Hegemony (27 page)

Filjon liked the sound of the flow of commands and responses. It was comforting to hear his officers reply. When the
Interdiction
actually engaged the pirate ship, if it came to that, the crew would use direct interface data feeds both to communicate and command. At least they did not have to command the ship from inside sealed command pods. It wasn't likely that they would need the
Interdiction
's maximum sustained acceleration of three gees, and even if they did, it was possible to ride out that much acceleration without sealing up the 'pods and filling them with acceleration gel; this wasn't a Fleet swift-ship or lance-ship, capable of five or six or seven sustained gees of acceleration. Of course, a Fleet ship would be manned by daemons who
inhabited
the ship's command systems and didn't care about acceleration. There were no daemons aboard the
Interdiction
or her sister-ship, the
Orbit Guardian
.

Still, there were swift-ships in the Yuro System Defense Fleet, mused Filjon... and some of these crews might serve on them one day. Perhaps he should order the crew to acceleration stations. It might not be a bad idea to give the crew a few hours' practice of doing their jobs via interface, dealing with the immobility imposed by the acceleration gel. Who knew... one day it might come in useful.

"Communications," said Filjon, still speaking out loud, in spite of his thought a moment before.

"Sir?" said the communications officer, her face showing up on his 'pod's holographic display.

"Confirm that the station reports that the main work crew was not on board."

"Confirmed, sir. The station reports that there were only two off-shift workers and four security guards aboard the 'liner when she launched. Station Security reports that witnesses saw what looked like a work party board the ship, but those are now thought likely to have been the hijackers."

"Does Station Security have the data on who else was aboard?" asked Filjon, and waited as the communications officer sent another signal to the Station. At least they were close. Lag time, even with the relays, was only a matter of seconds.

"Captain, Station Security says that have confirmed that the four security guards were aboard the ship. There were supposed to be two workers supervising the off-shift automated systems, but Station Security doesn't have an exact log and there seems to be a problem contacting the workers' employer. Station Security says that no one else
should
have been there, but some of the other work crew might have started their shift early. They can't confirm."

"Damn. That means there might be hostages. Maybe even aboard that pirate ship, now. All right. Navigation, as soon as we clear the horizon, plot a vector to pursue that suspected pirate ship.
Orbit Guardian
can deal with the 'liner, and anyone who's still aboard. Flight Control, send the crews to their gunships. We might need them before this is over."

Filjon hoped that they wouldn't need them, even as he gave the order. The little gunships were fast, for as long as the reaction mass for their plasma reaction drives held out. At close range they could run down a ship that was too fast for the
Interdiction
to catch. But deploying them meant that this whole matter was going to be more involved than simply bringing the suspected pirate ship within range of the
Interdiction
's lasers and signaling it to surrender. He had no idea if the hijacker's ship was armed, but he thought it likely. If it was a hard-core void-runner, that might mean all kinds of trouble. The gunships might be able to handle the improvised armament of a hard-scrabble "pirate," but they'd probably be outgunned by one of the more heavily armed void-runner ships.

Filjon hoped the pirates were not void-runners. There were plenty of pirates based on frontier worlds or
anomic
systems outside of the Hegemony. Some of those were just opportunists. Some claimed to be members of the "fleets" of their home worlds. Few of either breed wanted a direct confrontation with the Hegemony or one of its system defense fleets. When confronted they would try to escape, or, if they couldn't, they'd try to obtain favorable terms of surrender.

The nomadic void-runners were a different story. If a void-runner ship couldn't escape, it would probably fight, and the nomadic pirates could be counted on to be vicious. A void-runner ship might even pass up a chance to escape in order to fight.

If that pirate ship was a void-runner, it could be crammed with weapons and manned by psychopaths.

Until he got an actual clear view of the ship, there was no way to tell; it might be well armed, or it might be a glorified yacht with just enough firepower to intimidate tramp freighters and long range shuttles. A lot of pirates were like that...

Maybe, he thought, the pirate was not well armed; maybe it was hiding behind that rock as a kind of bluff. Or maybe it
was
well armed, a void-runner ship, and it was hiding to get a shot at a careless Hegemony guard-ship; there were some void-runners who would literally die for that sort of chance. It would not do to get careless.

Either way, he might have to shoot at a ship that may well have hostages aboard. Probably just some security guards, though, Filjon thought. And the two maintenance workers. It would do his record no good to lose them, but nailing a "pirate" would do more good than the harm of failing to save some security guard hostages. Public perception was a lot more accepting of security guards killed "in the line of duty" than of out-and-out civilians killed as "innocent bystanders." Of course that still left the two workers, who were civilians. On the other hand, just maybe it was the workers and the guards who were on the second escape shuttle, if they had managed to escape...

He'd have to take his chances, thought Filjon. And, anyway it was really unlikely any of those guards had a serious patron. Or the workers. It wasn't something he could easily check, he thought, but what
aristokratai
would offer patronage to a mere security guard or maintenance worker? On the other hand, if that somehow was the case, it could be very bad indeed for one Demi-Captain Gabrayal Filjon. Perhaps he had better ask his communications officer to find out about those four guards, since their names were available... run the names through the databases of notable lineages and see if anything came up; there was no way to find out about the anonymous workers, he thought with a tight frown.

None of it would matter, though, if he didn't get into range in time.

"Navigation," he said, "I want a lower orbit."

"Sir, we're almost skimming the atmosphere now. If we go lower..."

"I know. Go lower anyway. If we skim too much, use the drive to keep up orbital velocity. Get us over that horizon."

---

"Launch warning!"

