“Atticus,” Gnuko snapped, stepping toward the two men and eyeing them briefly before tilting his chin toward the door, “report to the armory. Now,” he growled when the man made no attempt to comply with the order, “or this little fracas is about to get hotter than you can handle.”
Atticus gave Kratos a smoldering look before moving past Gnuko. The Tracto-an very nearly made contact with the Lancer Sergeant, and judging by Gnuko’s tense posture he was ready to deal with such contact immediately, but thankfully no contact occurred.
Gnuko gave Kratos a heavy look, “Report to your bunk, Kratos.”
Kratos nodded stiffly and walked out of the mess hall as though nothing had happened.
Gnuko gave the Tracto-ans who had arrived with Atticus withering looks before he, too, left the mess hall.
Fei Long exhaled, seemingly in unison with everyone else, and found that his anger at having been shoved to the ground was completely gone. He fully intended to get revenge on the War Leader, but such would have to wait.
He took a cleansing breath and handed Hephaestion the tray he had been filling. The young Tracto-an still looked to be affected by the incident, but in Fei Long’s experience the best way to deal with such anxiety was to simply push past it. “So,” he said leadingly, “you were about to describe the different dialects of Tracto, paying special emphasis to the compositional and grammatical elements?”
The young man smiled weakly as he accepted the tray, and Fei Long knew that he would get revenge for both of them on Atticus for his arrogant bullying.
Unfortunately, it would have to wait.
Chapter XXII: Pulling at Threads
“Point emergence,” reported Helmsman Marcos. “Firing engines now.”
“Shields drained to 93%,” reported Sarkozi as she lurked over the shoulder of the Shields station. Over the two weeks since their departure from the ComStat hub, Middleton had finally begun to see something resembling a military level of discipline during point transfers conducted by the First Shift. But the Shields section had, oddly, been the weakest link in the group. Sarkozi had therefore taken it upon herself to oversee their actions during such transfers.
The ship shuddered gently beneath their feet and Helmsman Marcos reported, “We’ve shed the sump, sir.”
“Scanning,” reported Hephaestion, who had remarkably shed a significant portion of his native, Tracto-an, accent. “Populating the grid now, sir.”
Middleton watched as the system’s planets began to pop into virtual existence on the main viewer, followed by the major satellites and other orbiting bodies. This particular system was nearly in the center of Sector 24; Middleton’s search for ComStat hubs had taken the Pride of Prometheus almost directly away from the border region of Sectors 23 and 24. But while there had been several possible contacts with ComStat hubs, they had failed to find another in two weeks of searching along Fei Long’s prescribed flight plan.
“Mr. Fei?” Middleton asked, turning to the young man as the tactical overlay continued to populate.
Fei Long seemed to almost ignore Middleton entirely as he adjusted the Comm. station’s instruments. But after a moment he shook his head in clear disappointment. “I am only reading repeater signals, Captain; there does not appear to be a hub in the local vicinity.”
Middleton nodded as he came to the decision that they would need to modify the flight plan in some way. That was likely to be easier said than done, seeing as Mr. Fei had put a great deal of work into their current one, but the ship should have encountered at least two of them by now using Fei Long’s probability model.
“Captain,” Hephaestion called out in a slightly raised, but still professional, voice, “we have contacts.”
Middleton turned his chair just as a trio of signals appeared in orbit of the second planet in the system. Two were clearly in pursuit of the third, but as yet the Pride’s DI was unable to determine their identities. This suggested that they were either unwilling to squawk universal identification codes, or they had never been equipped with them in the first place. One vessel running dark could have been explainable, but all three meant that none of them wished to be identified.
“Time to intercept?” Captain Middleton asked as Lieutenant Sarkozi made her way from the Shields station to the Helm.
A few moments later she replied, “Thirty six minutes, Captain.”
