Accord of Honor (10 page)

Liquid hydrogen had a few other interesting features. It expands into gas rapidly when warmed. And that gas, in an oxygen rich environment, was highly flammable.

We were expecting company dockside. They were letting us dock, but that was no guarantee they had bought our story. The package was there in case we had an armed reception party. Which, judging by the external cameras, we did.

“Open up and have your captain report for debriefing. The rest of you, stand to for inspection of the ship!” came the order from outside. I sighed. There were at least twenty armed men out there. It had to be a good chunk of the total compliment of the pirates left on the station. Or so I hoped. If I was wrong, we were in a lot more trouble.

My crew was gathered round the package, just inside the airlock. They all backed away from the thing and took cover. Everybody knew the scoop – nobody had to be told to get clear. I had a small, jury rigged remote in my hand with a single button. I pressed it.

Several things happened in a very fast sequence. First, our air lock over rode the safety features built into it. Both doors opened at once, which should have been impossible. Thank you, Dad, for always hiring the best techy geeks out there. The ship was somewhat more pressurized than the station, so there was an immediate rush of wind as pressure kicked out of the ship through the airlock. Nothing like a sudden thirty mile an hour wind to surprise armed guards standing outside your ship.

Less than a second after that, a small quantity of explosive triggered on the nozzle end of a large liquid hydrogen storage tank. The amount of explosive had been tricky to get right – because blowing up the entire tank while it was still on the ship would have blown us all to bits. Benson hadn’t been messing around when he said he could do the job, though. The explosion was small, more of a ‘pop’ than a ‘bang’. The blast hardly moved the big tank. But almost instantly the immense pressure in the tank forced hydrogen out the gaping hole where the nozzle had been. The tank lifted into the air, blasted forward by the hydrogen venting from the hole. It flew out of the ship. It slammed into an armed pirate who was standing in the doorway with a wet thwack, the impact tossing him into the air. It continued on, spraying liquid hydrogen all around the small unloading bay just outside our air lock.

Next, the airlock seals reset themselves and slammed down in emergency seal mode, blast doors slipping into place.

Last, an incendiary grenade duct taped to the hydrogen tank was ignited.

It burned very briefly before cutting through the side of the tank, which was still skittering around the room spewing liquid that was about negative two hundred fifty something degrees Celsius all over the armed men in the room. The tank had held a couple hundred kilos of hydrogen. It still had about half that when the grenade finished melting through the tank wall and dropped into the liquid inside, instantly cooking it to gas and igniting it.

The resulting explosion shook the ship and trashed the bay outside our doors, but the blast doors were made of solid stuff, and they held. There wasn’t much left of the pirates outside.

We wasted no time. Cycling the lock several times to preserve the atmosphere in the ship, we shuffled crew out into the still smoldering bay in groups of four. Sixteen of us went out there, leaving only four to guard the ship. The rest of us went looking for trouble.

The first step was to try to get to that big heat spot we thought was where they were holding the hostages. This entire mission would turn into a disaster if they could threaten the hostages, use them against us. We moved as a unit straight down the corridor to the nearest outward bound shaft. We needed to get to the outer ring where that large heat signature had been. I had us led by the four survivors of what I had started to think of as the Chief’s marines – his handpicked tatical squad. I walked in the middle of the pack, where I could retain command well.

We didn’t see anyone on the way to the shaft, not a one. It was a long way down, and even though the gravity would start off slow, it would go up to about two third Earth by the time we reached the bottom. I hit the call button for the elevator, but the display said it was all the way on the bottom and was going to take a while to get to us.

“We do not have time for this,” I growled. “Follow me.”

Then I jumped over the edge.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounded. I remembered riding the elevator up when I was there as a kid and having someone almost land on me from above. The elevator platform had no roof and by the time it was halfway up the shaft, the spin was so slow that the artificial gravity was minimal.

A minute later, I landed on the platform, armored feet hitting with a clang. I turned to the control panel and stopped the upward movement.

Behind me, the crew started landing, one after another. They jumped out of the way as they landed, hugging the walls to open space for the next guy.

“What the hell was that, sir?” one of them asked. But he was laughing. They all were.

“Saved us two minutes travel time,” I replied, grinning back. Then, more soberly, “And every second counts for those prisoners. We have to get there before the enemy can react.” I set the platform to descend again.

We met no interference on our way down, but the door to the conference room was sealed. Someone on the other side had realized something was up, and was thinking. That could be bad for us.

