Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (48 page)

"Gordon, Chance here. We were going to assume a similar parking pattern to when we left. Dart going wherever he pleases of course. We are about an hour out. Do you wish us to make any adjustments to that plan?" he asked.

"Nope. If that entry burst is one of the big boys you saw then nothing we have could beat it to jump from orbit here. Running  just looks bad, like we are guilty of something. Let's wait and see what they want. If it's the Biters they are welcome to them. If they want to touch one of ours we'll see if that big a ship can eat a dozen X-heads all at once. That big a target, how the hell could we miss?"

"You people are insane! With all due respect sir... "

"What are the alternatives Fussy? We can't talk. We can't run. Might as well be crazy."

"My pardon sir. I have no missiles so I should stay silent. Who knows? Maybe I wouldn't be afraid to shoot at a ship that big if I had some."

"Without going into too much detail, Fussy. If I could get twelve weapons on that target I might be able to vaporize it completely despite the size and not leave anything but the grit that condenses back out of the plasma ball."

"I believe you. I'd rather not see it happen if we can avoid it."

"We'll try to avoid it. I never even wanted to shoot any Biters, and they keep making that a harder attitude to retain all the time."

* * *

"We have a little situation here," Gordon told Lee. "The Badgers are going to suspend shuttle flights in a few hours. You read the after action report Chance sent in when he reentered the system yesterday?"

"Yes, I thought he did well. I took his apologizing as tongue in cheek. He might need to stop doing that with a different commander though. Another commander might think he lacks confidence. I just take it as a sign he is so confident he isn't afraid to criticize himself in after-action, and a little black humor perhaps," Lee said.

"I will probably warn him about the dangers of too honest a self appraisal sometime, after enough time has passed to soften it a little. But it looks like we have a system entry of one of  those big ships he saw. Possibly chasing some Biters. Any sort of movement might be upsetting to those folks, we have no idea what they are like. That's why the Badgers are grounding the shuttles. I agree with that. I don't want ours flying either. I'd be just as happy for you to stay down there another day or two. It's probably safer down there on the planet too."

"It's pleasant here. That's no burden. I can wash a change of clothes. Can I still get the data stream? I haven't been following it, but nothing has been happening. If you have a bigger ship than I've ever seen maneuvering up there I'd love to follow the action."

"You can't see much on a com pad. But yeah I'm not shutting down our local net."

"I have my spex with me. I'll go off to a dark room somewhere and see it just fine."

"That's fine. You can even talk to me, just don't distract me if things go all hairy."

"I wouldn't think of it. Just be careful, OK?"

"As much as I can, yeah. Love you too," he replied to the real implied message. "Out."

Lee walked in the other room. "Talker, I was wrong. It looks like the Biters may have bit off more than they can chew without  either of us needing to rein them in."

He lifted his muzzle from his screen, interested, then frowned and looked at it again. "This is a reference to horses? Does anyone ever
finish
learning this language?"

"Honestly no, I don't think so, if that's a serious question. There are antiquated forms, regional dialects, and all the technical jargon of a hundred thousand professions. You could probably spend a month just learning all the terms they use to describe sailboats and seamanship. Some of which we still use for starships."

"I was afraid of that... "

Chapter 23

"If I've fulfilled my duty I'd like to be released," Captain Fussy of the
Dart
requested. The
Dart
,
Sharp Claws
and
Roadrunner
were all back at rest with respect to the station and their other ships again.

"I'm done with you and satisfied, thank you," Chance said on the command channel. "Gordon should release you though."

"Thank you for your service. I'll ask through your command if we need you again. Are you going to stand off?" Gordon asked.

"No actually I'm going to dock," Fussy told him. "As you said. We can't run and we can't talk. If they are the sort to fire on an unarmed civilian station I guess we're all screwed."

"We won't initiate it," Gordon promised.

"I had no thought you would. We haven't seen your fleet be the aggressor once. By your leave, we are proceeding to dock."