Middleton called up the information on the system’s two planets. The innermost planet was rocky and hellish, with surface temperatures well in excess of seven hundred degrees kelvin and an atmosphere composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide. Only specially designed probes, or heavily shielded craft, could survive in that environment for more than a brief period.
The outermost planet was a relatively massive gas giant, which was pumping out sufficient radiation to distort the Pride’s antiquated sensors enough that it took several additional minutes to get accurate readings on the three vessels’ profiles.
“Captain, I am receiving a distress signal,” Fei Long reported from the Comm. station.
“Put it on,” Middleton prompted, and a moment later a burst of static filled the ears of the bridge crew before a human voice emerged.
“This is Captain Clive Trent of the deep space mining vessel Carsoni Palmeiro,” the man said, his voice taut with anxiety. “We are being pursued by droid warships and request immediate assistance from any vessels in the area.”
As the mining vessel’s captain spoke, the icons of the pursuing vessels morphed from unknown status to confirmed droid configurations. They were apparently the equivalent of corvettes, and their physical configurations suggested they were from the Tribe which called itself ‘Harmony through Specialization.’
“This is the XO,” Sarkozi said in a piercing voice, “set Condition One throughout the ship. Repeat, set Condition One throughout the ship; all hands report to battle stations.”
Middleton switched his chair’s pickup to transmit on the emergency channel employed by the mining vessel’s captain as that ship’s information identity was corroborated by the Pride’s DI. “This is Captain Tim Middleton of the MSP cruiser, Pride of Prometheus,” he said as he called up a series of tactical specifications for the mining vessel. It was clear that, while the Carsoni Palmeiro was maneuvering quite deftly around the gas giant in order to cut off the two corvettes, those corvettes would soon surround the mining vessel and bring it to its metaphorical knees if things continued as they were. “Can you continue on your current evasion course for thirty two minutes?”
During the delay as the message traversed the distance between the two vessels, the Pride’s Executive Officer worked up a trio of tactical scenarios which she and Captain Middleton examined together while Middleton mulled the possible reasons for the mining vessel to be in the system. Aside from a pair of rocky, barren moons orbiting the gas giant there was no cataloged location which might yield anything of mineralogical value to a privately owned and operated vessel like the Carsoni Palmeiro.
Before they came to a decision on which course of action to pursue, the mining vessel’s reply came through, “Our secondary engines are inoperable and we’ve got limited maneuvering capability. The droids will achieve firing solution on us before you enter range; our shields have already been pummeled during our approach to the planet and will collapse after one or two more volleys. There are thirty two souls aboard this vessel who would greatly appreciate a miracle if you’re capable of delivering one, Captain Middleton.”
Middleton shared a meaningful look with his XO, who appeared to have caught the same undertones from the message. He left his command chair’s audio pickup deactivated as Lieutenant Sarkozi leaned in closer at his beckoning. “His verbiage is too professional for a mining ship captain,” he mused under his breath.
“Could be a mercenary outfit,” she suggested as her eyes flicked to the main screen, which showed the time to intercept winding down as the droid vessels neared a firing solution. “Or maybe the ship’s been overtaken b
y pirates?”
Middleton shook his head slowly. “No…that doesn’t track. If they were pirates they’d have escorts—or at least would have had escorts, the remains of which would still be registering on our sensors,” he added as though it was an afterthought. “And if they were mercenaries they would be squawking their idents. I’m not sure what they actually are, but they’re definitely not what they appear…and they’re not mercenaries or pirates, at least not in the traditional sense.”
Lieutenant Sarkozi’s expression was neutral but her body language was stiff, telling Middleton that she had drawn the same conclusion as he had: that the situation smelled mightily of the Raubachs. With the general instability in Sectors 23 and 24, no mining ship captain in his right mind would be operating without some sort of escort in an uninhabited, remote system like this one. But if the Raubachs were, in fact, the group which had sent the Carsoni Palmeiro out here…where was Commodore Raubach’s Rim Fleet?
