Starfist: A World of Hurt (5 page)

"I've seen stealth," Freelion said. "This isn't stealth."

"Hmm. Con, can you tuck us in behind that ship?"

"I've got a read," Lieutenant Sunshine Stems'n'seeds chirped. "Can do, sir."

Captain Happiness smiled tightly. If the
Goin'on
was directly behind that vessel, whoever she was, the
Goin'on
would be invisible to her and could follow wherever she was headed--unless she jumped into Beamspace. Which she wasn't likely to do unless her captain didn't realize she was on a collision course with a planet and needed to make an emergency jump in order to avoid catastrophe.

He didn't believe for a second that the cloaked ship didn't know she was on an intercept course for a planet.

Though she was a heavy cruiser in her current life, the
Goin'on
had been a Confederation Navy Omaha-class light cruiser before the Confederation Navy sold her to We're Here!

shortly before the end of her scheduled service life. They'd included all of her existing systems, and to juice the sale a bit, thrown in a service-life extension. Which made the
Goin'on
one of the most sophisticated military starships owned by the local navy of any individual world in Human Space, and by far
the
most sophisticated in We're Here!'s navy.

The craft with the shuttle drive signals, when the
Goin'on
got close enough to see her on visual, was a good deal bigger than a Bomarc 36V, which was the smallest ship capable of interstellar travel. She was an ore freighter, ten times the size of the
Goin'on.
The registration markings, which by Confederation statute were required to be clearly visible on the freighter's stern, had been painted over--the ship was unidentifiable. Except to someone who had the latest updates to
Jane's Commercial Starfleets of the Confederation,
which We're Here!'s navy made sure to keep updated on all its starships.

The freighter appeared to be the
Broken Missouri,
registered in St. Helen's as part of United Express Freight's starfleet. The
Broken Missouri
had been reported lost to pirates three years earlier. A drone sent by the ship carried jerky, mostly out-of-focus 2-D vids of the pirate attack. No pirate band was ever identified as being behind the attack, and there had been no reports of the ship or any member of her crew being seen since. Neither had there been an acknowledged ransom demand. The
Broken Missouri
had been dead-heading when she was attacked, so there was no cargo to show up on either the black market or the gray.

When it became clear that the
Broken Missouri
was indeed headed for rendezvous with the Rock, Captain Happiness backed off the
Goin'on
far enough that the possibility of detection from either the planetary surface or orbit was near enough to zero to make no difference, and he observed and considered the implications of the missing freighter approaching an uninhabited planet along the plane of the ecliptic.

Starships coming out of Beamspace had two priorities: avoiding gravity wells, and allowing for margin of error in their exit to Space-3. That typically meant several days'

transition travel above or below the plane of the ecliptic, as unanticipated gravity wells and small objects were more likely to be encountered along the plane. Contact with a sizable gravity well or an object much larger than a grain of sand could be catastrophic for a ship making the transition. Anyone watching for a ship to transit into Space-3 would, therefore, look above and below the plane of the ecliptic, not along it.

Captain Happiness came to the only conclusion that made sense: someone didn't want the freighter's arrival to be noticed. Which meshed tightly with the fact that the
Broken
Missouri's
kinetic drives were cloaked.

The next question Happiness had was: Who? Followed immediately by: Why?

Passive observation of the
Broken Missouri
in the visual, comm, and radar bands after she reached orbit made it clear that the freighter was loading cargo ferried up from the Rock. The only cargo Happiness could think of that might be worth uploading was minerals.

The very minerals the
Goin'on
was there to investigate--the
Goin'on
carried a geological survey team that they'd planned to land on the surface. Obviously, they'd been beaten to it.

Captain Happiness considered what to do about the unexpected situation and concluded he had three choices. One: he could close with, board, and commandeer the freighter, then quarantine the planet while he sent a drone back to We're Here! for further instructions. Two: he could wait until the freighter left orbit, then intercept and capture her. Three: he could wait until the freighter jumped into Beamspace, land a boarding force, and take the planetside mining operation, then send off a drone requesting further instructions.

