Scornful Stars Read online

  Sikander leaned back in his desk chair, gazing at the blank screen. “Now that is interesting,” he said aloud. He took a few minutes to review the reports and images Elena had attached to her message, and decided that what she’d sent him was very, very interesting indeed. It was a long shot, perhaps, but there wasn’t much more that they could do at Meliya that the Velarans couldn’t do for themselves; Decisive could move on in good conscience.

  It’s time to hunt pirates again, he decided, and tapped his comm unit. “XO? Come on up to my office, and bring Master Chief Vaughn. I think we’ve got somewhere we need to be.”

  11

  CSS Decisive, Zafer System

  “Clear arrival, Captain!” Ensign Carter called out from her station by the bridge’s sensor techs. “We’ve got a small carbonaceous asteroid three million klicks ahead—it’s already passed in front of us, it’s not a collision danger. Lots of other small bodies within a light-minute or so, but nothing that impinges on our course.”

  “That’s a cluttered screen,” Jaime Herrera said, studying the array of icons and vector arrows populating the bridge’s main display. “Rocks everywhere, it seems. Good thing we came in at a jog instead of a sprint.”

  “I thought that it might be a good idea, Guns,” said Sikander. On departing Meliya, he’d naturally leaned toward the idea of another high-speed transit to reach Zafer as quickly as possible … but after a little consideration, he’d decided to do the exact opposite, and chose a low-speed transit. It added thirty hours to their transit time, but it also meant that when Decisive cut off her warp generator she was moving only half as fast as she would have been during a standard-speed transit. And that in turn meant that Sikander wouldn’t have to spend hours and hours decelerating before he could think about executing tactical maneuvers in Zafer. Coming in hot would have carried Decisive hundreds of millions of kilometers across the destination system while she spent hours bleeding off her transit velocity.

  Plus, the Zafer system was full of rocks. The odds of a collision would have been very small even in a high-velocity arrival, but very small was not the same as negligible, and the consequences of impacting an obstacle at ten or fifteen percent c were not to be taken lightly.

  Sikander studied the bridge display, getting his bearings. Zafer was big, young, and bright compared to the sun of any system likely to harbor a world suitable for human colonization—a dazzling blue-white Class A star only about three hundred million years of age, surrounded by a dozen massive worlds and the smashed remains of two or three more that now made up a very rich set of asteroid belts. None of the worlds or their moons was remotely habitable, but systems such as Zafer could be valuable for space-based extraction industries. The challenge was getting the metal to market; a mine operation in an uninhabited system needed a particularly rich claim to work and a hungry industrial market nearby to make the trip worth the cost of the ring charge. Most mining companies settled for working less valuable in-system strikes that didn’t add a warp transit to the operation’s bottom line, so the fact that Venture Salvage’s predecessors had tried to make a go of it in Zafer said something about the mineral wealth of the system … and the fact that they’d given up said something more about the economics of mining remote systems.

  “Anything moving under power here, Ms. Carter?” Sikander asked the sensor officer.

  “No, sir. But we’ve got a line of sight on the old mining installation, and it looks like several ships are moored there. Distance one point four light-minutes, bearing three-four-three up ten.”

  Close by, ahead of us, and not far off our transit-termination course, Sikander noted. Decisive had unbubbled in pretty much the exact spot he’d planned to arrive: less than an hour from the target, ready to seek an engagement. “Very well. Mr. Girard, set course for the installation, zero-zero intercept,” he ordered—the standard naval terminology for reducing the distance to the target to zero, and arriving there at zero velocity in order to dock.

  “Aye, Captain. Helm, come left to course three-two-five up eight,” Girard ordered. Evidently he’d already calculated the interception. “Sixty percent standard deceleration.”

