Inwards Bound (The RIM CONFEDERACY Book 13)

by Jim Rudnick

  #####

  Magnusson sat and preened himself as the EYES ONLY Ansible went through and the screen in his Ready room on the Roc faded to black. Moments later, the face of his Caliph came on screen and he smiled at his admiral.

  “So, admiral, do I take the smile on your face to be good news?”

  Magnusson smiled even more.

  “Your grace—yes, I was able to secure the Jannah planet as our newest sub-realm, Caliph. There are some items which I know will not be a problem for us, but that you should know too. May I explain, Caliph?”

  “Please, admiral…I’m sure that they are minor details.”

  Magnusson went on to explain how he’d claimed that there was a trade shortfall between the Caliphate and Hope, and how he’d sweetened the Caliphate offer by offering that the distillation equipment and patents too, were going to be given to Jannah. He had also agreed that there would be some talks between the Caliphate and Tunander too, on what kind of compensation might be a fair trade for Jannah.

  The Caliph stared at him, his face a mask.

  He had sent a brand new admiral to make a deal for a new realm.

  He got the new realm.

  Now he had to deal with the deal itself.

  So he looked back at his admiral and smiled. Bigger than last time too.

  “My choice for admiral is paying dividends already,” the Caliph said.

  “The Hope trade shortfall is an easy one for me to use to get the Jannah what they want—so good call. The price however we might pay the Coalition for that planet is another story. Maybe I’ll up the ante and see how we can buy all three of the other planets too.”

  Magnusson then went into a fully drilled down report on the whole meeting—the first day and then the meeting the second day too. He also let the Caliph know, that threats from Noriega were made and that either the Roc had to be out of the Warlord space—or face nukes. At least that’s what the Warlord said.

  The Caliph took it all in, and from what Magnusson could see, he even made some notes too.

  He spoke though as he’d made his decision.

  “You said that the Crimson I will be staying on. It will therefore be that ship—clad in Xithricite, that Noriega will try to attack and that means that he and his ships will be destroyed. So, with the Gibraltar leaving today—you will return back to Neria today as well. I still will have a say with the Crimson I and it’s captain as the Caliphate is still a full partner on that mission. So, come home, admiral—have your dinner tonight with me here in the Palace tents. I look forward to dining with you this evening, admiral.”

  Magnusson smiled once more and the EYES ONLY screen faded to black…

  #####

  As the Gibraltar jumped back into real space around R17, the helmsman said, “Admiral this is her—R17. No sentient life the AI reports, and Gallipedia agrees with that audit, Ma’am.”

  They had left the Tunander Coalition just a few minutes ago and had jumped to R17 and found the planet.

  “Plain, big oceans and landmasses. No sentients … too bad too, because the place looks wonderful,” her XO said as he worked on his console. On the view-screen, there were sweeping views of beaches and mountains and even of an oasis on the desert somewhere too. He was impressed, Eleanor thought. At least one of us is because for me, a good planet with no sentient life is a waste.

  The Gibraltar was in high orbit around the planet, and from there, they could easily see the asteroid ring around the planet and the moon, which hung in the same ring of asteroids. The asteroids ranged in size from what looked like miles across to yards, and somewhere in there was the asteroid with the Xithricite mine. The XO provided her with that asteroid’s coordinates.

  “Helmsman, Outside the plane of the ring of the asteroid belt, then take us in when she’s close,” she ordered.

  The helmsman was good. He took the ship up and off the plane of the ring, and then the Gibraltar turned to port. Using InertialDrive, it went along, the view-screen showing the now red-bordered asteroid still ahead. It took ten minutes, but the Gibraltar eventually hung right above the red asteroid on the screen, and the helmsman yawed the ship to the right and then down toward the asteroid. In two more minutes, the ship hung above an asteroid, as the helmsman slowed the ship and then had her stop with her side right up to the Callisto, which was on the planet side of the asteroid.

  “Ansible—let the Callisto know that we’re going to send down a shuttle to the asteroid. I want to see it right up close,” she said and gave the comm to her XO.

