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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Well, it’s in roughly the right place and coming in on the right heading, Sir,” Commander Mirwani said.

“And about fifteen hours late squawking the wrong transponder,” Murphy observed dryly.

“Well, yes. There is that,” his ops officer acknowledged.

Murphy puffed his cheeks, clasped his hands behind him, and began pacing slowly around the flag bridge command ring. Ishtar and her embarked parasites had reached Alramal twenty-nine hours earlier. She’d dropped sublight just under three light-hours from the system’s sole inhabited planet—which also happened to be named Alramal—and decelerated to her current position, 98 LM from the system primary and 90 LM from the planet. No one in what passed for Alramal System Traffic Control had challenged them—probably because Alramal was accustomed to visitors who sometimes chose to exchange cargoes away from any prying eyes. For that matter, it was also possible no one had challenged them because someone on Alramal who anticipated the arrival of a commerce-raider was looking the other way for a cut of the proceeds.

One of the realities of interstellar commerce was that it was just as impossible for pirates or commerce-raiders to locate prey in wormhole space as it was for FTLCs to find one another there. That meant all pirates or their at least putatively more respectable regular navy colleagues were forced to do their hunting in normal space in proximity to shipping nodes. And if their sublight parasites were going to run down any prey, they could really only operate inside a Powell Limit and, hopefully, inside a planetary limit, since any FTL freighter could run away from any fusion drive ship with ludicrous ease anywhere outside that limit.

That wasn’t an issue for Ishtar, but even she had to wait for the fly to walk far enough into her web before she could pounce.

“Like Raleigh says, in the right place on the right heading, Sir,” O’Hanraghty said. “Two out of three ain’t bad. And its emissions fit the configuration of a bulk carrier, too.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that it’s a freighter,” Murphy replied. “The question is whether or not it’s the right freighter. Because if it isn’t, and we’re accelerating hell for leather to intercept it when the right freighter does come along, things get really, really problematical.” He grimaced. “I don’t suppose there’s anything on that transponder in our database?”

“You don’t suppose correctly,” O’Hanraghty told him. “Not surprising, though, is it? Only Federation-flagged ships are in the database, and the one thing this yahoo isn’t is a Federation ship.”

Murphy nodded, watching the icon whose transponder code tagged it as Val Idrak decelerate toward the inner system at eight hundred gravities. The ship had gone sublight two and a half light-hours from the planet…and 177.6 LM from Ishtar. At its current deceleration rate, it had been almost ten hours from Alramal planetary orbit. Now, ninety minutes later, it had traveled just under 1.38 billion kilometers, its velocity was down to 233,480 KPS, and the range to Ishtar had fallen to 101.2 LM. It would take it another three hours and twenty minutes to reach Ishtar’s position. Well, to pass within roughly 900,000 kilometers of it, at any rate. That was less than three times the distance between Old Earth and Luna—a mere nothing when it came to deep-space navigation.

“We can’t let it get past us if it is the ship we’re looking for,” the admiral said. “Once it makes planetary orbit, things get a lot stickier where boarding actions are concerned.”

“That’s true,” O’Hanraghty agreed. “Force majeure is a pretty convincing argument out here, though.”

“I’d just as soon not go that route if we don’t have to. And I want to be sure nothing disappears planetside before we can get people on board. We don’t have anywhere near enough Marines to conduct any snipe hunts on a feral planet.”

O’Hanraghty nodded, and Murphy completed one more circuit around the command ring. Then he stopped and inhaled deeply.

* * *

“So how come I’ve gotta go squishy?” Steiner complained.

“’Cause we can only fit three suits into the Moray if we take along more than one squishy, and we’ve got two. Not counting you,” Faeran replied as she shuffled the cards.

“Yeah, but how come I’m the one who isn’t in armor?”

“Because you botched the last breach-and-clear drill,” Logan said, gathering up his cards as Faeran dealt. “Remember firing sabots instead of hollow points and puncturing the hull? The simulated rapid depressurization? My entirely earnest string of expletives to describe your cockup?”

“If he keeps cocking up, can I have his armor?” Eira asked.

“No,” the Hoplons said in unison.

“That doesn’t seem very fair,” she muttered. Pinochle wasn’t her game, so she was earnestly honing a combat knife as she watched them play.

“I don’t think ‘fair’ plays a really large role in the Sergeant Major’s thinking,” Callum said dryly. He was tipped back in a chair in the strikecarrier Fury’s ready room, rereading the procedural manual on boarding actions.

“Damn straight it doesn’t…Sir,” Logan agreed. “Steiner’s a cockup, Eira, but at least he knows enough about the suits to cock up.”

“Bids?” Chavez interrupted, looking at his hand.

