Pirates of the Thunder (24 page)

“Sure, but we never powered down and our shields were in place. From battery, the engines have to be started, brought up to speed, and initial power diverted to the shields in order to start. I’m opening the ram scoops wide and we’ll take on as much as we can. Vals do best by psyching you out, not by their innate superiority to humans, which is only relative. They have to obey the same laws of physics we do.”

Without a Val directly on their tail, they were able to angle the scoops and take in a very large load quickly.

“Another ten or fifteen minutes and we’ll be full up. You could make it most of the way to Earth if you had to,” Nagy told them. “I don’t think you can count on Star Eagle to come with the
Thunder,
though.”

His words weren’t lost on them. Without the
Thunder,
Nagy was doomed; “we” had become “you.”

“Uh oh!” Sabatini said suddenly. “I just got a punchout reading. Stand by!”

“Maybe it’s the
Thunder,”
Raven suggested hopefully.

“Nope. Too small. Maybe it’s an automated ship, but I have a sinking feeling I’ve seen that kind of reading before.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Nagy responded. “We’ve got enough juice now to give him a hell of a run, though. Trouble is that damned thing that escaped from the first Val. If it contained a record of the battle and got intercepted, then the same trick won’t work twice. Maybe we can bluff it through. It’s not sure who or what we are, anyway. I’m getting a stock machine-language identity code query. I’ve just answered it by telling it that we’re the freebooter ship
Finland
and to mind its own damned business. I don’t think it’s buying it, though. I’m getting voice transmission.”

“Freebooter cruiser
Finland,
stand where you are for examination,” came a voice through the intercom. It was a woman’s voice, and very familiar, but not quite anyone Raven could place.

“China’s voice,” Warlock said softly. “Harder, younger, but still her.”

Raven nodded, placing it now. They wouldn’t have any recordings of China after the Doc had finished with her, so they’d have used the last recording they had, which was of the old Song Ching back on Earth.

“You have no authority to break the covenant,” Nagy responded to the Val. “Be on your way and let us be on ours.”

“Seems like I been through this once before.” Raven sighed.

“Highly dangerous fugitives are loose in this region,” the Val told them. “Measures must be taken that are extraordinary. I must board and verify that your passengers and crew are not among them.”

“Go stick it up your metallic ass!” Nagy responded. “You have no probable cause, and I’ve just wide-beamed this exchange to whom it may concern, as you must know. Let us go or all will know you break the covenant.”

“If necessary I have that authority,” the Val told them. “I would rather it be voluntary, since if I verify that you are not among those we seek, you will go your own way and nothing is broken. But if you do not drop your shields and prepare for boarding, I will be forced to fight.”

“Looks like it was all for nothing.” Nagy sighed. “Still, if I got to go out, then I’d like to go out this way.”

“Well, I wouldn’t,” Raven retorted. “Damn it, you just got through saying they ain’t invulnerable! We just blew one to hell!”

“If I had a second ship I’d turn that bastard into spaghetti,” Sabatini growled. “But, one on one, he’s always gonna be a hair faster.”

“Maybe you got something there,” Nagy responded. “I’m keeping the com channel on open broadcast. It’s why they’ve kept the covenant up to now.” He switched to the open channel. “Anyone out there want to see the covenant go down without a fight? You’re next. We can hold this bucket of bolts for a little while. You freebooters all know the truth out there. You want to defend the covenant?”

Subspace communications were not instantaneous, but an open and broad-beam broadcast didn’t take long to get to nearby areas.

“Finland,
this is
Kasavutu. I
am one hour away and on my way.”

“Finland,
this is
Yokohama Maru.
I am one hour and nine minutes away and punching now.”

They began coming in, one after the other. In the lonely emptiness of space, this region suddenly seemed very, very crowded.

“Hah!” Sabatini exclaimed. “That’ll teach that damned Val to jam transmissions!”

