Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (62 page)

“I know you aren't happy about the losses, Erica. I'm not either, but we couldn't help it,” the admiral said, coming over to her side. “Did you lose anyone on that ship?”

She blinked. “Me, sir? No, not that I know of.”

“Good. Unless something major crops up, I'm not going to slack our speed so don't ask,” he said, cutting her off.

“Why, sir? They were building the blockade here. Surely …”

“We don't know that,” the admiral said, cutting her off again. He turned away, fists clenched behind his back. “The only ships that are critical are the warships and the tanker. The rest are expendable now. We have to get back or the mission is a bust. I will not tolerate that. Therefore, we
will
get back to friendly space.”

“I am aware that the enemy has probably thrown up every road block they can between us and home. This was just the first one. There will be others. But bet on this, we
will
get there—one way or another.”

She nodded dumbly. She could see the crew had slowed their actions to turn an ear to listen. Her lips quivered. She was fairly certain the admiral's words were already hitting the scuttlebutt grapevine. In less than a half hour, it'd be all over the remaining ships.

“Or die trying,” the admiral said roughly. That made her flinch.

She nodded once. Her eyes cut to the woman being pulled from the help. She was feebly moving so therefore alive, but she was pretty weak. She knew she couldn't have managed that feat! She shook her head as the admiral caught her line of sight and followed it to the helm station. “Yes, sir. I understand now why command wanted the subhumans, sir.”

“Whatever works I suppose,” the admiral said as a new, yet very young female was placed at the helm. She looked uncertainly around herself as they strapped her in and placed the sensor helmet on her. She seemed to fight it before someone murmured to her. The child glanced to the woman and then nodded and did what she could to settle herself. “See that they are handled with kid gloves. We need them healthy and doing their jobs.”

“Yes, sir. I think everyone knows that now, sir, but I'll make sure.” She made a note to have the remaining frozen fish reserved for them exclusively. She also made a mental note to talk with the life support techs about improving their tanks. Whatever it took to keep them healthy she thought.

“Good. Arrange some special treats for them as rewards. Less stick, more carrot with these … people,” he said, fighting to keep his lip from curling. “They are definitely our golden geese and should be coddled as such.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

---<>))))

“I'd love to see their faces right about now,” a tech murmured to another. The XO cleared his throat but didn't make it loud enough to interrupt. Both techs were comm techs, not really necessary for the moment.

“I'd like to see their bulkheads,” the second tech replied.

“Bulkheads?”

“Yeah, I bet they are turning them blue right about now,” the tech said with a grin in her voice.

The XO coughed, stifling a laugh. He turned and saw the curious look from the skipper. She stopped looking at him when he shrugged off. He followed her gaze as she settled on the engineering tech near the rear of the room, and then to Mara their water dweller navigator. The strain the two seemed to be under made him pale a little. And the fact that it was all out of his hands offered no comfort whatsoever.

---<>))))

The moment the ships skipped, Captain Terrance realized his part was over before it had really begun. He used his tachyon transmitter to transmit a signal to the watching ships at the Agnosta jump point. After a moment a courier was dispatched to Agnosta with the news. “Well, that sucked,” the Chimera grumbled.

“Should we go after them?” First Lieutenant Tian Joey asked hopefully.

“How do you propose we do that?” the captain asked, turning in curiosity to his XO. Joey was a good sort but normally even he wasn't that dense. “They obviously skipped; something we can't do. We can go at our best speed, but if they are hauling ass this fast to get here, they'll undoubtedly haul ass the rest of the way.”

“They've got to stop to refuel sometime, sir. And they've got to be running their equipment and people hard.”

“Think we'll play tortoise to their hare and follow along?”

“Or beaters and let TF22 do the real hunting,” the XO suggested.

The captain frowned thoughtfully. He pulled up a spread sheet calculator and plugged the numbers in. He threw in the assumptions about how fast they'd gotten there, which gave him a rough idea on how fast they were going to continue the journey. Then he plugged the numbers into a transit to Kathy's World. He didn't like the results.

He shook his head. The XO saw the look and deflated a bit. “By my rough estimate, they are running in the upper octaves of Delta. I don't know how the hell they are doing it though, so don't ask me. We don't have the legs or speed to keep up,” he explained, shaking his head as he sent a copy of the file to the bridge crew. “By the time we get across this star system, they'll be halfway to Kathy's World. By the time we exit, they'll be on their way to Protodon.”

“Oh.”

“No, they are unfortunately someone else's problem now,” the captain said with a heartfelt sigh. “Damn.”

“Yes, sir.”

He glared at the icons on his screen. He could just imagine what the enemy commander was doing too. Sending him a fresh raspberry as he took off well ahead of him.

It was now a race between his courier and the escaping ships.

---<>))))

The small Kathy's World picket had been alerted to the enemy task force's movements but were certain they were going to be out of it. There were sufficient forces on the move to B452C that they weren't necessary even if the admiral was willing to uncover the star system, which he wasn't. “Darn the luck, they get all the fun. Someone's definitely going to get their spurs in B452c,” Captain Omni McCartney said, thoroughly disgusted. His
Apollo
class corvette
Tweedle Dee
was long overdue for refit and reassignment. Apparently the admiralty didn't see it that way however. The recent visit by the small repair ship and engineering team had dashed any hopes of him and his crew getting a new posting.

Picket duty was long and boring. They had the occasional brief spat of excitement when a convoy or single freighter passed through, but that was it. Now this, he thought.

“Quite possibly. And a fleet command to boot. Nice little gold sticker to go on one's record.”

“Yeah.”

