Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  Before we made it out of the Delta Pavonis system, though, I had a very different worry.

  Chapter Twelve

  Piracy and Other Questionable Pastimes

  We were a week out from Renata when an urgent call over the ship's comm woke me from a deep sleep.

  “Captain, Yuskeya here.”

  “Go ahead.” I struggled to get my bearings. Beside me, Hirin sat up, too.

  “I'm alone on bridge watch and there's a vessel on fast approach. I've commed it but no reply. I don't like the look of it.” Her voice was clipped and businesslike.

  “I'm on my way. Wake Baden, Viss, and Rei and get them to the bridge.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  I swung my legs past Hirin and reached for the jeans I'd left on the desk chair. He was right behind me.

  “You stay here,” I told him, pulling my t-shirt over my head. “You should rest. I'm sure it's nothing. We're all just a little jumpy.”

  He was already fastening his shipsuit. “Like hell,” he said mildly. “I feel fine, and I still have a vested interest in this ship, remember.”

  I didn't wait to argue any more, since it was obviously a waste of my breath anyway. The ship lurched hard to the left just as I got the door open, and I stumbled inelegantly into the corridor.

  “Damne,” I swore aloud, and ran for the bridge.

  Yuskeya was still alone there. She didn't look up from the piloting console when she heard me come in.

  “It's an unmarked Stinger-class,” she said, “and the ship's sig is scrambled. I don't know what he's trying to do. He's not hailing us on the comm; he's not shooting at us. He just keeps trying to get up under us. I'm taking evasive maneuvers.”

  I wondered where Yuskeya, a navigator, had learned to take evasive maneuvers, but she seemed to know what she was doing and I didn't have time to ask. Rei and Viss both arrived on the bridge at that second, and Rei slid into the secondary pilot console while Yuskeya gave her a clipped rundown of what she'd just told me. Viss went to the engineering console and punched up the screen.

  “Viss, try and get a reading on it. What the devil is he doing?”

  Baden ran onto the bridge then and slid into the comm console. “What's up?”

  Before I could answer him, Viss barked, “Goddamn—Cargo Pod One airlock override just engaged!”

  “Anything you can tell me, Baden—”

  The ship shuddered again and Viss yelled, “Cargo Pod One dockside door open.”

  “What the—close it!”

  Viss punched commands into the computer but he shook his head. “Can't. Something's overridden the controls. I'm going down there.”

  He turned and sprinted from the bridge before I could tell him not to. Yuskeya was about two steps behind him.

  “Damne! Baden, come with me! Hirin, you have the bridge,” I shouted over my shoulder as Baden and I followed Viss and Yuskeya. They'd left the weapons locker open and I pulled two of the remaining plasma rifles out of it and handed one to Baden. It sounded like Viss was mostly sliding down the metal ladder to the engineering deck below. Baden put a hand out to make me let him go first, and we went down the hatchway.

  “What the hell?” Baden asked me as we climbed down. “Is there even anything in Cargo Pod One?”

  “No, Viss thought we should leave it empty if we were going through the Split. They must have just picked that one as a way to board the ship.” Board the ship. My own words sent a chill down my spine. Piracy wasn't unknown in Nearspace, but the Protectorate kept it reasonably well under control. Those who practised it anyway were ruthless, hardened, and no-one I wanted to run into.

  We reached the engineering deck and jumped off the hatchway ladder. The ship pitched hard again to dockside and I stumbled, almost falling into the open hatch. I caught a rung of the ladder and pushed myself back. The hatch continued down to Cargo Pod Four below us, and I had no wish to take the same leap the masked intruder had taken a few weeks ago.

  “You okej?”Baden gasped, and I nodded. We sprinted through Engineering toward the hatchway to Cargo Pod One at the front of the ship. The pods didn't interconnect on the lower level; each had its own airlock and cargo doors. Viss's footsteps echoed on the metal decking as he ran ahead of us down the long corridor between the fuel storage cells. I had no idea where Yuskeya had gone, but she wasn't ahead of us. The hatchway to the cargo pod was at the very end. Viss was kneeling beside it when we caught up.

