The Terran Privateer (41 page)

“My god, ma’am, you look like hell,” he told her.

“I appreciate the honesty, Jake, though I thought you had a better idea of how to butter a lady up,” she said with a gentle grin. “Have a seat.” She gestured to a chair across her desk. After her abortive attempt to grab the communicator, she didn’t try to stand.

He sat, looking at her expectantly, then sighed.

“I guess you want to know how a middle-manager sensor specialist in Nova Industries ended up a slave on an alien pirate ship?” he asked.

“Among other things,” she confirmed. “How are you settling in aboard
Tornado
? I’m hoping someone has filled you in on our story?”

“Yeah.” Harmon shook his head. “Hard to absorb it all, but your people have been good at filling us in. It’s quite a story, ma’am. Bit of a leap from flying test ships for Casimir, huh?”

“The way we keep upgrading her, it doesn’t feel all that different some days,” Annette told him. “Though it appears Casimir was even better at keeping secrets than I thought—I didn’t even know the extra scout ships
existed
.”

“You knew Casimir,” Harmon said quietly. “He could sell water to a fish. Selling a bunch of us already tied up in the BugWorks projects on signing up for a secret survey mission? That was
easy
.” He laughed.

“I don’t even know where they were built,” he admitted. “But after drinking the boss’s Kool-Aid, I ended up as science officer and second-in-command of the survey ship
Hidden Eyes of Terra
.

“We were doing sweeps of three systems at a time and then going home. Three of those sweeps went by with no problems at all, so we were doing a shorter, two-system sweep to go out even farther. Heading out along the galactic arm, farther away from where we already knew
somebody
was.”

He shivered. “First system, empty. Some new EM pickups, but that was it. The
second
system, though…it looked empty at first brush, but part of our job was to survey the systems themselves as well.

“So, we checked them out. Bunch of dead rocks, one planet
very
early in the stage of developing single-cell life…and then we got too close to the gas giant. I don’t know what we did—they must have
thought
we’d seen something, but we didn’t see anything until the ships showed up.

“Two big bastards, size of the XC units, just appeared out of nowhere. Interface drive ships—I’d seen the early work-ups on the engines, so I knew what it was when the things just zipped up to us at half the speed of light and stopped on a dime.”

He shrugged.

“We had two rifles aboard,” he pointed out. “That was the extent of our weaponry, so we surrendered. Tentacled bastards boarded the ship and started slapping chains and collars on everyone.” He touched his neck where the collar had been until the day before.

“They demonstrated what they did and then told us we were all property. We’d do as we were told or die. Captain Astley died,” he said grimly. “Charged one of them and took a bolt of blue fire to the head. They split us up after that, but four of us ended up on
Subjugator
.

“We weren’t even the first humans aboard. The others were crew from out-system mining ships, retrained on alien tech and forced to work or die.” He shivered. “God, Captain, you have no idea how happy I was to see you walk off that shuttle. I’d given up seeing another human face not wearing a collar.”

Annette tapped the flimsy on her desk, flipping the map she’d been studying earlier onto the screen.

“You were science officer,” she said quietly. “You were helping navigate. My data from Casimir says you were at these two systems.” They flashed yellow on the screen. “Both have
nothing
in A!Tol records; both have hyperspace trails, according to the scans from Dark Eye and
Oaths
.

“Were you transported from there before you ended up on
Subjugator
?” she asked him. “It’s important, Jake.”

The gaunt man stepped over to the wallscreen and tapped one of the two stars. “G-KXT-Three-Five-Seven,” he identified it. “We were picked up here—and no, Captain Bond, we weren’t transported elsewhere and sold. I was working on
Subjugator
’s bridge. We were above the same damn gas giant—and we went back there, a lot.”

“That sounds about right, then,” Annette said aloud. “Ready to go back one last time, Mister Harmon? There are still a lot of people locked up in that base.”

“Give me a wrench, give me a comp, give me a rifle—whatever you need, Captain, I’m in. Those bastards owe me a year of my life, and I intend to take it back with interest.”