"Have a cold one for me," Gordon said. If Fussy didn't understand that he could ask the software.

"The one Biter coming in
insists
he is going to dock," Captain Frost noted, monitoring station com. "They told him plainly they can't stop him from grappling the collar, but the dock doors are hardware locked from the inside and won't open to their air lock."

"OK, station scan has detail on the big entry," Gordon announced. "Another one of those seven hundred meter ships. Those must be their scouts or destroyers. The two behind it are twelve hundred meters long. Impressive  isn't it?"

"I can't imagine why you'd
need
a ship that big," Lord Byron complained. "Nobody is going to do bulk hauling between stars. I don't think it could ever be made cheap enough."

"Bocce ball court off the ward room mess?" Fat Ortega quipped.

"Swimming pool on 'C' deck?" Chance added quickly.

"Think
big,
"
 Parsimony Cho challenged them. "Polo fields in the middecks," he suggested. "And of course that means you need stables."

"I'd like that," Thor agreed. "When I ran out of filter duty I could assign mucking out the stalls."

"I'm sure our Commander Gordon is already thinking how he might steal one," the usually quiet Captain Priceless Fenton told them from
The Champion William
. That was super chatty for him.

"Perhaps just
borrow
one," Gordon allowed modestly.

"System scan indicates they are skimming the star much closer than I'd ever care to at a sedate ten G. My system reports the numbers faithfully but tags them with an error message because it doesn't believe the numbers," Einstein reported. "We have to modify the code."

"Their course and acceleration extrapolated indicates they intend to come to rest here or make a very slow pass, which is interesting because they set the course when they were blind behind the star. That means they know what is here on the other side of the star.  Could they have put a drone in without making enough entry radiation to call attention to it or have some other way of spying on us? I'm not at all sure they can interpret system scan yet," Gordon said.

"Perhaps they are masters of the miniature as well as the colossal," Frost speculated. "They may have tiny stealthy jump drones we can't see."

"That's a possibility," Gordon acknowledged. "When they are a half hour out I want everybody at battle stations and damage control positions. All crew will be in suits with helmets on, even off duty in their bunks. Brownie will assign fleet targets as I direct and if we are fired upon we shall return fire on the offender with every missile we have in a tube. Greasers and peashooters will cover the pause while missile tubes are reloaded. Are there any questions?"

"Do you intend to reply to them if they fire upon the station or Badger ships?" Lord Byron asked.

"No. They have not asked for a pact of mutual defense with us or with our nations. Perhaps because they don't have the means to hold up their end, but who knows why, really? The
Dart
was under our protection, but he is dismissed now. I will not risk our civilian ships and people without being offered a signed on paper wet ink treaty, with spelled out terms and obligations, and I might not take one offered even at our governments' urging if I don't really like the terms."

"Do you intend to object if they fire upon the Biters?" Ho'omanawanui on the
Sharp Claws
asked.

"
Hell
no... I may give them supporting fire as needed," Gordon made clear. "Unless they take out a big bite of station where that idiot Biter insists he'll dock. They need to know to talk and understand what's happening before they use weapons indiscriminately. It looks like they had the brains to do that with Chance's group. At least one of their commanders did when he fail-safed his missiles. Any reasonable intelligence should not assume alliance based on simple physical proximity. Life is complicated and you don't use a nuke and then say oops."

"Tell the North Americans," Thor said drolly. Remember how they shot each other up at Fargone?"

"As I said...  Any
reasonable intelligence
," Gordon repeated, but it was humor, not a reproof.

"The Biter is making their usual hotshot approach to the station," Einstein noted.

"That would be sufficient for me to ban them permanently if I ran the place," Gordon said.

"Ah, the alien ships are hailing us from way out. Perhaps that indicates a little caution seeing a station and this many ships? Is that a match for their previous transmissions?" Gordon asked.

"The first couple seconds, then it diverges," Einstein said.

