Original Work Exiled to Glory (Morningstar I)

Chapter Fifteen

“So we have roughly four million credits worth of rare minerals, spread over the three ships, and nearly a million credits of various biochemical products,” Leo said. “And none of this was on the manifests?”

“No, sir,” Boothroyd said. “It might be worth a great deal of money, but the ingots and other smuggled goods are relatively small, compared to the whole. As long as no one opened the right crates, there was very little risk of the goods being discovered before they reached their final destination.”

Leo shook his head. It had taken four days to search the three freighters, four days during which he’d noticed a lot of freighters breaking orbit and jumping into interstellar space as quickly as possible. It didn’t take a genius to realise that those starship captains were smugglers, or feared their crews might be, or simply feared losing everything because Leo was actually doing his job and enforcing the law. Getaway’s prime location – Leo was mildly surprised Getaway hadn’t been chosen as the sector capital – made it an excellent place for smugglers to conduct their business, as long as the laws weren’t enforced. And now that had changed.

He sighed. “And how much would they have to pay in import-export dues?”

Flower leaned forward. “Ingalls is a mining world, ruled by a handful of local corporations,” she said. “And yes, that includes corporations with ties to the Deputy Governor.”

Boothroyd made a coughing noise. Leo glared at him, then looked at Flower.

“And?”

“The miners are legally required to report their output to the local government, which will take the ore and sell it onwards,” Flower said. “My guess is that some miners aren’t very happy with having to take whatever pittance the government offers them, despite the fact they’re doing all the work, and they’re resorting to smuggling to make ends meet.”

“It’s possible,” Boothroyd agreed. “The government has a monopoly. It’s quite possible its deliberately undervaluing the value of the ore, then selling it to itself. I’ve seen that trick before.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed. “I thought it was illegal.”

“There are a great many things that are illegal,” Boothroyd returned. “But as long as the laws are not enforced, and out here there aren’t many ships and crews intent on enforcing them, what are they going to do about it?”

“We’ll move on to Ingalls shortly,” Leo said. A couple of freighters had signalled their interest in being escorted to their next destination, and Leo intended to oblige. Boothroyd had pointed out that the navy had a bad reputation, and catching smugglers would only make it worse, but escorting freighters – and hopefully killing a few pirates along the way – might improve matters. “Until then …”

His terminal bleeped. “Sir,” Abigail said. She had the bridge, with Leo in his cabin and his de facto XO searching another freighter for smuggled goods. “Governor Forsyth’s compliments, sir, and he’d like to see you planetside, at Government House.”

Boothroyd snorted. “And just how polite was the original request?”

Abigail hesitated. “He was very demanding,” she said, finally. “I think he wants you there yesterday.”

“He’s going to be very disappointed,” Leo muttered, sarcastically. There was no such thing as time travel. “Tell him I’m on my way.”

He looked at Flower. “Coming?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Flower said. “Change into your dress uniform first. It might impress him.”

Leo nodded, dismissing both of them as he headed for the washroom. His dress uniform still marked him as a Lieutenant, rather than a Lieutenant-Commander or a Captain. He made a mental note to do something about that as he washed and changed, cursing the uniform’s designers under his breath. He had no legal right to wear a captain’s dress uniform – and he doubted he could wear Captain Archibald’s spare outfits in any case – but … he was tempted to put a captain’s rank pips on his collar anyway. It might make him look more impressive when he confronted the planetary governor. He keyed his terminal, bringing up the original message. It was incredibly rude. No wonder, he reflected curtly, that Abigail had been reluctant to pass it on verbatim. Her former CO would have blamed her for the message.

Flower was waiting at the shuttle hatch, wearing a uniform that had been carefully cut to outline her figure without quite breaking any regulations. Leo looked her up and down, then led the way into the shuttle and took the pilot’s seat. There wasn’t a real orbital traffic control system, somewhat to his surprise, and the planetary ATC seemed barely functional. He kept a wary eye on the scope as he flew into the atmosphere, following the beacon to Government House. He couldn’t help wondering, as he flew over the city, if he’d picked up the wrong beacon. Getaway City, the imaginatively-named capital, looked like a refugee camp. The vast majority of homes were little more than freighter crates, stripped of their cargo and turned into makeshift accommodation, surrounding a handful of wooden homes. Government House had started life as a colonial dumpster – a quick and dirty way to get thousands of tons of supplies down to the surface – that had been emptied, then converted into a centre of government. Leo felt his eyes narrow as he landed the shuttle on the pad, then opened the hatch, Government House managed to look both temporary and very permanent indeed.

“Interesting,” Flower commented. “You’d think the government would be able to set up a better home for itself.”

Leo nodded, slowly. The original colony plan had been fairly standard; the colonists used the first year to set up farms and towns, then – once they had some basic infrastructure – start building a proper collection of homes, offices and government facilities, steadily replacing the makeshift structures until they could be discarded completely. Getaway had been settled for nearly fifty years, according to the files, and yet it looked as if the colonists had only arrived a year or two ago. It was perplexing. The government should have been able to do a great deal more than it had …

A young woman greeted them, wearing a simple outfit that looked as if it had been passed down from her grandmother to her mother, and then down to her. Leo responded politely to her questions as she led them into the dumpster, then into an office. Governor Forsyth’s chamber did not inspire confidence. It looked as makeshift as everything else, from the crude desk and outdated terminal to the light bulb so primitive it should have been replaced years ago. Governor Forsyth looked old … it took Leo a moment to realise he really was old, that he lacked genetic enhancements that slowed aging. His eyes were sharp and cold as he studied Leo, narrowing as they saw his rank pips. His voice, when he spoke, was cold too.

“I summoned your commanding officer, young man,” he said. “Where is he?”

Leo bit down on an angry response. “I am the de facto commanding officer,” he said. It was imprudent, to say the least, for a planetary governor to summon a naval officer, but … he resisted the urge to point that out too. “The formal commanding officer chose not to accompany his ship to this sector.”

Governor Forsyth stared at him for a long moment. “How old are you?”

“Twenty,” Leo said.

He sighed, inwardly, at the governor’s doubtful look. Hardly any of his former classmates would have been promoted yet, and here he was in command of a starship. It was hard to blame the governor for doubting his story, or for wondering just what had happened to the real commanding officer. If Captain Archibald had been killed on active duty, Leo would have assumed command, but … it didn’t help, Leo supposed, that he really was young. It was vanishingly rare for a young officer to be promoted above lieutenant until he was at least twenty-three, and until Leo the only exceptions had been brevet promotions in the middle of a shooting war. Leo suspected he’d set a new record. If, of course, his promotion wasn’t classified. It wasn’t impossible. Back home, Valerian might be working overtime to bury any hint of improper behaviour.

“Twenty,” Governor Forsyth repeated. “Do you know how many complaints I have had about you, young man? Stopping and searching ships, messing up orbital and interstellar timetables, seizing of goods and forcible collection of dues …”

Leo met his eyes. Governor Forsyth sounded as if he were a headmaster, lecturing a student before delivering six of the best, but Leo was a grown adult who had gone through the Naval Academy. He had been intimidated by experts. He had no idea why Governor Forsyth was so angry about the rules being enforced, although … he suspected the only reason the governor had gotten the job was because his name had been put forward during the incorporation process, and no one had cared enough to challenge it. Governor Forsyth certainly hadn’t been selected by Daybreak, unlike Governor Brighton.

“It is my duty to enforce the law,” Leo said. “I have a legal obligation to search a number of freighters for smuggled goods, and – if I find them – to deal with the freighters and their crews appropriately. If they failed to report their cargos and pay the proper dues …”

Governor Forsyth cut him off. “Is this what we were promised, when we were incorporated into the empire? Do you know how many ships have gone missing over the past five years?”

He glowed at Leo, as if he were personally responsible for the disaster. “We were promised more colonists,” he said, curtly. “We even received a confirmation that two colonist-carriers, crammed to bursting with colonists who were prepared to work for land, were on their way. And did they show up? No. We sent a request for an update and what did we get from Yangtze? Nothing. Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said. He hadn’t heard anything about missing colonist-carriers … that was odd. It was rare for colonist-carriers to be harassed by pirates, if only because the colonists rarely had anything the pirates could sell. “The colonists might have other ideas about where they’re going …”

“And why didn’t you think to check, before you sent them?” Governor Forsyth leaned forward. “Why?”

Leo took a moment to calm himself. Daybreak didn’t give a shit about historical injustices, no matter how unjust they’d been. If a planet was facing a civil war because two – or more – ethnic groups couldn’t get along, Daybreak would separate them and impose a settlement by force. It wasn’t uncommon for two ethnic groups to be forced to disengage, entire populations uprooted to ensure the two sides were separated, or for a significantly smaller minority to be transferred, willingly or not, to a colony world that was desperate for manpower, desperate enough not to be too choosy. The practice didn’t always work out and it was quite possible that the exiles had seized control of their ship, steering it past the Rim rather than to their planned destination …

He met the governor’s eyes. “I was not involved with making the decision,” he said. “I will do what I can to find the missing ships, or request replacements if the ships cannot be found, but there are limits to what I can do.”

Governor Forsyth looked unimpressed. “Is this all we can expect from the empire? Pointless rules and regulations, while the promised help never materialises?”

Leo felt his temper fray. “Then perhaps you should have haggled for better incorporation terms,” he snapped. “I wouldn’t have to enforce the laws if you did it yourself.”

The governor raised his voice. “And have you ever tried running a planet?”

He went on before Leo could answer. “Two-thirds of the population lives on the farms,” he said. “The rest isn’t much use for anything. We don’t have the resources to develop the settled territory any further, let alone expand it. We’re short on pretty much everything we need, from HE3 to shuttles and other pieces of advanced technology, which is why the sudden disruption you caused is so problematic. My tax base is tiny and even if we collected every last cent our people earn, the exchange rate is still deeply tilted against us. There is no way we can enforce the empire’s law, young man, and if we did we’d be cutting our own throats.”

Leo raised his eyebrows. “In which way?”

“Most of our interstellar currency comes from traders passing through the system,” Governor Forsyth pointed out, snidely. “How long do you think they’ll keep pausing here if we start harassing them?”

Leo took a breath. “And that’s your excuse for doing nothing?”

The governor looked back at him. “What would you have me do?”

He shrugged, expressively. “You’re young. You have a starship – somehow – and you think that means you’re in charge. You may have done so well in training that they gave you a starship right out of the gate, without bothering to give you a little seasoning as well as formal training, but the real universe doesn’t listen to smug intellectuals who think they know everything and rarely do. Out here, you have to learn to compromise. Some rules are important and must be followed, others exist merely to provide a figleaf for snatching someone’s ship or interfering with local commerce. If you enforce the latter, you will make yourself very unpopular.”

Leo gritted his teeth. He could understand the governor’s point – there were practical limits to his ability to enforce his authority, such as it was – but that didn’t mean Leo had to give up and abandon his mission. That would get him in real trouble, when Daybreak heard what he’d done. A commanding officer was expected to enforce the law at all times, no matter how much the locals disliked it. Failing to enforce the law could lead to utter disaster. Leo knew he’d be lucky if the disaster only impacted his career. It was far more likely it would get a great many innocents killed.

“I have the responsibility to enforce imperial law, with or without the cooperation of local authorities,” he said, stiffly. “If you wish to challenge this, you may send a complaint to Governor Brighton or Daybreak itself; if they order me to step back from my responsibilities, in writing, I will naturally obey. Until them, I will carry out my responsibilities and if any local authority attempts to impede me the consequences will be dire.”

Governor Forsyth looked as if Leo had slapped him. “You imprudent young pup …”

He stopped himself with an effort. “I will be filing official complaints, on behalf of the shipping companies, to both Yangtze and Daybreak,” he said. “I will provide copies for you to include in your log, if you wish. I am sure sanity will prevail.”

“The vast majority of offences against interstellar law were minor,” Leo pointed out. “It isn’t that hard to get a proper certification, or to check the cargo against the manifest before you set out. I dare say they could be fixed, if the planetary government encouraged it before we return.”

Governor Forsyth blinked. “You’re leaving?”

“I have to show the flag right across the sector,” Leo said. The techs were clambering over the captured vessel, but it would take weeks to get her into fighting trim. “I’ll be on my way to Ingalls shortly. I’m sure this will meet with your approval.”

“I didn’t think you needed my approval.” Governor Forsyth made no attempt to hide his bitterness. “This planet is dependent on interstellar trade, and you’re threatening it.”

“Like I said, most problems can be solved easily,” Leo reminded him. It was hard to keep the waspishness out of his tone. If the governor had been doing his job, Leo wouldn’t have had to do anything. Hopefully, his superiors would see it that way. “You just need to apply a little focus.”

“If you say so,” the governor said. He change the subject, with brutal efficiency. “Will your crew be requiring shore leave?”

“A few hours each,” Leo confirmed. He would have preferred to get underway as quickly as possible, but the crew had worked hard and they did need a break. Hopefully, nothing would happen that would cause further delay. “I’ll be back on my ship, if you need to discuss the matter further.”

“You are far too young for your role,” Governor Forsyth said. He sounded more reflective than angry. Leo wasn’t sure that was a good thing. “What are you, the bastard son of the emperor?”

Leo tried to keep his face expressionless, rather than give into the urge to – childishly – roll his eyes. Daybreak didn’t have an emperor. The Grand Senators were the most powerful people in the Senate and even they had very limited power, always vulnerable to being impeached by Congress or simply undermined by their rivals. The system wasn’t designed to let the powerful rest comfortably, to ensure they never lost their edge. A formal emperor might seem a good idea, on paper, but it would never work. His coronation would mark the beginning of the end.

“I am a naval officer in the service of the Daybreak Republic,” Leo said, finally. It wasn’t as if he was anything else, although he did hail from the hardy stock that was the core of the republic’s greatness. “And that is more than enough.”

“You’re too young,” the governor said, again. He made a show of looking Leo up and down. “I hope you’ll survive long enough to learn a little wisdom.”

Leo eyed him. Was that a threat? Or just a snide remark? He didn’t know.

“We’ll see,” he said. He stood, brushing down his trousers. “But until ordered otherwise, I will discharge my duty as I see fit. And anyone who gets in my way will regret it.”

 

Chapter Sixteen

“That was probably unwise,” Flower said, when they were back on Waterhen. “A planetary governor could cause a great deal of trouble for you.”

Leo scowled. “What was I supposed to do? Kiss his ass?”

Flower looked reproving as she poured them both coffee. “He is in a very tight spot,” she said, stiffly. “If he enforces the laws too much, as he told us, the freighters will stop calling at Getaway and the planet’s income will drop like a stone.”

“And if he doesn’t enforce the laws, Governor Brighton will remove him and nominate a replacement,” Leo pointed out. Governor Forsyth might have been selected by the planetary stockholders, and rubber-stamped by an incorporation committee that had countless other matters to attend to, but there was no reason the empire had to put up with him if he didn’t measure up. “Where will he be then?”

“Probably hiding from the mob,” Flower said. “If you want to judge someone, you should first understand the limits on their roles.”

Leo felt his scowl deepen as he sipped his coffee. His instructors had said the same, pointing out that Nimitz couldn’t drop kinetic strikes on the Japanese carriers because he simply didn’t have those weapons, nor could President Lincoln send an armoured brigade to capture Richmond because tanks and aircraft hadn’t been invented until decades after the First American Civil War. He understood the logic, and yet he didn’t see the comparison. A governor was charged with enforcing imperial law and preparing his world for further incorporation, and Governor Forsyth was negligent on both counts. It would not end well for him if he didn’t shape up, before an inspection team arrived. Leo didn’t know if he had the authority to remove a governor himself – the precedents were vague, deliberately so – but an inspection team did. And if Governor Forsyth failed to impress them …

He keyed his console, bringing up the shipping records for the sector. Governor Forsyth hadn’t been wrong to complain about a missing colonist-carrier, although it was odd that the matter hadn’t been reported to Yangtze. It was hardly uncommon for a ship to be a few days – or weeks – later, but several months? Leo’s eyes narrowed. It was vaguely possible the ship had been allocated to a different sector, and therefore Yangtze hadn’t been copied into any correspondence on the matter, but Governor Forsyth had complained to Governor Brighton. Or had he? Governor Forsyth had struck Leo as someone who preferred complaining to actually doing something about the problem, and that impression hadn’t faded during the brief interview. It was quite possible he’d nurtured his grievances rather than trying to do anything to address them.

“The colonists weren’t particularly reluctant, either,” he noted. “There’s no reason to think they might have hijacked the ship.”

“No one really wants to be evicted from their homeworld,” Flower pointed out, dryly. “It might be the best solution, from the long-term and very cold-blooded point of view, but who wants to go? They might have thought they could set up shop themselves somewhere beyond the Rim, or even get back to their homeworld. Or whoever planned the mission messed up.”

Leo nodded, slowly. “Or it could have been a simple navigational error,” he said. “There’s little hope of finding her.”

He shrugged, dismissing the problem. “Did I really mess up?”

“The governor is in a tight spot, like I said, and your combination of youth and arrogance didn’t help,” Flower said, flatly. “Sure, you could back him up with superior firepower, but what happens when you leave?”

“Crap.” Leo looked down. “He’s going to blame everything on me, isn’t he?”

“Probably.” Flower smiled. “Does it matter, as long as the regulations are upheld?”

“Those ships … their masters could have made sure their crews were certified long before we came along,” Leo said. “Why didn’t they?”

Flower met his eyes. “Imagine I am a big fan of the Slithery Snakes,” she said. “You know, the Powerball team. I am such a big fan that I point a gun at you and tell you to chant support too, or I’ll blow you away. Maybe you like the Snakes, instead of preferring the Roaring Lions, but … you’re not going to be happy if I make you chant their praises at gunpoint, even if you do support them. You’d be mad at me instead, even if you thought my heart was in the right place.”

“You’re pointing a gun at your CO,” Leo pointed out. “Your heart is not in the right place.”

“No,” Flower agreed. “Point is, I am making you do something. Maybe it’s the right thing to do. Maybe you want to do it. But I am forcing you to do it and you will resent it, no matter how much you agree with me. Half the problems leading up to the Great War happened because a bunch of idiots thought they could force everyone to do the right thing, which didn’t work out well because no one likes being forced to do anything even if it is the right thing to do.”

“It isn’t the same,” Leo protested. “It doesn’t matter which Powerball team you support. I won’t think any less of you if you’re a Snake or a Lion. But starship certifications are important.”

“Yeah,” Flower said. “And all of the independent captains think they should decide who they take on as crew, rather than have their choices limited by some bureaucrat in an office on the other side of the known universe.”

“Madness,” Leo said.

“Humanity,” Flower said. “Speaking of which, what are you going to say to Gayle?”

Leo flushed. “The captains did not appear to be aware their ships were carrying smuggled goods,” he said, with the private thought they might be very good liars instead. Governor Forsyth had promised a full investigation, but such things took time. “I’m sure her father will see to it that his subordinates are dealt with.”

Flower’s smile grew wider. “He won’t be pleased,” she said. “If he quietly encouraged her to get close to you …”

Leo shook his head. He didn’t pretend to understand what Gayle had been doing, when she’d made the first move, and it was hard to convince himself it mattered. Back home, it wouldn’t. They could have a simple relationship with no strings attached, a relationship that could be broken off if – when – he was reassigned to an out-system post. Here …? Gayle might have made the first move because she wanted a secret relationship, or because she wanted to exploit him, or … who knew? He wasn’t inclined to worry about it. He had his duty to attend to.

“He’s the Deputy Governor of the entire sector,” Leo said, flatly. “If he’s breaking the law, what’ll happen to him?”

The intercom bleeped. “Captain,” Abigail said. “The search party just completed the final inspection. They found nothing.”

Which doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything to find, Leo thought. Smuggled goods didn’t have to be bulky. There’d been a major scandal a decade ago when a ship had been caught smuggling porn onto a deeply religious – at least on paper – world and the religious police had wanted to stone the entire crew to death. We didn’t have time to check every last datachip on the vessel …

“Good,” he said, instead. “Inform the XO he can start running through the shore leave roster.”

Flower grinned. “You’re not going back down yourself?”

“No,” Leo said. He had a lot of paperwork to do, and besides his junior officers needed the brief period of shore leave more than himself. “I have to get my ducks in a row before the governor sees the report.”

“Make sure you do,” Flower advised. “There’ll be a report already heading to Yangtze about you.”

Leo didn’t doubt it. The first complaints would have started the moment Waterhen ordered the freighters to prepare for inspection. Assuming Governor Forsyth had been quick off the mark, he could have sent a complaint with the next freighter heading to Yangtze … and even if he had waited until he’d spoken to Leo in person, the complaint would still reach Yangtze before Waterhen, unless Leo gambled with his ship’s safety and won. There was nothing that could be done about it. If Governor Brighton followed protocol, the complaint would be shelved until Waterhen returned to Yangtze. Leo would have several weeks to prepare his defence.

If there’s any need to defend myself, he thought. A sane Governor wouldn’t bother with a hearing. He’d tear up the complaints and tell their sender to follow the rules in future.

“I need to take the bridge,” he said. “You want to go see what you can learn, or get some rest?”

“Spying is more interesting,” Flower said. “I’ll rest when we’re back underway.”

Leo dismissed her, then made his way to the bridge. Orbital space was surprisingly quiet, now that Waterhen had established she meant business. There was nothing they could do about the starships that were hopping through the jump coordinates, without bothering to visit the planet itself, but any reasonable superior officer would understand he’d done everything he could. They might not have searched every ship, or impounded everything being smuggled through the system, yet hopefully the combination of firm enforcement and quiet understanding would deter more smugglers from trying their luck. Hopefully. It was a shame there was no way to prove their effectiveness, but …

He put the thought aside as he did his paperwork, putting his thoughts down in a stream of consciousness and then refining the gibberish into a proper report. It was something he wasn’t as practiced at as he should be, he noted sourly. The Academy had cautioned him that he’d be doing a great deal of paperwork, but a young greenie lieutenant wouldn’t expect his reports to be read by anyone other than the XO, unless he fucked up spectacularly. The XO was supposed to point out any problems with the report, from missing out important details to simple spelling and grammar errors. Leo knew he needed more practice. His reports were going to be read by the governor, and a small army of senior officers.

And I might embarrass Captain Archibald just by existing, Leo thought. It was hard to imagine how Captain Archibald could possibly be responsible for anything Leo did – the wretched man was hundreds of light years away – but naval protocol adhered to its own logic. Archibald was the captain, therefore he was responsible for everything that happened on his ship. Case closed. It is going to be one hell of a legal issue if I screw up.

The thought kept him amused as he finished his watch, caught some rest, and resumed his post in time to let Lieutenant Halloran get some shore leave of his own. There were no reports of trouble on the surface, which was normally a good sign. Leo hadn’t expected any – Getaway might have a red light district which catered to spacers, but it was hardly as big as the district on Daybreak or Yangtze – and yet, it was hard to be sure. He’d been cautioned about all the pitfalls for young and inexperienced naval officers, from women who would drain their bank accounts dry to alcohol, drugs and VR sims that were decidedly unsafe to mess with, and he’d also been cautioned about thinking he could handle them in moderation. Everyone thought that, he’d been told, and they were almost always wrong.

Lieutenant Halloran returned, his face marked with a black eye. Leo blinked. “What happened?”

“A couple of spacers decided to bash us,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “Luckily, we had a couple of troopers with us. They got bashed instead.”

“Charming,” Leo said. Bar fights between naval crew and merchant spacers weren’t unknown, but after everything they’d been doing in the system he suspected the attack hadn’t been motivated by random drunkenness. “Report to sickbay, get that wound inspected.”

Lieutenant Halloran looked reluctant. “Sir, I …”

“That’s an order,” Leo said. Modern medical science could mend almost anything that wasn’t immediately fatal, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “I’ll take the shift. You report back after the doc clears you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leo sat back in his chair and called Boothroyd. “Four spacers attacked our crew,” Boothroyd said, not bothering to pretend he didn’t know what Leo was calling about. “Two went after Lieutenant Halloran and his drinking buddies, the other two went after me and mine. They should be fine, once they recover from the beating we gave them.”

He paused. “I don’t think it was drunken foolishness, sir,” he added. “Someone paid them to go after us.”

Leo cursed under his breath. “Are you sure?”

“On the surface, the four looked like the typical losers who can’t or won’t get quit the booze and get themselves a billet on a half-way respectable freighter,” Boothroyd reported. “They bum around doing random jobs, trying to earn enough money to get drunk – again – and then repeat the cycle. But they had money in their pockets, interstellar and untraceable cash. I’d say they were paid to attack us.”

“I see.” Leo glared at his hands. “Do they know who?”

“I do intend to ask them some very searching questions,” Boothroyd said. “But I’d be surprised if they knew who’d hired them, or why. They’re not exactly what I would call reliable material.”

“And everyone talks eventually anyway,” Leo finished. A drunken brawl was one thing, and it could be safely ignored as long as no one was seriously hurt. A deliberate attack on his crew was quite another. A combination of drugs and lie detector tests would force the perpetrators to talk … he scowled, cursing again. The odds were good the bastards didn’t know who’d hired them. “Do what you can, but …”

He rubbed his forehead. They’d have to leave orbit shortly or face endless complaints from the new convoy. They were already pushing matters … he would have preferred to leave earlier and he would have, if he hadn’t wanted to give the crew a break. Should he remain behind and see what the planetary government did, or should he take them with him? Or …

“See what you can find out, before we go,” he ordered. “If they don’t know anything, hand them over to the local patrol. They can deal with them.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo let out a breath, then keyed his console to recall the crew ahead of time. No one was going to thank him for that – he’d already been nicknamed Captain Kid by the crew – but there was no choice. They were lucky they’d only planned for a few hours of leave before departure. If someone had left the city, it might be impossible to recall them until it was far too late. They were supposed to have their communicators with them at all times, but the rule wasn’t always followed.

Lieutenant Halloran returned, looking much better. “Sir, the doc gave me a clean bill of health.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Leo said. “Get the convoy organised. If nothing changes, we’ll be on our way shortly.”

“Yes, sir.”

Flower joined them, shortly afterwards. “There’s a lot of anger and resentment down there,” she said, simply. She wore an outfit that made her look like a common spacer, clearly female and yet not someone to be messed with, not unless someone was feeling suicidal. “A great deal of talk about armed resistance, or smuggling gangs becoming pirates, or other such nonsense. A great many spacers were muttering about having to take the certification and bitching about having to go to Yangtze, rather than take the exams on Getaway. It could become a problem.”

Leo frowned. “How big of a problem?”

“Impossible to say.” Flower shrugged. “People venting isn’t uncommon. Smart governments let people vent, for fear of what’ll happen if they let the problems fester. It’s possible they’ll get over it – it would be a good idea to set up a testing station here – but also possible that they’ll do something stupid. It didn’t help that the merchant skippers didn’t do anything about the law until they saw out the grace period, risking everyone’s legal right to work.”

Boothroyd stepped onto the bridge. “The interrogations were useless,” he said. “The attackers were paid, yes, but they didn’t recognise the names. We ran them through the planetary database, such as it is, and drew a blank. They were given money, pointed at us, and told to get on with it. I doubt we can get anything more from them.”

Leo scowled. “The money is untraceable?”

“The cash will have passed through a dozen hands or more,” Flower confirmed. “Given enough time, we might be able to trace it back to the original source …”

“… Which is probably on another planet,” Boothroyd said. “We might get lucky. But I doubt it.”

Leo held up a hand. “A lone captain with a grudge, or something more sinister?”

“I’d go with the former,” Flower said. “A corporate rep would complain to the governor, not hire thugs.”

“Speak for yourself,” Boothroyd said. “Some reps wouldn’t hesitate to hire mercenaries to get rid of tricky little problems.”

“Right.” Leo took a breath. “We’ll depart as planned, and we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for trouble. If this was just a once-off …”

“It could be nothing,” Boothroyd agreed. “But they attacked a naval crew. That’s worrying.”

Leo nodded, curtly. He was tempted to demand the planetary government do more to track down the person who’d hired the thugs, but unless he was incredibly careless it wasn’t going to happen. Getaway wasn’t Earth, with an infrastructure that could monitor every last person on the planet and a police force that knew how to use it. A provocateur could remain out of sight long enough for Waterhen to depart, then make his way to the next system and vanish into the shadows.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But right now, there’s little we can do about it.”

 

Chapter Seventeen

Leo had hoped, as the small convoy followed the jumplines to Ingalls, that a pirate ship or two would attack, to break the monotony, but he was unlucky. No starships, friendly or otherwise, materialised to assault the tiny convoy, leaving him doing paperwork, conducting emergency drills and a hundred and more other things that would make him unpopular with the crew, but probably save their lives if they were attacked. Waterhen and the two freighters completed their jumps in good time, hopping and skipping through FTL until they finally reached their destination. Leo was perversely disappointed. The convoy’s plan had been public knowledge and deducing their most likely course hardly difficult for any trained navigator. The pirates either hadn’t had time to plan an ambush or realised that pitting themselves against a warship, even a small destroyer, was asking for trouble.

He leaned back in his chair as Ingalls appeared on the main display, orbited solely by a single transit station. Ingalls was a rough world, according to the files; the planet might be in the life-bearing zone, but owing to a quirk of fate no actual life – not even microbes – had developed until the human explorers arrived and dumped a terraforming package on the surface. The explorers had to be kicking themselves, Leo reflected, once the first wave of colonists arrived and discovered what the first survey team had missed. Ingalls was surprisingly rich in rare metals, making the planet a valuable prize for almost any high-tech society, and the planet’s odd ecosystem was perfect for genetically-engineered plants that produced rare biochemical materials. Leo frowned as more data flowed into the display. The files insisted Ingalls had almost no defences, beyond the transit station itself, but there was a small and growing network of automated orbital weapons platforms surrounding the planet. They might be outdated by modern standards, yet they should be enough to convince a pirate ship to try its luck elsewhere.

The files are more than a little outdated, he mused. He couldn’t blame the planet’s corporate masters for investing in its defence, when even a lone pirate ship could steal enough rare minerals and substances to set the crew up for life, but there was something about the arrangement that bothered him. Where did they get the weapons and why?

“Captain, the transit station is welcoming us to the system,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “And the planetary governor is inviting you to dinner.”

Leo had to smile. “How refreshingly informal,” he said. The invitation was pretty much compulsory, no matter how it was worded. It would be a rare captain who refused it, if he wasn’t in the midst of dealing with a full-scale emergency. “Inform the planet that I’ll be down as soon as possible, with a single companion.”

“Aye, sir.”

“You have the bridge,” Leo said. There was no point in wasting time. The sooner they handed the freighters over to the locals, and checked to see if there were any freighters that needed an escort, the better. “Communicate with the local authorities, see if there’s any way we can send our crew down for a short period of leave.”

He stood and left the bridge, heading down to his cabin. He’d made sure to pack his dress uniform into a simple knapsack, allowing him to get changed on the surface, before the dinner began. He signed inwardly, surprising the dinner wouldn’t be as informal as the invitation made it sound, and then turned to the hatch. The intercom bleeped before he could step outside.

“Sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “The planetary authorities have declined our request for shore leave facilities.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed. That was odd. No planetary government ever voted into power would decline the chance to take spacers, rich in bonus money and poor in common sense, for everything they could get. Even planets that were strictly puritan in outlook tended to look the other way, when it brought in offworld currency they needed desperately. It was astonishing what could be overlooked, or tolerated, as long as it stayed in the red light district and the common folk never saw a hint of it. He’d never heard of a world that didn’t allow any shore leave whatsoever, certainly not a settled world. It might make sense on an asteroid mining colony, but here?

“Odd,” he said, thoughtfully. “Did they say why?”

“No, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “They just declined the request.”

Leo scowled. “I’ll raise the issue with the planetary governor,” he said, as he stepped through the hatch. “Until then, tell the off-duty shifts they can have a staycation.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo could hear the disapproval in his XO’s voice. The crew wanted – needed – a few hours off the ship, without being surrounded by metal bulkheads and familiar faces; they needed a chance to get drunk, to get laid, and generally relax without their commander and his officers breathing down their necks. Leo wondered, grimly, if word of the incident on Getaway had reached Ingalls ahead of Waterhen, but it struck him as unlikely. There hadn’t been any ships heading that way, as far as he knew, and even if he was wrong a minor incident on one world wouldn’t cause any alarm a dozen or so light years away. It was very – very – odd.

