Hegemony (28 page)

"Stand by for acceleration," came the warning from the navigation officer.

"Launch warning!" The alarm from Tactical managed to surprise Filjon again. The data feed showed the details.

"God damn them!" exclaimed Filjon, half in disbelief. The pirate swift-ship had launched
six
more warheads, on ballistic courses towards another civilian ship. A moment's focus on the data feeds showed it to be the
Sunrise Unlimited
, an old FTL passenger-carrier
carrying almost two hundred passengers.

---

"Fuck," hissed Nas Killick. The faster response of the guard-ships was costing him more and more of the profit from this job. Only one of the guard-ships was a problem; that one must have skimmed the gas giant's atmosphere, compensating for atmospheric drag with carefully managed bursts of its drive, to get here this fast. The other guard-ship was just barely over the horizon, a bit too far away to have any chance of affecting what was going to happen here.

And no matter how much profit Nas lost, it was going to happen. It was more than a matter of pride; Nas and
Whisperknife
had to succeed, to keep their reputation. That was worth more than the whole of the payment, to Nas. The presence of the guard-ships was enough reason for most Brotherhood ships to break off; if
Whisperknife
succeeded in spite of this, the benefit to their reputation would be worth more than the payment.

It had been rather nice of the captain of that guard-ship to broadcast that warning. If the bastards hadn't warned him, his own plan might have failed there and then. It still could. It turned now on psychology. He'd fired a full salvo of warheads. They were far out of effective range, ballistic, but they were still a threat. The guard-ship could just let them come, trusting that the passenger-carrier could handle it; between the civilian ship's limited defensive armament and evasion, it might be able to stop the six warheads. Or might not. Or the guard-ship could maneuver to engage the warheads: It would be easy for the warship to shoot them all down; the warheads' flight time was more than long enough to ensure kills, so long as the guard-ship maneuvered to engage them. But that would keep it from vectoring to get its own warhead to intercept the first shot he had fired at the 'liner. Nas had no intention of letting the warheads actually hit; killing the passenger liner was of no use to him. There were void-runner crews who would have reveled in the atrocity of it, but even though the
Whisperknife
would not be deterred by collateral damage, neither would Nas cause collateral damage needlessly. But the guard-ship couldn't know that...

---

Demi-Captain Gabrayal Filjon of the Hegemony Yuro System Defense Fleet guard-ship
Interdiction
watched six enemy warheads closing in at the passenger-carrier and wondered what to do. In all his tens of thousands of hours in the System Defense Fleet, he had never personally been in anything approaching this sort of situation before. If he made a mistake, people
would
die. It was an unsettling feeling.

The fact that the pirate had fired the second salvo meant that the first shot, fired at the drifting freight-liner, was important to the pirates. They really wanted to destroy that ship. And there might well be hostages aboard her. But now they had endangered a second ship too. The
Sunrise Unlimited
was not drifting helpless; in fact, she was doing her best to get out of the way. But the six warheads had been fired with a wide and carefully plotted spread, and the passenger-carrier was slow. She could not use her main drive to evade; there were too many other ships too close. The radiation from the exhaust plume of her main drive would be like a blade of nuclear fire, causing catastrophic damage to at least three other ships "parked" close to the passenger-carrier. Those ships were moving as well, but all that took time, and the warheads were getting closer.

The passenger carrier had point defense lasers, protection from small space debris and some defense against pirates, but
not
a reliable defense against a salvo of anti-ship warheads.

"Tactical," he said, "run the point defense sim again based on the latest data. What are the odds the
Sunrise Unlimited
can intercept all the warheads that come within detonation range of her?"

"Sir, the sims come up at 62%, using the defense plan we sent them and counting limited evasive action using maneuver drives. If they use their main drive the odds go up to 88%, sir, according to the sims.

"But Captain," the tactical officer went on, "if we don't make the burn to give our own warhead a base vector in the next eight minutes, we will not be able to intercept the warhead heading for the freight-liner."

Time, thought Filjon. Time was not on his side. The inbound warheads were fifteen minutes from the passenger carrier. The first pirate warhead was seventeen minutes from the more distant freight-liner. And every minute he waited was more time for the pirate to do something else.

"Navigation, you're sure there's no way we can maneuver to engage both sets of warheads?" Filjon asked again.

"Certain, sir."

"Alright. I don't think we have a choice," said Filjon. "Those pirates really want the freight-liner destroyed, and that means we do
not
want that to happen. But there can't be more than a few hostages on the 'liner and there are almost two hundred innocent people on the passenger-carrier. Navigation, boost to bring us into range of the warheads aimed at the
Sunrise Unlimited
. Tactical, engage with lasers. I want those warheads vaporized. As soon as that's done, get us in range of that fucking pirate!"

"Muir, what the
hell
are
you doing here?" Demi-Captain Freya Tralk asked as she watched the terrain roll by beneath the skimmer's stub wing. The
acro-telestos'
estate was receding rapidly behind them, and as the skimmer climbed Freya could see the distant tops of the city's towers blinking red and white with navigation warning lights, and, rising from among them, the silver thread of the orbital elevator, bisecting the sky.

Muir had not answered her on the ground. He had simply pointed into the skimmer, and climbed into the pilot's seat. Freya had sat beside him, and he had lifted the skimmer into the air with practiced ease. The howl of one of the skimmer's lift fans, ill-tuned, had drowned out conversation at first, but as they gathered speed and the stub wings began to take over the job of generating lift, the lift fans no longer needed full power and speech became possible again.

