Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (2 page)

Act 1

Chapter 1

Rear Admiral Linneaus Von Berk stood on his flagship
Apache
and stared down at the blue, green, and white marble below. He wasn't much of an imposing man but was given command of Fourth Fleet by the Horathian emperor and so his very notice was life or death for those below.

Just when he thought his time was wasted, something came up to change that. He'd almost given up on the planet. Oh sure, bombing the cities was fun, but he only had so many KEW strikes in his inventory. Pushing rocks sometimes worked, but that was hit or miss too. Some blew up when ice of one form or another superheated during reentry and blew the rock apart.

He'd destroyed the so-called Federation Naval hospital, blasted it into a molten crater after his marines had raided it. He wasn't too happy about the casualties the grounders had inflicted. Fortunately for him the hospital had doctors and nurses, not marines, so they hadn't put up much opposition.

He shook his head. They hadn't left much for his people to grab though. A couple tons of medical supplies, most of it replaceable. A few prisoners, though two had committed suicide upon capture, so they had learned little from them. The others had been fresh recruits. They would soon see the error of their ways.

His four cruisers, the heavy cruisers,
Apache
and medium cruiser
Adventure Galley,
the light cruisers,
Calico Jack,
and
Jean Lafitte,
the escort carrier
Lingchi
and four tin cans had to cover the ten support ships under his command. Ten, though he'd started out with nine. He'd captured three ships, and his people had picked them over thoroughly. Two hadn't been worth keeping; they were too far gone, too slow to keep up. He'd been tempted to send them back with prize crews, but he didn't want to lose the personnel so he'd abandoned them … with a suitable booby trap for any unwary person who attempted to board to claim them. He'd also marked their locations in case the admiralty wished to salvage them at a later date.

He doubted it though.
Tarzed
had been a
Cygnus
class, very old and slow.
Gahira
had been an even more ancient
Moth
class. Both had practically fallen into his lap. Their crews and databases had given his intelligence people a better, more recent picture of the sector and their AO however.

And the crew had been a source of labor and entertainment for the crews, he mused.

By stripping both ships, he'd managed to make a dent in
Miratch's
litany of woes and deferred maintenance. Honestly, he didn't understand how any crew would go out into space with such haphazard slipshod repairs.

Miratch
was the real find, an old but still useable Lagroose bulk freighter. Old she might be, but she'd had the best hyperdrive of the lot. He'd put the slaves and prize crew to work on her systems while other crews had stripped the other ships of anything useable. He had disciplined a few of the marines for shooting up some of the passageways; it had been a stupid waste and a danger to themselves and others.

He shook his head. The existing cargo on the ships had been used by his crew to great relief. They had run out of fresh fruit and other foodstuffs in the enlisted mess decks long ago.
Miratch's
cornucopia tree was highly prized by everyone in his fleet task force. He thought of the apple he'd had after breakfast then turned his attention to the plot.

His hands clenched and unclenched behind him. He had to be patient he reminded himself again. Such things took time. His people were checking the coastlines, but this tip might pay off.

The news his intelligence people had passed on was troubling. He'd ordered further interrogations, but they hadn't turned up much for the effort. What the crew knew was second or third hand, but it didn't bode well for him or his fleet's mission.

According to the reports, Admiral Irons had passed through the region on a solo mission. He wasn't concerned as to why. It didn't make sense, but it had been confirmed. He was more concerned with the other reports of Federation warships. Warships stooging through the area. News that they had a shipyard online and were building
more
warships.

His orders were to avoid contact if possible. He had every intention of following those orders, at least the spirit if not the letter of the orders. But if his people could bag a singleton, he planned on doing it. Every ship they picked off helped to blood his crew and might give them more information while also hurting their enemies.

Besides, it kept his people on their toes to know that there really were forces out there that were hell bent on stopping them.

“Still checking the coast lines, sir. Is the intelligence accurate?” the tactical officer asked.

“For the mayor's sake, it'd
better
be.”

“Not that it matters. We'll bomb them eventually, right, sir?” the tactical officer asked hopefully.

“I'll consider it,” the admiral grunted.

“We've got something, sir. The last pass … patching you through now, sir,” the shuttle's flight engineer said, sending a fresh signal to the flagship. The admiral frowned as the plot changed to a coastline. It narrowed down to one stretch of beach, then in further until he could see distinct buildings. He grimaced though. The rest was … no, he could see a few dots.

“Overlaying thermal imaging now. The shuttle's sensors aren't as good as we'd hoped, sir,” the TACO said. The image changed as dots of various shades of red and yellow appeared on the plot. He frowned, then nodded as he saw a few out to sea. Some were coming in, and he was pretty sure they weren't on a dingy or other small craft.

They had found what they had been after, a surviving water population. One ripe for the picking if they played their cards right.

The admiral touched the icon on the screen and grinned. His patience had been rewarded. “Jackpot.”

“I was going to say bingo or honey hole myself, sir,” Captain Eliza Bordou said, coming over to look at the image while standing beside him. The admiral glanced at the captain and then back to the image on the screen. She was a good captain, a good leader, which was why he tolerated her as his flagship captain.
Apache
needed the best, and he'd gotten it in her he mused. She wasn't pretty though, something that occasionally bothered him. She put great pains into making herself look severe with the bun and cold expression of disdain. Sometimes he wondered if it would be worth the trouble to take her in private and wipe the sneer off her face.