#

Annette was reviewing loading plans—a surprisingly boring ending to an immense pirate raid, though some of the items they were stealing were definitely eye-openers—at her desk when her communicator chimed.

“Ma’am, it’s Chan,” her communications officer announced. “The A!Tol base commander has asked to speak to you.”

“Any idea why?” Annette asked. “I thought James’s people had interrogated her already.”

“We got everything she was willing to give us, we thought,” Chan confirmed. “But she has asked to speak to you.”

Annette was intrigued. The more she learned about the A!Tol, the more they intrigued her. If Earth’s first encounter with them hadn’t been an Imperial fleet demanding humanity’s surrender, she suspected they would have worked well with the stiff, prickly and incurably honest creatures.

Ki!Tana’s ability to get along with
Tornado
’s entire crew was a case in point, though the big alien female was always quick to point she was very atypical for her race.

“Have Wellesley’s people get her a communicator,” she ordered. “I may as well see what the Brigade Commander has to say.”

“The Major thought you’d say that,” Chan replied. “He’s moved Kashel into an office and set up a communicator.”

Annette shook her head, then gripped her desk fiercely as a moment of pain spasmed from her still-healing facial bones and disorientation from her single eye.

She exhaled sharply, then returned her attention to the moment.

“Put her through,” Annette ordered. “Wallscreen in my office.”

The screen on her wall flickered and the loading plans faded away into an image of a plain office that could probably have existed in any military base in the galaxy. It was a plain gray metal box, but it had a desk, a computer and one of the cupped stools the A!Tol used as seats.

“Captain Bond, I appreciate you speaking to me,” Kashel greeted her. “I hope your wound does not pain you too much. It certainly looks severe.”

“It is unpleasant,” Annette admitted carefully. “I will recover. In time, we will even be able to replace my eye. Are your quarters satisfactory?” she asked the A!Tol in turn. “While it is necessary for me to imprison you and your personnel, I have no desire for you to be mistreated.”

“They are our own barracks for transient personnel,” the alien told her. “They are sufficient. And far better than the fiery annihilation that was your allies’ intention for us.”

“I did not know that was their intent,” Annette said quietly.

“And still you saved us in the end,” Kashel replied. “Despite my commander having betrayed your people and us. While she was betrayed in turn, she clearly knew her people were to be killed and agreed to this plan. Karaz Forel’s reach stretched to places he should not have been able to touch.”

“And now he is dead,” the Terran Captain said. She wasn’t sure where Kashel was going with this; the A!Tol’s skin was a mix of orange, purple and black, but anger, stress and fear were normal reactions to being a prisoner. “What is it you want, Brigade Commander? You asked to speak to me.”

“It is a matter of honor,” the base commander replied. “You understand, I hope, that the kind of mass kidnapping that was carried out on Earth is not our normal policy.”

“I accept, at least, that you believe that,” Annette told her.

“Now that we are aware that these people are on this station, we have a moral obligation to see them home,” Kashel told her. “Our single-use emergency hyperwave beacon was triggered when your armada arrived, though it will still be a five-cycle or more before a relief fleet arrives. That relief fleet, however, will have more than sufficient carrying capacity to take your people home.”

Annette considered. There were two important pieces to Kashel’s offer: one, the warning that there
was
a relief fleet coming, which wasn’t valueless in itself; and two, the offer to transport the kidnapped humans home. That would free up the ships her loading plan noted for the humans for other tasks.

“You realize,” she said noncommittally, “that your offer would allow us to load up all of your robot freighters with supplies and steal even
more
of the supplies you are sworn to protect.”

“I do,” Kashel answered steadily. “I am concerned, Captain, about the conditions you would have to transport those poor people in if you load them onto those freighters. If they work with us, we can make certain that everyone is cleaned up, checked over by doctors and well fed before we send them home.

“We owe them far more than that, but we can make sure they get home safely.”

