Scornful Stars Read online

  “Who are they?” Gamal Mohamed asked, hurrying up to the display in Bleindel’s wake.

  Marisa Kohl followed only a step behind the Zerzuran. “The Aquilans,” she answered, pointing at the display. “That’s their destroyer Decisive.”

  “Activate your point-defense systems!” Bleindel ordered Mohamed.

  “They were removed years ago—no one expected an attack in the capital’s orbit!” the yard supervisor protested. “The only weapons we have aboard the shipyard are small arms for the security force. Our defense against naval attack is the Zerzura Sector Fleet, and they’re docked at the fleet base.” He pointed at Dahar High Port in the tactical display, ten thousand kilometers higher than the shipyard and rapidly falling behind as the shipyard’s faster orbit carried it away from the system’s defenses.

  “Underpowered and undergunned patrol vessels,” Kohl told Bleindel in Nebeldeutsch. “They could shoot down those boats if they were here, but they’re no match for an Aquilan destroyer.”

  Bleindel nodded. There was no point in bemoaning the foolish cost-saving measures of years past that had led the Zerzurans to strip defensive systems they didn’t think they needed, or in waiting for the pasha’s gunboats to save the day. What was needed now was a clearheaded and frank appraisal of the situation so that he could determine what sort of action was necessary—or possible. He watched the symbols for the Aquilan boats split up, each heading for one of the three cruisers in the shipyard’s work cradles, and listened carefully to the Aquilan officer’s broadcast on the general comm channel.

  The cruisers, he realized. They’re going to sabotage the pasha’s new cruisers. Can we stop them? And do we want to?

  The answer to the second question was obvious: Those ships were the centerpiece of the bargain to reshape Zerzura as a Dremish client state. Their neutralization would leave Marid al-Zahabi without the navy he’d negotiated for. Even though the Empire had delivered on its end of the bargain by bringing the ships to Zerzuran space and turning them over, Bleindel didn’t believe for a moment that Marid Pasha would reciprocate without those ships … and that meant everything he and Hanne Vogt had worked toward over the last six months was at risk. He wasn’t about to let that effort go to waste; first of all, he was ready to move on from Zerzura and he had no interest in returning to square one with the pasha, but more important, he took a great deal of pride in his work, and he was not about to let it be undone without a fight. That leaves only the question of whether we can stop the Aquilans, he decided. And he had a couple of ideas about that.

  He moved back from the chaos of the station’s command center and tapped his comm unit. “Neu Kiel, this is Agent Bleindel,” he said. “Give me a channel to Kapitan zur Stern Beck, diplomatic priority.”

  It took only a moment for Beck to respond. “Agent Bleindel! It’s an outrage, an act of war! The Aquilans are boarding our cruisers!”

  “I know, Captain,” Bleindel replied. Technically, of course, the cruisers now belonged to the Zerzurans, but he didn’t blame Beck for feeling a certain amount of ownership over the three ships after all the work his people had put into them. In fact, he shared Beck’s outrage, although he didn’t see the point in shouting about it. “I’m going to put a stop to this nonsense, but I need your help. Listen closely: First of all, I want you to signal Fregattenkapitan Fischer of Polarstern and advise her of what’s going on her. Tell her to get here as quickly as she can and take up position near the shipyard.”

  “Polarstern is on the other side of the planet at the moment. I am not sure how long it will take her to power up her drives and get under way.”

  “Find out from Fischer, and let me know. Next, I need you to organize a landing force from your crew, issue them small arms, and send them to meet me on the station.”

  “The Aquilan commander has warned us against attempting to interfere with their operation, Agent Bleindel. She can turn my ship into a smoking wreck with one salvo.”

  That is a risk I am willing to take. Bleindel had bitter experience with Aquilans deciding to open fire instead of backing down, but that wasn’t something Beck needed to hear at the moment. “Decisive’s captain is Commander North, and I promise you that he does not want to fire on Neu Kiel unless you pose a threat to his ship,” he told the repair ship’s captain. “Nor will he fire on your sailors if doing so endangers his own landing force at the same time. Our best bet to stop this illegal action is to get our own armed sailors onto those ships as swiftly as possible and resist. The Aquilans have the crew of a single destroyer to draw upon, and they had to leave enough people on board Decisive to handle her in a fight. That means they can’t have more than a hundred sailors for their boarding parties, and most of those will be no better trained for close-quarters fighting than your own personnel. When the Aquilans see that they’re not going to be able to seize the ships without a fight, they’ll have to back down.”