“Ohhhhh! Somebody’s got a double run or double aces!” Faeran said, grinning at him across the table.

“Yeah, some people’s poker face isn’t worth shit, is it?” Steiner smirked.

“Hey,” Chavez said. “I’ve got a great poker face. And—”

Ooooh-GAAAH! Ooooh-GAAAH!

The ancient klaxon cut him off in mid-sentence and cards went flying.

“Suit up!” Logan barked, and looked at Callum. “Means you, too, Sir.”

* * *

“And about…now, I think,” Murphy said, watching the plot.

“Yes, Sir,” Lieutenant Mastroianni said from Ishtar’s command deck. She touched her boom mic, moving it in front of her lips, and spoke crisply. “Val Idrak, this is TFNS Ishtar. We are a Federation Navy warship, and you are instructed to decelerate and rendezvous with us for boarding inspection. Respond.”

Val Idrak had been sublight for just over four hours. Her velocity was down to 15,934 KPS, and the range had fallen to under five light-seconds as she streaked past Ishtar’s deep space hiding place.

“Show him our fan, Captain,” Murphy said, and Captain Lowe nodded to Commander Creuzburg.

“Fire it up, Augustus,” he said.

Creuzburg tapped his controls, Ishtar’s Fasset drive came online, and she began to accelerate in pursuit.

* * *

“God, I hate this ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ shit,” Steiner groused.

“You’re just full of sunshine today, aren’t you?” Logan inquired sardonically.

The three armored Hoplons were anchored to the deck in the forward section of the boarding pod while Steiner, Callum, and Eira—all in armored vac suits—occupied heavy duty acceleration couches in its configurable after section.

At the moment, all of them were in microgravity as the strikecarrier Fury rode Ishtar’s racks, but that was going to change, sooner or later, because their pod had been mated to one of Fury’s Orca-class fighters. The Orca was a flexible design, capable of accepting a number of different weapons modules or, as in this case, a single Moray boarding pod. In combat mode, an Orca pilot was capable of functioning effectively at accelerations as high as fifteen or even sixteen gravities, sustaining twenty gravities before blacking out, and actually surviving under that massive acceleration for as much as thirty minutes at a time. That was possible only because he was supported in a dense, high-pressure fluorocarbon mist to support his hollow organs. It also filled his lungs…and every other body cavity, which led to a predictable series of flatulence jokes when his acceleration chamber depressurized. Strikefighter pilots were also equipped to plug into external blood support systems which both oxygenated their blood (which their fluorocarbon-filled lungs could not) and insured its circulation at accelerations when the human heart simply couldn’t.

The Morays were intended for an acceleration of no more than ten gravities, however. Which would be quite nasty enough for their passengers.

“I’m just saying we could still be playing pinochle instead of sitting here in this tin can, Smaj,” Steiner replied. “That’s all.”

“Well, I’ll bet the Admiral’s just heartbroken—heartbroken—about interrupting your pinochle game.”

“But—”

“Oh, shut it down,” Logan commanded. “Better to load up early and wait than leave it too late and find out then your pod’s been downchecked! You want to go tell Captain Bisgaard how to do her job?”

“No…”

“Or the Admiral? No? Didn’t think so,” Logan said.

“No problem, Sergeant Major. I’ll just sit here and build character.”

“Smart choice.”

Callum leaned against his restraints and raised a hand, then tapped the side of his head.

“Uh-oh. Zero’s figured out we turned off his comms,” Steiner said.

Eira reached across and flipped the switch on the side of Callum’s helmet.

“Did I miss something?” he asked. “The way Steiner’s wiggling around, I thought maybe we got an alert notice.”

“Maybe he’s just got sand in his…suit,” Chavez said.

Steiner kicked his armor in the back.

“Squat and hold, Sir,” Logan said. “Welcome to the Corps.”

“Yeah, I didn’t expect to sit here this long when I volunteered,” Callum agreed. “Still, it’s not so bad.”

“So far, at least,” Logan agreed. “Acceleration’s gonna be a bitch, though, Sir.”

“My tolerance is in the top twenty percent.” Callum shrugged. “I don’t expect it to be fun, but I imagine I’ll survive.”

“You just hold that thought,” Logan told him.

“Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, why did you volunteer?” Chavez said. “For that matter, why didn’t you stay back on Crann Bethadh? You weren’t on shipboard rotation.”

“Heard the Admiral and Captain O’Hanraghty talking about the exercises and figured I should tag along, see how it all works in real life, not in a scenario like Federation Commander.” Callum shrugged again. “Not that I don’t like our duty station, but every so often I have to at least pretend to take all this Navy stuff seriously. Besides, where would the Admiral be without me to screen his message traffic? Then I found out about this interception, and, well—”

He shrugged minimally, all his harness would allow, and very carefully did not look in Eira’s direction.