  She took the lift down to the shuttle deck and was met by two Provost guards, who were going to accompany her. “Always a step ahead and looking out for my safety. Drouhin’s a good XO,” she said to herself. Twenty minutes later, the shuttle set down on the asteroid and placed itself on the floor of the crater that lay ahead.

  She struggled to get into her spacesuit, and then with the two guards, she air-locked out to the surface and looked around. Off to the side, the crater went for hundreds of yards. Ahead, there was another shuttle with wide-p[en cargo bays and what looked like some sheets of the ore already on board. She climbed the edge of the crater and went over the top to look at the mine area itself. Against an outcrop of the red ore from the tail end of the meteorite, the miners had erected three scaffoldings around the thirty-foot-wide ore block. One of the crew stood up top, and around his waist, he had tied and supported the metal framework of the saw. Below him and off to either side, two more crew were standing, and their jobs were to swing the saw from side to side from the focal point above, held by the man on top.

  It looked like very slow work, but once the sheet was free, the pieces were all carted off by other crew and stored in the shuttle for transport back to the Callisto later on. She talked to the miners on their comm channel, and they commiserated on hard work in general.

  As she was watching the actual mining, a shadow went over her and the whole asteroid. She backed up, turned to look up at the planet, and froze.

  Above her was a ship—a destroyer like the Gibraltar—but the icon logo she could see said it belonged to the Warlord Noriega. It had come from the dark side of the asteroid, moving now slowly along the planet side as it cut out the light from same. It was sneaking up on the Gibraltar, using the asteroid itself to hide it’s ambush of the two Barony ships on the other side.

  “Shit,” she said, and following her first instinct, she radioed to all the miners to take cover. Then she realized that was impossible on the small asteroid—a destroyer could simply drop a nuke on it, and they’d all go up in vapor.

  “The shuttle … get to my shuttle,” she said, and she turned to head back as a huge flash of light struck her. She was slow getting the helmet visor to filter down the view, and all she could see was the brilliant yellow light across each eye. She had to stop running as she couldn’t see at all. She radioed to all to hold their ground until they could see better.

  It took more than ten minutes for her to be able to see, and in that time, she counted nine more huge flashes but these flashes weren’t as bright as that first one. A guard had grabbed her by the arm, and she was hustled into the shuttle. The guard told the pilot to get her up and back to the Gibraltar.

  While her vision was still filled with strobe-like streaks across her pupils, she still saw the pilot turn to face her, his face white.

  “Can’t, Ma’am, the attacker took out the Gibraltar with six nukes, and she fell into the planet, Ma’am.”

  She was in shock. She’d just lost her ship and more than six hundred crew and officers.

  She was in a shuttle on an asteroid, and the enemy was above her.

  “The Callisto then? Is she there?”

  “Ma’am, they jumped after the second nuke hit the Gibraltar. Dunno where they went—but we’re alone, Ma’am. And the enemy ship is doing a turnaround to come back. We’ll be in range in less than a minute.” There was strain in his voice strain that she’d heard before.

  “Then take us d
own, right into the atmosphere of Birdland—at InertialDrive max. AI—admiral code U-eight-eight-six. Get us the hell outta here, and evasive action all the way down. Get us safe, Lieutenant! And send out an all channels, Ansible, that we’re under attack …” she barked at him. The admiral code would get AI to release the throttle governors and allow the pilot to make the best speed that the shuttle could. And if possible, the RIM would be notified that they needed help.

  The shuttle lifted up, yawed to the left, and then jumped to full max speed, shooting toward the planet.

  “Put the enemy on screen—left half,” she ordered, and in seconds, she could see the enemy destroyer, turning still about ten thousand miles away over the asteroid field.

  “Put the estimates for intersect of our flight path on the sidebar,” she ordered.

  On the sidebar, a quick line drawing quickly appeared and showed the face of the planet the shuttle was running to for safety and the slowly turning enemy destroyer well off to one side. The estimate of how long it would take until their flight paths intersected appeared. “Two minutes and fourteen seconds until intersect,” the admiral said, and that time stamp went down another second.