I ran up to the door and started pounding on it. We had our suits on, but there was air here. I popped back my faceplate and started shouting. After a few moments, I heard a tinny voice on the other side say “Who the hell is it?” He sounded nervous, which was good, and just the fact he asked meant that there were no video pickups where he was, or at least he wasn’t thinking about using them.

“It me, it’s John, they blew the bay, they’re coming down here! Let me in, fast!” I hollered back.

“No way, man, password first,” came the reply back.

“Running password is dynasty!” I shouted back. At least, that’s what it had been when we ripped it from the computer databases on the ship we took. “Hurry, they’re coming!”

“OK man, hold on,” he said. I heard beeps on the other side, then servos engaging to lift the heavy door. I snapped my faceplate down and rifle up in two smooth motions as the blast door lifted, and then the regular doors snapped open to either side. The man I had been talking to was standing just inside the door and off to my left. He had time to form his mouth into a silent O before I fired three rounds through his head. I moved forward into the room, scanning for more targets.

It felt oddly like shooting targets back on Earth. I was on the Harvard Shooting Team. Dad was never above bribing me to get his way – he promised me Spring Break anywhere on Earth I wanted to go if I joined the team and we kicked Yale’s ass. I worked daily for months to qualify and then longer after. I took my vacation in the Caribbean, sailing from island to island on a boat I had my father rent. It was as close as I could get to being on a ship in space while I was stuck on Earth. I think my Dad somehow got that, because he never even once complained about the expense.

I didn’t watch the body fall. Maybe I didn’t want to see that it was a person, not a popup target. I just kept moving.

I could feel movement behind me – the men from the Chief’s team, practiced at this sort of maneuver, pressing on into the room. There were three other pirates in sight. I fired a single round at one, dropping him. One of my men took down another as he was turning around. The last enemy reacted faster, pulling the classic ‘grab a hostage as a shield’ move that you see in so many video dramas. He had a middle-aged woman in a red shipsuit in front of him, a pistol held to her head.

My men hesitated. I didn’t. I had a good field of fire, dialed my rifle to armor piercing rounds, and took the shot. It slammed into the hostage’s right shoulder, went right through, and then blew through the pirate’s sternum and out his back. They both fell backwards with the force of the impact, and then the marines were there, kicking the gun away from him and putting pressure on his hostage’s wound.

Just like that, it was over. And I felt sick, thick nausea welling its way up my throat. My hands shook, and I could feel cold sweat popping out on my brow. That round I just fired could have killed the woman, but I hadn’t paused to consider that. I’d just fired. I got my helmet off in time to retch behind a sofa instead of into a closed space suit. I was starting to feel a bit better, if still shaky, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Sergeant Jones, one of the Chief’s marines. He had a paternal look on his face, but I was grateful to see that he looked more concerned than patronizing. I was pretty sure that throwing up on the furniture was not on the list of things daring space captains were supposed to do.

“You OK, sir?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so. Sorry about...that,” I waved errantly at the mess I had made.

“No worries, sir. First time?”

“Second,” I said, but realized that in the fight to seize the ship, I hadn’t really fired many rounds, and had never really seen the few targets I’d shot at. “No, first time like this, I guess.”

He nodded. “Normal reaction. You did well, sir. We’ve sealed the room again, and the medic is looking over that injured civ. Sounds like she’s going to be fine.”

“Thanks,” I said. What else was I supposed to say? I had seen the shot. I knew I could make the shot and I took it. But hell, I’d missed before. If the pirate had moved even a little, I could have killed her. I swallowed hard. Sometimes, knowing which call to make was hard.

“What are your orders, sir?” Jones asked.

I felt my lips draw into a grim line. “Let’s clean the rats out of this warren.”

T
wo hours later
, it was finished. We had three prisoners and had accounted for twenty two dead pirates, not counting the twenty I’d immolated in the bay. I wasn’t sure what exactly to do with the prisoners, but killing them out of hand seemed unjust. The man I shot while he held the hostage was not among the prisoners. He hadn’t survived. I tried to explore my feelings about his death, and the man who I had tricked into opening the door, and the ones I had ordered burned to death in the hangar. I was curiously numb to their deaths. I thought I should probably feel something, but there was nothing. Maybe I would later, or maybe their deaths were too small after ordering the deaths of so many others in the fighting. Or maybe in my gut I just felt like they had brought it on themselves.

Time would tell.

