The Terran Privateer (14 page)

Andrew Lougheed smiled to himself as
Of Course We’re Coming Back
erupted through the hyperspace portal into a brand-new system. Unlike the last time, he even knew what this one was
called
—Messeth, according to the charts from
Rekiki’s Fang
.

They’d matched up the results from Nova Industries surveys and Dark Eye’s scans against the charts as well. The guesses and analysis that had been pulled together were surprisingly close, though A!Tol charts showed their active colonies all well coreward of Earth. It didn’t look like they were to blame for
Hidden Eyes of Terra
’s loss, since the survey ship had been nowhere
near
their space.

“What are we seeing, people?” he asked aloud. The scout ship’s main screen was showing the system according to the charts: six planets, the fifth a super-Jovian gas giant they’d picked up from Earth years back, the rest rocks of various sizes. The real point of interest was planet two, Ikiseth, the only world in the system with its own name in
Fang
’s databases.

Ikiseth was a comfortably habitable world with a climate Andrew would love to visit—low axial inclination, slightly farther out than Earth from a much warmer star. A large portion of the planet had similar average temperatures to Earth’s tropics and little extreme weather.

It was an A!Tol Imperial colony and the charts listed its population as including
nine
separate species—but the largest population was the semi-amphibian Indiri. Andrew understood there had been a few of them aboard
Rekiki’s Fang
, but none had survived the mutiny to join the Terran privateer fleet.

The planetary population was only a passing concern for him today, except in that the eighty million sapients on the planet made it one of the largest colonies within sixty light-years of Earth. That meant the planet had a major trans-shipment station in orbit—and was a logical stopping-off point for ships heading to Earth.

“Planets are lining with up with what we expected,” Laurent reported. “I’m picking up a space elevator, half a dozen big stations—wait! I’ve got four patrol boats, look to be the same design as in G-KCL-79D. And…the queen in the deck. Will you take a look at her?!”

The screen zoomed in Ikiseth, Laurent highlighting several features. The biggest station was linked to the surface by a massive tether, the space elevator that apparently was a default feature of A!Tol colony expeditions. Five smaller stations were scattered in geostationary orbit along with an entire constellation of civilian satellites.

The four patrol boats were less of a concern this time—
Of Course
was still an eggshell, but with
Tornado
’s old laser now mounted to the “top” of the scout ship, she had real teeth.

Laurent’s “queen in the deck,” however, was a quarter-kilometer-long, elegant-looking hypership that matched their new databanks listing for an A!Tol destroyer. Smaller than any of the vessels the aliens had brought to Earth, the ships spent most of their time running convoy escort and courier missions through the Imperium.

The lightest ship the A!Tol Navy deployed, the ship could also eat
Of Course
for lunch without even noticing.

“Well, let’s see if we can get her attention,” Andrew said with a grin. “Take us in at point four cee, but keep your options open and assume that destroyer has a tenth of lightspeed on us. We want to see what’s in the system, not get vaporized.”

“Yes, sir,” Strobel chirped in response. “I like not being vaporized.”

Moments later,
Of Course
blazed across the system like a rogue meteor, drawing every eye around.

Behind her, having exited hyperspace through the same portal,
Oaths of Secrecy
drifted forward on cold gas thrusters, quietly studying the system for prey.

#

The hyperspatial anomaly sensor didn’t provide a great deal of detail. Sitting on
Tornado
’s bridge, Annette could see where
Of Course
opened the portal back into hyperspace—that was hard to miss; portals were
big
anomalies—but the scout ship itself was only visible for a few seconds.

“That’s odd,” Rolfson said softly. “They must have dropped their interface drive.”

“And there’s why,” Annette told him as a second portal opened ten seconds later. The pursuing ship would have been
well
out of range of
Of Course
in regular space, but the compressed nature of hyperspace meant they’d have been able to bring the scout ship to bay there.

Except that, according to Ki!Tana, the A!Tol didn’t have any better tools for scanning hyperspace than
Tornado
did. Their anomaly scanners were significantly longer-ranged than
Tornado’s
, but the limitations within that range were much the same.

Having cut their interface drive,
Of Course
was now effectively invisible to the A!Tol ship.

Tornado
’s interface drive was already off, the privateer cruiser floating in hyperspace outside the Messeth system, waiting for information from its two scouts. The plan had been for
Of Course
to draw the patrol boats out of position—a plan Lougheed had clearly decided to upgrade.

“The destroyer is entering a search pattern,” Rolfson noted. “But if I’m reading their vector correctly, those last few seconds under drive before
Of Course
went silent were enough to completely mess up the A!Tol.”

“Ki!Tana, how far away can they pick up us opening a portal?” Annette asked the big alien.

“It depends,” she answered. The A!Tol now had an almost-permanent position at the back of the bridge where she could see the screen and provide feedback on the strange and wonderful galaxy she knew better than anyone else aboard
Tornado
. “If we open the normal way, full power and straight ahead, she can pick us up from a light-year of real space distance. If do it slowly, low power, and only big enough for
Tornado
to fit through…fifty-fifty chance she won’t pick us up from here.”

“Amandine, can we
do
that?”

Annette’s navigator shrugged, then checked his screens.

“I
think
so,” he finally admitted. “We didn’t design the emitters for that kind of fine tuning, but we
can
control the power feed. It won’t be perfect and it’ll be slower, but I think we can do it.”