  “Or they might threaten to bombard my ship if I don’t withdraw my sailors,” Beck said bitterly.

  “Captain Beck, this is not a request. I am invoking Special Command Authority Case Blue-Three. Do you understand?” Bleindel didn’t particularly want to resort to rank to solve the impasse—if nothing else, it identified him as something other than a Foreign Office technical advisor—but he did not have time to persuade Neu Kiel’s captain or search for the safest course of action. They needed to act swiftly, or not at all.

  Neu Kiel’s captain remained silent for a moment, perhaps too surprised—or frightened—to answer. Then he said, “I understand. I will call out the ship’s self-defense force. That will give you thirty sailors with small-arms training.”

  “Captain, I want a hundred of your sailors under arms in ten minutes. Select them at random if you have to, but issue them guns and get them moving.” Bleindel considered the shipyard’s arrangement of open-space scaffolding and enclosed work modules, and the relative positions of Neu Kiel and the three cruisers undergoing refit. Ironically enough, the many hours he’d spent plodding around the shipyard over the last couple of months seemed likely to serve him well; he actually knew his way around the place. “Muster your force at Machine Shop Two—your sailors can reach it through interior passageways and keep out of sight from our Aquilan friends. I’ll meet your people there. In the meantime, I want you to get back in touch with Decisive and lodge every protest you can think of. List off every law and diplomatic protocol you think they’re violating and let them think you’re documenting everything they do. I want Commander North or his deputies completely distracted by your complaints.”

  This time, Beck did not hesitate. “Yes, sir. I understand. I am issuing the orders now.” He paused briefly, and then asked, “What about the Zerzurans? They have hundreds of workers on the station, too. Can they help?”

  “Most are civilians, and the Zerzuran military personnel aren’t ready for anything like this—we don’t have time to wait for them to figure it out. It’s up to us, Captain.” Bleindel cut the connection. He stepped back into the command center just long enough to signal Kohl to follow him, and then set off for the machine shop at a jog. The facility was reasonably close by the work cradles housing all three of the cruisers, and it was deep enough in the shipyard’s structure that Decisive couldn’t easily monitor any personnel movements there while standing off dozens of kilometers away.

  It wound up taking twenty-five precious minutes for Neu Kiel’s sailors to equip themselves, hurry to the machine shed, and sort themselves out into improvised platoons and squads. Kapitan zur Stern Beck, however, had not stinted on his personnel—he sent the repair ship’s trained landing force of thirty, and then a full hundred more sailors to boot. Half were armed only with mag pistols or stunners instead of the heavy firepower Bleindel would have hoped for, but it turned out that was unavoidable; the sailors had virtually emptied Neu Kiel’s small-arms lockers. The delay also provided him with the opportunity to quickly scout out the approaches to Drachen, Meduse, and Zyklop, and confirm that
the accommodation tubes leading to the ships’ airlocks were sealed.

  He returned from his inspection of the access points to find Neu Kiel’s officers standing to one side of the machine shop, waiting for him: Kapitan-Leutnant Kohl, executive officer Korvettenkapitan Arnold, main propulsion officer Oberleutnant Sommer, and a handful of junior officers. “The station access points are closed, so we’ll need to cut our way in,” he told the naval officers. “Mr. Arnold, I suggest you take charge of the Drachen group. Ms. Kohl, you take a group to Zyklop. I’ll take Mr. Sommer and the third group to deal with Meduse.”

  “What’s our mission, Mr. Bleindel?” Arnold asked. He was a stout man who barely managed to stay within the navy’s fitness requirements, but he carried his Gerst autorifle as if he knew how to use it. “What are we trying to do?”