  “Ms. Carter, let’s have a look at our mining post, please.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Ensign Carter adjusted her sensor controls, creating a large new window in the bridge display to show the highly magnified view of the mining post they’d come to investigate. The facility consisted of a bunker-like structure blasted out of the hard rock in the scarred flank of a ten-kilometer asteroid, surrounded by a sprawling automated refinery. An industrial cargo pier consisting of an open framework of heavy girders jutted two kilometers into space; three small ships occupied a dock originally intended to accommodate massive bulk freighters ten times their size. Warm yellow light spilled out from the slit-like windows in the habitat bunker and the cargo dock’s control tower.

  “That facility doesn’t look as abandoned as it’s supposed to be,” Herrera said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Sikander agreed. “But remember, it’s possible that this is a legitimate mining operation. Mr. Girard, do any of those ships look familiar?”

  “Checking now, sir,” Girard replied. He studied his own console at the tactical officer’s post. “Their transponders report them as Qarash, The’eb, and Mazuz. I’m comparing their registrations now.”

  “Would pirates use transponders?” Herrera wondered.

  “If they wanted to blend in with ordinary shipping without attracting attention, they certainly would,” Sikander pointed out. “At some point they’d want the ability to call on a civilized port and convert stolen goods into credits.” He rubbed at his jaw, thinking about how to proceed as the minutes ticked by and Decisive’s momentum carried her toward Zafer’s supposedly abandoned mining station. Venture Salvage might not realize they’d done business with pirate vessels … or they might claim that they didn’t know that the goods they’d bought had come from a pirated vessel, in which case it was not very clear just what sort of action CSS Decisive was empowered to take to determine whether the station’s occupants were actually guilty of something. Any commanding officer of the Commonwealth Navy could certainly intervene to stop an act of piracy in progress, pursue a ship he detected engaged in such an act, or even force a ship previously identified as a pirate to surrender for inspection. But outside of Aquilan territory, it was much less clear whether he had the authority to demand any sort of cooperation from people he only suspected of piracy.

  Then again, it might not be clear to whoever’s on that outpost that I can’t, Sikander reminded himself. “Mr. Girard, give me a comm channel for an open broadcast, please,” he said, and waited for the indicator light on his console before continuing. “Attention, all ships and stations in the Zafer system. This is Commander Sikander Singh North, commanding the Aquilan Commonwealth starship Decisive. We are making our approach to the Venture Salvage station located on the asteroid designated—” He paused to check his navigation display. “—Zafer B0177. Stand by to receive our boarding party. We have intelligence that indicates this station actively supports piracy in neighboring systems. Any ship presently docked at the Venture Salvage installation that attempts to get under way will be fired upon. Give up peacefully and I will guarantee you the opportunity to defend yourselves in the appropriate court of law. But if any captives currently held on your station come to harm before our boarding party arrives, we will hold all persons on your station individually and jointly responsible, and carry out summary justice. I advise you to choose carefully. Decisive, out.”

  Jaime Herrera’s eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline. “Well, Captain, that’s pretty clear,” he said.

  “It seemed best to be direct about it,” Sikander replied. He made himself sit back in his command couch, crossing his legs and keying the ship’s command circuit. “Did I miss anything, XO?”

  Amelia Fraser was not on the bridge—she was back in Decisive’s auxiliary bridge, the traditional post for the s
hip’s second-in-command during action. The idea was that she could continue to fight the ship from that position if enemy fire took out the bridge. Since Sikander had anticipated that they might find themselves in a shooting situation shortly after arrival, he’d ordered the ship to full battle stations shortly before arrival. “Clear and unambiguous,” she confirmed over the command circuit. “I’d be shitting bricks over there if I was a bad guy, but you’re going to owe someone an apology if it turns out this is just an unregistered mining operation.”

  Sikander snorted and started to reply, but Michael Girard suddenly called, “Captain! We’ve got movement. It’s Mazuz, the outermost ship moored at the station.”

  “Perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I thought I was,” said Sikander. He glanced at the tactical display; Decisive was still millions of kilometers from the station, but gobbling up the distance by a thousand kilometers each second; they’d be in firing range in ten or fifteen minutes. Mazuz might build up enough speed to prolong the inevitable for a few minutes, but nothing in space was going to outrun Decisive with the kind of velocity advantage Sikander held, not from a standing start. “Mr. Girard, adjust our intercept course to head off Mazuz.”

