The Terran Privateer (45 page)

James checked the telltales on his company one final time as the shuttles swarmed toward the crippled freighter. The six troops of his Special Space Service and alien soldiers were his entire first wave—while they’d easily pulled together plasma weapons and unpowered armor out of Orsav’s stocks for the three companies of mixed troops he had for backup, they didn’t have the power armor of his main strike force.

They were also inexperienced with their new weapons and hadn’t had time to exercise together as units. The freighter he was boarding probably had as many sapients aboard as the station he’d pulled together his battalion to attack. He’d
need
those troops, but putting them on the point of the spear would be murder.

Plus, he only had enough shuttles to deliver a hundred and fifty soldiers at a time at most. Two of the freighter’s eight cargo modules would be missed this time: the next wave, made up of his intact US Army and People’s Army platoons, would hit those.

“Landing in ten seconds,” McPhail announced. “Get off my ship, boys and girls! Faster you’re off, the faster you get reinforcements!”

“
Move
, people!” Annabel Sherman echoed.

James followed along as Charlie Troop and his headquarters section left the shuttle in an orderly swarm, four-man patrols sweeping out into the corridor McPhail had cut her way into.

The initial entry went quietly. The cargo pod was a kilometer long and a fifth of that around; unless the defenders had an entire
division
hidden, there was no way they could have had troops ready to intercept the landing.

“Which way?” Sherman asked. James might technically be a supernumerary on this operation, but she apparently wasn’t going to
ignore
him.

“The control center for the pod’s life support was at the front last time,” he noted. “That’s also where the scans show the starkiller being located. We need to secure those straightaway.”

“Roger,” she agreed. “Second Patrol—you’re on point. Move!”

#

Their trip forward was creepily silent. James knew they were moving through the outer sections of the pod, well away from the cargo compartments that likely contained any passengers or prisoners, but the complete lack of resistance or, well,
anyone
was disturbing.

The ship was clearly A!Tol military in build, smooth white lines and covered panels everywhere. Slick, elegant, efficient, and expensive. The calm white walls didn’t help with the creepiness factor.

It was almost a relief when the shooting started.

The distinctive hissing crack of plasma fire echoed down the corridors from the point team, and the entire troop and headquarters section went to ground against the walls. Sensor nets interfaced, reaching out to see just
what
was in front of them.

“Defensive drones,” Second Patrol’s Sergeant reported. “Haven’t seen anything like them before—look like wheeled trash cans with plasma guns.
Watch it!
”

A flurry of new plasma fire echoed, followed by a pair of explosions.

“They suck at taking cover,” the Sergeant noted, “but
damn,
do they take a lot of killing. Could use a heavy launcher.”

“Ral,” James ordered. He didn’t need to say anything more. The Yin, the tallest member of his company even in power armor, scooted along the wall as he unlimbered his weapon.

“Clear!” he barked, checking angles through the sensor network, then fired.

Four smooth black spheres emerged from his weapon in less than a second, following a carefully calculated trajectory that bounced them
past
the point patrol, around the wall, and into the midst of the defending drones.

A sequence of booms came echoing back around the corner—first the deep sounds of the four heavy plasma grenades, then the somewhat quieter sounds of secondary explosions as the drones’ ammunition and power cores blew up.

Any of the drones that survived the grenades
didn’t
survive Sherman’s Second Patrol swarming around the corner, plasma cannons firing into anything that moved.

The drones went down—and then two of the four green icons representing the patrol flashed blood-red on James’s command display.

“Son of a bitch,” the Sergeant snapped. “Falling back, there’s a defensive position behind the drones, they have power armor!”

Another icon flashed yellow, and then the two SSS troopers made it back around the corner—Sergeant Wei Lin
carrying
her sole surviving subordinate, power armor and all.

James pulled the visual and scan data from the Patrol’s short encounter. The area past the corner where the drones had stopped them opened out, a carefully designed defensive choke point ahead of the control center and its terrifyingly deadly companion.

There were another dozen of the ugly defensive drones, a pair of oddly crystalline devices he suspected would shoot down further grenades, and ten power-armored soldiers, all Rekiki.

“Suggestions, sir?” Sherman asked. She was looking at the same images he was.

“Mass grenades,” he replied. “I think those are anti-projectile systems, but we might be able to overwhelm them.”

“Let’s give it a shot,” she agreed. “All right, folks, grenades out on my mark! Three. Two. One… Mark!”

