First Strike (23 page)

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Lady Dalsha said. “I…”

The Empress’s image fizzled out and disappeared, a sure sign of dismissal. Lady Dalsha bowed her head to the screen and then headed for the hatch. The freighter that had transported her to Kauirik was still in orbit, ready to take her onwards. And at least Hammerfall wasn't the homeworld. She might be able to redeem herself…

…Assuming, of course, that the humans didn't have more tricks up their sleeves.

* * *

Blackbird
 
coasted in towards the system primary, all drives and active sensors stepped down to the bare minimum. No one, not even human starships with the most capable sensors in the galaxy, would have been able to detect her except at very close range. She would never be able to stand in the line of battle – a single destroyer could have obliterated her with a lucky shot – but she hadn't been designed as a blunt instrument. Her mission was reconnaissance alone.

Compared to a regular starship, she was tiny, an invisible ghost crossing the stars. A cloaking device would have produced turbulence, a distortion that might be tracked by a good or lucky sensor officer, but
 
Blackbird
 
produced nothing. Her hull was crammed with passive sensors, leaving little room for the two intelligence operatives who served as her crew. They worked, ate and slept in a cabin barely large enough to swing a cat.

“I have at least five superdreadnoughts,” Commander Connie Craig said. The power emissions of superdreadnoughts stood out, even among a swarm of smaller starships patrolling orbital space above Hammerfall. “Maybe another two – or maybe they’re ECM drones.”

“We should get a better look as we get closer,” Lieutenant Bruno Lombardi agreed. Like Connie, he was an intelligence officer rather than a line officer, although the distinction between them blurred where
 
Blackbird
 
and her sisters were concerned. “But they’ve established a tachyon net around the planet itself. I think they must be worried about spies like us.”

Connie nodded. A starship that passed through the net would be instantly detectable, allowing System Command to vector destroyers and assault shuttles to intercept the intruder. System Command itself was a colossal fortress, a space station large enough to daunt even the human imagination, bristling with weapons, sensor blisters and repair yards for the Hegemony Navy. It said something about the Hegemony’s resources that they could build something out of what was, effectively, pocket change. But then, Hammerfall was their major naval base in the sector. There were no pesky civilian ships to get in the way of defending the base.

The hours ticked by slowly as
 
Blackbird
 
made her closest approach to the planet. They’d be well clear of the tachyon net, Connie noted with some relief;
 
Blackbird
 
wouldn't have had a hope in hell of escape if she’d been detected. A larger ship might have escaped, but
 
Blackbird’s
 
drives were too weak to give her a fighting chance. And her crews were under orders to destroy the ship – and themselves – if the Hegemony caught them. They couldn't risk her falling into enemy hands.

“Definitely five superdreadnoughts,” Lombardi said. He hesitated. “I count roughly seventy lighter vessels, mainly destroyers. They’re probably consolidating the other units in this sector at Hammerfall. They’re going to outgun Admiral Sampson when he arrives.”

“Hell, that’s always been true,” Connie pointed out. But human quality had provided a counter to Galactic quantity, at least so far. “I think the Admiral will be pleased to know what we have found. We’ve verified the location of a squadron of superdreadnoughts.”

ONI did its best to track the Hegemony’s ships, but it was difficult, particularly for the smaller vessels. Most of the Hegemony’s superdreadnoughts were along their borders, or pinned down defending their homeworld, leaving only a small force to block humanity’s advance. But then, five more superdreadnoughts would be quite sufficient to block a similar fleet from any other spacefaring power.

“And then we can get out of here,” she added. “Maybe the Admiral will send us back for ringside seats when the fleet hits Hammerfall.”

“So,” Karla said, “how does it feel to be a pirate king?”

Joshua snorted. One rule that was a constant in both the business world and the pirate world – which were closer related than most people would have preferred to believe – was that success bred success. The loose network of pirates, fences, rebels and rogue colonies had fallen in love with the Clunkers, a love affair that would continue precisely as long as the stolen goods and money kept rolling in. Joshua had used their growing reputation to convince dozens of other pirates to join them, using the newcomers to crew ships he’d captured or bought on the black market. He’d known long before he’d been summoned home that there
 
was
 
a black market, but he’d never realised its extent. There was a whole secret economy operating out beyond explored space.

“Strange,” he said. He’d spent years worrying about his crews, travelling through regions where piracy was epidemic. Now he was planning and organising pirate attacks against Hegemony shipping, with enough ships to ensure that even escorting vessels were badly outgunned. A few more weeks and the Hegemony would be forced to start assigning heavier escort squadrons or abandon some of their most profitable shipping lanes. Not that they were going to have much profit in the very near future; regional insurance rates were rising sharply. “If only I was sure that they would obey orders.”

He had no doubt about the Clunkers, even if he
 
had
 
taken most of their personnel out of a penal colony. They knew the score as well as he did. But the other pirates wanted profit first, rather than waging war against the Hegemony, and even the rebels needed funds. The desire for loot drove them and they had a nasty habit of abandoning the chase to capture disabled freighters and take their cargo.

