Virtues of War (14 page)

There was movement in her scopes. Human forms, two, in a compartment to their left. Quick taps up to Assad halted the group. She gestured.

I see. Two targets. There.
She pointed ahead and to the left.
Alpha-Two, Alpha-Four, buttonhook. Alpha-Two lead.

Nods all around. The door to the compartment was manually activated. With Hernandez covering the passageway, she grabbed the handle and flung the door open. Assad was inside in a heartbeat, Jackson right behind. Katja heard a gasp, a thump, and a grunt. She looked through the door and saw a man and a woman, in civilian clothes, facedown on the deck. Her troopers crouched over them like giant, mechanical apes, applying restraining ties to arms and legs.

She glanced at her watch: forty-five seconds. They had fifteen more to get to the bridge. She motioned her team out of the space.

With her augmented vision she could see four people through the last bulkhead. She signaled to her troopers, and ordered a fast assault. Assad tried the airtight hatch.

Locked.

She motioned him clear, raised her rifle and reached for the trigger of the grenade launcher that was slung under the barrel.

The thick hatch exploded as the grenade detonated on impact, filling the passageway with smoke. The troopers kicked the remains of the twisted metal aside and charged through the opening. Katja followed.

The bridge was clouded with dust, but Katja identified the four merchant crewmembers instantly. Her troopers barked orders for the targets to drop to their knees.

Through the smoke emerged a middle-aged man in nondescript civilian clothes. He was covering his face. His skin was pale and soft, his belly obvious even under the loose cloth. Katja grabbed him with an armored grip and threw him to the deck. She placed a foot on his back and her rifle to his head. The weight of her spacesuit—the little she allowed to actually lean on him—made him gasp in pain.

Glancing around the bridge, she saw that the other three targets were subdued.

“This is the Terran Astral Force,” she declared. “If you cooperate you will not be harmed. If you resist, you will die.”

She stepped off the prone target. He rolled onto his side and groaned. Circulation units were clearing the smoke, and through the haze Katja got her first good look at the other targets. All were dressed in civilian clothes, and none looked threatening.

“Bravo-One, Alpha-One—bridge secure. No casualties.”

Chang’s response was immediate.

“Bravo-One. Engine room secure. No casualties. Two targets, three others detained en route.”

“Four targets here,” she replied. “Two others detained en route.” She switched to inter-ship freq. “Mother, Alpha-One. Touchdown, ops green. Commencing search.”

“Mother, roger.”
Thomas’s voice echoed in her ear.

Back to strike freq. “Bravo-One, Alpha-One—commence search.”

“Bravo-One.”

All the targets were watching her with wide eyes. The bridge was bright and modern, with soft, beige bulkheads and ergonomic consoles that wrapped around large, comfortable seats. The blackened remains of the hatch littered the deck, but it was obvious that this was a well-maintained ship. She studied the navigation projection on the starboard bulkhead, noting what appeared to be a straight run from a mining facility in Sirius’s Kuiper belt.

The recorded route of the freighter didn’t tie in with what
Kristiansand
had reported, but Katja didn’t worry about the details. All was not as it seemed.

The troopers were watching the targets with leveled weapons. All remained in place and waited for her word. Behind her visor she once again steeled herself.

* * *

Jack shifted in his seat, looking closely at his display to see if
Rapier
was still producing even a glimmer of spacetime distortion. The fast-attack craft had dug a gravimetric trough during her high-speed assault on the mystery freighter, but now that she had dropped her speed and taken station she had all but vanished.

Kristiansand
was drifting in her patrol box and was equally invisible across the dimensions, although her homing beacon gave Jack a continuous bearing on his mother ship. At first, the idea of flying support had sounded exciting to Jack, but now that the initial action was over he realized that this might be a bit of a yawner.

Looking at the spot on his scope where dead reckoning told him
Rapier
was, he imagined what Breeze was doing. He pictured her sitting behind her console, long hair falling past her shoulders as she carefully surveyed the situation. Most likely she wore a spacesuit for such an operation, but in Jack’s mind she was just in her coveralls, zero-g holding up those great tits. Of course, zero-g wouldn’t let her hair fall past her shoulders… Jack briefly debated whether his image should include falling hair or floating tits.

