Queen of the Pirates (9 page)

Hopefully, when they promoted her to Fleet Lord, he would get bumped up as well. He couldn’t imagine having to go back to just being an Executive Officer, unless they put him on a Dreadnaught, or something else big. But that was a problem for next week.

Today, he was skirting along the edge of the asteroid belt, at a relatively safe distance, at full speed, closing on
Sarmarsh IV
along one of the safe vectors d’Maine had identified. Unlike their normal attack runs, the squadron was sailing forward in a traditional formation.
Rajput
was out front, running hard and fast to keep up with the flight wing.
CR–264
was tucked in close, just in front of
Auberon
and below her two entire flight levels, just like an escort corvette should be. Ready to hunt anything coming after the carrier.

Anyone who knew Keller would be surprised at this pattern. Anyone expecting a
Republic of Aquitaine
fleet to show up would have been surprised by anything else. They were about to get several other surprises instead.

“Gunnery,” Denis said, loud enough for the whole bridge to hear, “confirm estimated time to impact.”

He watched Tamara Strnad look a question at the gunner, her black hair bobbing. Either she needed a haircut, or she was growing it out to pull back. He hadn’t noticed until now. And this wasn’t the time to ask.

Maybe in fifteen minutes, when the immediate craziness was over.

The gunner, Centurion Afolayan nodded once, barely taking his eyes off his boards as he slowly adjusted firing solutions.

“Confirmed,” she responded a beat later. “Impact in ninety seconds.”

Denis looked at the face of Commander Keller on one of the smaller screens to his left side. Noise–deafening around his station let her talk without generally being overheard. She smiled back.

“Squadron, this is the Flag,” she said over the general push. She spoke with a voice that somehow combined intimate warmth with the face of a hammer. “Initiate Phase 2.”

“Helm and Engineering,” Denis said, looking forward, “bring the engines to emergency flank speed.”

A blended chorus of replies floated back to him. This was a good crew. He had served on ships where the command centurion expected people to make eye contact and maintain proper protocol, even when under fire. He just wanted the job done first. Pretty could come later, after victory.

Even with the gravplates, the big ship shuddered as the engines surged. He watched the main screen with bright anticipation. This was why he had joined the fleet, to be one of the good guys, hunting down pirates and making the galaxy a better place.

On the main projector, a flash of light mushroomed over the horizon of
Alpha
, about where sensors had said the pirate base would be found. It was too early to be their missile striking home.

“Scanners,” Denis said sharply, but the man was already rapidly pushing buttons on his console.

“Working. Stand by,” Centurion Giroux said, his mousy brown hair looking vaguely blue in the light from his screens.

Denis watched him pick up a comm and rapidly speak into it, deadened around his console so the bridge wouldn’t be overly loud right now. It was a good idea, but he wanted to know now, and not when they got back to him.

The night sky about
Alpha
continued to be bright. There was some atmosphere around the small planet, but not nearly enough to support life. Just barely enough for wind and weather patterns, from the look of things. Still the glow was reflected, possibly off of low clouds. It was eerie.

“Flag. Sensors,” Giroux said, going straight to the commander instead of taking it to him first. Again, the sign of a good command crew. They could judge for themselves if something needed to go to the top immediately, and feel safe from repercussions if they were wrong.

“Go ahead, Giroux,” Jessica replied over the bridge comm.

“Flag, we have secondary and possibly tertiary explosions on the surface of Alpha. Big ones. No idea what caused them.”

“Acknowledged. Jež?” she asked.

“If I had to guess, Commander,” he said simply, “someone tried to crash launch a flight wing and missed. I saw it happen once. Tertiary explosions like that mean fuel cells and missiles on ready racks catching fire.”

“Understood. The first probe lasted longer than I expected, but I need another one. Get me eyes over there as soon as possible.”

“Roger that, commander,” Denis said, pulling up the locations of the flight wing and their current speed. The flight wing was supposed to cut acceleration back down to nothing ten seconds after the stealth missiles had hit, just to cause everyone over there to be extra–hyped.

