The Terran Privateer (15 page)

“Fire the warning shot,” Annette ordered.

A moment later, a single missile blazed across the void. The missiles they’d stolen from
Rekiki’s Fang
could hit easily the freighter at this point—but destroying the freighter was pointless.

The missile slammed into the freighter’s shield on a vector that would never have hit the ship, sending light flaring out across the energy screen.

There was no change to the freighter’s course.

“Will we intercept her before she can open a hyper portal?” Annette asked.

There was a limit to how close to a planet or star a portal could be opened, but at almost half the speed of light, those distances could be crossed with ease.

“Probably, unless we’re delayed,” Amandine told her. “And there’s the delay they’re hoping for.”

The four patrol boats that the scout ships had picked up earlier were now charging out from the planet. The angle was in their favor: unless
Tornado
changed course directly away from them, they
would
catch the cruiser.

Annette wondered if the quartet of tiny ships would actually be worth anything against a pirate. From what she’d seen of
Rekiki’s Fang
, the pirate ship could have taken all four boats—though it would have been more of a fight than it was going to be for
Tornado.

“Let’s see if we can head them off,” she said calmly. “Rolfson—target the closest and feed her a dozen missiles.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Twelve bright sparks flashed to light, closing the distance to the patrol boats in a blur. The small defending ships maneuvered and launched their own missiles in response.

The boats had shields, but they were designed to stand against pirates with half a dozen missile launchers instead of a true warship. The shields flared with light as the missiles struck home, then collapsed in a bright flash as they were overwhelmed—the ship they were supposed to protect vanishing similarly the next moment.

“We have twenty-four missiles inbound, and the other three boats are running for their lives,” Rolfson reported in satisfaction. It took an interface drive barely ten seconds to completely reverse velocity—and the patrol boats had done just that.

“Let’s not test the shields with those missiles,” Annette ordered. “We have missile defenses. Use them.”

Given the ubiquity of energy screens and high maneuverability of interface drive ships, the A!Tol apparently didn’t bother with active defenses against missiles. Annette suspected they were right and that the mass and energy required by
Tornado
’s suite of antimissile lasers had better uses.

Since she
had
them, however, she was going to use them.

A single missile made it past the suite, slamming into
Tornado
’s new shield and vanishing in a blast of fire.

“Shield status?”

“Overflow buffer at point six percent,” Kurzman reported from the CIC. “We can take a lot more hits like that before we need to worry.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Annette replied, allowing herself a small smile. “And our freighter friend?”

“She changed course while we were shooting at her, but we’ve adjusted to follow,” Amandine replied. “No material change to
our
intercept time, but she’s now entering Captain Sade’s intercept envelope.”

“Is she?”
Tornado
’s Captain murmured, studying the screen. “Well then, it seems
Oaths of Secrecy
will have the honor today.” She leaned back in her chair. “Inform Captain Sade to engage at her discretion—but I want the ship intact.”

The end of the chase was surprisingly sudden.
Tornado
was six million kilometers behind the freighter, closing the range at roughly nine thousand kilometers a second. They were nearing the point where
Tornado
would have to make a dangerous attempt to disable the A!Tol transport with missiles or pursue her into hyperspace.

Then
Oaths of Secrecy
brought up her interface drive. She was two million kilometers away from the fleeing transport—but
ahead
of her. Five seconds after the scout ship started her lunge, the big laser they’d mounted along her keel fired.

The freighter’s shield held for less than two seconds, and the laser washed over the ship—intentionally cutting power to only fry sensors and controls, not gut the ship.

“They’ve cut their interface drive and are transmitting their surrender,” Chan told the bridge.

“Inform Major Wellesley he has work to do,” Annette said as she let herself relax slightly. “Everyone else, keep a sharp eye out for that destroyer. After all this, I don’t want to be chased off at the last minute.”

James’s company was notably bigger now, with an entire troop’s worth of power-armored Rekiki providing a new heavy support section. They were only pure alien troop, though, as he’d expanded his four existing troops to six, slotting three power armored aliens and three human-carried plasma weapons into each sixteen-sapient troop.

