An Airless Storm: Cochrane's Company: Book Two

by Peter Grant

  “Got it, sir. Ah… repair ships are as expensive as major warships, thanks to all their sophisticated robotics and systems and tools. If we order two new ones, even less sophisticated than Vulcan, they’ll cost us up to a billion francs each, fully equipped, sir.” Another rustle of dismay.

  “I understand, but we don’t have a choice. Spend the money, and get the best ones you can. If nothing satisfactory – by which I mean top-quality – is available on the used market, order them as new construction, and we’ll just have to wait for them. Let’s see if we can lease one in the short term, while waiting for ours to be built. If Sue can return to duty – Frank says she’s almost catatonic at present, so that may not be possible – she can advise us on what to put aboard them. If she isn’t, I’ll ask Captain Lu,” and he nodded to Hui by his side, “to approach Qianjin’s Fleet to send us a few of their engineering officers as consultants, to help us make that call.”

  Hui nodded soberly. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem, particularly if you offer a consultancy fee.”

  “Consider it done. Let me know what would be appropriate.”

  Cousins’ brow furrowed. “Sir, you’re throwing money around like it’s confetti. How are we going to pay for all this?”

  “Don’t forget, we recently received a seven-billion-franc insurance payout. What’s more, our previous asteroid mining – or, rather, ‘stealing’ – ventures netted us a lot of money. Even after paying for every ship and missile we currently have on order, we still have several billion francs in reserve. Now that we face a lot more expenses, I’m going to mount some more asteroid ventures. You and I will discuss that. We captured over two hundred prospector robots when we started work in the Mycenae system, and we’ll use them all.” He paused, then grinned suddenly. “In fact, we’ll put them back in the Mycenae system. We know that’s a very rich asteroid belt, and we already have ships there to do the work.”

  “Won’t the New Orkney Enterprise object, sir?” Dave queried, startled.

  “We’ll tell them we’re setting a trap, to try to lure back the people who just hit us, and we’re going to make it look as realistic as possible. Don’t forget, their people saw the whole fight from Mycenae Primus Four, and their patrol craft came over to help our recovery effort. There’s no doubt they understand the Albanians are a threat to their operations as well as ours, so I daresay they’ll let us go ahead. It’s in their interests, after all. We just won’t tell them we’re going to keep the asteroids we find, to pay for our expansion.”

  “Ah… if you say so, sir. Who’s going to tell NOE?”

  “I’m going to Mycenae at once, to see the state of affairs for myself. I’ll drop in at Rousay on the way, and tell NOE what we intend to do. Orca will be back next month, after her most recent training trip. By then you should have received word from me to go ahead. If so, load the bots aboard her and send her to Mycenae. If not, wait for my message. I’ll go on to Kang Industries after visiting Mycenae, so I’ll be gone for several weeks. You’ll be in charge during my absence.

  “Your most important job is to recruit more spacers, particularly technical specialists and engineers for our new repair ships. We lost just about all we had, except for the maintenance crews aboard the depot ships, and we can’t spare them. We’ll need two to three hundred, maybe more, and good ones are very hard to find. Start looking right away, even before we have ships for them to serve on, but don’t relax our recruiting standards. We can’t afford that. You might consider offering paid training and bonuses to any of our existing spacers who want to make a career change into that field. They’ll have to sign contracts to serve for several years after being trained, of course.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s a question of aptitude, though. Not everyone has it.”

  “True. We’ll also consider robotic and artificial intelligence options. Frank says the automated weapons systems on our corvettes did a much better job than he’d expected. Let’s find out whether something as good is available for repair ships. I’ll talk to Kang, and we’ll look at other shipyards.”

  Hui asked, “What about the prisoners?”

  “That’s a good question. The young officer suffered a depressed skull fracture. Jean Bart’s doctor operated, with the help of one of its Medicomp systems, to relieve the pressure on his brain; but at the time Frank wrote, he was still comatose. The spacers, oddly enough, were from Keda. It’s a small backwater planet, a couple of hundred light years from Mycenae. Why the Albanians are hiring there, I have no idea. I daresay that officer can tell us more, if he survives.”

  Tom Argyll’s face twisted in distaste. “Are you planning to interrogate him the way we did those captured agents, sir?”

  “No. We’ll treat him as a prisoner of war. He wasn’t spying on us – he was engaged in combat. If we give him better treatment, he might be willing to talk to us. At the very least, we may need to exchange him for one of our own, someday. We can’t do that if he’s dead.”

  “You’d better let them know we have him, then, sir, otherwise they won’t know it’s worth keeping our people alive for an exchange.”

  “Good point! I’ll do that. We know the names of some of their top people.” He didn’t look at Hui as he said that. No-one else knew that Qianjin had its own agents keeping an eye on the Albanians, and was sharing intelligence with Hawkwood. “I’ll send word to them, discreetly.”

  PATOS

  At almost the same time, Agim summed up the situation for Endrit and Fatmir. “It looks as if we got three of their ships – at least, that is how many of their gravitic drive signatures and beacons were no longer operating when Saranda went past, an hour after the strike. Sadly, we have no idea what happened to Ilaria. Saranda could detect no wreckage, and no Hawkwood ships were mounting any obvious search and rescue attempt along her projected course. There was one lifeboat beacon near Secundus Two, but that might have been from a Hawkwood ship. I fear Ilaria must have been destroyed by their counter-fire.”