A quick re-imagining placed Breeze’s hair under a hat and brought his image in line with the laws of physics.

He’d have to check
Kristiansand
’s schedule after this run, and find out if the ship planned to rendezvous with
Normandy
anytime soon. Better yet, if he could do more shuttling to the invasion ship. Or maybe, when this boarding was over,
Rapier
could dock with
Kristiansand
for a post-mission briefing…

After two months in space, Jack found his mind wandering often to the possibility of entertaining Breeze in his rack. No doubt a hot cougar like that could teach him a thing or two.

But she was more than just sexy. She was smart, and fun. Jack had seen clearly how the XO had been ogling her. That big strike officer, Scott or something, had been trying pretty hard, too. Watching Breeze toy with them had been great fun, especially since she dropped everything whenever Jack spoke.

He had played it cool that evening, but it was pretty clear which guy Breeze had been thinking about going home with. Shame she’d been so tired from the mission.

Jack couldn’t wait for their next meeting.

An alert from his console pulled him back to reality. He blinked, did a sweep of the visual, of his flight controls, and then focused again on his hunt controls. Before he could figure out what had caused the alert, a red line appeared across his display.

“Viking-Two, Longboat.”
It was Lieutenant Makatiani from
Kristiansand. “Fishing true one-six mark one-zero.”

Jack spotted the disturbance on his display. How long had that been there? He tapped in the commands to drop in his own bearing line. There was something out there.

“Viking-Two, uhh, fishing true,” he said. “Zero-four mark zero-eight.”

The red line from his position intersected that from
Kristiansand
, some twenty-five thousand kilometers from Jack’s Hawk. Not too close, but not that far, either. And, Jack suddenly realized, not too far from
Rapier
and the mystery merchant ship.

He steered his Hawk to point at
Rapier
, then pushed open the throttle. Doctrine demanded that, once an initial fix on an extra-dimensional contact had been established, he was to relocate at best speed to continue triangulating. This could be in any direction—ideally perpendicular to the bearing, but a feeling at the back of Jack’s brain told him that it would be wise to get a little closer to the boarding.

K
atja pocketed the data crystal that contained the merchant vessel’s entire flight log. It would take hours—or days—to go through it all, but even glancing at the information as it downloaded, Katja had noticed a few suspicious items. The real question now was, was this merchant crew part of the smuggling operation, or were they just mules for an unknown agent?

On an impulse, she raised her rifle to point at the face of one of the kneeling targets. His face blanched, terror filling his eyes. She watched him carefully—his fear was pure, with no sign of detached calculation or tactical awareness. The other targets looked equally terrified, and she decided they were probably legitimate merchants.

She lowered her weapon.

“Who is the captain of this vessel?” she demanded.

Frantic glances passed between the targets. Then, the man whom Katja had taken down raised his hand.

“I am,” he said. “Daragh Wu. This is the Centauri Merchant Ship
Astrid
on a routine commercial run from Kuiper Base Charlie to Laika.”

“What’s your cargo, Mr. Wu?”

“Iridium ore.”

“Do you have all of your documentation?”

“Of course.”

Katja smiled. “So you won’t mind a bit if we have a look around.”

“Just please, don’t hurt my crew.” He stared at the deck, defeated.

“That depends entirely on them.” She looked up at her troopers. “Alpha-Two Team, collect Targets One and Two and bring them here.” Assad and Jackson moved to obey. As they reached the door Katja spoke again. “Oh, and at the request of their captain, don’t hurt them.”

Assad couldn’t suppress his smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

Hernandez shepherded all four members of the bridge crew into a corner, where he could cover them solo and free up Katja to inspect the bridge. She pretended to ignore the activity, even attaching her rifle to her belt and turning away completely, as if lost in thought. Her ears, however, tracked every sound the targets made—little more than short breaths and shuffled movement. To them, she was in complete control of the situation, and she was beginning to believe it herself.