“Captain,” Flower said. She was waiting in the shuttle, a knapsack resting beside her. “What happened?”

“No shore leave,” Leo said. He wasn’t expecting a mutiny – mutinies were very rare – but morale was going to be in the crapper for the next few weeks. Their timetable wasn’t fixed yet … maybe it would be wiser to head back to Yangtze, just to ensure the crew got the break they desperately needed. His voice dripped sarcasm. “It’s going to do wonders for morale.”

“I guess they saw us coming,.” Flower said.

Leo shook his head as he took the pilot’s seat, disconnected from Waterhen and steered the shuttle towards the planet below. Ingalls looked decidedly odd, compared to Daybreak or Yangtze or nearly any other world; great sweeps of greenery, a little too bright for his peace of mind, contrasted sharply with sections that looked as brown and lifeless as Mars, before the terraforming effort had begun in earnest. It puzzled him – the planet had a breathable atmosphere, although it was a little thin – and he made a mental note to look it up in the files and see what they said about it. Perhaps there was something down there, intentionally – or not – limiting the ecosystem’s spread. It would hardly be the first time the terraforming package had run into something that posed an unexpected challenge, something that slowed progress down to a crawl. In theory, the package could be left alone to do its work; in practice, it tended to need a certain degree of supervision and support before the process was finally completed.

He felt his mood darken as they flew towards the lone city. It was a strange mixture of stone houses, prefabricated houses and giant greenhouses, surrounded by plantations that looked as if they belonged in a historical novel, the kind of tissue-thin novel written by someone who romanticised the past and overlooked, deliberately or not, the grimy details that had made life hellish for those unfortunate enough to live there. He thought he spotted a handful of people working the fields, wearing environment suits, but it was hard to be sure. The shuttle flew over a primitive railway line – the engine also looked like something out of the grim and gritty past – and landed neatly in front of Government House.

“Interesting design,” Flower muttered.

Leo nodded, slowly. Government House looked like a strange cross between a mansion and a fairy tale castle. It managed to appear both tough and fragile, the latter almost certainly an illusion when the walls were probably reinforced by a modern compound that looked weak and yet was perfectly capable of standing up to anything short of a nuke. Leo was torn between amusement at the design and a certain flicker of disdain. He’d heard theories that grandiose architecture was good for society, and that Earth’s descent into drab grey skyscrapers had played a major role in the social collapse of the 21st century, but building such a structure struck him as a waste of time and resources. The other buildings, not too far away, weren’t much better.

A young man, wearing a uniform that made him look like a walking trifle, saluted as they stepped out of the shuttle. The honour guard behind him snapped to attention. Leo tried not to cringe inwardly. The welcoming party would have been a little much even if he’d been a full captain, rather than a jumped-up young officer, and he couldn’t help thinking it looked a little ridiculous. He bit his lip to keep from smiling as he returned the salute, then allowed the young man to lead them to their suite. The interior was another strange combination of over-the-top luxury and ruthless practicality, as if the designer couldn’t make up his mind which way to go. Or if there had been more than one designer.

“The dinner party will commence in one hour from now,” the young man said, as he showed them their suite. “Do you require refreshment?”

“No, thank you,” Leo said. The room was absurdly luxurious, and there was only one bed. He mentally resigned himself to sleeping on the couch. “Just give us time to get washed and changed.”

“Interesting design,” Flower said, echoing her earlier words. She wandered around the suite in a manner that looked random, at least to the untrained eye, but allowed her to sweep the entire chamber for bugs. “And it looks as if we’re going to be sharing a bed.”

She turned, her hands making a warning sign. Bugs. Leo sucked in his breath, keeping his face passive … somehow. They didn’t have privacy? Leo had spent years in training, years where privacy was vanishingly rare, and he’d learnt to treasure it, the few times he’d had it. The idea of a hotel that spied on its customers … the government building wasn’t a hotel, he reminded himself, but the principle was the same. Or was it? The government was little more than a façade, covering a cold corporate reality. The locals might see them as potential business partners, not naval officers or imperial representatives. Leo bit down – hard – on the sudden surge of anger. It was something to report to Governor Brighton and let him decide what to do about it.

He washed quickly, then changed into his dress uniform and waited – impatiently – for Flower to don a dress that somehow managed to make her look both innocent and alluring simultaneously, coyly hinting at her curves from one angle while revealing plunging cleavage from another. Leo shook his head in awe. If he hadn’t known her, if he hadn’t watched her switch from being a sexy secretary to a disciplined naval officer and back again, he would have been very tempted to try his luck. As it was, he didn’t know who – or what – she really was. Flower was a role. What was the actress underneath the role?

His mood didn’t improve as they were led down to the dining hall, where the guests were already milling about. Leo kept his face blank as a dozen men chattered to him, their conversation ranging from polite nothings to detailed complaints about shipping policy, the latter worded to suggest they blamed him personally for issues that had plagued the sector long before they’d been put back in touch with the rest of the known universe. He couldn’t help noticing the women appeared to be having a far nicer time of it, on the other side of the hall. Flower seemed to be very popular.

“I must say, I was very sorry to hear about the smuggled goods,” Governor Venture said. He was a tall man with an aristocrat mien, wearing a formal suit and holding himself as if he were a man of consequence. “There’s always someone who will attempt to break the rules.”

Leo nodded, stiffly.

“We also need you to bring in as many new settlers as possible,” the governor continued, changing the subject with practiced ease. “We have a persistent labour shortage and that limits our production …”

“You need to ask the governor to arrange for a recruitment effort,” Leo said. The files hadn’t suggested there was a manpower shortage, although they were outdated. “Or you could try recruiting directly, from the core worlds.”

“We have tried, but to no avail,” the governor said. “It isn’t easy to find workers prepared to take up limited contracts, rather than settlers. This world just isn’t suitable for long-term settlement.”

Leo gave him a sharp look. It was rare for settlers to migrate when there was no promise of a permanent home, let alone citizenship or the chance to enjoy the fruits of their labours. Very few wanted to move to a planet where they would always be second-class citizens, always at the whim of a corporate government that saw the average person as a cheap multifunctional tool. It was also rare for such a government to last, once the second or third generation started asking pointed questions about precisely why they had to serve the corporation, and why they weren’t allowed a say in their own government. Change was inevitable. The only question was just how much violence would be needed, before the world changed for good.

Governor Venture seemed to pick up on his mode. “What do you think of our world?”

“It’s strange, but beautiful,” Leo said. “You should be very proud.”

“We are,” Venture assured him. “The corporations and interstellar shipping lines have invested billions into this system, just to assure themselves – and the sector – a steady supply of rare minerals and biochemical compounds. We have even received notes of interest from interstellar megacorps that are expanding into the sector, with some very promising offers of financial support. It is vitally important that any threat to this system be headed off as quickly as possible.”

Leo kept his face blank. The tone was even, the words were reasonable, and yet his instincts were insisting it was a threat. If Venture was boasting of his connections …

“You’ll be our guest for a few days,” Venture told him. “Please let us show you our world.”

“My crew would also like to spend some time on the planet,” Leo said. “Why did you decline permission for my crew to take shore leave on your world?”

Venture didn’t seem surprised by the question, but Leo was sure he saw a flicker of irritation cross his face. The governor was not used to being questioned, Leo thought. And it was a question that would normally be very difficult to answer.

“We have had incidents, in the past, between visitors and permanent settlers,” Venture said, finally. “We determined, with full corporate agreement, that it would be better to forbid spacers from taking shore leave …”

The dinner bell rang. “You’ll be sitting with me,” Venture said, changing the subject once again. “You are the guest of honour.”

Leo didn’t feel very honoured as the dinner party wore on. The Academy had given him a degree of formal etiquette training – and he was a Grand Senator’s client, who could not afford to embarrass his patron at a formal event – but nothing had prepared him for the seemingly endless meal, from the small quantities of extremely fancy foods to the tedious dinner conversation and the long and self-congratulatory speeches from corporate officials who were trying too hard to be taken too seriously. Leo remembered a piece of very old advice – if you have to tell everyone you’re an alpha man, you’re really not – and smiled inwardly, suspecting the officials had far less authority than they claimed. They drew their power from their corporate masters and they could lose it at any moment, if they made a tiny mistake that made their superiors look bad. He wondered, idly, which of the overdressed men in front of him would become the scapegoat for the smuggled goods. He rather hoped it was the man who was braying loudly, as he ate his dinner. The woman beside him looked as if she would sooner be somewhere – anywhere – else.

It was late, very late, by the time the governor finally withdrew, signalling the party was over. Leo waved to Flower, then headed back to the suite. It was hard not to feel a degree of frustration. The party had been a complete waste of time and they couldn’t even go back to the ship, at least until the following morning. It would be very rude to leave early … Leo sighed inwardly. It would come back to haunt him, he was sure, judging by the number of times the governor had bragged of his offworld connections. Leaving a party early? It wasn’t a harmless little jest like murder.

A young maid stood outside the door, wearing a dress that left nothing to the imagination and an expression that suggested she was nervous. Leo gritted his teeth as she stepped closer to him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her breasts into his chest. He was too tired to feel much of anything, and he certainly wasn’t going to take advantage of her. The poor maid’s body language hinted she didn’t want to be there. Her hand brushed his fingers, just for a second, and slipped a piece of paper into his hand. Leo tensed. She’d given him a message …

He stepped into the room, keeping his mouth closed, and opened the wardrobe, using the door as a cover as he opened the note and read it quickly. HELP US! COME WITH ME AT 0200! PLEASE! He glanced at the maid and say absolute terror in her eyes, the fear of someone walking a tightrope over a shack pit … the fear of someone who knew she could fall off at any moment, through no fault of her own.

Leo nodded, once. It was 0130.

 

Chapter Eighteen

Leo could feel Flower’s eyes watching him as they waited for 0200, a hundred questions lurking behind her eyes that she didn’t dare ask, not when the room was bugged. Leo knew it was a gamble to even listen to the maid, let alone let her take them anywhere, but he was increasingly convinced something was very wrong on Ingalls. He keyed his communicator, sending a text-only message to the ship ordering Boothroyd to put the troopers on alert, then added a note cautioning his crew not to reply. It was Lieutenant Halloran’s duty to tell Leo he shouldn’t put his life at risk, if there was any risk, and Leo didn’t want to hear it.

He braced himself as the door opened, the maid tapping her lips and motioning them forward. Leo checked his sidearm automatically, then followed the maid as she led them down the corridor and paused in front of a large portrait of a corporate bigwig. She pulled on a hidden catch and the painting opened, revealing a door leading into a second – smaller – corridor. Leo felt a thrill of excitement, mingled with fear, as they kept walking. He’d heard stories about servant passageways – he’d always thought they were something akin to starship maintenance tubes – but he’d never actually seen them, not until now. The walls were bare and barren, the air tainted with dust; the only source of light were a handful of cells embedded in the concrete roof, bright enough to drive back the darkness but too dim for his peace of mind. There was almost no sound, not even their own footsteps. He couldn’t help finding it a little eerie.

They went down a long flight of stairs and stepped out of another entrance, this one not hidden. The chamber looked like a cross between a common room and a kitchen; Leo guessed it was where the servants hung out, when they weren’t tending to their masters or catching what sleep they could. There was no one in sight, but a warm kettle on the stove suggested someone wasn’t that far away. He grimaced, trying to imagine what it must be like to be permanently at someone’s beck and call. Junior naval officers were expected to do as they were told, he supposed, but at least they had the chance to rise up the ladder and work their way towards a command of their own. The maid, still wearing a outfit right out of an erotic harem fantasy, would never be anything more than a serving maid … Leo felt a wave of pure sympathy, as he saw her skirt shift to reveal her behind. There was a difference between entering a House of Joy, where the staff were paid to be whatever the customer wanted them to be – as long as the money held out, of course – and someone actually trying to turn the fantasy into reality. It was …

The maid held up a hand and tapped her lips, then held out a pair of heavy coats. Leo pulled the coat over his uniform, then followed the maid through another door and into the open air, Flower brought up the rear as they headed away from the castle, walking through a series of ditches and hedgerows that concealed their movements from prying eyes. The air was disturbingly silent, without even a single night bird hooting as it flew through the trees. Leo looked up, wondering which of the twinkling lights was his ship, then forced himself to keep going. The maid wouldn’t go to so much trouble unless it was important.

It felt as if they had walked for hours, before they finally neared a barn – half-hidden in the undergrowth – and slowed to a halt. Leo felt his skin prickle as he saw a handful of others waiting for him, little more than shadows in the gloom. It crossed his mind he might have made a mistake, that the maid might have led him right into a trap; he suppressed the sudden concern, telling himself his crew knew where he was going. They’d track down and rescue them, if they really had walked right into their own kidnap, or take a terrible revenge if they were kidnapped. The kidnappers wouldn’t live to regret it.

“Come in,” the maid said. Her voice was much more serious now, as she led the way into the barn. The door closed behind them. “I’m sorry for the cloak and dagger act.”

A light flared. Leo blinked hard. Four men were facing him, wearing hardscrabble outfits and harder faces. Their eyes were grim, desperately worried … Leo felt his eyes widen as he realised one was wearing a shipsuit that had clearly seen better days. His eyes narrowed a moment later. If the man had a shipsuit …

“We need your help,” the leader said. “Please.”

Leo met his eyes, trying hard to keep his voice calm. “What is actually going on?”

“We were told we’d be resettled on Rocha,” the leader said. “Instead, we found ourselves here … as indentured slaves. They told us we had to work to repay our debt and killed anyone who tried to argue and …”

“Shit.”

Leo recalled the missing colonist-carriers and felt his blood run cold. The governor had complained about a lack of manpower … were they so desperate, he asked himself, that they were turning pirate and looting colonist-carriers? Or were they simply careful not to ask any questions, when the pirates arrived with an offering of indentured slaves. It wasn’t uncommon for criminals to be offered the chance of going into indenture on a distant world, instead of being imprisoned or dropped on a penal colony, and while the system was prone to being abused few cared enough to try to fix it. The indentured colonists were criminals, after all, and if they hadn’t wanted to be deported they shouldn’t have chosen a life of crime. But if the workers were from a colonist-carrier …

Flower leaned forward. “Tell us what’s happening, please.”

Leo listened, grimly, as the story spilled out. The planet’s overlords had no interest in establishing a settler population that would eventually challenge their mastery, a challenge the corporation could only lose. Instead, they’d started bringing in indentured servants … on paper, he was sure, a temporary measure, but like most such measures it had lasted much longer than anyone had planned. The workers had been told they had to repay their debts and yet, somehow, the debts just kept mounting up. It wasn’t a very stable arrangement, but the corporations didn’t care. Ingalls was just too rough an environment to support a rebel movement for long.

“Anyone who asks too many questions gets sent to the mines,” the maid said. The hatred in her voice was almost painfully evident. “That’s what happened to my brother.”

“I see,” Leo said. He looked at Flower. “I suppose that explains why they weren’t interested in letting the crew take shore leave here …”

He forced himself to think. Legally, the corporations hadn’t so much crossed the line as they’d driven an entire armoured division over it. It was one thing to make settlers repay the cost of being shipped hundreds of light years from their homeworld to the new colony, quite another to rig the system to ensure the colonists remained permanently in debt. And taking settlers who had been kidnapped by pirates … he shook his head in disbelief. The trial was going to be a formality. The slavedrivers would be lucky if they were given a chance to speak their piece before they were put in front of a wall and shot …

Or would they?

Leo shuddered. Governor Venture had bragged of his connections. It was just possible the corporations would bring pressure to bear against Governor Brighton, insisting they’d had no choice and demanding a retroactive exemption from international law. Leo had no idea if they’d get away with it or not, but they could certainly muddy the water. If they managed to convince the governor that they’d had no idea the indentured servants had been kidnapped – Leo could just imagine a corporate lawyer insisting that of course the criminals would insist they were innocent – or simply blame everything on Venture and his cronies, the real villains would get away with it. Leo honestly wasn’t sure what to do. The law was a little vague, intentionally so. It went against the grain to simply return to his ship and take the issue to higher authority, and yet he suspected that was what he was supposed to do.

“My wife had a son,” the leader said, quietly. “Is he going to have to grow up here?”

“No,” Leo said. The arrangement was thoroughly illegal. He was sure of that, even if he wasn’t sure of anything else. Given some time, he could put together an argument that justified doing something the corporations couldn’t fix … it might cost him his career, but he didn’t want to keep it if it meant turning a blind eye to such crimes. The maid looked years older, now she didn’t have to keep up the façade of being permanently young, and the rebel leader didn’t look any better. “I’ll get you out of here ….”

Something exploded, far too close to him. Someone swore.

A voice thundered through the air. “COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP OR BE SHOT DOWN!”

Leo tapped his communicator, sending the emergency signal. He’d seen too much. Governor Venture might be a boor, dependent on his connections to climb the ladder, but Leo doubted he was stupid. Leo had slipped out of his suite at night and left the castle and … no, Venture would arrange for his death and blame everything on the rebels. The story would be complete bullshit, about as convincing as a young midshipman’s explanation of just how he’d managed to screw up so badly everything was an absolute mess, but it might seem plausible from hundreds of light years away. Leo rather doubted anyone from Daybreak would conduct more than a cursory investigation. Even his patron might be unconcerned, if he knew – now – why Leo had been promoted and sent to the edge of explored space.

“This way,” the maid hissed. She tugged back a pile of sacks, revealing a hidden tunnel. “Hurry!”

Flower held her sidearm at the ready as she followed the maid into the darkness. Leo followed, gritting his teeth as the earthen smell threatened to overcome him. He wasn’t claustrophobic – there were aspects of naval service that would be impossible to handle, if he were afraid of small spaces – but there was something uniquely terrifying about the tunnel. The ground beneath his fingers felt loose, dangerously so. It was a minor miracle the explosion, whatever it had been, hadn’t collapsed the tunnel. The next one still might …

He heard shooting and forced himself to speed up, clambering out of the tunnel into a plantation. The barn was on fire … he glanced back, as brilliant lights swept through the air, and saw a handful of armed men standing outside, shooting into the burning building. Another shudder ran through the ground … he cursed under his breath as he realised the tunnel had collapsed, trapping anyone who had been trying to get out after them. The spotlights shifted, sweeping across the plantation … Leo aimed his sidearm and fired once, shooting out the closest spotlight. The enemy soldiers weren’t very well trained, he noted, as the spotlight blinked out. Instead of trying to cut the escapees off, they merely opened fire.

“Stay down,” he hissed, as they crawled away. Bullets cracked above their heads, tearing branches and snapping through leaves. The shooting was too high to have a hope of hitting anyone, even if they’d been standing upright, but it made it harder for them to get clear before it was too late. “Conserve your ammo.”

Flower grinned at him, despite the enemy troops right behind them. “Next time, I want to bring an entire bag of ammunition.”

Leo nodded, curtly, as the shooting died away. It wasn’t a good sign. Someone on the other side was actually thinking, getting ready to launch his troops into the foliage after them. Leo had no idea how many enemy troops there were, but there were six billets remaining in his sidearm – and Flower could not be carrying more than a spare clip or two – and that meant they were on the verge of running out of ammunition. They could kill a man with every bullet they fired and still lose. And they’d be murdered if they were caught. There was no point in trying to surrender when the governor had to have them killed, if he wanted to keep his head on his shoulders. He’d been committed from the moment his troops had tried to engage the rebels.

“Keep moving,” he said. He’d sent the emergency signal, but … how long would it take for Boothroyd to get organised and get underway? The troopers had been ordered to relax, damn it. Leo hoped to hell they hadn’t done something really stupid, perhaps involving alcohol. “If we can get clear …”

He heard a group of men coming after them and fired a single shot in their direction. It wasn’t easy to be a sharpshooter with a handgun, and he hadn’t had a chance to be sure of his target, but hopefully the shot would force them to slow down even if it missed them completely. They had to keep moving, they had to … the world exploded with blue-white light, every muscle in his body twitching helplessly as the nerve grenade detonated, hammering his body with little electric shocks. The sidearm went flying as his legs locked, sending him plunging to the ground. Flower seemed to take it better – he wondered, not for the first time, just how much additional training she’d had – but there were limits. Leo didn’t pretend to understand how nerve grenades actually worked, yet his instructors had been very clear on what’d happen if you were caught in the blast. Unless you were wearing proper armour, or were boosted well past the legal limit, you’d be on the floor, your entire body jerking around like a puppet dangling from twisted strings. It gave him no pleasure to learn his instructors had been right.

There was no point in any sort of exposure therapy, he thought, grimly. They’d been introduced to gas and hard vacuum, under controlled conditions, but nerve grenades? There was no point. Repeated exposure didn’t do anything remotely practical, beyond reminding cadets of the dangers. We just had to learn …

His head twisted, painfully. He shuddered as he saw men running towards him, wearing light – and unmarked – armour. They were about to die, to be murdered on a slave world … their deaths blamed on rebels, to ensure the secret stayed secret and the slavemasters could keep working their slaves to death. Dismay swept over him, followed by grief. He’d known he could die at any moment, from the moment he’d started his naval career, and yet it seemed utterly pointless to die here, far from his ship. He’d thought himself prepared for the possibility of being on a ship, when she was destroyed, but this … it was a shitty way to die.

Light flared, again. “PUT DOWN YOUR GUNS OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE,” Boothroyd bellowed. The shuttle had come down hard, the drives barely kicking in a moment before the craft would have slammed into the ground. “THERE WILL BE NO SECOND WARNING!”

Leo shivered, hoping to hell the enemy had the brains to surrender. The shuttle wasn’t a standard assault shuttle, but the engineers had rigged up machine guns, plasma cannons and rocket launchers, enough firepower to make a ghastly mess of everyone in the area – including him – if they opened fire. Would the enemy think they could down the shuttle? That would be harder to cover up – Waterhen would be overhead, providing top cover – but the governor had to be desperate. If he’d even realised what was happening …

He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the sound of guns falling to the ground. His body felt stiff and sore, cramped in all the wrong places; he resisted the temptation to try to move, even though he knew he had to get the blood flowing again as soon as possible. Boothroyd and his men would have very real trouble telling friend from foe, to the point they might stun him again – or worse – if they mistook him for an enemy trying to get into firing position. The old jokes about low-ranking officers having a chance to push higher-rankers around, and making the most of it, were no longer funny. But at least they were alive.

“Sir,” Boothroyd said. “Can you get up?”

Leo gritted his teeth and tried. The cramping grew worse, then faded as he pushed himself forward. Boothroyd put out a hand to help steady him; Leo brushed it away, telling himself he couldn’t appear weak. The enemy troops were kneeling on the ground, their hands on their heads … a wave of pure hatred shot though Leo, a sudden urge to have them all killed. They weren’t soldiers, fighting to defend their society, but enforcers of a regime that rested on slavery. And Leo would bet good money that none of them owned a single slave.

“Barely,” he managed. Flower was clearly in pain, as was the maid. She was whimpering as one of the troops helped her to her feet. “They just crossed a line.”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd said. There was no mockery in his tone, but Leo felt a flash of anger regardless. It was hard to focus, when his body was so stiff and sore. “What do you intend to do?”

Leo forced himself to stand straighter. “I’m going to put an end to it.”

 

Chapter Nineteen

Leo keyed the communicator as soon as he was on the shuttle. “Lieutenant Halloran, go to full tactical alert,” he ordered. Governor Venture would have to be insane to fire on Waterhen, but the man had crossed so many lines it was quite possible he’d think nothing of crossing one more. “If the orbital defences go active, you are authorised to open fire without warning.”

There was a long pause. “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said, finally. “Ah, I …”

Leo understood. “If you are unable to clear space of active threats, or the ship is in serious danger, you are to jump out and head straight for the nearest naval base – not Yangtze – and report to whoever is in command there. They can send a battle squadron to investigate our fate, and bring the guilty to justice.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

“Stay watchful,” Leo said. “And keep recording.”

He kept speaking as the troopers filed back onto the shuttles, leaving the bound and helpless enemy soldiers to the rebels. Leo didn’t particularly care if the rebels killed them or not, although he did warn them that the guards would have to be interrogated to determine what was actually happening on Ingalls – and just who had been issuing their orders. The men really had been nothing more than enforcers, and they probably didn’t have the training to recognise an illegal order or the nerve to refuse it. Leo would have been more sorry for them if he hadn’t had to deal with the consequences. Just how many indentured workers – slaves – had been put to work, until they dropped, on Ingalls?

They might not have bothered to keep accurate records, Leo thought, grimly. The corporations might have been able to secure a degree of legal absolution, if they’d made a big show of not keeping de facto slaves past the incorporation, but instead they’d kept going even though they could no longer claim ignorance of the law. Did they even bother to bury the dead or did they just feed the bodies into a matter recycler?

Boothroyd met his eyes. “How do you intend to proceed?”

Leo forced himself to think. The law really was a little vague, although the attempt to murder a naval officer performing his duties did clear things up a little. Technically, he should ask the sector governor for a writ to move against a planetary governor, but he didn’t have time and he did have all the evidence he needed to move immediately. And if he acted quickly, Governor Venture wouldn’t have time to pin the blame on a subordinate who had committed suicide, somehow shooting himself in the back several times. Nor would he have time to rally his connections and use them to get himself a free pass.

“We go in, arrest the governor and the other bigwigs, and then pass judgement on them,” Leo said. The action would be technically legal, as long as the sector governor didn’t overrule him, but what the sector governor didn’t know he couldn’t forbid. He might not be very pleased if Leo presented him with a fait accompli, yet there’d be nothing he could do about it. Probably. “And let the chips fall where they may.”

He glanced at Flower, who nodded shortly, then back at the pilot. “Take off,” he ordered. “And fly straight towards the castle.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leo gritted his teeth as the shuttle rose into the air and headed west. They’d walked further than he’d thought, during their midnight adventure, but the shuttle could cover the same distance in minutes. Seconds, really, if they risked bringing up the main drive in the planet’s atmosphere. Leo had no intention of giving that order, not when there were people on the ground with itchy trigger fingers. They might panic and launch a man-portable hypersonic missile – if they had one – at the shuttle, blowing the craft to atoms before the pilot realised they were under attack. Waterhen would take a terrible revenge, but Leo and the rest of the crew would still be dead.

He keyed the console, switching to the universal channel, as the distance narrowed. “This is Captain Morningstar of the Daybreak Navy,” he said. “Governor Venture and his supporters are under arrest for multiple breaches of interstellar law, including charges of human trafficking, human slavery and assaults on imperial personnel. Further charges may develop, after a careful review of their records. By the authority vested in me, I am moving to take them into custody.

“I extend this offer to the planetary military and police personnel. If you stand down and offer no resistance, we will not hold you accountable for following orders that broke interstellar law. We will not seek to charge you, or to punish you, if you let it end now. If you offer any sort of resistance, active or passive, we will regard you as willing collaborators and deal with you accordingly. There will be no further warnings. Stand down now, or face the full weight of the law.”

Boothroyd glanced at him, but waited until he closed the channel to speak. “If they don’t listen …?”

Leo grimaced. Governor Venture had been the Governor. Defying him – even over a very minor matter – would be disastrous for a humble corporate trooper’s career. Leo wouldn’t have cared to tell a fleet admiral that his orders were illegal, even though Daybreak had a strong tradition of protecting junior officers who spoke out. His career was clear proof just how cunning some seniors could be, when it came to penalising juniors who irritated or embarrassed them. He could hardly blame the corporate troops for following orders, when there’d had no other choice, but now …

“Give them hell.”

“Yes, sir!”

He leaned forward as the building came into view, their shuttle still sitting on the landing pad. The pilot’s sensors were picking up weapons emplacements … Leo recalled his earlier puzzlement and frowned inwardly, now all too aware of precisely why the government building looked like a castle. They had known there were rebels out there, men and women desperate enough to take the risk of trying to storm the building, perhaps aided and abetted by people inside the walls. Leo wondered, suddenly, just how long the maid – he made a mental note to ask her name – had been a rebel spy. It had been a hell of a gamble to approach him, but it had paid off for her. Perhaps …

“The defences aren’t going active, sir,” the pilot said.

“Get us down as quickly as possible,” Boothroyd said. “Before some idiot pulls a trigger.”

Leo nodded as the shuttle dropped like a stone. They were far too close to the building for the defences to need active scanners, certainly not to take aim and blow the shuttle to atoms. Even a SAM from the Great War would be enough, if it were fired at point-blank range. There would be no warning, no time to dodge … he breathed a sigh of relief as the shuttle crashed down, then checked his sidearm. His body might still be aching – he wanted a long bath and a longer sleep – but he was damned if he wasn’t going to be there when they took Governor Venture into custody.

“Stay behind me,” Boothroyd said, firmly. “This is my turf.”

“Understood.” Leo wanted to argue, but there wasn’t time. And besides, Boothroyd was right. “Let’s go.”

The hatch opened, the troopers flowing out and heading to the main doors. Leo followed in their wake, Flower bringing up the rear … hoping and praying his message had gotten through. It should have been heard – everyone was meant to monitor the universal band – but there was no way to be sure. Boothroyd was right. All it would take to start a bloodbath would be a single idiot with a gun, or someone who believed Governor Venture’s promises of freedom and wealth if he engaged the incoming troopers. Or someone who was too implicated to have any hope of freedom, if he were captured … Leo felt his skin itch, all too aware of the orbiting firepower. If the enemy was so desperate …

They swept through the corridors, heading up the stairs to the master bedroom. A handful of servants were caught and secured, left bound until they could be collected and interrogated afterwards. There might be more rebel spies amongst them, potential allies for any future government, but he dared not take chances. Some might be willing collaborators, or simply think they had nowhere else to go. Leo was surprised Governor Venture wasn't at least trying to slow them down. But then, he didn’t have anywhere to go either.

Boothroyd kicked down the door and charged into the governor’s office. It was very early in the morning, and Leo had expected Governor Venture to be in his nightwear, but instead he was sitting behind his desk, wearing the same formal suit he’d worn earlier. Leo felt a hot flash of anger – the governor looked in better state than Leo, even though Governor Venture was far older – which he ruthlessly suppressed. They had to do everything by the book. Leo had no doubt the governor would have the best lawyers money could buy, and the slightest mistake could end badly …

“Can I help you?”

Leo kept his voice under tight control. “Governor Venture, by the authority vested in me by the Daybreak Navy, I am placing you under arrest for multiple breaches of interstellar law,” he said. There was a procedure for arresting planetary governors – or high-ranking figures in general – although they were rarely used outside mock proceedings to demonstrate, to cadets, the full scope of their authority. “I am obliged to inform you that you are currently suspended, and will remain so until you are cleared of all charges, and any attempt to make use of your gubernatorial authority will be noted and held against you at your trial. You are also ordered to turn over all encryption keys, authorisation codes, and warn investigators of any measures you or others might have taken to prevent access to your living space, files, or personal possessions.

“I am further obliged to inform you that you will be held in custody under strict observation and anything you say or do will be entered into the record and possibly wind up being used as evidence against you; any attempt to bribe, intimidate or otherwise discomfit your captors will also be held against you, possibly giving rise to further charges regardless of the outcome of the original legal proceedings. A full outline of your legal rights will be provided as soon as possible, and you may request an attorney once you are transferred to the holding facility.”

He paused, trying to recall the rest of the formal warning. “We will endeavour to treat you as decently as circumstances allow, but if you misbehave or do anything that poses a threat to your captors you will be restrained or sedated, after which your contact will be noted and further charges may be filed. Do you understand these rights as I have listed them?”

Governor Venture seemed unconcerned. “You do realise you’re making a very big mistake?”

Leo met his eyes. “You are running a slave colony,” he said, flatly. “At the very least, you trafficked with pirates and didn’t bother to ask any questions about just where they found their indentured workers; at worst, you did ask those questions and you simply didn’t care. There is enough evidence to bury you, or – at the very least – ensure you spend a very long time in prison. Given your age, it is unlikely you will see freedom again.”

