by Peter Nealen
Rehenek did not give the pirate a moment to speak. “Finally!” he barked. “I assume you are our escort to Ktatra? I was starting to think that we were going to have to cast about in this murk for a lifetime before we found it.”
His gambit had clearly paid off; the yeheri blinked, his eyestalks stretching out to either side of his hammer head. “Who are you and what is your business here?” he asked, with that strangely clipped accent that seemed common to all yeheri when they spoke Trade Cant.
“I am Amra Rehenek, General-Regent in exile of Valdek,” Rehenek snapped. “Where else would I look for mercenaries to take back my world from invaders and usurpers than Ktatra?”
“How would a man like you have heard of Ktatra?” the yeheri asked. He was clearly temporizing, one eye focused on the holo of Rehenek, who was leaning forward belligerently, the other gazing at something below the pickup.
“Don’t play me for a fool, Commander,” Rehenek snarled. “You may have kept the location secret for years, but that doesn’t mean that the name ‘Ktatra’ is not known, nor the kind of men and ships who gather here. Stop wasting my time. Either guide us in so that I can go about my business, or start shooting, so that I can blast your ships out of space and go in to find it on my own.”
The yeheri was clearly flustered now, both eyes flicking back and forth from the holo to something invisible from the pickup. He said something in one of the Yaahaagan dialects, and after a moment got a hesitant-sounding reply. Rehenek was watching the holo, his face tight and a faint frown overshadowing his intense, unblinking stare, his fingers tapping impatiently on his acceleration couch’s armrest.
Finally, the yeheri looked at him with both eyes. “You will take up formation between our two ships, not more than five hundred meters away,” he said, a little more confidently. “Any deviation from the course that we provide you will result in your destruction.”
Rehenek snorted. “Not before we render your ships inoperable and at the mercy of the asteroids,” he said.
“Do not misunderstand, ‘General-Regent,’” the yeheri said, putting just enough emphasis on Rehenek’s rank to make it clear that he was back on somewhat safer ground and could show the newcomers his accustomed contempt. “We will not fire upon you. We will not need to. The trajectory we will lead you on is the only safe way to Ktatra. Take any other vector, and the debris will kill you.” He stared. “Feel free to test my words.”
Rehenek just stared at the yeheri for a moment, then gave an impatient, dismissive wave. “Fine,” he said. “We will follow your course.”
“We will begin our approach after you rendezvous with us,” the yeheri said. The comm window blinked out.
Rehenek leaned back in his acceleration couch. “Well, Captain,” he said. “We should probably go inert and begin our synchronization burn to match velocities with them.”
He met Scalas’s gaze, and for the first time, he sighed deeply and grinned a little ruefully. “It worked,” he said. If not for the grin, it might have sounded a little defensive.
“That was impressive,” Scalas conceded. “You managed to fluster them into escorting us to Ktatra without telling a single direct lie.” He paused. “At least, so far as I could tell.”
Rehenek sobered, looking up at him. “Yes,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “I do intend to see if we can recruit mercenaries there. We will need every fighting man and fighting ship we can find. I can’t afford to be particularly choosy, not up against the numbers we face.” He raised his eyebrows and relaxed a little. “Of course, given the nature of the place and the mission, and the fact that the Unity has already been here ahead of us, I don’t expect to get many recruits. But you can’t blame a man for trying, can you?”
Scalas just studied him wordlessly for a moment. It was a very glib response, and he couldn’t necessarily argue the logic of it. The advisability, yes. But then, even the ancient Swiss Guard had started as mercenaries, untold ages ago, on long-lost Earth.
And, ultimately, I can advise him, but I have no control over his actions. I am a Caractacan Brother, and he is not of the Brotherhood. So long as we share a common cause and he does not do something that I must counter, he must make his own choices.
But where does that line lie? Where does my own responsibility end? At what point does my inaction become a violation of the Code?