“Tamara,” he said, “fire a probe over the horizon at them, right now, instead of over the pole. They won’t shoot it down fast enough to blind us. And we’ll be there shortly anyway.”

Instead of speaking, the tactical officer programmed the little sensor pod and fired it with a firm click. Then she looked up.

“It’s away,” she said. “Thirty seconds.”

Denis was about to ask when Jessica spoke.

“Squadron, this is the Flag,” she said. Again, that firm voice, hard without being brittle, command without the slightest hint of doubt. “All vessels go to maximum acceleration and close as quickly as possible. Flight wing, go to Plan Beta. Prepare for a high–speed bombing run instead of strafing and dog–fighting as you pass. If they just suffered a total meltdown over there, there isn’t going to be anyone to engage.
Rajput
, stay on plan.”

Rather than speaking, each element’s message appeared on his side board as a green light.

So far, so good.

Ξ

Jessica watched the data stream in from a dozen different sources.
Da Vinci
with the Flight wing. The probe arcing over the horizon of
Alpha
. Active and passive channels from all three vessels in the squadron. And even the boiled down command feed from Giroux.

It painted a reasonably good picture.

One of her hallmarks as a tactical officer had always been to move decisively, whether on offense or defense. That came from extensive planning and gaming out the scenarios. And dancing with the fighting robot.

Kigali might solo yachts and collect old maps in his spare time. D'Maine apparently painted. She fought wars. Old ones. New ones. Hers. Other peoples.

Most people didn’t get her. That was acceptable. They weren’t warriors in the truest sense of the word. She tried. Often, she succeeded.

Right now, a massive explosion had probably shattered a section of the pirate base and opened several bays to the inadequate atmosphere. Nobody was going to die from depressurization, but the survivors were too busy getting to breathers and suits, and trying to patch holes so the base could respond. They wouldn’t be launching fighters.

That just left the guns.

Denis Jež had been dead accurate with his predictions. There were two towers down there with what looked like twin Primary–beam projectors, something you could only do on a planetary surface. Between them, protected by them, a Type–4 emplacement. Slow and hard to aim, capable of blowing daylight through either
Rajput
or
Auberon
with a single shot.

If she let them.

Hopefully, they were blind right now, having lost the two sensor stations, plus all the extravagance of the flight bay exploding.

They still had a really big gun, firing through an atmosphere thin enough to be a danger.

Jessica considered retasking the big hitters in the flight wing to go after those three towers. But that would in turn leave them critically vulnerable to the point defense systems that this level of planning suggested.

No, better to stick to the plan. It was a good plan. Rude in unexpected ways.

She smiled.
Project Mischief
was going to be legendary, with this crew, and with any other vessel these people went to in the future.

On one of her screens, Alber’ d’Maine smiled at something off camera. She had seen more of his smiles over the last few months. This one was the pure joy of combat. Harsh. Feral. Almost a match for hers. It was a shame he did nothing for her personally. She needed a warrior as a partner. There had to be one somewhere in the fleet.

Another screen showed the unfolding surprise.
Rajput
had entered the thin atmosphere below
Auberon
, cutting the lowest chord possible with the elevation, gravity, and friction. To someone on the surface, it would feel like they were being buzzed.

In a way, they were.

Jessica watched as
Rajput
cut her engines. A beat later, she began to rotate on her long axis, point down like a dagger aimed at the surface. She pivoted a half–turn as she rotated, until the ship was coasting backwards at full speed, bow slightly declined as she moved.

Jessica held her breath as
Rajput
came over the horizon from the pirate base. How good were they?

The shot was late and wide.

It lit the late–morning sky with reflected energy as it bled into open space.

The gunners were very good, but they had been expecting
Rajput
to slow down and pop over the horizon for a quick shot, rather than blowing right by at orbital speeds.

And they hadn’t been expecting to be looking at
Rajput
’s ass as she appeared, or her guns as she passed.