“It couldn’t without also blocking communications to us,” Nagy noted. “This is an unprecedented act and even the Val knows it. It’s used to people rolling over and playing dead or running like hell when it appears.” He turned his attention back to the Val. “All right, Val—up to you. You have the authority to break the covenant over this or not. I’m full of fuel, heavily armed, tightly shielded, and highly maneuverable. You figure the odds yourself. I can hold you for an hour, maybe two, on automatics alone. By that time you’ll be fighting a whole fleet of people in heavily armed and shielded ships who hate your mechanical guts. If you are going to break the covenant, then you will pay for it dearly and you will still not get anything from the action.”

The Val was more than taken aback by this. If there was one thing a good computer could do, it could compute odds. Its backup was gone, a fact it might or might not know, and the odds were also that any additional help was many hours, if not days, away.

“Very well, then, we will sit here,” the Val responded. “I will not fire except in my own defense, but I will not go. Your precious covenant allows me the same rights here as you, and the same freedom of action. We will sit here until you grow old and gray, and where you go, so do I.”

“Another standoff.” Sabatini sighed.

“No, not at all,” Nagy replied. “I think our friend out there is very much misreading and underestimating the people who are coming. They can’t permit this to happen to any one of them or the covenant’s gone anyway, and they stop being freebooters and start being parts of the system or hunted fugitives. Under the covenant it’s within their rights, and ours, to take whatever measures we deem necessary to go our own way. I—I don’t think I’m gonna be here then, but you blast that sucker for me.”

“Raven!” Sabatini called sharply. “He’s had an automatic disconnect! See to him! I’ll switch over to full control.”

Both Raven and Warlock rushed forward to Nagy’s body. It was heaving and convulsing, and yet the security man’s eyes opened and he looked up at them and tried to speak.

“Water! Warlock, get him some water!” Raven snapped, and she went back and got some from the food transmuting unit. Raven gently lifted Nagy’s head and let him drink. Nagy swallowed, then coughed, bringing up some blood and mucus, but he got himself under control and managed a croaking whisper.

“I—would have liked—to have—had the honor—to fight alongside you in the quest,” he got out. “But—I—realize now—that it would be—against the rules.”

Raven frowned, again getting that eerie feeling that there was something more here than they were being told. “Rules? What rules? Whose?”

Nagy managed a smile. “That—would be telling. My job—to give you—the edge—when you were outmatched. Worked—for years—in that hole—Melchior. Helping set it up.”

Raven’s mouth opened in knowing surprise. He understood a little more now, but not nearly enough. “Then you’re one of the ones behind all this. Who are you, Nagy? Who do you work for? Chen?”

Nagy’s chuckle ended in another of those terrible coughs. “Chen—we put the bug—in Chen’s ear. Damned idiot needed it almost—spelled out—for him.” He suddenly reached up and grabbed Raven with surprising strength. “You
must
destroy it, Raven! Master System—must—
die!”

“Who do you work for, Nagy? Damn it!
Who?”

“It’s a—war—Raven.
We are at war!”
He went limp, and for a moment Raven thought he was dead, but he stirred again, briefly, and took a little more water.

“For your own sake—listen carefully,” Nagy said, fighting off the inevitable. “That Val—must be—destroyed—before you—send my body—to rest. Once done, just throw me out—air lock.”

“Don’t gimme that shit! You’re gonna make it! You’re too mean and tricky to die.”

“I’m almost dead now. Don’t worry. Do what—I say.
Exactly.
For your—own sakes. Then I will—die—but I will not—leave. When you need me—to even odds—I’ll be there. Promise me!”

“I swear it, Nagy. Only hold on, I—” Raven stopped, checked the body, then sighed. It was too late. Arnold Nagy was clearly now very dead.

Warlock shrugged. “That fellow took longer to die than an opera singer.”

Raven looked up at her and frowned. “Huh?”

“Never mind. He is gone. Toss him and take the controls.”

“No! I gave my word. First we take the Val, like he said.”

“What’s the difference? He was out of his head at the end anyway. Dead, but he’ll come back when we need him. So many get religion at the end.”

Raven removed the helmet from Nagy’s head and pulled the body away from the bridge console. “Uh uh. Maybe that part was a little nuts, but not the rest. I don’t know who—or what—he really was, but he was one hell of an agent. He suckered Clayben and Chen and the rest of ‘em. Hawks was right—there was lots more than coincidence at work here. He was one of the puppeteers, the guys pulling the strings on all this. He had the answers, damn it!”