"Be prepared to transmit images similar to what Captain Chance used with them before. I may want to send video off the bridge." Gordon thought on some of Lee's recent advice. "Have Ha-bob-bob-brie report to the bridge right now. Tell him not to waste time cleaning up or anything, just move it."

"His supervisor says he's on the way," Brownie reported.

"Well we don't want to seem standoffish. Transmit this back to them with my image in video. Gordon checked to make sure he had a decent head and shoulders view in his console camera. 'Hello big boy, I doubt you can understand this but maybe in a few days or a few years you'll translate it. We assume you are chasing Biters. Gods only know what the idiots have done to you but that's not our concern. I'd like to get along with you, but if you touch one of my ships I'll ram a nuke up your butt and ruin your day so fast you won't know what happened. I hope that doesn't happen.' Send them a composite image of our ships and Humans, Derf and Hinth together."

"Sent," Brownie confirmed. It took less than a minute for him to add the images.

The next transmission had no audio. It just showed the
Dart, Roadrunner,
and
Sharp Claws
together in formation.

"He's asking why we didn't include the
Dart
because he's seen them together." Einstein suggested.

"Probably, and a reasonable question. Send a picture of the Dart and a Badger," Gordon said. It was soon on its way. There was still enough light lag to make waiting uncomfortable.

The mosaic of both groups of species Chance sent from his little task force in the far system came back. With one disturbing addition. An image of a Biter was added. Not any image they had sent, and the Biter looked a bit rough, beak hanging open eyes vacant. Gordon would guess he was dead.

"Send the same matrix back with the image of the Biter blacked out. Then send a copy of the star chart the Badgers gave us with their races around it, but be sure not to add the Biters or their worlds we had added after the original chart. Make very sure of that," Gordon repeated.

The image of them all with the Biters included came back again.

"Just repeat the mosaic with blanked out Biter."

A fair line drawing  of a flat plate station came back with a Biter ship hanging on the edge.

"Well that's as clear an accusation as I've ever seen. Why is he docked on your station if he isn't part of your group?" Thor translated. "Kind of hard to answer."

"Look on the partial web we carry and find a picture of a big stout door with a locking bar dropped across it holding it shut," Gordon ordered. "Do a search for similar terms and images too."

"I have several," Brownie offered, putting them on his screen. "That's brilliant," he added.

"Hell, send all of them," Gordon ordered, ignoring the compliment.

One was a picture of a Derf keep door, with a massive wooden beam in iron brackets securing it, another was an old woodprint of large plank door with a wagon overturned against it and all sorts of barrels and beams and furniture piled in a heap to block it, backed by men with edged weapons. There was an old ad from Earth for a telescoping lock pole that braced under the door knob, and a picture of a road with two main battle tanks pulled across it at an angle to each other blocking the way and armed men behind them.

Another old drawing showed a stagecoach stopped before a tree cut down across the road. A photo showed a long line of people waiting to get in a club and a padded red velvet ropes strung between chromed theatre stanchions blocking the entry. One bouncer was holding an unfastened rope out of the way to let two people in and the other bouncer was holding his palm up denying the next couple entry. An old picture showed a long line of antique ground cars stopped before a raised drawbridge with a ship going through.

Just to top it all off they ended with a video showing a main entry through the blocky barbican on the face of a castle. First the massive oak and ironwork portcullis comes crashing down sealing the entry and then the draw bridge swiveled up covering it.

"If they can't figure it out from all of that they don't have
anything
in common with us," Gordon predicted. "They'd have to not use doors and I know damn well they have airlocks."

They didn't respond, so either that answered their question or confused them beyond any reply.

Ha-bob-bob-brie arrived in a maintenance jumpsuit that had seen some serious use, liberally coated with several lubricants and metal shavings.

"My daughter thinks you are underutilized, and upon consideration I decided she is right. Will you accept an immediate promotion to bridge crew, details of your training and duties to be worked out after the crisis we have on our plates right now is resolved?"