“We shall see,” Governor Venture said. “Governor Brighton himself signed off on our methods.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have bothered to hide the reality,” Leo said, flatly. There was no point in lying when you didn’t have to, and Governor Venture didn’t strike him as the kind of person who lied for fun. “And even if he did, he has no legal authority to permit an exemption from interstellar law.”

“I do have friends in high places,” Governor Venture said. “You really are making a very big mistake.”

“If you say so,” Leo said. He held out a hand. “Your code keys, please?”

Governor Venture shrugged and held out a pair of datachips. Leo took them, then nodded to Boothroyd. The troopers cuffed the governor – former governor – and marched him out of the room, back to the shuttle. They’d make sure no one had a chance to speak to him, let alone ask for orders. Hopefully, with Governor Venture on his way to the brig, and his power thoroughly broken, some of his supporters would testify against him, in hopes of securing a reduction in their own sentence. Leo was fairly certain he wasn’t the kind of man to inspire personal loyalty in anyone.

His communicator buzzed. “Sir, we have reports of riots in some of the other buildings,” Abigail said. “And several local notables are screaming for help.”

Leo rubbed his forehead. He should have expected it. The manservants and serving girls hadn’t liked being de facto slaves, and now Governor Venture was a broken reed they were taking the chance to rise up and take revenge for how they’d been treated. He was tempted to look the other way, but … he shook his head. They had to impose at least some order before the entire planet tore itself apart, leaving the government in ruins and rendering the system hopelessly vulnerable if - when - pirates attacked. He had broken it, and now he owned it.

“Tell the notables that they are to make their way to Government House, if they can, or request a pick-up if not,” he said. “And tell the troops they are to take the notables into custody … no, treat them as if they’re under arrest. We can hold them until tempers cool and we can decide what to do about them.”

“Aye, sir.”

“It won’t be easy,” Flower said, quietly. “I never had a chance to tell you this, sir, but there’s a lot of anger bubbling under the surface.”

“I can believe it,” Leo said. “What were they thinking?”

“None of the women thought they’d be spending the rest of their lives here,” Flower said. “I don’t think they really thought at all …”

Leo shook his head, then passed her Governor Venture’s keys. “Go through the records, see what you can find,” he said. He yawned, suddenly. “Get some rest, if you need, but otherwise … let me know if you find anything interesting.”

“Get some sleep yourself,” Flower advised.

“Hah.” Leo didn’t want to admit it, but the nerve grenade had taken a lot out of him. He hadn’t felt so tired and sore since the first time he’d been put through unarmed combat training, back when he’d been a sixteen year old know-it-all who didn’t. The streets had taught him a lot, but his unarmed combat instructor had taught him that half of what he’d learnt on the streets was useless if he faced someone who knew what he was doing and the other half extremely dangerous. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He forced himself to wander the mansion, now the troopers had emptied out the servants and moved them to a warehouse on the other side of the landing pad. It wasn’t much of a makeshift holding camp, but it would have to do. There just weren’t enough troops to cover the camp, protect the mansions and impose law and order on the rest of the city. He paused and stared out the window, spotting smoke billowing up in the distance. A mansion – probably – was on fire. He hoped the inhabitants had made it out, but feared they hadn’t. There was just too much resentment for any hope of a peaceful settlement.

It was hard to keep going, slipping through chambers that were the height of luxury and living quarters that made military barracks look like expensive hotels. What sort of mind, he asked himself, would expect a servant to bed down with the dogs? It suggested a lack of concern for basic decency, combined with a grim certainty the servants weren’t actually human. There was nothing like it on Daybreak. The sheer level of entitlement made Francis Blackthrone look humble. And Leo had thought him the most spoilt of spoiled brats.

He made his way back to his suite and staggered inside, heedless of his own safety. The lights were on and … there was a shape in his bed. He blinked … Flower? No, the dark hair belonged to someone else, the nameless maid. She sat up in bed and stared at him. Leo was too tired not to stare back. He’d thought they’d left the maid with the rebels …

“I walked,” she said, before he even realised he needed to ask how she’d gotten back to Government House. “Do you want to …”

Leo hesitated. He was tired and sore, and yet she was beautiful and … he shook his head. His cock had gotten him into quite enough trouble. Besides, he wasn’t convinced the maid really wanted him. The rebels could have sent her to get close to him, or she might think she owed him, or … she had spent most of her adult life in a world where she was little more than property, her body belonging to the man who owned her contract. She might think that was the way things were supposed to be … and it was disgusting. There was no way in hell he was going to take advantage of anyone like that, no matter how much he wanted her.

“No, thank you,” he said. He had a headache. He did. “But what’s your name?”

“Mary,” the maid said. “I can go …”

“You can have the bed,” Leo said. He sat on the sofa, took off his boots, and lay down.”I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

Chapter Twenty

“You can put the police and guardsmen to work in the fields, if you wish,” Leo said, to the closest thing the rebels had to a leader. “We can’t ship them out, at least in a hurry, and we can’t allow you to kill them all. However, you cannot kill or otherwise punish the families of the guilty men. That would cause too many problems.”

The rebel leader – he’d given his name as Greg – glowered at him. Leo stared back, feeling torn between agreement and a grim awareness he couldn’t let the rebels go too far. The sector government was going to have real problems determining what belonged to who, or who was ultimately responsible for the planet’s government – and, by extension, owned the mining and farming equipment, and a slaughter would only tip the balance against the rebels. It was quite possible Governor Brighton would order the navy to take possession of the planet, on the grounds the rebels had also broken interstellar law, and such an order would leave Leo with no wriggle room at all. It was bad enough that the planet technically belonged to the corporations. It would be a great deal harder to come to terms if the rebels killed hundreds of innocent women and children.

Greg leaned forward. “And you expect us to just let them get away with it?”

Leo rubbed his eyes. Mary had been a font of information, once she’d realised Leo saw her as a person rather than a walking piece of ass … and even that, from what she’d said, would be kinder than anything her former masters had thought of her. The managers had been bad enough, treating people as interchangeable tools to be used until they broke and then discarded, but their wives had almost been worse. They’d treated their servants with a brutality born of feeling stranded on the wretched world, isolated from their friends and families back home. Leo couldn’t understand why they’d chosen to punish the servants … he shook his head. It didn’t matter. The important thing, right now, was to avoid an atrocity the corporations could use to convince Governor Brighton to overlook their crimes.

“If you want to bring charges against individual people, you may do so,” Leo said. “However, I must strongly advise you not to hurt then – and, when a ship arrives to take them offworld, that you let them go.”

“We will not be surrendering this planet once again,” Greg told him. “You make that clear to your masters.”

Leo nodded, although he feared it was little more than mindless bravado. The corporate guards and policemen hadn’t had anything going for them, besides weapons and mindless brutality, and they hadn’t stood a chance once the orbital defences had been neutralised. The servants and slaves had risen up, tearing some of their former masters apart and forcing others to run for their lives, seeking a safety that was now largely illusory. The rebels looked tough, yes, but they’d be at a serious disadvantage if the Imperial Navy was forced to intervene. The starships would smash any large gathering of rebels from orbit, and ground troops would mop up what remained.

“I will tell them,” Leo said. “And I will also arrange for the unwilling settlers to be repatriated.”

Greg nodded stiffly, then stormed out of the makeshift command post. Leo had chosen not to use Government House, not least because Flower and a handful of techs were prowling the building, trying to find hidden records and copy them before Waterhen moved onwards and any remaining collaborators tried to destroy the evidence of their collaboration. A great many corporate officials and their agents were dead, or in custody, but a handful remained unaccounted for. They might be dead, their bodies lost under the remnants of their mansions, or they might be biding their time, plotting to cause trouble. Leo shook his head slowly as he studied the report. What the hell had they been thinking? It was just madness.

Flower stuck her head through the door. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure,” Leo said. A full-sized starship would have a legal team, a handful of mid-ranking officers who could serve as a provisional government, handle basic trials and generally keep the colony running smoothly until the precise question of who owned it was actually settled. “If I ever tell you I feel like going into colony administration, feel free to slap me.”

“It’s normally not such a mess,” Flower said. She pushed the door closed, then sat facing him. “There have been some interesting discoveries in the files.”

Leo leaned forward. “Anything incriminating?”

Flower frowned. “It depends on what you call incriminating,” she said. “The records regarding indentured settlers are vague to the point of uselessness, just enough to pass the automated screening tests without telling us anything useful. It doesn’t look as if anyone bothered to check the records manually, when the transport ships arrived with new settlers, or to confirm their stories. Or lack thereof. Reading between the lines, my guess is that the planetary authorities accepted the new settlers and created fake files to disguise their true origin.”

“You mean, they had dealings with whoever had originally hijacked their ships,” Leo said, curtly. It was vaguely possible the colonists had never been intended to go anywhere else, but that was extremely unlikely. Daybreak wouldn’t be able to separate ethnic groups, and impose peace through mass deportation, if the deported minority thought they were going to be enslaved. “Are there any records left from those ships?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Flower said. “I did speak to some of the former colonists. They were a minority group on Wayland, before they were offered a chance to settle on a new colony somewhere along the Rim, but they didn’t know much else. They were just farmers, really. They went onto the ship, got into the stasis pods, and got taken out here. And that was it.”

“Shit,” Leo said. It was going to be a political and legal nightmare. “Do they want to stay here?”

“Some do, some don’t.” Flower shrugged. “It may take some time to sort it all out.”

She paused. “There were two other interesting pieces of data. The first is that a number of technical experts, of one kind or another, were supposed to be accompanying the colony mission. None of those experts wound up here. I checked around and there’s also a number of techs who should be here, who are listed on the books, but they’re nowhere to be found. Ingalls is actually pretty short of trained techs …”

Leo sucked in his breath. “A con, to trick the corporations into paying wages to men who simply don’t exist? Or something more sinister?”

“I don’t know,” Flower said. “Their accounting is a right mess. It may take weeks or months to sort out where the money was actually going, or indeed if the techs existed at all …”

“Charming,” Leo muttered. It was an old trick, one common to many deeply corrupt planetary militias. The officers told their superiors they had twice as many men as they actually had, then pocketed the additional wages themselves. He’d been cautioned never to take anything he saw on the planetary rolls for granted, at least until he saw the men in person. It was astonishing just how many units were seriously undermanned. “Can you ask around, see who might know them …?”

“I will,” Flower said. “Mary and her peers might know something.”

She winked. “She’s quite taken with you, you know.”

Leo scowled. There was no world in which not bedding a woman who didn’t want to be bedded made you a hero, or indeed anything other than a decent young man. He wasn’t sure if Mary had assumed he’d be just as bad as the old master, or she’d been running a secret test of character, or … who knew? Perhaps, if he hadn’t been so tired and sore, he would have been more interested in her. But then, he might also have been more aware of just how difficult his life could become, if he’d been wrong about the situation. He’d gone too far to be anything but right.

“See what she knows,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Ingalls purchased a great deal of defensive gear from Yangtze,” Flower said. “And a bunch of that has gone missing too.”

Leo sucked in his breath. That was very bad news. If they were lucky, it had never existed and – once again – some damned corrupt officer had pocketed the cash and fucked with the files to conceal the theft. If they weren’t lucky … they’d see the weapons and God alone knew what else, pointed right at them.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Did it ever really exist?”

“The files say so,” Flower said. “I spent some time looking for discrepancies, the kind of inconsistencies that might indicate that someone used a CYA code to … well, cover their asses, but I found nothing. That might be meaningless, of course.”

Leo nodded, curtly. CYA codes – backdoor passes into the command datacores – were technically illegal, but it was a rare supply officer who didn’t have at least one way to create a false data trail, if something went wrong and he needed to cover his ass in a hurry. It was one of the little issues that didn’t cause problems, his tutors had told him, until it did … and all hell broke loose. It would have made more sense, he’d thought at the time, not to blame senior officers for incidents they hadn’t known about until it was too late, but … he shook his head. The department head was responsible for everything that happened in his department, no matter what he’d been doing at the time.

“Fuck,” he said, again. “If that material fell into pirate hands …”

He gritted his teeth. “Do we even have a list?”

“Yes.” Flower passed him a datachip. “It all came from Yangtze.”

“There must have been some pretty big bribes,” Leo muttered. Ingalls was a valuable planet, but much of its value lay in rare metals that had to be mined and bioengineered plants that had to be harvested. It wouldn’t be that easy for the pirates to raid the planet and take whatever they pleased, certainly not without a long occupation that could easily end badly. It was far more likely the planet had paid protection money instead. “Did the Governor sign off on it?”

“The files aren’t clear,” Flower said. “I wouldn’t care to bet against it, though.”

“We’ll check when we get back,” Leo said. “Make sure you copy everything to the ship’s datacores. We’ll forward copies to the core worlds, when we have a chance.”

Flower nodded. “Got it.”

Leo slipped the datachip into his reader as she left, running his eye down the list of missing equipment. It wasn’t easy for pirates to get their hands on modern equipment, or to upgrade civilian gear to the point it could be used in a military role, and most pirate ships tended to be outmatched even if they outweighed the military ship hunting them. Leo was fairly sure Waterhen could take out a pirate light cruiser, and give a pirate heavy cruiser a very hard time, even though a comparable ship operated by a military crew would have no trouble killing the destroyer. But if they had some modern equipment … the listed material wasn’t quite first-grade, yet it was still quite enough to cause real trouble. He almost hoped someone had faked the messages and pocketed the cash. Corruption was bad enough, but aiding and abetting the enemies of humanity was worse.

He put the thought aside as he completed his report, then stood and made his way to the makeshift POW camp. It was little more than a network of barbed wire, surrounding a cluster of tents, but it was far better for the prisoners than being left at the tender mercies of their former servants. Leo had seen the reports, covering atrocities that rivalled the horrors regularly perpetrated by pirate crews, and shuddered in disgust. One particularly unpleasant man had had his penis cut off and stuffed in his mouth – Leo didn’t want to think about it – and an overbearing woman had been mutilated … Leo had been careful not to ask too many questions about just who’d done it, and ensured the bodies were cremated before anyone on Yangtze could demand their return for a proper burial, but if that got out there would be real trouble.

Boothroyd nodded to him. “No real trouble, sir,” he reported. “The local guards have been cautioned to treat the prisoners decently, at least until they can be shipped out. I’d be happier having the camp further from town, but …”

“Yeah.” Leo couldn’t disagree, although they’d had to balance the camp’s safety with the need to have it fairly close to the city. “Let’s hope it stays out of sight and out of mind.”

“I’d be happier leaving a guard here, if we had the manpower,” Boothroyd admitted. “The locals aren’t professional soldiers.”

Leo couldn’t disagree. The rebel army was as ragtag a bunch as he had ever seen … hell, calling it an army was stretching credulity to breaking point. They’d had an effective intelligence network, but very few weapons and almost no ability to fight back without being crushed by superior force. Compared to the grand insurgencies Daybreak had had to quell on a dozen worlds, the locals were puny, hardly worth mentioning. In some ways, it worked in their favour – it would be very hard for the corporations to insist they were under intense pressure to impose extreme security – but it would gnaw at them. They’d won their freedom though recruiting help, not through an uprising. Leo doubted they’d recover in a hurry.

“We have little choice,” Leo said. He’d didn’t have a platoon he could leave behind and anything smaller was asking for trouble. They could be overwhelmed and wiped out, or simply imprisoned, if the locals decided they wanted to kill the prisoners. It would be a declaration of war, and Daybreak would punish them, but the Marines would still be dead. “Are your men ready to move on?”

“More or less,” Boothroyd said. “Their brief period of leave was fun.”

Leo shrugged. He’d risked letting his crew come down, two at a time, to take a few short hours of leave. From what he’d heard, the locals had been very accommodating and his men hadn’t had to pay for anything, to the point several crewmen had staggered back to the shuttle blind drunk. They’d regret that, once the ship got back underway. Leo made a mental note to sweep for alcohol, again. He’d made his feelings clear on the subject, but there was always someone who felt they could get away with breaking the rules, as long as they didn’t do it too openly. They’d have to be dealt with, before their bad example undermined discipline to breaking point.

His communicator chimed. “Captain,” Abigail said. “A freighter just jumped into the system from Morse. She’s reporting the planet is under attack, by a pirate ship!”

Leo sucked in his breath. Morse hadn’t been on his original planned sweep through the sector, if only because the planet was still undergoing terraforming and was of little real interest to anyone outside the colonisation and settlement corporations. He’d glanced at the file, noted the absence of anything likely to attract trouble, and decided they’d sweep through the system later. Much later. He simply didn’t have the sheer number of ships he needed to ensure the sector was properly patrolled.

His mind raced. Morse was only five light years away, but the freighter would have needed several jumps to reach Ingalls and that meant the attack might already be over. He didn’t know what Morse had that might be of interest to pirates, and … no, that wasn't true. He had a very nasty idea indeed. Cold logic suggested there was no point in hurrying to the scene of the crime, but he knew his duty. Who knew? Perhaps he could catch the pirates with their pants down.

“Recall the crew,” Leo ordered, curtly. It was unfortunate, but it couldn’t be helped. He had standing orders to respond to all pirate attacks as quickly as possible. “And then plot a direct jump to Morse.”

Abigail gulped. “Yes, sir.”

Leo tried to sound comforting. “Do the best you can,” he said. A direct jump would be practically instantaneous, but there was also a very good chance they’d materialise millions upon millions of miles from their target. Or fly straight into a gas giant and die before they realised what had hit them. Normal procedure would be to emulate the freighter and do a handful of smaller jumps, but that would take time they didn’t have. “We just need to be there as soon as possible.”

He cursed under his breath as Boothroyd rounded up his men, ordering them to the shuttle. He’d known he couldn’t stay much longer – they were already behind schedule – but he’d hoped he could remain long enough to get the local government sorted out, presenting the governor with a fait accompli. Daybreak was reluctant to change local governments for the hell of it, as long as they behaved themselves, and it was just possible the governor would urge the corporations to renegotiate their agreements with the planet instead of trying to recover what they’d lost by force.

“We should prepare for the worst,” Boothroyd warned, as the shuttle headed for Waterhen. “It will be difficult to catch the pirates in the act.”

“I know,” Leo said. The timing was odd, rather worrying. He keyed his console, handing command to the local government and muttering a quiet prayer they wouldn’t screw up. “But we can’t afford to ignore it either.”

 

Chapter Twenty-One

Waterhen shook, as if she’d been slapped by an angry god.

Leo gritted his teeth, feeling more than hearing the hull creak as the starship jumped four light years in the blink of an eye. There hadn’t been time to check Abigail’s calculations, let alone calculate the jump for himself, and he’d been all too aware the interstellar surveys were so lacking it was safer to try to calculate the jump sequence without them. The navy should be updating the local star charts, and calculating how the gravity masses interacted with the jump drive, but no one seemed to be particularly interested in doing it. Leo had already promised himself he’d find the officer who skimped on his charting and punch him, after realising just how badly the man had screwed the pooch. What sort of idiot managed to mix up clockwise and counter-clockwise orbits?

“Jump completed, sir,” Abigail said.

The display blanked, then cleared. Leo leaned forward, cursing under his breath. They’d arrived too far from the planet to interdict anyone trying to leave, yet too close to hide their presence long enough to sneak up on their target and open fire. A lone starship was already heading out of orbit, picking up speed rapidly as she cleared the gravity well. Leo opened his mouth to order an intercept course, but it was already too late. The starship jumped out before he could shape the first word,

He cursed, again. “Tactical, can you get a lock on their jump coordinates?”

“No, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “We didn’t get a close look at their jump field. I can give you a cone of probability …”

Leo suppressed the urge to snap something sharp and thoroughly unfair. No jump drive expert ever born could have gotten a good read on the enemy drive field, certainly not at such a distance. Besides, the enemy ship would probably recycle her drive and jump again, the moment she reached her destination. There was no way to track her down before it was too late.

“Run a full tactical sweep as we go into orbit,” he ordered, instead. “And try to raise the colony.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. There was a long pause. “No response.”

Leo keyed his console. “Sergeant, prepare an away team,” he ordered. “I’m coming with you.”

Lieutenant Halloran looked up. “Sir, I strongly advise …”

“I have to see it,” Leo said, cutting him off. “Try to raise the colony again.”

He gritted his teeth as the display focused on Morse. The planet reminded him of Ingalls, a dull reddish orb covered with flecks of green, but there were almost no signs of civilisation at all. No communications signals, no modern technology … his sensors couldn’t even pick up the primitive, but still useful, tech that was so common along the edge of explored space, where it was difficult – if not impossible – to rely on technology that could not be fixed if it broke. The file stated there was only one colony on the surface, the preliminary step to transforming Morse into a liveable world, but there was no answer to his signals. Morse felt like a graveyard. Leo bit his lip to keep from saying that out loud.

“You have the bridge,” he said, to Lieutenant Halloran. “Inform me if anything changes.”

He felt cold as he made his way down to the shuttle hatch, despite the ship’s warmth. Flower, Boothroyd and his team were already waiting for them, wearing light environment suits and carrying heavy weapons. Leo found a suit of his own, pulled it on quickly, and boarded the shuttle. The pilot took them down hard, plunging into the thin atmosphere and pulling up bare seconds before they would have struck the ground. Leo felt his lips twist in cold amusement. He was a fairly practiced pilot and he’d never risk doing something like that, unless his ship was under fire. Marine pilots, on the other hand …

The pilot levelled out. Leo felt his stomach settle as he peered through the porthole, studying the landscape below. It reminded him of Mars, with reddish rocks and long-dead lakes broken by patches of green lichen and other bioengineered plants that were slowly bringing life back to the dead world. The atmosphere was thin, barely breathable … the file had noted the settlers had dropped a number of water-ice asteroids onto the planet, in hopes of increasing the water moisture in the air, but so far the results had been very limited. Leo had to admire their determination. Terraforming took a long time, even with modern technology. It was unlikely the men who’d started the process would be around to see the world they’d birthed.

“Crap,” Boothroyd said.

Leo followed his gaze. The colony was a handful of domes, looking like soap bubbles against the dull landscape, bubbles that should normally provide all the protection the colonists could possibly need. They were strong enough to stand up to bad weather – the file insisted the planet had immense storms – but not remotely capable of protecting the inhabitants from outside attack. The pirates had torn through all the domes, doing so much damage that there was no point in trying to seal off the affected area and minimise the outflow of air. It didn’t look as if a single dome remained intact, protecting its population. The greenery within the dome – crops to feed the settlers, bioengineered plants to change the planet into something more habitable – were already dying. Leo cursed under his breath. He’d known they were too late, but he had hoped …

“Take us down,” Boothroyd ordered.

The shuttle landed neatly within a dome, something normally against regulations. Leo almost hoped an officious jobsworth would come out of nowhere, screaming about how they couldn’t land inside the dome … the man would be irritating, and his charm would wither very rapidly, but at least he’d be alive. No one moved as the shuttle settled down, no wind moved the crops as the hatch hissed open. Leo’s earlier thoughts returned to haunt him. They were walking straight into a tomb.

“Keep your weapons at the ready,” Boothroyd reminded his men. “And make damn sure you keep your masks on.”

Leo let the troops go first, then he followed them through the hatch and onto the planet itself. The gravity was slightly lighter than standard, just enough to be noticeable without being disconcerting; he gritted his teeth as he looked around, taking in the dead or dying plants. A number seemed almost frozen, as if the temperature was far too cold for them. It might well have been, he reflected, as they made their way through the ruined dome. The settlers had turned it into a park, a strange combination of a playing ground for children and a garden that actually produced crops; Leo would almost have preferred, in truth, a simple field. The combination was heartbreaking. A handful of playground structures, clearly visible on the grass, nearly made him cry.

He composed himself as they reached the first airlock, a design that should have slammed closed to protect the interior the moment the dome lost air pressure. It was wide open, so badly warped he knew someone had done it purposely … probably, he reflected grimly, before they’d torn open the domes. The troopers stepped through and stopped, dead. Leo followed and swore as he saw the bodies, bound with duct tape and left to die. It wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t a handful of civilians unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but pure sadism. The pirates had not only deliberately killed the settlers, they'd ensured the poor bastards knew they were going to die … and there was no way they could save themselves. Leo felt sick. It was a horror beyond human comprehension.

“Ninety-seven bodies,” Boothroyd said. Leo hated him in that moment, hated him for being so calm and analytical … envied him, too, for his calm in the face of an atrocity that would make most pirates blanch. “Mostly men. Where are the women?”

A trooper clicked onto the channel. “I’ve found them.”

Leo didn’t want to look, but he knew his duty. The scene in the next compartment was horrific beyond words. The female settlers hadn’t just been raped, they’d been tortured and mutilated and left to bleed out and die … he felt bile rising within his throat as he realised one woman had been given an drug to prevent her wounds from clotting, to ensure her bleeding would never cease until she bled to death. Another had been slit open from head to toe, a third … he turned away, too late, and tore at his mask an instant before he threw up. The cold washed over him as he vomited, gasping for breath … Flower stopped beside him, her face calm. Leo gathered himself with an effort, pulling the mask back into place. His face hurt. The extreme cold hadn’t done him any favours at all.

Stop whining, he told himself, savagely. The women had been raped and left to die … and their fathers and husbands had been forced to listen as their wives and daughters suffered and died. You’re luckier than these poor bastards.

He forced himself to stand upright. “Get a picture of every last body,” he ordered, sharply. His mouth tasted foul. “Run a match against the settlement rolls, see who’s missing. Flower and I will check out the command centre.”

Boothroyd didn’t argue as Leo headed away, thankfully. Flower stayed with him as he made his way through the maze of tunnels and into the command centre … or what he thought was the nerve centre of the colony. The consoles were broken and melted, as if someone had blasted them with machine guns or plasma cannons and then tossed a handful of incendiary grenades into the compartment to finish the job. The heat had been so intense the floor beneath the consoles had melted, revealing the datacore storage chamber below. The mess was so intense Leo couldn’t tell if the datacore had been removed or simply destroyed, but it hardly mattered. Either way, they weren’t going to recover anything useful from the molten mess beneath his feet.

He sagged, fighting the urge to collapse. He’d thought Morse a planet of no real importance, a tiny colony that could be safely left alone. He’d been wrong, disastrously so. The pirates had raided the colony and killed every last man, woman or child … the shitty thing, he reflected as he tried to gather himself, was that death might be preferable. There were worse fates, when pirates were involved.

“I jumped too late,” he muttered. There was no escaping his share of the blame. If he’d taken less time to get clear of Ingalls, if he’d risked jumping closer to the planet’s gravity well, he might have reached Morse in time to intercept the pirates. “I fucked up.”

“You did the best you could,” Flower said. “If you had jumped earlier, you might have jumped all the way back to Daybreak.”

Leo didn’t smile. Technically, she was right … he shook his head. It didn’t matter. The navy was supposed to stop pirate scum, and the navy – he – had comprehensively failed. Morse hadn’t had any defences, nothing that could deter a crew of vicious – and yet cowardly – savages from landing, having their fun, and then fucking off before anyone could stop them. He was to blame. He was …

He tried not to think about it as they searched the rest of the colony, passing through dead gardens and poking through bedrooms that looked as if their occupants had merely popped put for a second and would return shortly. The settlers had really made themselves at him, he noted; they’d had children and raised them, confident their kids would inherit a world safe for human habitation. Instead … he swallowed, hard, as he saw the blue-faced child in his crib. He might have survived, if the pirates hadn’t opened the domes. The poor kid couldn’t be more than a few months old.

“We’ll find these bastards,” Leo promised the infant. “We will.”

His heart twisted painfully. There was little hope of tracking the pirates down in a hurry. They had no idea where their ship had gone, or where their base was, or … Leo shook his head. Given time, they could start escorting more convoys and arming freighters; hell, sooner or later, something stolen from Morse would appear on the black market, giving investigators a chance to track down the pirate fences. But it would be a long slow process, if it happened at all. He knew too many pirates were never caught, no matter how many starships were deployed to hunt them down. The gulf of interstellar space was just too big …

“Sir,” Boothroyd said. “I think we have a problem.”

“We do?” Leo found it hard to keep his voice steady. “What now?”

“We counted the bodies, and ran the faces – the remaining faces – against the manifest,” Boothroyd said. “The files may well be out of date, but there appear to be at least seventy adults missing. Fifty are young women; the remaining appear to be techs.”

Leo exchanged glances with Flower. “Press-ganged?”

“It’s possible, sir,” Boothroyd said. “If the files are reliable, about half the missing women are related to the missing techs.”

“Shit.” Leo cursed under his breath. A tech would have plenty of opportunities to sabotage a pirate ship, even if the pirates kept them under close supervision, but if their wives and daughters were on the ship too … they might hesitate to do something that would damage or destroy the vessel. “Are you sure?”

“The bodies may well be discovered elsewhere,” Boothroyd said, a hint of waspishness clearly audible in his tone. “But right now, we have searched most of the colony and found only a handful of isolated bodies.”

“And no downloads from the datacore,” Leo mused. The colony was hardly a prison. There were few internal sensors, and they clearly hadn’t bothered with a backup datacore. “Not that we need one, I suspect.”

“Probably, sir,” Boothroyd said. “What do we do with the bodies?”

Leo shook his head slowly. “Take DNA samples, so we can charge their rapists when we finally run them down,” Leo said. It was unlikely there would be a match in the files, and even if there was it was equally unlikely they’d be able to lay hands on the pirate, but the navy could be very patient when there was no other choice. Sooner or later, a naval ship would catch the pirates, run their DNA against the files, and administer harsh but necessary punishment. “And then put the bodies into cold storage, below the domes.”

He scowled, inwardly. There was no room on his ship to convey the bodies to Yangtze and no one, he suspected, who would even want them. The settlers had been isolated from the remainder of the sector, barely visited save by a handful of freighters; they had no friends or families, no one who might try to fight for them. They’d been lucky a freighter had reported the pirate attack, although it hadn’t been in time to save them. Leo told himself that the DNA evidence would convict the pirates, when they were caught. He hoped to hell they would be.

“Aye, sir,” Boothroyd said.

“We’ll go back to the ship,” Leo said. “There’s nothing else for us here.”

He turned and led the way back to the shuttle, trying not to see the evidence of men and women trying to build a new life for themselves, and create a new world for their children, only to have it torn down in a heartbeat by the scum of the universe. He wanted to find the pirates and kill them, he wanted to make them hurt as they’d hurt so many others, he wanted …a wave of helplessness swept over him, a grim awareness that he’d done everything he could – including putting his ship at risk – and it hadn’t been enough. The atrocity was clear proof of why the empire was needed, and yet the empire had been unable to protect its subjects …

“I need a drink,” he muttered, as he took off his helmet. His mouth tasted foul, his stomach ached painfully. “Fuck it.”

Flower passed him a water flask. “Drink that, instead,” she said, practically. “You can’t afford to get drunk on duty.”

Leo nodded, sipping the water thoughtfully. She had a point. No one would say anything if he staggered off the shuttle, singing the old drunkard’s song about the happy little goblin and his enormous pair of things no one wanted to know about, but they would notice and they would remember. It would be much harder to run a dry ship if everyone knew the captain had returned as drunk as a lord, without even the excuse of drinking with one.

He looked up at her. “How do you cope?”

“The House of Joy taught me how to hide my natural reactions,” Flower said. Her voice was flat, as if she didn’t really want to talk about it. “You never know what a client might want, and some requests are just …”

Leo nodded at the porthole. “Like that?”

“No,” Flower admitted. “But still pretty disgusting.”

“Yeah.” Leo reminded himself, again, that Flower could have been a great actress. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, and every time she emoted it could be just an act. “But that outside isn’t just disgusting, it’s an atrocity.”

He keyed the terminal. “Lieutenant Halloran, prepare the ship for jump,” he ordered. “We’ll head straight for Yangtze, the moment the team has finished its work. There’s nothing left for us here.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And reprogram the orbital beacon,” he added. It felt like conceding defeat, but … there was no choice. “Tell any further visitors that the colony is effectively gone.”