  “But how?” Endrit demanded. “She was not using anything emitting a signature that could be tracked! The most they could have detected was when she fired her missiles, and they would have been too busy defending against them to bother with her at that moment. By the time our missiles had struck, Ilaria should have disappeared into space once more!”

  “I do not know. We may never know, unless we learn something from Hawkwood spacers who were there. Unfortunately, we had to withdraw our teams of spies from Constanta, due to the risk of infiltration. I have another plan to gather intelligence there. It will soon go into effect. Let us see whether that can glean us any more information.”

  “What is it?” Fatmir asked, but instantly looked chagrined as he waved his hands in negation. “I apologize. That was a foolish question. I do not need to know.”

  “No, you do not,” Agim said severely. “Remember, the more we compartmentalize our operations, the less the risk of betrayal or compromise.”

  Endrit said slowly, “Was it worth it? Was losing one of our new fast freighters, with all its missiles, and over a hundred of our spacers, worth what we achieved?”

  “Yes,” Agim said unhesitatingly. “Do not forget, its value is not only in the destruction we wrought. That was not even our primary purpose. We were sending a message to Hawkwood that their spying would not intimidate us. We killed one of their spies – or, rather, he killed himself – and disrupted an operation that must have taken them a lot of time, trouble and expense to set up. By striking back as soon as possible after we detected it, they will understand our meaning. If they do that again, we will hit them again, even harder next time. That was a message worth sending, even at the cost of losing Ilaria. The damage she inflicted was a bonus.”

  Above their heads, as they stood beneath a tree in the park, what looked like a brown moth clung to the bark. Its antennae vibrated slightly as it hung there, motionless.

  “What will we announce about Ilaria?”

  “I have already told others, inclu
ding the Brotherhood Council, that she is on a special mission. It will take several months to a year to complete. Our other ships on the Mycenae mission did not see her destruction, so their crews cannot question it. I have ordered their commanding officers to stick to our cover story at all costs. We shall have to announce it at some stage, but not yet. We must prepare our people for the shock. I think, if we have some new destroyers to show them before then, it will help to cushion the blow.”

  “Let us hope so. What are our other ships doing now?”

  “They are back at base. They will need several months, perhaps as much as a year, to educate and train their Kedan spacers, who have proved woefully inadequate. We may have struck a bad bargain there, but we must make the best of it. At least, once we have trained them to our standards, they can replace our own people, who can then take more responsible positions on the armed freighters, and crew our new destroyers as they come off the building ways.”

  The three concluded their business, then walked away in different directions. The moth waited until they were out of sight, then flew off toward a nearby parking lot, where a small van waited, its side window half-open.

  As he drove home that night, Agim pondered. Should he tell Jehona and Pal that their oldest son was missing, believed killed, aboard Ilaria? He thought about that for a long time before deciding, No. I need her to be completely focused on her mission, not mourning her son; and her husband is vital to us, as Head of Security for our refinery ship. We cannot afford either of them to be distracted. I shall simply tell them the cover story, and warn them not to discuss their son’s absence with anybody.

  He told them as much the following morning, when he attended the small private ceremony for Jehona’s graduation from her refresher training. The head of the small, highly secretive spy training center had assured him that she was as good as ever – perhaps even better than when she was younger. “She is more mature, more discerning,” he had said. “I wish I could keep her here as an instructor. She would be invaluable.”

  “You cannot have her. I need her too much in the field.”

  “Well, sir, you have in her one of the best agents I have ever seen. She will do well.”

  Jehona and her husband looked disappointed when told that Alban was on detached service with his ship. “May we know where?” Pal asked.

  “I am sorry. As your wife’s grandfather always reminded us, three can keep a secret…”

  Grinning, they joined him in the final, chorused phrase, “If two of them are dead!”

  Jehona turned to her husband. “That is why I cannot tell you where I am going – not that I know myself, yet!”

  “I understand. Security is my business, too.” He kissed her. “Be safe, my darling. Come home to me.”

  “I will do my best. I promise.”

  Agim drew himself up. “And I, for my part, promise that I shall not place Jehona at unreasonable risk. I shall always be honest with both of you about our needs, and I shall never lie to you about anything concerning or affecting your mission.

  Pal stood there, waving, as his wife drove away with Agim, feeling as if his heart were already breaking. Would she ever come back?

  13

  Lessons learned

  NEW MYCENAE

  “And the New Orkney Enterprise bought your fake-asteroid-mining plan, sir?” Frank asked as their pilot guided the gig toward the wreckage that had once been HCS Manchineel.

  “In the words of the old fisherman's proverb, they fell for it hook, line and sinker,” Cochrane said. “They weren’t too happy at first, but when I pointed out that since we don’t know where the Albanians are basing their ships, the only way to get at them is to make them come to us, they saw the sense in what I was proposing. They’ve agreed, provided we set up our asteroid operation at least one light-hour away from theirs. They’ll have their people avoid it like the plague.”

