In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (22 page)

The first indication of the autonav taking over
was when our sensors suddenly retracted and the spacetime distorters began
charging.

“Here we go!” Jase said.

I relaxed, hands behind my head. “Time to see what
the Drakes are hiding.”

“Captain,” Izin’s synthetic voice sounded from the
intercom.

“Yes Izin, what is it?”

“I’m detecting that electromagnetic anomaly again.
It’s very close.”

I smiled, this time knowing what it meant. Gern
Vrate was alive! “Don’t worry about it, Izin. It’s just a nosy neighbor from
the Perseus Arm.”

Before he could question me further, the
Merak
Star’s
bubble formed, sending us hurtling at a thousand times the speed of
light toward Anya’s secret destination.

Drift Station

Acheron Abyss Dark Nebula

Non-System Space, Outer Draco

945 light years from Sol

Population Unknown

The
Merak Star
was bubbled
up for three days, and thanks to Anya, the autonav refused to share its real
time coordinate simulation with us. I was used to flying blind – there was no
way to avoid it, no signal of any kind could penetrate a superluminal bubble – but
not seeing the autonav plotting our progress against the infallible Tau Cetin
charts was strangely unnerving.

Jase and I took turns standing watch while Izin
locked himself in the
Silver Lining
trying to crack the Consortium’s navlog
encryption. In my spare time, I studied the armaments the
Merak Star
was
still carrying for the Drakes in three of its four cargo holds. At first
glance, they appeared to be everything the Brotherhood could want, except they
were all hard hitting military grade weapons designed for war fighting, and
that was the problem. The Brotherhood wanted loot, not glory. The only booty
they’d get with these weapons would be corpses and radioactive wrecks. There
was no profit in that.

“Skipper,” Jase’s voice sounded over the intercom
in hold two. “We’ve arrived.”

“On my way,” I said, pushing off in zero gravity toward
the forward hatch. Like many large ships, the
Merak Star
was rigged for artificial
gravity only in crew areas in order to lower build costs and reduce energy
consumption.

Izin met me halfway to the bridge elevator, as eager
to see where Anya was taking us as I was.

“Any progress on the log?” I asked.

“I’ve decrypted a fifth of the entries, but have
found nothing useful. Nazari was even more ineffective at keeping records than
you, Captain.”

I was sloppy on purpose, because I didn’t like
anyone knowing my business, especially my EIS business. Nazari on the other
hand was a stimhead who’d have lost his license the moment he set foot in Core
System space.

“You’ve been reading my log?” I said, feigning indignation.

“I assure you, Captain, deciphering your cryptic
annotations is more difficult than decrypting the Merak Star’s log, and far
less stimulating.”

When we reached the bridge, Jase was scanning
nearby space. All four screens displayed a thin black mist devoid of stars with
only a single point of light in the distance, blurred by the gas and dust between
us.

“Where are we?” I asked, climbing onto my
acceleration couch.

“The autonav isn’t talking,” Jase replied, “but from
the looks of it, I’d say we’re inside the Acheron Abyss.”

The dark mass of the
Cyclops
floated in the
mist several clicks to port. Being significantly faster than the
Merak Star
at both super- and subluminal velocities, she must have been waiting there for
almost a day.

“Incoming signal,” Jase announced.

“Izin, they don’t know you’re here” I said. “Let’s
keep it that way.”

Izin hurried into the corridor, then Jase put Anya
on screen.

“Follow us in,” she said without preamble. “Don’t try
to access your autonav or you know what’ll happen, and whatever you do, don’t
activate shields or weapons. If you do, we won’t be able to protect you.”

The screen went blank, then the old assault
carrier’s three maneuvering engines glowed to life as she started toward the
distant light.

“If they can’t protect us,” Jase said, “what are
we doing here?”

“They want us looking like a prize, not a threat,”
I said, laying in a course behind the
Cyclops
.

Jase parked his annoyance, turning his attention
to the sensors. “There’s over a hundred ships out there, all sizes, all types, all
Drake!”