Kashel clearly regarded allowing Annette to leave with three or four more freighters of expensive military supplies as part of the payment of that debt. The offer had a lot of value…
if
Annette was willing to trust the A!Tol military.

“And if you betray me?” she demanded. “My people could be headed right back into slavery.”

“Captain Bond, I was asked to trust the honor of your Major Wellesley when I surrendered my people,” Kashel replied. “I did, and you have not disappointed me. It would betray my own honor to not repay oaths in kind.

“But regardless of that, the betrayal of your world’s surrender is a black mark on the honor of my Empress.” Kashel’s skin muted to a dark green tone Annette had never seen on Ki!Tana—still marked with the orange of her anger and the purple of her stress, but now predominantly green. “Bringing your people home will only begin to erase that mark, but every step to erase it
must
be taken, Captain Bond.

“On the honor of my Empress, my Imperium, my uniform, and my own blood, I swear this to you: any of your people who remain here will be returned to Earth unharmed.”

There was, really, no higher oath Annette could demand. She could either trust the squid-like creature in the screen or not. The choice, like so many others since her exile, was hers alone.

“Very well, Brigade Commander,” she accepted. “I will place their lives in your manipulators. Fail me, and dishonor will
not
be your worst fear.”

Captain Andrew Lougheed thought of himself as a patient man, but finding himself once again in deep space, waiting on Captain Bond and
Tornado
without knowing the fate of the only warship the Terran privateers commanded, was straining his calm.

That was a large chunk of the reason he was studying the sensor plot of the deep space surrounding them from the desk in his quarters while Sarah Laurent watched him lazily from the bed, both of them naked.

“Even if everything went perfectly right, they had to load up the cargo and head out,” his second in command told him. “We were always going to have to wait.”

“It’s been over three days,” Andrew told her, dropping down onto the bed next to her. “
Tornado
should be here by now.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Assuming everything went perfectly—and while things have been going our way, would you say
anything
has gone perfectly for us?”

He snorted.

“Last time I checked, we’re still exiles without a home,” he pointed out. “So, no.”

“Bond will come,” she told him, running her hand up his back. “She hasn’t let us down yet.”

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Andrew nodded. Grinning, he began to reach for Laurent—and then his intercom chimed.

“Sir,” Strobel announced. “We have hyperspace portals forming—multiple portals. I’m reading at least forty, maybe more.”

Shaking his head to regain his focus, Andrew rose and hit the button to reply.

“Any IDs yet?” he asked. He’d been expecting
one
ship, not a fleet—if the entire pirate armada was here, something had gone
very
wrong…

“No, sir. They’re all in the right range that one of them
could
be
Tornado
, but…”

“Understood. I’ll be on the bridge in two minutes.”

He turned back to Sarah Laurent, to find that she’d risen and grabbed his uniform while he was checking in with the bridge. Their newfound relationship was against regs, but at this point…well, at this point, Andrew Lougheed wrote the regs for his ship.

They just couldn’t let it get in the way of their jobs, and he nodded his thanks as he started to dress.

#

The ships hadn’t stopped emerging from hyperspace by the time Andrew reached his bridge, a little less than two minutes later. Forty-three ships, each a two-million-ton, six-hundred-meter monster, had emerged from hyperspace at the rendezvous point.

Of Course We’re Coming Back
and
Oaths of Secrecy
were both drifting cold and silent in space. While the new ships were close enough they’d be able to pick up the two scout ships easily, there had been no active sensor sweeps.

“Are they doing
anything
?” Andrew asked after studying the ships for a long moment. All of the ships so far were identical, though close enough in size to
Tornado
that he could see why Strobel had thought the cruiser might be there.

“Not much,” Laurent told him. She’d only had a few seconds at her console herself—they hadn’t bothered to arrive separately,
Of Course
being far too small a ship for everyone not to already know—but it was apparently enough for a first-cut analysis.