  “Viss!” I yelled, and he stopped and looked up at me, one hand on the hatch lever. “Red light!” The warning light beside the hatch glowed bright crimson, indicating that the pod below was not pressurized. The hatch shouldn't have opened without a keycode anyway, but I wasn't sure how clearly any of us were thinking.

  Viss let go of the lever, stood, and kicked the wall beside the hatchway viciously. None of us had stopped to put on an EVA suit, so the hatch had to stay shut. He turned and started to run back past me headed back to Engineering and the EVA suits stored there.

  He almost ran into Yuskeya. Her arms were loaded with EVA suits, and Maja was with her, carrying more.

  I blinked. Maja's blonde hair was still tousled from sleep and she'd thrown only a short jacket over her sleepsuit, but she looked totally in control of herself. She'd obviously stopped at the weapons locker for a handgun since she was toting a pin-beam Viper in one hand. I know I stared. She let Viss pass her and ran down the hall toward us.

  “Are you okej? What's happening?” she demanded.

  “I wish I knew. Pirates, apparently. What are you doing down here?”

  “What was I going to do, cower in my cabin while the ship was being attacked?” she asked.

  Viss was on his way back down the corridor. He'd closed and sealed the bulkhead at the engineering end of the corridor behind him and took a suit that Yuskeya offered him. “Get these on quick,” he ordered. “If they blow this hatch from the other side—”

  Damne, I hadn't thought of that. The Tane Ikai had bulkhead hatches between each deck, but we almost never kept them closed. I touched my biochip implant to comm the bridge and told Hirin, “You and Rei get into EVA suits, just in case. Wake Dr. Ndasa. With the pod bay doors open—”

  “Already done,” Hirin said. “What's happening down there?”

  “I'll keep you posted.” I struggled into an EVA suit as quickly as I could. My fingers trembled as I wondered if the intruders would blow the hatch from the depressurized pod before we had our suits on. The others were quick, too. Baden helped Maja with the unfamiliar fastenings.

  “What are they doing down there?” I wondered aloud. “There's nothing in that pod to start with, and they're not coming up.”

  Viss gave me an unreadable look and said, “I'm going to open the hatch.” He'd been the first into his suit and had stood fidgeting, waiting for the rest of us.

  “They'll probably be watching it,” Baden warned. “Don't do anything rash.”

  Viss just grinned at him and pulled the hatch lever. There was an almost immediate burst of plasma fire from the cargo pod. Viss glanced up at me and then dropped through the open hatch. Yuskeya and Baden followed him and there was more fire.

  “Stay here,” I ordered Maja, and went down the hatch myself.

  When you drop through a cargo pod hatchway you have two options. You can keep climbing the metal ladder down the nearly five meters to the floor of the pod, or you can head to the side on one of the raised catwalks. Going in blind, I hit the catwalk, dropped, and crawled right. There hadn't been any lights on in the pod, although Viss must have hit the switch when he left the bridge. They were still very faint, warming up, so the pod was cast in general gloom.

  I could make out a few things. The doors were still open, though mostly blocked by the stinger, which had attached itself to the Tane Ikai's hull just outside the doors. Its own cargo door was open, and some crates rested just inside. A couple of figures in EVA suits crouched behind the crates, and one more was trying to hide behind a crate on ou
r pod floor. The tableau didn't make sense to me. They'd boarded the ship to put cargo into our pod?

  A few short bursts of plasma fire shot out from the stinger, but they were out of range and didn't reach us on the catwalk. The final pirate left on the Tane Ikai made a run for the stinger under the covering fire, and Viss let loose a couple of shots. One went wide, but one took the pirate in the leg and he stumbled and fell, skittering across the floor of the cargo pod toward the open door. He dropped both his weapon and a techrig, clutching at the burned patch of fabric and flesh on his calf with one hand and trying to catch the door ledge with the other. He stopped sliding, hauled himself upright, and managed to launch himself across the space separating the two ships just as the stinger's cargo door slid down, blocking our view. Viss gave a yell of rage, muffled by his helmet, and slid down the ladder. Yuskeya fired at the stinger but the distance was too great and the plasma dispersed harmlessly.

