Queen of the Pirates (15 page)

Bedrosian, the punk from
Ramsey
, was seated uncomfortably at a table. His fancy clothes had been replaced with a simple pair of pants and a tunic from the ship’s stores, dark gray in this case. No attempt had been made to get a good fit for the man. Perhaps an effort had been made to find the wrong size, judging on his appearance.

Lack of access to some manner of intoxicant had apparently been rough on him, evident in the shakiness in his hands and a general twitchiness to his eyes. She had no pity for him.

By the time she got back to
Lincolnshire
, they might decide to hang him for her. Until then, he was a sponge for her to squeeze. If he was especially useful, she might just drop him off at
Corynthe
and let him make his own way.

Jessica took the chair across from the punk. She studied him for several seconds. His hair was too long, and without something to slick it back, it tumbled down into his eyes. On some men, the look was sexy. Bedrosian wasn’t that man.

“Your friends at
Sarmarsh IV
have been annihilated,” she said to open the conversation.

She was rewarded by a flinch he quickly covered.

The moment dragged.

“How?” he said finally, disbelief barely registering above a whisper.

“All those guns?” she sneered at him, “not particularly useful when you destroy the moon they’re standing on.”

“You destroyed…”

“I warned you that this was serious business, Tanis Bedrosian,” she said, cutting him off sharply. “When I get to
Corynthe
, I plan on having a very serious conversation with the King of the Pirates about borders and manners.”

She could see the whites of his eyes for the first time. He remained silent. Awe, fear, or shock, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. She wanted him on his back foot.

“Just so you know,” she continued, “with them gone, the folks in
Ramsey
are going to clean house. All your friends just might be gone, unless they get out fast enough. I fully plan on turning you over to the authorities when we get back. That is, unless you give me a reason not to.”

She let the bait dangle.

His tongue appeared, just enough to wet suddenly dry lips. His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed past a suddenly tight throat.

She let him stew. Waiting was probably her strongest suit. She let her face fall into a simple smile. That seemed to stick an extra bevy of needles into his skin.

Several times, he opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, silent.

Finally, he spoke.

“They’ll kill me,” he whispered.

Jessica leaned close across the table.

“They don’t have you, Bedrosian,” she whispered back with a black widow’s intimacy. “I do. You should worry about me killing you. The King of the Pirates can’t get to you unless I let him.”

“Not him…” he said, but suddenly clammed up. Rather than speak, she watched him lean back in his chair as far as he could get from her without actually moving it.

She waited, but he lapsed into silence, staring at her with a haunted look.

“Have it your way, friend,” she said finally. “You have the
Aquitaine
Navy between you and the bad guys.”

“It won’t be enough,” he said, then collapsed into fearful silence.

She couldn’t get another word out of him.

CORYNTHE

Chapter XX

Date of the Republic October 24, 393 Jumpspace Approaching Petron

Jessica escorted Moirrey into her office and saw the young engineer seated comfortably before taking her own chair.

“How can I be of service, ma’am?” Moirrey asked simply. She was rarely one for small talk, another reason Jessica prized her company.

She considered the woman now, the one she referred to in her head as her evil engineering gnome. Perhaps the Head Gnome.

“Last year,” Jessica began, “you did wonderful things for me, and saved us all, with
Project Mischief
.”

She waited for Moirrey to nod before she continued.

“Now, I need you to do your magic again, Moirrey.”

“What’ve the buggers got this time?” Moirrey asked, her pixie smile turning puckish.

Jessica smiled back. “Medium–sized carriers with a wide variety of melee–style fighters. It’s almost a junkyard worth of strange ships, leftovers and one–offs from everywhere I’ve ever seen or heard of. No two are going to be the same.”

“New stuff?” Moirrey asked, her eyes turning sly as she twisted her head to one side.

“No,” Jessica replied as she thought about it. “Older. I have an image of the one that was at
Sarmarsh IV
. The newest fighter it carried was an Imperial
A–6
fighter. Plus at least two very old Republic
M–3 Crossbows
, which had to have been originally built at least seventy years ago.”