He didn’t have any answers. Not then. “I suppose I can’t, not under the circumstances,” he allowed. “So long as they forswear piracy and pledge themselves to the cause.” The warning was implicit, and from the flicker in Rehenek’s eyes, he could tell that the other man had heard it. The Caractacan Brotherhood would stand by its Code, and that Code pledged eternal enmity toward those who crossed the line from warrior to marauder.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Rehenek said, with a faintly wolfish grin. “Anyone who turns on the Alliance will have to answer to me.” He waved toward the couch next to him. “You might want to strap in.”
Chapter Nine
Ktatra loomed out of the murk ahead, suddenly appearing only a few light-seconds away.
It had been a harrowing dive into the disc, all point defenses live, lasers licking out to blast away the biggest chunks of debris. There was still a lot of vacuum inside the disc, but at the velocities involved in crossing any distance of space in a timely manner, it got crowded quickly. All three ships were rapidly surrounded by a flickering nimbus of light as their targeting computers picked out the fragments of rock and chondrites that posed the greatest threat and cleared them out of their path.
They had synchronized their vectors above the disc, then gone inertialess before descending into the cloud of dust, gas, and rock. Dust hissed against the hull, less of a threat than the rocks.
Visibility had quickly dropped to a matter of light-seconds, and that applied to lidar, radar, and any other sensors as well. There was just too much debris.
So by the time they could see Ktatra, they were nearly right on top of it.
Scalas studied the enhanced display in the holo tank. They hadn’t been sure whether Ktatra was a station, an asteroid base, or actually built on a protoplanet. It had only ever been a name, associated with some of the worst marauders and raiders in the Carina Arm.
It was an armored space station. The protoplanet it orbited was still forming and was clearly unstable. It made Borogone look like a paradise. Vast cracks of magma glowed sullenly through the dust and rocks floating nearby, and massive volcanoes spouted towering plumes of magma. The embryonic world was under continuous bombardment from the sky, meteors ranging from the size of a fist to the size of a city raining down, often punching clear through the barely cooled crust to unleash more lava. The birth of a world was not a peaceful process.
The station floated in low orbit above that inferno of destruction. It was a simple, squat, rotating cylinder, surrounded by defense platforms and with two heavy weapons booms extending from either end. Those defenses were constantly busy, keeping the station’s orbit clear of dangerous debris. Even as he watched, a powerful laser started to burn away the surface of a meteor almost twice the size of the station. Rock sublimed off, boiling into incandescent vapor, acting as a thruster and altering the flying mountain’s trajectory until it would just miss the station.
The command crew, such as it was, had to be constantly busy.
There were no ships visible nearby; they had to dock inside the station to shelter from the storm of asteroids and dust outside, never mind any debris kicked up from the impacts on the protoplanet below, that might reach orbital or escape velocity. It was a chaotic, hellish environment.
No wonder the pirates used it as a hideaway.
“Follow us into the docking bay,” the yeheri aboard one of the K’hara-class ships instructed. “Do not deviate from your trajectory.”
They moved in, staying inertialess until the last moment, only going inert when they were less than a hundred kilometers from the station. The synchronization burn
above the disc had been precise; they fell right into an approach vector to the gaping maw of Ktatra’s docking bay.
Closer up, the station turned out to be considerably larger than it had appeared from a distance. The curvature of the cylindrical hull seemed to disappear as they got nearer, becoming a scarred, pockmarked cliff of discolored metal looming above the three starships.
The two K’haras led the way in. That close to the station’s formidable defenses, they seemed less concerned with escorting the Nemesis than they were with getting out of the maelstrom of meteorites and debris. With hard bursts of maneuvering thrusters, they disappeared into the cavernous docking bay.
Ravinu steered the Nemesis to follow.
The docking bay wasn’t quite what Scalas had expected. Rather than the shielded docking facility he’d been expecting, it was simply the inner side of the fat ring that made up the station’s hull, dotted with hardened landing pads and extendable docking tubes. The centrifugal force of the station’s rotation would keep a “landed” ship in place, though there were clearly heavy locking claws poised to latch a ship’s landing jacks into place.