  At the same moment, Maja jumped down onto the catwalk beside me and immediately rolled to one side, coming up with the Viper steady in her hand as she looked around. I was speechless.

  She grinned at me. “Warrior Chi self-defence classes. I had to do something to vent after Taso left.”

  Well, that explained the bruise she'd left on the PrimeCorp operative back on Rhea, anyway.

  The second the stinger's door closed the ship released itself from us and moved off, slowly at first but then with mounting speed. I wished the Tane Ikai's torpedo bays were full and I could order the little bastardo taken right out of the sky, but it was an empty desire. I hadn't carried torps since Hirin and I had downgraded from really exciting cargo to more mundane loads, and with the Protectorate on patrol, the notion of pirates had dimmed to a memory of a long-ago threat.

  Viss crossed to the control panel beside the open doors and punched in some commands. The pod bay doors began to close, and once they did, the pod could be re-pressurized. For now we'd have to talk over the comm channel. I left the plasma rifle on the catwalk and climbed down the ladder, Baden and Maja right behind me. Yuskeya had already made it to the floor and was collecting the pirate's weapon and techrig.

  Hirin's voice came over the comm. “Luta? What's happening? Should we pursue this guy?”

  I thought fast. “No, never mind. We'd never catch a stinger; they're just too fast. Is everyone okej up there?”

  “We're fine. You?”

  “No problems. You can probably shuck the EVA suits, too.”

  By this time I had reached the floor, and I realized that there were still a dozen crates sitting in the tie-downs. Slowly my confusion cleared—somewhat. The pirates hadn't been loading anything into the pod; they'd been taking it out. This pod, however, was supposed to be empty.

  “What is all this stuff?” I asked.

  No-one answered, and the question hung in the air, caught in a sudden tension. Then Viss said, “I suppose I could say, 'ask your brother,' but that probably wouldn't cut it, would it?”

  I turned to look at him and put my hands on my hips. “No. No, it wouldn't. What does Lanar have to do with any of this?”

  Viss sighed. “You want to go up to the galley and get a triple caff? This could take a while.”

  I scowled at Viss, but it's hard to feel you're really conveying your anger from behind an EVA helmet.

  “I think we'll take it on the bridge.”

  It wasn't often that I saw Viss looking sheepish, but that's the face he presented me once we assembled back on the bridge. The viewscreen showed a magnificent nebula swirling in the distance, but none of us paid much attention. Viss and I faced each other near my command chair, but I didn't sit. The others went to stations, turning in their chairs to face us. Tension hummed in the air as if the skip drive were warming up.

  “Are you sure you don't want to do this in private?” Viss asked me.

  I glared at him. “You've put every member of this crew in jeopardy. I think they have a right to hear what you have to say.”

  “There might be . . . higher powers . . . who might not appreciate that,” he said.

  “The higher powers can kiss my azeno. You have one chance to tell it, and this is it. So get on with it.” Generally I got on exceedingly well with Viss, not because I was under any illusions about his shady past—or present, for that matter—but because I thought we shared the same bearings on our moral compass. The possibility of this kind of betrayal had never crossed my mind. First Maja, now Viss. The thought left a bitter taste in my throat.

  “Guess I'm not a very good smuggler,” he said with a half-grin.

  I didn't return it. “Oh, I don't know, you had me fooled, and it's my ship. What's in those crates in the cargo pod?”

  “Illegal tech,” he said.

  I closed my eyes. Carrying illegal technology was a Primary Statute crime that could land us in jail for what would be, even for me, a very long time.

  “And why is it on my ship?”

  Viss swallowed. “Because your brother asked me to deliver it to Kiando, or as close as I could get it, for him.”

  “Her brother?” Yuskeya broke in. “You mean the Admiralo?”

  “That's the only one she has, as far as I know,” Viss drawled.

  “I don't believe it.” Yuskeya sat back in her skimchair and folded her arms, looking as angry as I felt. “He wouldn't put the Captain in that kind of danger.”

