War To The Knife (35 page)

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes,
understood and will comply.
Dadarsi
out.”

There was a brief pause, punctuated by a burst of static. “That’s when the space station blew up,” the Communications operator explained.

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes
. The space station’s just blown up! It’s a damn great fireball over the planet! Over.”

“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi
. We see it. That makes this rebel action for sure. What’s that foreign freighter doing? From here it looks like she’s just sitting in orbit. That’s suspicious in itself. If she had any sense she’d be getting the hell away from the missiles, like you did – not to mention that bloody great explosion! Over.”

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes
. Could she be waiting for something or someone? Over.”

“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi
. I think you’ve put your finger on it. I’m going to head straight for her. We’ll send over a boarding party to see if they’re up to anything. Start to turn now, so you can pull up alongside me in formation as I pass you. Over.”

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes,
understood, out.”

Another brief pause, then,
“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi,
that freighter’s leaving orbit. She’s turned towards the system boundary and is accelerating at what looks like her maximum drive power. Did you pick up any indication of any other vessel joining her? Over.

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes,
negative, but of course a cutter or gig wouldn’t have a drive signature big enough for us to detect at anything but close range. Over.”

“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi,
you’re right. I’m going to pursue, and order her to await my boarding party. Stand by.”

There was a brief pause, then, “Patrol vessel
Oxyartes
to Lancastrian merchant vessel
Benbecula
. You have not been authorized to leave orbit. Return to orbit at once and await my boarding party. Over.”

A few seconds of silence.

“Patrol vessel
Oxyartes
to Lancastrian merchant vessel
Benbecula
. I say again, you have not requested or received clearance to depart Laredo orbit. Return to orbit at once and await my boarding party. Over.”

Another pause.

“Patrol vessel
Oxyartes
to Lancastrian merchant vessel
Benbecula
. I am placing your vessel under arrest for non-compliance with system traffic regulations. Brake to a standstill relative to the planet and await my boarding party, or I will fire on you! Over.”

“That’s where it ends so far,” Captain Grassby informed them, frowning. “I don’t think their threat to fire was serious – they only have short-range patrol-craft-type missiles, not a warship’s fully-fledged main battery missiles. At a range of over one light-hour from us they can’t possibly control or guide them, let alone reach us. Even so, they’ve arrested us. That could be difficult to deal with if they make a formal complaint to the Interplanetary Transportation Union that we ignored system traffic regulations and evaded arrest. The fines can be pretty steep, even if they don’t accuse us of somehow being involved in the destruction of their space station.”

“We’ll publicly take responsibility for destroying the space station,” Dave assured him. “That’ll happen as soon as we get to Neue Helvetica and report to the President Pro Tem of our Government-in-Exile. We’ll make sure to add that no other ships were involved.”

“Thank you. That’ll probably be sufficient to avoid us being arrested on that charge, but we may still have to pay a hefty fine.”

“How much is it likely to be?”

“It can run as high as a million credits – that’s Lancastrian Commonwealth credits.”

“We’ll pay it if it comes to that. My word on it.”

The Captain’s eyebrows rose. “You’re very free with your money. I suppose this means that Manuel’s mission was successful?”

Manuel nodded. “Yes, they’ve got the bank keys with them. The Vice-President will be able to pay me, and that means I’ll be able to pay you.”

The Captain grinned, and everyone on the bridge broke into broad smiles. “That’s excellent news! It’s going to make this a very profitable year indeed for the ship and my entire crew. They’re all on profit share, with a special bonus for this trip, so they’ll all benefit.”

The crackle of the speaker on the Communications console interrupted him.
“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi,
it’s no good. That freighter’s maximum speed is at least as fast as mine – she may even be a little faster. What’s your maximum speed? Over.”

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes,
we can do the same as the corvettes – after all, we have the same drive unit. That would be one-quarter of light speed at max power. Over.”

“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi
. Do you have a corvette’s full sensor suite as well? Over.”

