Relics of War, page 2
It wasn’t him—in fact it looked like it was Gilroy—who broke through the weakened shield and put the first close range gash across the engines. There was a flicker in the power readings—they dropped almost to zero—before they recovered, but that was the beginning of the end. Three other fighters synced up their attack runs and blasted holes straight through the engines and out the other side. The ship’s power died—killing all the shields, weapons, and sensors.
Now they could board.
2
BOARDING THE PIRATE
Once the pirate’s acceleration dropped to zero and the exchange of fire stopped, the squadron received a broadcast from the still fleeing merchantman.
“Unidentified fighters, state your intentions!”
Kayn keyed in his fighter’s frequency and transmitted it back to the freighter. He’d rather not have this conversation be a general one if his instincts could be trusted. “We are Mungo squadron from the registered privateer carrier Alcazar. We intend to claim salvage on this ship disabled during an act of piracy.”
A long pause ended with a hesitant transmission. “Registered? With which systems?”
“We carry letters of marque and reprisal from several regional governments, including the Schwyz Eidgenossenschaft.”
“The SE? The Switzer Navy does their own piracy patrols.”
“They do, but they can’t be everywhere, so they issue letters of marque to save them from stationing Korvette and Fregatte squadrons in every minor system.” And because if they didn’t, the pirates would find out, and privateers in neighboring systems would end up driving pirates into Switzer systems. This way privateers patrolled the whole area and took prizes wherever they could. And could even be taxed.
“Oh. Well, then, thank you, Mutlos squadron.”
Kayn huffed at the—unintentional?—insult. It was still traditional to name ships, ranks, squadron designations, everything in German—the language of the Kaiserreich—the old empire. Mungo—mongoose. Mutlos—coward. He signaled a disconnect and watched as the freighter lumbered further in-system. They still had work to do and pay to earn.
Half the squadron stayed on overwatch while the others latched on to the pirate’s hull. It wasn’t likely, but until they were sure the pirate had no reserve power for weapon systems, they needed firepower prepared. Kayn chose to stay with the overwatch. He assigned Gilroy to the boarders. Boarders might get shot up, but they also got first pick of the loot. Gilroy would be happy about it, and it might make the later conversation about rank and insubordination go easier.
Kayn kept his channel to the boarding party open as they moved through the ship. They forced the airlock and roamed the passageways, looking for resistance. So far, they hadn’t encountered any. He heard Gilroy bark orders.
“I’m heading for the bridge, with you, you, and you.” He must be pointing. “The rest head for engineering and secure it. Once we have both under our control, we’ll set up for a compartment-by-compartment sweep. Move out.”
Not a bad plan. There might be armed pirates gathered elsewhere, but if they lost the bridge or engineering, the internal systems of the ship could be turned against them. There would be guards at both locations. Hitting both at once prevented those systems from being used against the boarders.
Still, it split their combat power. One group could be overwhelmed by defenders where combined they could win. Gilroy hadn’t thought it through, Kayn was sure. Gilroy never did. He just pushed ahead as quickly as possible.
If they ran into trouble, Kayn could dock with the remaining fighters and come to the rescue. It would piss off Gilroy, even if it saved his life. But there wasn’t anything to be done about that.
“We’re at the bridge. The door’s sealed but there’re no guards.”
Strange. Kayn would have expected them, but they could have an ambush set up inside. He itched to get aboard and at least back up the rest of the squadron.
“Force the door.”
Still no word from the other team. It might take them longer to reach engineering.
“Going in!”
Kayn leaned in as if he could pull more information from the communicator by force of will. The pause went on and on. Had they all been killed? In the middle of a firefight? Damn it, Gilroy, say something!
“Clear. They weren’t suited up when environmental failed. Tegid, status on engineering?”
“We just reached the door. It’s not sealed, but it won’t open. Damaged.” Tegid panted as he talked.
