She shrugged helplessly. “Ugo was
waiting. He’d been circling since midnight.”
“Nice stunt. It nearly got you
killed.”
She looked surprised. “What do
you mean?”
“What do you think crippled your
ship?”
“
Mannie
said it was a system problem.”
“He was . . . wrong.”
She sobered. “You’ve seen him?”
I nodded somberly, telling her
with a look that he was dead.
Tears clouded her eyes. “We knew his
air supply must have run out, but I hoped –.”
“It wasn’t his air supply.” When
she gave me a puzzled look, I added, “It was a crawler.”
“Another one?” she said puzzled,
thinking only the crawler in the emergency bay had malfunctioned.
“They were all taken over by
whatever crippled the
Heureux
.”
Gadron Ugo, the bald headed man mountain
who doubled as Marie’s de facto guardian, stepped forward and put a big arm
comfortingly around her shoulders. “I’ll take care of
Mannie
.”
He gave me a nod, the nearest I’d get to a ‘thank you’, then he left with the
surviving crew members.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“The helm just stopped responding
and our engines shut down.
Mannie
cooled the energy
plant as a safety precaution, then we decompressed for no reason. After we got
to the lifeboat, he went off to do repairs. That was the last we saw of him. A
few hours later, a hull crawler tried to force open the hatch. It nearly killed
us, but we managed to lock it out.”
“When did the
Soberano
show up?”
She gave me a puzzled look. “The
Soberano
? I haven’t seen Vargis since
Icetop.”
I couldn’t believe he’d simply
run, even if the Ravens were nearby. “Where’s the Codex?”
“In system control.
Mannie
tried analyzing it, but it was unresponsive. I
thought we’d all been conned.”
I activated my communicator.
“Izin, is the Codex up there with you?” I hadn’t seen it, but I’d been
distracted by a deranged plasma torch wielding octo at the time.
“What is it?” Marie asked.
“Vargis knew you were here.”
“And he left us to die?” she
exclaimed incredulously.
“He reported your position to
Axon Control. That’s how I found you.”
“Captain,” Izin’s voice sounded
in my earpiece, “it’s not here.”
“Damn! Vargis boarded your ship
and took the Codex!” He must have made the same guess I had, that Marie was
heading to the Society’s regional headquarters at Axon.
“That thieving bastard!” Marie said.
“Well, you stole it first.” I
realized that wasn’t quite true. “Actually, I stole it first, you stole it
second, he stole it third!”
She gave me a canny look. “I knew
you cheated!”
“I improvised.”
The crawler in the processing
core must have seen Vargis take the Codex, so why weren’t there bits of destroyed
crawler and dead
Soberano
crewman
littering the system control compartment? Then I remembered Bo believed Sarat’s
auction had been rigged to ensure Vargis won. Could the homicidal crawlers have
simply let him take the Codex, because whatever controlled them knew he was
supposed to have it – that the Matarons wanted him to have it?
I activated my communicator. “Jase,
what’s the status on those Ravens?”
Marie looked alarmed. “Ravens?”
“The scout’s back to the edge of
the Shroud,” Jase said, “coming in slow. No sign of the other two.”
I quickly recounted how we’d
scared off the scout. Now that it was back, I didn’t need to see the two Raven
combat ships to know they were out there, waiting for the order to attack. “You
need to get the
Heureux
out of here –
fast.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got to find Vargis. He
doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.”
“And you do?”
I couldn’t tell her Vargis was the
unwitting target of a Mataron scheme to wreck our civilization. “You’ll have to
trust me on that.”
“Vargis knows one thing. He knows
what it’s worth,” she said slowly, deep in thought, “and he’s got a plan to exploit
it.” Realization appeared on her face, then she gave me a wily look. “You have
no idea where he’s gone, do you?”
“Not a clue. Do you?”
“Maybe.”
“You didn’t even know he boarded
your ship! How could you possibly know where he’s taken the Codex?”
“Women’s intuition,” she said
evasively, “and he said something back on Icetop.”
“We haven’t got time for this,
Marie. Where’s he headed?”
She pressed her lips tightly
together and crossed her arms defiantly.
So that was it! “You’re not
coming. Your ship will barely make it to Axon, even with Izin’s help.”
“There’s room on your ship.”
“For you?” I laughed.
“Ugo can get the
Heureux
to Axon while you, my dear Sirius,
are in desperate need of . . . me.”
“Not in a million years!”
“How about one in a million,
because they’re your odds of finding Vargis without my help.”
“I know he didn’t tell you where
he was going.”
“Not in so many words.”
“So you’re guessing?”
“I’m reading between the lines.”
“Tell me what you know and if it
pans out, you’ll get your fair share.”
She gave me an incredulous look.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, my love, it’s just that daddy taught his
little girl never to let other people handle her credits.” She ran her finger
across my shoulder teasingly. “You can handle my
other
assets, but not my credits!”
She was right about the odds. Vargis
could be headed anywhere in Mapped Space. Finding him would be impossible
without help.
I groaned, certain Jase and Izin would
think I’d gone out of my mind, especially after the way she’d played me on
Icetop. “If you’re lying to me, I swear, I’ll space you myself.”
“As if you could possibly do that
to me!” She gave me a sly look. “Partner.”
* * * *
“The
scout’s started a high-G run into the Shroud,” Jase’s voice sounded urgently in
my earpiece. “It’s going to pass within ten thousand clicks of us.”
There’d be no hiding what we were
at that range, then the two combat ships would bubble in on top of us and make
sure none of us went home alive.
“Understood,” I said as I entered
the
Heureux’s
system control room.