“They’re emerging from their hyper portals, matching angles with each other and then stabilizing speed at one percent of light,” she continued. “It’s station-keeping…it’s
automated
station-keeping.”

“There were supposed to be robot freighters at Orsav,” Andrew said aloud. “But…this would be
all
of them. What
happened
?”

“Last portals are closing,” Laurent announced. “I have fifty-one contacts…wait…confirm. Contact fifty-one is
Tornado
. We’re being pinged.”

“Oh, thank gods,” Andrew sighed. “Put Bond on.”

The main viewscreen flickered and then settled onto the image of
Tornado
’s two-tiered bridge, centered on the figure of the cruiser’s Captain. Annette Bond’s uniform was perfect, her hair braided and pulled off to one side, everything in perfect place…so it took Andrew a moment to realize that her right eye was
gone
and a raw red line cut down that entire side of her face around a plain black eye patch.

“Captain Bond, what happened?” he demanded. A moment later, he heard Captain Sade ask the same question as a side window popped up on his screen, linking the other scout-ship captain into the conversation.

“Our friend Forel turned out to have his own objectives,” Bond replied after a long moment. “A lot of his own objectives.

“We’ve prepared a briefing packet for both of you, but the long story short is that Forel was involved in a conspiracy to drag the A!Tol into an outright war with the Kanzi by destroying several Kanzi core systems. Since his plan involved a war with Terra in the middle of it and using about thirty
thousand
human slaves as his key into Kanzi space, we had a disagreement.

“The rest of the armada backed him and we blew them to dust bunnies,” she said grimly. “I left
Subjugator
with the A!Tol so
they
are fully aware of the conspiracy, but I am not prepared to accept any chance of that plan succeeding.

“I’ll need both of you aboard
Tornado
for a planning session in four hours,” Bond ordered. “I don’t expect there to be any ships left in this empty corner of space in twelve.”

#

Even with the briefing packet, they’d been in the meeting for over an hour before Andrew and Sade felt they’d really caught up with everything that had happened in Orsav after they’d left. Shaking his head at the mental image of
Tornado
taking on the entire pirate armada and
winning
, Andrew leaned back in his chair and studied the room.

All of
Tornado
’s
senior officers were present, along with Ki!Tana and Jake Harmon. He and Sade were the only ones who weren’t attached to the big cruiser and permanently under Bond’s sway, and Andrew carefully considered how to phrase his question.

He respected Captain Bond, but he’d also watched her destroy a career many would have given their left arm for in pursuit of justice. She hadn’t been
wrong
, but her determination to see things through could be excessive.

“Ma’am,” he said slowly, addressing Bond directly, “I have to ask. Is this really our fight? No offense to Ki!Tana, but the A!Tol
conquered our world
. They are not our friends. And the Kanzi?” he shivered. “Blue-furred scum of the highest order. I’ll shed no tears for their deaths.

“A war between them would weaken our conquerors and make liberating Earth easier. I’m no fan of atrocity, but there’s a difference between committing mass murder and not killing ourselves trying to stop it!”

“The problem with that theory, Captain Lougheed,” Bond replied, her remaining eye focusing on him, “is that Earth is on the front lines of the war Forel’s sponsors want to start. The coreward border of both empires is with powers strong enough that flanking through their territory is impossible.

“To flank the defenses and the fleets each has prepared along their border, they would come through Sol. To pick an example from our history, Sol is Belgium—and the Kanzi will invade through us.

“Even were we to somehow convince ourselves that it was moral to stand by and watch—what, fifty billion Kanzi and as many slaves of a dozen races?—die, our homeworld would be ground to dust in the war to follow. We could easily see Sol be among the first targets of the Kanzi’s starkillers.”

Her single eye somehow managed to hold his gaze, looking into his soul before Andrew finally blinked and bowed his head.

“We still don’t know what kind of defenses they have in place at this lab,” he pointed out. “We could hand the coordinates over to the A!Tol and let them handle it. They have squadrons of capital ships, armies, all of the things we don’t have.”