“Open it.” Gilroy didn’t provide any advice on how, but he was clear about the task.
“On it.” A few muttered curses came through the communicator as Tegid worked. “Okay, I’m going in.” Another pause while Tegid must have squeezed through the gap. “Dark as a tomb in here. I’m turning on my suit lights. There’s…” Tegid’s transmission cut off abruptly, then a garble of noises followed.
“What the hell?” Gilroy sounded annoyed, but not frightened yet. That was fine, Kayn was frightened enough for both of them. “Who else is there? Somebody get in there and back him up.”
“I’m almost in.” Rhonwen’s familiar voice sounded strained. Fear or just the exertion of getting through the partially cleared door? Kayn gripped his console. “Okay, I’m in. Tegid’s curled up against the bulkhead. Doesn’t look injured. Oh…” Kayn’s knuckles were white with strain. “Only some of the engineers were suited, and they were shredded when we holed the compartment.” Her voice stayed even, but an edge of tension made it tight and breathy. “It’s pretty…bloody. Ah—an arm just floated past. Hold on.”
Her communication cut off for about twenty seconds. Kayn caught himself holding his breath and inhaled deeply, trying to release some of the strain. Gilroy kept silent as well.
“I’ve checked Tegid. He vomited in his helmet. The automatic systems have cleared most of it. I think we need to get him back to pressure and get him out of the suit, but it’s not life-threatening. Everyone is dead here, systems inactive or destroyed.”
“Great,” said Gilroy. “Kayn, you can land the rest of the troops, and we can complete the sweep and secure all compartments.”
“On it. Pilots, in we go.” Kayn concentrated on maneuvering his fighter to a docking position and doing a proper shutdown before he checked to make sure his suit was vacuum ready. He stepped out on to the outer hull of the former pirate, now a derelict, ready for salvage once they were sure it was safe.
He and the other pilots clomped across the hull, magnetic fasteners on their boots holding them tight to the ship. They shuffled through the open airlocks and into the passageways. It might take some time to check every compartment, but it didn’t have to be wasted time.
“Mungo Three to Alcazar. Pirate is blown. Engines and power down. No pressure: we’re still in suits. Starting a compartment sweep. Head in for pickup.”
Merrok responded personally. “Alcazar to Mungo squadron. We’re on our way. Good work, team.”
Well, the hard part was over. Now for hours in vacuum suits, searching a dead ship for armed pirates who’d shoot them on sight.
Easy.
3
ENGINE ROOM EXPLORER
Rhonwen shut off her comms again and forced herself to move. She pushed Tegid to the hatch where the rest of the pilots still struggled to open it wider. She shoved his arms and head into the gap and the others tugged him through. She waved after them, letting them find a spot to stow Tegid until Alcazar arrived, and moved back out of the line of sight from the hatch.
She locked her magnetic boots to the bulkhead and wrapped her arms tight around her own chest, shrinking down into as much of a fetal position as the suit allowed. Double checking her comm was off, she let out a shaky sob. The blood and gore, even frozen in the vacuum, triggered memories of the time before she joined Alcazar’s crew. Spurts of blood from once living crew. The shock of seeing that blood soaking into her own clothes. Finding flecks of blood, and bone, and flesh, and brains in her personal gear. She’d destroyed her clothing, but other items she’d desperately wanted to keep. Until she found the contamination. She tried to scrub it out, to bring back their pristine condition, untouched by horror, but failed. At last she had to destroy so much of her past, anything that was touched by that time.
Now she faced a new horror, but without her at the center. She’d learned a few things in her time aboard Alcazar. So she put her new education to work. She gathered up bodies, both whole and partial, and shoved them into a corner of the compartment, away from panels or controls. When she’d finished consolidating them, she pressed her hands together and closed her eyes.
