Prophet of ConFree (The Prophet of ConFree) (23 page)

"Well, ConFree hasn't informed its people yet, either, have we?"

"No. But this is a fairly recent development and ConFree will be deciding what to do. There have as yet not been any sightings in the Outvac or the Crista Cluster, as far as I know. And none yet in the Gassies or the Inners. But ConFree is dealing with the issue, I know that. Remember that immediate Q-link we received from Fleetcom when we spotted that first alien craft? Fleetcom knew about these aliens already. They'll be informing the citizenry as soon as they make decisions on a proper course of action."

"A proper course of action. What will that be?"

"Well, the first thing we need is information. Who or what are we dealing with? What are their intentions? And what are their capabilities? Can we resist them, if necessary? Or are they so advanced that they will simply swat us like bugs – if they want to?"

"And how do we find that out?"

"Simple. ConFree sends in the Legion. Fleetcom and the Legion.
We
find out the answers. That's what we do. That's what we signed up for." Prof smiled.

"Perfect. I can hardly wait."

Δ

"
ATTENTION OUTLAW YACHT! YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED AS A STARJACKED SHIP BY MILITARY UNITS OF THE CONFEDERATION OF FREE WORLDS! YOUR SHIP IS HEREBY DECLARED CONTRABAND AND IS TO BE BOARDED FORCIBLY AND CONFISCATED. WARNING! UNLOCK YOUR ENTRY HATCHES IMMEDIATELY! IF YOU FAIL TO UNLOCK YOUR HATCHES OUR BOARDING PARTIES WILL BREACH YOUR HATCHES AND RESPOND WITH LETHAL FORCE. WARNING! ANY ATTEMPT TO EJECT ANY PASSENGERS OR CARGO INTO THE VAC WILL BE GROUNDS FOR SUMMARY EXECUTION. ATTENTION! IF YOU FAIL TO RESPOND TO THIS MESSAGE WE WILL PRESUME YOU ARE HOSTILE AND WE WILL REACT APPROPRIATELY. ATTENTION OUTLAW YACHT! REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!
"

Well, nobody could say our intentions were not clear. Delta squad was nearing the target yacht in an assault tug named
Tarantula
. It looked kind of like a giant black spider, so it was a good name. We were all in our party suits, armed to the teeth, ready for the festivities. Of course I was terrified, but I never admit that to anybody. There were plenty of imaginative ways you could die when forcing your way into some hostile ship, and they were all running through my mind as we neared the target. It was a beautiful white ship, formerly the Personal Ship
Linda Lee
, likely owned by some rich fool who thought he was invulnerable. But nobody cruising these Gulf stars was invulnerable.

The bad guys didn’t answer us. Their ship cruised silently through the vac. We watched the antimat torpedo from the
Wasp
leisurely approach the
Linda Lee
and smash into its stern with a little puff of gas.

"
ATTENTION OUTLAW YACHT! WE HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PENETRATED YOUR HULL WITH AN ANTIMAT TORPEDO. IF YOU RESIST US WE WILL DETONATE THE TORPEDO AND DESTROY YOUR SHIP! YOUR ONLY OPTION IS SURRENDER! RESPOND IMMEDIATELY TO THIS MESSAGE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND LIE ON THE DECKS DISPLAYING OPEN AND EMPTY HANDS. IF YOU FAIL TO ANSWER, OUR BOARDING PARTIES WILL ASSUME YOU ARE HOSTILE AND WILL BOARD YOU USING LETHAL FORCE. IF YOU SURRENDER YOU WILL BE TURNED OVER TO THE RESPONSIBLE AUTHORITIES. SURRENDER OR DIE! REPEAT, SURRENDER OR DIE!
"

Left unsaid was what would happen to the boarding party if the
Wasp
detonated the missile. I thought it better not to ask.

There was no answer. We smashed up against their ship with a great metallic bang, grappling for position, our own boarding ports closing over the
Linda Lee
's primary port. Since it was such a small ship, there was only our one squad handling the boarding. We hustled into the boarding pod and sealed our internal hatch behind us. My adrenalin was at max. I clutched my E tightly. These bastards were going to fight to the death – they knew we'd kill them anyway, no matter what we said. There weren't any "responsible authorities" in these parts, and they knew it.