“Since you’re so close to the flagpole,” Chavez said, “maybe you know a bit more about our target than what was in the mission briefing? Unlicensed merchantman carrying slaves from Inverness and…? Any particular pirate outfit associated with it? Because if they’re ex-League that went AWOL, that means a different fight than your normal feral in sixty-year-old gear.”

“Not much,” Callum said. “According to the report that got us headed out here, it’s a slave consignment being shipped to some feral world despot.”

“Eira, are you going to keep your cool if we do find a hold full of your people?” Logan asked.

“I don’t…I don’t know if I even believe it’s possible,” Eira said. “I spoke to a few other survivors when I was in the hospital. No one said anything about raiders. But in all the confusion after the attack…it’s possible. Just know…know that if there are prisoners, they’re in cages. They’ll have no protection if there’s a hull breach. At least…that’s how it was for me. It was a long time ago.”

An uncomfortable moment passed.

“Slavers get their due,” Logan said then. “Any crew on a ship carrying slaves gets an express ticket out an airlock. That’s Federation law. So don’t take the law into your own hands, understand me?”

“Yes, Smaj.”

“Sometimes it’s a lottery for who pushes the button. Sometimes it’s volunteers. Either way, I’ll see to it that you’re the last thing any slaver sees,” Logan told her.

“That’s…real? I thought the airlock was just something in the vids,” Callum said.

“Why waste time and effort prosecuting a slaver? In the field, the commander gets supreme judicial authority out past the blue line,” Logan said. “Slavers going for a float keeps others from getting similar ideas.”

“I—”

“All hands, this is the Captain,” a contralto voice said over their comms. “The Admiral has required our intercept to stop and be boarded, but it’s continuing to accelerate. We are in pursuit. Estimate velocity match in approximately thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes,” Faeran said. “See, Steiner? Not that much longer.”

“Yeah, sure. You’re not going squishy,” Steiner retorted.

“Oh, hell, Steiner,” Chavez said, turning in his turretlike helmet to glower over his shoulder. “All right, look. How about the movie game to shut you up? I’ll go first. Ellen Orochi.”

Moon over a Supernova,” Steiner said. “Man, that one sucked. Who else was in that…Tracy Thrace.”

“You always go Thrace,” Logan said. “Assignment: Void. Your turn, Lieutenant.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Callum said.

“Movie game. You name another actor from Assignment: Void or another Tracy Thrace movie.”

“Oh…Reg Parland. How long does this go on?” Callum asked.

“Hours sometimes. Greenie, your turn.”

Eira shook her head, her expression baffled.

“Don’t think she’s seen many movies,” Faeran said. “Not fair to us from the Fringe.”

“I’m from Bremen-on-Sagittarius, and you don’t hear me complaining,” Steiner said. “Titanium Souls. Faeran, your turn.”

* * *

“Target’s gone to a thousand gravities, Admiral,” Commander Mirwani announced.

“So he did have some acceleration in reserve,” O’Hanraghty said. “And not a peep back from him yet. You’d almost think he had a guilty conscience.”

“No, really?” Murphy looked at him, then back at the plot.

Merchant ships, by and large, were slower than warships, although transports specially built for the passenger trade were often an exception to that rule. Like Papsukkal—but usually without her missile launchers and point defense—they were built for speed, with enormously outsized Fasset drives for their size. Their fans also used mil-spec nodes, which were more powerful but more maintenance intensive. Cargo, on the other hand, didn’t really care how quickly it reached its destination, so freighters normally opted for commercial nodes. They produced lower peak accelerations, had a slower top speed in wormhole space, and had a higher failure rate if they were pushed to the limit, but they also cost about half as much, required far less maintenance, and were much harder to break if they weren’t pushed to the limit.

The Val Idrak, or whatever its real name was, had just increased its acceleration by twenty-five percent, which pushed it into the upper brackets for merchant vessels. Ishtar, on the other hand, could generate eighteen hundred gravities of acceleration without redlining her drive out here, beyond the stellar Powell Limit. That was far more than she would require, however, and she was maintaining a leisurely (for her) sixteen hundred gravities.

“The idiot should be capable of doing the math,” O’Hanraghty said. “There’s no way he can stay away from us.”

“He may just be spinning it out,” Captain Lowe put in from the command deck. “It’s always possible we could blow a fan quadrant. Not likely, but possible.”

“He still hasn’t said anything to us,” O’Hanraghty pointed out.

“He will,” Murphy said confidently.