  “Get to the vital spaces of the ship and prevent the Aquilans from carrying out whatever sabotage they have in mind,” the KBS agent said. “We’ll begin with the bridge and the engineering spaces, and once we have those in hand, we’ll systematically sweep each vessel and secure prisoners. Divide your detachments into three teams each: one for the bridge, one for engineering, and one team to capture the Aquilans’ shuttles and prevent their escape. Get on board however you can, and shoot to kill if you meet with any resistance. Now, what will it take to force the hatches?”

  “If they’re locked, an hour or more with a high-powered laser cutting torch,” Arnold replied. “These are heavy cruisers, Mr. Bleindel. The airlocks are armored.”

  “Damn!” Bleindel swore. “Could we blow them open instead?”

  “I’m afraid it would take fifty kilos of molecular explosive.”

  “Find some, then. Time isn’t on our side.”

  “I have an idea,” Marisa Kohl volunteered. “The torpedo loading hatches. They’re big enough to crawl through, and we’ve got external work shelters in place around each ship’s bow—we can access the hulls without suiting up or being spotted.”

  Arnold nodded. “And the torpedo rooms on Zyklop and Meduse are currently unpowered,” he added. “We can get in without tripping any alarms on their bridges. Drachen’s torpedo room has power, so opening the torpedo loading hatch will trigger an alarm. But her bridge is enough of a mess that the Aquilans might not notice the signal on the status board.”

  “That’s a much better plan,” said Bleindel. He had to imagine the Aquilans would be guarding the airlocks, but it was possible they might have overlooked an access point that wasn’t intended for use by humans. “Oberleutnant Sommer, you’re with me. Let’s move.”

  The Dremish sailors assembled in the shipyard’s machine shop broke up into the three groups and hurried toward their assignments. Bleindel allowed Leutnant Sommer to lead the way for the Meduse group, since he was not completely certain where to find the cruiser’s torpedo loading hatch other than somewhere near the bow. In one ear he listened to Kapitan zur Stern Beck railing ineffectually at the Aquilan warship over the local comm channel; the Aquilans didn’t seem to be listening, although he had to admit that if he were in their position he wouldn’t be, either.

  “Here we are, sir,” Oberleutnant Sommer told Bleindel. The passage they’d followed from the machine shop ended at an airlock and a flexible accommodation tube, which in turn led to a temporary work shed clinging to the cruiser’s alloy hull. Just a few millimeters of tough, translucent plastic stretched over a light frame separated the working space from the hard vacuum outside; Bleindel tried not to think about what would happen if one of the untrained sailors behind him accidentally fired off a few rounds while the group was crowded into the shed structure. The torpedo loading hatch itself proved to be two meters long and about seventy centimeters wide. Two sailors hurried to open a small panel next to the larger hatch, and activate the concealed controls. With a hiss of seals deflating, one end of the hatch depressed, forming a steep chute leading to a round hatch; he realized that the torpedoes would simply slide in like bullets in a sporting rifle’s ammunition feed.

  “Inside, and quietly,” he ordered the sailors. One by one, they scrambled down the chute, through the round hatch at the bottom, and onto a semicylindrical receiving tray in the machinery-cluttered torpedo room. From there, it was simple enough to scramble down the two and a half meters to the deck. So far, so good, Bleindel decided. We’re on board without shots fired, and the Aquilans have no idea we’re here. We might actually pull this off!

  When all forty-odd sailors in his group had assembled in the torpedo room, Bleindel addressed his improvised force. “Sommer, you take engineering. You there, Obermaat—my apologies, I don’t know your name—head for the starboard-side airlock and get control of the shuttle, or at least block access to it so that the Aquilans can’t retreat that way. I’ll take the bridge. Once we leave this room, move fast: Speed and surprise are our best weapons now. Good luck to you.”

  He moved to the compartment’s interior door, and cracked it open to peek out at the darkened passageway beyond. No one was in sight, but a string of portable work lamps provided at least a little illumination. Without hesitation he set out for the bridge, one party of armed sailors at his back; the other teams swiftly turned down different passages, heading for their own targets. Ideally he’d wait for them all to get into position before signaling an attack, but Bleindel doubted that all three groups would reach their targets undetected, so they’d just have to do the best they could.