  I rubbed a hand across my eyes. “You'd better just tell me the whole thing.”

  “Mind if I sit?” he asked, and pulled a skimchair away from the secondary pilot's console without waiting for my answer. He turned it to face me and sat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Here's what I know. The Admiralo contacted me when we arrived Earthside, and then again shortly before we shipped out again. I've done some . . . favours . . . for the Protectorate in the past, so that wasn't unusual. He told me that they've been keeping an eye on PrimeCorp for some highly irregular activity at their new tech subcorp for a while now, and they've managed to . . . acquire . . . some of PrimeCorp's illegal tech.” He paused.

  “I've got my own issues with PrimeCorp, but I don't see how this ties in.”

  He shrugged. “Well, it doesn't. See, the Protectorate wants a chance to have a look at this stuff, so they need to get it to a planet controlled by one of the other Corps. They have to tread carefully around PrimeCorp and they don't want any hint to get out that they're involved. It's too chancy for a Protectorate ship to transport the stuff. But we were going to Kiando anyway, it wasn't a big load, and I knew we weren't carrying a full cargo shipment . . . if I just told you to keep one pod clear . . .”

  “And what happens if we get caught with it on board?” I asked.

  “The Admiralo said he'd make sure that didn't happen, and if the worst happened and it did, he'd make it right. Remember how he jumped in when that Mars Planetary Police ship was heading for us? I figure that's why.”

  “It was on board then?”

  Viss nodded, but had the grace to blush. “Once I got you to leave Cargo Pod One empty, I had room for it, and that pod wouldn't have to be opened again, so the secret would be safe. The Admiralo's message came for me as soon as we were close to Earth.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “And who's out here looking after my back now? I didn't see any Protectorate ships coming to the rescue when we were breached and boarded a little while ago!”

  Viss frowned. “I don't think they were expecting that. The Admiralo didn't mention that anything like that might happen.”

  “Who the hell were those guys?”

  “I don't know.” Viss stroked his grey-peppered beard. “I'm kind of worried about that, to tell you the truth, since they knew exactly where to find us and where on the ship to look for the stuff.”

  “Unless it was a coincidence,” Yuskeya suggested, but she didn't sound like she believed it. She stared at Viss coldly.

  “Viss, did you tell Lanar we were going to Kiando?” I asked. “Maybe the message was intercepted?”


  He shook his head solemnly. “No, Captain, because I didn't tell him that. I said I'd see how close I could get it, and let him know where the Protectorate could pick it up. We have some . . . mutual contacts . . . and I was sure I'd be able to arrange something. But I knew you wanted to keep the Kiando thing quiet.”

  “I think it had to be PrimeCorp,” Baden said suddenly.

  “Why?”

  “If they've got an eye somewhere inside the Protectorate, found out where the stuff was headed and how, it'd make sense to come out and try to take it back.”

  “PrimeCorp has an informant in the Protectorate? No way,” Yuskeya said, shaking her head.

  Hirin spoke up. “If they were going to go to all that trouble,” he said, “Why didn't they just blow the hatch and come right through the ship after Luta, too? We know they're still after her. They could have taken care of two birds with one stone.”

  Everyone fell silent, picturing that scenario, I suppose. I know I was, and I didn't like it. Then Rei snorted delicately.

  “Different departments,” she said. “These guys probably don't even know anything about Luta. PrimeCorp's huge—big enough to make the Protectorate nervous. Not everyone's going to know what everyone else is doing.”

  “Great, now we have two groups of PrimeCorp operatives after us? Makes me want to skip into the nearest unexplored wormhole and take my chances.” I turned back to Viss. “Did Lanar tell you why the Protectorate is tiptoeing around PrimeCorp? That doesn't sound right to me.”

  Viss shook his head. “He didn't really say. But he said that PrimeCorp's planning something—he didn't say what—that the Protectorate is working to stop. But he said it's a 'delicate operation.'”

  “If the Protectorate's worried, then I'm worried,” Baden said. Yuskeya looked like she was about to say something, but she scowled and stayed silent.