Val Idrak had sliced past Ishtar at 15,934 KPS, and the interval between the two vessels was continuing to increase as the freighter stopped decelerating and started accelerating. Unfortunately for Val Idrak, Ishtar’s stupendous acceleration was sixty percent greater than her prey’s, which meant that, despite the freighter’s best efforts, the velocity differential was shrinking by 5.8 KPS every second.

* * *

“…Marcus Hammer,” Faeran said. “Red Sky over Mars.”

“Damn, you guys see a lot more movies than I do!” Callum said. He drummed his fingers on his thigh for a moment. “I think…Margje Katers was in that one?”

“Good one, Sir,” Logan said. “One of her first roles, in fact, I think. Let’s see…so was Jonas Atlan.”

Atlan?” Steiner repeated. “He was in Red Sky?”

“You wanna challenge?” Logan asked.

“Well…yeah,” Steiner replied, and Chavez gave an excellent imitation of a game show buzzer.

“Wrong answer, but thanks for playing,” he said. “Atlan was that jerk Timmons.”

“Timmons? But he was only in the movie for, like, fifteen seconds before he got blown up!” Steiner protested.

“It’s called a ‘cameo,’ you uncultured moron,” Logan said scathingly.

“And now that Steiner’s sidelined, maybe we can do some complicated ones,” Faeran said. “Wha’cha got, Lieutenant?”

“Okay,” Callum said after thinking for a moment. “Casablanca.”

“Casa what?” Faeran asked blankly, and Callum smiled.

“Oh, come on, guys! This one’s a true classic of the genre!”

“Never heard of it,” Chavez said suspiciously.

“Feel free to discuss it among yourselves while you think about it,” Callum said expansively. “I’m not going anywhere.”

* * *

“Velocity equalizing…now,” O’Hanraghty announced.

Ishtar had been in pursuit for thirty-nine minutes, during which her velocity had risen to 35,851 KPS. The range between her and Val Idrak had increased to fifty-four light-seconds, but from this moment, it would shrink remorselessly.

“I wonder what he’s going to do now?” the chief of staff continued. “You’d think—”

“Communications request,” Lieutenant Mastroianni announced.

“Put it through, Lieutenant,” Murphy said, and a dark-faced, whippet-thin man appeared on the holo display.

“Federation vessel, this is Captain Buckley of the Val Idrak.” He had a peculiar accent, one Murphy couldn’t place. “Please state your business.”

Murphy glanced at O’Hanraghty, one eyebrow arched, then looked back at Buckley.

“I am Rear Admiral Terrence Murphy of the Terran Federation Navy. I think we’ve made that amply clear already,” he said. “If we haven’t, however, allow me to reiterate. You will decelerate to rendezvous with us and stand by to be boarded for inspection.”

He sat back to wait out the communications delay.

“I don’t believe you have any legal authority here, Admiral,” Buckley replied two minutes later. “This isn’t Federation territory.”

“It’s Federation territory if I’m in it.” Murphy smiled and shook his head. “Care to argue with me and the carrier that has ten times the Alramal System’s total firepower on her racks? We can do this the easy way…or we can do a forcible hull breach, followed by handing you an invoice for our operating expenses and impounding your ship until you pay it. Either works for me.” He shrugged. “Which would you prefer?”

“What?” Buckley asked after another couple of minutes. “I mean, why do you want to inspect me? All I’m carrying is terraforming equipment.” His face sank to half size on the display as a shipping manifest appeared beside him. “If you want to make me an offer on it, I might just accept it. I got stiffed in my last port of call.” He shrugged. “Fly-by-night developer went belly-up while his equipment was in transit.”

A mute icon came up, and Lowe appeared on the command bridge holo link. A wire diagram of Val Idrak appeared beside him. The freighter was a typical ship of her type, with four seven-hundred-meter racks. At the moment, there were pods on three of them.

“Admiral, we’re not seeing any personnel pods,” the flag captain said. “They all look like standard bulk carriers.”

“Slavers don’t usually worry about things like state rooms,” O’Hanraghty pointed out from behind Murphy.

“A valid point,” Murphy acknowledged. “Can we tell from here if they’re pressurized, Captain?”

“Not with any certainty, Sir. Heat signature suggests they are, but we can’t prove that. Val Idrak’s spin section is a lot smaller than ours, too—just enough for the ship’s crew—so they’re in microgravity. And there’s no sign of a life-support section on any of them, so they’d have to be tied into the ship’s mains. That’s not going to support a whole lot of additional sets of lungs.” Lowe’s hologram shrugged. “On balance, I don’t think they could have a lot of people packed into them, but it’s not impossible.”

“Noted.”

Murphy stood in thought for a moment, then shrugged.

“We’ve come this far,” he said, and un-muted the link to Val Idrak.