We blew away the yacht's entry hatch, then our own external hatch snapped open and Doggie and Smiley leaped in simultaneously and both fired, Doggie with auto xmax and Smiley with a tacstar on low power. A tacstar blast on low power at that range is kind of like the end of the world and that was our intent except we didn't want to penetrate the hull of the ship. In instants, we were all in the corridor, which was black with smoke and sparkling with tacstar debris. As Honey cleared the smoke for me, I saw a shredded corridor and a giant hole ripped out of midshsips.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Honey advised. "No life. Correction, one unit alive, unarmed, no armor, position noted, numerous dead, count unclear. Threat appears minimal, suggest investigate one suspect hostile, position noted." The hostile was located on the bridge and was not moving.

"All right, let's take our time," Doggie ordered. We moved slowly forward, along the remnants of the corridor, through the tangled, glowing debris. Blood was splattered everywhere, along with bleeding shreds of flesh and shattered bones.

"You blew them away, Smiley," Scout said.

"Negative, Delta," our squad tacmod, Dolly, responded. "We had no hits." Delta Dolly had the same capabilities as our individual tacmods but she dealt with us all as a squad.

"Well, what killed them?" Doggie asked. "The hatch detonation?"

"Negative, Delta. Cause of death is unknown. Insufficient information."

This brought a little silence on the net.

"All right, guys. I want 100 percent alert," Doggie said. "Let's check out that live hostile."

We moved forward cautiously, past the blast radius of the tacstar, along a main corridor with metal deck, walls and overhead that was strangely rippled and black and shredded from some unknown disaster. And there was more – lots and lots of bloody little chunks of flesh, bits of shattered bones, bloody scalp flesh with hair, shredded clothing torn to bits, toasted fragments of internal organs. It was everywhere, all over the deck, embedded in the walls and ground into the ceiling.

"What the hell is this?" There – a bloody hand, fingers snapped off, a blackened shattered skull like a lunatic bowl, grey brain matter splattered around. Bone fragments. Awful bloody unidentifiable chunks of corpses. Body parts, everywhere. Fragments of shredded, burnt armor.

"This is kind of grim," Arie said.

We came to an intersecting corridor. It was the same way – the corridor had undergone some terrible blast and a whole lot of people had been violently torn to pieces. The walls were soaked in blood. Shredded viscera and guts and unidentifiable internal organs and excreta were splattered everywhere, cooked black. I saw part of the stock of an SG battle rifle, ripped up like paper. I was happy I was inside my A-suit; the stink must have been intolerable. What could have done this? The blackened corridors told of an awful weapon that cut like a tacstsar and burnt like plasma.

We found the survivor near the bridge, curled up like a corpse, hidden behind a couple of large scorched but intact metal cases, wedged underneath a narrow ledge that supported startrack instrumentation. His coveralls were burnt black. The bridge was not too badly damaged but it, too, was slick with blood and the dismembered remains of several bodies.

Bees examined the survivor after we carefully pulled him out from under the ledge. An Outworlder male, unconscious, face scorched red, breathing shallowly.

"He's alive – just barely." Bees said. "We need to get him to triage on the Wasp – now."

Δ

The Professor was monitoring our survivor in the
Wasp
's hospital unit when he finally regained consciousness a few days later and was cleared for interrogation. He lay in bed, his scorched face gleaming with healing gel. The
Wasp
's forensic staff had found out a great deal about events on the
Linda Lee
– but there was a lot more to be learned and we were hopeful that the one survivor could help us.

"So – you're feeling better?" the Prof began. We were seated by the pirate's bed, and I was at the Prof's side as usual.

"I'm alive," he said, hoarsely, "and I can hardly believe it." He was a good-looking guy, other than the red face. He had a scraggly mustache and traces of a beard. His originally long dark hair had been scorched and crisped. He wore golden button earrings. I suppose females might have thought him handsome, but his profession was not admirable.

"You can call me Professor. I have a lot to ask you and it's very important that you answer truthfully and not leave anything out. What is your name?"

"Name? Oh, um, Charles Baxter."