"What are you doing here?" asked Freya again, putting a tone of command into her voice.

Muir said, "Piloting this skimmer for you, Captain."

"Don't evade the question. Why aren't you aboard
Ice Knife
?

"I left a Demi-Captain Persios Talso in command. He seemed a decent fellow, a
telestos
of good lineage, who joined the local system defense fleet from Yuro Government Service. Very patriotic, you know," said Muir, with a light tone. "He's got a warrant as an exchange officer to the Central Throne Fleet, and who knows, he
might
even be qualified. But
I
don't want to serve under him.

"Captain," Muir went on, "the orders we got... I just had to see what was going on. There were just too many 'red flags.' For one,
Ice Knife
has been in the refit docks for too long, and the excuses the refit crews were making were getting too strained."

"Oh,
really
?"

"Even accounting for the hard use we put her to, the ship shouldn't have taken more than twenty or thirty hours to refit, refuel and rearm. Instead they keep 'finding problems in the supply chain,' or running into things we need that 'they just aren't used to dealing with.' And then some System Defense Fleet functionary decided that the reactor needed to collapse the femto-singularity and restart, according to Yuro System Defense Fleet standard operating procedures, and never mind Central Throne Fleet procedures.

"There is just no way a system defense fleet base doesn't refit Fleet swift-ships coming in from patrol. Yuro ought to see something like two dozen patrols every tenkay, all of them wanting nothing too different from what
Ice Knife
needs. If it was incompetence, which was my thought at first, the Fleet would have taken issue with it before this. So that leaves something funny going on... in the 'no one is laughing' sort of way.

"And then there's the
Skyrunner.
She came in better than a hundred hours before us; Demi-Captain Meryl had to top off reaction mass too, and deal with some damage. I tried to find the refit logs for that, while you were on the station and
Ice Knife
was waiting for things that ought to have been ready at hand... and the records aren't there. Oh, there are records of the
Skyrunner
coming in, and leaving, but no records of the repairs, or even of refueling."

Muir's voice was suddenly very earnest, no lightness in it at all. "So something
is
going on here. And then I got a very brief report on a pirate raid, in
this
system. Seems that someone attacked and destroyed a freight-liner called the
Ulia's Flower
... the same 'liner that escaped from the Waypoint system and reported those raiders...

"After that, when we were told you had requested an exchange duty in the Yuro System Defense Fleet... well, that was the biggest red flag of all. At that point, I had to know what was happening with you.

"So I managed to get planet-side," Muir went on, a bit more lightly. "I took the
Ice Knife's
shuttle to a little orbital factory station, 'to requisition some parts,' and then rode a civilian shuttle down. From there I tracked down where you were going to be and thought you'd need a driver. "

"Which makes you AWOL, doesn't it, Muir?" asked Freya.

"That depends on whether you're asking about the letter or the spirit of regulation, Captain. There were a lot of routine requests for Demi-Captain Talso to approve, and one of them happens to be an indefinite leave for one of his officers. Of course that's not what it looked like when he approved it, but that's what it looks like now, if anyone checks."

"Holy shit, Muir! You've committed yourself pretty far here. If that comes up in an investigation... But OK, under the circumstances, I suppose I approve. And yes, I do know
something
is going on here," said Freya. "I just got pushed into accepting a detached exchange-service post in command of a system fleet guard-ship. And believe me, I did
not
request it. The
acro-telestos
told me
Ice Knife
had already been assigned a new captain."

"Alright then, Captain, since it seems there's
something
going on... I suppose it now falls to us to figure out just what in the hell
is
going on."

"Yup," said Freya and smiled. It was an undeniable boost to have Muir here with her.

"It could just be system politics," she said. "Or it could be the
acro-telestos
trying to bury us under a rug. I'm not sure what losing a Fleet assault-ship would do to his position, out here. Yuro wasn't showing any hints of rebellion last I checked, but maybe the local Throne Fleet representatives are nervous. Or, more likely, the
acro-telestos
himself. He's the only direct Central Throne representative who's actually assigned here on Yuro IV on a permanent basis, and if someone starts looking for political scapegoats, he has no one to hide behind."

"Hmm... That's not a bad analysis, Captain," said Muir, with a smile in his voice.

Freya winced silently. No doubt her multi-generation-
aristokratai-
lineage executive officer could read this political situation better than she could. Muir was only a
acro-hetairos
in social rank himself, but he was still young, just starting his social climb, and his lineage was one of the most noble in the Hegemony. When she had entered the Fleet Academy, going through the pressure cooker of Basic Selection, she had resented the
aristokratai
-born cadets who had only to pass the Examinations and progress straight to their advanced training. But in all the time she had had
Ice Knife,
Muir had proved to be a solid, skilled officer, someone she trusted to cover her back whatever the situation. And over the last few thousand hours, Muir had also become a friend.

The city was growing closer. The orbital elevator tower was visible from so far away that there seeing it gave no sense of distance, but now the cluster of kilometer-tall towers of the city's central district was clearly visible as well. This far out from the city, the skimmer was still outside the traffic control zone and Muir could fly as fast as he pleased. Still, there were the beginnings of some air traffic. Another aircar was following the same course towards the city, flying above and behind them. The ground below was forest of some sort, spiky green-blue "trees" with no leaves that Freya could make out, though the tangle of spiky branches gave the look of foliage from this high up. Freya did not know much about the ecology of Yuro IV. It was human-habitable, and had been colonized directly from old Earth during the Escape, not as a secondary colony from one of the initial colonies.