“I pray to she who comforts the dead when they have finished making their mistakes in the world. Comfort and teach these who have done so much wrong in their life, so they may learn the lessons they should have learned before death. While we cannot hold them blameless for their transgressions, we must learn to forgive them in order to move on in our own lives and learn the lessons you seek to teach us. Aid us in this, comforter, and teach us so that these lives will not be lived in vain.”
She took her belief from a variety of sources, discarding much of it to achieve a slim, personal faith. Obviously no perfect creator made the universe. Perfection didn’t describe the real universe at all. A mother’s loving arms after you died would comfort your soul, teaching you, telling you which actions were your mistakes and which weren’t. So she believed in that.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
4
PIRATE TREASURE
Pilots marked the loot they claimed as they checked each compartment. It wasn’t until Kayn entered the room where the pirate’s boarding parties had gathered that he realized why this had gone so easily. The compartment had taken a direct hit from a missile, killing everyone. The bodies lay heaped up against two bulkheads, while twisted metal occupied the other corner. A few personal weapons were salvageable, and pilots claimed them as they picked through the corpses.
Kayn turned it over to Gilroy and staggered down a passageway. With his suit still sealed, there was no way he could smell any of the gore he’d seen, but the bodies tripped his memories and the smells from his past flooded his mind. It wasn’t that the pirates hadn’t deserved their fate. They had. But not every pile of bodies Kayn had seen were so deserving. Some were innocents, some even children.
He leaned against the bulkhead and swallowed convulsively, trying to hold down the bile fighting to rise and foul his helmet. Keep it together. Panted breaths rasped in his ears. Think of something else.
Rhonwen had handled this much better when she squeezed into engineering. Now terror gripped him. What if some of them had survived? What if they’d blasted a hole in her suit as she lay trapped in the doorway? What if he didn’t have her anymore? Could he keep the delicate mental balance he’d assembled since joining Alcazar’s crew if he lost her? Or would everything spiral out of control again, as it did back on…whatever the name of that cesspit world was.
No. He pushed hard against the bulkhead and staggered upright. Find something else. Move down the passageway. Flick the lights left and right. Other lights flashed into the passage from an open compartment. Kayn doused his own lights and leaned around the door frame.
Three of his squadron rooted through items stored inside. Nothing of obvious extraordinary value, but they still marked a few items: a hanging bag with colorful silk visible through the open fastener, a glass fronted shelf filled with leather bound books, a display box filled with semiprecious stones set in copper jewelry. One of the crew spun around and caught Kayn in a beam of light. She reached for her weapon, then stopped and straightened.
“Leutnant! I thought you were…” She trailed off. It wasn’t obvious where she thought Kayn might be, other than somewhere else.
He waved a hand at her and switched his lights back on. “At ease.” He winced as she cocked an eyebrow at him. He still hadn’t shed all the military training he’d been given. “Relax, I was just looking around.” He flashed his light around the compartment. “Anything interesting?”
She grinned and gestured at the hanging bag, then at the jewelry. “I thought these were pretty, but interesting? Not much.” She swung her light across the walls, then down to the floor near a corner. “Well, this might be. It’s marked as archaeological artifacts, but the case is sealed pretty tight. We thought the stuff might break if we blew the lock.”
“Huh, let me take a look.” Kayn crouched down next to the box and examined it. “Carry on, don’t let me keep you.”
“Thanks, Kayn.” She turned back and continued rummaging in the crates.
A cursory examination showed an expensive lock, perhaps more valuable than anything else in the room. The case might rival the lock’s value, though. Designed to protect the contents from direct fire from most personal weapons, and survive near misses from heavier fire, just protecting artifacts didn’t make a lot of sense. He explored the outside of the case and found a manifest in a protective sleeve. His eyebrows rose as he saw the estimated age of the artifacts. Two thousand years old put them right at the end of the AI Wars. Skimming through the descriptions confirmed this.
So AI Wars-era artifacts, sealed in a case designed to survive anything short of a direct hit by ship’s weapons, with a lock that should defeat any attempt to open it by any amateur and most professionals. She’d been right: it was interesting. He needed to make a call.
