Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason (39 page)

But then, there had been his order to train with the Marines, after Terra Nova.

“No, sir,” I agreed. “I’ll wait and see what happens.”

Day followed day as we sailed on through the Beyond. We entered an unexplored star system and discovered two Earth-like planets orbiting around each other, with a smaller planetoid in the barycentre between them. I took a shuttle down to the surface with two of the Ensigns, and three Marines for security, and we walked on a beach under an alien sky. I looked up and saw the other planet hanging in the sky, seemingly far closer than the Moon on Earth, and shivered. It was irrational, but I felt that the planet was going to come crashing down on me. Settlers on Jupiter’s moons had felt the same – they’d also seen the Great Red Spot as an eye glaring at them – and some of them had gone insane. I wondered who would come willingly to settle this planet, if they knew the truth. Perhaps people from the mountainous areas of Earth, I decided; both planets were covered in mountains.

The Captain formally named the two planets Romulus and Remus, after the legendary founders of Rome, but I doubted the name would stick. The UN would go looking for some nice inoffensive name for the twin worlds before they started settlement – even assuming that there were enough colonist-carriers left to settle the colony – and the first city would probably end up being called Landing City, again. The Captain shrugged when I asked him if they’d change the name, merely noting that whatever happened, he’d named the planets. We left a satellite in orbit to mark our visit and headed back onwards to our final destination, Bellefonte.

I had wondered if we would get any finders reward for locating the new planet – planets – but the regulations suggested that any discoveries made by UNPF personnel automatically belonged to the UNPF. It was quite possible that the planet was the location of a black colony and they wouldn’t be happy at being disturbed, but they wouldn’t get any reward either. If they were lucky, they'd be integrated into the settlement population. It had happened before. The unlucky ones would get a harsh lesson in how the UN treated deviant populations and probably wind up enslaved, or dumped on somewhere like Botany. I mulled on that as we sped onwards to our final destination.

“Captain,” Yianni said, as we emerged from the wormhole, “I’m picking up a distress signal.”

“Put it through,” the Captain ordered. Bellefonte might not be a UN system, but all starships were obliged to offer aid if required.

“This is…station alpha…under attack…”

The signal broke off in a wash of static. “Signal lost, sir,” Yianni said.

The Captain nodded. “Sound battle stations,” he ordered. “Helm, take us in.”

Chapter Thirty-One

On first glimpse, there appears to be no economic basis for piracy in the UN’s sphere, but that is a false impression. Depending on what the pirates loot, they can sell it to black or grey colonies – or even back to the UN or the colonies. Even farming equipment, sold to the right people, can bring a high price. High tech is worth more than gold to the black colonies. Although the UN would wish to deny it, it cannot be doubted that many pirates are UNPF renegade ships, determined to eke out a life for themselves on the fringe.

-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.

“Power up weapons units,” I ordered, as I brought the tactical console on line. One hand moved down a line of switches, unlocking the starship’s weapons. “Load torpedo tubes. Load missile racks. Power up laser cannons and activate the point defence systems.”

“Number One, launch a probe towards the enemy ship,” the Captain ordered. I complied and launched the fast-boost probe towards the pirate vessel. “Ensign Gerasimos, transmit a stand-down and prepare to be boarded signal to the enemy ship.”

“Aye, sir,” Yianni said. She worked her console. “No reply, sir.”

The Captain leaned back in his chair. “Put the feed from the probe on the main display,” he ordered. “Stand by to engage.”

The probe’s signal vanished suddenly – the enemy point defence would have picked it off, given time – but it had lasted long enough to give us an image of our enemy. I almost came to my feet when I saw the enemy ship, feeling a mixture of astonishment…and shame. There was no mistaking the design. It was a starship of the same class as the Jacques Delors.

The Captain muttered a curse, barely loud enough to be heard. “Number One,” he ordered, “prepare to fire a warning shot.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I had heard of renegade starships before, of course – a case could probably be made that I was a renegade myself, or worse – but this was the first time I’d ever seen one. There was no mistaking it for a Heinlein Resistance starship, or a more mundane pirate vessel. This was a UNPF starship, armed and ready to press matters. “What did they want with Bellefonte anyway?”

“Unknown,” the Captain said. There was a dark tone in his voice. “We’ll find out when we ask them, afterwards. Open communications.”

“Channel open, sir,” Yianni said.

“This is Captain Percival Harriman of the UNS Jacques Delors,” the Captain said, coldly. “You are ordered to stand down your attack and prepare to be boarded. If you do not stand down, we will be forced to open fire.”

I scowled, watching the power fluctuations around the enemy starship carefully. If they were renegades, they wouldn’t surrender, not knowing that the UN would either send them to Botany or simply throw them out the nearest airlock without bothering with a trial. I wondered, absently, what their story had been. Had a Captain led a mutiny against the UNPF, or had his officers overthrown him and turned pirate? The latter seemed much more likely. Bellefonte was a small colony, yet it produced a considerable amount of starship components and other high technology. If it hadn’t been for the distance factor, the UN would probably have occupied it decades ago.

“They must be having problems maintaining their ship,” I muttered, skimming through the records of lost starships and eliminating all that had been destroyed by the Heinlein Resistance or other resistance forces. The database wasn't exact, but the UN had produced sixty cruisers like the Jacques Delors and five had vanished in deep space, without any known cause. “They won’t have any source of components.”

“Perhaps,” the Captain agreed. I flushed. I hadn’t realised that I was speaking aloud. “That does leave the other question. Why haven’t they run?”

