War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan (2 page)

"Why?"

"Because your Honma & Voss
Itar
is just the sort of hand cannon that will provoke a response from our host." Cozen stepped into the lift.

"Twenty-four, new LiDAR contacts inbound," Biko said. "Fighters. IFF says they're Staas Company F-151s from
Taipan's
Air Group."

The squadron leader's voice called out on comms to the patrol junks between her and
Hardway
. She sounded like she'd screamed her throat raw. "
Hardway
combat air patrol, this is Hellcat 1-1, 55th Squadron. We are approaching your carrier and requesting landing clearance and bay assignment."

A flight of
Hardway
's gunnery junks on combat air patrol answered Hellcat 1-1 first. "55th Squadron, this is
Malta.
Standby, 55th..." When
Malta
called in, Air Group Commander Asa Biko told the CAP to pass them through. Seconds later, the gunnery junks veered away, and twenty-four Staas F-151s flew in over the bow looking like a pack of hungry predators.
Hardway
hadn't had so many interceptors flying off her since the Lancers' first bloody battles.

Biko leaned into the comms button as he thumbed it. "Hellcat Squadron, this is
Hardway
AT. You can park those fighters in bays 15, 16, and 17, port-side, primary bays. Redsuits there will sort you out. Try not to cook 'em with your exhaust. They bloody hate that. Welcome aboard, 55th."

"Wilco,
Hardway
," she said. "Will comply."

Biko asked Ram if he'd managed to find bunks for the Hellcats yet. It hadn't been easy, but as first officer that was part of Ram's job and he'd moved mountains to put the Hellcats where they'd feel most comfortable. He thought he'd done pretty well. "I got the Hellcats a couple of compartments in Forward Hab, Deck 2," he said, "right next door to the Lancers."

Chapter Two

Hardway
and
Taipan
orbited in the ice moon's shadow, keeping the four box carriers between them. The twin, wonder-wheel hulls of fragile
Malibu
and
Hardway
's own breaching ship,
Tipperary,
held station in the very center of the formation, as protected as they could possibly be.  

The longboat ferrying
Hardway
's senior officers to
Taipan
left from Bay One, the starboard of the two launch bays almost at the base of
Hardway's
command tower. Torpedo junk pilot, Dell Pardue flew them over the carrier's primary launch bay modules and the midships railgun batteries before she rolled them around the ship's armored, turret-studded sides.

When she turned the longboat in
Taipan's
direction, Ram glanced over her shoulder and out the front canopy. Entire constellations of pale blue exhaust flares buzzed around Matilda Witt's command ship, flying their combat air patrols in tight, echelon formation. At least ten sorties of Bitzers kept watch over the carriers. Ram noted more than one flight breaking orbit as they headed out to patrol the larger system.

He knew Witt's squadrons were powerful enough to protect them, but it almost hurt to look at the box carriers and their lack of armor. Clearly vital parts sat on the outside of the hull just waiting to be blown off. "There's not a scratch on any of those ships," Pardue said. "Any of you senior officer types notice that?" She pointed her chin at the thin-skinned carriers below. "The converted box-carriers down there. There's no battle damage."

"That," Harry Cozen said from the longboat's rear, "is because Matilda Witt doesn't send her carriers into battle." He rose from the seats in back and spoke as he came forward. "She doesn't fight like we do – like
Hardway
fights. Only her 151s go into battle. They sortie in such great numbers that they overwhelm the enemy. The carriers stay hidden somewhere safe. Same with
Taipan
." He pointed at Witt's command ship hanging over the box-carriers like an armored castle keep. "There's not a scratch on her command ship either, you'll note. Not one alien particle stream has ever ripped
Taipan's
armor."

"You say it like it's a bad thing," Dana said.

Harry Cozen suggested she ask
Hardway's
Air Group Commander, Asa Biko what he thought about the notion of their pilots taking all the risk.

Biko looked down at the box carriers and then up at the fighters on patrol. Biko remembered every pilot he'd lost, but he also remembered every time
Hardway
had taken a hit from the Squidies' big guns. Plenty of people died when alien particle streams ripped molten gashes up and down the carrier. Alien warheads or flying bombs that detonated against the hull could fill whole decks with firestorms and kill scores upon scores of crewmen, engineers, and company marines. Ram knew Biko was mentally weighing the lives of
Hardway
's pilots and crewmen against each other because he looked as if he'd bitten into something and didn't like the taste. That sour look remained on his face after he'd shifted his gaze to Witt's command ship.