Izin was packing his equipment away, watched by Ugo, who by his disdain was
clearly not a tamph lover. “Can they get underway?”
“Their autonav is going through
pre-start now, Captain,” Izin said. “They’ll be able to bubble in fifteen
minutes.”
“The Ravens will be on us in ten,”
I said as Marie appeared in the hatchway carrying a small bag ready to board
the
Lining
.
She wore a headset so she could
listen in on communications between the two ships. “Can you buy Ugo some time?”
she asked.
“We can try.” I turned to Ugo.
“If the combat ships jump in, we’ll have to run.”
“I know.” His eyes flicked to
Marie with the worry of an adoptive father. “Don’t wait for us,” he said,
giving me free reign to do whatever was necessary to ensure Marie didn’t fall
into Raven hands.
“They won’t catch us,” I
promised.
Marie hugged Ugo. “I’ll meet you
at Axon,” she said, then we hurried to the airlock and cycled through into the
Lining
.
Once the airlock sealed, I called
Jase. “We’re in. Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Across the scout’s trajectory,
nice and slow. Make it look like we’re itching for a fight.”
“OK, you’re the boss,” Jase said
uncertainly.
High speed was the resort of the
weak, slow the choice of the strong. If we raced out there with our hair on
fire, the two ships would close upon each other so fast, they’d have only a few
seconds to fire before their opposing velocities carried them out of weapons
range. It would then take time for both ships to decelerate and come back for
another pass, giving either an opportunity to escape. It’s what the scout was
banking on. It was coming in fast for a look, not a slugfest, intending to race
away into the safety of the Shroud’s sensor clutter while its two attack dogs
did the fighting. By going out slow, I was telling the scout I wanted more time
in weapons range. It was a message they’d relay to the two combat ships, making
them hesitate until they knew how big a stick I carried.
A dull thud echoed through the
hull as the
Lining
released the old
freighter. Marie and I hurried to the flight deck while Izin disappeared towards
engineering. By the time I was sliding onto my acceleration couch, Jase had us
on a course to the closest point intersecting the scout’s trajectory. Marie
climbed onto the third couch placed centrally behind us, and slightly above the
two piloting stations. Ideally, the
Lining
should have had a pilot, a sensor specialist and a navigator, who doubled as weapons
operator in a crisis, but Jase and I juggled the duties between us, so the third
seat was usually vacant.
“Any sign the scout’s getting
cold feet?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s pulling low forties,”
Jase replied, “but the two brawlers are powering weapons thirty million clicks
out.”
“OK. Let’s see what he’s made of,”
I said, activating the autonav. “Retract sensors.”
Jase gave me an apprehensive look
when he realized I was going to micro-bubble out to the intercept point. “You
sure, Skipper? We’ll be a sitting duck if that scout’s packing any real
firepower.”
“I’m betting he isn’t, but he sure
as hell will think we are.” It was an aggressive move, but it would keep the
Ravens guessing and would buy Ugo a few more minutes. Unfortunately for the
scout, it wasn’t all bluff.
The screen went blank as we
retracted sensors to protect them from bubble heat, then for a fraction of a
second we stretched spacetime around us and moved out to the interception
point. The moment the bubble dropped, Jase deployed our sensors, bringing the screen
back to life. I rolled the
Lining
bow
over stern, applied a short high-G blast from the engines to kill our velocity,
then rolled again so we were facing the scout at almost a dead stop, giving us
maximum time in weapons range.
The maneuver was not lost on the
Raven scout.
“You’re just going to sit here?” Marie
asked.
She was a trader, born and bred.
All her training was in how to avoid getting into a fight, not how to start
one. “It’s the best place to be if you want to slug it out.”
“Isn’t this tow boat a little small
for that?” she asked skeptically.
“You might be surprised.” I said
as the scout yawed ninety degrees, still pulling high G’s, but now sliding away
from its previous trajectory. “That Raven’s not taking any chances.”
“That’s because he has two
killers to do his fighting for him,” Marie said.
“Be ready to bubble when you see
double!” I said absently as I programmed the autonav to run the moment our
sensors detected the combat ships in two locations at once. The old escape
mantra was the key to surviving this kind of fight. When the Raven combat ships
attacked, they’d bubble in travelling faster than the speed of light for a
fraction of a second. Because the signals our sensors read travelled at the
speed of light, we’d pick up both the attacker’s sensor ghost from their
starting location and their actual presence nearby simultaneously – seeing
double. That was the signal to run for our lives. We’d pull our sensors while
they deployed theirs, and with luck we’d be superluminal before they could open
fire.
For the navy, sensor ghosting was
the signal to open fire, and the rationale for their battle saying – start
trouble when you see double. They rarely got to use it because equally matched combat
ships rarely bubbled into battle. They stalked each other with eyes open,
careful not to give their opponent the chance for a knockout blow. In naval
combat, it was decidedly better to receive than to give – to wait for the enemy
to bubble blindly in to you than for you to bubble out to them with sensors
stowed. It was simply the physics of space flight and it inherently favored the
defensive, at least for the first few decisive seconds – unless one side had
overwhelming superiority, in which case all bets were off. Weaker ships usually
had the opportunity to escape before ever coming within weapons range. It was why
the navy struggled to eliminate the Brotherhood, even when they had them
cornered. The navy simply couldn’t engage them quickly without placing their
own ships at unacceptable risk.
It was different for the traders.
The Brotherhood would pounce as soon as a trade ship appeared, knowing their
prey lacked the firepower to hurt them. It came down to how alert the trader
crew were and whether they were equipped to fast bubble away before the pirate
could deploy sensors and open fire. It was the ultimate game of cat and mouse.