“Aye, sir.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Leo’s mood did not improve, over the four days it took to jump from Morse to Yangtze, no matter how many emergency drills he held to prepare the crew for war. There was no way he could have reached Morse in time to make a difference – he’d proven that to his own satisfaction, through running countless simulations – and yet it still gnawed on him to know the pirates had raided the colony, kidnapped a bunch of people, killed the rest and then escaped before he could bring them under fire. If he’d risked a microjump … there hadn’t been time and yet, he felt it could have been done. Perhaps an older or wiser commander would have handed it better, but Leo felt as if he had failed …

“Jump completed,” Abigail reported. The display lit up, revealing a handful of starships and orbital nodes circling Yangtze. “The drives are cycling now.”

“No threats within detection range,” Lieutenant Halloran added. “We appear to be in the clear.”

Leo nodded, curtly. He’d had nightmares about returning to Yangtze to discover the sector capital had been attacked too, no matter how many times he reminded himself the planetary defences could give any attacking pirates a black eye or two. It was unlikely they’d tangle with a single orbital weapons platform, let alone a network extensive enough for individual platforms to give each other covering fire, but the nightmares had refused to fade. The idea of Gayle being held down by a pirate, her legs forced open and … he shook his head, biting his lip to banish the image. It felt wrong to be grateful the colony’s internal sensors hadn’t recorded the atrocity – or the records had been destroyed, if they had – but he couldn’t help himself. If there had been records, he would have had to review them. And that was a disgusting thought.

“Contact Government House and request an immediate meeting with Governor Brighton,” Leo said. There was no way to know if word of events on Ingalls had reached Yangtze, but he had to assume the Governor had already been briefed. Governor Venture had bragged of his friends on Yangtze. If they knew their ally had been arrested, they’d already be bending the governor’s ear, trying to get him to issue a pardon before the full facts reached Yangtze. “And then transfer Governor Venture to the shuttle.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo waited, trying not to brood as Waterhen neared the planet. He didn’t have a legal team, but he’d spent several days distracting himself by studying the legal precedents that might – might – cover the arrest of Governor Venture and related matters. The real danger was Governor Brighton issuing a pardon before hearing the full story; the pardon would be legally binding, as suggesting otherwise would cast doubt on the man’s authority, and while Brighton himself might be penalised Venture and his cronies would go free. Leo had checked the files and, according to the last set of updates, planetary governors had issued pardons in only a handful of cases … hopefully, Governor Brighton would be smart enough to wait for the full story. If nothing else, he’d know a pair of governors had been recalled and arrested for abusing their powers and do nothing that might land him in hot water, at least until he knew what he was doing.

“The Governor’s compliments, sir, and you are welcome to call on him as soon as possible,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “His staff are arranging a suitable reception team for Governor Venture now.”

Leo nodded, stiffly. He would have preferred to keep Governor Venture on his ship, but the rules were clear. The disgraced man was to be handed over to the sector governor and his staff as soon as possible, to allow him to hear the formal charges against him and prepare a defence. Leo had kept a close eye on the man, and his interactions with the crew, and he’d been surprised he hadn’t tried to bribe his caretakers. It wasn’t as if there was anywhere for him to go, but … who knew? Perhaps he could convince someone to destroy the records for him.

“You have the bridge,” he said. “Prepare the crew for leave, remind them to watch their backs. Flower and I will be down on the surface, if you need us.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “Do you think there’s any danger?”

Leo hesitated. Yangtze was far better patrolled than Getaway. The locals would also be more aware of the Imperial Navy’s mandate to certify merchant crewmen, inspect passing freighters and – if discovered – seize smuggled cargo. They would be used to it, he was sure, not least because they were sitting right next to the testing centre. But there was no way to be certain …

“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “Tell them to be careful.”

He returned to his cabin to change into his dress uniform, then made his way down to the shuttle. Boothroyd had marched Governor Venture into the shuttle and secured him to a restraint chair, more to make it clear that he was a prisoner rather than any expectation he’d be able to break free and try to take control of the shuttle while it was in flight. Flower nodded to him as he took the pilot’s seat, then steered the shuttle into the atmosphere. The craft jerked, slightly, as it struck the outermost edge …

“Careful,” Governor Venture protested. “I don’t fly well.”

Leo shrugged, briefly considering a flash-dive into the atmosphere before dismissing the idea as petty spite. He didn’t need the older man throwing up behind him, nor did he want to inflict the task of cleaning the interior on a long-suffering crewman. Instead, he steered into the proper flight path and flew directly to Government House. He wasn’t looking forward to the coming discussion. Governor Brighton had already had more than enough time to read the reports. Or at least the summary.

“Be careful,” Flower said, pitching her voice so only he could hear. “There are politics involved.”

“I know,” Leo said, landing the shuttle neatly in front of Government House. “But I also know my duty.”

He stood and opened the hatch, then stepped aside to allow the planetary militiamen to unhook Governor venture from the chair and march him into custody. The older man shot him a curt look as he passed, a silent warning the affair was not yet over. Leo knew he was wrong. The evidence was so clear that even a bribed court couldn’t avoid convicting Venture of a whole string of charges, from gross corporate mismanagement to directly or indirectly aiding and abetting human trafficking. His best bet would be to plead truly monumental levels of incompetence, but Leo doubted that would get very far. A man could not become a planetary governor, even a de facto corporate mouthpiece, without a very good understanding of corporate politics.

Flower followed as he stepped out of the shuttle, then headed off on her own mission as he made his way into the building, up the long flight of stairs and into the governor’s office. Governor Brighton sat behind his desk, his face grim; Deputy Governor Bridgerton sat on the other side of the table, his face unreadable save for a twinge of dislike that came and went too quickly for Leo to be entirely sure it was there. He cursed under his breath, schooling his face into a blank mask as he saluted the two men. He would have preferred to give his report to the sector governor alone. Gayle’s father had far too many reasons to dislike him. Some were even legitimate.

“Lieutenant-Commander,” Governor Brighton said. Leo had to fight to keep his face impassive. He was the ranking officer on Waterhen, and that made him a Captain even if it was just a Captain pro tem. Naval protocols were clear on such matters. The ranking officer was always addressed as Captain, to make it clear who was in command. “Your report does not make pleasant reading.”

“No, sir,” Leo agreed.

“You took it upon yourself to arrest a planetary governor and overthrow an entire corporate government,” Bridgerton said. His voice was so flat Leo knew he was angry. “You are aware, of course, that the government you so casually destroyed was established as part of the sector incorporation, and the planet itself confirmed as a corporate possession?”

Leo kept his temper under tight control. Bridgerton had reason to be annoyed. His corporation was closely involved with Ingalls, his starships had been caught moving smuggled goods and Leo had been fucking his daughter, something that could easily do immense damage to Bridgerton’s reputation if it got out. He wondered, suddenly, if Gayle’s absence had something to do with their affair, if her father had locked her up because someone had seen their tryst and reported it. Could he lock up his child? Perhaps. The law didn’t allow it, but law and custom could sometimes diverge in surprising ways.

“The planetary governor was deeply involved in a series of crimes, defined as such by interstellar law, and he needed to be removed as quickly as possible,” Leo said. “Worse, he also made a very deliberate effort to kill representatives of the Daybreak Navy in a bid to cover up his crimes. I believed that arresting him as quickly as possible was the only way to prevent a far greater crisis, or the destruction of records that would prove his involvement and that of the entire government.”

He paused. “And we found proof of multiple criminal acts. They took kidnap victims, called them indentured workers, and put them to work. They deliberately underreported their production rates, allowing them to sell rare minerals under the table and pocket their proceeds. They arranged for the purchase of vast amounts of military hardware and … we don’t know. Did they use the purchase to cover up something else, or did they sell the hardware to pirates? I might point out that that alone merits the death sentence.”

Bridgerton eyed him narrowly. “And you are sure Governor Venture was involved?”

Leo looked back at him. “He was either involved or so unaware of what was going on, around him that it beggars belief,” he said, flatly. Captain Archibald might not have cared what was happening, below decks, but he’d had the excuse of being expected to stay in orbit and do nothing, while Governor Venture had been put in charge of a corporate facility. His superiors would start breathing down his neck if profits dropped, even if the sudden shortfall hadn’t been his fault. “Either way, we have proof of serious misconduct.”

Governor Brighton held up a hand. “Thank you for your efforts,” he said. “My staff will conduct a full investigation and determine how to proceed. We will also craft a caretaker government for Ingalls, at least until we have a clear idea how far the rot spreads, which will be charged with studying the records, then dispatching the supposed indentured workers to their final destination.”

“The local rebels have already set up a government,” Leo pointed out. “It may not last, but …”

“The planet belongs to the corporate consortium,” Bridgerton snapped. “That is settled law. The workers have no more say in what happens at the top than a junior crewman has on your ship. You cannot take it from the consortium and hand it over to the workers …”

Leo lifted his eyebrows. “Are you condoning criminal acts?”

“And if a captain committed criminal acts,” Bridgerton countered, “would you hand his ship over to the most junior of crewmen?”

“It isn’t the same,” Leo said. “The crew volunteered to join the navy. They would also be aware of ways to blow the whistle, if their commander was violating naval protocol. Many of the workers were recruited under false pretences, or were legally indentured, or even kidnapped from a colonist-carrier and sold to the government, under the guise of being indentured servants. You would do better to listen to them, than …”

“You sound very much like my daughter,” Bridgerton said. “She doesn’t understand the harsh realities of the galaxy too …”

Governor Brighton cleared his throat. “That is part of the reason we are sending a caretaker government,” he said. “We will sort out what actually happened, then prescribe penalties in line with interstellar law. If it turns out the consortium was deeply involved in the affair, rather than a few bad apples, we will deal with it accordingly.”

Leo frowned. It would be a great deal easier to turn the planet over to the rebels …

“It will be dealt with,” he said. “Now, about Morse … what happened?”

“The system was attacked by at least one pirate ship,” Leo said. It was all in his report. He had no idea why the governor wanted to go over it verbally. “We did not manage to recover many records, but it appears the pirates landed, took control, kidnapped a number of prisoners and hostages, then had their fun” – he grimaced, trying to forget the horrors he’d seen – “before departing, tearing open the domes and venting the atmosphere as they left. We found three hundred and seventy bodies in total, with a further eighty-seven remaining unaccounted for.”

He paused. “To all intents and purposes, the colony no longer exists.”

“That’s what I was telling you about,” Bridgerton said, to his superior. “We need to expand the local defence force as quickly as possible. And extend its protection to the rest of the sector.”

Leo took a breath. “Interstellar law states …”

“The Governor can put interstellar law aside, if he feels it justified,” Bridgerton pointed out, sharply. “How many more worlds are going to die?”

Leo had no answer. It was rare for a pirate ship to tangle with any sort of defences, but … he could see several ways to cripple Yangtze’s orbital defences from a safe distance and he was sure the pirates could see them too. And there were nearly fifty other star systems within the sector, ranging from reasonably well defended to completely helpless. And …

His blood ran cold. Waterhen was the only Daybreak ship in the sector.

Bridgerton was still speaking, his tone icy. “They promised us protection,” he snapped. “What did they send us? A single ship, older than me, and a commanding officer straight out of the academy! He’s not even a proper Captain! How many more have to die before we act?”

“There are huge demands on the navy,” Leo said, quietly. Yangtze might be the most heavily developed world in the sector, but she was tiny compared to Daybreak or any one of a hundred autonomous worlds that were part of the empire … and resented it. The navy needed to remind them, constantly, of the price they’d pay for open defiance, as well as the dangers of a Second Interstellar War. “The fleet simply can’t spare many ships for this sector.”

He paused. “And we did blow a pirate ship out of space.”

“One ship,” Bridgerton said. “Tell me, can your mighty destroyer be in two places at once?”

“No.” Leo met his eyes. “She can’t.”

“Yes,” Bridgerton agreed. There was something cold and hard in his tone, an anger that didn’t seem directed at Leo but yet still disturbing. “The pirates will be watching you, now. They will know where you are. And they’ll be fine as long as they keep their distance from you.”

Leo feared he was correct. No matter what they did, they could only be in one system, or escort one convoy, at a time. An idea crossed his mind … it would be risky, but …

“We will discuss the matter later,” Governor Brighton said. “Captain Morningstar” – he got the rank right this time, Leo noted – “we will speak later too. Until then, I suggest you give your crew some leave, then resume your patrols at the earliest possible moment. My staff will investigate the legal issues, and then act as they see fit.”

Leo scowled, recognising the dismissal. “Yes, sir.”

He saluted, then turned and left the office. It was hard not to feel at a loss. Flower probably hadn’t returned yet, while he wasn’t needed on the ship … he had a suite in the building, true, but he didn’t want to go there either. He was at something of a loose end.

“Hey,” a voice said.

Leo looked up and smiled. Gayle was leaning against the wall outside the office, looking oddly out of place in a long green dress that flattered her figure and a straw hat that cast a long shadow over her eyes. Her neckline was cut to hint at her cleavage … He felt his smile grow wider, his body suddenly intent on reminding him just how long it had been since he’d lain with a woman. He’d wondered if she was still interested, or if her father had found out and reacted badly, or … he found himself leaning towards her, catching himself before he could make it too obvious. They were in Government House. The odds were good there was someone watching them …

“Hey,” Leo said, feeling like a schoolboy again. It was hard not to cringe at those memories, at trying to act like a suave and confident adult while possessing a teenager’s body and hormones to match … at making a total fool of himself, time and time again. “How have you been?”

Gayle grinned, reminding him that she was no more a schoolgirl than he a schoolboy. “I can take you to see the town,” she said, in a manner that left no doubt about what she really had in mind. Her words were innocent; her tone, anything but. Her fingers brushed the underside of her breasts as she spoke, drawing his eyes to her curves. “You want to come?”

Leo felt his smile grow wider. “Yes!”

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

Leo opened his eyes slowly, feeling warm and comfortable as he lay in a big and comfortable bed. A young woman lay next to him, her rear pushing into his groin as she slept. Leo felt a rush of sudden affection, and blood rushing to his nether regions, as he gazed upon her. Gayle was young and innocent and real in a way Fleur, who had made full use of cosmetic surgery and gene-modifications, could never match. There was nothing fake about her features, nothing that suggested their relationship was just sex and little else. Leo knew it could easily be an illusion, but at the moment he didn’t really care. They had gone to the room hours ago and started making love, then drifted asleep in each other’s arms …

He sat upright, looking around with interest. The chamber was no hotel room. Two walls were lined with bookcases, holding dozens of mechanical and political textbooks; a large desk, easily large enough for three people, sat against the third, a pair of terminals resting neatly on the wooden table. A large chair – he was perversely relieved that there was only one – rested in front of the desk, turned to prove there was no one sitting on the leather, waiting for the sleeping couple to awake. The final wall was broken by two large windows, staring over a mighty estate. Leo stared, his mind – dulled by sex and sleep – puzzling over a very important question. Where were they?

Gayle stirred and rolled over, stretching as she opened her eyes. Leo stared, admiring – and adoring – the way her breasts heaved, drawing his eye helplessly to her chest … and her womanhood, resting between her thighs. Fleur had been almost perfect, her body crafted to be an impossible vision of young womanhood, but Gayle was real. Leo’s eyes lingered on muscled arms, then drifted down to her breasts before looking up to meet her eyes. Gayle smiled at him, then winked.

“How was your sleep?”

Leo felt a sudden flash of alarm. “This is your father’s estate, isn’t it?”

Gayle nodded. “Do you like it?”

Leo hesitated, glancing at the door. The mansion was immense, easily large enough for an entire army of kids to play hide and seek, and yet he was sure the staff had noted their arrival. If they’d called her father … he wondered, suddenly, if he’d wind up giving Gayle asylum on Waterhen, or if her father would challenge him to a duel or simply demand they got married immediately, just in case Gayle was pregnant. That was unlikely – all naval officers were given a contraceptive implant – but it was not completely impossible. The implants were largely reliable, yet there were times when they failed …

He flushed. “Your father?”

“Is still busy trying to sort out the political nightmare you dumped on him,” Gayle said, cheerfully. “He’ll be at it for hours, demanding answers from his subordinates and plotting to throw one or more under the shuttlecraft if he can’t prove the corporation wasn’t aware of what was going on.”

Leo sucked in his breath. “Are you sure? Can you trust the staff to keep their mouths shut?”

Gayle leaned back. The movement did interesting things to her breasts. “Sure, they could tattle on me,” she said, her tone never changing. “But Dad would dismiss them afterwards, because they couldn’t be trusted, and even if he didn’t I would when I inherited.”

Leo frowned. “I thought you couldn’t inherit?”

“Matter of opinion,” Gayle said. “And besides, none of my cousins would trust a tattletale either. If they betrayed me, they might betray someone else next time.”

Leo wasn’t so sure. Gayle might be her father’s sole child, but there were no guarantees she’d inherit anything … or, for that matter, that she’d be able to wrap her future husband around her little finger. She might be able to get the poor bastard to dismiss a servant who proved himself untrustworthy, or her husband might feel that having a servant who could be relied upon to tattle was a good thing. Leo sighed, inwardly. A servant might suffer if he – or she – spied on the young masters and mistresses, but if it was their only way to take revenge for mistreatment …

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. He checked his terminal, breathing a sigh of relief as he confirmed there were no emergency messages. Half the crew was on shore leave, the rest was resupplying Waterhen … there was nothing, thankfully, that required him to leave her bed and hurry back to his ship. “That said, how long should we stay here?”

“A while.” Gayle pushed him onto the bed and straddled him. “And now …”

Afterwards, she keyed her terminal and ordered breakfast. Leo hastily hid in the bathroom as a servant arrived, carrying a breakfast tray piled high with enough food for two. Or three. Gayle laughed as she called him back into the bedroom, then motioned for him to tuck into the meal. Leo ate quickly, shaking his head in disbelief. Gayle was clearly just as much of an adrenaline junkie as himself, enjoying their affair for the thrill of doing something dangerous as much as sexual attraction or … he wondered, suddenly, if part of her mind hoped the affair would be discovered. Her father would not be pleased, but as a Daybreak naval officer Leo was minor nobility and it was quite possible the Deputy Governor would swallow his annoyance and bless the match.

And if that happened, Leo wasn’t sure what he’d do.

Gayle joined him in the shower, afterwards, for a quick wash that turned into another bout of lovemaking before he finally cleaned himself, then changed back into his uniform. He hadn’t thought to bring a change of clothes – he had the sudden mental image of trying on her father’s clothes, only to dismiss it before it escaped his lips – but it didn’t matter. He’d be going back to the ship shortly, where he could change again before taking his place on the bridge. His crew could handle a great many things on their own, but some required the commanding officer’s oversight …

“I’d better sneak out,” he said. “If we get caught …”

“Dad is still a long way away,” Gayle assured him. “And everyone else will keep their mouths shut.”

Leo wasn’t so sure, but there was no point in arguing as she led him out the door and through a long maze of corridors that reminded him of his patron’s home, right down to the walls lined with portraits of famous and accomplished ancestors. There was a sense of age around the artwork, as if the mansion was decades old … perhaps it was. Gayle’s father was a direct descendent of the first colonists, the men who had provided most of the funding in exchange for vast tracts of land and near-complete political power. It felt wrong to consider any sort of inheritance as a path to power – on Daybreak, the sons of famous men were expected to prove they could live up to their fathers – but he supposed it made a certain kind of sense. No one would invest so much money if they didn’t expect some kind of return.

But there’s no competition, he thought. How could they be sure the best man would inherit?

He found himself staring at Gayle’s back, feeling a strange mixture of guilt and regret. Gayle was smart, as well as young and beautiful, and she would go far if she’d been born and raised on Daybreak. Leo had a mother and sisters and they’d proven, time and time again, that they were in no way inferior to him, just because he had a penis and they didn’t. There was nothing stopping them from earning citizenship, then stepping onto the cursus honorum and climbing to the very top. Gayle, on the other hand, would always be restricted by her gender. The man she married would inherit the formal power – not her – and the only way she could gain any sort of freedom would be to leave, which would mean leaving her homeworld behind for good. Her father might let her go, he might even give her his blessing, but …

“Next time, we’ll go horse-riding,” Gayle promised. Her smile promised much more. “Or we could find a lake to go swimming.”

Leo nodded, feeling torn. There had been no obligations with Fleur, no suggestion the relationship would eventually become something more. Fleur wouldn’t have married him even if her husband died in a freak accident, not when a lowly cadet couldn’t do anything for her beyond … Leo cut that thought off quickly. Gayle, on the other hand …

“I’ll see you soon,” Gayle promised, as they stepped outside. The bright sunlight illuminated an aircar, waiting for him. “Just leave the aircar at the spaceport. Someone will pick it up.”

Leo nodded, tersely, and clambered into the vehicle. It was wholly automatic, not uncommon in the core worlds yet rare for a relatively new settlement like Yangtze. He shrugged and clambered inside, feeling a rush of affection as Gayle winked, then dropped the demure act and flashed her breast at him. It was hard to tell if she was sure they weren’t being watched, or if she really was sure no one would betray her, or … if the prospect of someone tattling was just part of the fun. Leo leaned back in his chair as the aircar took off, the affection slowly morphing into a kind of fellow-feeling. Gayle was just like him, in so many ways. If she’d been raised on Daybreak, she would have made an ideal naval officer.

He felt a sudden stab of something as the aircar picked up speed, flying over farms and small villages broken by vast tracts of forest. There had been fifty cadets in his class, boys and girls, and they’d all gone on to their first postings now … affairs between classmates were technically forbidden, but that was part of the thrill. He’d slept with five of his classmates … he wondered, suddenly, where they were now. Their first postings had been meant to be a surprise, their orders kept sealed until after they graduated, but it wasn’t hard to guess. A cadet who graduated in the top ten could expect a very prestigious posting indeed. And he had been sent to the ass-end of nowhere instead.

Leo’s lips twitched. On one hand, the odds of promotion are very low, he thought. On the other, I have a command …

His communicator bleeped. “Sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “Governor Brighton’s compliments, sir, and he’d like to see you at Government House immediately.”

“Understood.” Leo scowled. That wasn’t good news. “I’ll be back up as quickly as possible, and then you can take your leave.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “Good luck.”

Leo scowled as he keyed the aircar’s console, adjusting its final destination and ordering it to get there as quickly as possible. The tiny craft picked up speed … Leo wondered, suddenly, just how good the local ATC actually was. Daybreak preferred to have its aircars flown manually, but that was rare elsewhere. Most planets didn’t trust their civilians to fly properly and normally insisted the ATC handled the flying, which wasn’t always a good thing. When the system went down, the aircars went down with it. He checked his sidearm, automatically, as the aircar slowed to a halt, then dropped down to land on the pad. A young guard was already waiting for him. Leo nodded, then allowed the young man to lead him to the governor’s office.

A shame Flower isn’t around, he thought. She might have far more useful insights.

“Captain,” Governor Brighton said. He was alone, somewhat to Leo’s relief. “I’m afraid I've got bad news.”

Leo kept his face schooled into a neutral, even blank, expression. Somehow. His mind raced, trying to determine what the older man might consider bad news. Had he been spotted entering the mansion? Had Gayle’s father been bending his superior’s ear, demanding Leo married his daughter as soon as possible, before her reputation could be ruined beyond repair? Or was it something else? Leo doubted he’d be recalled to the core words, not unless the republic was desperate, but it wasn’t impossible someone senior to him would be sent out to take over the naval station. It would be a relief, or would it? A senior officer might balk at a lowly Lieutenant-Commander in de facto command of a ship, even an outdated destroyer like Waterhen.

“It’s not good,” Governor Brighton said. “Governor Venture is dead.”

“… What?”

Leo stared at him, utterly shocked. The governor was dead? The governor he’d arrested was dead? It had only been a day – less than a day, really – since he’d handed the prisoner over to the governor’s staff. And that meant … he felt his mouth drop open as horror rushed through him. If Venture was dead, questioning him was impossible.

“God damn it,” he managed. It wasn’t the sort of thing one could normally say in front of a senior officer, let alone one with full gubernatorial authority, but he was too stunned to care. “What happened?”

Governor Brighton chose to overlook the outburst. “The first interrogation was carried out this morning, and in line with standard protocol the interrogation staff injected Governor Venture with a standard truth drug,” he said. “According to the report, he had a massive allergic reaction and died.”

Leo sucked in his breath. “Allergic reaction, my ass.”

He had to bit his lip to keep from swearing out loud. There were countless ways to render interrogation difficult, from simple drugs and implants to genetic modification that would ensure the interrogation techniques were ineffective or simply kill their hosts if they believed the host was on the verge of giving up vital information. A bad reaction – a lethal reaction – to a commonplace truth drug was one of the simplest tricks, but there were ways to test for the countermeasure before they risked using the drug. The interrogation staff should have done the tests … why hadn’t they?

Governor Brighton looked embarrassed. “He promised to tell us everything,” he said, grimly. “We only ordered the use of truth drugs to ensure he only told us the truth …”

“Fuck.” Leo stared down at his hands. Had Venture committed suicide? Had he manipulated events to ensure he’d have a lethal reaction? Or had he been murdered by someone who feared what he might say? What he would say, when the interrogators got to work? “I want the entire interrogation staff held in custody, and interrogated themselves. If this was deliberate, we need to know who ordered it and why.”

“Yes, of course,” Governor Brighton said, mildly. It was a surprisingly understated reaction to a very junior officer bossing him around. Leo would never have dared try to boss any of his instructors around, not at the Academy. He’d be lucky if they only expelled him. “We will find out who did it, and why.”

Leo sat down, feeling his blood run cold. It could be a coincidence, but four years of naval training mandated against it. No, the odds were staggeringly against it being any kind of coincidence. Someone had murdered Governor Venture to keep him from talking and that someone was … who? One of his backers? Someone who feared embarrassment? Or … or what?

“We will be carrying out a full investigation,” Governor Brighton continued. “And we will keep you informed of our progress.”

“We need to know who, before they do something worse,” Leo said. It was possible the killers had acted to spare their corporation embarrassment, depending on just how much approval Governor Venture had enjoyed, but also possible there was something bigger in store. Venture had boasted of his friends in high places … in hindsight, it was clear his friends hadn’t trusted him to keep his mouth shut. Wise of them, if so. Everyone talked, eventually. “And if …”

“We will be carrying out a full investigation,” the Governor repeated. There was a new firmness in his tone. “Your responsibility is to return to the jumplines and escort the next set of ships to their destination. The more pirates you kill, the better.”

And someone on the planet probably ratted the first convoy out, Leo thought. It wasn’t impossible to guess the course a convoy would take, but inside information would remove the element of chance from the equation. Next time, they might be a little more careful about engaging us.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “We’ll be underway in a week or two.”

“Good.” Governor Brighton stood. “Do not let this setback discourage you. Your first patrol was a resounding success.”

He grinned, suddenly. “At least, judging from the volley of complaints we’ve had about you searching ships and seizing smuggled goods.”

“If they don’t want their goods seized, they can try not smuggling crap,” Leo said, crossly. It was hard to hide his irritation. Some of the smugglers had been trying to avoid taxes and tariffs, others had been smuggling contraband that was incredibly dangerous – and illegal. “And everything we did was in accordance with the law.”

“Yes,” Governor Brighton agreed. There was no hint he disagreed … in fact, it sounded as if he were quietly pleased by the outcome. “You did good work. I’m sure your next voyage will be just as successful.”

Leo nodded, recognising the dismissal. “We’ll be back shortly,” he said. A unexciting convoy escort mission would be a success, even if it meant they wouldn’t get to paint more enemy silhouettes beside the airlock. “And hopefully we’ll have some more pirate scalps to hang on the wall.”

And if we capture another corrupt governor, his thoughts added as he left the office, we damn well won’t be handing him over to you.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

“The report suggests the whole incident was an accident,” Flower said. “Do you believe it?”

“It could be,” Boothroyd said. The four had gathered on the bridge, where Leo was duty officer while a third of the crew were on leave and the other third working on his covert project. “It’s uncommon for a corporate paper-pusher to have any kind of counter-interrogation treatment. I wouldn’t care to put money on it, though.”

“No,” Leo agreed. The report suggested it had been a simple oversight, although one with disastrous consequences. The staff hadn’t thought to test for any sort of allergic reaction until it had been far too late. If they’d done it on purpose … he ground his teeth, wishing he had the authority – and the staff – to take over and conduct the interrogations himself. A fleet admiral could, if he thought the planetary government was too corrupt to be useful, but a lowly starship commander? No. “And that means that whoever was behind Venture will remain unknown.”

“If there was someone behind him,” Boothroyd pointed out. “The man could have been acting alone, without the support of his corporate masters.”

Leo wasn’t so sure. It was true Ingalls was a long way from Yangtze, and the other major players in the sector, but it struck him as unlikely the supervision would be that lax. He doubted Venture had intended to remain governor for the rest of his life, or that he’d be allowed to if he tried. The man would have planned for his retirement … had he intended to take the cash and run, or had he thought he could legalise it somehow? Or, far more likely, was there a deeper game underway? And, if so, what?

“We may never know,” he said. There was no way they could interrogate the corporate heads. It was bad enough dealing with complaints about the stop and search policy. “It may just have been money. Or …”

He shrugged. “Bryon, how have you gotten along with Donkey?”

The Chief Engineer smiled, rather thinly. “She’s ready to your specifications, Captain,” he said. “We were careful to ensure no one knew what we were doing.”

“There’s no hint anyone caught on,” Flower added. “But that does raise other problems.”

Leo nodded. On paper, Donkey would be hauling starship components to New Nebraska … and a minor drive failure would ensure she’d leave a day or two after the convoy. It looked a plausible mistake, Leo thought. The big corporations were already demanding Waterhen leave orbit and escort the convoy, without waiting for the final ships to join up. Leo had wondered if the corporations wanted to get the ships underway, or they just wanted to get rid of him, but he had no intention of arguing. It worked in his favour … or it would, if the plan worked. It was equally possible he’d get himself killed.

“We will deal with it,” he said. “Officially, we leave in two days. I’ll have the sealed orders ready by then. Sergeant, ensure your men are ready for a covert transfer.”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd said. “Who’ll be in command of the mission?”

“Me.” Leo held up a hand before anyone could object. “I can’t ask anyone to undertake a risk I’m not prepared to assume myself.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it,” Boothroyd said. “If this goes wrong, there will be enough shit going around for everyone.”

Leo couldn’t disagree. “Bryon, complete the final checks on Donkey and then return to Waterhen,” he added. “You’ll be needed here.”

“Yes, sir,” Bryon said.

“Dismissed,” Leo said. “I’ll see you all before you go.”

Flower didn’t leave. Instead, she waited until the other two men were gone. “You do realise you are putting your life in terrible danger?”

“And everyone else who’ll be with me,” Leo said, flatly. It was hard not to feel a little insulted. Only a fool would claim to be unafraid of death, but he refused to allow that fear to paralyse him. Besides, if he had wanted a safe life, he would have signed up for the civil engineering program rather than the navy. “I know the risks.”

“And if the mission goes wrong, you’ll be leaving Lieutenant Halloran holding the bag,” Flower pointed out. “Right?”

“I updated my logs and I’ll update them again before I transfer,” Leo said. He understood what she meant - Lieutenant Halloran would be the senior survivor if the mission failed, which meant he’d bear the brunt of the navy’s curiosity about the incident – but he’d done what he could to ensure the blame rested with him, if it failed. Lieutenant Halloran was a Lieutenant, after all. It would be unfair of the navy to expect him to keep his superior from carrying out his crazy plan. “But I won’t ask him – I won’t ask anyone – to do something I won’t do myself.”

“So you said,” Flower reminded him.

Leo changed the subject. “Did you pick up anything interesting?”

“A lot of anger chatter about us, and a great many nasty rumours,” Flower said. “It’s difficult to tell how many, if any, are grounded in reality. But …”

She shrugged. “I will say there was a surprising degree of quiet from the corporate officials I happened to meet,” she added. “They said nothing about Governor Venture, or Ingalls, or anything.”

“And that’s odd?” Leo’s patron had vast corporate interests, but Leo himself had never been involved with that side of his business. “Were they told to keep their mouths shut?”

“It’s hard to say,” Flower said. “I didn’t really have time to work on any of them, but …” – she shrugged, again – “there was a great deal more excitement over the plan to increase the local defence force. They’re looking forward to more contracts for everything from starships to orbital defence platforms, as well as everything else they’ll need. The colony raid has provided all the impetus they need to get going.”

