Hegemony (46 page)

"Muir," she vocalized, "status?"

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence and then, "all systems nominal, Captain," came Muir's reply. His vocalization sounded calm enough, and Freya hoped that he would be alright. Having an avatar crippled, as his had been, was surprisingly hard on the psyche of a daemon. For that matter, she hoped she would be alright as well.

"How are you doing, Muir?" she vocalized.

"All right, Captain. It was pretty bad back there, I will admit. But on the other hand, if I had been human, I'd be dead right now... as would you. So I think there's not too much room to complain... We'll be all right, Captain...

"Reactor singularity is fully stable, plasma drive systems are fully operational and standing by. We are ready to undock at your command, Captain," Muir went on, his vocalized tone now fully professional.

"Very well," Freya said. "Execute emergency undocking and stand by for main drive orbital burn." She could "hear" the confirmations from the rest of her crew, many of them sent with personal words of welcome or relief at her return. In her own mind's eye, Freya felt the emotional equivalent of a smile.

"Emergency undocking complete." Not words, really, just pure data. The ship signaled full readiness now, and Freya initiated the docking thrusters, pushing the
Ice Knife
away from the System Defense Fleet station.

The Communications Officer sent a pulse of vocalized data. "Captain, Station Control is asking what we're doing."

"Inform them that we are engaged in a maximum priority Central Throne Fleet operation. Acknowledge all further communications but do not reply," ordered Freya.

Ice Knife
was drifting away from the station now, and Freya fired bow thrusters to swing the arrowhead bow around and bring the main drive into line for the orbital burn. All systems showed ready.

"Main drive orbital burn in forty seconds," Freya sent, and felt as the ship responded, locking down for maneuver.

Her mind flashed again to the interceptor pilot, Neel... Alekzandra Neel, who preferred to be called "Zandy." There was nothing Freya could do about it now. With any luck, maybe the woman had gotten away. Freya could hope. Freya and Muir had risked a lot to rescue Neel, but now there was nothing more she could do... no more time.

"Main drive orbital burn initiated," sent Freya. The
Ice Knife
's plasma drive lit, operating at low power here in planetary orbit. Even so, the swift-ship was suddenly under three quarters of a standard gee of acceleration, and the acceleration grew as the ship made distance from the planet, climbing to a full gee, then 1.5, then 2 gees.

Sensors showed another ship burning for deep space, and Freya focused her attention. Sensors was designating the contact as Delta-One. Pursuit from the System Defense Fleet? Freya wondered, and queried for more data.

No, it was a civilian ship, but a powerful one, accelerating fast, keeping its drive energy just barely under the allowed limit for orbital maneuvers.

Communications signals were beginning to arrive with increasing urgency. Her maneuver was unscheduled and not routine. And sooner or later, someone might connect the firefight at the atrium mall, and the abandoned, damaged avatars, with her ship's departure. Then things would get interesting.

Freya turned her attention to her Communications officer.

"Communications, I want you to generate a new master code barrier for all ship's systems, ASAP," Freya said, then added in explanation, "the locals had
Ice Knife
docked at their station for a long time. They might have gotten the old codes, and it's only a matter of time before someone tries a little info-warfare and sends out an attack code to compromise our computer systems."

"Understood, Captain. Top priority," replied Communications. Communications Officer Aiven Macal was the
Ice Knife's
info-warfare specialist, and in normal circumstances, Freya would have expected
him
to advise
her
. But nothing about this current situation was normal; Macal was simply not used to thinking of Hegemonic System Defense Forces as a potential enemy.

Ice Knife
was climbing away from Yuro IV rapidly, getting close to the point where she would be able to use full acceleration without violating the ironclad rules for orbital maneuvers. Any ship that broke those rules was subject to immediate attack; a plasma drive could do devastating damage to a planetary surface or orbital installations with a full power burn.

Ice Knife
crossed
out of the threshold of official "orbital space" and Freya signaled high acceleration, again feeling as the ship configured itself for high gee forces. A second passed and Freya pushed
Ice Knife
's drive to full non-emergency power. Nuclear fire lit up the vacuum as the swift-ship's acceleration soared to seven gees.

A quick look at sensors data showed that the civilian ship, contact Delta-One, was past the orbital threshold as well, and boosting at five gees; astoundingly fast for a non-warship.

"Contact Delta-1 is changing vector, Captain" came a vocalization from Sensors.

"I see it," Freya said. Indeed, the surprisingly fast ship was burning to follow Freya's vector, burning to generate a vector parallel to the swift-ship, though rapidly falling behind.

Communications chimed in abruptly. "Delta-One is signaling with a tight-beam comm laser. Shall I accept the communication?"

"What do they say?"

"They're sending a Hegemonic Fleet identity code: Deputy Wave Leader / Interceptor Pilot Alekzandra Neel; Sigma-99-Alpha-29-Theta-22,
Conquering Sun
."

---

"Captain Killick, what are your intentions?" Freya vocalized. A tight-beam comm laser flashed her words across the thousands of kilometers that separated the two ships. It was a relief to know that Neel had escaped. But now there was this complication. The other faction that had been involved in the firefight had identified themselves, and now Freya had to deal with a void-runner captain who had the Hegemonic officer aboard his ship. And now he wanted to talk to Freya.

"Well," came the reply, "...my intentions. I intend to get out of this system. And I'd like your help, figuring that you
fucking owe
me."

Freya paused. This captain, Captain Nas Killick of the
Whisperknife
, he called himself, had, without doubt, saved their lives, intervening just when the hostile agents would have killed all three of them. And he'd lost at least one of his people doing it. On the other hand, he was almost certainly a void-runner, a member of the Brotherhoods. A pirate.