“Thank you for sharing your manifest with us, Captain,” he said. “However, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on at least a cursory examination to confirm its accuracy. If everything is as you say, then I’m sorry to inconvenience you. However, we’re in-system searching for a suspected shipment of illicit human cargo. I’d be derelict in my duty if I weren’t to make certain you’re who you say you are.” He showed his teeth in a brief smile. “Wouldn’t look good in my report at all, you know.”

“That’s…that’s patently ridiculous,” Buckley said. “I’ve already sent you my manifest: atmosphere converters and ocean seeders!”

“Indeed you have, and we appreciate it. We’re still going to take a quick look to confirm it. I’m afraid we need your full compliance…bearing in mind that if we’re forced to fire on your vessel, you’ll be liable for all costs associated with conducting the search. And, just to be forthright with you, our munitions are rather expensive. I was dead serious about that.”

Buckley’s expression tightened as the transmission reached him a minute later. A tic appeared at the corner of his mouth, and he started to say something quickly. Then he visibly stopped himself and inhaled sharply.

“‘Cursory examination,’ is it? Fine!” He leaned to one side and spoke rapidly in a language no one on Ishtar’s flag bridge recognized, then straightened again. “I’m going to eight hundred gravities’ deceleration,” he announced.

“Thank you, Captain.” Murphy glanced at the plot as it updated. “At that rate, I believe we will rendezvous in approximately ninety-six minutes.”

* * *

“What did you say?” Captain Cho Su demanded sharply.

“I said it looks like that freighter you were so worried about has a visitor, Irene,” the bearded man on her comm display replied.

He wore the uniform of Alramal System Traffic Control, and he had no idea what Cho Su’s real name was. She was pretty sure that he knew damned well the one she’d given him was a fake, but he didn’t care about that. All he cared about, she thought with carefully concealed contempt, was money. He didn’t have a clue what commitment to a cause was.

“What do you mean?” she asked now.

“We just picked it up,” he replied. “From the plot, though, looks like we’ve had a Fed FTLC in-system and didn’t know it. Our data’s running behind, of course, but about two minutes ago, we picked them up going in pursuit of what sure as hell looks like the ship you’ve been concerned about. They were ninety light-minutes out, so that means they’ve already been chasing it for an hour and a half by now.” He shrugged. Light-speed limitations were a fact of life. “Your boy—assuming, of course, that this is your boy—is at least six hundred gees slower than they are, too. Crunching the numbers, they’re probably still eighty-five light-minutes out or so, and I imagine he’s about to recognize the virtues of discretion. Sorry about that.”

“You’re sure it’s a Federation carrier?”

“Hell, no, I’m not sure!” The Alramalian snorted. “Whoever the hell it is and whatever they may be saying to your boy, they aren’t bothering to talk to us. They’re cranking right on sixteen hundred gravities, though, so they’re somebody’s FTLC!”

“Couldn’t be one of the freelance raiders?”

“I doubt that very much. Drive’s way too powerful, and most of the raiders who might have a ship that big don’t poach here in Alramal. We’re too valuable as a cargo transfer point.”

As a place to fence plunder, he meant, she thought. But that didn’t make him wrong.

“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “Please keep me informed.”

“Sure.”

The display blanked, and Cho Su pushed up out of her chair and began to pace. Things had gone so well—for so long! And now, this. She didn’t know all the details. In fact, she knew practically none of the details; that was known as operational security. But she did know two things. First, the cargo aboard Val Idrak was essential to the war effort, the golden key to final victory over those murderous Federation bastards. And, second, because it was, it could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to fall into Federation hands.

Her job had been to ensure its safe passage to this point. It was the fifth shipment she’d overseen, and her unbroken record of previous successes only made the looming probability of failure hurt even worse.

Nonetheless, her instructions for a case like this were clear, concise, and nondiscretionary.

She wrestled with herself for another sixty seconds or so, trying to find an alternative to her orders. But there wasn’t one. And so, in the end, she squared her shoulders, leaned over the keypad beside her comm, and began entering a long, complicated code.

* * *

Red warning lights flashed as the Orca came almost to a halt relative to Val Idrak and released the Moray.

The boarding pod accelerated fiercely across the remaining gulf between its transporting fighter and the freighter, then decelerated with equal ferocity. The twenty-five-minute trip from Fury to their target had been just as bad as Logan had suggested, under six gravities of acceleration, and deceleration, the entire way. The Morays were designed to hit fifteen gravities on final approach, however, and the sudden jolt of deceleration drove Callum deep into his couch, then sent his stomach whirling sideways as the pod spun fiercely on its attitude thrusters to reach its target nose-first. One arm shot out, and his face went warm as a last burst from the nose thrusters threw him forward against his restraints and blood pooled in the front of his body.