  We have two minutes and a bit to run and to hide … if we can, that is, she thought …

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Sir, I’ve got an Ansible SOS from the Gibraltar—well, from a shuttle of theirs, Captain.”

  The bridge Ansible officer had already hit the button for the klaxons, and they were beginning to blare all over the ship.

  “What the hell? On screen now,” Bram said, and he hit the CODE RED button on his captain’s chair console, and BATTLE STATIONS appeared on all screens throughout the ship.

  On the bridge view-screen, the interior of a shuttle with some people he didn’t recognize appeared, and then Admiral Vennamo stood up leaning on the back of the seat in front of her.

  “Anyone—this is Admiral Vennamo of the Gibraltar. I’m told that she took six hits—nukes—from a Noriega destroyer not more than twenty minutes ago. I was off ship on the Xithricite mining asteroid over Birdland—sorry, off R17 as it’s known here in Warlord space. We’re fleeing the enemy destroyer, going down to the planet, and we’ll try to find somewhere to hide. SOS code seven-seven-Y,” she said, and then the message repeated itself over and over.

  “Kill that,” Bram said, and then he looked at his helmsman. “Get us the hell over to Birdland now, Helm. I want it to be in less than a minute—no landing authority or requests—just go now!” he yelled.

  In twenty seconds, the Crimson I lifted off going to full InertialDrive when they were less than five hundred feet up, and in ten seconds more, they went to sub-space as the Barony Drive kicked in. Ten seconds later, they popped into real-time space over Birdland, and the mass detector sirens went off. Not more than a half mile away was a destroyer—an enemy destroyer from Noriega.

  He barked at the Ansible officer and said, “Get that captain on the horn, NOW!”

  Moments later, the view-screen showed a face, and it was the face of Noriega himself.

  “You are in Warlord space. Like the ship I just took down a few minutes ago, one that you’d have to agree makes your little frigate look like a toy, I give you a choice. Leave or die,” he said, and the screen went black again.

  Bram looked over to Major Stal and said, “Major, get a team ready to go out on the Defiant and get our shuttle people. Full rescue and recovery, please.”

  The major left the bridge in a hurry.

  “Helm, find me the Gibraltar below. I want longitudes and latitudes for same, and get those coordinates to Alver on the Defiant too.

  He turned to his XO. “XO, I want a spread of torpedoes—full strength nukes, please, at contact detonations, engine, and life support targets. Ready to launch on my command. Helm, take me in closer to their ship—say, five hundred yards off. Ansible, send them a simple order—leave or die.” He smiled and waited.

  In a minute, the sidebar up on the view-screen chimed as those items were all ticked off. As he’d hoped, the destroyer had swung to its starboard side about thirty degrees to bring a full battery of its own weapons to bear.

  “Engage the enemy,” Bram said, his voice strong.

  From the side, he could see the missiles carrying the nukes head out those short yards to the destroyer. The destroyer’s laser radar had picked up same, and they were able to knock out four of them, but the other two hit the destroyer full, in the rear engine areas. While the blast and the detonations were massive, in space, they were not heard or felt. The view-screen showed the flash of light that the atomic explosions had generated.

  And from the side of the destroyer, from their huge amidships arrays, out came a full dozen missiles, nukes once again, and all aimed at the heart of the Crimson I. The missiles crossed the last few hundred yards, and they hit the red metal Xithricite plates of the Crimson I’s hull, and nothing happened.

  No explosions. No piercing of the plates. No nukes. Nothing.

  “Engage,” Bram said once more as the Defiant was launched down toward Birdland to find the shuttle.

  The six nukes roared away from the Crimson I toward the destroyer, and this time, the targets were life support systems and all three landing bays. The landing bays exploded killing all close inside the destroyer.

  “Target their weapons arrays next, XO,” Bram shouted as this time the destroyer was aiming their plasma cannons at them.

