Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars) (37 page)

They still had to wait, though.  Early the following morning heatscan showed the presence of two small blips moving around outside the large one.  They were hullwalkers, it was explained to Mako, removing the tape that had concealed the identity of the shuttle. 

‘They’re moving back into shipping lanes now and if anyone saw them with their ID taped over that would be even more suspicious than the sight of a shuttle hauling a container around in deep space.’  Buzz told him.  ‘There might after all, be conceivable legal reasons for a shuttle picking up a container.  That does happen sometimes, as companies agree private stashes amongst themselves entirely legitimately.  Even if they suspected it to be a heavy cargo, few spacers would take much notice of that, but a shuttle with both its own ID and that of a cargo container concealed would arouse very definite suspicions.’ 

‘If only we could just get close enough to see them,’ Mako said, burning with frustration as they continued to tail the shuttle at a distance beyond visual range.  ‘I know, I know, if we get close enough to get them on our visuals, they’ll see us on their heatscan, but if only we had something like a really powerful telescope.’

This caused one of those moments of disbelief, followed by a burst of laughter that had become less frequent over the weeks.  This, as he recognised at once, was hilarity at his civilian daftness.

‘Even the most sophisticated telescopes out there could not pick up an object of the size of that shuttle, at that range, as anything more than a blurred pixel.’  Buzz pointed out, quite kindly.  ‘They are only fourteen metres long and they are more than six hundred billion kilometres away.’

‘Ah,’ said Mako, finding that, not for the first time, he just did not have his head around the immensity of scale you were dealing with in deep space.  The fact that they were able to see the shuttle on heatscan in such detail as to be able to make out the two little hot spots moving around outside the shuttle was, in itself, remarkable.  He was, he realised, just going to have to be patient for a little while longer.

Five and a half hours longer, in fact, since that was how long it took before the shuttle came up on an enormous ship lumbering along at L12. 

Even Mako recognised it immediately from its heatscan signature.  He had been shown the heatscan signatures of all the suspect ships, and was spacer enough by now at least to be able to tell the difference between the various classes of container ship.  

One look at the heatscan readout told him that this was the Might of Teranor.  It had eighty four engines and fifty six cargo towers, each of which held twenty containers.  It was on course just where they’d predicted it would be.  It was on a heading from Chartsey to Karadon, hanging twenty six minutes away from the central line route.  There were no other ships on scopes at this range, though there might well be other ships in the region.  Even the Minnow’s powerful Fleet scopes could only see for half a light year or so, and they were further away than that from the busiest part of the shipping route.

Mako felt his stomach lurch, though there was a kind of inevitability about it.  It would have been just too much to expect that the ship that picked up the drugs would either be heading to Chartsey or small enough for them to arrest with conventional force.  Of course,
naturally
, it was going to Karadon, compelling them to have to do something before it got there. 

Mako looked at Alex, wondering if he regretted now not making the decision to seize the drugs and the shuttle when that would have been relatively easy.  It had been a gamble letting the shuttle go on.  It was legally important for them to be able to see the freighter taking the drugs aboard, but that had had to be balanced against the risk that it might be heading for Karadon and would be too big for them to tackle by conventional means.

Alex, however, did not seem to be in the least bit perturbed.  There was no surprise on his face as he saw that the ship was the Might of Teranor, and certainly no dismay.  It was as if he, too, had seen the inevitability of this.  Fate had thrown them the worst-case scenario, but he was untroubled, plans and decisions already made for this contingency. 

‘Right,’ he said, matter of factly.  ‘All officers to the command deck.’

Mako was familiar with this protocol now.  It meant that the skipper was about to give a strategic briefing of a nature which was open to the crew.  If it was private or classified, he would ask to see them in the wardroom.  Meetings on the command deck were actually intended to be listened in on by the crew, though officially only involving the officers.

They were all there very quickly, taking up their accustomed places around the datatable.  Dan Tarrance was the only one who looked excited.  The older, more experienced officers were keenly alert but focussed, looking at the skipper for his decision.

‘My intention,’ Alex von Strada informed them, ‘is to mount a covert operation to arrest the skipper, secure the container, and establish a prize crew aboard.’

Mako recognised that as the Moffat Solution they had been practising.  It was a rapid tactical strike, securing what were felt to be the two most important things – the container of drugs, for a start, ensuring that it did not reach the streets, and the skipper who was legally responsible for his ship.  It would be a matter for in depth investigation to establish which of the rest of the officers, crew and passengers had been actively involved, with decisions to be made about that by the League Prosecution Service. 

‘I intend to make it a night attack,’ Alex told the officers, ‘between three and four tomorrow morning.  We will run up ahead and double back, crossing paths with them as if in a chance encounter.  We’ll offer them a gift box.  If they accept, then we’ll send our snatch party under cover of delivering it.  If they refuse, then we will appear to accept that and move on, coming back at them three minutes later with a direct boarding manoeuvre.  Either way, we will send alpha and beta teams aboard the number one shuttle.  Alpha team, led by Mr Burroughs, will secure the airlock area and mount a snatch on the skipper’s cabin, here.’ 

He had called up a schematic of the Might of Teranor and indicated the location of the skipper’s cabin, which as usual on starships was near to the flight deck.

‘Beta team, led by Mr Tarrance, will secure the flight deck and impose lockout software on their systems to give us control.  At the same time, gamma team, in the number two shuttle, will launch and lock grapnels to the target container,’ he indicated that, too.  ‘I intend gamma team to be led by CPO Burdon.’

That did not cause any surprise either, since they were not allowed to send more than two officers off the ship and Hali Burdon was a superb pilot with years of experience of handling freight.  They had not just been practising for this, but making some structural alterations to the hull of their own ship too, to be able to carry the container.  The Fleet, it seemed, was prepared for most eventualities and the order to break out the hull nets hadn’t amazed anybody.  