"All right, Dwayne," I said. "Let me explain something. You are hooked up to a brainscan. The Professor's function is to ask you questions. Mine is to ensure you are telling the truth. As the Professor just said, it is very important that we determine the truth. And we want to know exactly what happened on the Linda Lee. We already know who you are, Dwayne Pfeiffer. We know you are a slaver and a member of Foster's Fortuneers. Since you starjacked the Linda Lee three years ago, you and your cowardly gang have been attacking defenseless outposts, kidnapping defenseless females and selling them as slaves. Now we can do this one of two ways. You can cooperate and tell us everything, and we will treat you nicely, or you can resist and lie, and I will start cutting off body parts and finish the job that your attackers did not finish on the Linda Lee. Tell me how you would like to proceed. It's entirely up to you."

"Oh, that's a hard one. Let's see…tell you what, let's do it the first way, where I tell the truth and you treat me nice."

"Fine with me. Professor, please proceed."

"Oh good," the Prof said. "Again, what is your name?"

"My name is Dwayne Pfeiffer."

"Good start! Would you like some more cold water?"

"Yes, please."

"Prophet?"

"Certainly." I got him some more water, and he started talking, prompted by the Prof's questions.

"What was your last port, and where were you bound when we boarded you?"

"Our last port was Foster's Hideaway on the planet Greyfriars. It's not on anybody's map, but I can zero it for you if you like. We built the place and it was nice and isolated. It was home. We loved it."

"Is there anyone there now?"

"Oh yes, about – well, around twenty Fortuneers, just to defend the place. Although nobody has bothered us there so far."

"And where is the rest of your gang?"

"They were all on the Linda Lee – all forty-eight of us. All dead, I guess. You know that one better than I."

"Did you have any cargo on board – slaves, that is?"

"Yes, we had done a raid on Williston and it was very successful. The fools had no security at all. We picked up thirty-two females from the midschool. We did this raid in daylight, to catch the kids in school. You can't imagine what a fortune that was going to net us!"

"I see. And what was your destination?"

"The body shops at Port Royal. We were happy! Life was good."

"Well, that ended quickly, didn’t it? What happened?"

"We had exited stardive and were poking along, taking our time, so as not to attract any attention, when we detected another ship. It was way out there but it maintained its distance from us as we cruised along. We thought about attacking it but we voted on it – we're a democracy you see – and decided against it. We decided we had a great cargo and didn't need any complications at that point. And we were worried if we went after it, we might not like what we found. So we increased speed. We were not in a panic mode and Port Royal was not far off, so we saw no immediate need to go into stardrive – but we kept a careful watch on that ship. "

He put his water glass down on the tray. "That's when our troubles began. The mystery ship suddenly increased speed. We stared wide-eyed at the screen – we couldn't believe it. It shot past us at impossible speeds and slowed down far ahead of our track – as if to wait for us. That scared the crap out of us. Our science freak said it was physically impossible. No ship can move that fast, he said. But it had done it. By that time, it was within range of our image scanners. We snapped off a few shots and looked at the results. We had never seen a ship like that before. It was shaped like a saucer, with no projections or visible seams. No lights, no ID pulse, no commo. Just dull metal with a kind of a muted, colorful sheen.

"All right, time to go, Foster says, and we prep for stardrive. But our ship shakes and bucks and we cannot go stardrive. Stardrive systems inoperable, the ship tells us. By then, we were in panic mode. The enemy must have somehow blocked our stardrive. Prep to repel boarders, Foster says. Man! We only had four old DefCorps A-suits, because we normally don't take on armored targets, so Foster and three other lucky souls suit up and gather around the main hatch and the rest of us take positions to cover the escape hatch, the cargo hatch and all corridors should anybody get past our A-suits."

"I see," the Prof said. "So you were all set to welcome them. With all hatches sealed and locked."

"Believe it!"

"And what happened?"

"I was on the bridge with three others. We were armed to the teeth but no armor except A-vests. We waited – and waited. We were watching the ship and reporting on its movements. The ship was nearby – about 500 K away – we were waiting for them to approach us to board us, but it didn't happen. Then suddenly,
BOOM!
It was like the crack of doom. The corridors erupted in flame – I think it was plasma – and body parts and debris shot through the air everywhere. Then more of those awful cracks, just like a volcano blowing its top, five, six, I don't know how many, and blood and brains spraying us all on the bridge. We didn't get hit directly at first but I just lost it. I dropped my SG and dove over those two metal cargo cases and huddled under the shelf where I guess you found me. Then they hit the bridge and blasted the other three to mush and I thought I was dead as the flames licked around me but then it died down and I lay there, terrified and gasping for breath."