Three bolts of solid lightning lashed out from
Rajput
as
Auberon
approached the horizon. Jessica had wondered at the man’s prioritization. She shouldn’t have.

Three Primary bolts hit the Type–4 emplacement in rapid succession as
Rajput
’s gunner locked in. The first was stopped by local shields, barely. The second kicked those shields in like an armed robbery. The third one shattered the entire tower, a pocket, manmade earthquake that left behind a small lake of lava, slowly cooling.

Auberon
came into range next. A strike carrier only carried two Primary mounts. She watched Afolayan target the pirates’ Primary tower on the left and fire both beams simultaneously.

One shot was well off–center, but the shields absorbed it anyway and failed, followed by the steel and stone of the tower itself.

That left the other tower.

As Jessica watched, the remaining twin gun tower rotated with
Auberon
and began to lift enough to fire, like a snout stuck in the air on a hunting dog. They had been tracking
Rajput
before a better target appeared.

Jessica took a deep breath.
Auberon
had gotten hammered by Primaries at the battle of
Qui–Ping
. It was nearly a terminal experience then. This would be no better.

Or would have been.

Before the pirates could recover, the flight wing popped up over a nearby ridge and opened fire. Seven fighters strafed the hell out of the base, with even
da Vinci
getting in the act with her little single barrel popgun.

Necromancer
and two S–11
Orcas
,
Damocles
and
Starfall
, showered the last Primary tower with everything they had. From here, it looked like a fire–breathing dragon had belched gaseous burning death over everything. If it was only a combination of Type–2 and Type–3 beams, plus missiles, the effect was similar. Larger, perhaps, considered the number of explosions that erupted on the rubble over the course of several seconds.

Jessica let her breath go. That had been far closer than she had planned, or expected. Someone over there knew his business far too well to be just a pirate. She looked forward to a conversation with that person. An unpleasant conversation.

“Flag, this is
Auberon
,” Denis said, interrupting her thoughts. “I have two vessels making a run for the edge of the gravity well. You need to see this.”

Jessica cursed to herself as she spun the projection back so that she could see the whole battlefield. She had gotten too close, too absorbed, to the battle.

Fortunately, her executive officer had been on the ball.

There, and there.

The transponders on the two enemy vessels finally got displayed.

Oh, my.

One of the vessels was a carrier, what
Corynthe
called a Mothership. It had a big head start and was running hell–bent–for–leather.

The other vessel, much smaller, had been caught in a much lower orbit than the Mothership and was only now getting up a head of speed to try to escape.

Jessica scanned her various readouts of the battle below, but things were pretty much as she had gamed them out.
Rajput
had redlined his engines in a savage braking attempt, to get back into battle, while
CR–264
was too small to get involved with what was happening overhead.

Below, the battle was over. The failure of the crash launch had crippled the pirates’ response. Losing the big defensive guns had broken their back.

Overhead…

“Denis,” she said, “ignore the pirate and go after the corvette.”

“She identifies as a
Fribourg Empire
courier with diplomatic immunity, commander,” he replied carefully.

“Acknowledged. That’s exactly what she is.”

They had just crossed into one of those areas where they were likely to have to explain themselves to a Court of Inquiry.

Tomorrow.

Today, an Imperial corvette was running for the edge of Jumpspace as fast as she could accelerate, leaving behind a pirate base in a system claimed by an ally of the
Republic of Aquitaine
. They could explain it themselves, possibly to
Lincolnshire
, if not to the First Lord himself.

But first, she had to catch him.

“Engineering,” she said, also calmly, “redline the engines and hold them together. We have a jackrabbit that needs to be caught before he can get away.”

“Affirmative, sir.” The Chief Engineer appeared on a screen to nod to her. Vilis Ozolinsh was short, broad, and would have been Mongolian, before the Homeworld was destroyed. He was also a prominent member of one of the Fifty Families that ruled the Republic, but had fallen in love with engines at a young age and never looked back.