It explained Anya’s insistence on secrecy. She was
a Brotherhood navigator, a member of an elite group who knew the coordinates of
every pirate base in Mapped Space, places so secret that such knowledge was a
death sentence to all but the anointed. Bases like Acheron Station were the
beating heart of the Brotherhood, where booty, hostages and ships were bought
and sold and the long arm of Earth Law was entirely unknown. If Earth Navy ever
discovered this location, they’d send in a fleet and blast it out of existence.
It was why no Brotherhood navigator had ever been taken alive – or ever would
be.

“Welcome to pirate central,” I said, wondering if
I’d made a terrible mistake coming here.

* * * *

Ten thousand clicks out we passed through a
field of gravity mines forming a spherical shell around our destination. The
curved space the mines generated was strong enough to collapse any bubble
passing through it, providing an impenetrable barrier to superluminal flight. In
the event of an Earth Navy attack, the barrier gave the Drakes a chance to
escape while the navy wallowed through curved space trying to reach them.

“Fancy stuff for a bunch of raiders,” Jase said.

“It’s old technology,” Izin said, back on the
bridge now that our commlink to the
Cyclops
was closed. “Only new
knowledge is difficult to acquire. It’s why there were no pirates during the
early centuries of human interstellar travel. Back then, Earth’s collective
governments had a monopoly on superluminal technology. Now interstellar flight
is commonplace and pirates are everywhere Earth Navy is not.”

“Greed always finds a way,” I said.

After more than two thousand years of interstellar
travel, any thug could buy or steal a ship, equip it with weapons and menace the
space lanes – at least the human lanes. Initially the pirates had fought each
other for the spoils, then the Brotherhood had been formed, turning raiding into
an organized, highly profitable business. The captains pooled their resources,
built support bases in locations shrouded in secrecy where Earth Navy couldn’t
find them.

The navigators who knew where those bases were
hidden received the largest share of the booty, even more than the captain,
because they bore the greatest risk, being the first to die if Earth Navy
boarded their ships. The commband Anya wore on her forehead was more than just a
communications device, it was her death sentence if she or her ship were ever
captured. All navigators had them surgically attached, knowing they would wear
them for the remainder of their lives. The commbands carried within them the
coordinates of every Brotherhood base and allowed the navigator to communicate
directly with Brotherhood ships, negating the need to enter coordinates into
pirate autonavs that might be seen by bridge crews.

The rewards in terms of wealth and power for
bearing such risks were great, and should they pay the ultimate price, the
Brotherhood ensured all they were owed went to their chosen beneficiaries. It
was a harsh but effective system, one neither Earth Navy or the EIS could penetrate,
and in spite of the risks, the rewards ensured there was no shortage of
volunteers.

Inside the sphere of gravity mines was a layer of
long range sensors monitoring the approaches to the minefield. There were no
gun platforms, no robot sentries to engage an attacking fleet because the
Brotherhood knew if Earth Navy came, it would be in overwhelming strength. The defenses
were designed to warn and delay only, not for a stand up fight the Drakes could
not hope to win.

Once inside the early warning system, the
Cyclops
performed a half-roll and began decelerating. We followed suit, mimicking the Drake
ship’s every move. Soon the station came into view. It was a long, linear
structure with cruciform arms branching out from the central spine every
fifteen hundred meters. Attached to the arms was a haphazard mix of VRS
containers, ship hulls, habitats, storage tanks, agridomes, hangers and
shipyards. The derelict ship hulls had long ago been stripped for parts and
were now no more than pressurized structures organically integrated into the
station’s cross-arms. Small craft and maintenance bots orbited the station like
insects around a rotting corpse while scaffold-like docking gantries containing
flimsy pressure tubes extended from the station’s arms to battle worn combat
vessels of every type. Floating near the station were other Drake ships,
maneuvering to dock or preparing to set off to plunder the shipping lanes
grazing the edge of the Acheron.

“Sure is a lot of them,” Jase said warily.

“Too many,” I said, surprised at how well
organized they were.

In spite of their numbers, the odds were with the
traders. Space was vast and a smart captain could avoid the choke points
favored by the Brotherhood if he didn’t mind spending a little longer underway.
Even so, ships were lost, prizes taken and the Brotherhood flourished on the
promise of instant riches.

“Lots of space docks,” Jase observed, noting how
many ships were laid up, surrounded by cranes and thrusterbots.

“Maintenance docks,” Izin corrected. “They have repair
facilities only, no construction.”