Ral and two people in Sherman’s troop had the heavy launchers and fired four-grenade bursts around the corner. James’s suit dropped a grenade into his hand and carefully precalculated the throw for him.

Over thirty grenades went flying around the corner in a coordinated salvo, bouncing along the floor and walls toward the defensive position—and the entire room lit up with lasers and grenades started detonating. The beams weren’t enough to penetrate armor of any kind, but armoring a grenade was counterproductive.

It wasn’t what James was expecting…but it would work.

“Go now!” he snapped.

He matched his actions to his words, charging forward with an abandon that would have seen several of his instructors bust him back to first year at the academy. All of his training insisted that leading from the front was a bad idea—but in this case, every suit, every plasma cannon was needed.

The kill zone was filled with smoke and debris. He couldn’t see
anything
, but he knew where the drones and defenders
had
been. He tracked his weapon across those points, white-hot plasma flashing out and triggering secondary explosions to let him know when he hit.

The rest of Charlie Troop and his headquarters section were right with him. The enemy missed their charge at first, but they returned fire as soon as the first drones went down. Icons flashed yellow and red on James’s display, but he focused on the outlines his computer drew in front of him of where the targets
should
be.

He heard one of the heavy launchers fire and a series of explosions lit up the room even through the smoke…and the firing stopped.

The smoke dispersed slowly, several electrical fires that
had
been armed drones adding to the air pollution. It was clear before the smoke dispersed that the mad charge had done its job—the defenders and their drones were dead.

Most of the wall behind them was gone, too. The outer hull was probably tough enough to withstand the firepower James’s people had just unleashed, but even a warship’s interior bulkheads would melt under that kind of exchange.

“Sensors say the starkiller is just ahead and two decks down,” James told Sherman. “Leave someone to guard the wounded and secure life support control with the rest of your troop. I’m going after the weapon.”

“Yes, sir,” Sherman replied shakily, looking around the space they’d just temporarily turned into hell. They’d lost five people in under twenty seconds.

James was sadly certain they weren’t going to be the only ones today.

#

While there were almost certainly stairs or a ramp or
some
way of getting down the two floors to the blinking icon marking the starkiller weapon, James was getting twitchy about sharing space with the most literal weapons of mass destruction in existence and not being in control of it.

And their power armor came with energy blades he’d yet to have his people try out in the field.

Those blades extended into meter-long, nearly invisible force fields that easily cut through the hull plating to create holes large enough for his people and their power armor. There was a series of resoundingly loud crashes as his headquarters section
dropped
twelve feet to the deck below—followed a moment later by the same noise again as they repeated the process.

The starkiller’s guard must have heard them coming, but they clearly had
not
been expecting this. Three power-armored A!Tol stood at the end of the corridor they’d emerged in, and they were frozen in shock for a long moment.

Too long of a moment. Plasma fire from the first half-dozen troopers down, including James, cut the three squids down before they reacted.

“Get that door open,” James snapped as his people closed with the hatch the aliens had been guarding. Two of his people ripped open the security pad, not even trying to guess the code before linking the system into their suits.

“Give us a minute,” his information specialist told him. “They’ve locked this down tight, but…I think we can get it.”

Seconds passed. James waited patiently but twitchily. The other side of that door contained the death of stars, the murder of billions. For all he knew, there was a member of the conspiracy in there about to punch a big red button and fire the weapon into G-KXT-357, killing them all.

“We’re in!”

The door slid open and James charged through, weapon sweeping the room for any occupant.

He found no one. The room had started life as a general storage space that just happened to be next to the hull. Now it was empty of anything except a four-meter-wide cylinder that stretched back from the hull of the ship to the rear of the room: the launcher for the weapon.

“Check the room,” he ordered. “Find the controls; make sure we’re alone.”

His power-armored troopers swept the room, the two information specialists stopping when they found a hologram-based control panel and started going over it.

“We’re clear,” the report came. “Nobody in here but us.”

He pinged Sherman.

“Annabel, are you in control of life support?” he demanded.

“We are,” she said calmly. “No further resistance, though we’ve got a pair of Tosumi crewmen duct-taped to a wall. Surveillance is linked in here too; looks like we’ve got at least patrols, ten strong each, sweeping the pod. They’re heading our way now, but we’ve got the same choke point they did. I’ll be ready for them.

“What about the weapon?”

“It’s a big bitch, twice as wide our missiles at least,” James told her. “We have it secured. I doubt we’ll be able to fire it, but these bastards aren’t going to either.”