I understood. No pirate in his right mind would want to tangle with a cruiser. They should have opened a wormhole and escaped, but instead, they were just finishing their bombardment of the Bellefonte Station. They’d be in missile range in less than a minute, unless they intended to escape by the skin of their teeth. They wouldn’t have time to move anything from the station before we were on them.

“Weapons locked, sir,” I reported. “All missile tubes are ready to fire.”

The Captain nodded. “Fire a warning shot,” he ordered. “Fire!”

“Missile away, sir,” I said. The starship shuddered as it launched the first missile. “Tracking now.”

I’d programmed the missile to detonate just short of their drive field, enough to scorch them, but unlikely to cause any real damage unless their drive field was completely wrecked. It was possible, I conceded, but there was nothing wrong with their point defence network. The missile telemetry terminated suddenly as they burned it out of space. A moment later, they began to move away.

“Helm, take us after them,” the Captain ordered. “Tactical, fire at will.”

I keyed the firing sequence into the console and, a moment later, launched a full spread of missiles towards the pirate ship. They turned away again, presenting their broadsides, and returned fire. Their missiles, I noted with a flicker of relief, were definitely older designs. That suggested that someone out along the Beyond had been building missiles for them; the UN had abandoned that particular design years ago. At least they weren't the damned missiles Heinlein had created. They would have made the engagement too unpredictable.

“Point defence network up and running,” I confirmed, as the missiles entered the point defence network. They had the advantage of being targeted on a starship that was closing the gap between them itself, but they were too old and slow to be a major problem. The pirates would have to fire hundreds of them to be sure of scoring a hit, let alone the numbers required to destroy us.

I turned my attention back to our own missiles. Four of the seven missiles we’d fired had been taken out by the point defences and a fifth had misfired, but the final two detonated against the enemy’s drive field. I hoped – prayed - that that had been enough, but a moment later I saw the enemy starship emerge from the blasts, open up a wormhole and vanish.

“Track the wormhole,” the Captain ordered, sharply. I realised what he had in mind with a thrill of excitement. “Engineering, bring the Jump Drive online, now!”

“Unable to track the wormhole,” the Pilot reported, grimly. “The disruption from the nuclear blasts confused the sensors for too long.”

“Nuts,” the Captain said, mildly. “Damage report?”

“No damage,” I reported. “There are mild fluctuations in the drive field, but nothing significant. The Engineer would like to spend several hours examining the generators before we jump out, but he reports that we can jump out now, if necessary.”

“There’s little point,” the Captain said, coldly. I felt guilty, even though it hadn’t been my fault. “Helm, take us back to Bellefonte. Number One, stand down from battle stations, but I want ready watches in all of the compartments, including the bridge. If they decide to come back while we’re here, I want to be ready to greet them.”

“Aye, sir,” I said. I didn’t disagree with the sentiments, although double watches would make it harder to send anyone over for shore leave, or even go through the engagement with the Ensigns. They’d have to study it and identify mistakes, even though it would be a brave Ensign that accursed the Captain of making a mistake.

“Yianni, open communications with Bellefonte,” the Captain continued. “We may as well carry out our actual mission while they might be grateful.”

It was a day before I was sent, as the Captain’s representative, to Bellefonte. Bellefonte’s government, for reasons of its own, had insisted on holding the discussions on one of their orbiting asteroids and the Captain, for reasons of his own, had agreed without demur. I’d been on asteroids before, but Bellefonte’s asteroids hadn’t been spun up to generate gravity, leaving everyone floating in zero-gravity. I’d grown used to it at the Academy, but even so, it had been a long time and I felt a little unwell as I floated through the airlock to meet their representative.

“We wanted to experiment a little with his asteroid once we’d mined it of all useful materials,” the representative explained. Her name was Jade, or so she claimed; a vaguely-Chinese looking girl, barely older than I was. She was pretty, in a way, but reminded me too much of the girls from Luna City. “We thought about creating a gravity field through proper generators, but then the government decided to send the elderly into orbit to make their final years a little easier.”

I blinked. “You can’t cure them?”

Her voice hardened. “The regeneration therapies are very expensive,” she said, coldly. “We cannot produce them for ourselves and we cannot purchase them from you or anyone else. They have to grow old naturally.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Earth’s regeneration treatments were normally saved for the very wealthy or the very well politically-connected. It was true that elderly people were entitled to a dose for a reason that no one had ever explained to me, but most of them received nothing. At least one person I had known as a child had died shortly after receiving her treatment, which suggested that the treatment hadn’t been produced properly, or had been nothing more than boiled water. Earth’s companies were set production quotas and…well, they had to struggle to meet them. A planet like Bellefonte, without even the resources of Heinlein or another world, wouldn’t be able to produce it for itself. “Why were the pirates attacking you?”

“They came four months ago and demanded that we hand over vital components for their ship, or else,” Jade explained. I realised that she was glad of the change in subject. “The Government realised that it had no choice, but to comply, so it handled over everything the pirates wanted. Three months later, they returned and demanded more components and – this time – women as well. A month later…”

“They returned again?” I guessed. “Why didn’t you produce defences?”

“We did,” Jade explained. “We opened fire when the pirates arrived and tried to drive them off. It didn’t work and they were on the verge of destroying one of our stations when you arrived and chased them away. Why didn’t you destroy them?”

“They just opened a wormhole and escaped,” I explained. I felt as if I had failed personally, even though I knew that there had been no chance of catching the pirates. They hadn’t chosen to fight for long – hell, it was still a mystery why they had even fought at all. Perhaps they had wanted to make the point that they couldn’t be scared off so easily. It wasn't as if the Jacques Delors could remain at Bellefonte forever. “They’re going to be back.”