‘It will be a silent strike.’  Alex told them.  ‘Carried out as quickly and quietly as possible.  We want the situation under control before they even realise what’s happening.’

Mako could see why.  The Might of Teranor didn’t just outmass the little corvette, being more than forty times their size if you included the mass of cargo containers.  It was a ship that was clearly geared up to defend itself from pirate attack.  It had eight cannon.  They were nowhere near as powerful as the ones the warship carried but they could still do some damage.  Rather more importantly, as far as boarding operations were concerned, the Teranor had forty seven people aboard.  Since regulations only allowed the Minnow to send twenty eight on a boarding party, they were clearly going to be outnumbered.  If any of those people were armed and given the opportunity to make a fight of it, there were liable to be casualties on both sides.  

 ‘Are there any objections?’  The skipper enquired, looking round at the officers.  This was their opportunity to go on record with any concerns or doubts they might have about the wisdom of his intentions, but it would have been a pretty strange situation for him to have got this far with a plan, rehearsing and preparing for it, with no concerns being raised by the officers till now.  He had their full support, in any case, though they all gave formal acknowledgement of the fact for the benefit of the log. 

‘Thank you.’  Alex gave them a brief smile in return.  ‘So,’ he said.  ‘Let’s get down to details.’  He walked them through the operation, step by step, on the Teranor’s schematic, making sure that everyone knew where they were supposed to be and what they had to do. 

How much resistance they would meet, of course, was the unknown factor.  There had been much discussion about the crew manifest of the Might of Teranor in recent days.  Mako had seen ID pictures of its skipper and everyone aboard.  The skipper, Marlon Steppard, looked like an ordinary kind of guy.  He was middle aged, mousy haired, rather running to paunch.  He had a reputation, Mako had been told, for running a safe, quiet ship, and for having a good eye to a profitable cargo, but nothing much more than that was known about him.  The first mate, Kem Salmond, was considered rather more ambitious.  He wore expensive suits and socialised at country clubs.

‘This is definitely one to keep an eye out for.’  Alex highlighted one of the profiles on a subscreen, with nods from the officers who had already spotted him as a potential risk.  ‘Rikado Marsh.  Supposedly a passenger and a friend of Kem Salmond’s.  There’s nothing on record about him, beyond a vague background in ‘corporate security’, but it’s likely that he’s riding shotgun on the drug consignment.  Any and all of the Teranor’s crew have to be considered potentially armed and dangerous, but this one…’ he tapped at Rikado Marsh’s profile, ‘may be a killer.’

He paused, looking around at them appraisingly.  They all knew the risks and were all taking them seriously.  They all knew, too, that a ship the size of the Minnow could not be expected even to attempt the seizure of a ship the size of the Might of Teranor.  It was apparent, though, that Alex von Strada had absolute confidence in their ability to do it, and that they had the same trust in him.  Mako felt his heart quicken as it sank in that this was for real, they were actually going to do this.

‘So,’ the skipper asked matter of factly, ‘any questions?’

____________________

Chapter Twelve

Fourteen hours later, the Might of Teranor was cruising uneventfully on the shipping lane to Karadon when the corvette Minnow passed it.  It looked so natural that neither of the two members of crew holding night watch on the freighter thought anything of it, not even when the corvette span about and dropped down to cruise alongside them.  This was a routine courtesy from Fleet ships, asking if they were in need of any assistance and offering to send over a courtesy gift box.

This was accepted.  Other than the fact that they had a container full of drugs instead of the tetracitrine it was declared to be on the manifest, there was nothing aboard the freighter to excite the interest of Customs.  They were always careful, too, to maintain the image of a good-natured ship.  They were friendly with the Fleet, helpful to other freighters and entirely unsuspicious.  The crewman at the conn did not even consider it worthwhile to wake the skipper for a routine gift-drop to their airlock.

So, the offer was made and accepted.  Two minutes later, one of the Minnow’s shuttles detached and came over, docking to an airlock just aft of the freighter’s flight deck.

What happened then would go down in spacer legend.  As the unwitting crewman opened the hatch, instead of a friendly rating there handing over a gift box, he was confronted by four terrifying figures.  They stood larger than human in their cyborg-like hullwalker suits, but these were like no hullwalker suits the Teranor crewman had ever seen before.  Not only had their visors been blanked out so that the faces of the people within could not be seen but the suits themselves shone with a dazzling mirror gleam.  They were all the more impressive because the lights in the shuttle they were boarding from had been turned up to maximum.  They were armed with rifles too, and as they ran aboard, their duralloy boots strangely silent, all those rifles were aimed directly at the Teranor crewman.

That was all the more terrifying because none of them said a word, or at least nothing that the crewman could hear.  They were in fact talking to one another on their suit coms but that was not audible to anyone else.  Within seconds, before he’d had time to do more than catch his breath, the crewman was on the deck, face down, with tape-cuffs snapping round his wrists and a safe-breathe tape pressed over his mouth.  As his colleague came aft to find out what the odd scuffly noise was, he suffered the same fate.  Before he knew what was happening, he was pinned to the deck with the business end of a rifle shoved in his back and a tape over his mouth.  It let him breathe but its sound-suppressing qualities meant that his yelling emerged as barely audible.

He was stunned.  This was just not the way the Fleet behaved.  The Fleet were so predictable, you always knew exactly what they would do in any given circumstance, all laid down by strict policy and procedure.  There was nothing in any Fleet policy he knew about figures in weird shiny armour storming your ship without as much as a word.

There was nothing in normal Fleet procedures about two of the weird figures in shiny armour bursting into the skipper’s cabin and hauling him out of bed, either.  Or indeed about carrying him face down back to their shuttle, struggling and cursing into a gag-tape.