Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (61 page)

“It does indeed,” Admiral Irons rumbled.

“It still sounds fishy to me, though I can't argue with the multiple sources. It is however, the perfect thing to make people run and hide, sir,” Lawrence said, looking at the admiral.

“I'm cautious by nature. I was working on a defensive strategy to allow us to build up a proper hammer to go in and smash the pirates once and for all. After the second battle of Protodon, we had to rethink that strategy. Now we're sure a revision is in order.”

“No more pussy footing around?” Professor Tyler asked with a sour grimace. “You are aware that this might make us jump before we are ready? To jump onto the enemy's spears and clear the way for them to come in unopposed?”

The admiral gauged the expressions around the room. He nodded once. “It's occurred to me, but Captain Montgomery and his intelligence officers have enough supporting evidence from multiple independent sources, sources with no contact with each other. They confirmed it is a viable threat.”

“We need more data,” Doctor Kraft said, eying the captain. “And you are working on that I suppose?”

Captain Montgomery nodded once. “Yes, sir. And, sir,” he bowed to the professor. “ you are right; it could be a bluff. False intelligence fed to us to make us jump at shadows. Or it could be the real thing. We have to take the threat seriously. That sucks. But I'm certain it is a viable one. How could they plant the story across various sources? Remember, when the pirates left home, they had no idea of our existence. Now they do, but when these people did …,” he waved a hand to let them finish that thought.

“True,” Doctor Kraft ground out.

“We're going to get the answers. We may not like them, but we'll get to the bottom of it. The shift to carriers will allow us to send escort carrier groups out as raiders. To take a page from the enemy's own playbook I suppose you could put it,” Admiral Irons said, smiling mirthlessly. “We're working on a strategic revision as well. Go in, smash the orbital infrastructure and any ships, then pull out for the next target.”

“No ground troops and messy occupation?” Professor Tyler asked. “No guerrilla movement to tie our forces down? But what about the genocide?”

“That's a problem,” the admiral admitted with a grimace. “We'll send in follow-up forces when they become available. For now, we can only do what we can with the tools at our disposal. If we get more, then we'll adapt.”

“Destria … Nuevo Madrid …,” T'rel'n clacked.

“Will be cleared of starships. Once we've gotten Hidoshi's World completely cleaned out we'll shift the marines over to Destria,” the admiral explained. “Now, are there any more questions?” A few frowned or raised a hand. He sat back. “You can address them now if you wish or call on Captain Montgomery at your convenience. But this matter remains classified people. Don't tell your staff, mate, or political friends. We need to keep people from doing something stupid.”

“Like panic?” Emily asked. “I'm glad I'm locked in a pod I suppose, otherwise I'd be running around gibbering myself,” she said.

“Yes,” the admiral said as Lawrence snorted, eying Emily. “If you'd like to put off your questions for a later time, then I believe we can check in with each department with the usual chest beating and then see if we can address some of the problems on the agenda?”

D'red clacked then eyed the others. The group nodded slowly.

“Very well then. Captain, thank you for your time,” the admiral said, turning to Monty.

“Thank you, sir,” Monty replied with a nod at the dismissal. “Ladies, gentle-beings,” he said to the room then exited quietly.

“Now, T'rel'n, you want to begin?”

“Certainly,” the Veraxin stated, rising from his saddle.

Chapter
33

Mara was in heaven-hell. Time passed, but she didn't have a way to judge it other than the time on duty or off. That was her only sense of day. That and when they exited hyperspace. She had come to realize she preferred the virtual reality headset and time at the helm overseeing the misery of her own people. There she felt alive, almost … normal. Almost free. Almost, she reminded herself. They hadn't shackled her; they didn't need to. She had nowhere to run. But in the virtual world of the helm station, she had some sort of purpose, even if it was helping their captors.

She wondered briefly if she was being seduced by the enemy. What was the term Anya had called it? She nodded once when it came to her. Stockholm Syndrome, she thought. Whatever the hell that meant.

Each time they took a seat at the helm, they got better at it. The challenge though became harder as the pirates pushed the pace, moving up the octaves to shave time off their transit.

She had overheard the officers talking about it. How they hoped that shaving time off each jump would throw the Federation forces time estimates off balance. However, the longer they stayed in the high octaves of Delta band, the heavier the strain on the civilian hardware and on her untrained water dwellers. She missed them all and prayed they got out safe.

Exhaustion and stress began to take a toll on them despite their ability to settle in and actually enjoy the job. Some of their weaker number collapsed under the load, which distressed them all. Tyrel and Pacifica went catatonic. Mara wasn't certain what had happened to them since the pirate medics had taken them away, supposedly for better treatment than what they could provide in their miserable tank.