As the other two targets were brought in and placed on the deck next to their colleagues, Katja examined the various engine settings displayed on the consoles. All systems appeared fully operational, but nothing was running at higher than a minimum.

“Mr. Wu, how are you keeping to your schedule?” She looked over at him, her expression light and disarming. “I know how it is for space traders—time is money.”

He raised his eyes to meet hers, but only for a moment. “We’re actually… a little ahead of schedule.”

“How much?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much ahead of schedule.”

“Uhh, I don’t have the exact figure.” He began to rise. “I can show you—”

“Stay down.” Both troopers raised their rifles in augmentation of Katja’s gentle words. “Give me an estimate. Humor me.”

“Maybe twelve hours.”

She nodded. “This looks like a pretty nice ship, although I admit I’ve never seen the class before. What’s your top speed?”

“Point-zero-nine-c.”

“Not bad. I bet you have to use that sometimes, to make up for lost time when the loaders are slow.”

“We manage,” he replied.

“The loaders must have been really fast at your last stop. Do they have modern facilities at Kuiper Base Charlie?”

He stared stupidly at her.

“I said…” she repeated slowly, “do they have modern facilities at Kuiper Base Charlie?”

He swallowed. “Umm, not bad. The crews are hard-working.”

“They must be, since you’re so far ahead of schedule that you’re drifting through extra-solar space at less than six kilometers per second. That must be one hell of a low SOA, to let you loiter for so long.”

He was beginning to sweat. Certainly no spy, here.

“There was… a delay at the port on Laika,” he said. “We’ve been told to hold off.”

“Really? You were asked to hold off at three hundred million kilometers? That must be some stack of freighters waiting to get down to Laika.”

“Alpha-One, Bravo-One. Poss suspect, deck two frame niner-alpha. Investigating.”

Katja keyed her mike. “Alpha-One.” She glanced at the bulkhead chronometer. The strike team had been on board less than seven minutes, and already they’d found something. Chang was good. She looked back at the merchant captain, who watched her like a rabbit, nervous and eager to bolt.

“Mr. Wu, I’m a patient woman, but I don’t like being lied to. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re going to tell me the truth from now on?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you traveling so slowly?”

He hesitated, but clearly didn’t have the stomach for this. “So that your ships wouldn’t detect us.”

“Why are you so far out of the space lanes?”

“So that we wouldn’t be seen.”

“What was your last port of call?”

“It really was Kuiper Base Charlie, but that was nine weeks ago.”

“Did you rendezvous with any ships since then?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“A trader named Cobb. I don’t know where he was coming from.”

“Did you take on cargo from him?”

“Yes. Ten sealed crates.”

“What’s in them?”

“I don’t know.”

Katja hardened her expression. Time to get nasty.

“If you lie to me I’ll have one of your crew executed. There are five of them in here, so I guess that gives you five lies before you die.”

One of the prone targets squirmed. Another whimpered. Wu was sweating freely, and he wiped his eyes.

“I’m not lying!” There was real panic in his voice.

“Where are the crates?”

“In a small hold under the deck in the number two generator room.”

She keyed her mike. “Bravo-One, Alpha-One, new info. Space under the deck in number two generator room.”

“Bravo-One. Tally-ho.”

Katja frowned. Chang had already found the crates. Apparently his search procedures were faster than her interrogation methods.

“Mother, Alpha-One. Sitrep.”

“Mother, go.”

“Suspect cargo discovered. Bravo-One Team on location, Alpha-One Team en route with Target Zero-Zero.”

“Mother, roger.
Kristiansand
’s Hawk has reported possible stealth activity. Checking now, but I recommend you expedite.”

She looked back at the merchant captain. “Get up, Mr. Wu.”

The merchant hesitated. Hernandez stepped in, hauled him to his feet and threw him forward. He would normally have been taller than Katja, but was hunched over so much that he actually had to look up to meet her eyes.

“You’re going to show me these crates.”

He nodded.

She switched to strike freq. “All units, Alpha-One. Alpha-One Team en route to suspect cargo with Target Zero-Zero. Mother says expedite. Bravo-One, get those crates open. Over.”