Then the Moray hit hull plating at a “mere” 1.5 meters-per-second in a perfectly coordinated maneuver. The shock-absorbing collar functioned exactly as it was supposed to…and the impact slammed him back in his seat and rattled his teeth, anyway.

“Damn, that never gets old!” Chavez shouted over the Alpha Team’s channel.

“Hot mic!” Logan snarled. “Bravo Team’s securing the target’s bridge now. Compliant boarding so far, but stay frosty.”

“Why aren’t we securing the bridge?” Steiner slapped the center of his restraints and they snapped off and retracted into his seat. “Thought we’d be the main effort on this.”

“Main effort is the cargo.” Logan’s armor rose. “Faeran, left flank. Chavez, center. Squishies…stay behind us.”

“Oh, good.” Callum unstrapped and drifted upward from his couch. “Thought we’d be going first.”

“Sir,” Eira tapped him on the arm then pointed to his carbine, still locked to his acceleration couch.

“Right…almost forgot.” He nodded. “You think I’ll need this? A trio of Hoplons should take the fight out of anyone, I’d think.”

“You know what’s waiting for us in there, Sir?” Steiner asked.

“Not exactly, no.”

“Then you need your weapon. Sir.”

Callum wrapped his right suit gauntlet around the pistol grip and a sighting optic appeared on the inside of his visor, along with an ammunition readout.

Doors at the front of the boarding pod snapped open. There was no sound in vacuum, but Callum felt the impact through his feet as they slammed back into their housings. The Moray was almost, but not quite, perfectly located. Thrusters fired, moving it sideways, adjusting its position until the bay doors of the cargo pod were properly centered. Then the umbilicals locked to the hull, the docking collar inflated to prevent catastrophic pressure loss in the event of an airlock malfunction, and Logan reached one armored hand toward the locking bar. A green light blinked above it, indicating that the freighter’s command deck had disconnected the interlocks.

“Weapons hot,” he said. “Bravo’s got the bridge and they’re playing nice so far, but I’d rather not lose any of you idiots.”

“You say the nicest things, Smaj,” Faeran said.

“Yeah, sure.”

He yanked the bar and the outer doors slid apart to reveal a standard airlock.

“You okay, Eira?” Callum asked on their personal channel. “You seem…more focused than usual.”

The young woman had her carbine at the shoulder ready, eyes locked forward.

“Inverness was never a home,” she said. “But no one deserves to be a slave. The Smaj promised me blood.” She nodded. “I’ll take it.”

“Then I’ll just…stay behind you,” he said.

“Don’t need to convince anyone to let the Hoplons do the work,” Steiner said. He was looking at the bulkhead telltales. “Definitely pressure on the other side. Everyone’s got hollow points loaded, right? Navy has a pretty good track record of picking up anyone that gets sucked out during an explosive decompression, but it’s not a hundred percent.”

Alpha Team moved forward into the airlock. It was a tight squeeze with the three massive Hoplons, but they made it, and the outer doors slid shut behind them.

“Open it up, Steiner,” Logan commanded, and Steiner tapped the controls beside the telltales. It would have been far more difficult for a Hoplon to activate them without breaking something.

The inner doors slid open, the right panel moving at an uneven pace, to reveal a cavern of crates fitted into stacks. They appeared to all be identical, each about the size of a small ground car, and none bore any markings. A pair of deckhands floated to one side in the hold’s microgravity. They wore raggedy vac suits and simple helmets and held their hands high.

“Clear,” Logan said. “Heads on swivels, people.”

Gas jets pushed him forward into the cargo pod’s central hold. Chavez and Faeran followed, each of them sweeping the interior and overhead as they moved forward to flank him.

“So far so good,” Callum said.

“Sir, please don’t say that,” Steiner said, his voice going an octave higher. “Now Faeran’s gonna have to sacrifice a duck or something to un-jinx us.”

“Inspection element forward,” Logan said.

Callum hefted his carbine and pushed himself forward. He lifted his visor forward and shifted it onto the top of his helmet. The air was unusually warm for a cargo pod and smelled of static and ozone.

“Hello,” he said. “Federation military. I’m here to help.”

The two deckhands, diminutive even in comparison to Callum, far less the towering Hoplons, smiled and nodded.

“Both scan clean for weapons or augmentation.” Logan turned toward the forward end of the hold.

“Bill of lading,” Callum said. He held out a hand. The deckhands glanced at each other, then looked back at him and kept smiling.

“Bill?” Callum mag-locked his carbine across his back and tapped the side of his right hand against the inside of his left forearm. “Ishteema. Houyon. Naubhara. Um…lulan?”

