The Terran Privateer (38 page)

“We are not secure,” he warned her, “but I think we will be.”

“We’ll be back in orbit shortly,” Annette advised him. “We can supply fire from on high at that point.”

“Don’t rush on our account,” Wellesley replied. “I think the Americans might get cranky if I don’t let them kill something. Your countrymen are
angry
.”

Annette smiled, a halfhearted chuckle escaping her.

“Understood,” she told him. “We still need to deal with Forel.”

“Good luck.”

She accepted his comment with a nod and cut the channel. Scanning her bridge, she saw the plot was now clear of hostile ships except for
Subjugator
.

“Take us back to our Indiri friend,” she ordered. “Prep the proton beams. How many shuttles and weapons do we still have aboard?”

“Two shuttles, enough weapons to equip thirty or so volunteers,” Ki!Tana replied instantly. “We have those volunteers already.”

“All human or…” Annette asked.

“The nonhumans aboard this ship are loyal to you now,” the A!Tol told her. “A third of the volunteers are other races.”

“Get them equipped,” she ordered. “We’ll see what Captain Forel says once we summon him to surrender.”

Tornado
flipped in space in a maneuver that would have been flatly impossible without an inertialess drive and charged back toward the pirate ship.

“Captain, Forel is hailing us,” Chan reported.

“On screen.”

Karaz Forel’s familiar ugly face filled the main bridge screen again, but this time his focus wasn’t as narrow. The view encompassed his entire bridge, part of which was still sparking from what appeared to have been an overloaded conduit.

“Hold your fire, Captain Bond,” he snapped. “I surrender. We need to talk. In person. And no matter what you think of me, realize that I have human slaves aboard this ship.”

Annette paused—froze, really. That…made sense of all of his oddities, and she could now
see
two humans in the background. Both were burly men with gold-colored collars around their necks, working at putting out the remnants of the conduit fire.

“Your surrender is accepted for now,” she finally told him. “I will be arriving with armed crew shortly. You will be prepared to turn all of those human slaves over to me on my arrival. If you do so, it will buy you five minutes to talk fast enough to save your pathetic life.”

#

“You realize this is a trap.”

Ki!Tana’s comment wasn’t a question. The big A!Tol was busy strapping several weapons to a webbing harness that wrapped around her body and helped cover her skin, preventing her emotions from being immediately visible to everyone around her.

“Most likely,” Annette agreed. While Wellesley hadn’t acquired power armor for anyone other than his boarding teams, they
had
acquired some very advanced-looking unpowered armor on Tortuga.
Tornado
’s Captain locked the front and back plates of the set into place and let the straps auto-cinch.

“But Forel won’t play if I don’t go,” she noted. A submachine gun and pistol, both the old UESF issue she was comfortable with rather than the more powerful weapons she wasn’t used to, went onto her own harness. “Which, given that I need to rescue those humans, leaves me no other option.’

She paused.

“Plus, I’m curious what the bastard has to say,” she admitted. “If he’s been selling ‘exotic slaves’ for a while, I wonder how many were humans—and where he got them.”

“Your curiosity will not be satisfied if you are dead,” Ki!Tana pointed out. “You now control this system. The largest pirate raid in recent history and all of the loot is now yours. Forel’s only chance of salvaging his prize, his reputation, or his
pride
is to kill you.”

“Killing me won’t gain him any of those,” Annette replied. “Rolfson would just blow
Subjugator
to hell.”

“You will never think like a pirate,” her companion replied. “That is why your crew, human and the rest alike, will follow you. But Forel
does
—and he thinks killing you will buy him power over your crew.”

“We just killed most of the pirates in this region,” she told the A!Tol. “I’m surprised you’re not more concerned by that.”

“Captain Bond, you may well have killed
piracy
in this region,” Ki!Tana told her, what was visible of her skin flushing light red in amusement. “But as I told you, I am more concerned with boredom than anything else. I see you becoming many things—but never boring.”

“So, Forel will betray us,” Annette accepted. “But if we expect that, we can string him out, get some answers out of him.
Watch him
,” she ordered Ki!Tana. “You can read him better than we can. Don’t hesitate to shoot first.”

“What about your answers?” Ki!Tana asked.

“I want them,” she admitted. “But I want that red-furred toad chained or dead when this ends more. Is that an order I can give you, Ki!Tana?”

“You command my life, my skill and my knowledge,” the ancient alien next to her said softly. “Not my death. This falls under ‘staying alive’, I believe.”

“At some point, I want to
see
this contract,” Annette told her companion.

“Of course,” the A!Tol told her. “But for now, focus on Karaz Forel. This will not be easy.”

“I believe the map says the central control center is just down this block of corridors,” Hughes told James. “But I came under fire as I approached, and not from Imperials.”

“Project the map,” James ordered the specialist.

A moment later, Hughes’s helmet lit up as the mounted holoprojector projected a three-dimensional image of the chunk of the facility they were in into the air. A large circular room flashed in orange, their target, with a number of corridors leading to its two entrances.