For now, I was headed back to the conference room. The hostages were all still there, being guarded by people from my crew. I hadn’t had a chance to address them yet, and they were probably terrified.

There were thirty in all. I had my medic go through them while the rest of us were busy clearing out pirates, and they seemed OK. While there were a lot of bruises to go around, and they were all pretty hungry, the pirates as a whole seemed to have been taking fairly decent care of them. Better than I had feared, anyway.

“Sir.” It was Jones. From the look on his face, it was bad news. I knew the good luck couldn’t hold forever, but I had been hoping.

“What’s up?” I asked.

He handed me a tablet. There was already a video queued up. I pressed the start button with my finger, and it began playing a recorded news stream – from Earth. My teeth ground together in frustration as I watched newscasters report in vivid detail the death of three major cities. The pirates were hammering the planet with asteroids. The space station was destroyed, the pathetic defense fleet obliterated, and now they were just picking off cities until the planet gave up. It was too much to take in. Millions dead. Tens of millions, maybe? The news wasn’t even trying to get a death toll, and I had a feeling the enemy was just getting warmed up.

“Shit,” I said. “We have to get moving.”

“Aye, sir. Also, radar picked up the enemy ships which survived the tussle with your father. They’re about two hours out.”

I thought furiously. Dad would have gotten this information already. He’d be acting on it, and with Defender and the Inde, he’d get there fast. We didn’t have anything like his speed, and we were further away. It was going to take us a long while to get back to Earth where we could support him.

That wouldn’t stop him from going in.

The sooner we got going, the better for everyone involved.

“Thanks, Jones,” I said, handing him back the tablet. “Pass the word. We’re leaving within the hour.”

“Aye, sir,” he said. His hand flashed a salute before he left me. I wasn’t used to that – not at all. Ship crews don’t salute one another. It was a military thing, and there was no military in space – had been no military in space, anyway. I took the gesture as the compliment I felt it was intended.

I walked back into the conference center, intending to get people up and moving. But things were a lot livelier than the last time I was there. When we first arrived, the hostages were frankly scared shitless. And who could blame them? They’d been prisoners for days, captured and then held by armed men. Then we busted in and started shooting the place up. It can’t have been fun for them. When I left the room, they were sitting huddled on the floor. Now they were standing in clusters and arguing amongst themselves.

And arguing with my crew. I frowned. This could get ugly fast. I only had sixteen men on the station. We’d gotten crazy lucky and lost no one taking the station. But we’d rescued forty-four prisoners. And although they’d been frightened of us when we first came in through the door shooting, they seemed to have decided we were not in league with the pirates and were not going to shoot them. They’d stopped being afraid and started being angry instead.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” I said, trying to quiet the loud buzz in the room. No such luck. “Quiet please!” I said, louder. Still nothing. I sighed, and flipped my rifle to frangible rounds before firing one round into the air. What’s the use of having a rifle if you can’t fire it to shut up a gaggle of spacers?

The room went dead quiet.

“That’s better,” I said.

“What’s the meaning of this?” one man demanded.

“All of you were taken prisoner by these pirates, yes?” I asked. I didn’t want for an answer, just barreled on. “We’re the rescue. We will get you all back to secure space.”

“Who are you people?” the same man asked.

“I know him,” called one voice from the back. “He’s from our company. The Old Man’s son.”

I spotted the speaker. James Kessler, one of Dad’s older employees. He’d captained our ships since I was barely toddling around. The man next to him was also a Stein Space Industries employee, Sam Levine. The two had actually been with me on my apprentice cruise, and although we’d had few opportunities to get together lately, we’d still stayed in touch over the years.

I nodded, resisting the urge to wave hello. “That’s me,” I said. “Thomas Stein. Look, this fight is bigger than it looks. While had you locked up, they tried to hit Mars – and failed, thanks to my father. And they’ve sent ships at Earth as well. They’re throwing rocks from space, blowing up cities with kinetic strikes.” There were a few gasps at that, and someone started crying.

“Now, there’s three ships here at this station. The pirates have started converting them over to carry weapons. We’re taking those ships and bringing them into the fight.”

“You can’t take our property,” the man who’d spoken before growled. “I’ll sue!”

“I’ll return you to someplace more safe than here as quickly as I can,” I said. “But we are taking those ships.”

He came barreling up to the front of the crowd. I saw some of my men tighten grips of rifles and shift their stance a little, but I waved them down. They relaxed. A little.