At least they had a tank, though it was a grav tank like the tank she was in when helming the ship. And they were only allowed in it once per day. Just the idea of sleeping while floating again was an incentive to do the job.

But each failure, each time one of them collapsed or refused to work dumped more of the stress on the survivors. They worked longer hours in the hot seat. She was grateful when she overheard them say it was about to come to an end; they were near their destination of B452C. Wherever in the universe that was she thought tiredly. As if she cared.

Once they began to transit down through the octaves and then the bands, the human helmsman took over. She and her people were allowed to rest. Last time they had been allowed a glorious week to rest and recover. But near the end of that time period, they had all been anxious to helm the ship once more, if only to have something to do and keep their minds occupied.

A tiny corner of her mind was miserable at the idea. That she was being conditioned so easily bothered her immensely—when she had time to think about it that was.

---<>))))

Additional Fed forces had been dispatched to B452c to run them to ground. A munitions ship headed to Pyrax was backstopped to thicken the force's firepower with missile pods. The frigates didn't have the fire control to handle all of them, so they rigged daisy chain software scripts to handle the load.

Other forces were en route. However, the senior officer on the scene backstopped the convoy escorts to thicken the force in the star system. Napoleon's comment on “ask me for anything but time” reared its ugly head. Only ten warships were in the star system when the task force arrived weeks earlier than planned.

---<>))))

Since he had a plan and was the cautious type, Admiral Von Berk had directed the navigators of his ships to exit hyperspace one light hour high and short of the normal jump point.

Jumping short wasn't without its own inherent risks. They had no idea what was going to be in real space when they exited. If it was something with enough mass, a collision would doom a ship and set off a chain reaction that could doom the entire task force. And for the navigators, there was a secondary risk, the risk of interpolating between two or more ships while emerging from hyperspace. It was no wonder that they came out in a ragged gaggle instead of the orderly formation the admiral had expected and hoped for.

“Too much to hope for apparently,” the admiral said, seeing the group form up. “No matter. Report!”

“We're still getting data in, sir. Internally my chief engineer is grateful we're out of hyper. They are doing a survey now,” Captain Bordou stated. “It's going to take our sensors some time to get hit and then return, sir.”

“I can tell you we're not in the jump zone, sir. We are high but short. Jumping that precise …”

The navigator's excuses were cut off by the upraised hand of the admiral. “Very well. Get me more information. Don't stand down until the star system is clear,” he ordered. He could already see the cruisers and
Lingchi's
status icons and data changing on the status board. They weren't the green he was accustomed to though; they were closer to a yellow. But as he watched the color went back to green. Good. The destroyers slotted in as they got within range of the flagship. Their icons stayed stubbornly closer to the yellow range.

“Aye, sir.”

---<>))))

“Wouldn't you know it?” Captain Terrance snarled, curling his lips as his gold eyes flashed. He flexed his clawed hands, another legacy of his chimera heritage.

“The pirates have jumped high. A light hour up and one out from the jump zone, sir,” the CIC rating reported.

“I see that,” the captain said tightly. “Get us more intel sensors. Comm, raise all ships. Nav, plot a course.”

“Yes, sir. Aye, sir. Aye aye, sir,” came back from various points around his bridge. The captain frowned thoughtfully.

It was obvious right away that their attempt to stop them in B452C had failed. The forces in the star system didn't have the position to get to them in time nor the mass to take them head-on he thought, looking at the specs. So far everything matched up with the data from Epsilon, and he didn't like it. He had two destroyers, his
Arboth
class
Richard
and LCMDR Mark Anderson's
Nelson
class
Akizuki
, as well as a squadron of frigates. He might as well shoot the frigates himself and save the enemy the trouble; there was no way they'd survive against a cruiser let alone three of them! What was the admiralty thinking?? There was such a thing as overconfidence in their abilities! He shook his head.

That was neither here nor there.
Richard
and
Akizuki
might slow them down. Operative word there,
might
. But if the enemy was feeling frisky, he too would be in trouble, without a snowball's chance in Hades of surviving a prolonged engagement. No …

He frowned. Now why did they jump short he wondered.

At last he caught on. He slowly nodded as understanding struck him. He'd thought they'd done it due to their astronavigation but that wasn't it. The Horathian force had jumped short and high of jump point, which had allowed them to avoid the picket in B-452c as well as any potential minefield or trap they had laying there. Smart of them, he thought with a mental salute to his opponent.

Still, they had their orders so the captain ordered all ships to run at flank speed on the enemy ships. They couldn't cut them off from the jump point and were aware that it was a stern chase.

But apparently it wasn't even going to play out that way.

---<>))))

“CIC reports we're one ship short, Admiral;
Mirach
didn't make it out of hyper,” Rick said.

“Damn it,” the admiral said mildly. Losing the bulk freighter hurt; there was no doubt about that. She had been the weakest link in his chain of ships and was only the first to go. He had a mental bet that he'd lose others before their journey was finished.