“Mungo Three to Alcazar. Connect me with Ambrose.”
The case was sturdy, so he sat down on it. He tapped his fingers while he waited. The other pilots had moved on already, leaving him on his own with the case. The general communication channel stayed quiet. People used a short-range temporary comm link when they were in the same room. No one was interested in advertising the treasures they’d found.
He brooded on the difference between privateers and pirates. Both were hunters, but pirates were privateers’ prey, while the pirates hunted merchantmen. Both killed and looted, but pirates killed the innocent and stole their property. Privateers killed pirates and took what was already stolen. But did that make privateers like him good? Noble? Heroes?
Was he a hero? Did he feel like one? During the battle, he felt like a warrior concentrated on winning, even beyond survival. Afterward, he felt like a killer. A thief. A murderer. Without even the excuse that he was only following orders.
The darkness lurking in the corners of the room reached for him, his little artificial lights too weak to save him. He curled down into himself, pondering his sins and his eventual punishments for them.
“Kayn! Kayn? You there?”
He shook his head, rapping his knuckles on his helmet to try and clear his mind. “I’m here. Ambrose?”
“Of course it’s me! Now, what are you interrupting me for? I was working on a translation of a code fragment found recently and now I’ll need to start over. Do you know how difficult it is to make sense of fragmentary AI code?”
Kayn grinned. Esoteric research occupied much of Ambrose’s watch time, and all his personal time. Once Ambrose heard about this case he’d forgive all interruptions past, present, and future.
“Sorry about that, Ambrose,” said Kayn, faking deep remorse. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s probably not important, but there’s this case of AI Wars artifacts on the pirate. I’ll just chuck it out the airlock.”
“You what! Stop! Stop that right now!” Ambrose struggled to control his voice. “Now what kind of artifacts are you talking about? What are they? How many?”
“I don’t know, Brose. The case is locked, and it’s pretty heavy duty. I figure you can work on it for a few months to try and get the lock open.”
“Ha! Months! It’ll only take me a few hours and you know it! Put my mark on it and I’ll take a look as soon as you get it transferred over. How is the transfer going, by the way?”
“Alcazar hasn’t arrived yet. We won’t start until you slowpokes get here.” He found it easy to relax with Ambrose. And Rhonwen. But none of the others. Not the Hauptmann, not the Kommandant, not even Gilroy, the closest to him in rank. But at least there were two. “So hurry up and we’ll see how fast you can open this piece of junk.”
“Fine, fine. Just have them bring it to my quarters.” Ambrose cut the connection without another word. Kayn was sure Ambrose had heard of manners and politeness but didn’t understand how they applied to him.
Kayn checked the ETA with Alcazar’s helmsman. They could have everything ready to transfer by the time Alcazar arrived if he started kicking some butts right now. That would keep everyone busy. Including him.
5
ALCAZAR INBOUND
“You heard the man,” said Merrok to his bridge crew. “The hulk is secure. Let’s get in there and see what we’ve got. Get me an intercept course and don’t spare the horses!” Merrok dropped into his chair and put his feet up in his traditional position. The crew scuttled around carrying out his orders while he watched over them like a benign ruler.
The ship’s engines engaging shook the hull and he nodded in satisfaction. On their way. He paged through data the sensor section picked up on the pirate, along with a download from the squadron. He compared parts breakdowns to price lists and scrap value for the hull itself. Nothing special, but enough to make this intercept break even just from the hull and parts, not including any loot they might find on board. So this should put them firmly in the black. Good news for any self-supporting privateer.
Communications piped up. “I’ve got a signal from the freighter they were after.” He paused and shrugged. “They broadcast to the squadron and Kayn’s answering.” His eyes unfocused as he listened in on the exchange. Merrok grinned a bit, wondering if the rescued freighter would be worried they’d gone from the frying pan into the fire.