His headquarters section was now seven people. He’d taken one of the plasma rifles for himself and incorporated the last two aliens—a squat, trilaterally symmetrical mobile fungus named Pophe, whose real name was apparently unpronounceable and whose species were called the Frole, and a tall blue-skinned biped named Ral.

With the deaths of many of the Rekiki aboard
Fang
, Ral’s species—the Yin—were the single largest group of aliens aboard
Tornado
. Despite being, on average, thirty centimeters taller than humans and having faces closer to a bird’s than a human’s, the blue-skinned aliens seemed to get along well with their new crew.

Ral himself had demonstrated an ability to go poop joke for poop joke with James’s headquarters section, which the Special Space Service Major took as a positive sign.

His headquarters section and the Rekiki troop—his new Golf Troop—were the second wave. The first was, once again, his Alpha Troop. By the time McPhail docked the shuttle with the transport and he made his way aboard, they’d already taken control of the landing bay.

The human SSS troopers were mostly dwarfed by their alien comrades in their power armor, but they were also clearly in charge. The pirates weren’t bad as inexperienced troops went, but the Special Space Service was Earth’s
best
.

Three A!Tol stood in the middle of the bay under the watchful eye of James’s people. He approached them directly, allowing the Rekiki to spread out behind him.

“I am Major James Wellesley,” he said flatly. “Your ship is now a prize of the UESF. You will bring your crew to this landing bay and await further instruction. Resistance will be met with lethal force. Do you understand me?”

The translator mounted in his armor repeated his words in a series of sibilants and clicks. All three A!Tol’s skin was a burnt orange hue he hadn’t seen on Ki!Tana yet—he was
guessing
anger or possibly embarrassment.

“You’re nothing but pirates,” the Captain replied, his beak snapping sharply as his beady eyes bore down on James, who ground his own anger under its heel.

“And my opinion of your species is worse,” he snapped back. “Do you understand my orders?”

The burnt orange color went even darker.

“Yes. We will comply.”

“Good.”

James turned his back on the aliens, trusting his troopers to keep them under control.

“Sweep the ship,” he ordered his Troop Captains as the remaining shuttles continued to disgorge his troopers. “Alpha Troop, Golf Troop, maintain security here and act as a reserve. Bravo Troop, get me an ID on the cargo. Everyone else, round up the crew and bring them here.

“We’re on the clock. Go!”

#

“Ma’am.” The voice of Bravo Troop’s commander dropped onto Annette’s private link. “You need to see this.

Tornado
’s Captain quickly checked the connection—the young woman commanding Wellesley’s Bravo Troop had linked the Major in as well as the XO, but it was only the four of them. Whatever she’d seen, she thought it needed to be kept very quiet.

“Show me,” she ordered, linking one of her command chair screens to the channel.

A moment later, the screen flickered into the view from Mumina Bousaid’s helmet. The Libyan soldier was looking over a vast open void, presumably one of the cargo holds aboard the freighter they’d captured. A power-armored Yin, even taller than Bousaid’s impressive height, was running a bright arc light along the hold, showing dozens of identical honeycomb shapes.

Each cell of the honeycomb held a cylindrical object, about a meter and a half across and ten meters long.

“My God,” Annette whispered. “Are those
missiles
?”

“Translator says the labels call them Mark One Hundred Five Momentum Drive Missiles for the Imperial Navy,” Bousaid said quietly. “This hold contains about two
thousand
of them—and this ship has eight holds.”

“Well done, Troop Captain,” Annette told her. “
Well
done.”

She leaned back in her command chair, studying the frozen image of the dozens of honeycombs full of supremely lethal weapons for a long moment. Finally, she gestured Ki!Tana over to her.

“You implied there was a state we could acquire Imperial missiles in where we’d be able to use them,” she reminded the alien. She pointed to the tiny screen. “Is ‘still in the packaging’ that state?”