“I know the feeling. We've been all over the sector, and other forces have been combing adjoining sectors only to find them right here, right under our nose.” He now regretted sending a quarter of his command to Aquarius. They might get something; then again, they might not. How they were supposed to pull the aliens out of the water was still in doubt, even from him.

“At least we found them, sir. Quite a feather in our cap I suppose,” the captain said.

Rear Admiral Linnaeus Von Berk eyed her before turning away. She was a bit of a suck-up, but he had to grant her, her elation. It would indeed mean good things for their potential future careers. “Yes. Now we have to round them up and get them up here, then to Horath. No easy task.”

“I'm open to ideas, sir. If we just rush the beach, they'll swim for deep water, and we'll lose them,” Lieutenant Needlemier, the tactical officer advised. “We had the idea of hitting them from the sun or coming in over the water to drive them further up the beach, but there is considerable doubt that it would work. It would most likely inflict losses in a strafing run.”

“Some might linger—the old, injured, and young,” the captain mused.

“The ones we don't need or want,” the XO replied with a grimace. The admiral nodded.

“Long term, the young, yes,” the admiral replied. He saw the XO's expression and shrugged it off. “Young can be sculpted and molded, conditioned to obey. The old can be useful for a while.”

“If you say so, sir,” the XO said dubiously.

“We could try gas, sir. We don't have a lot, but riot gas might make them stall diving in order to breath.”

“True. And the air breathers we can pick off on the surface. We have the nets, though I'm not sure how effective they'll be,” the admiral said.

“Is going after them at all wise, sir? We'll be wasting a lot of time and resources on what could be a net loss. And that doesn't include their survival chances on board, sir, or their compliance later.”

“It's in our mission brief. And we might get some of the adults in the bag if they wish to protect their young,” the admiral said. Catching them was actually one of his top three priorities.

“Why won't they take them with them, sir? When they swim out to sea?” the TACO asked, wrinkling his nose.

“The very young can't swim,” the captain replied, eying the tactical officer with a slight sneer for not doing his homework as thoroughly as he should have. “They lack the lung capacity to dive deep and don't have the fat reserves to endure the cold sea for long.”

“Oh.” The TACO caught his skipper's look and looked away in embarrassment.

“So, we can work that to our advantage I suppose. We can also enlist the natives to help out. If we provide the right
incentives
,” he smiled with a shark-like toothy grin, “then they will fall all over themselves to help. Especially if we promise to leave them alone.”

“Yes, sir, I suppose they will.”

---<>))))

Lingchi
was an
Arboth
frame variant built to be an escort carrier. She wasn't much unfortunately; she had sacrificed most of her armament for two boat bays, one per flank. Each boat bay supported one squadron of fighters and a small number of support craft.

Of the two squadrons of fighters on board, all but one were F-32
Raptors
.
Raptors
were small and tight, easily able to fit in the tight confines of the starfish stylized warship's boat bays. They were crude craft compared to more modern fighters, but they were the first Horathian-built fighters deployed outside of the home star system. The squadrons had them to minimize logistical issues that had plagued other commands with a larger variety of craft.

The one lone fighter standing outside the group was labeled 00. It carried the nickname double-ought-buck to the maintenance crew, the CAG's Dread fighter to the pilots who exercised against her. She was an executor class fighter, more powerful than any of the others on board. Lieutenant Commander Maya Gisborn had taken ruthless advantage of bringing her own fighter with her when she'd transferred aboard to assume command of the tiny fighter wing. She also took ruthless advantage of everything her fighter had to offer over the Raptors. She frequently bested the entire wing during exercises.

Commander Gisborn was a cold woman, 169 centimeters tall. She was lithe, with a fighter pilot's trim body. She had ice blue eyes that matched her blue hair. Both contrasted with her pale skin. She tended to wear a monocle over her left eye when she was on duty. The monocle projected a HUD into her field of vision on that side.

She knew she was a damn good pilot, one of the best. She resented the position she'd been tricked into taking. She was better than
Lingchi
deserved. She thought of herself as wasting away on the ship surrounded by amateurs.

She kept her pilots to training, though she did tend to let them rotate to pilot a trash hauler if they needed a bit of relief. She didn't allow any of her people to linger on the ground, however; the last thing she wanted was to lose a carefully trained pilot to some idiotic stunt. It didn't make her a favorite among the pilots, but that was their problem.

She had thought when she'd first taken the assignment that it would be a step up to bigger and better things. Apparently not. She was now trapped on the ship, at least until she returned to Horath after completing her mission. The moment she did she planned on filing for a transfer. She already had the paperwork drawn up and in her files, ready to date and send off at a moment's notice.

She was still struggling with the concept of the carrier. It was small, tiny, cramped, and not well designed for a fighter group. Two squadrons were less than what a heavy cruiser could carry as well, so it was silly. Apparently someone in the old Federation had come up with the design on paper, and then they'd rushed it into production to protect vulnerable civilian shipping during the Xeno war.

They should have kept the
Arboths
going instead and ignored the civilian losses, she thought coldly as she checked the status board. She frowned when she noted more shuttle damage.

That was another thing. The cruisers had all traded in their fighters for more shuttles … and more life support for aliens to be on board. She wrinkled her nose at the very idea. She'd seen the big water tanks and pumps and such the work crews had brought in when she'd shuttled over to the flagship. Stupid. But, it was the brass's orders, so they had to be obeyed.

She was the one who had to live with it.