Middleton flicked on the audio pickup built into his chair and began streaming a data packet over the attached frequency as he said, “Captain Trent, alter your course to rendezvous with us as indicated in the attached data packet. We can cut down on the time you’re under fire by two minutes if you do so; those corvettes will think twice before engaging my ship in the open.”
He deactivated the audio pickup and Lieutenant Sarkozi nodded professionally in response to Middleton’s silent order. “Get Engineering on the line,” she ordered crisply, “tell them to redline the engines on the double.”
A few moments later, the Pride’s velocity increased by twelve percent and all sections of the aging warship reported they were at Condition One. Then the mining ship’s icon made a deliberate turn away from the relative safety of the gas giant and began to burn for all it was worth to intersect the Pride’s projected course.
Middleton checked the clock to see how long it had taken for the crew to reach battle stations and was only slightly disappointed to see the last department had reported ready thirty eight seconds later than was the minimum standard for the MSP. The good news was that every other department had reported in on time, which meant that the seemingly endless drills and inspections which Lieutenant Sarkozi had implemented were having their desired effect.
“If our engines don’t fail, we’ll rendezvous with you in twelve minutes, Captain Middleton,” the mining ship’s captain said over the emergency channel. “But there’s no guarantee our stern shields will hold that long.”
“Understood, Captain,” Middleton acknowledged quickly before severing the connection and turning to the Pride’s Tactical Officer. “We’ll need your gunships,” he said, making no attempt to hide the disappointment in his voice. “They might buy the mining vessel a few minutes if we launch them now.”
Toto’s chest swelled as he assumed what Middleton took to be a defiant posture. “If mining ship enemy, why we risk gunships to save them?”
Unaccustomed to having his orders questioned on his own bridge—but understanding that these were unusual circumstances, seeing as the entirety of Toto’s family wealth was tied up in those ramshackle fighter craft—Middleton nodded slowly, silently impressed that Toto had deduced the Carsoni Palmeiro’s true affiliations without the benefit of having served aboard the Pride during her previous mission. “If the gunships strapped to the hull are available for action then I’m ordering that they be deployed immediately, Mr. Toto. If they are not, I need to be made aware of that prior to engagement with the enemy—and by that I mean more than eleven minutes prior,” he added with a hard look that matched his tone.
Toto cocked his head in apparent confusion and gave the main viewer a pointed look. Middleton followed the Sundered’s gaze and saw that the two gunships had, in fact, already launched and were streaking toward a likely intercept point with the mining vessel.
It was clear they had been launched prior to Middleton’s upbraiding, so the Pride’s captain straightened himself in his chair and made brief eye contact with his Tactical Officer. “Thank you, Mr. Toto. Please disregard my last,” he said, coming as close to an apology as he dared while sitting in the command chair during combat conditions.
“Yes, Captain,” the uplift replied in his deep voice, and Middleton thought he detected a hint of amusement in the old ape man’s tone.
“Even with the gunships,” Sarkozi said as she stood back from the Sensors section, “I’m getting a sixty two percent probability that the Palmeiro’s shields will collapse prior to our entering firing range.”
“True,” Middleton agreed, leaning forward in his chair, “but the droids will have to commit to the attack, which means they will come under our fire if they pursue the miner that far; they can’t reverse course quickly enough to escape our firing arc.”
“Of course, sir,” Sarkozi acknowledged as her ears turned red, “which means we’ll have a good idea of how valuable the Palmeiro’s cargo is to the droids.”
“Quite so, Lieutenant,” Middleton agreed as he wondered what a simple mining vessel might be carrying which might cause the smaller droid vessels to pursue in the face of almost certain destruction. He switched his chair’s com-link to the Lancer command channel. “Sergeant Gnuko, is your boarding party ready?”
“The shuttle is ready to board the enemy vessel at your command, Captain,” the Lancer Sergeant replied promptly.