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes,
yes, we do, over.”

“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi
. Excellent! That means you can follow another ship by her emissions, even if she switches off her transponder beacon. Stand by to receive my cutter. I’m coming aboard, then we’ll use your greater speed to intercept
Benbecula
. Over.”

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes
, I don’t understand. We have no missiles. Over.”

“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi,
you have three laser cannon, right? Over.”

“Dadarsi
to
Oxyartes,
yes, but those are defensive weapons to intercept incoming missiles. Over.”

“Oxyartes
to
Dadarsi,
they’ve got a range of half a million kilometers. If you know what you’re doing with them and you get close enough, you can take out specific compartments of another ship with pinpoint accuracy – her drive unit, for example – or slice her up like a trussed turkey. Your ship has the speed, the sensors and the cannon, and I have the training and experience to make use of all of them. I’ll bring an armed boarding party with me. Between us we’ll make these interfering bastards wish they’d never come to our system! Now stand by for my cutter.
Oxyartes
out.”

“Oh,
shit!”
Captain Grassby’s face and voice were suddenly deeply apprehensive. “We’re in trouble. If she can do point two five Cee, that’s two and a half times faster than this ship at maximum power.”

“How long before we can hyper-jump out of the system?” Manuel asked.

“The system boundary here’s nine hundred eighty-eight million kilometers from the star. That means…” and he glanced at the Plot, “we’re about seven and a quarter hours from it right now. Trouble is, that yacht can move much faster. Plot, assume a velocity of one-quarter Cee for that yacht. How long until she catches us? Assume we stay on course at our present speed.”

“Just a moment, Sir.” The Plot operator tapped instructions into his console. In the display a yellow line appeared, extending from the present location of the Bactrian ships to an interception point on
Benbecula
’s course line. It was some distance short of the system boundary. “She still has to accelerate from her present velocity, Sir, and she’s got a long way to catch up, but it looks like she can reach us in about six and a half hours.”

“That’ll give her more than enough time to use those laser cannon to disable us before we can hyper-jump out of here,” Grassby said gloomily, his shoulders slumping.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Dave said, puzzled. “I thought a gravitic drive could accelerate a spaceship continually, reaching almost light speed, with its only limiting factor being mass gain at higher percentages of Cee. Am I wrong?”

“That’s fine in theory, but there’s another issue. We generate a gravitic shield ahead of the ship to deflect small debris – tiny bits knocked off asteroids, garbage dumped by careless spaceships, that sort of thing. The faster we go, the more powerful that shield has to be. It won’t protect the ship against large objects, but they’re usually mapped, and we can pick them up on radar in time to avoid them. As for smaller ones, the kinetic energy released by a collision at cruising speed with even a pea-sized piece of gravel would badly damage us. Therefore, the faster we go, the more of our drive power has to be diverted to the gravitic shield. Right now we’re at max cruise of one-tenth Cee. At that velocity almost all our drive power’s going to the shield, not to propulsion. That’s what limits our speed.”

“Oh. I get it.”

Manuel asked, “You can’t shut off your drive, change direction slightly, and coast without any emissions those ships can track? I’m no spacer, but doesn’t a spaceship retain its velocity until it’s actively braked by some means?”

“Yes, it does, but you heard them say that yacht’s got a corvette’s sensor suite. That means she’ll have much better active and passive sensors than a merchant vessel. She’ll detect our radar or radio transmissions at long range, and it’s a big risk to shut off the radar. If there’s anything in our path, like a wandering asteroid or an unmapped big piece of debris, without radar we wouldn’t know it was there until it was too late to avoid it. If we accepted that risk we might evade her, but if her skipper – or, rather, the skipper of that patrol vessel – uses her radar to search for us, he might find us even if we shut down all emissions. This is just a regular merchant freighter, after all; she’s not stealthy like a warship. I’d hate to depend on luck when our lives are at stake!”

“Do you have to decide what to do at once?” Dave asked.