The deckhands started chattering. None of it meant a thing to Callum.

“Dialect drift out beyond the blue line,” Logan said. “Not that uncommon.”

“Damn right. I had to relearn your heathen standards, and you all still sound strange as hell,” Faeran said. “Sir. Suggest you get your point across, or I’ll start breaking shit.”

“Charades it is.” Callum used a toe against the deck to push himself toward the nearest stack and gestured at the bottom crate, then mimed a box opening.

“Illata. Illata!” One of the merchant spacers ducked behind Logan to put the Hoplon’s bulk between him and the crates. The Sergeant Major swiped him aside with a forearm sweep that sent him pinwheeling across the hold into his companion. The Marine swung the massive barrel of his rifle around and drew down on the deckhands.

“Guess they don’t want you to open it,” Steiner said.

“I’m close enough.” Callum popped a scanner off his belt and toggled the display. He looked down at it, then frowned. “Huh. There’s a scrambler field built into each crate. Guess that explains the ozone smell.”

“There people inside or not?” Logan asked.

“Not alive.” Callum adjusted a dial on the scanner. “Fields like this cause severe neurologic damage after prolonged exposure.”

“Now ain’t that interesting?” Logan observed. “Patching you through to the Beta Team.”

“—swear I don’t know what we’re carrying.” Captain Buckley’s voice came through Callum’s helmet speaker. “I was hired to collect the pod and drop it in the system for someone else to collect. That’s all I know!”

“And who would that ‘someone else’ be?” Callum asked.

“Oh, this is a new voice. Who? Sure as hell wasn’t the Federation! All I know is a contact here in-system would identify himself by asking me if Val Idrak was named Holy Oak, and I’d get paid when I said she was.”

“And where were you supposed to drop it?” Callum asked.

“On my way out,” Buckley said reluctantly. “I’ve done the same run once before and I’ve got the release vector, but I don’t know—”

“Lieutenant Murphy,” O’Hanraghty cut in. “Ishtar’s close enough for real-time discussions with the Captain. Continue your inspection and leave him to us.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.”

Callum pushed himself closer to the rack and ran his scanner up and down the metal frame.

“The scramblers are connected to external power,” he said. “Makes sense—batteries wouldn’t last that long. Let’s see.”

He looked around, then pointed at a panel on a bulkhead.

“You two,” he said to the merchant spacers, then switched his scanner on and off rapidly and motioned them toward the panel.

They shook their heads.

“At least we’re communicating,” Callum said dryly. “Oh well. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out on my own.”

He started toward the panel, but Eira stopped him with a hand to the chest.

“Don’t take the risk, Sir,” she said.

Logan snapped his middle fingers together, opening them just wide enough to fit over a skull, and loomed over the recalcitrant deckhands.

“I’ll crush your heads,” he said.

“And I’ll pinch your face,” Faeran said, miming the same gesture.

The deckhands looked nervously at one another, but they still didn’t budge.

“Look,” Callum said, “I’ll just open the panel. I promise I won’t touch any buttons until you’ve had a chance to make sure they’re not wired to a bomb or something, Eira. But if we don’t—”

“Callum!” Murphy shouted over the comm. “What’s going on in there? What did you do?”

“We haven’t touched anything, I swear.” Callum slammed his visor down. “Why? What’s—”

The hum of scrambler fields died, and a crate at the forward end of the hold exploded. The thunderous blast and wall of over-pressure was stunning in the cargo pod’s confines, even from within the protection of a vac suit, and a wall of flame washed against the bulkhead.

“Collapse!” Logan shouted.

Another explosion, closer to the team and high up on one of the stacks. More explosions rippled down the crates, and an even more violent blast ruptured the pod’s thick skin. The howling hurricane of escaping atmosphere sent Callum tumbling toward the hull rent, but a dark shadow hurtled toward him. It slammed into him, something grabbed his right arm with a jerk that almost dislocated his shoulder, and he whirled sideways, instead. His visor slammed into the bulkhead—hard—but at least he wasn’t moving anymore. Darkness enveloped him as the entire ship shook and rattled with more explosions.

He covered the back of his helmet with his hands, mind racing as he tried to remember what he was supposed to do aboard a ship during a cascading failure. Life pods?

“Eira? Eira!” he called.

There was no answer, and an icy calm descended upon him as the shaking died away. He tried to push away from the bulkhead, but a huge hand on his back prevented it.

“Not yet, squish,” Chavez said over the comm.

“Thunder! What the hell happened?” Faeran asked.

“Extraction’s en route,” Logan said. “Keep a perimeter.”