In one sense, it didn't really matter – and it was sure to confuse the Hegemony. But in another sense, it risked expanding the war or convincing other powers to start sending their own escort units through Hegemony-controlled space. The Hegemony wouldn't like it, but if they had a shortage of their own lighter units, they might accept it without more than token protests. And
 
that
 
risked expanding the war. As far as Joshua knew, no one had realised that the Clunkers were exclusively human – and the pirates they had recruited certainly weren't – but sooner or later someone would put all the pieces together. Who benefited from the Hegemony’s woes? Humanity wasn't the only suspect, but they were the only ones who had gone to war.

Karla snorted. “You don’t trust them?”

“I trust them about as far as I can pick up this ship and throw it,” Joshua countered. The Hegemony had its own agents in the black market. Chances were that they were already trying to locate Joshua’s base. He’d pulled a fast one by using a freighter converted into a mobile shipyard as his prime base, which should be effectively impossible to detect, but there were limits to how long they could operate without proper refitting. “But if the worst should occur, they are expendable.”

And so are we
, he thought silently.

The Clunker Fleet had made an impact, largely through coordinating its operations and careful planning, neither of which were hallmarks of pirate society. But the Hegemony wouldn't simply give up. They’d set traps, hoping to snare his ships in an ambush, using overwhelming power to destroy the small squadron. And when that happened, the alliance of pirates he’d pulled together would melt away like snow under summer sun. He’d done his best to prepare fallback positions, but he had no illusions about their effectiveness. They couldn't risk a major defeat.

“But many a king on a first class throne, if he wants to call his crown his own,

Must manage somehow to get through, more dirty work than ever I do.”

Karla smiled. “What was that?”

“Gilbert and Sullivan,” Joshua said. “They wrote an opera about pirates…”

The console chimed as the enemy ships came into view, slipping through quantum space under heavy escort. Joshua had taken up a position that should allow his ships to observe the newcomers without being seen themselves, just in case the Hegemony had prepared some unpleasant surprises for his men. Sensors rapidly picked up a pair of light cruisers, flanked by four destroyers, escorting five heavy freighters and one ship of unknown configuration. It reassembled a freighter in basic design, but it didn't match anything in ONI’s records.

“It might be a Q-ship,” Karla said, after a moment. The Galactics generally disdained Q-ships, pointing out that a warship convincingly pretending to be a freighter would have all of the disadvantages of being a freighter and none of the advantages of actually
 
being
 
a freighter. But if there was one area where they made sense, it was in hunting pirates. Most pirates didn't want to blow away cargos they could sell on the black market. “Or maybe it’s just a kind of freighter we haven’t seen before. They do have more than one design.”

“Maybe,” Joshua agreed. They
 
could
 
back off and let the convoy go on its way, but the pirates would complain – loudly – that they hadn't been paid for their services. Given that their job was to steal from the rich and keep for themselves, it would be a little hypocritical, yet somehow he doubted that that would stop them. And disgruntled pirates might sell them out to the Hegemony. “Signal the fleet. We advance in a body on my mark.”

Standard tactics for evading interception in quantum space were to scatter, every starship heading away on a different vector. Against the average pirate ship, which operated on her own or in pairs, it wasn't a bad tactic. The storms of quantum space would cover the freighters that got away while the pirates were hunting down and disabling their comrades. But that was why Joshua had worked so hard to build a coalition, no matter the disadvantages involved in working with such untrustworthy allies. Not a single freighter would escape his fleet.

“Mark,” he ordered. “Take us in, now.”

Blackbeard
 
lanced forward, weapons at the ready. The Hegemony ships altered course, the escorts forming a line to face the pirates while the freighters headed away from the battle. That too wasn't bad tactics, but it suggested that the mystery ship was merely another freighter...unless the Funks were trying to be subtle. They weren't known for being anything, but brutally direct – and yet some of them were crafty enough to match the best humanity could offer. It might still be a trap.

Any pirate force would be a hodgepodge of technology, drives and weapons systems from all over the galaxy. Few rogue colonies had the industrial base to produce their own starships – and they would be careful about selling their wares to pirates, knowing that the Hegemony or another of the Galactics might send a superdreadnought squadron to extract revenge. The Hegemony ships would have good reason to believe that they had the advantage over the pirate fleet, even though they were badly outnumbered. Under normal circumstances, Joshua knew, their confidence would be fully justified. But these weren’t normal circumstances.

“Fire,” he ordered.

Blackbird
 
launched a spread of antimatter torpedoes towards her target, the first of the light cruisers. The other ships opened fire seconds later, presenting the Funks with an impossible tactical problem, even as they started to return fire. Joshua half-expected them to make an emergency transit back into normal space, which would have allowed them to evade the torpedoes, but it was already too late. Both light cruisers were blown apart, their death throes exciting quantum space and threatening the creation of new energy storms. One of the destroyers staggered out of position, spinning helplessly through space. The other two kept firing, concentrating on the pirate ships. It represented their best chance to damage the fleet before they were destroyed.