There were many docks of different sizes, but they
all held completed ships. There were no partially constructed super structures,
no massive hull blocks being aligned, just darkly scarred ships that should
have been scrapped years ago.

“He’s right,” I said, “the Brotherhood are
scavengers, not builders.”

“Then what’s that doing here?” Jase demanded, pointing
to a distant dock. He zoomed our optics, revealing a pristine ship surrounded by
cranes and gantries. Her hull was as spotless as if she’d just been launched
and her four large engines in diamond formation showed no sign of wear. She had
a squat bridge amidships, a rounded bow and four cargo doors each side.

“It’s not a new build,” Izin said, “it’s an
upgrade.”

Closer inspection revealed large thrusterbots were
fitting slab armor, big naval turrets, small point defense weapons and shield
emitters to the hull. She was unmistakably a structurally reinforced Saracen,
the same class Hadley had imaged landing at Loport, now being transformed by
the Drakes into the equivalent of a purpose built, cruiser sized warship. It
didn’t take long to discover other maintenance docks performing similar
transformations on seven more Saracens.

“That’s quite an upgrade,” I said uneasily.

“Cyclops hailing,” Jase warned.

Izin hurried from the bridge, then Jase opened a
channel.

“Follow us around,” Anya ordered, on screen for
only a moment.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jase said to a blank screen as the
Cyclops
pitched slowly and thrusted along one of the station’s massive cross-arms.

“Her captain’s watching her,” I said, sensing her
tension.

Jase gave me a puzzled look. “I thought she was
the captain.”

“She’s the navigator. Rix is the captain. We
haven’t seen him yet.”

I copied the
Cyclops’s
maneuver, then as we
drifted up past the cross-arm, nine more Super Saracens came into view parked
off the far side of the station. They stood with their upgrades complete in
block line abreast formation – three rows of three stacked together. Compared
to the chaotic structure of the station, the precision of their formation
displayed an order and discipline unlike anything the Drakes had ever shown.

“The Brotherhood appear to have learnt station
keeping discipline from Earth Navy,” Izin observed from the hatchway.

Brotherhood ships were adept at working in teams,
but they never flew tight formations. They kept their distance from each other,
always ready to run, every man for himself in the face of Earth Navy. Formation
flying was the navy’s specialty, designed to bring all weapons to bear upon a single
target. Even standing to, these Super Saracens looked ready to fight in the
same way, indicating they were fitted with Earth Navy level combat systems that
would enable the ships to fight as a single unit.

“Maybe the Drakes are recruiting Earth Navy
tactical officers,” Jase suggested.

The more I watched the Drake fleet, the more
apprehensive I became. Several Super Saracens fighting the way the Drakes
normally did, sharing sensor data and targeting at will, would challenge the
solitary Earth Navy frigates that patrolled Mapped Space’s outer regions. A
fleet of them, fighting as a compact, integrated force could strike any target
outside Core System space with impunity.

“She’s back,” Jase said, eyes on the comm system.

“Ride the docking beam into theta one niner,” Anya
said.

Jase did a quick check of our incoming signals and
nodded. “I see it.”

“Lock up to the station, and open your outer
doors. Cargobots are waiting to unload you.”

“We’ve got cargo in holds one to three,” I said. “Four
is empty.”

She looked puzzled. “We were expecting a full load.”

“The manifest says we’re full, but that’s not what
we’re carrying.” I shrugged. “Nazari sold the rest for stims.”

She gave me a disgusted look, but swallowed the
story. “Once you’re empty, we’ll begin preparing you to receive your outbound
load. Until then, you’re free to access the station, but I wouldn’t recommend
it.”

“Why not?”

She gave me a scornful look. “It’s full of Drakes,
all drunk and looking for fights. You should stay there ... where it’s safe.”
She cut the signal.

Jase exhaled slowly. “I’m not one to pass up shore
leave, Skipper, but in this case ...”

“I agree. You stay here.” Knowing Jase’s quick
temper, he was likely to get into a fight the first time a drunken Drake breathed
on him. “I’ll check it out.”

Jase gave me a surprised look. “If you’re going,
I’m going.”

“No, you and Izin make sure their bots don’t find
the Silver Lining,” I said, calculating how far it was to the nearest Super
Saracen. “The kind of sightseeing I have in mind is better off done alone.”