The shadows shifted, and Callum turned. There was still a tiny bit of atmosphere—enough left to send him drifting toward the rent once more as it bled past him—but Eira grabbed him by the ankle. She gripped a tiedown on the deck with her other hand, and at least he could see what the dark shadow had been. Two of the Hoplons—Faeran and Chavez—had formed a blast wall between him, Eira, and Steiner as the explosions rolled around them. Both of them looked somewhat the worse for wear, and one of Chavez’s armored arms hung motionless at his side, the shoulder joint dented by some heavy impact.

The cargo hold was a blackened ruin, the remnants of the stacks twisted like fallen branches. Red-hot bits of crates and whatever they’d contained floated in the microgravity, drifting toward the hull breach on those last eddies of atmosphere.

“Fuck my life,” Steiner said.

“Get it together,” Logan said, although Callum couldn’t see the Sergeant Major. “Count off.”

“One,” Chavez responded. “Integrity holding, left arm inop.”

“Two,” Faeran announced. “Systems up.”

“Three,” Steiner said. “All good, but I’m gonna need a really good internal clean.”

Callum got his magnetic boot soles onto the deck and stabilized himself. The instant he did, Eira was beside him, her expression fierce, running her hands along the seals of his suit. He saw his own expression mirrored in her visor and couldn’t find the same level of confidence in the reflection.

“I’m fine.” Callum pushed one of her hands away. Then he noticed a crack across one edge of his visor. He crossed his eyes to look at it and swallowed. Was it growing ever so slightly?

“Wait,” he said. “That’s not—”

Steiner yanked him into a headlock and pressed a nozzle against his visor. A mist shot out and covered half Callum’s vision before hardening into a lattice.

“He’s sealed,” Steiner said. “Not to—Eira! What the hell?”

Eira was in front of Callum, her hands poised beneath the ring of her helmet. The emergency latch was already cocked open.

“Give him mine!” she said.

“He’s. Sealed,” Steiner said. “He’s fine. Now button up before you spill your air.”

“Where’s Logan?” Callum twisted around, keeping one mag-locked foot on the deck and using the other to push himself in a circle. The Sergeant Major was at the edge of the hull breach, pushing one of the ground car-sized crates in front of him. One section of it had been ripped away, and Callum glimpsed bent metal bars that glittered with inlaid golden flecks through the opening.

“Got a scan when the scramblers fell,” Logan said. “The explosives in each case were easy to spot, so I managed to get hold of this one and do a field expedient bomb disposal before it went up. Contents don’t look that banged up, do they?”

“You risked your life for that,” Callum said, reaching up to touch the spray on his visor. Steiner slapped his hand away.

“Shame for us to go through all this trouble and have nothing to show for it,” Logan said.

“Hey,” Faeran said. “Where’d the deckhands go?”

“Not positive, but there’s a couple of smears on the deck,” Chavez said.

“All hands alert,” Captain Bisgaard’s voice came crisply over the comm. “All boarders, evacuate the ship immediately. I repeat, evacuate immediately!”

“You heard the lady,” Logan said. “Chavez, take lead. Faeran, you and me on the crate.” He patted it with a massive, armored paw. “Not leaving this baby behind now.”

“What’s the rush?” Callum asked as he turned toward the hull breach. “Oh, wonderful!” What was left of their Moray was definitely not going to get them home.

“Central, Alpha Team,” he said over his comm “Our ride’s sort of broken. We’ve got one crate, more or less intact, so we’ll hold here until you can pick us up.”

“Negative, Callum,” O’Hanraghty said sharply. “Get off that ship now. And if you have a crate in one piece, it’s even more vital that you do.”

“But—”

“There’s no time for discussion. Do it. Activate your beacons. Search and Rescue will pick you up.”

Both of Callum’s eyebrows rose, and he opened his mouth and turned his head toward Logan. Which was why he was looking in the right direction to see the Sergeant Major’s enormous hand hit him in the small of the back and send him spinning out the breach.

The rest of the team followed rather more gracefully. Logan and Faeran brought up the rear with the crate between them, and the three suited Hoplons used their thruster packs to send the entire team scudding away from the Val Idrak.

Callum looked back at the ship, receding rapidly behind them, as the Beta Team Moray detached from the forward hull and started in their direction. Aside from the long, jagged rent down one flank of the cargo pod, the freighter didn’t seem especially damaged to him, and he frowned.

“I wonder what that was all about?” he said.

“Mostly about somebody not wanting us to find out what was inside the damned crates, Sir,” Logan said. “Duh.”

“I wasn’t talking about that. Why the rush to send us floating around out here?” Callum shook his head, still staring back at the freighter. “I hate going EVA! Especially when there’s a more or less intact ship I could wait aboard, instead. I mean—”

The explosion was blindingly bright but silent in the vacuum about them.


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Framed