Those claws concerned him, and as he glanced at Rehenek, he saw the other man’s eyes narrowing as he studied the display in the holo tank. Such locking mechanisms were probably necessary, given how low the spin gravity probably was, but they presented a potential problem as well. Once they were locked in, there was little preventing the pirates from keeping them locked in.
“How much ordnance did you bring?” Rehenek asked softly. Clearly, they were thinking along the same lines.
“Enough to breach those claws, if it comes to it,” Scalas assured him. Rehenek simply nodded, apparently satisfied.
The yeheri appeared in the holo tank again. “You have been assigned Pad 421,” he said. “I suggest you keep your weapons powered down and make no sudden maneuvers.” Without waiting for a reply, he winked out.
Ravinu grunted, and muttered something in his own language. But a moment later, when a pad flashed in the display, he said nothing more, but started maneuvering the Nemesis toward it.
As they drifted along the axis of the rotating pirate station, Scalas took in the cavern they had flown into. Scale was often hard to judge, looking at spaceborne objects, and it had already become evident that Ktatra was larger than he’d initially thought, just on the approach. But now that they were inside the belly of the beast, it became even clearer.
There were well over three hundred ships docked inside Ktatra’s ring, and there were still plenty of open pads, not to mention a respectable amount of space between ships. There were starships of every imaginable make and model, ranging from squat, thick, utilitarian cylinders to more sweeping, streamlined shapes. At least one, a massive three-quarter sphere, had to be nearly a dreadnaught in class, just going by tonnage alone.
He wondered just who had built Ktatra. It seemed far too big to be a pirate construction; this was no ad hoc conglomerate of dead ships and hab modules. It had taken considerable resources to build this station, never mind to hide it inside a protoplanetary disc.
“Look there,” Kahane said, pointing. Scalas followed his finger, though he couldn’t see what he was talking about at first.
Then he saw it. The ship was gray and unmarked, instead of white with the blue wreathed galaxy and crossed swords that they had seen before, but the blunt, angular pyramid shape was unmistakable. There was a Galactic Unity cruiser docked inside Ktatra’s landing bay.
“It certainly looks like we’re in the right place,” Scalas murmured.
“Indeed,” Rehenek replied. He grimaced. “That alone would be cause to jet out of here and retrieve the rest of the fleet. But we’re committed, now.”
Scalas nodded. He didn’t need to say anything. There was no way to make their escape from inside Ktatra right at the moment. Certainly not with those two K’haras floating off either flank, their weapons still uncaged, watching.
They had to play this out and wait for an opening to escape, hopefully before the Unity ship left.
The Nemesis was coming up on her assigned landing platform. Flying was about to get tricky.
There was no good way to land on a rotating platform on the inside of a ring, particularly one the size of Ktatra. It was going to be less a matter of matching velocities than trying to hit a moving target with a ship the size of a skyscraper.
“Brace yourselves,” Ravinu said in Trade Cant, his words clearly meant for his Valdekan and Brotherhood passengers. “There could be a bit of a bump coming up.”
He rotated the Nemesis to point her tail toward the curving inside surface of the ring, lowering the landing jacks as he did so. He had already all but killed the ship’s forward velocity; they were now essentially stationary within the station’s hull, while that hull rotated around them. With faint, precisely calculated bursts of their maneuvering thrusters, he started to move the ship toward the ring.
It might have seemed at first that as they got closer to the ring, they should start to be pulled outward by the centrifugal force. But as massive as Ktatra was, it still wasn’t big enough to have an appreciable gravitational pull, so the Nemesis was still weightless, depending entirely on her thrusters. The ship and the station were completely independent objects until they made contact. And if it wasn’t handled carefully, that contact could be catastrophic.
Landing Pad 421 was swinging beneath them, as Ravinu fired the nose thrusters, hard, along with the flank maneuvering thrusters.