  He almost reached the bridge before the plan fell apart.

  A sudden burst of mag-weapon fire erupted from somewhere aft of his group: the piercing buzzsaw whine of Gerst autorifles opening up, the heavier chirping coughs of Aquilan battle rifles, the rattle of high-velocity darts striking steel bulkheads and ricocheting down passageways, a dozen voices shouting at once in Nebeldeutsch and Anglic. One of the other groups must have blundered into the enemy, he realized. The Aquilan shots sounded off to him: too low in pitch. Nonlethal rounds, he realized, but before he could pass that reassuring news to his followers, the shots grew higher and shriller—someone on the other side recognized that they were in a gunfight now.

  “Come on!” he shouted to his own team, and sprinted down the last passageway leading to Meduse’s bridge hatch.

  An Aquilan sailor in battle dress stepped out of the bridge and caught sight of the charging Dremish. Bleindel fired at a dead run, and downed the Aquilan with a lucky hit—but a second Aquilan using the hatchway for cover opened up with a blistering spray of automatic fire, shooting half-blind down the passage. He couldn’t help but hit somebody, and a Neu Kiel mate running shoulder-to-shoulder with Bleindel grunted and collapsed around a bad hit in the midsection. Bleindel threw himself behind a structural stanchion that offered at least some protection, while the sailors behind him hit the deck or leaped for cover of their own.

  In the space of a few seconds a furious firefight broke out, as more Aquilans fired from the doorway to the bridge and Bleindel’s own force returned fire. Mag rifles created no muzzle flash or gun smoke, of course, but showers of sparks from mag darts striking steel bulkheads rained down in bright curtains and weapon reports filled the passageway—high, shrill shots at full lethal power in response to the Dremish assault. Bleindel realized at once that his force was pinned down: Rushing a doorway defended by alert enemies with automatic weapons was a tactical challenge that simply had no good answers. Think, Otto, think, he told himself, ignoring the shouts and screams and roaring guns. Either find another way in, wait them out, or screen your approach somehow.

  He looked back at Leutnant Sommer, crouched behind a water cooler in an alcove. “Is there another way into the bridge?” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the din.

  “There are escape scuttles in the deck and overhead, but I’m not sure which compartments they’re in,” Sommer called back.

  Too slow, Bleindel decided. Escape scuttle hatches were small, barely large enough for one person at a time. It might take several minutes for the sailors to find th
e neighboring compartments where the hatches opened, minutes during which their advantage of surprise would dissipate entirely. No, he needed an answer now, and that meant screening their assault. “Smoke!” he ordered the sailors. “Smoke grenades at the doorway, now!”

  At least half the sailors crowded in the passage with him ignored his order, concentrating only on hosing down the bridge entrance with their autorifles. Others were already hurt and unable to comply, or couldn’t figure out how to use the devices they’d been issued. But a few—just three or four, more than enough—found the smoke markers on their utility harnesses, pulled the pins, and hurled them down the passage. Dense white smoke billowed out, filling the narrow space.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Bleindel shouted.

  With a ragged chorus of shouts, the Neu Kiel sailors on the deck scrambled to their feet and ran into the smoke. Scathing mag-rifle fire blasted from the now-hidden doorway; blind or not, some of the defenders found targets, filling the hall with screams of panic and pain. Bleindel crouched low and advanced more slowly after the first wave of the assault, keeping one hand on the bulkhead to his left to feel his way forward. Mag darts cracked past him, close enough that he could feel them pass by. He stumbled over a motionless Dremish sailor bleeding on the deck, and stepped past another thrashing in agony with her hands clamped around a shattered knee. Then he found the edge of the hatch, turned left, and started making his way along the bridge’s aft bulkhead as he searched for a target.

  The smoke thinned around him, and he got his first good look at the scene inside the bridge. Dremish sailors groped blindly through the mist, firing wildly as they stumbled into the room. The Aquilans had pulled back from the entrance: Several crouched behind bridge consoles or acceleration couches, firing at the smoke-filled doorway. Across the room, Sikander Singh North stood behind the main tactical display, firing a mag pistol at the sailors attempting to storm the room.