SCS
Taipan
was barely longer than three mining junks laid end to end, but her armor was the thickest Ram had ever seen on a Staas Company ship. Once, her hull must have had a teardrop shape, but the armor plates had been welded on so thick in so many layers that
Taipan
no longer had the sleek lines she'd started with. Now, she looked more like a castle keep.

There wasn't a single mark on her as far as Ram could see. No particle stream had ever torn at her sides. No warhead had ever vaped craters in her. She'd gone three months behind enemy lines without any support and no weapon had ever touched her.

"
Hardway
longboat, this is
Taipan
Control. You are cleared for docking in our bay. Be advised, we have artificial gravity running at .5 gees."

"Roger,
Taipan,
" Pardue said. "ETA one minute."

"Point five gees?" Dana said, "Is she crazy?"

"Great," Biko said. "Heavy gravity..."

Cozen said, "She keeps it heavy because nobody else does. She likes to have the advantage."

It was just half of one Earth gravity, but if you'd been out in the black for as long as most of
Hardway's
crew and living at .3 gees or less for all that time, then .5 gees weighed on you like a lead suit. It was worse if you were big like Biko and had spent years flying mining junks without any gravity at all. Ram could feel the awful tugging on his internal organs just thinking about it.

The add-on gun towers and the single railgun battery on
Taipan
's bow dressed her for war, but like almost all antebellum Earth ships, she'd originally been made for other things.
Hardway
had been a mining carrier. Harry Cozen's personal ship,
Arbitrage
, had been a salvage vessel, but the purpose for which Matilda Witt's ship,
Taipan
, had originally been made was difficult to discern.

On landing, they saw
Taipan
's launch bay was so small it could only accommodate a few longboats or a half-dozen of fighters. And it had been gilded. The polished bulkheads on all sides and even the inside of the bay doors had been engraved with the image of an ancient, Silk Road caravan seen in isometric perspective. The camels and traders and wagons wrapped around the bay and the precisely engraved gouges in the metal that had been used to render the Silk Road scene had been filled with gold so that all the figures and the entire caravan looked as if it were lit by rays of dawn.

"
Taipan
used to be Matilda's bloody yacht," Cozen said.

The armed Staas Guards on the far side of the airlock didn't care for Ram's sidearm. He didn't want to give it up. Any other gun and he wouldn't have minded, but not
that
gun. Not because it was one of only eighteen know to exist and a famous historical artifact worth more than a decade of his salary, but because it had been Mickey Wells' gun. After the War of the Americas made him an orphan, she'd taken care of him like he was family. The Honma & Voss x-ray laser was the gun she'd carried until a Squidy murdered her on the first day of the war.

The Staas Guards recognized the antique H&V
Itar
even in the holster. Everyone recognized a gun that had been banned on Earth. "No way you're coming on board
this
ship with
that
gun," they told him. "That thing goes off at full discharge, it could slice right through the hull." Their eyes coveted.

Cozen showed them some Staas VP outrage and then some one-star admiral's outrage, but they wouldn't back down. If you have a two-star admiral of your own upstairs, the one-star variety isn't as compelling. After a good three minutes of arguing, Ram was about to give in and leave the
Itar
with Pardue in the longboat just so they could get out of the airlock, but then, the lift doors behind the guards parted to reveal the queen bee herself. Matilda Witt had arrived.

The Staas Guards stepped out from in front of the lift doors and stood to the sides and straightened up at attention. Ram hadn't ever seen Staas Guards stand like that before no matter how much anyone paid them. Their eyes didn't move as she stepped out of the lift. She looked them up and down. "Thank you gentlemen, but Mr. Devlin can keep his sidearm. I trust him."

"Aye aye, Ms. Witt."

She wore a sari – a single, long piece of fabric wrapped around her to form a dress of sorts. It was a traditional Indian garment and even with the lines of some distant Asian ancestors around her eyes, to see a block-jawed, ruddy-cheeked Australian woman of Germanic descent with silver blonde hair wearing a sari called up images in Ram's mind of Colonial India under the British Empire.