It was only a fraction of a G’s worth of acceleration, but the thrust pushed the ship down against the pad, the landing jacks making contact with a ringing thunder that reverberated through the hull, their pneumatics compressing with the shock of the impact. The lateral thrust had given the ship just enough movement to match the passage of the pad underneath them, and Ravinu kept the nose thrusters firing until the docking claws latched onto the landing jacks, holding the ship in place.
Rehenek looked a little queasy. “Remind me not to come along on a landing like this again,” he murmured to Scalas.
While Scalas had been through worse landings, he could understand. The conflicting accelerations had played hell with his inner ear too, and the Coriolis force was still a little unnerving, even though they were now relatively stationary, locked to the ring and under the effect of its spin gravity.
He unlatched his harness and stood up from his acceleration couch, a few seconds ahead of Kahane. It felt like about two thirds of a G; Ktatra was clearly big enough that it could spin fast enough to generate that much spin gravity without causing really debilitating Coriolis effects.
Rehenek and Zorek were gingerly unfastening their own harnesses and getting up. They were tough enough, both of them; Scalas had seen that on Valdek. And they must have spent months in space since the escape from that doomed world. But both had spent the majority of their lives planetside on Valdek, while Scalas and Kahane had been crossing the gaps between stars for years. It takes time to make a man a spacer.
“The docking tube is attached to our lower outside lock,” Ravinu announced. He showed no sign of getting up, and in fact, his place was aboard the Nemesis. The ship would need to be ready to launch on a moment’s notice.
“Well, my friend,” Rehenek said to Scalas, straightening, “shall we go meet our hosts?”
Rehenek was wearing a Valdekan battle suit, a semi-armored, black-and-green environmental suit festooned with equipment and ammunition pouches, his helmet off and under one arm. A sidearm, a Valdekan PK-23 laser pistol, was holstered on his right leg plate. It didn’t have a lot of punch, but it was good enough to kill an armored man inside of twenty meters at full power. Major Zorek was dressed similarly, though he was carrying a streamlined KVS-174 powergun.
Scalas, Kahane, and half of First Squad had come along. They weren’t in their usual armor; the Code forbade lying, but marching into a pirate den with ten men sporting Caractacan Brotherhood armor and insignia was not honorable, it was fool
ish. They were wearing Dahuan spacesuits, with what armored vests over them that they could find that fit, while carrying their BR-18 powerguns. They were displaying enough of a hodge-podge of equipment that they looked rather piratical themselves, like the sorts of mercenaries a desperate leader-in-exile might gather.
Scalas was still on the fence about this plan; he would have preferred to reconnoiter Ktatra from a distance, and then swoop in on it in force. The Brotherhood tried to eschew subterfuge; it was far too easy to get wrapped up in the trap of dishonesty and treachery that way. The preferred method of operations was to have enough force along to make it a losing proposition to attack them while they worked the situation out as best as possible in the open. The Brotherhood were more than soldiers; they were defenders and peacemakers where possible.
But here they were, and they would have to keep their heads down and do what they could to keep their honor clean in this den of murderers and thieves.
Scalas had known those who considered that attitude squeamish. Dunstan and Volscius had been the most vocal among the Brotherhood that he had encountered. Dunstan, of course, was back at the Central Keep, facing the consequences of his violation of the Code, and Volscius was dead.
Squeamishness was not something that anyone who had faced the Brotherhood could accuse them of with any honesty. They were unparalleled warriors. In his experience, those who scoffed at the desire to keep their consciences clean were those with a great weight on what was left of their own souls.
A man had his honor and his standing before God. There was nothing else, not really.
The thirteen men descended the steps inside the flexible docking tube toward the hump of the lift at the end that would lead them into the bowels of Ktatra. There was a reception committee waiting.
Two yeheri, a massive, sloth-like houkh, and a human waited by the hatch. All of them were in armor, and all of them were heavily armed. The houkh had what looked like a grenade launcher slung across his back, and a heavy, bell-mouthed shotgun in his clawed hands. The human was carrying two pistols on his belt and a hard-shot submachine gun slung across his chest—not exactly the best choice of weapon inside a pressure hull. Both yeheri had shotguns.