The alert brought Filjon instantly back into focus. The
Interdiction
had come over the horizon of the station and the stolen freight-liner just minutes ago, to see with her own sensors the unfolding drama. The stolen 'liner had caused chaos at the station docking arm where it had been berthed, and the chaos was rippling through the parking orbits around the station. Dozens of civilian ships were firing their maneuvering drives,

forcing the sensors officer and his team to follow dozens of contacts, in case one of the maneuvering ships might be an ally of the pirates. Filjon had been multi-tasking, watching the cascade of drive flares and thinking about how he might organize a rescue of the hypothetical hostages aboard the 'liner.

The sudden report had come from the sensors officer, sent through the interface, and Filjon immediately focused on the relevant data feed.

There was a vector track of a single warhead, its short-duration drive already burned out, on a vector towards the freight-liner. Range was far too long for any practical combat use of a warhead; any normal target would have more than enough time to evade the warhead or burn it out with a defensive laser. But the 'liner was perfectly still, drifting on its slow vector. Against a non-evading target, there was no actual maximum range for a warhead. The weapon would simply drift, ballistic, to a pre-calculated intercept. It didn't even have to get close; a stand-off detonation warhead had a multi-thousand kilometer spherical danger zone around it.

"Navigation, can we intercept that warhead?" asked Filjon silently, fully in the interface now.
Interdiction
was nowhere near within effective laser range of the warhead. It was uncertain if they could get within range of it in time.

The navigation officer didn't respond for a second. Then, "Negative, Captain. We can't get within effective laser focus range of the warhead anywhere along the predicted track. Not before it reaches the target." A data feed with the schematic data followed into Filjon's interface, showing him the navigator's calculations.

The 'liner was doomed, then, Filjon knew. If the target couldn't evade, there was no need for a stand-off detonation. The weapon could actually be set for impact, with the nuclear warhead going off in contact with the hull.

"Can the gunships intercept?" asked Filjon, sending the query to Flight Control.

"Negative," came the reply.

Nothing to be done, then. The 'liner was dead. And any hostages aboard her, too. This was not going to look good. Damn the
Orbit Guardian
for being so slow. Demi-Captain Hafez hadn't followed the
Interdiction
's maneuver to an even lower orbit, and was lagging behind. Not that the
Orbit Guardian
would be able to change the situation...

"Navigation, we'd damn well better intercept that pirate swift-ship," said Filjon, aloud. At least they could get the damned pirates.

"Yes, sir," said the navigation officer, also out loud.

The crew was settling into their command pods now, and Filjon restrained himself from taking a deep breath before his life-support / data mask lowered and pressed against his face. His command pod sealed around him, and a moment later he felt the pressure of the acceleration gel injected into the pod. That would keep him able to function even at high gees, allowing him to see and command the ship through direct interface data feeds. To Filjon, the process always felt stifling, at first.

Filjon let the data feeds enter his mind, shutting out physical sensations. He could see the vector display of the warhead, on a ballistic course, streaking onward to the freight-liner. Why fire it? wondered Filjon. A warhead had to be expensive for a pirate; even a void-runner ship couldn't have access to many of the weapons.

A moment of concentration, and Filjon opened a communication feed. "Tactical, set the point defenses up for enemy warheads; they might have another one to shoot at us."

No reason to get careless, Filjon thought. That swift-ship had already shown itself to be better armed than the usual run of pirates. But why shoot in the first place? Once the hijacking failed, as it had as soon as his ship came over the gas giant's horizon, why waste an expensive weapon to destroy the ship? Would a pirate, even a void-runner, waste so much out of spite? That did not match what Filjon had been taught about void-runners. The nomadic pirates were all too efficient, in their psychotic way. That warhead had to be there for a reason.

"Witnesses," realized Filjon, unintentionally projecting the word into the interface data feed. "They fired to kill witnesses." The 'liner's guards must have managed to repel the pirates, or maybe the 'liner's computer system had gotten records of the hijackers, thought Filjon.

"Sir?" asked the communications officer, but the captain was silent now.

"Tactical!" said Filjon, suddenly. Using the data feeds to relay "verbal" commands wasn't ideally efficient, but it worked, and Filjon had no time to grope for rarely used direct interface command routines.

"Standing by," came the reply.

"Engage enemy anti-ship warhead with one of our anti-interceptor warheads," said Filjon. Then, elaborating, "Configure for a maximum endurance burn at launch. Get our warhead within stand-off distance and take out their warhead!"

"Captain!" came the 'vocalized' reply, "that means setting off a nuclear detonation in the station's parking orbits!"

"Tactical," said Filjon, "one way or another, there's going to be a nuclear detonation! Communications, send out a broadcast warning to the station and all ships; there's nothing close enough to be in danger from the radiation of a few kilotons going off, but let's be on the safe side. Tactical, make sure when you detonate our warhead that nothing unintended is in the way of those laser pulses... but take out that pirate warhead. Now."

"Confirmed!
"
said the tactical officer, and Filjon was pleased to see that he understood the plan. The enemy warhead was flying ballistic, way beyond the normal effective range of a warhead. That made it vulnerable to another ballistic shot; it had no ability left to maneuver or evade. The only limitation was that the
Interdiction
would have to maneuver aggressively to ensure that their warhead would have enough initial velocity to catch the pirate's warhead in time.

"Navigation, coordinate with Tactical. Burn to generate a vector to set up the shot. Sensors," Filjon continued, "keep a close watch on that pirate. Navigation, Tactical, as soon as our warhead is away, vector to engage that void-runner son-of-a-bitch."