  “Intercept Mazuz, aye. Weapons, designate Mazuz Target Alpha. Helm, come right to course … zero-one-one, down five. What about the Venture Salvage station, sir?”

  “The station isn’t going anywhere. We can come back to board her after we make sure Mazuz doesn’t get away.” Sikander looked back to his gunnery officer. “Mr. Herrera, we’ll try to cripple her ring and drive plates when we come into range. We want to capture her if possible, not blow her out of space.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Herrera replied. “We’ll have the firing solution ready.”

  Minutes crawled by, while Sikander watched the geometry of the encounter taking shape on the tactical display. Most naval battles embodied the old military adage to hurry up and wait; ships easily spotted each other at distances measured in tens of millions of kilometers, unless something like a planet got in the way or someone managed to hide in the sun’s glare. But kinetic cannons were unlikely to score hits at ranges of more than twenty or thirty thousand kilometers, so most of the battle consisted of waiting to get into range … at which point things started happening fast. Sikander himself had been in more space battles than most Aquilans—four, by his count—but even so, the waiting weighed heavily on him. The only other officer with battle experience on the bridge was Michael Girard, but then again, the fight at Gadira had been very atypical; Hector had started off that fight by exchanging fire at point-blank range with the Dremish Panther while both ships were in orbit above that planet.

  This is the first real action for virtually everybody else on the ship, he reminded himself. They’d fought through plenty of tactical simulations—every hand aboard an Aquilan warship practiced their battle drills. Simulations, however, did not feel the same as the real thing. It might be a good idea to settle some nerves before K-shots start flying.

  He keyed the ship’s general announcement circuit and spoke. “All hands, this is the captain. I’m pleased to report that we unbubbled exactly where we wanted to be, and we’ve caught several ships moored at the Zafer mining station. We ordered them to surrender, but one of them is making a run for it. We’re going to chase her down before attempting to board the station. It looks like nobody over there wants any part of Decisive, but we might have to fire on the ship trying to escape or make a few pointed remarks to the outlaws on the station with our K-cannons. Keep calm, be alert, and remember: This is exactly what you have trained for. I have complete confidence in each and every one of you, so let’s go get them.”

  Officers and crewhands manning the bridge’s various stations exchanged quick looks or nervous smiles; shoulders relaxed, expressions lightened, and some of the tension building up in the compartment seemed to dissipate. Not exactly the St. Crispin’s Day speech, but good enough, Sikander decided.

  “Captain, we’ve got an identification on Mazuz,” Michael Girard said. If he was nervous, the only sign he gave was that his natural awkwardness was nowhere to be seen—it seemed that the more he had to occupy his attention, the less he worried about how he carried himself. “She’s the same ship we chased out of Bursa.”

  “Target Alpha is Target Alpha?” Sikander sat up in his battle couch, and zoomed in on his own display. The stripped-out light freighter had been hidden by the structure of the mining post’s dock, but now that she was clear of the asteroid the battered hull and gleaming weapon mounts were unmistakable. “This is shaping up to be an interesting day. I’m looking forward to—”

  “Sir! We’re being illuminated by fire-control systems!” Ensign Carter shouted from the sensor position. “The mining station is targeting us!”

  “The’eb is getting under way, Captain,” Girard added. “Qarash, too. Designating Target Bravo and Target Charlie.”

  “Damn,” Jaime Herrera growled. “They’re all making a break for it.”

  “Very well,” Sikander answered, keeping his voice steady. So much for giving up peacefully, he noted. The mining station didn’t concern him too much yet; Decisive was still hundreds of thousands of kilometers out of the range of just about any weapon he could think of. Two more ships getting under way, however, complicated the tactical picture significantly. He still outgunned the pirates by a comfortable margin, but if the targets fled on diverging courses—

  “They’re scattering, Captain,” Girard reported. “They’re taking courses at right angles to make us choose which one we’re going to chase. Which should we go after?”