“
Serial Peacemaker
 
took four hits and is seriously damaged,” Karla reported. “Her captain is requesting permission to break off the engagement.”

“Granted,” Joshua said, tightly. Their second salvo was already away. The galactic news service had been raving about new weapons from Earth over the last few weeks, but none of the Clunkers had anything that could be traced directly back to Earth. It hardly mattered, not in this engagement. The last two escorts died, leaving the path to the convoy open. “Detail ships to hunt down the freighters and remind them that we need prisoners.”

“Of course,” Karla agreed. “Do you think they’ll listen?”

Joshua shrugged. He’d been very clear that all booty was to be shared equally between pirate ships, hopefully dissuading the pirates from breaking off and chasing prizes they considered to be more important than maintaining formation. But the pirates were a suspicious and distrusting lot. Some of them probably thought that Joshua intended to abandon them, sooner or later, and take all the loot for himself. But that wasn't a bad thing. They wouldn't suspect his real motives.

Blackbeard
 
slowly overhauled the mystery vessel, watching suspiciously for any sign that the freighter was a disguised warship. Nothing suggested itself, apart from the fact that the crew were trying to evade Joshua rather than surrendering in the hopes that they would be well-treated. Maybe it was a rational thing to do – the pirates didn't have a good reputation for treating prisoners – but all they were doing was annoying him. It took nearly thirty minutes to chase them down enough to launch the assault shuttles, which locked onto the freighter hull without incident. Joshua was still watching carefully when Kang reported in from the captured vessel.

“Boss, I think you're going to need to see this,” he said. “It’s a prison ship.”

* * *

It was nearly an hour after the engagement when Joshua boarded the captured freighter, after he’d seen to the
 
Serial Peacemaker
 
and reassured the pirates that they would receive their fair share of any booty from the mystery craft. The other freighters hadn't been great prizes, but there would be enough loot to pay their operating costs and reward their allies. They’d spend most of what they’d earned on a hidden asteroid and then set out again to earn more money, once the whores, gamblers and hustlers had cleaned them out. Some things were universal among humanoid races.

The Galactics generally didn't bother with prison ships. Attitudes to crime and punishment varied from race to race, with some races having strict laws and others taking a milder view of rape and murder than a human would have found comprehensible. No one knew how the Cats punished their offenders – if there
 
were
 
Cat offenders – but the younger races tended to establish penal colonies on lifeless balls of rock and leave the offenders there to rot, if they weren't simply executed out of hand. A handful of races used personality reconstruction techniques to prevent further offending, while the Hegemony tended towards inventive punishments for female offenders. Males were assumed to be naturally rogue without female supervision, an attitude that many human females would have understood.

He boarded the ship through a secured airlock and stepped into the bridge. It looked remarkably small for such a large ship, but a glance at the status panel revealed that it was completely separate from the rest of the ship. Layers of hull metal, tough enough to require phase cannon or molecular disintegrators to penetrate, protected the crew from the prisoners, who were expected to fend for themselves while they were being transported from world to world. They didn't need to worry about restraints. There was no way the prisoners could do more than kill each other.

“Odd,” he said. “Why were they being transported in the first place? They can't be that short of trained labour, can they?”

Kang nodded towards one of the screens. “That's the live feed from the hold,” he said. “Those aren't Funks, boss.”

Joshua narrowed his eyes. He hadn't seen even a fraction of the hundreds of races in the Association, or hidden out beyond the borderlands, but he’d studied extensively and he recognised the race. The Gobbles – the closest any human could come to pronouncing their name – had been even more primitive than Earth when they’d been discovered by the Association, and then they’d been unlucky enough to be overrun by the Hegemony before they even knew that there was an entire civilization living among the stars. Their resistance had been pitiful – Alexander the Great wouldn't have had a prayer against modern technology, no matter his military genius – and the Funks had rapidly turned them into a slave race.

Aliens were rarely ‘cute,’ but the Gobbles came surprisingly close. They reassembled teddy bears as much as anything else, although teddy bears with sharp teeth and humanoid hands that gave them a remarkable talent for industrial machinery. Primitive didn't equal stupid and the Gobbles had managed to carve out a niche for themselves among the Funks, although never as anything other than slaves. Their treatment was a chilling reminder of the
 
best
 
that humanity could hope for if they lost the war.

“Curious,” Joshua said, slowly. “Why would they bother to transport them anywhere?”

One of the other former criminals – a computer tech with a habit of exploring outside permitted areas of military datanets – looked up from one of the consoles. “Security on this thing is rubbish,” he said, by way of explanation. “Those teddies have been convicted of treason against the Hegemony and were being taken to the Empress. I don’t think that she’s going to give them a big hug.”