“He was crazy,” she maintained. “Crazier than we are.”

“His body doesn’t go out until we blow up or shake this Val. Understand? What could it hurt?”

“All right, all right. It just seems to me that you are taking on a dead man’s madness.”

Within twenty minutes, the lonely system began to get more and more crowded. The numbers astonished Raven and even impressed Sabatini. One hell of a lot of fire power and, most impressive to Raven, all under human control.

They were male and female, and some he couldn’t be sure about, and they spoke with many accents, and a few probably did not look the least bit human, but there they were.
Lightning
was not their cause; they wouldn’t have crossed the street, let alone millions of kilometers of interstellar space, for
Lightning.
But Nagy had been right—they were all freebooters, and if this sort of thing happened to any one of them and they stood by and did nothing, then it would happen in the end to each and every one of them.

“All right, Val, your move,” Sabatini said, sounding far more relaxed and confident.

“I move when you move. You have no right, any of you, to dislodge me here. I have as much right to be here as you do, and if I choose to leave by the same path as that ship out there, I also have the right to do that.”

“You can stay here as long as you want,” replied a sharp female voice that reminded Raven of Reba Koll. “Or you can pull out now. Them folks over there can also leave, but you don’t follow them. Any other course, speed, angle, and trajectory is fine but not theirs. That’s the way it is, iron ass.”

“You have no right to do that,” the Val came back. “It is against the covenant.”

Sabatini chuckled. “Look who’s invoking the covenant
now!
You all heard the thing—it was ready to violate the covenant at a moment’s notice. Either Master System has abrogated the agreement, in which case it’s got no rights at all, or this thing’s malfunctioning, damaged, a rogue who’d bring down the covenant, and therefore one that is outside of it. That logic says you got no right to be here at all, Val. What do you say, you others out there? We don’t want anybody damaged or hurt, so what say we give it five minutes to get up to speed and punch anywhere it wants? After that, I think we got a moral obligation to take it on.”

There were numerous murmurs of agreement and even a few menacing growls.

The Val was, indeed, a computer, and the odds were ten to one against it. It might well take one ship, perhaps two, with it, but there was no way it could win. As Nagy pointed out so well, it was forced to obey the same laws of physics as everybody else.

“Very well,” the Val said. “1 will leave for now. We will postpone this fight, you on that ship that call yourselves the
Finland.
But we will meet again, and soon. Another time, another place, outside the covenant and without clannish allies. And then you will beg for a merciful death and it will not be given!” The Val ship began to power up once more and move out and away from the gathering crowd.

“Oh, hell, it’s runnin’,” somebody said, sounding genuinely disappointed.

“We could always blast it anyway,” another suggested hopefully.

“Uh uh. Let it run,” Sabatini told them. The Val achieved fairly high speed, then there was a punch and within seconds it was gone. “We owe you one, though. Give me your ship’s identifiers and then check in in a month or so at Halinachi. It’ll be worth your while. Just tell old Savaphoong you did a favor for the pirates of the
Thunder.
He’ll know what to do.”

They might or might not follow through, but they all sent their identifiers and acknowledged.

Raven got up and went to the back.
“Now
we leave Nagy the way he wanted.”

They put the limp form in the air lock, closed it, and brought up a fair amount of pressure before releasing the outer door. Nagy’s form shot out the side of the ship and was soon lost to view.

Sabatini called excitedly to them. “Hey! A
big
mother of a punch! I’ll be damned—it’s the
Thunder!”

Raven stared back at the air lock hatch. “Yep. Just a little too late to do any good.”

Thunder’s
own shields snapped on tight and her armament came alive as it sensed the near armada there.

“Take it easy,” Sabatini called to Star Eagle. “They’re friends. We’ll give you the details later.”

“Holy mother of God! What is that thing?” someone exclaimed. Several others echoed a mixture of fear, awe, and amazement. The largest in the ragtag fleet, an old freighter, was perhaps four hundred meters long; the length of this thing was fourteen kilometers.

“That, my friends, is the
Thunder,”
Sabatini told them. “Hey, Star Eagle! Glad you could make it even if you missed all the excitement!”