“Sir,” his information specialist cut in. “The encryption on the weapon…well, it’s not that much stronger than the door.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

“We’re in,” his hacker replied. “We have control of the starkiller. Transmitting the access parameters to the other teams—we own these weapons now.”

A chill ran down James’s spine. Eight starkillers. Each small enough to be carried in, say, one of the scout ship’s external racks, instead of the normal size closer to a destroyer.

Eight weapons any power in the galaxy would apparently kill for—and they were now in the hands of Terra’s exiles.

Fuck.

“We have secured all eight cargo pods,” Wellesley reported an hour later on a conference channel with Annette and Captain Lougheed. “All eight starkillers are under our control, and we have access to the launch systems. My infotech guys tell me they can copy the software to any of our ships, but it doesn’t look like the missiles will fit in our tubes.”

“They’ll fit on
Tornado
’s shuttle deck,” Annette noted, studying the schematics the Special Space Service people had sent back. “It’s not the best launch system, but it’ll work. What about prisoners? And the slaves we were looking for?”

“Five of the pods had humans in them,” the Major confirmed. “Still sorting out exact numbers, but it looks like sixteen, maybe seventeen thousand people. Most…well, most of the ones we’ve identified so far are from a couple of Kuiper Belt outposts that went dark about five years back.

“We’ve got about a thousand prisoners and we took down about three hundred enemy troops along the way,” he continued. “Our prisoners are…techs and maintenance guys. We’re talking janitors and button-pushers, ma’am. The researchers, the leaders—the core of our conspiracy—were in the command module, and Captain Lougheed sent them to hell.”

Lougheed looked tired to Annette’s eye. Almost as tired as she felt.

“Can we slot
Of Course
into the command module spot they way we did before?” she asked.

“It looks like it,” Lougheed replied. “We’ll need a couple of hours to be sure, but even if we can’t, we should be able to tow her into hyperspace regardless. You have a plan, ma’am?”

She realized she did. Not much of one. Not one with its most important decision made, but she had a plan.

“Major, I want you to remain on the freighter with the rescuees,” she ordered Wellesley. “Work with Andrew; take these people home. But first, I need the starkillers transferred to
Tornado
.”

Both of her juniors swallowed hard at those orders.

“Once the starkillers are aboard
Tornado
, Captain Lougheed is in command,” she continued. “Andrew, I want you to return to Centauri and pick up Sade. From there, you are to proceed back to Sol with our rescuees and our prisoners.

“Get those people home,” she said simply. “And then once you’re there, you are to surrender to the Imperium.”

“Ma’am, I…”

She held up a hand to cut off Andrew.

“I’m sorry, Andrew, James,” she said quietly. “What happens next will be on me and me alone.”

“And what is that?” Wellesley asked.

“If we are to use these weapons to gain our freedom, we need to deliver that demand in person,” Annette told them. “Once you are on your way,
Tornado
will proceed to the Kimar fleet base. There…” She sighed.

“One way or another, people, our exile ends there.”

#

The starkillers looked so prosaic, so harmless, sitting in
Tornado
’s shuttle bay that night. The crew was giving the things a wide berth regardless, leaving Annette alone in the cavernous space with her eight deadly new toys.

They didn’t even really look like missiles to her. Interface drive weapons were long cylinders, a meter and a half wide by three to five meters long, depending on how advanced the missile was.

The starkillers were, technically, interface drive missiles, but they were perfect spheres just over three meters in diameter. Their drives were slower than a modern missile’s, too, though they still matched the point six cee missiles
Tornado
had been built to fire.

Their casings were the same calm white metal the A!Tol used for all of their ships. Nothing about the immense white marbles suggested their deadly, terrifying power.

Annette’s one warship now held more firepower than many entire
fleets
, and she wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with it.

Threatening the A!Tol with the weapons was pointless without a demonstration. She’d picked Kimar for two reasons: firstly, it was a military base with a hyperwave communicator. Tan!Shallegh was likely there, and he could transmit whatever threats or demands she delivered to the Empress directly.

Secondly, it was the military base closest to Earth, the fleet base from which the force that had conquered Earth had launched. It was a system she could
almost
convince herself was a legitimate target.

“I wondered if I would find you here,” Ki!Tana said behind her, her voice distinctive with the translator overlaid over the hisses and clicks that made up the A!Tol’s actual speech. “They are so normal for something so terrifying, are they not?”