“And they’re absorbing men who might otherwise take service with us,” Leo said. He had put out feelers for more crew, but most of the locals didn’t seem interested in joining the Daybreak Navy. He wasn’t sure he trusted the ones who’d replied to the invitation. There was no way to vet them properly, and after Governor Venture’s death he wasn’t inclined to trust any local completely. “Charming.”

“Yes,” Flower said. “I’ll keep my ears open, but unless you want me to remain behind and inch my way into the planet’s society …”

“No,” Leo said. “We need you here.”

“As you wish,” Flower said. She changed the subject. “You do realise your visit to Bridgerton Mansion did not remain a secret? If her father doesn’t know, he’s an idiot, and nothing in his record suggests he’s an idiot.”

Leo reddened. “And how did you know?”

“Heard some chatter,” Flower said, vaguely. “It’s impossible to say how many people take the rumours seriously, not least because there are some really absurd stories out there, but … you should be careful. She should be careful.”

“She insisted no one would tattle,” Leo said.

“I wouldn’t care to be the servant who didn’t report his daughter’s misbehaviour to her father,” Flower said. “Odd, isn’t it? You’d think she’d show a little more discretion.”

“I think she likes the thrill,” Leo said. It was hard to convince himself that there was anything really at stake. His mother might have disapproved of his older sister’s first boyfriend – and she hadn’t been shy about saying so – but she wouldn’t have beaten the girl until she couldn’t sit for a week, let alone cut her throat and sworn blind it was a terrible accident. “Or maybe she just doesn’t care.”

“Don’t care was made to care,” Flower said, firmly. “Watch yourself.”

Leo mulled it over for the rest of his duty shift, then retired to his cabin to update the logs and file a formal report to be taken back to Daybreak by the next passing freighter. He had no idea what was happening hundreds of light years away – he suspected Captain Archibald would claim credit for Leo’s work, once he realised what he’d done – but it hardly mattered. He had wide authority to do what he saw fit, as long as he didn’t break the rules and regulations too openly. In some ways, his exile was a blessing. He had more responsibility – and authority – out here than he would ever had had, so early, if he’d followed a regular career path. But he also lacked anyone who could give him advice …

“I’ve put signed orders in your safe,” he told Lieutenant Halloran, two days later. “If this goes to hell, declare yourself captain, copy the files to Daybreak, and continue patrols as you see fit until they get back to you.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. He sounded reluctant to take the orders. “I …”

Leo nodded. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “Just don’t do anything to discredit our shuffle play.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “Take care of yourself.”

“I’m not planning to die,” Leo assured him. “Don’t get too comfortable in my chair.”

He took one last look around the bridge, then headed to the shuttle. Lieutenant Halloran would take Waterhen and the convoy though the first set of jumps, then order the freighter crews to open their sealed orders and follow them. Leo couldn’t help feeling cold at the sheer magnitude of the risk he was assuming, although if the mission failed there was a very good chance he wouldn’t survive to face a court-martial. Lieutenant Halloran had the wit to blame everything on him, he reflected, and hopefully he wouldn’t let any misplaced loyalty get in the way of doing just that. Logically, he shouldn’t suffer because of Leo’s misjudgement, but the navy wasn’t always logical.

But they’ll probably be glad to see the back of me, Leo thought. If he were safely dead, Fleur and her husband could patch up their marriage, without a hint of scandal forcing them to do something they might regret. And maybe they won’t ask too many questions about how I died.

His mood darkened as the shuttle undocked and flew to Donkey, holding station near the remainder of the convoy. She was a light freighter, small enough to land on a planetary surface and yet also large enough to be – barely – economically viable, carrying fright from system to system. Her class were favoured pirate targets, not least because they were easy to seize and land just about everywhere. Leo hoped her cargo – which existed only on paper – would prove a tempting target. If nothing else, it might help reveal just who was slipping information to the pirates.

“Welcome onboard,” Boothroyd said. “Donkey is at your disposal.”

Leo smiled, although he felt no real humour. “No data breaches?”

“Nothing, as far as we can determine,” Boothroyd said. He sounded confident, although they both knew there could easily have been a leak that would undermine the entire plan. “We played a shell game with the engineers, and made certain none who knew the truth landed on the planet. It’s unlikely word got out.”

“Let us hope so,” Leo said. The engineers had come from Waterhen, rather than Yangtze, but it was impossible to be sure one or more of his crew hadn’t been corrupted. It wouldn’t be that hard for a pirate recruiter to slip up to an engineer or two and offer a lot of money for a tiny little favour, which would lead straight to an even bigger favour, and then an even bigger one … the poor bastard would be thoroughly compromised before he knew what had happened to him. “If this goes wrong, the whole exercise will be worse than useless.”

Boothroyd gave him a thumbs up. “Who wants to live forever?”

He sobered. “More to the point, sir, we all volunteered for this mission and we all made out our wills before we transferred. We know what we are doing.”

Leo nodded. The idea had been his, but now he was putting it into action he was starting to develop cold feet. The plan rested on the pirates buying the cover story, and the convoy he was supposed to escort following orders, and on a certain degree of coordination that would be hard for a well-drilled fleet to practice, certainly not when under enemy fire. He had done everything in his power to minimise the risks, yet … they were still considerable. And if the mission failed, the fault would be his and his alone.

He did his best not to think about it as the crew gave him a short tour of Donkey – the freighter was roughly the same size as Waterhen, but most of her internal volume was cargo space, with a handful of tiny cabins for the crew – and then bid farewell to the convoy. Leo was silently relieved the governor hadn’t wanted to talk to him before the convoy jumped out, or that Gayle hadn’t invited him to the mansion a second time. He kept himself out of sight, just in case, catching up on reports from the core worlds that were – unsurprisingly – several weeks or months out of date. The election they were discussing would be over now, he knew, and the winner already seated. It was always a headache when someone hundreds of light years away did something that was predated on the wrong person winning an election, but it was part and parcel of running a de facto empire. There was simply no way to get a message from one side of settled space to the other in the blink of an eye.

And they keep promising FTL communications too, Leo thought. It was just another concept that was theoretically possible, yet frustratingly beyond the reach of modern science. I’ll believe it when I see it.

It was hard to wait two days to depart, even though there was nothing wrong with the drive and they could easily have left earlier. Leo had planned it that way – the pirates had to think Donkey was alone – and yet it still gnawed at his mind. Naval service, he’d been told, was days or weeks of boredom, broken by moments of screaming terror, and he was starting to realise his instructors had been right. Patience was not one of his virtues, and he would have preferred to leave early – despite the risk – even though he knew it would undo the entire plan. Or part of it, at least. He was happier on Waterhen, flying from star to star, than doing nothing …

“You need to pace more,” Flower said. She had insisted on sharing the cabin with him, much to his annoyance. It was funny how quickly he’d gotten used to having a cabin all to himself, although there wasn’t enough space on Donkey for anything other than hotbunking. “Or simply lose yourself in VR.”

Leo shook his head. VR was a dream, and like most dreams it could turn into a nightmare. It was just too easy to lose yourself in fantasy, or to do something embarrassing … he still cringed at the memory of returning to the barracks, three years ago, and discovering a bunkmate trapped in a sexual fantasy, his body bucking and heaving as he thrust deep into an imaginary vagina. The poor bastard had been lucky the instructors hadn’t caught him. And there were worse things that could happen …

“How do you do it?” Leo sat up. Flower was lying on her bunk, her head resting on her hands, with no sign of impatience at all. “How do you wait?”

Flower shrugged. “And there I was thinking it was men who could lie back and think of nothing.”

Leo snorted. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Flower said. “Is there any point in getting impatient? Is there any point in worrying about something I can’t fix? I don’t think so, so I don’t.”

The intercom bleeped. “Captain,” Boothroyd said. “System Command has cleared us to depart.”

Leo nodded. “Take us out as planned,” he ordered. He didn’t need to be on the bridge for this, and in fact it might be better if he stayed in his cabin until the jump, but he intended to be there anyway. “And jump as soon as you reach the first jump coordinate.”

“Aye, Sir.”

Leo felt his heart start to race. Two days … more than long enough for the pirates to get the news. They’d certainly done everything in their power to ensure the news spread far and wide. A light freighter, crammed with starship components and everything else a pirate crew might want … a very tempting target indeed, one no pirate crew would forgive their commander for passing up. Leo had wondered if he’d made the ship look a little too tempting, but both Boothroyd and Flower had pointed out greed would probably overcome caution. Pirate ships had no real chain of command, nor did they have a higher authority enforcing their captain’s decisions. If the crew mutinied, no one would punish them.

Assuming they won, Leo thought. It was technically against regulations to plot a mutiny, but he knew cadets who’d done it … purely as a theoretical exercise. It wasn’t that easy to seize control of a warship without the right command codes; a pirate ship, on the other hand, could be taken fairly easily, if the mutineers knew what they were doing. If they lost, they’ll be lucky if they’re just killed quickly …

He stood and made his way to the bridge. There would be several days – and jumps – to go, and it was quite possible the pirates had missed the news, but at least they were on their way at last. And that meant there would be action soon. He couldn’t wait.

And if we manage to complete the first half of the plan, he told himself, we might just manage to complete stage two.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

It was ironic, Leo reflected as he sat in the tiny command chair, that they were still doing nothing – but waiting – even though they were underway. Donkey was no naval ship, with a jump drive that could recycle in minutes, and her flight path to New Nebraska was a combination of jumps and long periods of waiting, sensors ready for any sign of enemy ships, before jumping again. Leo felt exposed, and yet excited, as they inched towards their destination. Surely, he told himself, the pirates had to take the bait.

He sighed, inwardly. It would be as frustrating as hell if the pirates didn’t. They could work the trick again and again, after doing more shuffling to suggest the starship components were needed elsewhere, but there was a limit to how long he could leave Waterhen in Lieutenant Halloran’s hands. At some point, it would become dereliction of duty … and when was a question it would probably take a court-martial to settle. If the plan worked, Leo’s decision to command the mission himself would be overlooked; if it failed with a whimper, rather than a bang, it was quite possible it would be held against him. And yet …

“Captain,” Midshipman Yu said. “I’m picking up turbulence on attack vector.”

Leo sucked in his breath. Donkey’s active sensors were the best the vessel’s former crew had been able to buy, which made them decades out of date. Her passive sensors, on the other hand, had been transferred from Waterhen, ensuring they were the best the Daybreak Navy could produce. If they were picking up turbulence … he leaned forward as a fuzzy icon appeared behind Donkey, clearly trying to creep up on her from behind. The pirates were taking their time – if indeed the contact was real – but it made a certain degree of sense. They had to know it would be hours before Donkey was ready for her next jump.

“Keep an eye on them, but don’t go active,” Leo ordered. “No need to let them know we’ve seen them.”

He keyed his console, waking Boothroyd and his men. There was no such thing as red alert on Donkey – her only weapons were a pair of popguns that wouldn’t scratch the hull of anything bigger than a shuttle – but the crew had to be ready. Leo ran the possible vectors in his head, trying to imagine how the pirates would carry out the intercept. A warship might well try to blow them apart from long distance, but a pirate captain would want – need – to take Donkey intact. Their very reluctance to destroy their prize would work against them.

“They’re picking up speed,” Yu reported. “They’ll be within firing range in twenty minutes.”

“They won’t risk firing into our hull,” Leo said. He studied the image on the display, wishing he dared run an active sensor sweep … not, he reminded himself, that the outdated sensors would add enough to justify their use. The enemy ship was a haze, probably no bigger than a light cruiser, although it was impossible to be sure. “Let them think of us as a happy little merchant man, just on her way to the slaughter.”

His earpiece bleeped. “Sir,” Boothroyd said. “We’re ready.”

“Good.” Leo looked up as Flower joined them on the bridge. “Keep an eye on things. It may be a while until we hit the denouncement.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo checked his helmet, ready to pull it on if the enemy holed his ship, then took the helm console long enough for Yu to check his too. Wearing full suits was dangerous in a naval engagement, but it would be even more dangerous if they were tossed into space without any protection. He grimaced – they might regret it if the pirates took them alive – and then dismissed the thought. There was no point in skimping on basic precautions. They needed every edge they could get, when the shit hit the fan.

He sat back in his chair and forced himself to wait as the seconds ticked by, the enemy vessel inching closer to their hull. Leo made a bet with himself the enemy ship wouldn’t show herself openly, let alone bring up her targeting sensors, until she got a great deal closer. There was little risk of being caught by Waterhen – as far as the pirates knew, she was a dozen light years away – and no point in blasting Donkey’s hull to stop any emergency transmissions she might make, not when there was no one who might detect them within millions upon millions of miles. The pirates thought they had Donkey at their mercy. The hell of it, he reflected, was that they might be right …

Alarms bleeped. “Missile separation,” Yu snapped. “One missile, a warning shot!”

“Alter course,” Leo ordered, calmly. There was no way Donkey could outrun her opponent, or even stay ahead of her long enough to finish recycling the jump drive and escape, and the pirates would know it. Good. “Make it look as if we’re panicking.”

“Aye, sir,” Yu said. “They’re bringing up targeting sensors now …”

Leo nodded, studying the display. The enemy vessel was showing up clearly now, the warbook identifying it as a missile-heavy light cruiser from the pre-war period … a reasonable design, in her time, but now heavily outdated. Her designers had thought in terms of vast salvos of missiles, unaware that technology would reach the point of starship point defence scything them out of space before they could detonate or FTL drives repowering in time for the target to jump out and escape. He suspected the pirates had modified some of her weapons and sensors, but they might well have kept some of her original armament. The missiles would be far deadlier, when deployed against a target – like Donkey – that could neither fight nor run.

The missile flashed past them and detonated, the sensors reporting a straight fusion nuke. Leo grimaced. Nuclear weapons were disturbingly easy to make with the right equipment and no one, not even Daybreak, had been able to keep them out of pirate hands. There was no sign the enemy vessel carried bomb-pumped lasers, but it hardly mattered. Donkey didn’t have a warship’s layer of armour. If she were hit by a nuke, she’d be vaporised.

Flower looked up. “They’re signalling us,” she ordered. “They’re ordering us to cut our drives and prepare to be bordered. Or else. They actually said or else.”

“I think they can rely on our imagination to fill in the blanks,” Leo said. He shook his head thoughtfully. “Helm, keep trying to evade; Communications, start screaming for help.”

“Aye, sir,” Yu said. He paused. “They’ll be on top of us in … missile separation!”

Leo braced himself. “Evasive action.”

The missile lanced past them and detonated, this time much closer to the hull. “They’re warning us the third shot will be lethal,” Flower said. “Your orders?”

“Tell them we surrender,” Leo said. “Use your best breathy voice to do it.”

He hid his amusement, somehow, as Flower spoke into her console, her voice perfectly pitched to convey the impression of someone young, female, and completely helpless. Leo had to admire her skill, even though he thought it was also a colossal distraction. The pirates wanted their fun with the crew and Flower was offering them everything they wanted, as long as they didn’t blow the ship away first. Leo would have felt sorry for the pirate CO if he hadn’t been an enemy of humanity. Any smart captain would wonder if Donkey was a trap, and react accordingly, but if he did his crew would have him for breakfast. Perhaps literally. Leo had no idea if the reports of pirates eating human flesh were true, but they broke so many taboos it was hard to imagine them hesitating to break them all. His lips twitched. One way or the other, the pirate CO was not going to get out alive.

“They’re ordering us to hold position,” Flower said. “They’re coming to get us.”

“I’m sure they are,” Leo said. The pirates would want Donkey intact. She was valuable in her own right, quite apart from her cargo and crew. And she had been screaming for help a few seconds ago … it was just possible, he reflected, that a real warship would show up. The enemy crew would be wise to latch onto the hull, jump to a random location, and then loot Donkey and rape her crew at leisure. And if her captain was caught between a rock and a hard place, his wisest move was to latch at once and jump, without trying to board and search first. “Prep the magnets.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Leo felt ice prickling down his spine as the enemy ship came closer, her hull bristling with active sensors. There were so many that they had to be interfering with each other, although a capable programmer could probably minimise the effect as much as possible. He suspected it was intended more for intimidation than anything else, a grim reminder that any resistance would end badly. And if they smelt a rat …

“Transmit our manifest,” Leo ordered. “And the offer to ransom prisoners.”

“Aye, sir,” Flower said.

“Good,” Leo said.

“And they’re promising to treat us very gently,” Flower added. “Charming.”

“Quite.” Leo wouldn’t have believed the pirates, even if he hadn’t grown up in the roughest part of town. “But as long as they think we’re going to surrender without a fight.”

He took a breath, watching as the pirate vessel overshadowed his ship. Up close, it was clear her hull had been patched multiple times, with various weapons systems pulled out and replaced by a complex mishmash of devices from a dozen different places. Leo was surprised they’d managed to get them all working together, if indeed they had. It was quite possible half the weapons were non-functional. The sensors seemed active, but were they actually linked to any processors and datacores capable of turning their readings into something useable? It was impossible to be sure.

“On my mark, bind us to them,” Leo ordered. The pirates intended to do the same, he was sure, but he wanted to catch them by surprise. “Get ready … MARK!”

A thump ran through the ship as Donkey sealed herself to the pirate hull. Leo tapped a command into his console, ordering Boothroyd to move, then keyed the communicator.

“This is Captain Morningstar of the Daybreak Navy,” he said. “Your ship is currently bound to my remote-controlled freighter. That freighter carries a nuke, which I can and will detonate to blow your ship to atoms unless you do exactly as I say. My men are boarding your vessel. If you surrender without a fight, and make no attempt to destroy your navigational records, you will be held prisoner and eventually transferred to a penal world. This is a once-off offer. If any of you try to fight, you will all be executed. There will be no second chance. Choose quickly.”

There was a long chilling pause. Leo felt sweat soaking his back. It was unlikely the pirates had a self-destruct system ready to go, but if they thought they were going to die anyway they might well stall long enough to find a way to destroy their ship, taking Donkey with them. They might refuse to believe his offer, or suspect he’d be overridden by his superiors, or … Leo gritted his teeth. It went against the grain to make any sort of offers to pirates, and his superiors would probably not be happy. But if the first part of the plan worked …

The radio bleeped. “You won’t put us into space?”

Leo breathed a sigh of relief. The pirates were talking. That was a good sign. Probably.

“No,” he said. “Surrender now and you’ll be transported to a penal world. But only if you surrender now.”

He waited, watching the live feed as Boothroyd entered the enemy ship. The pirate CO was caught in a blind. There was no way to be sure Leo would keep his word and yet, if he tried to do something stupid or desperate, he’d be overthrown by his crew. They knew they’d die, if Leo was lying, yet if they blew up their own ship they’d die in the blast. Leo hoped they didn’t want to die. Most pirates were cowards, but if he’d run into a handful who weren’t …

“We’ll surrender,” the pirate said.

Leo breathed a sigh of relief. The pirates made astonishingly cooperative captives, as Boothroyd led his men through the enemy ship. A handful of their crew looked to have been press-ganged; Leo made a mental note to ensure they were interrogated, then given a better offer than a lifetime on a penal world. The psychologists predicted the prisoners – or, more accurately, their descendents – would evolve into a more reasonable society that could then be welcomed back into the interstellar community, but – so far – no such world had stabilised properly. Leo personally suspected none ever would. The colonists were not ideal stock, lacking any sense of unity as well as proper training. It was a miracle some had survived past the first year.

He keyed his radio, “Bring the captain to me, once the ship is secure,” he said. “And then prepare for the jump to Waterhen.”

“Aye, Captain.”

It was nearly an hour before Boothroyd shoved the pirate captain and his XO into the cargo hold. Leo studied the two thoughtfully, his eyes narrowing as he realised the XO was actually a woman. They both looked tough, their bodies benefiting from illegal levels of genetic engineering … a doctor would need to take a look at them, Leo thought, but from their oversized muscles it seemed likely whoever had done the modifications had been a hack, leaving a bunch of genetic time bombs in their bodies, waiting to explode. They were struggling to keep their faces under control, but Leo could see the fear in their eyes. He might not keep his word … and, even if he did, their crew would likely kill them. Whatever fear they’d had of their commanders was gone.

“I’ll make this quick,” Leo said. “If you assist us, by helping to unlock your navigational databases and cooperating completely by answering all our questions, I will see to it that you two are sent to a different part of the penal colony. If you refuse, I will tell your former crew that you cooperated with us anyway and let them deal with you.”

The woman glared at him. “You think they’ll believe you?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said, with mock-innocence. “Do you think they’ll believe me?”

The captain spoke quickly. “We’ll give you everything we know, if you let us go instead,” he said. “Fuck the crew, just us.”

“Your loyalty warms my heart,” Leo said, sarcastically. It was unsurprisingly, but depressing. “I am prepared to drop you into a safe area …”

“There’s no such thing on a penal world,” the captain said. It was true. Daybreak didn’t care about the fate of anyone dropped onto a penal world, no matter what they’d done. The republic certainly didn’t bother to give them any protection. “That’s the offer. Take it or leave it.”

Leo met his eyes. “You do realise we could force you to talk?”

“Maybe,” the pirate said. “But do you have time?”

Leo shrugged. The pirate could have an implant designed to make interrogation impossible, keyed to explode – or simply overheat – the moment it detected any form of interrogation, from the most advanced brain scanning tech to drugs or old-fashioned torture. Or, like Governor Venture, his genetic alterations could have included a lethal reaction to any sort of truth drugs. Defusing such devices was hit or miss, to the navy’s eternal frustration. It was hard, almost impossible, to find pirate bases because almost everyone who knew where they were had a similar implant. If they refused to give up the information willingly, extracting it would become almost impossible.

“I suppose not,” he said. “Very well. Give us your full cooperation, without lying or withholding information, and we’ll make sure you go to a different world as indentured workers. It’s the best offer I can make you.”

There was a long pause. Leo held the captain’s eyes, daring him to say no. Boothroyd’s report had encompassed the normal horrors of a pirate ship, from press-ganged techs to sex slaves … some of the latter, he’d noted, having been treated in a manner that left them little more than dolls, unable to do more than lie there and take it. There was no way in hell Leo would let the pirates go free. Sending them into indentured servitude was the best offer he’d give them, and frankly he wouldn’t shed a tear if they were murdered the day after they were handed over. They were just too nasty to allow to live.

“Very well,” the captain said. He looked as if he were trying to be prideful, despite losing almost everything. His life would be worthless if the pirates ever realised what he’d done and he knew it. “We’ll do as you want.”

Leo nodded, curtly. “You know what we want,” he said, to Boothroyd. They had discussed it briefly, during the planning sessions. “If they give you any trouble, the deal is off.”

Boothroyd snapped a perfect salute, then favoured the prisoners with a savage grin. “Yes, sir!”

Leo left him to it, walking back to the bridge. The pirate crew had been separated from their prisoners, the latter being held in a separate hold until they could be treated properly. Leo wanted to take them straight to Yangtze, or another world, but they had to act fast. Sooner or later, someone would realise the pirate ship was missing and change all the codes …

And if we manage to get ahead of the curve, Leo told himself, we might just manage to knock over a pirate base.

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

The pirate base was located in a system of little importance, a few hundred asteroids – the remnants of a world long-since shattered – orbiting a dull red star. It was the sort of system that might be visited once or twice a year by navy patrols, if it were closer to the core worlds, but otherwise be left alone, unless a corporation took an interest or an independent settlement effort decided to turn the system into a home that would be firmly off the beaten track. Leo suspected, as more and more data flowed into the captured ship’s display, that the original settlers had been the latter, intent on living their lives countless light years from the war. And then the pirates had arrived …

“Got it,” Yu said, quietly.

Leo studied the younger man thoughtfully. He’d been having the time of his life playing with the mismatched pirate sensor gear, noting all the ways it was better than the pirate crew had a right to expect. It shouldn’t have been possible to blend so many pieces of tech from so many different manufacturers together, not without very real problems, but the pirates had made it work. Leo hoped their maintenance crews were conscripts, people he could press-gang into his service. If they served the pirates willingly …

“Show me,” he ordered.

An icon blinked into life on the display. The pirate base wasn’t located within an asteroid cluster, the drifting rocks impressively close together even though an experienced spacer would have no trouble steering a path between them. Asteroid fields that posed an actual threat to starships, at least starships that weren’t trying to ram an asteroid, were few and far between; this one, he noted coldly, was no exception. It looked as if someone had been mining the asteroids, judging from the pattern, although there was no way to be sure from such a distance. They’d figure it out later, if the plan worked.

A rush of excitement shot through him. Pirates didn’t act in a vacuum. There was always a network of illicit colonies, fences and ties to organisations and worlds that, willingly or not, paid good money for stolen goods. The defence gear they’d told the universe they’d crammed into Donkey would bring a pretty penny, as would nearly anything else the pirates captured and sold to the highest bidder. It wasn’t uncommon for kidnap victims – women, mainly – to wind up married to asteroid miners, who paid the pirates for their wives, or be sold to brothels after the pirates had their fun. Hell, the missing colonist-carriers could easily have been flown to a stage-one colony beyond the Rim and the colonists informed they had a flat choice between working to build their new homeworld or being enslaved. It could take years to map out the entire network, and work out where the illicit bases interacted with more legitimate settlements, but they’d do it. And those who funded the pirates would pay for their crimes.

“It doesn’t look like a half-covert base,” Flower said. “There aren’t many starships coming and going.”

Leo nodded. There were millions – literally – of independent asteroid settlements scattered throughout known space, most without any sort of naval presence and inhabited by people who wouldn’t ask many questions about where the pirate ship had been, particularly if the pirates were smart enough to use a fake IFF code or something that would give the asteroid’s managers a degree of plausible deniability. If the pirate base had been one of those, dealing with it would have posed a tricky little problem. But it looked as though the asteroid was completely off the beaten trail, the kind of settlement with no legitimate operations at all … and no innocents to get caught in the crossfire, if the mission went to tell. Leo wanted the base intact, along with the ships docked within the rock, but if worse came to worst he’d blow the asteroid away and congratulate himself on his success. If nothing else, killing pirates was always a good deed.

Although they will have a bunch of captives on that rock, he reminded himself. If we can recover and rescue them, we should.

“Contact Waterhen,” he ordered, quietly. “We’re going in.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo leaned back in his chair, trying not to show his nerves as the pirate ship glided towards the rock. It was hard to pick out any trace of the pirate base on passive sensors; there were no free-floating defence platforms, radio beacons or anything else that might indicate human settlement. It made him wonder what had happened to any legal miners that had entered the system … he shook his head. If any had, which was unlikely because there were dozens of more profitable systems within the sector, they probably hadn’t lasted very long at all. No one would notice, or care, if a bunch of independent miners went out and never returned.

He keyed his terminal. “Sergeant? Are you ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd said. “Get us in and we’ll do the rest.”

Leo leaned forward as the asteroid loomed over the pirate ship. There were still no signs of human settlement … no, there was a gap within the shadows, a cave mouth expanding rapidly into a structure that looked like a crude internal spacedock. It was incredibly inefficient, Leo noted coldly, but it was quite effective at ensuring no betraying emissions would radiate beyond the rocky shell, revealing the base’s presence to any watching eyes. His mouth watered as he saw the two dozen or so ships crammed into the bay, some clearly being cannibalised and others being prepped for departure. It was a bigger operation than he’d expected, but then … the pirates had been fairly safe, until recently. The local planets didn’t have the resources to hunt them down and Daybreak was a long way away.

No, Leo corrected himself. It was a very long way away. And now we’re here to stay.

“Captain,” Yu said, quietly. “They’re demanding our codes.”

“Transmit them,” Leo ordered. Sweat prickled down his back. He’d interrogated the captives mercilessly, and made sure to bring them with him to ensure their lives were at risk too, but if they’d managed to slip a lie past him … there were no visible weapons within the giant cavern, yet that was meaningless. There were so many pieces of junked equipment piled against the far walls that they could easily conceal starship-grade weapons, or missile launchers, or anything. “And then hold position here.”

He waited, keeping his breath steady. One way or the other, the pirate base was going to die. Waterhen was right behind them, with more than enough firepower to blow the base into atoms … Leo and his crew would die, if the pirates left them alive long enough for them to be killed by friendly fire, but at least the pirate base would be dead. It would put one hell of a crimp in their operations …

“We’re cleared to dock,” Yu reported. “Sir?”

“Take us in,” Leo ordered, keying his communicator. “Sergeant, deploy the moment we dock.”

“Aye, sir,” Boothroyd said. “We’re ready.”

Leo counted down the last few seconds as the pirate ship docked. The gravity field flickered oddly, a faint sense of sickening unease rushing through him as the base’s gravity field sought to mesh with the shipboard field. Proof, if Leo needed it, that the pirates weren’t that concerned about basic maintenance. The pirate ship he’d captured made Waterhen – before his arrival – look like a perfectly-maintained ship, so perfect the captain could be smug in front of the other captains. Leo’s lips twitched at the mental image, then tightened. The last seconds were ticking away …

A dull thump echoed through the ship. “Sir,” Yu said. “The assault force has deployed.”

“Ramp up the targeting sensors,” Leo ordered. “And signal Waterhen to go live.”

He keyed his console, broadcasting on every frequency. “This is the Daybreak Navy,” he snapped. “You are under our guns. There is no escape. If you bring up your weapons and active sensors, or attempt to fly out into open space, we will blow you away. If you surrender now, I am prepared to commute your death sentences to lifetime imprisonment instead. There will be no second chances. Surrender now and live, or fight and die.”

The display altered, sharply. Waterhen had deployed a dozen decoy drones and they’d all gone live, suggesting an entire fleet was surrounding the pirate base. Leo scowled as he studied the display. He knew the fleet didn’t exist, which helped, but there were still too many signs suggesting the fleet was nothing more than sensor ghosts and illusions. Waterhen wasn’t a modern ship, assigned to the core worlds; she hadn’t been allowed to requisition any truly modern drones, the kind of decoys that would fool the pirate sensors effortlessly. If the pirates thought about what they were seeing …

He told himself it didn’t matter. His targeting sensors were sweeping the ships inside the spacedock, a clear warning he’d open fire if they gave him even the slightest excuse. There was a real destroyer outside too … the pirates might be able to give Waterhen a real fight, if they had a chance to get their ships into open space, but neither Leo nor Lieutenant Halloran had any intention of letting them. Leo wanted the base intact, yet … he’d blow it away if there was no other choice. He eyed the live feed as Boothroyd led his team through the enemy base, throwing stun and gas grenades around as if they were going out of fashion. The pirates, thankfully, hadn’t bothered to prepare for an internal assault. A little forethought could have stalled the assault team for quite some time, perhaps forever.

But they couldn’t keep the base intact if the navy wanted it gone, Leo thought. Why bother with internal defences when we could just nuke the place from a safe distance?

“Captain, some of the ships are trying to surrender,” Yu reported. “Your orders?”

“Tell the crews to power their ships down completely, then disembark,” Leo ordered. He didn’t have the manpower to occupy the entire base, not in a hurry. “We’ll pick them up shortly.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo leaned forward. “Can you locate the colonist-carriers?”

“No, sir,” Yu said. “The largest ship on my scanners is an old bulk freighter.”

“Shit.” Leo hadn’t counted on finding the colonist-carriers on the pirate base, but they would have come in handy. It wasn’t going to be easy to hold hundreds of prisoners, let alone transport them to their new home. “Keep looking …”

He forced himself to watch the live feed as Boothroyd led his team into the core of the pirate settlement, blowing through hatches and crashing into enemy territory before they could organise more than sporadic resistance. A handful of armed men tried to stop them, only to be stunned … they’d be secured later, Leo noted, once the assault force had taken control and started to clear up the mess. The makeshift drones were flying free, distributing sleepy gas as they flew through the corridors; a couple were shot down, the gas continuing to spread regardless. A number of pirates were smart enough to don suits and run, but they had nowhere to go. Leo breathed a sigh of relief as Boothroyd stormed the control centre, overrunning the remaining defenders and directing a hacker to take control of the asteroid.

“Sir, the control centre is in our hands,” Boothroyd reported. “I’m shutting down the internal network now.”