“Should we wait? They might come out ahead or behind us, sir,” Captain Bordou asked.

“I'm … no. We'll get prepped. If we don't see them before we jump, we'll have to write them off,” the admiral said. He saw his chief of staff give him a curious sidelong look. He shook his head. “It's not like we can form a search party and go look for them, Commander,” he reminded him.

The chief of staff grunted. “No, sir, I suppose not.”

“Definitely not. So …”

“Sir, enemy forces advancing on our position. We're counting ten warships so far, with a few small craft at the Agnosta jump point. Eight of the warships are designated as frigate class based on their size and drive readings, but their mass readings are throwing the computers off.”

“That's because they have loaded themselves up with missile pods,” the admiral murmured, watching the numbers come in as well as their course and time to get within range. Those numbers changed rapidly before they finally settled down to about five hours give or take a few minutes he noted. He saw the TACO blink and snorted. “It's obvious, isn't it?” he asked, eying the man.

Either out of sycophancy or because he had come to the same conclusion, the tactical officer nodded. “Yes, sir. But we outgun them, sir. Even with the two tin cans they've got with them,” he said, pointing to the two larger ships.

“But we don't have the missiles or more importantly the counter missiles to handle what they can throw. Not anymore,” the admiral said sourly.

“True,” Captain Bordou observed.

“We're going to have to chance it,” Admiral Von Berk said.

“Sir?” The captain asked dubiously.

The admiral clenched his fists. “This clinches things. If they have forces here, they'll have them at each stop. How long until we can jump again?”

“Engineering says two hours, sir,” a tech reported.

“Sir, are we headed back?” the navigator asked doubtfully.

“Back? Hell no!” the admiral said, rounding on the man. “We're going forward. Plot me a dogleg. We're going to zip around the outskirts of this star system in hyper. A skip I believe they call it.”

“Sir?” The navigator was pale. “That's dangerous! We've never done it …”

“There is a first time for everything then. We'll be impossible for them to intercept. Be glad we get to break ground and
make
precedence for the navy. We'll go down in history.”

“
If
it works,” the captain murmured under her breath. But she didn't protest as they set up the jump. She just hoped and prayed nothing went wrong.

---<>))))

“They are running, but not very fast. I don't think we are impressing them much,” Captain Anderson said.

“No, not really,” Captain Terrance replied. “I'm going with a firing pass right now Mark. There is no way we can go toe-to-toe with these bastards. I just want to kiss them, give them a send-off, hell, maybe chew them up and slow them down if we can. I highly doubt we can saturate their defenses though.”

“I know. We'll give it a try though,” the other ship captain replied. The captains of the frigates nodded grimly in agreement. “We owe these bastards for
Firefly
and ET,” Mark growled.

“Definitely,” Captain Terrance growled, equally angry.

---<>))))

In order to get across the star system quickly, the ships oriented to face the star system's +Z axis and then jumped in a short hop.

The short hyperspace hop was considered a skip, a dogleg allowing them to get around the star system's mass shadows and then back down to real space in a short time period. Such short jumps could only be done with a crack navigational and helm team. It allowed the small flotilla of ships to avoid battle, but it drained their fuel for the short run and put additional wear and tear on their ships and helmsmen.

Mara took the helm for
Apache
since she was their best. The pirates had rigged a helmet for her as well as a small pod that let her float in zero gravity. Misters had been placed to squirt her with salt water. Small fans sucked the water away from time to time to keep it from becoming a hazard to the electronics. She cared little for such things, the challenge of the jump was upon her.

They had promised her an entire day off if she managed it with food and a bath in salt water.

She'd heard something about ships hunting them. A small part of her mind toyed with the idea of doing something, but she didn't see an opportunity. Besides, if she tried she'd most likely fail and be punished.

Worse she'd miss out on the bath. After weeks of being in the ship, she ached for a soak.

“Jumping now!” her human “assistant” said, prompting her to action. “Follow the bouncing ball Mara and do it right or we're all toast,” the human said.

She did her best to obey.

---<>))))

Admiral Von Berk grinned as the ship rematerialized into real space close to the Kathy's World jump point. “Sir, systems are stable, but we're going to need time to plot a fresh course while the engineers go over the hardware while they can,” the XO said.

“Get on it then. Tell Miss Mara well done. Very well done,” the admiral said smugly. He turned to the captain with a slight grin. “Nothing like the kiss of death to renew your zest for life.”

Captain Bordou snorted, but she realized he shouldn't be making jokes at a time like that. Their brush with death had cost them one of the tenders filled with cargo and marines that were supposed to protect. She'd seen her pop like a fire cracker in hyper then just break up as pieces of her went up and down the octaves.