“I will be taking my ship back. You have no right to stop me,” he said, getting up in my face.

“You asshole. People are dying,” I said, my voice rising with each word. “You think I give two shits about your lawsuit? I am captain of an armed vessel. What’s the penalty for that?”

I let the words sink in for a moment. Everyone knew the sentence for that: death.

I grabbed his collar. “If that isn’t stopping me,” I hissed, “what makes you think I will hesitate to remove any other obstacles that might slow me from saving our homeworld?”

I let him go, and he went stumbling back. He’d gone pretty pale. I guess I had maybe overdone it a bit, but I was pissed.

“I am going to go inspect those other ships and begin implementing evacuation plans. There are three enemy ships only hours away from this station, and we want to be long gone before they arrive. I’d ask everyone to sit tight a little longer and we’ll get you safely away from here.”

I turned to leave the room. That was when I saw her.

Keladry hadn’t changed – and had, at the same time. I mean, I’d know her face anywhere. I’d dreamt of her enough nights, trapped in the gravity well Dad sentenced me to down on Earth. I’d wondered what happened to her. I’d longed to write, to get some sort of message through. But if Dad had learned I’d made any sort of contact, that would have been it – she’d have lost her career. I didn’t doubt my father’s resolve.

Her face. Her curls. Looking at her across the room, I could remember how she smelled. She was here. Of course she was here; she’d been taken by the pirates. I’d been worried to death about her back when I’d first heard. But I’d been so busy retaking the station here that I hadn’t even checked the prisoner list to see if she’d been among them. I felt a sudden pang of guilt. Why hadn’t I gone looking for her right away? I took a hesitant step forward, wanting to say something, anything, to close the gap between us that the years had created.

She turned her back, and walked into the crowd. I lost sight of her.

It hurt. Maybe as much as the original separation, it hurt. Because I’d always had at least some lingering hope that maybe there was still something there, something we could save in spite of my father. But I guessed there just wasn’t. With a force of will, I pushed her from my thoughts. I didn’t have time for this right now. My eyes were a little damp, and I blinked twice to clear my vision. No tears. Not right now, anyway. I had too much counting on me not screwing up. If I fumbled the ball now because of Kel, then Dad would have been right all along.

I left the room with a few of my crew in tow. The rest remained behind to protect the folks we had rescued, from each other as much as anything else at this point. I had to shake my head. I knew people could be panicky creatures, but it seemed a little surreal to argue over ship ownership when millions of lives were at risk.

We went back to the hangar to check out the other two ships. Both had been converted, at least partly. The first was another basic cargo ship like the one I had captured, much like the hull the Indefatigable had been before the heavy drive modifications. The pirates added two missile bays onto the ship. According to the telltales on the missile control console they’d installed on the bridge, both bays were functioning for a total of six launch tubes. It looked like they’d been planning to add some missile defense rockets as well, but hadn’t done so yet. No time now, which was a pity.

The other ship was much larger. “They must have about wet themselves when they captured this one,” I muttered to myself. It was an SSI vessel, one of our largest: the Constellation. Modern cargo ship design was pretty basic. You had a long spindle with a command bridge and crew berths on one end, the main drive on the other, and a tube down the middle. Ships had sets of clamps in the middle of the spindle to which you would attach a ring or disk for carrying crew or passengers or large hauling units for carrying cargo. The hauling units and rings were all standardized, so a unit would fit just about any ship.

Most ships only had one set of clamps. All of the pirates’ standard vessels were like that, and so was the Inde. Some much larger ships had room for two or three sets of clamps, and a very few ships had been built with four sets to haul truly huge loads. The second captive ship was one of those.

The pirate weaponry system was elegant. They simply took off the cargo containers and clamped on missile units they had prefabricated elsewhere. The station was full of a pile of component modules for the missile units, so they had hauled a bunch of them out here. Obviously planning to beef up their fleet at the expense of cargo vessels they had captured.

The SSI Constellation was an amazing sight. If any ship had a prayer of standing up to the likes of the Defender, it would have been this one. It had one crew ring, so the ship could carry a much bigger crew compliment than most. That had been retrofitted with a number of antimissile rocket launchers. The other three rings had been filled out with missile pods, six in total, for a launch capability of eighteen tubes.

It was love at first sight. I had my new flagship. It was even legal since I was simply recovering Stein property. I had to smile at the irony of worrying about property legalities when flying an armed ship meant a mandatory death penalty. I pushed the thought out of my head. One thing at a time.