A few minutes later they got a flash priority. Since neither the frigate
Rose
nor the corvette had a tachyon receiver, it had taken two precious hours to get the light speed transmission from the ansible station in orbit of the gas giant. When they did they blanched. “If this is right …”

“Hyper translation at the B452c jump point!” the sensor officer yelped. “It's a big one!”

“Damn it! They are hauling ass!” the captain swore, rushing to the CIC console. He stood behind the tech as she tried to make sense of the raw data coming in. “How the hell did they get here that fast?!?” the chief engineer demanded.

“Get to your stations,” the captain barked. He reached through his implants and ordered the ship to go to alert 2. A klaxon wailed in the distant compartments. “We're out of position. Navigation, plot a course. We need to get to that jump point ASAP.”

“Sir, the rest of the message …,” the comm rating said.

“What about it?” the captain asked. “Someone's obviously screwed up somewhere here,” he muttered.

“The enemy can skip,” the comm rating said.

“They can do
what
?” the captain demanded, rounding on the hapless rating. He just shrugged helplessly and then pointed to the screen in front of him. He flipped a finger to forward it to the skipper's inbox.

The captain saw the file come into his inbox and opened it. His eyes scanned past the header to the meat of the message. When he read it, he swore again.

“Delta. It's the only way that they got here racing the courier. No wonder! But how the hell are they skipping??” he demanded.

“Should we continue to go after them, sir?” the chief engineer asked, sounding dubious.

The captain frowned thoughtfully. He had his corvette and Rose, a frigate and corvette against three cruisers, four destroyers, a reported escort carrier, and a bunch of civilian ships. Charging them would be suicide. “No,” he said slowly. “Comm, warm up the ansible. Get a flash update through to Protodon first, then the rest of the network. Message begins,” he cleared his throat. “Kathy's World Picket Tweedle Dee Flash priority. Enemy forces sighted at B452c jump point faster than expected. Expect skip jump at any time. Expect fast, repeat fast jump to Protodon. Expect high octaves of Delta. Due to the disparity of forces, I cannot engage. Over.”

“Good copy, sir,” the comm tech reported after a moment.

“So send it. Copy it to Antigua as well.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“So, we're out of it,” the sensor tech said doubtfully.

The captain nodded, squeezing her shoulder from behind. “Looks that way, but at least we can hurry them along the way. Let's see if we can pick up some weapon pods and get them moving faster than they'd like. Maybe sling some missiles their way, Guns?”

The Veraxin nodded a human slowly.

“Set up the firing solution then. C fraction hit if we can swing it. Use decoys first. I think they'll stick around to do some engineering homework since we obviously can't hurt them.”

“Sir, do you think they'll come after us?”

“That … that's a good question,” the captain said thoughtfully, now unsure himself. “Either way, hopefully it'll light a fire under someone's ass to send us some spirit of space help!” he said sourly. He missed
Kittyhawk
badly now, he thought.

Now they just had to survive the unwelcome visit long enough to see it.

---<>))))

Admiral Von Berk weathered a storm from his ship captains as they lobbied to tempt him into running down the Federation picket. “It's only a corvette and a frigate!” Captain Corry said in disgust. “We can split up, pin them down against the planet or run them to ground and tear them apart, sir!”

“That we can see,” Admiral Von Berk stated. He surveyed the officers and then grunted. “I see a lot of you wish to fight. I admire and condone that spirit. But this isn't a democracy. There are eighteen ayes and one nay. The nays have it,” he said heavily.

“What do we do about them then, sir?” Captain Bordou asked, recognizing his intransigence.

“Ignore them. We've got more important things to worry about,” the admiral said. “We need to get on repairs and maintenance. Ride the engineering crews hard,” he said.

“We're got serious problems, sir,” Captain Wutzle said dubiously. The captain was the senior-most tender captain and had been apparently elected by the other support ship captains to voice their collective concerns.

“Bad?” the admiral asked. He was still digesting the reports as they came in.

“In a word, yes. Our ships can't take much more abuse, sir. I'm not sure we can handle another jump. And the jump to Protodon …”

“We're going to skip.”

Captain Wutzle's eyes went wide in shock and fright. “But, sir!” He licked his lips nervously. “We can't handle it. It's not just the hyperdrives; it's the shields and the helm people you sent over! They can't …”

“We're going to skip. Keep up or get left behind,” the admiral growled. He could see the support ship captains flinch. What they didn't know was that he'd set up a self-destruct program into their computers. If he didn't reset it after each jump, they had less than a week before it went off.

“Sir, I'm, I was just telling you, we've got cracks in the drive.”

“Handle it,” the admiral said with finality in his voice.

“Sir, back to the picket … we can avoid them. We can just sail past and use the warships to screen the other ships,” Captain Bordou suggested. “That will give our engineers time to get a handle on the repairs while letting our new helm teams time to rest and recuperate.”

The admiral frowned, pretending to think the proposal over. The truth was he'd already made his decision and wasn't ready to change it. Nor did he see the need to. Quite the opposite.

Erica might be counseling him in private not to get too enamored with skipping and too impatient to get home but it wasn't that. Not at all. Getting home with only a couple ships was going to be disastrous enough for his future career. That didn't concern him.

No, something far more ominous was playing on his mind. The fact that the enemy had a picket in the star system didn't bode well for Earl Gumel's forces in Protodon he thought. There was no telling what was in there.

“They can avoid us. If they are smart, they will. We need the time to dump waste heat and make some repairs. The support ships aren't handling the speed well. I'm afraid if we continue to push the pace we're going to lose one, sir,” Captain Bordou warned.

“If we do, then we can't help it. The mission comes first,” the admiral rumbled. She looked ready to object, but a sensor tech snapped his fingers and then waved frantically.