“We’ll see what happens. They can’t touch us this far away, but if they get too close, I may have to surrender rather than see my ship destroyed and my crew killed.”

“You
don’t
want to surrender. You’ve no idea what Security Service torturers will do to you in an effort to extract information.”

Grassby frowned. “They’d better not! We’re all citizens of the Lancastrian Commonwealth. They can arrest us, sure, but if they do anything illegal the Commonwealth Fleet will be all over them like white on rice. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to take this job. Our citizenship, and the ship’s registration in the Commonwealth, both give us a measure of protection.”

Dave couldn’t help rolling his eyes in frustration at the man’s naiveté. “Not as far as the SS are concerned. They’re thugs. They don’t care about any law but their own regulations. For the past three years Bactria’s refused to allow us to surrender. They either shoot captured Resistance fighters on the spot, or if they’re officers or senior NCO’s they hand them over to the SS for what they euphemistically call ‘interrogation’. When they’ve sucked them dry, they shoot them too. I doubt they’ll have any compunction about doing the same to you. After all, the Commonwealth has to learn what happened to you before it can retaliate. If you just ‘disappear’ or your ship is ‘destroyed while attempting to evade arrest’, what are they going to do about it? Go to war with Bactria without any clear evidence that it’s done anything wrong?”

Manuel said quietly, “Tom, he’s not joking. I’ve seen and heard things on Laredo that I wouldn’t have believed possible in a civilized society. Believe him when he says it would be a really bad idea to surrender.”

Grassby threw up his hands in frustration. “So we’re trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea!” He paced back and forth, frowning. “I guess we’ll have to see what the next few hours show us. If it looks like they’re going to catch us, we may not have many options left.”

~ ~ ~

Three hours later it was clear that the Satrap’s yacht was closing even faster than they’d expected. “She must have cut her gravitic shield,” Captain Grassby guessed gloomily. “She’s up to one-third Cee already. Her skipper’s taking a hell of a chance, but if it works he’ll have that much more time to shoot at us at his leisure. He’ll start braking soon, so that he won’t overshoot us and give us time to duck out of his way.” He looked at Dave. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I’m not prepared to risk the lives of my crew for this mission. Despite your warning, I’m going to have to surrender.”

Dave thought fast. “Sir, if I can pull those bastards off your back, will you undertake to deliver Manuel and our evidence to Vice-President Johns?”

“I… I don’t understand.”

“Just answer my question, please, Sir.”

“Well, of course I will – but how can you possibly stop them?”

“I’m going to call for volunteers among my people. We arrived here in a Security Service shuttle. It’s got lots of electronic warfare goodies on board – I don’t understand most of them, that’s a pilot’s or WSO’s job. If we launch, we can move off to one side over the next hour or so, then start broadcasting the drive signature of another ship – perhaps a warship of some kind, something that’ll be a threat to them. They’ll have to either investigate it or take avoiding action, which means you’ll have more time to reach the system boundary and make your escape.”

“But that’s suicide! Even if they don’t blow you out of space with their laser cannon, an assault shuttle doesn’t have enough range to return to the planet from this far out!”

“That’s my problem, Captain, not yours. Will you let me do that, and see Manuel and our evidence safely to Neue Helvetica?”

There was a long silence. Eventually Grassby said slowly, “I’ll do that, Captain. If I can’t take him there myself, I’ll make sure he and the evidence are put aboard a trustworthy ship headed that way. I’ve got to say, this is just about the bravest thing I’ve ever heard of. You have my respect, Sir.” He drew himself up and saluted formally.

Dave returned his salute. “Thank you, Sir. I’ll go and ask my team for volunteers. Manuel, would you mind waiting here, please? This will be a private moment.”

“Sure,” the investigator agreed. “I understand.”

Tony followed Dave as he hurried down the main passageway to the accommodation unit that had been allocated to his team. He burst into the common room to find the others assembled there. Everyone had showered and changed. Some were watching a program on the holovid projector, while others talked quietly among themselves.