There had been a squarish bulk to Witt's frame before, when Ram seen her in contemporary business suits. She had a confrontational shape. Matilda Witt couldn't face you without squaring off. The soft lines of the fabric wrapped around her didn't do a thing to mask it. Matilda Witt was a bulldozer draped in silk.

"Harry Cozen." She smiled with no attempt to feign warmth. "It's been ages since we've actually been face to face – not since before the war began."

"Not since Istanbul," he said.

Her eyes narrowed a tenth of a millimeter while her thin lips stayed tense across her mouth. "We won't have any repeat of what happened there because
I'm
clearly in charge now, Harry."

"Yes," Cozen said. "I can see that second star you've got pinned to the neck of your...dress."

She sighed. "Uniforms look fine on some of us – men like you, for instance, who've worn them on and off over the decades, but it seemed an affectation for me to wear one. Even to a war." She laughed. "I'm not a naval officer and I never have been. I'm a businesswoman, Harry. You know that."

"You had no problems asking the board for command rank."

"Oh... I have oodles of proper, military advisers. And... well... you know the Board of Directors, Harry – they're always willing to back a proven winner in a new venture." She turned away from him without waiting for a response while Cozen quietly simmered. "You must be Lt. Commander Dana Sellis," Witt said.

Dana's full mouth somehow mimicked the thin-lipped chill of Witt's smile in a way Ram found distinctly unsettling.

"And Asa Biko," Witt said. "
Hardway's
Air Group Commander." Biko didn't move a muscle. He held himself still as if he'd been locked in a cage with a dangerous animal and didn't want to spook it. Witt grinned at him and showed her teeth.

"Mr. Devlin," she said. "The Privateer Fleet's saltiest XO. You should have given him his own ship by now, Harry."

Above the launch bay deck,
Taipan
's passageways were paneled in real wood. "Spoils of the Amazon campaign," Witt explained as she led them through the command deck. "A gift from my ex-husband." The ironwood panels were all intact and uncracked and Ram realized the decks of that ship had probably never been vented for battle or exposed to a vacuum.

There was even carpeting underfoot. The softness of it confused Ram's feet. He hadn't walked on anything but fast-printed metal decks for as long as he could remember – even at Sagan Station. For the first ten yards out of the lift, the heavy gravity and the soft surface underneath his feet made Ram feel as if he lurched to one side and the next whenever he took a step.

Witt was the only one Ram saw in civilian dress. The rest of her officers and crew wore the standard jumpsuits. The way they stood at attention for her as she passed told Ram she'd hired her new crew directly from someone's military. They were Staas Privateers now.

"And where is SCS
Arbitrage
these days?" Witt asked Cozen without looking back at him.

"
Arbitrage
is on a tour of the Squidies' finest vacation destinations," he said.

She chuckled. "Alien IP... That's where the profit is, alright."

Witt didn't bother to show them her bridge. Ram got a glimpse of it at the end of the passage, through an open hatch, but before they got too close, Staas Guards outside a different hatch snapped to attention and opened it for Matilda Witt to enter. She led her guests into her office.

It was nothing like Harry Cozen's office. Granted,
Hardway
was a very different ship built for a very different purpose, but the contrast was stark. Cozen's office was a bare and minimal stage. It contained nothing but objects useful for accomplishing tasks at hand. Witt's office looked like both a museum and a vault filled with treasure.

It was no secret Matilda Witt made her first millions stealing and selling looted art. Ram knew very little about art, but he recognized a carved Olmec head 2-meters-tall and a sprawling, 16th century triptych populated with creatures and demons that made the Squidies look friendly. "That's a Bosch," she said. "I got
that
one from Harry." She didn't say whether it was gift or acquisition. The drypoint landscapes had a calligraphic quality to the marks that even Ram couldn't mistake as anyone's but Rembrandt's. He looked down to note how the rug under his feet was a Sarouk – historic and irreplaceable since much of Iran had been vaped just like the Revolutionary Guard for whom the famous Honma & Voss
Itar
x-ray lasers had once been made.