  “That’ll work, sir. I’ll send a corvette to do some preliminary scouting. Their systems can detect different densities of asteroid, if they get close enough. I’ll try to find an area with a lot of M- and S-type asteroids, then the prospector bots can take a closer look.”

  “Good. Thank you, Frank.” He peered out of the window as the gig passed slowly along Manchineel’s starboard side. “Ye Gods, that’s not a ship any longer – that’s a colander in space!”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. There are only three compartments that didn’t vent their atmosphere to vacuum, and only five survivors from them. Everyone else aboard didn’t make it.”

  “You’ve recovered the bodies?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re stored aboard Jean Bart, awaiting your orders. That’s not a problem, by the way. Exposure to vacuum desiccated them all.”

  “Space fatalities usually end up like that. What’s the general feeling about funerals and memorials?”

  “They were spacers, sir, so a traditional spacer’s funeral, dropping their bodies into the nearest star, will work for most of our people. They’d like to have some sort of memorial, though.”

  “I’ll be glad to provide one. We’ll put it on Constanta for now, but build it so we can dismantle it if we move from there, and take it with us.”

  “I think they’ll appreciate that, sir.”

  “I – good grief!” Cochrane pointed at the stern, where the docking bay was blown wide open by what had obviously been an internal explosion. “What did that?”

  “The cutter was carrying volatile cargo, sir. She’d just docked, but hadn’t been unloaded when a laser beam went through her. That’s the result.”

  Cochrane shook his head in dismay. “I’ve never seen damage like that before. Well, it reinforces my earlier decision. We won’t even try to repair Manchineel; we’ll simply replace her.”

  “I think you’re right. If you’re finished here, may I tell the pilot to go over to Bowhead, sir?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  As the gig left the shattered wreckage of Manchineel behind, and started on the long hop to where Bowhead orbited the airless, lifeless planet below, Cochrane asked softly, “What was it like, being under that big an attack? There were – what? Over a hundred and fifty missiles coming at you? That’s a hell of a barrage.”

  “Yes, sir, and our counter-barrage fired over three times as many missiles back at them, including those that destroyed the intruder. It was like hail, going out from us toward them. It looked just like that in the Plot display – a hailstorm in space, an airless storm.”

  “I’ve no doubt it was impressive. Speaking of destroying the intruder, how are our prisoners doing?”

  “The Kedans are just happy to be alive and safe, sir. They have no idea who they were working for, or why they were there. I think their officers just shoved them aboard through the airlock, then went off, counting the money they’d been paid to provide cheap labor. I suspect the Albanians don’t have enough of their own spacers. I reckon they’re trying to make up the shortfall by hiring more from planets that won’t ask awkward questions.”

  “And the officer?”

  “He’s conscious, sir, but still very weak. The doctor says he’s lucky to be alive. So far there doesn’t seem to be any long-term neurological damage, which is good news.”

  “Is he talking to us about anything?”

  “He won’t, sir. He seems to think it’s his duty to be silent.”

  “If he was in a regular armed force, during time of war, it would be. Working for Albanian thugs hardly qualifies! Still, let’s leave it at that for now. Once he sees we’re treating him well, and as his condition improves, he may open up. When are you sending him back to Constanta?”

  “I wanted to ask about that, sir. Can we legally keep him a prisoner on Constanta? It’s neutral territory, so to speak.”

  Cochrane blinked. “You know, I didn’t think about that, but you’re right. Here in Mycenae, there’s no local authority to care. Back at Constanta, it’ll be a different story.” He thought for a moment. “Can you keep him here for
the time being, and the Kedans too?”

  “Yes, sir. You built a brig into the depot ships, so there’s enough room for all of them. He’s still in sick bay, of course. I think it might be worth converting a berthing unit into a makeshift prison, though. It’ll be more comfortable than the brig, and you said you wanted them treated well.”

  “I’ll leave that up to you, as long as they can’t threaten the ship’s security or try to escape. Give me photographs and personal details of all of them before I leave, including their DNA profiles, in case I find a use for them. Has there been much resentment toward them from the crew?”

  “Some, sir. After all, they helped kill a bunch of us in a sneak attack.”

  “Let’s hope it stays at low level. If you get any troublemakers trying to stir things up, tell them we need these people to talk, and they aren’t helping. If they won’t shut up, send them back to Constanta aboard the monthly freighter, and we’ll fire their asses when they get there.”

  “Will do, sir. Now, to change the subject, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into analyzing what happened. There are several lessons we can take away from Mycenae Two, sir.”

  “Mycenae Two?”

  “The Second Battle of Mycenae, sir – the first being the fight with the two destroyers, a couple of years ago.”

  Cochrane gave a mirthless chuckle. “I see. All right, what are they?”

  “First off, sir, we had only one corvette with the arsenal ship, because they were still working out the kinks in a new, faster datalink setup. That worked like a charm, by the way. I’d like to recommend the tech who came up with the idea for a thumping great incentive award. We might have suffered more casualties, if it weren’t for Datura being able to program the missiles aboard Narwhal so much faster.”