“Yus, ma’am. They’s Motherships and they be flying uglies of all shapes and sizes.”

“Uglies?” Jessica had never heard the term applied to fighter craft before.

“Like ye said, commander,” Moirrey continued, her burr growing as she warmed to her topic. “Is a junkyard o’stuff. Ya canna buy replacement parts when they break, so’s you weld new stuff on ‘stead. An’ that breaks, so you hack it off an’ weld more on. Or you gets a front half that works and hook it to a back half that flies. No two’s the same, but that’s okay –cause yer pilots is a crew o’pirates and they keep tinkering.”

She lapsed into silence for a moment as she thought.

“Missiles be nice, but nots enough,” she continued.

Jessica leaned back and watched the woman’s eyes flicker back and forth across whiteboards and engineering specs in her mind. It was like watching a master chef in her kitchen. Probably smelled that way in her head.

“Plus, some crazy bastard’s like to do something weird an’ centerline a Type–3 cannon with a couple of engines and a cockpit and call it good.”

“A Type–3?” Jessica blurted out in surprise.

Auberon
was built on a Heavy Cruiser hull design. Those ships normally carried six Type–3 beams. Big guns. Auberon had only two, but she was a carrier, so her flight wing made up for it. Even the GunShip Necromancer mounted only Type–2 beams. Granted, a triple–weapon, nose and both wings, that could parallax, but still. Much smaller.

“Aye, ma’am,” Moirrey chirped. “Is a can opener. Seen a picture of one back home. Ya fires it and the whole ship shuts down. Ya relights the engines and starts recharging the batteries. Maybe five or ten minutes later you can fire again. Assuming you didn’t cook nothing along the way. And nobody cooks you.”

“Okay,” Jessica said, “so how do we fight off waves of these things?”

“That will require more
Mischief
, ma’am,” Moirrey responded. “How soon?”

“We’ll be at
Petron
in a few days, Moirrey,” Jessica said. “After that, I don’t know. Hopefully, never. Possibly quickly.”

“Rights,” Moirrey said as she rose. “First, I builds it ugly. Then I gets all elegant n’thin’s.” She saluted, turned, and scooted out the door.

Jessica watched her go. If only it were a simple as that. Although, for an engineer, it might just be that. Hand them a problem and get out of the way. Let them get technical on it.

Dealing with people was where it got messy. At least, it always had for her.

Perhaps she just hadn’t take the time to be
elegant
, before now. Not that the pirates would appreciate it. But what she had planned wasn’t for them. They just got to be the victims if it worked.

Chapter XXI

Date of the Republic October 27, 393 Edge of the Petron System

Denis had come down to the flag bridge for this meeting. The two other commanders from the squadron had already shuttled over, but this was much more of a conclave for war than an opportunity for High Tea. He took the seat next to Keller and watched her face.

She gave nothing away.

“Okay, people,” she finally said, “we’re about to go into the lion’s den. Unless someone happened to be out this far and then hopped in without us seeing them, the King of the Pirates, and all of
Corynthe
, will know that the Republic has arrived in the next six hours.”

She looked at each of the faces of her command staff in turn. Denis felt the weight of her gaze last. He nodded back.

“I plan to treat this like any port call on the outside,” she continued. “We’re here to say hello and drop off a bunch of shipwrecked survivors, not pick a fight. I don’t think we could win against the forces down there anyway.”

Denis studied the orbital projection rotating slowly above their heads.
Petron
looked like a nice planet. A little warm and mostly land, instead of ocean, but not badly so. There was a
LOT
of traffic in orbit, but it was mostly composed of little freighters coming and going. However, there were a whole bunch of armed shuttles and small country craft moving around as well.

“They don’t have anything comparable to
Auberon
,” he heard her continue, “but they do have this.”