“They’re not what I expected,” Annette allowed, gently rubbing at the scar above her eye. Her
socket
hurt, but she suspected Jelani would start making
very
unpleasant suggestions if she rubbed at that.

“You know, the A!Tol Imperium only has about fifty starkillers,” the old alien told her as she stood beside the Captain. “You now command more weapons of mass destruction than any of their regional fleets. Almost a fifth of the weapons the entire Imperium has at its disposal.”

“I am now a power in this galaxy in my own right, am I?”
Tornado
’s Captain whispered.

“Indeed. Once the galaxy knows what you command, your name will be fear. Your reputation, death.”

“Enough that I’d never need to fire one?” Annette asked.

“No.” Ki!Tana’s tentacles shivered, a long, convulsive gesture very different from the usual shrug. “No. To
know
you have the weapons, the galaxy would need to see one used. Then they would believe. The galaxy would know your name then.”

“And ‘Bloody Annie’ would be more appropriate than ever,” she said, looking at her reflection in one of the shiny weapons. The eyepatch certainly went with the name.

“Yes.”

Annette shook her head, eyeing the weapons.

“I hated your species, you know,” she said quietly. “I wish I still could. If we’d taken these weapons the day we boarded
Rekiki’s Fang
? Kimar would burn. The Imperium would kneel at my feet and beg my mercy.”

“I have told you that I am not representative of my race,” Ki!Tana replied.

“Not just you,” Annette replied. “There is a saying among my people that you can judge a man by the measure of his enemies. The A!Tol’s enemies? Slavers. Pirates. Murderers. The Kanzi—madmen like Forel.

“And the people who conquered my world?” She sighed. “The line between. The only people I’ve met since I left Sol that I respect are the
Laians
. And they…they are exiles lost without a cause.

“But the only people I’ve met are the A!Tol’s enemies,” she continued. “What does that tell me about the empire I opposed? About the Imperium I have been handed the sword to destroy?”

“I do not know, Captain Bond.”

“Bullshit,” Annette swore. “Dammit, Ki!Tana—I’m sitting here deciding whether to kill a
hundred million
of your people, and you don’t have an
opinion
? You don’t
know
what to say?”

The big A!Tol was very quiet for a long time.

“The Ki! are very careful in what we say and do,” she said finally. “We remember very little of our lives before the madness took us, Captain. We emerge from our mountain retreats little more than children, but our species looks to us as wise ancestors.

“So, we learn quickly never to command, never to
suggest
. We ask questions. We challenge. Where possible, we
do
. But we do not lead and we do not tell people
our
desires.”

“Even if I ask? What does your contract say about
that
?”

“The contract I agreed with Kikitheth truly only said that she commanded my life, my knowledge and my skills,” Ki!Tana admitted. “It was a short paragraph, nothing more. It transferred to you because I was curious, Captain Bond.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No.”

Annette almost punched one of the weapons, settling instead for gently smacking it with her hand.

“What would you do?” she demanded.

There was silence again for a long moment.

“Destroy the starkillers,” Ki!Tana admitted. “But I have a disadvantage you do not, Annette Bond.”

“And what is that?” Annette asked, realizing that this was the first time the alien had
ever
addressed her by her full name.

“I have seen a starkiller fired. I have watched a world burn in the aftermath of my command and known that
my
will and
my
voice had set into motion the death of billions,” the alien said flatly. “I do not even know who I
was
before the madness, but I remember
that,
and I could not find it in me to fire these things.”

Annette exhaled, letting air and energy and rage flow out of her.

“Thank you,” she said simply. “And if I were to fire one, to free my world with the death of another, what would you do?”

“I have never been the last exiled soldier of a fallen world,” Ki!Tana admitted. “I cannot judge your choices. I do not know if I could continue to serve a captain who had done so, but I will not judge you for the action.”

Annette stared at her eight deadly prizes.

“Ridotak said you would make me a king, an outlaw, or a corpse,” she said quietly. “I don’t see a way to be king of anywhere. I think I’m done with being an outlaw. That doesn’t leave me many choices, does it?”

“I think, Annette Bond, that you cannot see past the choice in front of you,” her alien friend replied. “No one can make it for you.

“Only you can decide what you are prepared to sacrifice.”

“It’s not sacrifice if I ask someone
else
to die for it.” Annette shook her head again. “I need to think,” she told Ki!Tana. “Alone.”

With a small gesture of her manipulators, the A!Tol withdrew, leaving Annette Bond alone with her deadly prize, her conscience, and her choice.