He didn't like any of those options.

In the first, it wasn't likely that the
Broken Missouri
was still a pirate vessel--pirates didn't engage in trading for minerals and ores--and taking her could well cause a major interstellar incident. The same applied in the second, in addition to which he didn't know what defenses, if any, the ship had. Neither did he know what defenses the planet might have.

He decided on a fourth choice. Send a drone to We're Here! and stay in place observing until further instructions arrived.

A week later, when the freighter finally left orbit and headed out to where she could jump, he was glad he'd decided on his fourth choice. The
Broken Missouri's
hull had masked a military space station, to which she had been docked, from detection by his ship. Had he attacked, the space station might have caused severe damage to the
Goin'on
even if he'd been able to win a battle with it, which, while probable, wasn't certain.

Like the
Broken Missouri,
the space station had no identifying marks.

It took the
Broken Missouri
six days standard and a couple of hours to get far enough from gravity wells along the elliptic to make a jump into Beamspace. Only then did the
Goin'on
launch a drone. After little more than one day in Beamspace, it jumped back into Space-3 less than two days out from its destination and immediately began broadcasting its arrival. It was picked up the next day by a We're Here! coast guard cutter that downloaded its message and tight-beamed it to Navy HQ, where it was loaded into the Fleet Intelligence section comp and decoded.

Lieutenant Stardust had the duty. When he saw the message was classified "Urgent Highest," he nearly panicked; he'd never before seen that classification on a live document and didn't immediately know what to do with it. Other than not read it; neither he nor anyone else in his duty section held the necessary security clearance. He punched up the board to see whether anybody with a sufficiently high clearance happened to be in HQ. Such a person was.

Admiral of the Starry Heavens Sativa Orange, the We're Here! Chief of Naval Operations, was in his office. Lieutenant Stardust immediately routed the message to Admiral Orange and, to make sure it wasn't overlooked, placed a voice call to the admiral's office. Admiral Orange was alone, so there was nobody to take the call, but he dutifully noted a call had come in and made a mental note to see what it was before he left, which he planned to do in just a few minutes--no one would send a voice message to his office on an off-day unless it was very important.

The few minutes passed and Admiral Orange finished with the few logistics details he'd come in to check on--he was a notorious micromanager--and listened to the voice message. He heard with surprise the excitement in the voice that informed him of the arrival of an Urgent Highest message. Curious--he'd seen very few Urgent Highest messages in his entire career--he called up his in-box. There it was. He lifted his eyebrows and turned down the corners of his mouth at it, then read. He read it again. He pressed the panic button as he read through it a third time.

It was a literal panic button. Behind a sliding panel on the edge of his desk was a red button, about twenty millimeters in diameter and protruding ten millimeters from the back of the recess hidden behind the panel. Pressing the button sent a message to his senior staff ordering them to drop whatever they were doing and assemble immediately in the staff briefing room adjacent to his office.

Admiral of the Starry Heavens Orange had never had to press the panic button before, so an hour later he didn't know whether to be pleased that his senior people had gathered so quickly or furious that it had taken them so long. He opted for neutrality, as though the occasion was a regularly scheduled staff briefing and everybody was right on time.

"Do any of you know anything at all that will shed light on this?" Admiral Orange asked, and tapped the key that displayed the Urgent Highest message on the console in front of each of his people.

All of them did their best to keep their expressions blank as they read, but other involuntary reactions made their shock clear. Captain Head, Chief of Personnel, nervously brushed fingertips across her throat. Commodore O'Wow, Head of Intelligence, turned pale.

Vice Admiral Toke, Operations, turned red. Rear Admiral Crashpad, Logistics, developed a severe tick in his left eyelid. Commodore Hitme, Civil Actions and Control, began trembling.

One by one, and with obvious reluctance, they turned their heads toward their commander. None of them was immediately willing to say anything.

