First Command (34 page)

      
“Neither.
 
Let me ask you something.
 
Do you like it here living in slavery?”

      
Sally exploded, “Do I like it?
 
Do I like it?
 
What are you, a moron?
 
Of course I don’t like it.
 
Who the hell would like being someone else’s property?”

      
Alistair let her calm down some and said, “I’m with the cavalry.
 
In a day or two all hell is going to break loose.
 
This pirates’ den is going to be turned upside down.”

      
She looked at him with wariness in her eyes, “What are you trying to pull?”

      
“I’m not trying to pull anything.
 
These pirates thought they were invulnerable in this star cluster.
 
That is no longer the case.
 
The Galactic Republic is tired of their raids and retribution is coming.
 
You say you have a chip.
 
Show me where.”

      
Sally put down her fork and stood up.
 
She pointed to where her Adam’s apple would be if she were a man. “See the scar?”

      
Alistair pulled his hand sensor from his pocket and waved it at Sally’s throat.
 
He did the same for Russell.

      
“I don’t know what they told you, but there is no chip in your neck.
 
I bet it hurt like hell when they poked you, too.”

      
“What do you mean there is no chip?
 
If I didn’t have a chip I couldn’t travel to the moon and I’ve been there twice.”

      
“There is no chip in your neck.”

      
“But I could feel it after they put it in!”

      
“What you felt was probably a grain of rice or the scar from them poking you with a big damn needle.”

      
Russell said, “Wave that thing at my neck again.”
 

      
Alistair did the same for him and said, “No chip.”

      
“This is what they use in some prisons to cut down on escape attempts.
 
They’re cheaper than using real chips that prisoners sometimes cut out.”

      
Sally asked him, “Okay, now that that is settled, why are you here?”

      
“I’m looking for three recent captives.
 
These are three women that are worth a lot of credits in the form of ransom.”

      
Sally and Russell looked at each other and exclaimed at the same time, “That’s what that was.”

      
Alistair looked at them and said, “That’s what ‘what’ was?”

      
Sally started off.
 
“We got three special orders in here a few days ago.
 
One of the orders was for pearlfish fillets.
 
I thought, what moron thinks we can get pearlfish here?
 
It had to be someone new and rich or showing off.
 
I substituted another local fish and fixed the meals.
 
The guards were in a big hurry, so I had to drop everything and make those meals.
 
Well, we plated and packaged the meals, but the Ascetics guards were scared they would spill them, so they took Russell along to wrangle the meals.
 
Russell, you take it from here.”

      
“They took me to this big house up on the ridgeline.
 
This house looks like something out of Pride and Prejudice.
 
It comes complete with liveried servants in powdered wigs and the long coats and short pants.
 
I spoke to one of them and he told me there were three important women there.”

      
Can you show me on this screen where the house is?”

      
Russell looked at the hand sensor screen and pointed to the general vicinity.
 
Alistair zoomed in until Russell was pointing at the exact house.

      
Alistair finished his breakfast and thanked them for saving him a lot of useless walking.
 
He warned them to stay away from military facilities for the next few days and wished them luck.
 
He would look them up after this was over.

      
Alistair set off to the northeast in search of the big house.
 
He stuck to the alleyways as much as possible.
 
While the chips were a fraud, the neck scars were not and he didn’t have one.
 
When he left the northern outskirts of town he sat behind a tree and sent out a special report.
 
He told the Vigilant that he had probably found the women, but he was going to verify they were there.

* * * * *

      
Captain Ben Alden arranged his ships in the formation he wanted for the initial assault on the pirate world.
 
He led with five missile boats, followed by the two corvettes.
 
The fighter carrier came next, followed by the medium gunboats.
 
The armed cargo ships with their troops trailed in the rear, protected by the remaining missile boats.
 
His four special operatives were on the fighter carrier, ready to ride in the jump seat behind the pilots.

      
His plan was to go in and just tear things up.
 
He assumed there would be additional patrols, seeing as how the scout ship had gone in and kicked over the hornet’s nest.
 
He needed to tear up their defenses so the fighters could get his operatives down on the planet.
 
He needed them to find the women.

      
Once he had them arranged and briefed on his plan, they were ready to go.
 
He came up on his communicator and said, “Tally Ho.”
 
He didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded cool to say it.

      
The formation accelerated slowly and entered into the star cluster.
 
He had given instructions to the missile boats to kill the early warning sensors as the came up on them.
 
They did their job and the first dissolved into a cloud of debris.

      
One of the lead missile boats called out, “We got company – twelve ships dead ahead, coming in fast.
 
These are probably those torpedo ships.
 
We’ll launch on them when they come in range.”

      
Ben looked ahead, but saw nothing.
 
He saw one of the missile boats turn into a fireball.

      
Another called out, “They have active mines deployed out here on the flanks.
 
Keep your eyes open.
 
Range on the torpedo ships in five seconds.
 
Prepare to fire.”

