it would take to get to the tanker if they went to maximum thrust at that very moment. That made the timer countdown oddly slow.
Even though they were starting out about twenty-five minutes’ slow thrust away, the timer read less than ten minutes at the beginning. As time dragged on, the number dragged toward zero.
When they crossed the five-minute marker without any sign that the tanker was aware of their presence, he rejoiced inwardly. When the timer showed less than three minutes, he was exuberant. Every second they took away from the pirates’ reaction, gave them less opportunity to destroy critical information.
“All troopers prepare to board,” Lieutenant Phan said in a low tone over the coms. “Fire teams one and two will lead the way. If we remain undetected all the way in, we will proceed to the airlocks and conduct a soft intrusion, just the same as Major Doary and her people.
“If the enemy shows any indication that they’ve detected our approach, we’ll go in hard and fast. We’ll use charges to blow the airlocks and secure the critical areas of the ship as quickly as possible. Once inside, everyone has their assigned targets.”
Brad couldn’t see the woman, but her calm tone belied the fact that they were about to get into a shooting match with pirates. He’d always appreciated her unflappable composure.
“This is Commodore Madrid,” he added. “Remember that we want prisoners. If you see any indication of someone with a weapon or feel threatened, you are cleared for lethal force, but I would prefer that we take as many people prisoner as possible.
“It’s entirely possible that some of the crew is not aware of whom they’re working for. If someone surrenders, put restraints on them and continue with the mission. Your safety comes first. Remember that. Good luck.”
“Fire teams one and two will capture the bridge, three and four will secure the computer center, and five and six will assist two fire teams from Bound by Law in securing Engineering,” Phan said. “Major Doary’s remaining four teams will be scouring the surface of the tanker to disable any method of communicating with other ships or people in the system. Both ships’ heavy-weapons fire teams will go wherever we need as a reserve force. As one might expect, we don’t need heavy weapons on a tanker, so they have a regular load-out of weapons.
“Fire team four,” Lieutenant Phan continued. “Your primary mission is to keep the Commodore safe as you back up team three. Safe being a relative term in the middle of a firefight, but you get the idea. Cover his back and make sure that he doesn’t get in over his head.”
“Thanks,” Brad said dryly.
“It’s all part of the service, sir. Good luck to you, too.”
He couldn’t believe his eyes when they hit the one-minute mark. If anyone was on the bridge, they should’ve seen the approaching assault shuttles. Everlit, the automated collision alarms should be signaling something even though the closing rate was very low.
A whole new kind of anxiety ran through Brad when they hit thirty seconds. Action was imminent, so Brad did a second check on his weapons and the release on his restraints.
The assault shuttles made it in to just under ten seconds before the tanker showed any indication that it had detected them. At that point, it attempted to change course and accelerate.
Lieutenant Phan gave the order and the assault shuttle rocketed down onto the tanker’s hull. They’d already picked out appropriate locations to put down.
Brad wasn’t certain if the tanker was unarmed, but their surprise meant that no one had a chance to shoot at them, for which he was grateful. Losing a shuttle full of people would suck.
Once the shuttle slammed into the tanker’s hull, everyone was moving. Brad rose to his feet and followed the lead teams out. This was it.
Chapter Twenty
The lead fire teams wasted no time in blowing the outer airlock door. They quickly slapped explosives around its perimeter and set them off. The chamber must’ve had pressure, because the hatch promptly went spinning off into space.
Everyone huddled close to the breached airlock as they spread a portable airlock over their heads and sealed it to the hull. They’d practiced this operation hundreds of times, and it took only thirty seconds.
Once it was sealed, someone planted a shaped charge on the inner door and slipped out of the airlock just before it went off.
This charge was much smaller than the one they’d used to pry off the outer door. As a rule, a ship used security features only on the outer doors. No one worried about someone in a spaceship getting into the airlock from the inside.
That meant they only had to have enough explosive to breach the hinges and latch. The portable airlock huffed outward as the atmosphere in the ship rushed out to fill it. In moments, the pressure had equalized and they had access to the tanker.
“Fire teams one and two on point. Go! Go! Go!” Lieutenant Phan said over the dedicated platoon channel.
The assigned troopers moved into the ship quickly and efficiently. Brad, being the supercargo, followed along at the rear. The troops from his shuttle had several targets. The bridge was the main one, but the computer center was just as important. In the long term, probably even more important than the bridge.
On a tanker, the computer wasn’t going to be that impressive, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t some critical piece of information on it. If they could keep the enemy from wiping it, that might give them just the lead they needed.
Fire team one headed for the bridge, while fire team two set off for the computer center. Lieutenant Phan followed the team heading toward the bridge to provide exterior security for the operation. Saburo was doing the same with one of the Engineering teams. Fire team four—Brad’s team—followed the team assigned to the computer center.
On a regular ship, the distance would be fairly small between the airlock and the bridge or computer center. The tanker, however, was of a significant size. That meant they had to go through several corridors to get to the target.
Brad expected to see crewmen, but the corridors were ominously empty.
The first indication of resistance came over the com when fire team one ran into several people defending the bridge and began exchanging fire. As per Brad’s orders, they’d instructed the people to surrender, and received a hail of bullets as their answer.
The firefight was short and decisive, from everything Brad heard. His people were armored; the crew were not. Worse for the defe
nders, there was nowhere in the corridor that they could use for cover. They had to stand there in the open, shooting at the Vikings. Always a bad idea.
Brad wasn’t entirely surprised to find the same situation held true at the computer center. Fire team two returned fire as soon as the enemy started shooting. He hoped they were being careful not to shoot the computer. The confrontation wasn’t in Brad’s line of sight, and it was over by the time he could see what was happening.
Two crewmen in regular vac-suits lay sprawled in front of the hatch leading into the computer center. They’d been shot numerous times and were obviously dead.
“The hatch is locked,” one of the troopers in fire team two said.
“Use a breaching charge,” Brad said. “Keep it light. We don’t want to wreck the computer.”
The man fitted a charge over the lock, and everyone stepped back while he triggered it.
Brad felt the whump of the explosives going off through his armor, even with his back turned. By the time he looked back at the hatch, his people were already pouring into the computer center.
Based on the shouts for someone to surrender, there was someone inside. Since his people didn’t open fire, Brad made a second assumption that the person had surrendered or wasn’t armed.
“Make sure that no one comes up behind us,” Brad instructed the corporal in charge of fire team four. Then he went inside.
The interior of the computer center—which was really too grand a phrase—consisted of several battered computer cases on racks and a cramped desk bolted to the bulkhead. It was only marginally larger than the guest bathroom in Brad’s apartment back on the Io Shipyards.
Needless to say, a fire team of mercenaries pretty much filled the room.
Brad stepped over to the computer interface, looked at the screen, and his heart sank. The graphic being displayed was one for wiping the system and it indicated the dump was complete.