“It’s always slower,” Ki!Tana told him. “A
lot
slower—and more vulnerable, too. The people
in
Messeth will still see you.”

“So long as we leave that destroyer searching a needle in a hyperspatial haystack, I don’t care,” Annette told them both. “Make it happen, Amandine. Ki!Tana—help him if you can.”

It was a sign of the big alien’s growing acceptance aboard
Tornado
that Amandine didn’t even complain at being told to work with a member of the species that conquered Earth. He just gestured the big alien over and got to work.

Annette leaned back in her command chair, watching the destroyer carefully. With the upgrades they’d ripped from
Rekiki’s Fang
, she could take the destroyer. With an energy shield extended around
Tornado
’s compressed-matter armor, they were unlikely to even be damaged.

She’d rather avoid that. Little as it appealed to her, she had to think like a
pirate
now—and that meant going after lightly armed ships with valuable cargo. It was highly likely that destroyer had been guarding a freighter of some kind.
That
was her target.

#

Annette Bond had at this point gone into and out of hyperspace over a dozen times. Unless she’d had a reason to think about it, she would have said the transition had no sensation at all. If forced to stop and recall, she might have remembered a momentary sense of discomfort.

Creeping
through a hyperspace portal barely larger than her ship, taking over ten full seconds to make the transition, was a
very
different story. That slight discomfort she’d barely noticed before was now a seconds-long sensation of dizziness and nausea, building on itself until the cruiser
finally
exited the portal.

From the echoing sigh of relief around her bridge and Ki!Tana’s pitch-black skin, she was hardly the only one impacted.

“Is everyone all right?” she demanded. A chorus of “I think so,” “Yes,” and “Maybe?” answered her, her bridge crew rapidly recovering from the impact.

“Check throughout the ship,” she ordered. “Let sickbay know to expect casualties.” She glanced at Ki!Tana. “You didn’t mention that part.”

The alien’s black skin rippled, slowly fading toward the rainbow ripples of calm.

“I perhaps should have mentioned that I have never
done
that before,” Ki!Tana replied. “And I would not care to do so again.”

Annette chuckled. “So, you
don’t
know everything,” she observed.

Ki!Tana’s knowledge and skill had been intimidating. Annette wasn’t entirely sure how old the A!Tol was, but she knew her way around the Imperium and its technology better than anyone else aboard—including the other alien recruits.

“Ma’am, datapulse received from
Oaths of Secrecy
,” Chan announced. “Captain Sade specifically notes what appears to be a hyper-capable military freighter like the one we missed at G-KCL-79D.”

“Well, that’s promising,” Annette agreed. “And this time, they’re not outrunning us. Lieutenant Commander Amandine—take us after that ship. Maximum interface drive.”

She smiled coldly as her ship leapt from a standstill to forty-three percent of lightspeed. Still slower than the destroyer Captain Lougheed had lured out of the system, but hopefully faster than the freighter.

“How long until they see us?” she asked.

“We emerged eight light-minutes away,” Rolfson told her briskly. “She’ll see us in a little under seven minutes, by which point we’ll be almost halfway to her.”

“Prep a missile warning shot for if she tries to run,” Annette ordered. “If she
keeps
running after that, try and disable her with lasers. Whatever happens, I do
not
want that ship escaping into hyperspace.”

“Yes, ma’am,” her tactical officer replied crisply.

“Amandine—whatever course she tries, see if we can cut her off,”
Tornado
’s Captain continued. “We don’t have
that
much of a speed edge; every bit of angle you can give me makes Harold’s job easier.”

“What about
Oaths
?” her XO asked. “Or the patrol ships, for that matter?”

“I’ll talk to Captain Sade,” Annette replied. “You keep an eye on the locals—if they’re threatening us or
Oaths
, put a missile spread into them.”

At a hundred meters and
maybe
a quarter-million tons, the patrol boats had neither the shields nor the active defenses to stand off
Tornado
’s
missiles. She
probably
couldn’t kill all four with a single salvo, but the boats’ commanders had to know they were out of their weight class.

“Get me Sade,” she told Chan. A moment later, the image of the wispy blonde captain appeared on her command chair screen. “Captain, what’s your status?”

“Drifting toward the planet under cold jets and keeping our eyes peeled,”
Oaths of Secrecy
’s Captain replied. “I’m guessing you want me to start being less quiet?”

“Not yet,” Annette told her. “I want you to stay nice and quiet while we make a lot of noise chasing that freighter. I’m hoping to take her down with
Tornado
, but we’re also going to herd her in your direction. If you get a shot, take it. Aim to disable. I want her cargo.”

“We don’t even know what her cargo
is
,” Sade pointed out.

“If we can’t use it, we can sell it through Ki!Tana’s contacts,” Annette replied. “We’ll make it work.”

“Your call either way,” the junior Captain acknowledged. “Good hunting.”

#

The freighter’s crew was slow off the mark. Annette wasn’t sure if they hadn’t been paying attention or hadn’t had the right crew on duty, but they didn’t bring up their drive until over five minutes after they would have picked up the closing privateer.

But the ship was still capable of forty percent of lightspeed, and
Tornado
was now overhauling her at a little more than three percent of light. It was a mind-bogglingly fast speed in many circumstances, but in this case, it might not be enough.