“There are two things we have that the A!Tol don’t,” Bond told him. “We know where the lab is. We could tell the A!Tol that, but it wouldn’t be easy for us and would cost time. And time is the other thing we have; we don’t know how long the attack will be delayed if Forel is overdue. Even with the delay here, we will arrive only a few days at most later than he would have. An A!Tol force would be
weeks
behind.”

She shook her head and Andrew nodded slowly.

“We are the only force in position to intervene, Andrew,” Bond told him, her voice soft but firm. “It is possible, yes, that their defenders will be more than we can handle. But we are talking one hundred billion or more lives within weeks.
Trillions
inside years. We’re talking about Earth herself being burned to a cinder as one more collateral casualty of a galactic war.

Bond’s eye flashed as she looked around the room, and Andrew knew he wasn’t the only one being measured.

“We were sent into exile to save Earth,” she reminded them all. “Ordered to abandon our world so that when the time came we could liberate her. Protect her.

“This isn’t the mission we were sent into exile for,” she allowed, “but we knew
nothing
about galactic society when we left Sol. We didn’t even know we sat on the border between two great powers, let alone that someone would try and turn their cold war hot.

“If we let this happen, there may be no blood on
our
hands, but we will always know we could have stopped it. Earth might survive. But are we prepared to gamble on that? Are we prepared to bet the lives of our entire species on those odds?

“I am not,” Bond said flatly. “And even if I was, there are fifteen thousand
humans
held captive in that base. We are going to free them. We are going to stop this goddamn war. We are going to make sure that our homeworld is
safe
.”

Andrew wasn’t leaning back in his chair anymore. He was leaning forward with everyone else. The one-eyed woman who led them knew
exactly
how to yank on her people’s strings.

“All right,” he told her. “I’m in.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where this ends, Captain Bond, but you’re right: we have to free those people.”

The room was silent for a long moment, tension slowly releasing. Andrew doubted he was the only one who hadn’t been sure, who’d questioned taking on what really should have been the A!Tol’s fight.

But Bond was right. It might be the Imperium’s fight, but their home was still in the line of fire.

Which made it their fight, too.

#

Annette waited out the silence after Lougheed’s statement, meeting each of her senior officers’ and junior Captains’ eyes, making sure they were all in. She saw some hesitation, some uncertainty, but no objections. They’d come this far together; it seemed they’d go the rest of the way.

“Our other concern is the robot freighters,” she reminded them all. “Ki!Tana—if we send them to Tortuga, is anyone going to raise a fuss over our claiming them all as our own?”

“Tortuga regards possession as ownership,” the A!Tol pointed out. “While we cannot send the ships unescorted, once they are delivered as ‘ours’, no one will question it. Anyone who does will do the math on what must have happened to Forel and the others and not make a fuss about it.”

“Do we need to wait until
Tornado
is available?” Kurzman asked. “With us going after Forel’s sponsors, it could be a while before we’re in a position to guard them.”

“The only ships that regularly visit Tortuga that would require
Tornado
to intimidate them died at Orsav,” Ki!Tana said calmly. “The remaining pirate ships are only barely a match for
Of Course We’re Coming Back
or
Oaths of Secrecy
. Even with this rich a prize, the handful of ships left at Tortuga would hesitate.”

“That’s the best we can pull off,” Annette concluded. She’d have preferred something more definite than “hesitate”, but she was also confident in the ability of either of her scout ships to blow the first pirate to come after them to hell. The
second
ship to attack them would have an easier time, but the pirates wouldn’t know that.

“We’ll need one of the scouts with us at G-KXT-Three-Five-Seven,” she said aloud, considering. “Captain Sade—you’ll take the freighters back to Tortuga. The computers will respond to you. If it looks risky, hold off on going in, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the ethereally tall woman replied. “Should we wait for you at Tortuga?”

“No,” Annette decided. “Ki!Tana—Ondu will honor the existing agreement and sell all of the freighters and their cargos?”