“Stand by, Sergeant,” Middleton ordered, “we’ll need to neutralize the droids prior to your team’s embarkation.”
“Larry that, Captain,” Gnuko acknowledged.
Middleton swiveled his chair to face Fei Long’s Comm. station. “Mr. Fei, scan the ComStat frequencies passively; under no circumstances are you to issue any signals which may tip a local force off to the fact that we’ve gained some limited access to the network, is that clear?”
“Yes, Captain,” Fei Long replied crisply as he began to input commands to his station with obvious grace and efficiency. After just a few moments he reported, “I am now passively monitoring the ComStat carrier frequencies. I will be unable to record the content of any messages sent or received by vessels in the immediate vicinity, but I will be aware of which ships may attempt to access the ComStat network.”
“Good enough,” Middleton replied as he turned to face the main viewer.
“Near corvette firing,” Toto reported as the Palmeiro’s icon was lit up briefly on the main viewer. “Distant corvette in range thirty seconds,” he added, and after so many weeks of drills and shifts manned by the uplift, Middleton barely even noticed the Sundered’s broken verbiage.
“The Palmeiro’s shields are holding,” Hephaestion reported in his decidedly high, un-Tracto-an voice.
“But not for long,” Sarkozi cut in. “One more salvo might bring them down; their shields can withstand two more at most.”
Toto’s twin gunships streaked past the mining vessel’s position as they made for the droid corvette which had not yet engaged the fleeing vessel. Middleton was pleased to see that the Pride’s newest Tactical Officer thought as he did; the best chance the mining vessel had to survive was if the second corvette could be kept out of firing range long enough for Middleton’s ship to intercede. If both droid warships brought their weapons to bear on the relatively defenseless vessel, it would only be a matter of minutes and the mining ship would be destroyed.
“Time to extreme weapons range: eight minutes,” Sarkozi reported, likely more for the rest of the bridge’s benefit than for Middleton’s. “Helm, coordinate with the gun deck to ensure our bow is in optimal firing position against the near corvette when we achieve a firing solution; I want as many shots on target as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Marcos replied, her fingers navigating the controls of her console with practiced efficiency.
“Mr. Fei,” Middleton turned to the Comm. station, “have you detected any transmissions from the droid vessels?”
Fei Long shook his head without ever taking his eyes off the various readouts embedded in his
station. “No, Captain, I have detected nothing to suggest the droid vessels are attempting transmissions of any kind. ComStat frequencies are still inactive, as well.”
“Keep monitoring,” Middleton ordered, knowing that if either the droids or the Raubachs were alerted to the Pride’s location it would complicate his primary mission.
“Yes, Captain,” the young man replied as he continued to work at his console.
“Gunships firing in ten seconds,” Toto reported. Middleton knew it was a long shot that the pair of fighter craft would be able to effectively harry the corvette, but it was the only play available to him.
The icons of the gunships flashed on the main viewer, and an enhanced image of the second corvette filled the screen as its shields flared under the rapid-fire assault of the Sundered craft. But the corvette continued its pursuit, and failed to make even a token gesture of resistance as its engines drove the warship toward its ultimate quarry.
Seeing the droid warships pursue the mining vessel so intently only heightened Middleton’s resolve to find out what, exactly, the Carsoni Palmeiro was up to.
The nearest corvette fired on the Palmeiro again, and the mining ship’s shields appeared to fail as a result.
“Their engines are still operable,” Sarkozi reported crisply, “but one more shot on their stern and the Palmeiro’s as likely to explode as it is to lose motive power.”
The gunships continued to harass the second corvette and appeared to be having some success in bringing down its stern shields, which were currently showing 50% power. Toto’s vessels would certainly not succeed in crippling the warship in time to prevent the warship from opening fire on the mining vessel, but they would limit the corvette’s tactical options afterward since its stern would be relatively vulnerable—especially to the Pride’s big guns.
Up The Middle (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 2) Page 23