Leo nodded. It would be difficult, under normal circumstances, to ensure there were no unpleasant surprises waiting within the enemy datanet, and damn near impossible given how many different systems had been worked into the pirate net. Better to shut everything down, then bring it back up piece by piece, after the base had been searched and all enemy personal – willing or not – taken into custody. There was no immediate danger from shutting down the life support system. The asteroid was big enough that it would take some time for the air to turn foul, then lethal.

“Captain, signal from Waterhen,” Yu said. “A pirate ship is detaching from the rear of the base.”

“Shoot her down,” Leo snapped. A smart captain would have covertly charged his FTL drive, preparing to jump the moment he was clear of the rock. Leo didn’t want to let anyone escape, not if it could be avoided. There would be a handful of ships out on raiding missions, if he was any judge, and they’d come back to the base – fat and happy – if they didn’t know the base had been captured. “Now!”

“Aye, sir,” Yu said. There was a long pause, just long enough for Leo to wonder if they’d mistimed it. The pirate captain would be foolish to jump so close to the base, but if the only other option was getting blown away … he might see no choice. He might also see a squadron of illusionary naval warships bearing down on him. “Sir, the enemy ship has been destroyed.”

Leo smiled, tiredly. “Sweep the exterior of the rock for any other surprises,” he ordered, curtly. The pirate ship had been a surprise, and they hadn’t seen her because they hadn’t dared use active sensors, but it wouldn’t happen again. “And then order Waterhen to hold position.”

He sat back in his chair, watching grimly as the assault team fanned through the remainder of the pirate base. There were nearly eight hundred inhabitants, from people who were very definitely pirates, and fences, to enslaved techs and prostitutes. The latter, at least, were easy to identify. Some had been chained to their beds, others bore the marks of brutal mistreatment … Leo’s stomach churned as he realised just how badly some of the poor woman had been mistreated. He’d thought himself inured to horror, to man’s inhumanity to man, but this … it was hard, very hard, to keep from throwing up as he saw a handful of girls who were clearly underage. He’d known the pirates cared nothing for common decency, and that they knew they’d be executed when – if – they were captured, yet …

I shouldn’t have offered to accept surrenders, he thought, darkly. The bastards need to be killed.

He grimaced, warring with himself. It would be easy to go back on his word, to order the pirates thrown into space or simply shot. It would be easy … and yet, word would get out and the pirates would know, of course they would know, that there was no point in trying to surrender. Leo ground his teeth in fury. He had taken an immense risk in making the offer – the navy’s policy on dealing with piracy was that all pirates were to be executed, no exceptions – and it would come back to bite him. His enemies wouldn’t hesitate to suggest he’d made a dreadful mistake, and disobeyed orders into the bargain. It made sense, from a tactical point of view, but someone looking at it from hundreds of light years away might come to a very different conclusion.

“Damn it,” he muttered. He knew he had to keep his word. Daybreak naval officers were supposed to keep their word, to embody the rigorous honour code that drove their society. If you gave your word, and he had, he had to keep it. Loophole abuse was not tolerated. It was the mark of an man who could not be trusted, or relied upon. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

He sighed, inwardly. The pirates would not have a comfortable life, after they were transferred to Ingalls. They’d spend the rest of their existence working in the mines. No doubt some of the worst would suffer accidents, or simply cross the line and get executed by their overseers. It was vanishingly unlikely they’d ever have a chance to menace the universe again. And yet …

His intercom bleeped. “Sir, we have started securing the enemy vessels,” Boothroyd reported, shortly. “One of the freighters looks large enough to take the prisoners, at least until we can start sorting them.”

“Do it,” Leo said. The pirates would have to be interrogated, to see who’d been forced to work for them. “Do you think you cleared the entire rock, and got all the pirates?”

“It’s tricky to say,” Boothroyd said. “We swept all the compartments, but someone could easily be hidden in the tubes – knocked out by the gas – or trying to find a way to get off the rock before it’s too late. We did confirm the ships are all powered down, so I doubt they can escape.”

“Unless there’s another base on the other side of the asteroid cluster,” Leo mused. It was quite possible for an asteroid miner to survive alone for months, if not years, if he had the right equipment. A pirate could do the same. It wouldn’t be a pleasant life, and the odds of getting rescued would be slight, but it might be better than being executed. “And that base may be impossible to find.”

“If it exists at all,” Boothroyd pointed out. It was clear he didn’t believe there was a second enemy base. “The more bases within the system, the greater the chance of being spotted.”

Leo nodded, slowly. It wasn't impossible that the pirates had hidden a starship a few million miles away, so completely powered down that there would be no way to tell, short of visual contact, that the ship wasn’t just another piece of space junk. If a pirate had the wit to get a spacesuit and jet away from the rock, before it was too late …

“We’ll see,” he said. Some things just had to be left to chance. “For the moment, deal with the prisoners. Get the real pirates separated from the rest” – his smile widened, just for a second – “and then we’ll see what use we can make of this base.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“I spent half my shore leave in red light districts,” Boothroyd said, as they surveyed the remnants of the pirate base. “They catered for spacers and soldiers on leave, with tastes from the unsubtle to the gross … really gross. And there was nothing – nothing – like this.”

Leo nodded, feeling sick. The pirate base looked like a red light district, right down to the brothels offering cheap sex and VR parlours, but there was absolutely no sense there were any legal restrictions at all. A red light district, even on the most liberal worlds, had some laws; the pirates had none. They offered sex with slaves, some underage; they offered VR fantasies that were illegal almost everywhere; they offered pleasure drugs that were flatly forbidden right across the known galaxy, including some so addictive that one dose was enough to make a victim dependent for life, at least unless they were wealthy enough to afford some very expensive treatment. The pirates had produced some of the most dangerous drugs, in hyper-concentrated form, on the base … the hell of it, he reflected grimly, was that he couldn’t simply shut the production lines down. They’d made sure to addict most of their slaves, just to ensure they couldn’t escape, and denying them their daily dose would be a death sentence.

“I believe you,” he said. He hadn’t seen many red light districts – the only one he’d visited regularly had been near the Academy, and he’d been told it was tame compared to others – but Boothroyd’s career had taken him right across the known galaxy. “What are we going to do with it?”

“Work our way through the client lists, and try to see how many we can catch,” Boothroyd said. “We should be able to catch a bunch of them, given time.”

Leo nodded, then looked at Flower. “What did you find?”

“We captured eight hundred and seventy people,” Flower said. If she was troubled by the pirate base, and the horrors inflicted on its slaves, she didn’t show it. “Two hundred and thirty appear to be pirates, from captains to crewmen, or their supporting staff. Thirty-seven appear to have run the base, the remainder were fences or” she grimaced, just for a second – “content creators.”

Leo felt sick. It wasn’t enough to treat their prisoners like shit, to drug them with something that would keep them begging for the next dose. No, the pirates had actually recorded their suffering and used it to produce sickening VR fantasies, the kind so illegal that possessing them led to a lifetime in jail … if the owner had a good lawyer. Slavery wasn’t supposed to be economical, at least outside a stage-one colony world, but he had to admit the pirates had made the practice pay. It was so repulsively horrid that his earlier thoughts came back to mock him. No one would say a word if he put the bastards into space. He wanted to believe it. He really did.

“The remainder appear to have been slaves,” Flower continued. “Two hundred were sex slaves, the rest engineers and maintenance staff. Most claim to have been taken off captured starships, and our records back up that claim … for the few for which we do have records. The slaves were quite happy to point out a couple of pirates pretending to be slaves, so I think it’s fairly safe to say the remainder really were.”

“And they’re all addicts,” Leo said. “Crap.”

“Yes, sir,” Flower said.

Leo scowled. The Academy did not tolerate drug addicts. If you were so weak that you became dependent on a drug, the instructors had said, you were too weak to become a naval officer. It was grounds for a dishonourable discharge, if not a charge of rendering yourself unfit for duty. There were rumours of some cadets being offered a second chance, if they could muster the willpower to break the addiction from within, but he’d never heard them confirmed. Frankly, he rather doubted them. The Academy was never short of prospective cadets …

The poor bastards didn’t have a choice, he reminded himself. And you know it.

He looked at Flower. “Did you make them the offer?”

“Most accepted,” Flower told him. “Only twenty-three didn’t, all of whom want to go home.”

“We can ship them back, after the interrogations are over,” Leo said. “The rest …”

He smiled, coldly. The navy’s rules were clear. It was a criminal offence to aid and abet pirate operations, even if the pirates put a gun to your head or threatened to rape your young daughter if you didn’t. Leo was starting to suspect the laws were far too inflexible, but he was too junior to have any hope of convincing the navy to change the rules. Instead, he’d sentence the pirate prisoners to community service, helping to get the pirate base up and running as a formal naval base. It wasn’t ideal, but it was impossible to do anything through Yangtze without it being noted and logged. And the captured ships would give him some much needed firepower.

“They’ve agreed to work for us,” Flower said. Her eyes narrowed. “That said, there’s a couple of oddities.”

Leo eyed her. “What sort of oddities?”

“I assumed we’d be able to pick up the kidnapped techs,” Flower said. “The ship that attacked Morse might have brought them here, but there’s no trace of them. Or the techs from the colonist-carriers. It’s possible they were sold to another colony, but … so far, we haven’t been able to uncover anything pointing in their direction.”

“Odd,” Leo agreed. The pirates wouldn’t have any use for the techs, certainly not all of them. “Can you add it to the interrogation questions?”

“I have,” Flower said. “So far, nothing.”

“There’s no reason to assume this is the only pirate base,” Boothroyd pointed out. “The pirates could easily have taken their prize elsewhere.”

Leo wasn’t so sure. Colonist-carriers were very recognisable ships. They would stand out, if they were brought to a pirate base, and someone would have noticed. The ships might have been destroyed, after they’d unloaded their human cargo, or … or what? And where were the missing techs?

He rubbed his forehead. “And the other oddity?”

“Their accounting is downright criminal,” Flower said, essaying a black joke. “Their records are even worse. I have been unable to determine how the pirates got the funding to get started, or even how they were able to locate and seize this base. I’m surprised they managed to get so many ships into service, let alone pose such a threat …”

Leo nodded, slowly. It wasn’t that expensive to keep a civilian ship operating, but warships – even outdated hulks – were a great deal more difficult to keep in service. The pirates cut corners wherever possible – the ship they’d captured had been one catastrophic failure short of absolute disaster – but there were limits, even for the best engineers in the known galaxy. It was possible the pirates had stolen their ships, or purchased them at bargain rates, yet … did they manage to steal enough, he asked himself, to fund their operations?

It wasn’t impossible, he conceded. There was always someone willing to buy, if the price was right, without asking any awkward questions. Even a stage-one colony could scrape up quite a bit of cash, if the need was there. And yet … it bugged him.

“There might be someone behind the scenes,” Boothroyd said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Maybe closer to the core,” Flower countered. “Out here?”

“We’ll keep working on it,” Leo said. “The fences will be quite informative before we send them onwards.”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd agreed.

They walked on, passing barracks that looked like death chambers and workshops that looked messy and unreliable, tools and gear from a dozen different manufacturers – and eras – scattered over the desks. Leo knew the former prisoners would have their work cut out for them, turning the pirate base and the captured ships into something the navy could use, but … they were better than nothing. The more ships they had patrolling the jumplines, the more pirates they could kill – or deter. Given time, they might even be able to keep the sector worlds from building and deploying their own navies. Daybreak would not approve.

He looked at Flower. “Do we know where they actually found this base?”

“According to the staff, the base was created by an independent asteroid mining company and then abandoned, when the economic crash washed over the sector,” Flower said. “The miners never returned, leaving the base empty until the pirates took it for themselves. Quite how they found it I don’t know; one of the miners could have sold the coordinates for a song, or they might have located an old record somewhere and decided to check it out.”

Leo frowned. It wasn’t an uncommon story. The war had led to thousands upon thousands of settlements, mining camps and other deep space installations being abandoned and left to drift in interstellar space until the end of time. Some had been reopened, as Daybreak drew the human race back together; others hadn’t been so much as touched for decades, since they’d been evacuated. And yet, it was odd. The sector was too underdeveloped for a hidden mining camp to make economic sense.

He looked up. “When did this happen?”

“A decade ago,” Flower said. “That would have been shortly after the first survey ships made contact with the sector, just before annexation.”

“Interesting timing,” Leo mused. “Did anyone on Yangtze or any of the other major worlds know about the mining camp?”

“If they did, it was never included in the charts they supplied us,” Flower said. “Officially, this system was eyeballed a year or two after the survey, then deemed useless and largely left alone.”

“Officially,” Leo repeated. Had someone on Yangtze made the file disappear? Had the file ever existed at all? There was no way to be sure. “We’ll look into it when we get back to Yangtze.”

He put the thought aside over the next few days, as they worked their way through the pirates and tried to put as many ships as possible back into space. It wasn’t easy. The pirates might have been willing to take insane risks, by naval standards, and the press-ganged techs had done the bare minimum, but there were limits. Leo had hoped for a large squadron and it looked as if he was going to get five or six ships at most, nothing larger than a frigate. They’d probably be effective against pirates, but anything else wouldn’t be even remotely intimidated. And manning the ships was going to be a real problem.

“We can’t trust manpower from this sector,” he complained to Flower, “and there’s no way we can convince the navy to send us more crew.”

“You can trust the former prisoners,” Flower reminded him. “And they are very eager to get to grips with the rest of the pirates.”

Leo had his doubts. The former prisoners wanted revenge, and he could hardly blame them, but they were also drug addicts. They couldn’t be trusted completely, not least because they tended to fall into withdrawal at odd – and unpredictable – moments. There was no way any experienced naval officer would be comfortable putting them in command of a starship, and yet he had no choice. He had no one else. Perhaps it would be better to try to recruit on Yangtze, despite the risks. They might be able to vet the recruits through the local authorities.

Except someone might well have murdered Governor Venture, Leo thought, coldly. Who?

He had been careful to steer the captured ships well clear of the pirate base before he put them through their paces, a policy that proved its wisdom two days later when another pirate ship turned up, fat and happy, and waltzed right into a trap. Leo’s crew took her without a fight, freeing two dozen slaves and new captives, and herding the prisoners into the cells for later interrogation. The pirate crew were quite happy to confess to everything, and cooperate as much as possible, in exchange for their lives. Leo wasn’t surprised. They’d already proven themselves cowards.

“You may find this of interest,” Flower said. “The bastards were raiding Yellowstone, in tandem with another ship.”

Leo studied the report thoughtfully. Yellowstone was a de facto stage-one colony world that should have climbed the ladder by now … and would have, if the sector’s sudden isolation from the rest of the galaxy hadn’t destroyed the local economy. The report noted that Yellowstone had very little modern tech, certainly nothing capable of convincing a pirate ship she’d get a bloody nose if she tried to press the issue. The locals were helpless before anyone who held the high orbitals, and the pirates had had no trouble ordering them to pay tribute – or else.

“One ship returned, with a hold of stolen goods,” Flower said. “The other will be collecting the second set of goods shortly.”

“Bastards.” Leo stared down at the report, his mind racing. Yellowstone was five days away, maybe three if they pushed it. “If we can get there in time …”

He keyed his terminal, bringing up the starchart. It was possible that all they’d have to do was wait, to let the pirates walk back into the captured base … and straight into his waiting arms. But there was no guarantee the pirates would come back to this base, and – after what had happened to Morse – no guarantee they’d take their tribute and leave the rest of the planet unmolested. Leo knew there was no point in thinking about it. He had to get to Yellowstone as quickly as possible, to catch the pirates in the act.

His eyes narrowed, as he keyed his communicator. “Plot a course to Yellowstone,” he ordered. “I want to be there as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo leaned back in his chair and forced himself to think. He needed to leave most of the troops on the pirate base, even though it was unlikely the prisoners could cause any trouble … let alone escape. They didn’t have time to prepare the newcomers to assist them, not without delaying their departure until it would be far too late to capture the enemy ship. Or destroy it.

“Sergeant, assign someone to remain here, in command,” Leo ordered, briefly running through the situation. He would have preferred to leave Boothroyd himself, but he needed the older man to recruit more troopers when they returned to Yangtze. “We’ll depart in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd said. “How many troopers do you want to pull off the base?”

Leo cursed under his breath. In theory, he could operate Waterhen with five crewmen, assuming nothing went wrong. In practice … something would go wrong, something he’d need more crew to handle, and he’d be in deep shit if he didn’t have those crewmen.

“Leave eight behind, with their equipment,” he said. Their gear was outdated, but it should be enough to deal with unarmed and unarmoured prisoners. “We’ll recall the rest of the crew.”

Good thing we weren’t offering any shore leave here, his thoughts added, as a low hum echoed through the ship. That would have really messed things up.

“Make sure you copy all the pirate databases to a secure datacore,” Leo added, to Flower. “If there’s anything there we can use, I want to know it.”

Flower nodded, although she didn’t look convinced there was anything. Leo suspected she was right – the pirates hadn’t kept very good records, where they’d bothered to keep them at all – but he was going to be in quite enough trouble when the navy heard he’d sentenced a bunch of pirates to a lifetime as indentured workers, rather than simply executing the lot of them. It had served a tactical purpose, but … was it enough? Leo wondered just what his patron would make of it, if he’d commend Leo for his tactical skill or if he’d see him as an embarrassment best kept hundreds of light years away. It was impossible to know what was happening on Daybreak, if his enemies were undermining his position with his patron or if they’d decided they could safely forget about him. And if he gave them a clear shot at his career …

Another one? Leo shook his head, wondering how he could have been so foolish. It would have been so much easier, and safer, to meet Fleur in a love hotel. You’re damn lucky you got a chance to have a command of your own so quickly, even if they thought they were getting rid of you.

His intercom bleeped. “Captain, that’s the last of the crew returned to the ship,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “Lieutenant Hawke has assumed command of the pirate base.”

“Naval base,” Leo corrected. If they were lucky, the pirate ships would just keep coming … and being captured. “I’m on my way.”

He allowed himself a smile as he stood, brushed down his uniform, and headed to the bridge. The mission had worked better than he’d dared hope, letting them capture a pirate base and repurpose it – and the ships – for naval use. And by the time the pirates realised the base was in naval hands, it would be too late. They’d find it much harder to trust any other bases, after they worked out what he’d done. Leo would see to it that rumours were spread far and wide, suggesting all the bases were in naval hands.

“All stations report ready, Captain,” Lieutenant Halloran said. Leo made a mental note to recommend him for promotion, as soon as possible. He’d done very well, keeping command of Waterhen while Leo took the captured ship into the pirate base personally. “We are clear to jump.”

Leo nodded. “Helm, set course for Yellowstone,” he ordered. “And jump!”

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Yellowstone could have passed for Daybreak, or Earth, or Yangtze, or any of a thousand other worlds that the human race had settled over the past few centuries, save for a single detail. There were no satellites in orbit, not even the standard planetary communications relay networks that were normally established before settlement could begin; the only trace of any sort of modern technology, as far as Waterhen could see, was a radio transmitter positioned near the single city. Yellowstone wasn’t a very highly-populated world, Leo noted; the majority of the population was spread out, rather than being concentrated into giant cities. He couldn’t help thinking it looked ideal, if one didn’t mind a low-tech environment. There certainly didn’t seem to be anything more advanced than a handful of steam trains moving on the surface … primitive and slow, yet surprisingly charming.

“Raise the surface,” Leo ordered. It was unlikely the locals had the slightest idea they were there, but … if they’d already been raided once, and they did have some way of keeping an eye on the high orbitals, they’d panic when they spotted Waterhen. “And ask for permission to land.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

“No enemy contacts detected,” Abigail added. “The system appears to be empty.”

“Good.” Leo felt oddly uneasy as he surveyed the display. The system would be a valuable prize, over the next century or two, but right now it was incredibly vulnerable. The pirates could sit in the high orbitals and drop rocks until the locals gave up, if they didn’t simply land on a distant farm and tear it to pieces, withdrawing well before anyone could react to their arrival. “Keep everything stepped down as much as possible. I don’t want the pirates to know we’re here.”

“The planetary government is responding, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “They’re inviting you to land.”

“Tell them we’ll be down shortly,” Leo said. “You have the bridge.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo hurried down to the shuttle port, nodding politely to Flower as she joined him. There was no time to change into his dress uniform. They’d shaved as much time off the journey as they could, but there was still only a few hours – at most – before the pirate ship returned to the system. Leo knew better than to expect them to be on time – pirates weren’t known for being punctual – yet he needed as much time as possible to prepare a suitable reception. He slipped into the pilot’s seat, took the controls, and guided the shuttlecraft into the planet’s atmosphere. There was no ATC, and no proper spaceport; he thought, for a horrible moment, he’d made a terrible mistake before realising he was being steered towards a landing field that might be good for primitive aircraft, but dangerously fragile for modern shuttlecraft and light freighters. The city beyond was smaller than he’d expected, nothing more than a small town compared to Daybreak City. He couldn’t help thinking, as he flew over a river network, that Yellowstone was never going to be anything more than a stage-one world. And someone else was going to take the rest of the system for themselves.

He guided the shuttle down to the landing field and grimaced. There had been a building at the far edge of the grassy field, now nothing more than burnt-out rubble. He guessed the pirates had blown it away as a show of power, surprisingly restrained considering what they’d done to Morse. The other hangars would have made excellent targets. But then, there was nothing to be gained by slaughtering everyone on Yellowstone. They couldn’t keep demanding tribute if there was no one to provide it.

The shuttle hatch opened. The warm air flooded into the craft. Leo took a long breath, memories of his first time with Gayle washing through his mind as he breathed in the scent of nature, so different from Daybreak or even Yangtze City. He told himself to forget it as he stepped outside, noting the two visitors waiting for him. One was old enough to be his father, wearing maroon robes with a single gold chain hanging around his neck; the other was the same age as himself, his face grim and cold. Leo felt a twinge of guilt, even before either culd speak. The navy was meant to protect worlds like Yellowstone, and the navy hadn’t so much as bothered to do anything to defend the planet from cowards in starships. He told himself, firmly, that that was about to change.

“I’m Mayor Thompson,” the older man said. There was a thin edge of hostility in his tone, but he kept his voice calm. “What can we do for you?”

Leo met his eyes. “We understand the pirates demanded tribute from you,” he said. “What exactly do they want?”

“The first ship wanted food and drink,” Mayor Thompson said. Leo guessed he was the closest thing Yellowstone had to a planetary head of state. “The second wants women.”

“Ten women, to be precise,” the second man snapped. “And if we don’t hand them over …”

He glared at Leo. “Where were you?”

“We’re here now,” Leo said. It was hard not to feel a little shame. Daybreak had annexed the sector, and Yellowstone was supposed to follow interstellar laws even if the planet’s population didn’t know what they were, but – so far – it had offered little in return, not even protection. “And we will deal with those pirates.”

“Yeah,” the second man said. The helpless rage in his voice burned. “And what happens when you go away?”

“Fritz, enough,” Mayor Thompson said.

“It’s understandable,” Leo said. He had grown up in a rough area, where his mother had often had to haggle with landlords and other shitheads, who seemed to delight in raising and lowering prices to ensure the poor stayed poor. As a child, he’d promised himself he’d kill the wretched landlord and wondered why older men didn’t rid themselves of the parasite; as an adult, he’d come to understand it, and hate it. “But we will deal with the pirates.”

He sighed, inwardly. Fritz had a point. What would it profit Yellowstone to see Waterhen blow a pirate ship out of space, when the next pirate ship might be far more brutal or even strike the planet without warning, just to avenge its comrade? It was the same problem he’d known people face back home, although Daybreak was generally better at ensuring long-term thugs, having finally run afoul of the law, never got to go home and resume making lives miserable. But here …

“Tell us what happened,” he said. “And let us deal with the pirates.”

“They want ten women, assembled here, and any techs we might happen to have,” Mayor Thompson said. “Or else they’ll land and take them. I had to ask for volunteers.”

“And my sister volunteered,” Fritz said. “Doesn’t she know what they’ll do to her?”

Leo felt a stab of pity, and rage. “They’ll land the shuttle here and take them?”

“Yes,” the Mayor said. “That’s what they did before.”

“I see.” Leo had considered trying to seize the pirate shuttle and flying it to the mothership, but that wasn't likely to work. It depended on just how alert the pirate crew actually was and he dared not assume they wouldn’t be alert. “If we can …”

Flower caught his arm. “Can I have a word?”

Leo nodded, silently sending his apologies to the two men as Flower led him back to the shuttle. Her face was grim, but resolved. “I have an idea,” she said. “Let me go as one of the tribute girls.”

“What?” Leo stared at her. “Are you mad?”

“No.” Flower looked back at him evenly. “We need to disable that ship from the inside and I can do it.”

Leo shook his head in disbelief. “This isn’t a bloody movie with a friendly scriptwriter,” he pointed out, sharply. “Did your training really include daring commando raids?”

“You might be surprised,” Flower said. “Dealing with difficult clients was part of the job, so was a degree of industrial espionage and …”

“That’s insane.” Leo had heard stories, but he’d always thought they were crazy nonsense, absurd rumours spread to hide the truth behind a tissue of lies. “Do you really think you can do it?”

He met her eyes. “We could also stay in orbit, in stealth mode, then blow the pirates away when they arrive.”

“And how could you be sure of capturing or destroying their vessel?” Flower looked back at him, evenly. “If they get away, they’ll return and Yellowstone will pay the price.”

Leo cursed. She had a point. No matter how he worked the problem, there was no guarantee he’d be able to capture or destroy the pirate ship. If the crew came in fat and happy, they’d have no trouble taking the vessel intact, but if they took even the slightest precautions … no, there was no guarantee of anything. And if the enemy ship got away …

He looked at her, wondering just when he’d come to care for her. It wasn’t as if they were lovers – they weren’t – but … they were good friends, he thought, although it was tricky to know if she’d ever shown him her real face. If she thought she could pull it off … either she was insane, or she had a lot more up her sleeve than she’d ever showed him.

“What are you?”

“I haven’t had a chance to use much of my training since I went to work for Captain Archibald,” Flower said. “Let me have this.”

Leo sighed. “As long as you understand the risks,” he said. He felt as if he were sending her to her death. If he hadn’t known her for so long, he’d have squashed the idea immediately. “Grab your stuff. I’ll speak to the mayor.”

He walked back outside, feeling cold despite the heat. “We’re going to be adding a special agent to the tribute,” he said. “She’ll deal with the pirates once she’s in orbit.”

Fritz glowered. “And when they work out we were involved?”

Leo bit down the response that came to mind. It hurt to feel helpless, it hurt to let someone push you around … it gnawed at your very soul to have someone force you to do something and to do it, because they’d do worse – much worse – if you refused. He understood Fritz far better than he wanted to, if only because he knew what it was like to face overwhelming force. It was one thing to say he would rather die than bend the knee, but quite another to watch helplessly as wives, sisters and daughters were condemned to a fate worse than death …

And it was all too easy to lash out at the person trying to help you, with his condescension born of a complete lack of understanding of your helplessness.

“I can’t promise miracles,” he said. “I do know that we have already put a crimp in pirate operations, and we will do more damage, over the weeks and months to come. We’ll have more ships soon, allowing us to start patrolling the jumplines and make life dangerous for any prowling pirate ship. I do understand that there is a risk to you, and your world, and no matter what we do that risk cannot be neutralised completely. But …”

He took a breath. “I also know that the only other option is to keep giving the pirates the tribute they demand. They will come back, again. And again. And again. You will never be free of them, once they know they can force you to give them whatever they demand without a fight. They think you are helpless … but we can take them out. You can gamble or you can get used to spending the rest of your lives as their slaves.”

Mayor Thompson sighed. “You can do it,” he said. “And I hope to hell it works. And …”

Leo’s communicator bleeped. “Sir, we just detected a unknown ship jumping into the system,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “She’s some distance from the high orbitals, coming in slowly. I think she’s recycling her drive.”

Leo swore under his breath, his mind racing. There wasn’t time for him to get back to Waterhen. The destroyer could be quite astonishingly stealthy, at least assuming she didn’t face modern sensors, but the shuttle would stand out a mile against Yellowstone. The planet had no energy signature that might hide the craft. He briefly considered trying an ambush, ordering Lieutenant Halloran to sneak into engagement range and blast the enemy vessel without warning, but the ship was out of position. If he abandoned the whole mission …

“Help me get the shuttle under cover,” he snapped. They should have enough time to hide the shuttle in the nearest hangar. “They want techs? I’ll give them a tech.”

“Bad timing,” Flower said, as he hurried back into the shuttle and steered her into the hangar. The craft shook violently on the grass … Leo hoped, prayed, the pirates weren’t observant enough to notice the tracks. The handful of aircraft within sight wouldn’t have been out of place on pre-spaceflight Earth, none heavy enough to do more than leave tiny marks on the ground. “Do you want to stay behind?”

Leo shook his head. The idea of sending her alone had been galling. If he’d realised the pirates were coming so quickly, he’d have ordered a couple of Boothroyd’s troopers to join them … although he supposed that would have been risky too. Yellowstone was unlikely to have any techs, certainly not any trained in modern engineering … some space colonies were surprisingly primitive, Leo knew, but there were limits. They needed a cover story and they needed one fast.

His communicator bleeped. “They’ll be in orbit in two minutes,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “Good luck, sir.”

“Stand ready,” Leo said. He’d intended to be in command himself, but Lieutenant Halloran had proved he could handle it, “See you on the flip side.”

He changed quickly, into an unmarked shipsuit, and then hurried back out to join Fritz and Mayor Thompson. “If they ask, tell them I got dropped off by a passing freighter three days ago,” he said. “And tell them I spent some time in the stocks for bad behaviour.”

Mayor Thompson gave him an odd look. “We don’t have stocks.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Leo said. It wasn’t uncommon for pirates to recruit their crews from spacers who couldn’t get any other jobs, after their former captains blacklisted them … and if he looked like a promising candidate, it was possible the pirates wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He hefted an emergency knapsack … naval issue, but hardly uncommon amongst merchant spacers. The design was old enough to date back to the first days of FTL exploration. The contents were typical … and they would be very useful, if the pirates let him keep it. “Just try and hint you want to get rid of me.”

Fritz laughed, humourlessly. “We do.”

He turned and hurried away. Leo watched him, wondering if he’d read the man right. Fritz might convince himself Leo was doing the right thing, or he might betray Leo out of fear of what the pirates would do to his world if they caught Leo in the act. There was no time to do anything more than hope now, Leo told himself. If he’d had time, he would have called down more men to pose as techs …

“They’re coming,” Fritz said, returning. “They want the girls ready now.”

“Get them ready,” Leo ordered. “And caution them to say nothing about either of us.”

Flower shot him an amused glance. “Wasn’t it you who said this scheme was insane?”

Leo scowled, as the rest of the girls joined them. It was insane, a stark breach of the convention the captain did not leave his ship and put himself in serious danger. His superiors were going to have problems deciding if they wanted to give him a medal, or court-martial him, or both … he felt oddly better about being in danger himself, rather than letting Flower go alone. At least they’d both be in deep shit if the pirates were more alert than usual …

He looked up as he heard a shuttle roaring across the sky, the pilot bringing her in to land with astonishing recklessness. The ground heaved as the craft touched down, the hatches opening a second later to reveal four men in blood-red uniforms. They were carrying enough weapons to fight a small war … one, Leo noted coldly, was a cyborg. His right arm had been replaced by an implanted gun, a design that had been common decades ago but withdrawn from service when the problems made themselves apparent. Leo hadn’t met such an openly augmented person in his entire career.

The pirate eyed him nastily. “And who the devil are you?”

“Crewman Third Class Lenard Gunderson,” Leo said. It was hard to hide the Daybreak in his accent, but that was hardly unusual in the sector. “My captain ditched me here after catching me in bed with his wife. The bastard took my ID too.”

The pirate looked him up and down, then reached out and took Leo’s knapsack. Leo opened his mouth to object – it was a serious breach of spacer etiquette to search a man’s private bag without permission – and then shut it again as two pirates levelled their guns at him. The cyborg – Leo guessed he was the leader – rifled through the bag, then slung it over his shoulder. Leo suspected he wouldn’t be allowed to reclaim it until after the pirate captain had had a good look at him.

“Onto the shuttle,” he said. “If you cause any trouble, we’ll put you out the airlock.”

Leo bowed his head. “Yes, sir.”