  The cannons fired and two balls of gaseous plasma roared across the space aimed directly at the Crimson I’s bridge. Both hit the red metal hull plating, and both were snuffed out completely.

  The balls of plasma, at more than ten thousand degrees, did not burn through the metal. They went out like a snuffed candle.

  “Should be getting the idea soon. Engage,” Bram said, and from the Crimson I, out went another six nukes, their last bank of atomics.

  This time, the missiles were aimed at the weapons arrays amidships and the plasma cannons at the bow and rear of the destroyer. A laser did catch one, but the rest found their targets. The destroyer lay badly hurt and injured.

  “She’s done, Captain,” Daika said, but her hands were still poised over her console ready to keep going.

  “Sir,” the helmsman yelled, “She’s firing up her—”

  The destroyer blinked out of real-time space as she jumped to FTL using her TachyonDrive.

  “Helm, get us down over the wreck of the Gibraltar if you can get any idea of the coordinates from Major Stal,” Bram said as he killed the klaxons and stood his crew down off BATTLE STATIONS.

  #####

  Admiral Vennamo had been found on the shuttle with the rest of the miners and her guards just a few hundred yards from the wreck of the Gibraltar. It had taken four hours, but all were now on the Crimson I.

  For the Gibraltar and its crew, there was no hope. She’d been nuked up in space, losing her hull structure and life support at the same time. She had arrowed in, driving a crater almost a mile wide on a high steppe near the mountains on a southern continent. Thankfully, the steppe was grass and weed and overgrowth bound; had it been a forest, the fires would have burned for a month. As it was, the ship’s safety AI had taken over, and as she had plowed into the ground, everything had been turned off or ejected to drift down on its own. There had been no resulting fires and no further damage to the archives and systems that had been turned off and then shielded with the security force fields.

  Still, Bram thought as he read the first reports. More than six hundred and thirty dead.

  There was no way to be exact yet since a team would need to come from Neres City to provide full post-mortem on the ship and its crew.

  After being released from sickbay, Admiral Vennamo had stormed onto the bridge. She wanted blood—Noriega’s blood. “I want you—us, I mean, to go to Noriega and arrest the warlord. I understand that you’ve both received the Callisto’s report and you’ve seen it too. Shows the Noriega destroyer coming up and around the mi
ning asteroid and launching nukes. No warning. No notice. A pure ambush and they chose the Gibraltar, as she was a destroyer, just hanging in space—not with BATTLE STATIONS on the ready or shields up. No warning. And I want that man’s blood,” she yelled right on the bridge.

  Bram nodded. He was the captain of the Crimson I, and even though she was an admiral, he had no real reason to follow her orders—except that he wanted to.

  He called for a quick meeting, and soon the admiral, his XO, the major, and the ambassador sat in his ready room.

  He went right to Alver first and asked, “If we land, can you and your marines find this Noriega and arrest him and get him back to the Crimson I?”

  “Roger that, and we can do it quickly. I cannot guarantee no casualties on their part—they will fight back. But with belts on, we will be an unstoppable force.”

  Bram nodded and then turned to the XO. “And can you handle the Crimson I on the deck? If we land, the ship is just as protected as always, but the landing ramps can’t be used as that opens up the Xithricite hull plating, right?”

  The XO replied, “No problem, Sir, but aren’t you going to be on the bridge?”

  “That’s a negative. I’m going with the marines to grab this warlord. Wouldn’t miss it!” Bram said as he looked at the ambassador. “And Ambassador—exactly how many laws are we breaking if we do this?”

  Ambassador Harmon smiled. “Well, I believe the phrase we might want to use is ‘hot pursuit.’ We are in hot pursuit of the criminal who shot down one of the RIM Confederacy member realm’s ships. So we can pursue and then arrest the perp—perpetrator I mean by that—and that’s law just about everywhere!”

  Bram grinned. “Admiral, it will be a real privilege to have you on my bridge”—she rose to make a point, but he stopped her—“And yes, I know, you’re coming along too. Noted. And now, let’s go get this warlord,” he said.