The viewer flipped to show the craft that had fled
Alpha
at
Sarmarsh IV
when they had arrived, or at least a ship that was very similar. At one end of the vessel was an arrowhead–shaped bow made up of four blades equidistant around the centerline. The other end was very obviously an engine cluster and Jumpdrive assembly, ripped from something else and welded together in someone’s back–yard instead of a professional facility. It was the middle three–quarters of the ship that looked interesting.

The centerline of the ship was a narrower cylinder, like a goose’s neck connecting the two ends, but much, much longer. Around the neck, like mosquitos squatting on skin ready to bite, were several rings of fighters and miniature gunships, no two of the same design. Again, thrown together in someone’s back–yard, if the back–yard had at least three of every kind of starfighter ever flown, chopped into pieces and stacked randomly, waiting to be welded into some new configuration by a demented beaver with a laser torch.

Denis looked closely. This was craft that had fled them at
Alpha
. Three rings of five or six fighter craft, so about sixteen fighters. The fourth ring was comprised of four larger gunboats, roughly the size of the pair of S–11
Orcas
that
Auberon
carried. Nothing like
Cayenne
or
Necromancer
, though. Still, but for a lack of missiles visible, that thing could put up almost as many craft as one of the big Republic Fleet Carriers, such as
Archon
or
Ajax.

Denis whistled unconsciously.

“Yes,” Jessica said to him. “You see it.”

“Sir?” Command Centurion d’Maine off of
Rajput
said.

“We could slaughter them with missiles, probably,” Denis said instead. “That is, until they got close. Then it’s a knife fight. Very messy. Gut us like fish.”

“Correct,” Jessica continued. “This is the largest class, what the locals call a 4–ring Mothership, and they have at least six of them, according to
Lincolnshire
’s intelligence. Most of
Corynthe
’s ships are smaller, one to three rings. Those things would be murder on a freighter. Drop out of Jumpspace on top of him and unleash a horde of snub–fighters.”

“So what’s the plan, sir?” Command Centurion Kigali said.
CR–264
would have a field day in such a battle, right up to the moment that they overwhelmed the little escort with numbers and shot holes in it.

“Pick a nice orbit, well out, and talk,” she replied. “When they decide that they’re going to be nice and talk, I’ll probably need a lift to the surface, but I plan to ride down in the jumpseat on
Necromancer
, while she and a sizeable chunk of the flight wing escort
Cayenne
. After that, hopefully nothing more dangerous than politics.”

That got a good chuckle out of the group, especially after the
adventures
at
Ramsey
.

Denis watched her neutral face turn deadly serious.

“If they decide to take me prisoner,” she said calmly, “I would appreciate Navin the Black and his people rescuing me. If something happens to me, I will leave standing orders to do to
Petron
what we did to
Alpha
at
Sarmarsh IV
.”

The silence turned nearly solid as the implications settled around them, like a heavy quilt on a cold night. Physics was physics, after all, but hitting an inhabited world like that violated every single tenet of civilized warfare.

Of course, so did killing a
Republic of Aquitaine
officer under safe conduct. Hopefully the pirates wouldn’t need to be reminded of that. The survivors being brought home from
Sarmarsh IV,
bringing their story with them, would help.

Denis figured that
Auberon
’s crew would be willing to stay around for several weeks afterwards, reigning fiery death down onto the planet, if something happened to Jessica Keller. She was probably counting on that.

“Understood, Commander,” Denis said, signaling to the rest that he would be willing to end his career on that sort of note. The others growled back at him. It sounded like a pack of hungry wolves spying sleeping chickens.

Jessica fixed each of them with a hard look.

“Then we are ready to go to war, people.”

Chapter XXII

Date of the Republic October 28, 393 Above Petron

Jessica was down on the flag bridge with her flag centurion and a few crew members, when the door opened on the right wall. Daneel Ishikura,
Warlock
, entered slowly and looked around.

Their eyes locked for several moments across the space.

“Commander,” he said finally, breaking the silence. “What can I do for you today?”