“What nice manners,” the pirate said. He laughed, as if he’d just told a joke. “And now, the girls.”

Leo shuddered. The die was firmly cast.

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The interior of the shuttle was cramped, smelly, and unpleasant.

Leo sat on his seat and forced himself to study the pirates coldly, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. The cyborg was probably the most dangerous threat, although it was hard to be certain. The original set of enhanced humanoids – implanted muscles, weapons, and tactical computers – had been effective, but they’d also put such immense strain on the cyborg’s body that they’d rarely lasted long even if they weren’t killed in combat. Leo was surprised to see even one still alive; he guessed, grimly, that the pirates had retained the techniques to make their raiders more formidable. He’d heard stories of back-alley doctors performing forbidden medical procedures … why not cyborg implantation? It wasn’t as if the tech was so advanced it could only be produced in a specialised fabber.

The other three pirates looked unaugmented, although Leo knew better than to take it for granted. They moved like swaggering fools, which could imply they didn’t know what they were doing or they did and they were pretending to be overconfident to convince their enemies they were. Leo’s first unarmed combat tutor had looked harmless and yet he’d been able to kick Leo’s ass; his second had been loud and boastful, but he’d been just as dangerous when push came to shove. Leo told himself not to take anything for granted, as the shuttle rose out of the atmosphere. The girls had been shoved against the rear bulkhead and told to stay there, as the pirates circled around Flower like sharks scenting blood. It was lucky, part of Leo’s mind reflected, that the cockpit was isolated from the rest of the craft. If the pilot was watching the show, the flight would probably come to an unfortunate end when the shuttle rammed her mothership …

He kept his face blank with an effort, mentally cursing himself for taking the risk. He knew he couldn’t have let Flower go alone, and yet there was also a very good chance both of them would wind up dead. Flower had been confident and yet … Leo forced himself to focus, assessing their chances. They had to act fast. There would be no second chance.

Flower stood in the centre of the compartment, radiating sexuality in a manner that made it hard, almost impossible, to keep his eyes off her. Leo had no idea how she did it. She wore a basic shipsuit, perhaps a little tighter than most, and yet she looked more attractive than even a naked lady. Leo shuddered inwardly as the pirates devoured her with their eyes, their gazes crawling over her covered skin. The scent of savage anticipation hung in the air, the grim awareness that there was only one way the day would end. They were predators, surrounding their prey. Flower appeared desirable and harmless and virginal and utterly vulnerable a pretence that appealed to the deepest and darkest parts of the male mind. A pirate reached for her breast, a motion that was oddly jerky and unsure even though he had to think she was completely at his mercy; the cyborg growled and smacked his hand away, hard enough to break the bone. The pirate cringed, just as the other two started forward. Leo couldn’t tell if they were going to attack the cyborg or not, but it hardly mattered. He pulled the multitool from his belt, adjusted the settings, and slammed it into the cyborg’s back. His implants might have been modern, once upon a time, but they were outdated now. The disrupter pulse sent him crashing to his knees, his implants sparking painfully. He didn’t cry out in pain.

“You …”

The pirates started towards him. Leo had no time to recover his sidearm – they’d taken that, although they hadn’t bothered to take the rest – forcing him to go on the offensive and punch the first pirate in the throat. He gagged and choked as he fell to the deck; the other two didn’t hear Flower behind them until she wrapped her arm around their heads and shoved her fingers into their eyes with astonishing force. Leo gagged himself as she kept pushing, ramming her fingers into their brains. The pirates tumbled to the deck, blood spilling from their eye sockets. Modern medical science could cure anything that wasn’t immediately fatal, but that …

“Get your gun,” Flower ordered. Her gaze switched to the girls. “Any of you know how to shoot?”

Leo opened his mouth to ask who was supposed to be in charge, then thought better of it as a dull thump ran through the shuttle. They’d docked. Flower searched the dead men quickly, recovering their weapons and handing them out with practiced ease, then removed her top as the cockpit hatch started to open. The pilot gaped at her, his eyes lingering on her bare breasts … Leo almost laughed as he smacked the pilot down, then bound his hands and legs with duct tape. There would be time to deal with him later, if they survived. He didn’t know how long it would be until the pirate ship jumped out, but any smart pirate would jump out as quickly as possible. There was nothing to be gained by continuing to menace Yellowstone.

Except they enjoy making people grovel in front of them, Leo thought. He knew the type, upperclassmen who liked sending their juniors to fetch and carry, or simply forced the younger cadets to address them with proper respect. And yet, Francis Blackthrone – whatever his other flaws – had never forced junior cadets to grant him sexual favours. It was almost a shame. The Academy would overlook a certain degree of misbehaviour from cadets who were well-connected, but there were limits. If he’d tried, he’d be lucky if he was only dishonourably discharged.

The airlock hissed open, both the inner and outer hatches opening at once. Leo felt a twinge of unease – the blatant disregard for safety would get the pirates killed, sooner or later – as Flower hurried forward, still topless. She wasn’t trying to pose now, but she still drew the eye as the hatch opened completely. A pair of rough-looking men gaped at her, realising – too late – that she was almost armed. Flower shot them both, displaying a ruthlessness that left Leo feeling surprised and awed. It was the correct decision, as far as he could tell, but it was still astonishing. Flower was clearly far more than she seemed.

He followed her through the hatch, weapon at the ready. The pirate ship smelt better than the last ship they’d captured, but there was still a stench of decay that suggested the pirates weren’t bothering to replace the air filters on a regular basis. He reminded himself that Waterhen had been much the same, when he’d first stepped onto his new command. She might have been in poor shape, but her crew was still fully-trained and – with a little encouragement – they’d managed to come together and get their ship ready for departure in record time. The pirate ship might be better off than it looked … he glanced from side to side as the girls fanned out behind him, their weapons held loosely in their hands. Leo hoped to hell they hadn’t been bluffing, when they said they knew how to shoot. It was unlikely they were familiar with the captured weapons …

“We don’t have much ammo,” he muttered, as Flower keyed a console. Most naval officers tried to carry a spare clip or two, but the pirates hadn’t bothered. They’d probably assumed their ship would punish the planet, if they were impeded in any way. “Don’t shoot unless you are sure of your target.”

Flower muttered a word in a language he didn’t recognise. “There’s no way to hack the main datacore from here.”

Leo nodded, cursing under his breath. A formal boarding party would bring hacking tools with them and try to brute force their way into the enemy datacore, making it difficult to turn the starship’s internal sensors and defences against them even if it was impossible to take the ship over from within. They hadn’t thought to bring any down to the planet … his lips quirked in cold amusement, noting that it had been a terrible oversight. No doubt someone would read the report and insist they should have brought it … he shook his head, dismissing the thought. Time wasn’t on their side. He wasn’t sure precisely where they were, relative to the bridge, but most military starships shared the same basic design. The odds were good the pirate captain would start demanding to know where the girls were shortly, if he wasn’t already. Leo knew the type. He’d want first pick before his men had their fun.

“We’ll go to engineering,” he said. The enemy captain would expect them to head straight for the bridge, if he realised his ship had been boarded, but engineering would be a better target. They didn’t have the numbers or training to seize the bridge … not until Waterhen sent reinforcements and there was no way to know how long that would be. “Hurry.”

Flower led the way, her bare breasts bobbling in front of her. Leo followed, his eyes flickering from side to side as internal hatches either opened without demur or were already locked open, the kind of laxity that would get a naval crew brought up on charges of gross negligence. Leo could understand the impulse if one needed to get to one’s station as quickly as possible, but a hull breach could – would – be utterly disastrous if the internal hatches weren’t already closed. He’d considered, briefly, blowing up the shuttle to create a diversion; he thanked his lucky stars the idea had seemed implausible. It would have vented most of the ship, killing them along with the pirate crew. A lone pirate gaped at them, a second before Flower shot him down and stepped over his dead body. Leo checked the corpse quickly for another weapon and found nothing. He hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.

The engine hum started to grow stronger as they neared the rear of the ship, passing compartments that had once held naval officers or shipboard troops and were now either empty or crammed with loot. Leo had no idea how many pirates there actually were … an old-style naval warship tended to have more crew than a modern design, but the odds were good the pirates were cutting the margins very fine indeed. It was easy to justify cutting crew numbers, at least until you ran into an emergency where the extra manpower might make the difference between victory or death, and the more crew the pirates had the more they’d have t share the loot. He hoped they’d cut their crew to the bone. The mission was incredibly risky, and …

A tremor ran though the ship. She was preparing to jump.

“Shit,” Flower muttered. The engineering hatch was closed, and locked. “If we can’t get in …”

Leo grinned at her, recalling a drill that had ended badly at the academy, and knocked on the door with his sidearm. The hatch hissed open, the pirates inside clearly unaware their ship had been boarded. Leo shoved his way through as quickly as he could and opened fire, picking off every pirate he saw. There was no time to sort friend from foe, to work out who might have been forced to serve and who might have joined the crew willingly. An engineering crewman could do real damage to the ship, given a few moments to work, and Leo wouldn’t have cared to bet that the pirates had left the original safeguards in place. Hell, the navy tended to cut those safeguards down as much as possible. There was no time to verify access permissions, in triplicate, when the ship was taking heavy fire and the damage control teams needed to do their jobs.

He dived to the main console and keyed it, breathing a sigh of relief the pirates hadn’t had time to lock it. The ship was powering up the jump drive, preparing to jump … he grinned and depowered the capacitors, scrambing the navigational coordinates as an afterthought. No one in their right mind would try a random jump, unless they were desperate … he linked into the exterior sensor network and smirked as he saw Waterhen moving in for the attack. It wasn’t good news. The pirates had seen through the ship’s stealth, which meant …

“Seal that hatch,” he snapped. The section wasn’t designed to be difficult to use, but the girls had never been in space before. They would take time to shut it, time they didn’t have. “Hurry!”

He worked fast, silently thanking the fates that the pirates had removed so many safeguards as he shut down the fusion plants. The pirate ship wouldn’t be able to charge or fire its energy weapons … a naval crew might be able to fire the missiles, if they worked at it, but missiles were much less dangerous to Waterhen than plasma cannons or phasers. The real risk was the pirates managing to turn a missile into a makeshift self-destruct system, blowing their craft to hell, but even then …his lips twisted, painfully. The missile tubes were designed – at least in theory – to redirect the blast, if a warhead detonated accidentally, yet the pirates might have easily fucked around with those safety precautions too.

The hatch banged closed, not a moment too soon. Leo had tried to close the internal hatches, but most refused to either close or lock. It worked out for the pirates, he reflected grimly. He’d shut down the life support, but it would be hours before the pirates ran short of air and without the hatches they’d have no trouble rushing their remaining crew to engineering to retake the section. They had no choice, unless they wanted to surrender. A nasty thought ran through his mind and he keyed the console again, trying to access the communications system. Waterhen had seen the pirate ship lose power – her drive section had failed – but his crew had no way to know what else was happening. A friendly-fire incident was all too likely.

“They’re trying to burn their way through the hatch,” Flower snapped.

Leo looked up, silently gauging how long it would take the pirates to get through the heavy metal. Not long, if he was any judge. The pirate crew would be expert at getting into sealed compartments, and that meant … he glanced around, looking for places they could take cover. There weren’t many. It wouldn’t be very safe to have bullets flying around the compartment too … he snorted at himself. They were well past that concern. Besides, the idea of a stray shot accidentally blowing up the entire ship was the stuff of action flicks. They’d be in more danger from bullets ricocheting off the bulkheads and bouncing around, completely unpredictably.

“Set up a cutter to damage theirs,” he ordered, as he sent a signal. The external sensors were failing now, but he was sure Boothroyd and his team would already be on their way. They’d have no trouble getting onto the pirate ship and fighting their way to the bridge, or engineering. “Hurry!”

The air grew hotter as the pirate crew kept pushing, burning through the hatch. Leo finished his sabotage – carefully wiping the navigational datacores to make any further jumps impossible, at least without the hours they’d need to pull out the original datacores and replace them – then found cover and took up position to shoot at anyone charging into the compartment. The girls were at the rear, as protected as possible … Leo wouldn’t give a single forged credit chip for their chances, if the pirates got their hands on them now. The pirate crew had to know they were doomed, even if they did manage to recover the engineering compartment. Or were they hoping they could power up the drives and do a blind jump …

He braced himself as the hatch exploded inwards, the pirates tossing a lone stun grenade into the compartment. Leo ducked back, closing his eyes as the grenade detonated. A nasty electric shock seemed to pass through the air – he heard one of the girls cry out, the sound cutting off abruptly – and then faded away. The pirates were taking a hell of a risk, he reflected as he fired two shots in their general direction. There was a very real chance their grenade had damaged the consoles, making repair impossible without a shipyard and a trained crew. He supposed it was a good sign. If the pirates had really thought they were doomed, they might have tossed a high explosive grenade into the compartment instead.

Flower opened fire, each shot carefully placed. Leo risked a glance – the pirates hadn’t had time to don armour – and then fired at a lone man who was shooting madly into the compartment. Bullets bounced around like crazy, sparks flying as they crashed off the bulkhead and spun around madly. It was sheer luck no one was hit. The pirates had to be desperate … hell, Leo was desperate too. The compartment was surprisingly roomy, but there was no way to get out … or to hide, once the pirates got organised. Their time was running out … the shooting stopped, so abruptly Leo wondered if he’d gone deaf. It wasn’t impossible. The racket really had been deafening …

“You can come out now,” Boothroyd said. Leo had never been so glad to hear anyone in his life. “The ship is in our hands.”

Leo stepped out of cover, breathing a sigh of relief. “Get the prisoners into the brig,” he ordered, stiffly. “And see what you can extract from their datacores.”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd said. There was something odd in his tone, something that made Leo’s mind sit up and take notice. “And then we have to talk.”

 

Chapter Thirty

Leo felt uncomfortably like a schoolboy, again, as he supervised the transfer of the pirate prisoners from their ship to Waterhen, then returned to his office to write his report. It was hard to focus, let alone to put down words in a manner that would not give his superiors – when they read the report – a heart attack. Leo had been told, more than once, that while success would merit forgiveness, if the crazy idea actually worked, there were limits. The gulf between a cunning plan, and sheer fucking lunacy, was a great deal thinner than most people supposed. He couldn’t help scowling, as he tried to organise his thoughts. It wasn’t easy. His superiors were not going to be pleased.

The hatch bleeped. Leo looked up. “Come.”

Boothroyd stepped into the compartment, looking stern. Leo found himself straightening to attention, a moment before he recalled that he was supposed to be in command. Boothroyd looked almost fatherly, a strange combination of an older man who cared deeply for his son and an NCO who had the task of both preparing a junior officer for his role and protecting the enlisted men from the stupid greenie lieutenant who had been dumped on them. Leo had worked hard to master the skills – and his early promotion was proof his superiors thought he had – but he’d been cautioned, time and time again, that he didn’t have the experience he needed to be a great officer. Some skills could never be taught, only learned through actual service. And it was all too easy to come up with a plan that looked good on paper and yet was doomed to failure …

“Captain.” Boothroyd’s tone was as stern as his face. “What were you thinking?”

Leo suppressed the angry response that flashed to his lips. They were alone. His authority was not being questioned, certainly not in front of the rest of the crew. And besides, he’d been trying to write a report that would not get him committed, or put in front of a court martial, or simply ensure he never saw promotion again. It was hard to come up with any sort of justification, beyond the simple fact the plan had worked. It might have to be enough. Any vague report, carefully worded to avoid going into too much detail, would raise hackles back home. The admirals would certainly ask for more information.

“I saw a chance and took it,” he admitted. “I couldn’t let her go alone.”

“With all due respect, sir, that was precisely what you should have done,” Boothroyd said, flatly. “You put your life at risk …”

“Risk is our business,” Leo said. It was flippant, and he regretted it instantly, but it was also true. No one signed up for military service if they wanted to be safe. Even the most determined REMF sometimes found himself in the midst of the hurricane, as enemy missile crews bombed bases or insurgents popped up to shoot a few bullets before vanishing again. “I took a very calculated risk.”

“You are our commanding officer,” Boothroyd said. “Maybe not on paper, depending on how you squint at the subject, but you are very much so in real life. It is not your job to put your life in danger, threatening the chain of command, or to cut yourself off from your crew while you go haring off on an insane scheme to catch a bunch of pirates. Do you have any idea how much could go wrong?”

Leo nodded, tartly. The pirates might have looked a gift horse in the mouth and asked him a few more pointed questions, or simply handcuffed his hands behind his back before flying him to orbit. Or they might have simply refused to take him … it had been a calculated risk – most pirate ships were desperate for trained manpower, particularly manpower that had nowhere else to go – but it had been quite possible the risk wouldn’t have paid off.

It was a good point. He chose to ignore it. “I had every faith in you and Lieutenant Halloran,” he said. Technically, Lieutenant Halloran still had more experience than him. “And you played your role magnificently.”

“You left Stuart in a terrible place,” Boothroyd snapped. “You do realise you could be charged with abandoning your post? Or he could be charged with usurping your authority?”

Leo shook his head. The former charge wouldn’t stick … probably. He’d been out of place, caught on the ground … there was no way he could have commanded the battle from the surface, even if the Mayor had been inclined to let him. The latter … Leo considered it for a long moment. On one hand, Leo had left Lieutenant Halloran in command and made no attempt to remove him; on the other, arguably, Leo had been on the ship Lieutenant Halloran had been targeting. It could go either way, if a Board of Inquiry were summoned to investigate the manner. But why would it?

Issues of command are not always easy to resolve, Leo thought. The navy had its fair share of incidents where the chain of command had blurred, or been broken, mostly through communications breakdown. It was quite possible for a relatively junior officer to find himself in command, legally speaking, without either knowing he was in command or being in position to issue orders. And this one could get very nasty, if someone wants it to.

“I took a calculated risk,” he said, again. “And it paid off.”

“Yes, barely,” Boothroyd said. “You were a cadet. You might have been a Cadet-Lieutenant, but still a cadet. You’re still thinking like a cadet, not a commanding officer … if there had been a full captain on Waterhen, you could have taken the risk, but you were the captain. You could have gotten yourself killed, or captured, and you could still be charged with abandoning your post. You are still thinking like a cadet … that sort of crazy stunt is best left to trained operatives, rather than young officers. You don’t have a safety net out here.”

Leo gritted his teeth. “I know I am not a cadet any longer …”

“Yes, but you don’t really believe it,” Boothroyd corrected. “Not yet.”

“I have to,” Leo said. “This is real.”

“And you could have easily gotten yourself killed,” Boothroyd said. “That was incredibly unwise.”

Leo controlled his anger with an effort. The hell of it was that Boothroyd had a point. The mission had been risky, and if he’d had more time he could have come up with something else instead. And yet, he had been short of options. And … and … there was no way in hell he would have let Flower go alone, if there had been any other choice. He liked her too much to let her go.

And that might not be a good thing, his thoughts pointed out. What’ll you do when the time comes to sacrifice a crewman or two?

He shuddered, trying to keep his face blank. There were times when you couldn’t get out of a dangerous situation without losses, times when you had to send your juniors to their deaths to buy time for everyone else. The Academy had delighted in putting him in no-win scenarios, forcing him to sacrifice some to save others … but none of those deaths had been real. He’d known that, deep inside, no matter how many times the judges insisted they were treating the deaths as real. But Flower could have died for real …

“I take your point,” he said, stiffly. “And I will try to be more careful in future.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Did we find anything interesting from the pirate crew?”

“The captain was rather resistant to interrogation, sir,” Boothroyd said. “His implants are clearly designed to dull his pain receptors, and kill him if we find a way to overwhelm him. Someone wasn’t taking any chances. Any use of truth drugs would almost certainly trigger an allergic reaction, killing him.”

“Like Governor Venture,” Leo muttered.

“Yes.” Boothroyd looked grim. “The doctor refused to try to remove the implant, stating that even trying would probably trigger the suicide protocol. There may be ways to cripple its effectiveness, given time, but there are no guarantees. My guess is that the implant is designed to watch for even a mild drugging, to the point that feeding him painkillers might be lethal too. Right now, I’m not optimistic. It’s impossible to hack the implant from outside and if we can’t get into the programming we can’t reprogram it.”

“Crap,” Leo muttered.

“The rest of the crew was a little more informative,” Boothroyd continued. “They believe their captain was paid to raid worlds, and that their ship came from a mystery backer, and … and whatever they looted, they were allowed to sell and keep the money. I don’t know if their story is true, but they think it is.”

Leo stared at his hands. “Someone paid them to raid worlds?”

“So they say,” Boothroyd said. “They don’t know who. Or why.”

“No,” Leo said.

He shook his head slowly. It made no sense. Yellowstone had little to offer looters beyond food, drink and women and anyone backing the pirates could easily get that legitimately. It was hard to believe a slaver ring could produce enough money to fund a pirate operation … raiding Ingalls and Morse made a certain degree of sense, but Yellowstone? If they wanted what little the planet could provide, why not just buy it? Yellowstone just wasn’t that important.

“At least we put a raider out of commission,” he said. “And we can at least try to trace their supply lines back to their backers.”

He smiled, coldly. “How is their ship?”

“The prize crew are replacing the datacores now,” Boothroyd said. “She’ll be ready to fly shortly. She does need a lot of maintenance though.”

“Of course.” Leo keyed his terminal, bringing up a starchart. “We’ll send her back to our new base. If there’s anyone on the crew that was forced into working for the captain, they can go back too and work for us. The rest of the pirate crew can be shot out the airlock.”

Boothroyd nodded. Leo hadn’t made the pirate crew any promises, certainly nothing that would come back to haunt him. He was tempted to offer the crew to Yellowstone, as indentured workers, but there was too great a chance of other pirates recovering them and then extracting a bloody price from the planetary government. Even if the odds were low, the government would take the risk seriously. Better to deal with the crew himself than run the risk of exposing the planet below.

“And inform the crew,” he added. “We’ll return to Yangtze shortly.”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd said. He paused. “We do need more crew. And troops.”

Leo nodded, shortly. “The problem is vetting potential hires,” he said. There were procedures for recruiting locals to fill the gaps in his order of battle, but it was difficult to tell how many could be trusted. “How many do you trust?”

“We can take precautions to prevent them from becoming dangerous,” Boothroyd said. “Unless you can convince Daybreak to send more personnel out here …”

“I doubt it,” Leo said. The sector might have been formally incorporated, but Daybreak hadn’t bothered to send more than a handful of personnel – and a single outdated starship – to start building the infrastructure to unite the sector with the rest of the human race. Yangtze simply wasn’t that important, not compared to worlds that possessed the industrial infrastructure and memories of independence that might inspire them to try to stand in the way of progress. “I can ask the Governor to request more support, but …”

“The last time he requested someone, he got us,” Boothroyd finished. “It worked out for him, didn’t it?”

Leo nodded. Governor Brighton had been very lucky. If Captain Archibald had remained in command … Leo guessed he would have found the fleshpots of Yangtze, assuming there were any to be found, and vanished into them, leaving his ship floating uselessly in orbit. Or worse. Leo wondered, idly, if the Governor realised how lucky he’d been. He hadn’t made any formal complaint about a lowly officer being sent in answer to his pleas, but … who knew? He might have waited to see what would happen, and Leo knew he had done well.

“Yes,” he said. “Dismissed, Sergeant. We’ll speak later.”

He looked back at his terminal, completing the report in a manner that – he hoped – would answer all the questions his superiors might think to ask, while glossing over precisely what had happened and making it clear that his subordinates had acted under his orders. It sounded like he’d planned the whole thing, instead of rolling with the flow, but … it sounded better, he hoped, than the bare truth, without signing any lies into his log. That would definitely land him in very hot water indeed.

The door pinged. Flower stepped into the compartment. “The Sergeant spoke to you?”

Leo sighed. “Was it that obvious?”

“He’s spent much of his career teaching young officers the ropes without actually crossing the line into outright insubordination,” Flower said. “How are you feeling?”

Leo shrugged. It was difficult to put his feelings into words. He’d been caned by his headmaster, and dressed down by the senior cadets, and it hadn’t bothered him so much because he’d had scant respect for any of them. Even Valerian, for all his political skill, had done little to earn Leo’s respect. But Boothroyd was an experienced NCO, with a record that was long – and classified in places - who had come out of retirement to mentor one final young officer. He deserved respect, and that meant the lecture had struck home.

“Torn,” he said, finally. “Did I do the right thing?”

“You took a gamble and it worked,” Flower said. “But you should be more careful. Luck runs out.”

“I know.” Leo met her eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s good to know all that training didn’t go to waste,” Flower said. “Dear Archibald didn’t have the slightest idea of what I can do.”

“The pirates were drooling over you,” he said. “They could have …”

“Maybe,” Flower said. “But I was in control.”

“Maybe,” Leo echoed. Flower would have been in serious trouble if the pirates had jumped her … but then, she had been projecting an image that made each of them want to be the first to take her. He’d known it was nothing more than a trick and yet … he’d felt it too. He wondered, suddenly, how she would have coped without him. Trick the pirates into fighting each other? Or let herself be taken into the captain’s cabin and proceed from there? Or …

He frowned, recalling the blatant sexuality she’d projected. “How do you do that?”

“You just need to know what buttons to push,” Flower said. “That’s one of the skills I was taught. Just one.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it,” Leo said. “How did it even work …?”

“I told you.” Flower favoured him with a mischievous smile. “You just need to know what buttons to push.”

She leaned forward. “No con artist ever born made money by refusing to give the mark what he wanted,” she added. “The trick is to let the mark steer you in the direction you want to go.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Leo said. “What would you have done without me?”

“Improvised,” Flower said. “It would have worked.”

“I hope so,” Leo said. “Why didn’t Captain Archibald make better use of you?”

“He just wanted his fun,” Flower said. “And you want someone useful.”

She grinned, then stepped back and left the cabin. Leo watched, wondering if he was being manipulated as easily as the pirate thugs. It was easy for a woman to catch the eye if she walked around topless, projecting an air of desirability, but Flower might have something else in mind. She had said he wanted something useful, and he did, and she might want to be useful. And she wanted to be used …

The intercom bleeped. “Captain,” Lieutenant Halloran said. If he wanted to chew Leo out too, he kept it to himself. “We are ready to depart orbit.”

Leo nodded and stood, putting his concerns aside as he walked back to the bridge. The pirate ship was preparing to depart too, heading back to the captured base. Leo allowed himself a tight smile as he took the command chair, knowing that he had gambled and won and it would look good – great, even – no matter what his superiors thought of it. If nothing else, the story would make the pirates a little more careful about who they raided, or what they brought back to their base.

We can’t be everywhere at once, he mused. But we can make them think twice about attacking convoys and even lone starships.

The pirate ship vanished from the display. Leo leaned back in his chair. The ship would be pressed into service, escorting convoys and taking out pirate ships that tried to attack them. A handful of freighters would be turned into Q-Ships, ready to destroy any pirate ship that stumbled across them. He keyed his console, feeling a sense of satisfaction as Waterhen angled herself to depart. They might not be able to eradicate the pirates completely – they were a persistent scourge – but they might just have turned the corner. There would be no safety for the bastards any longer, no certainty that a lone starship might be truly alone – or unarmed. Their profits would fall, and fall sharply. And given time, their backers would be found and exposed. And executed.

He took a breath. “Helm,” he said. He would go back to Yangtze – and Gayle. “Take us home.”

“Aye, Captain.”

 

Chapter Thirty-One

“Jump completed, Captain,” Abigail reported. “We have …”

Lieutenant Halloran cut her off. “We’re being scanned,” he snapped. “Targeting sensors are locking on!”

Leo cursed under his breath as the display flickered an alert. “Red alert,” he ordered. There was no way in hell anyone should be scanning them with targeting sensors, certainly not on Yangtze. They were too far from the planetary defences to be threatened … weren’t they? “Recycle the drive, stand by point defence!”

“No incoming fire,” Lieutenant Halloran said, after a moment. “I say again, no incoming fire.”

“Transmit our IFF,” Leo ordered. The display was filling up, revealing the existence of a new and powerful set of sensor platforms. It looked crude, too crude. He had the feeling a handful of armed platforms were orbiting nearby, drawing on the sensor platforms to target their weapons while remaining stealthed themselves. “And hold position until we get a reply.”

He calmed himself with an effort. He hadn’t expected an unfriendly reception. He’d been cautioned that Daybreakers weren’t always popular, and some worlds resented their supremacy, but even the most resentful would think twice about lighting a warship up with their targeting sensors. Standard procedure, during wartime, was to launch missiles as quickly as possible, if it looked as if you were about to lose them, and that was a good way to get yourself killed if you were just trying to make the other crew jump. Yangtze was lucky they weren’t actually at war.

“They’re welcoming us back, and standing down the defences,” Lieutenant Halloran said, as the display updated again. “Governor Brighton would like to see you, sir, as soon as possible.”

“Which is going to be at least thirty minutes, unless he’s managed to invent a teleporter,” Leo growled. He didn’t like people trying to shock him, and it was goddamned stupid and suicidal when he was in command of a warship carrying enough missiles to really mess up the average planet. “Do they have any sort of explanation for this?”

“Getting a tactical download now,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “A pair of pirate ships flew through the system.”

“Copy it to my terminal,” Leo said. He hadn’t shit himself, but it had been a very close run thing. “Helm, take us into orbit. Tactical, keep an eye on the high orbitals.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo waited until Waterhen was safely in orbit, then handed command to Lieutenant Halloran and headed to the shuttle. Flower and Boothroyd were already waiting for him, the latter intent on recruiting as many crewmen and troopers as possible. Leo made a mental note to press Governor Brighton to unlock the prize money as quickly as possible. It was unlikely anyone would sign up for patriotic reasons – not on the Rim – but greed could always be counted upon. Even by a conservative estimate, the captured base and ships were worth a lot of money and his crew stood to become quite wealthy, once the money was freed up.

“Be careful down there,” Flower advised, as the shuttle dropped into the planet’s atmosphere. “If the pirates did attack, they’ll be jumpy.”

Leo nodded, slowly. The sensor records showed a pair of unknown warships jumping into the system, making a run at the planet, launching a handful of outdated missiles – which had easily been intercepted – and then jumping out again. There’d been no IFF codes – unsurprisingly – nor anything that could be used to trace the starships, although it was clear they were as outdated as the missiles they’d launched. Leo had no idea if they were testing the defences, trying to take a little revenge for the captured pirate base, or … or what? The more he looked at it, the more he was sure there was something odd about the whole affair. It just didn’t make sense.

“Yeah,” he said. He wished he had a tactical analysis department. Waterhen was too small to carry an entire team, which made timely analysis difficult. “I don’t get it.”

He put the thought aside as he landed on the landing pad. Gayle stood outside, wearing a conservative dress that – somehow – managed to remind him of her naked body without showing anything below the neckline. She looked demure, but winked when she met his eyes; Leo winked back, feeling a rush of affection. Gayle nodded politely to the others, then led Leo through the corridors to the Governor’s office. Leo wasn’t surprised to see Gayle’s father had joined them, as well as a dark-skinned man he didn’t recognise. He was wearing an outfit that looked like a naval uniform, more functional than most planetary militia outfits. Leo wondered, grimly, just who he happened to be.

“Welcome back, Captain,” Governor Brighton said. “We’ve had some excitement here too.”

“Our world was attacked,” Bridgerton snapped. Gayle’s father eyed Leo as if he held him personally responsible for the raid. The very odd raid. “We came very close to being nuked.”

“The planetary defences handled the attack,” Governor Brighton countered. He favoured Bridgerton with an affable smile. “And we have been enhancing the defences, as you planned.”

“You also came very close to starting a shooting war,” Leo said, curtly. “Lighting up a starship with tactical sensors is a declaration of open hostility, something to be avoided unless you are ready and willing to shoot.”

“We are being very careful,” the dark-skinned man said. “We cannot risk an attack on our world.”

Leo scowled at him. “And you are …?”

“Commodore Alistair Howell, Yangtze Militia,” the man said.

“Alistair was appointed commander by the government,” Bridgerton said. “I’m sure you and he will work together closely.”