"Commodore," Orange said, looking at O'Wow, "I believe this falls under your primary responsibility. Is there anything you haven't been telling me?"

"Nossi--" O'Wow squeaked, then tried again. "Nossir. Th-This is a complete surprise. It must have happened since the last time we surveyed 43q15x17-32." He looked to Toke.

Toke moved as though to tug her collar loose, caught herself, lowered her hand, and, mindful of O'Wow's squeak, cleared her throat before speaking. "Sir, it's been three years since our ships visited that system. This operation must be more recent than that."

"We haven't had any observation there for three years?" Orange demanded incredulously.

"Nossir," Toke croaked. She wasn't about to remind the Admiral of the Starry Heavens that ignoring the outlying systems in We're Here!'s sphere of influence had been his idea.

Orange shook his head and stood theatrically taller. "You realize what this means, don't you?"

His staff shook their heads.

"It means war."

Before the moment of stunned silence stretched long enough to become too uncomfortable, Rear Admiral Crashpad asked, "Against whom, sir?"

"Well, that's what we need to find out, isn't it?" He looked pointedly at Commodore O'Wow.

In his half century standard of service in We're Here!'s navy, Admiral of the Starry Heavens Sativa Orange had never gone to war. For that matter, We're Here! had never had a war in its entire history. We're Here! had originally been settled by counterculturists, back-to-earthers, feminists, and others who thought everybody should simply be dreadfully nice to one another. And it was far enough out of the way that it didn't have any nearby neighbors to annoy or be annoyed by.

Admiral Orange was head of the navy, and the purpose of a navy is to fight wars. It didn't occur to him that he had to notify the President of the situation, and the President had to take the matter up with the planetary congress before any action could be taken, or that the appropriate first step was for We're Here! to make an appeal to the Confederation of Human Worlds. The main thing on his mind was:
I have under my command a heavy
cruiser that, by Confederation Navy standards, is less than a full generation away from
being a state-of-the-art light cruiser!

And what was the point of having such a modern warship if you never get to use it to fight a war?

CHAPTER FOUR

Brigadier Sturgeon and Sergeant Major Shiro stood on the reviewing stand that was centered along one side of the parade ground at Camp Major Pete Ellis. With them stood Colonel Bankey, the Camp Ellis commanding officer, and his top people; Rear Admiral Blankenvoort, commander of the navy supply depot on Thorsfinni's World and senior Confederation military officer; Stor Edval, mayor of Bronnysund; and other distinguished visitors. Even a half-dozen members of Thorsfinni's World's legislature were present. The men and women--Marine, navy, and civilian--who constituted the Camp Ellis base personnel, sat in bleachers flanking the reviewing stand, as did the few military family members allowed to accompany their spouses to the hardship post, and a significant number of interested civilians from Bronnysund.

The steady
tromp-tromp-tromp
of marching feet reverberated off the parade ground and echoed from the surrounding buildings as the Marines of the infantry battalion, composite squadron; headquarters company; transportation company; and the artillery battery that comprised the FIST marched onto the parade ground. The units marched in a straight line from the right of the reviewing stand. Company by company by squadron by battery, they halted at their designated positions and faced left. When they finished, the entire FIST, standing at rigid attention and resplendent in dress reds, was centered on the reviewing stand, facing it.

Admiral Blankenvoort stepped to the front edge of the reviewing stand and made some innocuous remarks about the courage and loyalty of the 34th FIST Marines, how proud everyone was of them, and finished with a remark about how well deserved were the decorations and promotions about to be given to so many. Colonel Bankey remarked about how proud he and his base personnel were to be host to one of the Marine Corps' most honored and decorated units. Mayor Edval then said much the same, though from a civilian's point of view and in fewer words. And, of course, the politicians from New Oslo all had to have their say, so the Marines had been standing at attention for nearly an hour by the time it was Brigadier Sturgeon's turn.