“Set up well,” James noted. “Easily accessed from everywhere, but choke points here and here.” He tapped the two points where the corridors converged. “I’m guessing our pirate friends are trying to break in?”

“It appears so,” Hughes confirmed. “I didn’t get much of a count, but there were at least eight or nine suits of armor and many in body armor.”

“This is probably the last major concentration of both sides,” James murmured, considering the overall situation. Most of the base defenders, the Imperial ground troops, were dead. There were a few pockets of resistance, but so far, he’d left them alone. The A!Tol soldiers weren’t going anywhere.

Their
non
-solders, the civilians and Navy who ran the base, were still scattered throughout the facility. Some were armed, many weren’t, and the roving groups of pirates were still following their no-prisoners order. Most were probably unaware of the battle above or how utterly screwed they were.

The well-organized group in front of him, however, was almost certainly aware of events in orbit. It was the single largest concentration of troops left, including teams from
Subjugator
. Despite the destruction of the armada above, they were still trying to break into the command center. Most of the surface weaponry was gone, but access to the surveillance systems—systems the defenders had too few troops left to use to their full potential—would tip the balance against the Terrans in this knife fight.

“What are we waiting for?” the burly young American with him demanded in a thick Southern drawl. “We go right after the fuckers, burn them out and take that center.”

James studied the map for a long moment.

“What’s your name, son?” he asked.

“What?” the noncom seemed confused.

“Name and rank,” James snapped. Full Officer Tone brought the American to a crisp ready stance.

“Staff Sergeant Dave McQueen, US Army,” he crisply recited.

“Good lad. You have family back home?” the SSS officer asked gently.

Dave swallowed.

“A sister,” he admitted. “Harry’s”—he gestured to one of the other volunteers—“wife. I might forgive him for that someday.”

“You want to go home,” James told him. “I want you to get home. So, I have
no
intention of trying to take these people out with a human wave attack, plasma guns or no plasma guns. Understand me, son?”

“Yes, sir,” he conceded. “Just…so pissed, sir.”

“Rightly so,” James conceded. “But I bet your sister would rather you got home alive, don’t you?”

The young noncom nodded, and his gaze went to the map.

“Sir,” he said slowly, “if the tentacled guys are holding the command center, then they’re the ones holding the choke point, right?”

“Yes…”

“So, the pirates are
in
the choke point, shoved up against the locals? So, we can be in”—Dave waved a hand through the air—“
all
of these corridors and shoot at them?”

Seven corridors connected to the closer entrance to the control center. Each was wide enough for half a dozen humans or three power-armor suits abreast. The choke point corridor the pirates were assaulting was the same size, limiting how many of them could attack—or defend from behind.

“That was my own thinking as well,” James agreed. “Still no cover, though, and we’re playing with weapons that will burn your unarmored boys alive.”

“But your people have the armor suits,” Dave pointed out. “We can use
you
for cover.”

Tornado
’s landing force commander blinked, glanced around his people, and smiled coldly. Charlie Troop had joined up with his HQ section. Even with their losses, he had twenty-two humans and aliens in power armor, one more than he needed.

“I
thought
you were a little young for a Sergeant,” he told the American. The stripes had apparently come for brains, which was
not
what one would have expected from the burly Louisianan soldier on first impression. “Well done.

“All right, people,” he barked. “Gather around. We’ve got ourselves a plan, thanks to the young Sergeant here.”

#

The timing had to be perfect. Even the power armor could only take a handful of shots from the plasma weapons carried by the unarmored infantry, let alone the cannons in the hands of the pirate suits. If one corridor’s team attacked first, they’d be overwhelmed before the rest of the teams could intervene.

James found himself at the back of one of the teams, coordinating everyone via the maps and communicators in his helmet. No one was willing to let the company commander lead from the front this time around.

He ran up the distances on the helmet map, checked the location of each of his seven hastily assembled teams, and then started issuing orders.

“Teams one through four, go now. Five through seven, hold twenty seconds then go, starting …now.”

Spread out through the base, his people and their new American and Chinese friends charged through the corridors, the power-armored Special Space Service troopers slowing from the breakneck pace the suits would have allowed, to let the unarmored infantry keep up.

Even from behind, James knew the moment they made contact. The cacophony of dozens of plasma rifles opening up simultaneously echoed from the front: twenty-one plasma cannons in the hands of his power armor, and then another dozen lighter weapons from the unarmored infantry behind each wall of troopers.

“Grenade out!” Sherman bellowed, Charlie’s Troop Captain leading his team four. Louder explosions echoed, followed by another flurry of plasma fire—and then silence.

“Let me through,” James ordered as he squeezed carefully forward through his people. Finally, he entered the small open area where the tunnels converged into the choke point.

The path forward was clogged with smoke, bodies and debris. Two of his power-armored troopers were sitting on the edge of the room, receiving rough and ready medical attention as the others set up to cover the entrance to the control center.

“Any peep from the A!Tol?” he asked Sherman. He hadn’t seen anything on the automatic reports the suits gave him, but that didn’t mean anything compared to the eyes and ears of the woman on the front.