      
Ben saw twelve missiles streak away from the missile boats ahead of them.

      
One of the missile boats reported, “Missiles away, but they have fired on us, too.
 
I count 22 torpedoes inbound.
 
I’m switching to guns.”

      
All the missile boats switched to guns and fire bursts reached out toward the speeding torpedoes.
 
Ben added his long-range fire to the missile boats’ gunfire.

      
Success against missiles and torpedoes was measured in black clouds of smoke, failure for manned ships a short blossoming of orange flames, before the breached atmosphere dissipated in space’s vacuum.
 
Ben counted two missiles boats taken out by torpedoes and 16 torpedoes destroyed.
 
He saw that the two destroyed boats had ripple-fired their missiles before they were hit.
 
Those had been good pilots.
 
He kept up his fire and looked over to Captain Mac’s ship, whose corvette was matching fire with his.
 
He watched the massed missiles hit the torpedo squadron and saw eight ships burst into orange flames, as their internal atmosphere fueled their demise.
 
That left only two missile boats to sweep the path clear and four torpedo boats left in their way.

      
Ben saw one of his long-range bursts take out another torpedo ship.
 
He swung right and killed another.
 
Captain Mac took out the other two.
 
Ben ordered Captain Cho to launch her fighters and get the operatives on the ground before the next torpedo squadron got between the planet and his fleet.

      
Ben watched the four fighters accelerate past him and streak forward to the planet.
 
Now all they had to do was hold on long enough to recover the fighters.

* * * * *

      
The message from Alistair caused quite a stir in the 3rd ALG flag country.
 
Kelly’s communicator buzzed during CPT Chen’s briefing.
 
Several scowling eyes stared at Kelly until he read them the message that Alistair thought he had located the Debran women.
 
Kelly interrupted the briefing to take over the holographic projector controls.
 
He found the house that Alistair referred to and centered it in the hologram.

      
Instantly the concept briefing became a planning meeting as the admiral started looking for the best place to land the Vigilant.
 
In fifteen minutes, the concept had gone from a plan to an execution order.
 
Kelly instructed LTJG Cortez to dock the Valiant to the Yellow Jacket and prepare to embark a platoon of Marines and their equipment.
 
He instructed her to clear out the starboard stores locker and consolidate anything in it to the port storage locker.

      
Just as quickly, everything came to a screeching halt when his emplaced sensors showed combat taking place in the star cluster.
 
No one could figure out just who the pirates were fighting.
 
Admiral Minacci ordered Kelly to get in there and figure out what was going on.
 
Kelly ran for the admiral’s gig’s airlock and made a speedy trip back to the Vigilant.
 
When he was on board and the gig was away, the Vigilant was already moving.
 
LTJG Cortez had taken Kelly literally when he said get us moving as soon as I’m aboard.
 
By the time Kelly sat in the command chair, they were already at FTL Power 3 and accelerating.

      
In an hour, the Vigilant was in amongst the brown dwarves, parallel to the main avenue of approach.
 
Their sensors showed the hulls of destroyed torpedo ships, spent torpedoes, and the burnt out hulls of ships Kelly had never seen before.
 
With the exception of a squadron of torpedo ships, no other ships were within sensor range.

      
Chief Johnson called to the bridge that he could identify them and he was enroute to the bridge.

      
Chief Johnson pulled up his pocket tablet and showed Kelly data and images of an obsolete commercial missile boat.
 
He said they were mostly parked in bone yards or melted down, but there were still a few used by fleets for hire.

      
Chief Johnson said, “Kind of makes you wonder who would have the need and enough credits to hire a private fleet, doesn’t it sir?”

      
Kelly had already made the connection.
 
It had to be Debran working both ends against the middle.
 
Bastard probably didn’t care about his family.
 
He only wanted to make sure the pirates paid for their affront to him.
 
Kelly considered him a sick individual.

      
Kelly had the Vigilant held at their current position while they prepared a report for the admiral and waited for Alistair’s latest report.
 
When Alistair’s report came in and the admiral’s report went out, Kelly made another high-speed dash across the sector.

* * * * *

      
A beat up transport ship badly in need of a paint job and TLC moved slowly into the Rigel Aldebaran sector.
 
Its pitiful exterior did not match the interior, which was K’Rang state of the art.
 
The K’Rang research vessel H’Gou moved toward Rigel, having been ordered to provide data on this sector.
 
Its twin, the T’Rak, concentrated on Aldebaran.

      
Between the two, they catalogued every vessel within sensor range.
 
The captain of the T’Rak was attempting to resolve a cluster of ships between Aldebaran and the star cluster that he thought might be Fleet warships.
 
The H’Gou was attempting to resolve what appeared to be a dispersed small fleet of corvettes and smaller combatants.
 
Both captains agreed that there were enough warships in this sector for it not to be a backwater.
 
In their judgment, the Humans considered this to be a frontline sector.
 
Their independent reports to the K’Rang Imperial Analytical Cabal and Fleet commander read almost word for word.