A pirate who had rescued a Hegemonic Fleet officer aboard his ship; a quick comm-link with Interceptor Pilot Neel confirmed that. These pirates had saved her, not kidnapped her. And they'd saved Freya and Muir too.

And that wasn't all of it. She wasn't sure if the data they had sent her was real, but if it was... If it was, then they had helped Hegemonic Fleet officers escape a trap set by a Coalition special operations team.

"What do you need?" Freya asked.

"Need?" came the reply. "I need you to run interference on the bastards that are going to be chasing me down any minute. I've got multiple demands to 'cut my acceleration and stand by to be intercepted.' I figure you can buy me some time."

Freya paused again, contemplating her options. Aiding a pirate? Aiding a pirate who had helped her... had saved her, and two of her officers. Damn, what a mess. This whole thing was a mess of unimaginable proportions.

---

Labeck Pyer --there was no need left for cover names now-- tried to control his breathing. The mission had gone as badly as he could have imagined. Worse... worse than he could have imagined. His team, all except himself and one other man, was dead. The targets, at least some of them, had escaped. The degree of failure would have been stunning, if Pyer let himself think about it. But that was a thought he couldn't afford.

There was no way he could continue to operate here. And no way he could think of to escape. It was all too likely that local law enforcement was tracking him even now. Just a matter of time till they found him. His local agent might be able to interfere with low priority operations of the local System Inspectorate, but not now, with the smoldering remains of heavily armed men and dead civilians still warm in a laser-shattered mess at the damned atrium-mall.

There was very little time left. Pyer didn't understand how those void-runner scum had tracked him down, and he didn't have the luxury of time left to speculate. Maybe the Hegemonic Central Throne Inspectorate was involved. Maybe the pirates had been co-opted. The possibilities were numerous, and all of them were disastrous.

His man looked pale, under a face set in an emotionless mask. The mission had failed, and getting safely off-world was going to be brutally hard at best. For now, though, there was still some time, at least a few minutes, before even the luckiest and most diligent pursuit could track them to this old factory. It had been scouted out at the very beginning of their mission here on Yuro IV, a last ditch, emergency location that all of them had deeply hoped would never have to be used. So much for hopes.

Carefully, Pyer checked his laser pistol, feeding a fresh charge-clip into the grip. The other commando did the same. Next Pyer took a small black polycarbonate case out of his belt pack, keying the authentication codes and opening it. The encryption device lay within, a black glossy cylinder of metal with a single interface port.

Pyer plugged a data cable into the port at the back of his neck, and then another cable into the single-use encryption device. He closed his eyes and activated his pers-comp. It took some minutes to compose the message and set up the encryption. That done, he prepared the message for transfer and then sent a high priority encrypted comm-code. There was a pause of several seconds, and the masked, distorted shape of his contact filled Pyer's optic-data pickups.

"The situation has become unstable," the contact said without preamble.

"Yes," agreed Pyer. "I'm sending you a data package, encrypted," Pyer said, and triggered the data transfer. "You must relay in via a deep space transmitter as soon as possible. Minutes count."

"Why me?" the contact said.

"You can get it done," Pyer said. "Do it. It's a quantum encrypt. Once you send it, your copy will decay into static. Send it and then do whatever you have to, to stay in cover. Escape if that's what's needed. Do not attempt to contact me again."

Pyer killed the link before the other man could say anything else. It was done. Pyer had done all he could. The signal was sent, or would be, soon. It was a last ditch, desperate gambit to save the operation, to clean up the mess. Briefly, bitterness at the whole thing threatened to well up in Pyer, but he forced it down. He was a professional. And there was no time.

Pyer unplugged from his pers-comp. The encryption device was beginning to dissolve, breaking down as the embedded nano-devices tore it apart. Pyer waited till it was nothing but dust.

"Case Omega," he said to the surviving commando. The man's eyes barely had time to flare with surprise as Pyer leveled his laser pistol and shot him.  There was a flash-crack of the laser pulse, and the commando's head exploded in a cloud of vaporized blood and brains. The body fell to the floor.

Pyer exhaled, hard. Then he lifted the almost headless body and dragged it a few steps to the edge of the catwalk they had stood on. Faded warning signs marked the railing. When the factory had been operational, there would have been warning data-streams and holographic alarms as well. A pit of gray sludge lay four meters below. Pyer lifted the body and threw it in. It hit with a muffled thump and began to sink.

The factory had once produced complex carbon-composite castings. The advanced control computers were long gone, stripped out when the factory had been decommissioned. But Pyer had made sure that the old nano-assembler feed stock was still there. In violation of any number of local laws, his team had primed it with the specific chemicals it needed to remain active. Covert operations often needed things disposed of. The commando's body sank deeper, taken apart at the molecular level by the gray sludge of nanites. Only a fraction of those were still fully functional, and without the control computer, they couldn't build anything. But they could still break apart raw material into molecular sludge. Untraceable molecular sludge.

Pyer picked up the dead commando's laser. He wasn't likely to need another weapon, but it was best to be prepared. He looked down into the pit. Nothing visible was left of the commando's body, sunken in the sludge, probably half dissolved already.

There was no way off-world, and his superiors would have expected him to suicide in this situation, but that, Pyer thought, would have been a waste. Getting off-world was impossible, but surviving on-world was not. The city was off limits, any place with a working computer network was off limits, but 99% of this planet was wilderness, and Pyer had secreted away survival supplies in case moving into the wilderness turned out to be required. There was only enough to supply the team for a half-dozen local days, but alone, he enough had supplies to wait, to disappear until the hunt for him cooled down. One man, alone --a man as well trained, as dedicated and motivated as Labeck Pyer-- might just make it.