  “Captain, I think we should stay on Mazuz,” Amelia Fraser suggested over the command circuit. “If we divert after one of the other targets, she gets away, and we know that she’s a pirate.”

  “I’d like to, XO,” Sikander replied. He studied the evolving engagement, scowling; this had been a lot simpler when he didn’t have multiple targets tearing off in different directions. Whether through luck, panic, or cold-blooded calculation, the pirates had struck upon the best strategy to make sure at least one of their ships got away, and maybe two if Sikander wasn’t careful. Due to her head start in getting under way from the station, Mazuz now represented something of a stern chase—it would take Decisive longer to bring the first ship under her guns than it would to engage one of the others just now leaving. We can engage The’eb or Qarash much faster, Sikander realized. And if we disable our first target quickly, we might have time to chase down the other before it escapes … but probably not Mazuz.

  He decided he wanted two ships instead of one.

  “Tactical, change course to intercept The’eb,” Sikander ordered Girard. “If we can disable her quickly, we’ll have a chance to add Qarash to our bag. Sorry, XO.”

  “Intercept The’eb, aye, Captain!” The operations officer quickly calculated a new course on his console. “Helm, come right to course one-three-three up thirty, deceleration at one hundred percent military power. Hold on, this may get a little bumpy.”

  Decisive spun swiftly end-for-end, rotating to aim her powerful drive plates almost ninety degrees off her previous course, and went to full military power—the maximum safe acceleration customarily used in battle maneuvers. The ship’s inertial compensators lagged just a little behind the sudden shift in acceleration; Sikander felt his weight shifting in his battle couch and quietly checked his seat harness. No one on the bridge needed to see the ship’s captain decelerate himself out of his command seat by neglecting to buckle in before hard maneuvers. Decisive’s projected course line in the tactical display changed into a high, looping curve that would pass above and in front of The’eb before settling in pursuit of Qarash.

  Sikander nodded in satisfaction; Michael Girard was already looking past the engagement of the first ship to put Decisive in a good position to go after the second. By age-old custom, an Aquilan captain allowed the acting tactical officer to maneuver the ship in battle and focus on the details of engagin
g each target while exercising command by negation—if Girard started to do something Sikander didn’t approve of, he’d step in and cancel the tactical officer’s orders. But so far Michael Girard had things well in hand, so Sikander deliberately distanced himself from the details and paid attention to the situation as a whole. Mazuz boosted recklessly away from Decisive, pouring every gram of thrust in her drive plates into a desperate effort to flee. The distance continued to narrow … but the closing rate slowed as Decisive diverted toward the two ships just beginning to pull away from the mining station, now less than a hundred thousand kilometers away. Decisive’s course would carry her quite a bit closer than that to the asteroid as she maneuvered for her firing pass on The’eb.

  That station illuminated us with fire control, Sikander remembered. “Mr. Girard, keep an eye on the asteroid installation. They might be thinking of taking a shot at us when we pass by.”

  “Yes, sir,” Girard replied. “Ms. Carter, see if you can figure out what sort of armament they’re hiding over there. Maybe they’ve got a K-cannon or two concealed somewhere in that cargo structure.”

  “Yes, sir!” Ensign Carter consulted with her sensor techs, redirecting the destroyer’s vid systems to study the asteroid installation more carefully.

  “Tactical, we’re in range to try a shot on Target Bravo,” Jaime Herrera reported from the weapons post.

  “Captain, permission to engage The’eb?” Girard asked.

  “Permission granted.”

  “Main battery, Target Bravo, general-purpose rounds only, aim for her drive plates,” Girard ordered. “Engage!”

  “Commencing fire,” Herrera reported. A moment later Decisive’s Orcades Mark IX kinetic cannons whined loudly and thumped, sending a quiver through the hull behind the bridge. Given Decisive’s hard braking maneuver, only the aft mounts bore on the target, but that still represented four powerful K-cannons, any one of which was easily enough to cripple a light freighter no matter how it had been rearmed or reinforced for its new career.