Ki!Tana stared at the image for easily ten seconds, her skin color rippling through large chunks of the rainbow.

“Yes,” she finally said. “We should be able to load the software we do have onto those weapons. They will be less effective, but not by much. That is a lot of missiles, Captain. The Imperium will not let the theft of this many weapons go unnoticed.”

The alien shivered all of her tentacles in what Annette was starting to suspect was an A!Tol shrug, and her skin settled into an unfamiliar dark blue tone.

“May we speak in private, Captain?” Ki!Tana asked.

Annette glanced around the bridge. Everything was in order for the moment, and she could keep her headset with her and be alerted to anything.

“My office,” she agreed.

#

The day office attached to
Tornado
’s bridge was sparse, designed as a space for the Captain to work without leaving the bridge unattended, as opposed to the office in her quarters intended to be her main workspace.

It held a desk, a computer, and just
barely
enough space for the big tentacled alien to squeeze in across the desk from Annette.

“The Navy will pursue you,” the alien told her. “You have captured a military freighter and one full of munitions they clearly plan to use. They keep close control of those missiles.”

“Let them,” Annette replied. “I’ll outrun and outmaneuver anything I can’t fight.”

“Your ship is not that powerful, Captain,” Ki!Tana told her. “You are now easily a pirate heavy, though there are more powerful pirate ships, but you still are barely a match for an Imperial cruiser—a squadron of which could easily bring you to bay and crush you.”

“You were already operating as pirates when we met you,” she countered. “The game isn’t that impossible.”

“No,” the alien agreed. “But there are choices you must now make, Captain. That ship will be crewed by just over one hundred and fifty Navy personnel—most likely primarily A!Tol, if the Captain is. They prefer only semi-mixed crews.

“You do not have the cargo capacity or the time to transship those missiles,” Ki!Tana continued. “You must take the ship itself if you want its cargo. What happens to the crew?”

That stopped Annette’s thoughts in their track. She hadn’t even thought of the crew of the ship—her plan had been to take the most valuable parts of the cargo and flee, but Ki!Tana was right. She wanted
all
of those missiles.

“The ship has shuttles and lifepods, yes?” she asked, buying herself time to think.

“She was designed by my people,” the alien replied. “She has far more of them than she needs. You
could
eject the entire crew and still have life pods for your prize crew. They would then tell your enemies who you were. They would tell the Navy that a rogue human ship is out here causing havoc.”

“They saw us run,” Annette pointed out. “They know that.”

“And if the crew of this ship reports, they will know you now have alien crewmembers and translators,” Ki!Tana said. “Your threat level will increase. They will have more information with which to pursue you, and you will be in greater danger.”

“And you would suggest, what, killing them all?”
Tornado
’s Captain snapped. She should have considered that as being a necessity. Was it a line she would cross?

“I suggest nothing in this case,” the big alien replied, her voice annoyingly flat through the translator. The devices had improved their ability to relay emotion into English, but they were still imperfect at best.

“If you kill them all, you will be harder to trace,” she continued. “The Navy will know less about you and will have no basis on which to start hunting for you. But.”

“But?” Annette demanded.

“But they will hunt you harder. There are two types of pirates to the A!Tol: thieves and murderers. Thieves are punished when caught—but murderers are
sought
. Thieves will be hunted in the course of duty. Murderers will have special task forces devoted to them.

“But without witnesses, you are far harder to track,” Ki!Tana noted. “Many darker pirates have hunted for years and retired successfully. As a rogue warship, you may see a special task force regardless.”

“‘May’,” the Captain repeated. “In my world’s past, pirates had a tradition: when they intended to take no prisoners, they flew a black flag. It is, my alien friend, far easier to
stop
killing than to start, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” the A!Tol agreed. The blue hue of her skin was fading suddenly, easing into a lighter color.

“I think today we reward surrender with life,” Annette said quietly.

“You are the Captain,” Ki!Tana replied. “And the holder of my contract. The decision is always yours.”