“I
think
they realized what was going on and opened fire from their own side,” she told him. “Can’t be sure, though.”

“Well, time to play diplomat,” James sighed. He stepped forward to the corridor leading toward the control center for the A!Tol base. He set his translator to project in A!Tol and leaned against the wall, just out of the line of fire down the corridor.

“Hello in there,” he shouted. “Is there somebody in there with authority to talk to me?”

There was silence for a moment, though he could hear shifting through the smoke and the crackling of the small fires.

“I am Brigade Commander Kashel,” a voice his computer informed him was A!Tol—he certainly couldn’t see the speaker—replied. “Who are you?”

“I am Major James Wellesley of the privateer
Tornado
,” James told her. “Now, I’m not going to pretend we’re here to rescue you. We came with these idiots, but as you can tell, we had a slight difference of opinion with them.

“I am not here to kill anyone, but the truth is you had fifteen thousand human prisoners in this base, neatly packaged up for the slavers we came with. So, right now, the only nonhumans on this rock I’m not at least
willing
to kill are the ones working for
me
.

“If you’re in a surrendering mood, Brigade Commander, it so happens I’m listening. But if you’re in a dying one, I am prepared to oblige you.”

James smiled tightly. He need the controls and computers in the surveillance center to end this mess
quickly
, but with the troops who’d volunteered out of those slaves, the day
was
going to end with him in control of the base.

One way or another.

His only answer was silence for a long moment. He was gesturing Sherman to him, about to prepare for a final push, when a response finally cut through the smoke.

“What guarantee do I have that my people will be safe?” Kashel demanded.

“I am the second son of the Duke of Wellington,” James said harshly. “For fourteen generations, my fathers and mothers have guarded the realm we serve. By my family’s honor, you will not be harmed.”

Silence, then, finally:

“We are laying down our weapons, Major Wellesley,” Kashel told him. “I trust the lives of my people to your honor.”

#

The smoke slowly began to clear as James approached the door to the control center. At some point, the security hatch had clearly been blown off with explosives, and it now lay flat on the ground, forming an additional obstacle on the already-dangerous ground.

Two A!Tol stood in that door, each slowly removing the complex interlinked plating that made up the power armor for the many-tentacled species. Their weapons were already on the ground, and one gestured for James to go past them with a free manipulator tentacle.

He walked into the control center and
felt
the sense of desperation that filled the room. The survivors—there was no better word for them—all looked to him and the power-armored soldiers following him. Weapons were tossed in a pile just inside the door. Over a dozen aliens from four different species were receiving medical attention in a corner, and plasma burns and bullet holes marked much of the equipment.

“Take over the consoles,” James ordered his people. “Connect with our mobile forces, sweep the base. I want the last of Forel’s people dead or chained inside an hour.”

“On it,” Sherman replied, leading the alien members of her team to the computers. The uniformed aliens manning them stepped back, clearly staying out of the way of the invaders while looking at them with shell-shocked gazes.

“Who is Kashel?” James demanded. An A!Tol in the center of the room slowly approached him, waving manipulator tentacles to draw attention.

“I am,” she replied, purple and black flickering across her skin—fear and stress. “I am the senior surviving officer of this base, originally the second-in-command.”

“I need you to order the rest your people to stand down and shelter in place,” he told her. “We will use your surveillance to neutralize the remaining pirates and take full control of this facility, but I cannot guarantee your people’s safety until we have taken them into custody.”

“I have passed on the surrender order,” she replied. “I wish no more death. Why are you even here?”

“I am here because you tentacled bastards conquered my planet, took thousands of my people as slaves, and left us other choice but to turn pirate to honor our oaths,” James said flatly. “I promised you would not be harmed and I will keep that promise—but you better have a damned good explanation for the fact that there were
fifteen thousand
humans in this base ready to be captured.”

Her tentacles fluttered in a confused swirl.

“I have no explanation, Major Wellesley,” the A!Tol finally replied. “I was aware of no such prisoners. The sector I presume you found them in was locked down under my commander’s orders for a classified special project.

“The A!Tol Imperium does not take slaves,” she told him. “We certainly do not take slaves from worlds we are trying to peacefully absorb like yours. Those prisoners should not have been here.”

“Then perhaps I need to
discuss
this with your commander,” James said calmly. He might regret it later, but right now he was willing for said discussion to involve burning tentacles off one by one.

“She is dead,” Kashel admitted. “She…met with the raiders—the other raiders, that is—in the secured compound. I do not know what she expected, but they shot her.”

There
had
been a dead A!Tol among the aliens Forel’s people had murdered.

“I have no answers for you, Major,” she said. “Only the oath, on my Empress’s honor, that whatever brought so many of your people here, it was not truly the action of her Navy or her Imperium.”

Sherman had been standing next to James as this discussion concluded, and tapped his shoulder, linking in to a private channel.

“Do you buy this, sir?” she asked, the featureless helm of her armor focused on Kashel.