Leo glanced at Governor Brighton, who nodded. Leo frowned inwardly. Technically, Governor Brighton was the de jure commander of the planetary militia, although the planetary government funded it and therefore had more practical authority than it was supposed to have. If Bridgerton had managed to realise his dream of creating a stronger defence force … Leo kept his face under control. It was legal, if the Sector Governor supported it, but they’d had one incident already and they could easily have another. The next one might be disastrous.

“You need to review your procedures,” he said, stiffly. He’d review Howell’s file too. The man had no real naval experience, or Leo would eat his hat. “You could have caused a disaster.”

Howell gave him a smile that was almost certainly fake. “It’s my first day.”

Leo was too irked to be amused, even though he recognised the catchphrase. It belonged to a character who had been incredibly popular during his childhood and was now outdated, superseded by the next generation of stars. He was mildly surprised the recordings had made it out to Yangtze, although it wasn’t impossible someone had imported them directly from Daybreak. They’d still be fresh and new, this far from the core worlds. The jokes had not yet lost their lustre through overuse.

“We will sort out problems as they arise,” Bridgerton said. “Now, do you have anything to tell us?”

His voice was cold and hard. Leo couldn’t tell why he was annoyed … had he discovered that Leo had been sleeping with Gayle, or was he irked Leo had called him – and his militia – out on their carelessness. Leo had made his fair share of mistakes during his training – his instructors had told him it was better to get the stupid mistakes out of the way early, under controlled conditions – but he’d never been in a position to make a mistake that could easily get a lot of people killed. Not until his third year, at least, and even then it would have required a great deal of stupidity mingled with incompetence. And not just on his part.

“The operation succeeded as well as I had planned,” he said. He’d been careful to limit what he’d told the locals about the real plan, just in case someone was passing information to the pirates. “We not only captured a pirate ship; we captured a base, and a number of other ships, and took a considerable number of prisoners. It is unlikely their operations will recover in a hurry.”

He paused. “We are currently investigating the contacts between the underground networks and people operating openly within the sector,” he continued. “It is quite likely the fences we caught were linked to a distribution network, allowing the pirates to sell both stolen goods and covertly-produced illicit drugs and porn. Given time, we will uncover the funding and supply chains leading to the pirate base and eradicate them.”

Bridgerton frowned. “And you are keeping the captured pirates to yourself?”

“As the ranking naval officer within the sector, I have authority to deal with them as I see fit,” Leo said. He’d made a mistake, when he’d handed Governor Venture over to the local authorities. He didn’t intend to repeat it. There was no pressing need to hand any of the others over in a hurry, allowing his crew to interrogate them at leisure. “Given time, we will hunt down the networks and expose them.”

He let the words hang in the air, then leaned forward. “The pirate ships are, put unkindly, heaps of junk, but they can still be useful. We’ll start using them to patrol the spacelanes shortly, taking out more pirate ships. We still can’t cover every last convoy, unfortunately, but we can make life dangerous for the pirates and finally start bringing the benefits of incorporation to every world in the sector.”

“That’s wonderful news,” Governor Brighton said. “How long until you can deploy a full fleet?”

“Weeks, at best,” Leo admitted. “We also need to recruit more manpower.”

“We are also recruiting,” Howell said, curtly. “And we have first call on the planet’s space-capable personnel.”

“The navy has first call,” Leo corrected. “The Articles of Incorporation …”

“Gentlemen, please,” Governor Brighton said. “There are enough space-capable personnel for both of you.”

Leo doubted that was true. Yangtze was surprisingly well-developed, for a world along the Rim, but that meant there would always be a demand for space-capable personnel, particularly personnel who had the right Daybreak-approved qualifications. The corporations had gotten a lock on most qualified personnel, even before the planetary militia had started to climb off the drawing board. Leo grimaced inwardly as he considered the implications. Legally, he could conscript personnel against their will; practically, that was asking for trouble. And he already had quite enough of that.

“I hope so,” he said. If they had to take part in a bidding war, the navy might well lose. They couldn’t offer anything like as much as the planetary government, certainly not the option of remaining on their homeworld and going home every weekend. “We’ll see how many we can recruit from passing freighters too.”

“My ships are already undermanned,” Bridgerton growled. “The crews are locked into very strict contracts.”

“Perhaps you should expand your training facilities,” Leo said. “You could easily train more workers, if you wished.”

“If that were possible …”

Governor Brighton cleared his throat. “I think we owe you a vote of thanks for your service,” he said, looking at Leo. “I see no reason why the navy and the militia cannot cooperate. The militia is focused only on defending Yangtze – the remaining militias are intent on defending their own homeworlds – while the navy can handle interstellar affairs. There is no reason for us to argue.”

Perhaps so, Leo thought, but you are running very close to breaking some very strong laws.

“I quite agree,” Howell said. “You have done immensely well. Losing even one pirate base will hurt them badly.”

Leo nodded, curtly. The pirates were hardly an organised government, not even akin to the star-travelling gypsies who spent their entire lives on starships and rarely, if ever, set foot on planets. They were a loose coalition at best, without any formal structure, and it would be difficult – if not impossible – for them to recover from the loss of their base, once they realised it actually had been lost. If the plan worked, quite a few ships would fly right into his waiting arms over the next few weeks.

Bridgerton nodded, curtly. Leo wondered why he was displeased. His ships were as vulnerable as any others … perhaps he was irked this his militia was outdated before it even managed to get into space. If the pirate threat was sharply reduced, the government might think twice about funding a major fleet. There was no real point in trying to build a defence force if the planet didn’t need defended.

And yet, we still don’t know what happened to those techs from Morse, Leo reminded himself. He’d have been happier if the techs had been located, even if they had been sold into slavery. Or who funded the pirate raids.

“I’ll read the rest of the report shortly, and then we’ll meet again,” Governor Brighton promised. “Until then …”

Leo nodded curtly, recognising the dismissal. There was no point in trying to have a more serious conversation in front of the other two men, even if he was in a place to have such a conversation. A captain or an admiral might be able to call a governor out on getting too close to the planetary government, but not a lowly lieutenant-commander. Probably.

He stood and left the room. Gayle followed, the movement reminding him she was there. She hadn’t said a word during the discussion … it was odd, almost alien, to see a pretty girl treated as part of the furniture. He hadn’t seen that kind of sexism outside historical docudramas, depictions of the past that looked too clean and sanitary for him to wholly believe them. Sure, some very primitive worlds had fallen back on equally primitive gender roles, buy Yangtze was a little more advanced than that … wasn’t it?

Gayle tapped her lips, then motioned for him to follow her down the stairs to her aircar. Leo glanced around, awkwardly, as she opened the door for him, then sat next to him and set the aircraft into motion. The city seemed to have gotten bigger in the last couple of weeks, a handful of new barracks clearly visible on the other side of the river. He spotted what looked like a missile emplacement beside it, suggesting the militia was preparing for war.

“Odd choice,” he muttered. “Amateurs.”

Gayle looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“That’s a short-range missile launcher,” Leo said. He suspected he was almost certainly correct, unless someone had done something clever. It wouldn’t be the first time an engineer, forced to put something together from a handful of scraps, had built something remarkable – with unexpected capabilities. “The targeting system can only engage targets that are already in the atmosphere, which will reveal the launcher’s location to anything watching from the high orbitals. And then they’ll just drop a KEW on it.”

“Everyone was terrified when the pirate ships flew through the system,” Gayle said. “Dad’s keen to reassure them.”

“It’s a false reassurance,” Leo pointed out. “That launcher might as well be fake, for all the good it’ll do.”

Gayle gave him a brilliant smile. “Fake it until you make it?”

Leo shrugged. He knew the launcher’s limitations, and anyone who bothered to read the manual would know them too, but … Gayle might be right. The only real hope of defending a world from an enemy who held the high orbitals was to keep them out and that required a powerful orbital defence network, backed by mobile units … Yangtze could produce such a network, given time, if the workers weren’t too scared to go to work. He wondered, suddenly, just how naked and vulnerable the planet’s aristocrats were feeling. Their mansions would make excellent targets, for anyone orbiting the planet, and they’d be no risk of hitting something they actually needed.

“It’s odd,” he said. “Why did they raid your world?”

Gayle frowned. “Why do they raid any world?”

“Goods, food, and women.” Leo had a sudden vision of Gayle trapped under a pirate, her legs forced open and … he gritted his teeth, trying to banish the image. He’d die before he let that happen. “But here … it is a very odd choice of target.”

“Why?” Gayle seemed puzzled. “We are the most important world for a few hundred light years.”

Leo was tempted to argue the point, but declined. “Pirates are generally somewhat cowardly,” he said. “They want to grab their loot, have some fun, and vanish … not put their lives at risk. It’s rare for a big pirate ship to take on a much smaller target, if that target is capable of defending itself. Even if they win, they might take enough damage to really spoil their fun.”

His lips twisted. “It’s rare for pirate captains to have complete authority too,” he added. “If they push too far, their crew will mutiny.”

Gayle landed the aircar outside a small bungalow, half-hidden in the forest. “And your point is?”

Leo followed her out of the car and into the tiny house. “Yangtze has enough defences to make a pirate ship think twice about trying to fly into orbit,” he said. “The pirates didn’t even try to sneak in and wipe out the defences before they realised they were under attack. It could have been done … barely. Why did they just shoot off a bunch of missiles from well beyond effective range?”

“I don’t know.” Gayle bit her lip. Leo had to admit it made her look cute. “Perhaps they thought they could hold the planet to ransom?”

“Perhaps,” Leo agreed. It was as good an explanation as any, and yet it didn’t seem quite right. Daybreak would be pissed if the sector governor was forced to pay protection money to a band of pirates. The navy would be instructed to dispatch reinforcements as quickly as possible, with orders to hunt the bastards down and teach them a lesson. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Gayle grinned. “Enough bad news,” she said, indicating the bed. “It took quite long enough to set this up for you.”

Leo grinned back, then took her in his arms.

 

Leo is letting his little head get him into potential trouble. I am not sure if Gayle is an asset of her father or not. I think she is but wonder if she may be developing actual feelings for Leo. Flower is a very interesting character and I wonder if she is really a spy or special forces in disguise.

 

Chapter Thirty-Two

Leo awoke, slowly.

He stretched as he opened his eyes, then frowned as he realised Gayle was nowhere to be seen. It felt as if her presence had been a dream … he sat upright, a twinge of alarm running through him before he heard her in the next room. He stood and hurried into the small kitchen and saw her, wearing an apron and nothing else, standing over a hot stove. The scene was so domestic he had to smile, a reminder of his mother cooking for her children, even though he knew both Gayle and he wanted more in their lives. It was hard to believe Gayle would be happy as a housewife, or even that she would have the chance. She lived in a world of servants, doing everything from cooking meals to changing the baby. Leo supposed that explained some of the more vapid women he’d met at the Governor’s Ball. What else did they have to do with their time?

“Pancakes are almost ready,” Gayle said, without looking up. “Can you lay the table?”

Leo nodded, looking around the small kitchen for plates, cutlery and mats. The chamber was both a kitchen and a dining room, the walls laid with wood in a manner that reminded him of Boothroyd’s hut, although that had been real and there was a faint hint of unreality about the lodge that bothered him. It was like stepping into a starship simulator, after a few months on a real ship, and discovering that – no matter how much effort was put into maintaining the illusion – it just wasn’t good enough. Experienced spacers could always tell it was a lie. He laid the table as quickly as possible, then felt a twinge of guilt as she put the plate of pancakes in front of them. His mother would have found more for him to do, of course, and she would have done so even if she’d been as upper class as Francis Blackthrone. The whole idea of having domestic servants was strange, almost alien, on Daybreak. It was seen as a sign of disturbing laxity.

He took a bite, and nodded in appreciation. Gayle was a good cook. His mother had taught him the basics, pointing out that he might need to feed himself – and that women loved men who could cook – but he couldn’t claim to be an expert. His mother would have been horrified if she’d laid eyes on what passed for survival cooking in the Academy – the bland food, spiced up with sauce – and probably insisted on sending him care packages. Leo had never complained, unlike some of the upper-class twits. He’d had far worse, when money ran short and his mother had to make their food stretch …

“Good?” Gayle looked nervous as she took a bite of her own pancake. “Edible?”

“Very good,” Leo said. “How did you learn to cook?”

“The old cook taught me,” Gayle said. “She said it was a useful skill to learn. And then Dad fired her.”

Leo raised his eyebrows. “For teaching you how to cook?”

Gayle shrugged. “Something like that,” she said. “Dad’s reasoning is not always easy to follow.”

“Ouch.” Leo found it hard to imagine someone – anyone – treating their child as nothing more than a piece on their personal chessboard, but he supposed the senators on Daybreak did much the same. And yet … most of those senators worked hard to ensure their children had the best education they could get, combined with the chance to develop their talents under reasonably controlled conditions. A child’s failure would reflect badly on their parent. “Is that why you want to leave?”

“I want to become something more,” Gayle said, shortly. She stood, turning to pour them both coffee. Leo watched in appreciation, admiring the curve of her rear. She lacked any sort of cosmetic bodyshaping and she was all the more attractive for it. “Did you never want to see how far you could go?”

“Of course.” Leo grinned. It wasn’t easy to rise to the top and become a consul, but he certainly intended to try. Given time, he could certainly become a senator. “And if I do well, I can rise far.”

He smiled as she sat back down, feeling warm and comfortable and safe. Gayle was sweet and innocent and clearly a great deal smarter than she acted, and that meant … he wondered, suddenly, if she’d make a good wife. It wasn’t uncommon for officers to progress by marrying the daughters – or sons – of senators, or governors. The Deputy Governor might not be a Daybreak citizen, not yet, but there was a reasonable chance he’d succeed Governor Brighton when the governor’s term expired. He had connections and, as long as he displayed his loyalty to Daybreak, he might be voted citizenship and allowed to step onto the cursus honorum. Might. Marriage to a Gayle might be good for Leo’s career or, he acknowledged quietly, it might not. If her father failed to win citizenship …

His communicator bleeped, from the next room. He kicked himself mentally for leaving it in the pile of clothing – a serious offense, for which he would speak very severely to himself later – as he found the device and clicked it on. “Morningstar.”

“Captain,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “The Governor requests that you visit him at your earliest convenience.”

“As soon as possible, you mean,” Leo corrected. He couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice. He’d hoped to make love to Gayle once more, before going back to his ship and resuming their patrol. He forced himself to calm down. It wasn’t Lieutenant Halloran’s fault that Governor Brighton wanted to see him. There was nothing to be gained by snapping at the messenger. In the long run, it guaranteed he would miss something vitally important because his crew were too scared to bring it to his attention. “Inform His Excellency that I shall wait on him as soon as possible.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

Leo closed the channel, then walked back into the kitchen. “Duty calls,” he said. “I have to get back.”

Gayle nodded, showing no hint of reluctance to let him go. Leo couldn’t tell if that were a good thing or not, although it wouldn’t have mattered either way. He was a naval officer and he knew his duty, even if it meant he had to attend upon the governor rather than spending time with his girlfriend. He finished the pancake quickly, then hurried into the shower. The sense of unreality washed over him again as he spotted the modern water system, a far cry from the makeshift washroom in Boothroyd’s cabin. The lodge was fake, designed to allow the visitors to imagine they were roughing it without sacrificing a single iota of comfort. Leo shook his head as he turned on the water, hastily washing himself. It might have been fake, but at least it was better than a starship.

He stepped aside as Gayle joined him, the water running down her breasts and drawing his eyes to her womanhood. His manhood stiffened … he gritted his teeth, telling himself he simply didn’t have time. The Governor wasn’t fool enough to expect Leo to arrive instantly – it was impossible, and he knew it – but he’d certainly expect Leo to make all haste. If he thought the younger man was deliberately dawdling …

Gayle gigged. Perhaps she’d had the same thought. “Later?”

“Later,” Leo promised. He stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. “What is this place?”

Gayle made no pretence at being surprised by the question. “A hunting lodge, belonging to my father,” she said. “He takes some of his clients out here, so they can shoot a handful of deer and then return home with tales of their skill and daring.”

Leo shrugged and hurried into the next room, silently blessing his foresight in packing a spare pair of underwear. It wasn’t as if he could wear any of hers … the thought made him smile as he dressed rapidly, checking to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. That would be embarrassing, if her father discovered something that proved he’d been there … he looked up as Gayle joined him, dressing with a rapidity that had been alien to Fleur. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought her a naval officer. She didn’t waste time with anything. She hardly needed to.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We’ll have other times.”

She led the way outside and into the aircar. Leo followed, looking around with interest. The lodge appeared to rest in the middle of a clearing, an oddly perfect placing that only added to the sense of unreality. Birds flew through the trees, small rodents rustled though the undergrowth … he thought he saw something larger, just for a second, in the shadows under the trees before it was gone, as if it had never existed at all. He wasn’t sure what to make of the place. He liked hunting pirates, and he knew he was good at it, but hunting harmless animals struck him as pointless spite. There certainly wasn’t any risk.

Gayle took the aircar up, and set course for the capital. Leo keyed his communicator, checking for messages. There was nothing urgent, beyond a routine report that emergency supplies had been transferred to Waterhen and that a third of the crew had been allowed to go on leave. It looked as if there had been no issues, much to his relief. If the pirates had agents on Yangtze, attacking his crew would be an easy way to cripple his operations. Cheap, too.

“Good luck,” Gayle said, as she landed the aircar in front of Government House. “I’ll see you later.”

Leo nodded and scrambled out of the aircar, feeling a rush of affection that surprised him in its intensity. Gayle was very much like him, only prettier … he was torn, suddenly, between wishing she’d had her chance to go to the Academy and relief, in a way, that she hadn’t. A year or two under her belt and she would have had a fair shot at the valedictorian title … he shook his head, mentally kicking himself. There was nothing to be gained from being jealous of someone for being better than him, certainly not when they’d earned it. And, with a non-citizen father, she certainly would.

He put the thought aside as he was shown through the corridors, again, to the governor’s office. This time, thankfully, the older man was alone, seated behind his desk. He stood and nodded as Leo was shown into the room, then ordered tea and cakes. Leo sat and waited as a maid arrived with a pot of tea, poured two mugs, and left as silently as she’d arrived. The governor did not seem disposed to hurry. Leo tried to hide his irritation. The tea ceremony was worse than pointless. It was a waste of time.

“Tell me,” Governor Brighton said, after he had asked after Leo’s health. “Did you ever meet Argent Darling?”

Leo frowned. The name meant nothing to him. “No, sir.”

“He is a clerk in the local chamber of commerce,” Governor Brighton said. “Was, I should say. He killed himself last night.”

“I see.” Leo felt his eyes narrow. “Why?”

“From what the investigators have been able to determine, he was smuggling spare parts and suchlike to pirate gangs,” Governor Brighton said. His voice was cold, hard. “We’re still putting together a complete picture of his activities, but it seems he was able to use his position to ship certain crates to orbit, and load them onto certain starships, and then wiping those crates from the records. There’s hints he was able to remove supplies from naval and corporate stockpiles and move them to orbit, then erase all records of their existence. He may well have done much more, over the last two years. A man in his position could certainly gain access to shipping records, then forward them on too.”

Leo scowled. Logistics were difficult at the best of times, requiring supply officers to follow instructions without question. It would be very easy for a man in the right place to add a crate or two to the endless stream going into orbit, turning the system into an unwitting mule and ensuring none of the officers involved had the slightest idea of what was really going on. They handled so many crates that one more wouldn’t draw unwanted attention … hell, with the right labels, the crates might be spared any sort of inspection. And a lone clerk might be beneath suspicion, at least as long as he was careful.

“I see,” he said. “How did we even find him?”

“The investigators probed the records and discovered traces of manipulation, using his access codes,” Governor Brighton told him. “He must have had a flag in the computer system, because he was clearly warned before we came for him.”

“And he committed suicide,” Leo mused. It struck him as a little too neat and tidy. “Are we sure he was working alone?”

“So far, we have found no evidence against it,” Governor Brighton said. “I think …”

His terminal bleeped. “Your Excellency, the Deputy Governor requests an immediate audience.”

Leo groaned, inwardly. Gayle’s father was the last man he wanted to see right now.

“Send him in,” Governor Brighton ordered.

The door opened. “Governor,” Deputy Governor Bridgerton said. His eyes flickered to Leo. “Captain.”

He closed the door. “Breen just jumped into the system, Governor,” he said. “The long-feared civil war on Eden has finally broken out.”

“That’s not good,” Governor Brighton said. “Do you have any more details?”

“No,” Bridgerton said. He sat, resting his hands on his lap. “The two sides have ignored the edict to hold their fire permanently and started shooting at each other, both on the ground and in orbit. Breen’s CO decided to jump out at once, rather than risk being targeted by one side or the other. The data is very sparse, but it appears they are finally going to all-out war.”

Leo grimaced. Eden had been settled by a religious community that had wanted to escape the increasingly suffocating atmosphere of Earth and the early colonies, a decision that had spared their world the ravages of the war, but – according to the files – there had been a major split within the community, shortly after their arrival, and the two factions had been snapping and snarling at each other since them, both building up an immense arsenal of primitive and yet incredibly destructive weapons. Daybreak had told both sides to quit it, and threatened open intervention if they went to war …

“We have to go, now,” he said. The weapons might be primitive, compared to modern technology, but a man could be killed as easily by a slingshot as a plasma cannon. “If the war doesn’t settle down fast, they could destroy their entire world.”

He keyed his communicator, issuing an emergency recall. He’d studied wars throughout history and religious conflicts had always been the worst, with both sides convinced God was on their side and anything they did, no matter how horrific, could be excused because they did it in His holy name. They could – and did – dehumanise their opponents, justifying murder, rape, and looting on an unforgivable scale. And they weren’t afraid to die, because they thought death in the name of their cause was a guaranteed ticket to paradise … he shuddered. The war had to be stopped, before it got out of hand.

“You better had,” Bridgerton said. “The last thing anyone wants is a civil war threatening to spread into interstellar space.”

“No,” Governor Brighton agreed. His tone hardened, showing a surprising amount of resolution. “We’ll continue the investigation here. You stop the civil war. You are authorised to use all necessary measures, up to and including planetary bombardment, to separate the two sides and keep them apart, at least until we can put a peacekeeping force in place to disarm them.”

“Understood,” Leo said. He was tempted to make a snide remark about the planetary defence force being unwilling to join him, but refrained. It wasn’t their job. “I’ll deal with it.”

He looked at Bridgerton. “Copy the data files, such as they are, to my ship. We’ll see what we can get out of them.”

“They were recorded with civilian sensors,” Bridgerton warned. “I want that clearly understood.”

Leo nodded, impatiently. There would be no legal trouble for supplying inadequate warnings. He could hardly blame the freighter captain for cutting and running, when his ship was armed with nothing more than popguns … if that. If the orbital defences were shooting madly at each other – and Leo silently cursed the idiots who had sold the orbital weapons to both sides, rather than using them to keep a lid on the conflict – there was a very good chance they’d mistake Breen for a hostile and blow her away, before realising their mistake. If they ever did …

“I won’t hold it against the crew,” he said. A naval crew would have collected as much data as possible, but a civilian crew had other priorities. “We’ll see what we find when we get there.”

He saluted Governor Brighton, then turned and left the compartment. His mind raced as he hurried to the shuttle, hastily calculating their options. It was a minimum of three days from Yangtze to Eden, and that assumed everything went perfectly. The odds were good that, no matter how much time they tried to shave off the journey, they’d need at least four to five days to reach their destination. Five days … if the enemy had launched their nukes, Waterhen might arrive to discover a dying world, the handful of survivors envying the dead.

No, he promised himself, as the shuttle screamed into orbit. I won’t let it happen.

An hour later, Waterhen set course and jumped out for Eden.

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Jump completed, Captain,” Abigail said.

Leo braced himself. They’d jumped as close to the planet as they dared, a calculated risk with both a planet-sized gravity well and trigger-happy religious fanatics involved. His crew was well-trained, and confident in themselves after a series of successful engagements, but no crew – no matter how experienced – could grasp a situation instantly, not when the enemy might engage them at practically point-blank range. He’d seen no choice. They had to get into orbit quickly enough to shoot down any ballistic missiles, as well as suppressing the orbital defences, and that meant …

“Captain,” Lieutenant Halloran said, slowly. “Are we sure we jumped to the right system?”

Leo looked up. “What do you mean?”

The display bleeped as it updated, reporting a set of orbital defences that were surprisingly – impossibly – intact, and a handful of freighters orbiting a blue-green orb that looked astonishingly peaceful. There was nothing to suggest a civil war had broken out, or that the two sides had been shooting at each other only a few days ago … no active sensors, no wreckage, no nothing. Leo felt his heart sink as he keyed his console, reassessing the sensor data from Breen. Could they have jumped to the wrong system? It should have been impossible, and they’d be no hope of escaping a court martial for gross incompetence … he ran a check, confirming the location of the sensor recordings from scratch. The location was correct and …

“I checked the coordinates,” Abigail said, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. Leo told himself to ignore it. “The recordings were definitely made here.”

Or were they? Leo forced himself to consider the problem coldly and logically. The recordings insisted the orbital defences had been largely destroyed, but Waterhen’s sensors were showing them intact. He couldn’t imagine any tech that could create such an illusion, nor any motivations for bothering; it was certainly impossible for any world, even Daybreak, to rebuild so quickly as to leave no traces of the war. And if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains – no matter how implausible – has to be the answer.

Ice ran down his spine. We were tricked …

“Captain,” Lieutenant Halloran snapped. “I have two – no, three – starships approaching on attack vector!”

Leo swore. “Red alert,” he snapped. It was a pointless order – the crew had been at battlestations before the jump – but it helped to focus his mind. “Hail them!”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. There was a long pause. “No response.”

“Helm, bring up the drives,” Leo snapped. The ambush had been carefully planned and luck that unfaithful bitch, had clearly been on the enemy’s side. “Tactical, get me a hard read on those ships!”

There was another pause. “Three light cruisers, probably based on Prometheus-class hulls,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “They’re lighting up active sensors … modern active sensors.”

Leo nodded, curtly. The Prometheus-class had been very common in the lead up to the First Interstellar War, with hundreds constructed and sold to dozens of navies before the shooting started. They were about as untraceable as starships could be, with hulls designed specifically to allow their original sensors and weapons to be pulled out and replaced with more advanced systems as technology advanced. The original versions might not have been a match for Waterhen, even though they outmassed her, but the current operators could cram enough upgrades into the hull to give a lone Prometheus a better than even chance. And there were three of them.

“Helm, cycle the jump drive,” Leo ordered. “And then warn them off.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo nodded, feeling sweat prickling down his back. Three starships, coming at him like bats out of hell … no, there was no way they were friendly. They couldn’t have come from Eden either. The rest of the sector might have been happy to supply the locals with fixed defences, but starships would have been a step too far. There was simply too great a risk of the starships being pointed at their sellers, crewed by religious nuts too fanatical to care if they died, as long as they took their enemies with them. Leo shuddered as he realised the newcomers had to be fanatical too. They’d revealed their existence, which meant they needed to destroy Waterhen before she could escape …

“Missile separation,” Lieutenant Halloran snapped. A handful of red icons appeared on the display. “I say again, missile separation!”

“Helm, alter course to evade,” Leo snapped. The missiles had been fired just outside sprint range, giving his point defence plenty of time to choose its targets, but that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. They might have been fired to pin him down, to force him to keep evading rather than plotting a hasty jump and flight. “Tactical, return fire!”

“Aye, Captain,”

Leo braced himself, silently assessing the situation. The three cruisers weren’t manned by pirates. He’d never met – or even heard of – a pirate who would willingly pick a fight with a warship, even if the bastard had a battleship and the warship nothing more than an underarmed corvette. There was too great a chance of taking damage – even minor damage, something a naval crew could repair effortlessly - or simply being rammed by a naval warship that knew she was dead and wanted to take the enemy out too. And if his attackers weren’t pirates … who the hell were they? How did they plan to keep word from reaching Daybreak?

He shuddered. No one will be very surprised if something awful happens to Eden, he thought, numbly. And they could easily take out the freighters in orbit too.

“Point defence engaging … now,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “Our missiles are flashing into their point defences …”

Leo nodded, watching as the vectors narrowed rapidly. The enemy missiles didn’t seem to be anything more than simple designs, without modern penetration aides, and his point defence had no trouble swatting them down … but they were doing their jobs. His ship couldn’t fly in a straight line for more than a few seconds, which made it impossible to escape … he swore as two enemy missiles detonated, proving they were carrying bomb-pumped laser warheads. A battleship could soak up a dozen such hits and keep fighting. Waterhen could not.

He frowned as he studied their point defence. It was a little more scattered than his, with no sign of any datanet coordinating their defences. Daybreak banned the export of coordinating systems, in hopes of ensuring their starships maintained a significant edge, but Leo had been cautioned there was little hope of keeping a monopoly on the technology indefinitely. It was just too important, and too easy to duplicate. Reading between the lines, he suspected the autonomous worlds had cracked the problem already …

“Helm, bring us about,” he ordered. A long-range missile duel would end badly. The enemy just needed to get lucky once to score a hit, and with bomb-pumped lasers the hit would likely be disastrous. “Open fire with energy weapons as soon as you get into range, and prepare to divert power to phasers.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

Leo nodded as Waterhen wheeled about, her point defence snapping the last flight of enemy missiles out of space as the range closed rapidly. The enemy ships seemed to flinch – Leo told himself it was his imagination – and then opened fire, switching to sprint mode as the range closed sharply. Abigail did a good job at twisting and turning, trying to keep one of the enemy vessels between Waterhen and the other two enemy ships at all times. The enemy compensated by spreading out their formation, trying to bring all their weapons to bear. Leo leaned forward. The timing would have to be very good …

“Target their drive section,” he ordered. There was no way to be sure if the enemy would expect Waterhen to be carrying phasers. They weren’t on the standard design – and Leo suspected the designs were effectively in the public domain, even if they were supposed to be classified – but how much did the enemy know? “Aim to disable, not destroy.”

“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Halloran said. The enemy might be able to pick up hints Waterhen was preparing to fire, but would they believe them? It was possible they’d think it a bluff … “Weapons ready.”

Leo smiled, coldly, as the range shortened rapidly. The enemy ship was altering course, bringing her missile tubes to bear even as she prepared to evade a suicide run. No starship could hope to survive being rammed by another starship, not even a destroyer. And if they thought he was trapped, he might think he’d try for a mutual kill. They might even hope for it. Leo would take out one ship, but lose everything; they’d have two ships left, more than enough firepower to finish off every other ship in the system and bomb Eden back into the Stone Age. It could not be allowed.

“Fire,” he ordered.

The lights dimmed, just briefly, as engineering channelled all spare power into the phaser array. The twin beams of ravening power, stronger than anything a destroyer should have mounted, roared through space and dug deep into the enemy drive section, setting off a chain of smaller explosions and a stream of venting plasma and atmosphere that suggested the ship was in very deep trouble. Leo snapped orders as Waterhen ran out of spare power, directing Abigail to alter course before the other two ships, suddenly aware their target had a nasty sting, resumed their efforts to destroy her. The badly-damaged cruiser fell away behind them, the stream of atmosphere tailing off as internal hatches slammed closed … not too shabby, Leo noted coldly. A pirate ship that had been damaged so badly would likely have vented everything, if the chain of explosions hadn’t destroyed the entire ship. The enemy crew might be somewhat inexperienced, but they at least knew how to save themselves from certain death.

“I think we took out two of her three fusion cores,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “She’s still got some drive power, and she’s shooting …”

“Evasive action,” Leo ordered. If he recalled correctly, inflicting so much damage on an unmodified cruiser should have destroyed the vessel, or at least left her a largely powerless hulk. The enemy had clearly upgraded her power cores as well as her weapons, ensuring she could continue to fight – if not to fly – on a lone fusion core. Hell, there was no way to be sure their count was accurate. Pretending to be badly damaged was an old trick and it was quite believable, here, because the ship really was damaged. “Tactical, deploy ECM drones.”

“Aye, Captain.” Lieutenant Halloran sounded doubtful and Leo didn’t blame him. The range was too short for the enemy to have much doubt which ship was real and which were just sensor ghosts, but – if they were lucky – their missiles would be much less capable of telling fact from fiction. “Drones deployed and …”

Alarms howled. A red icon appeared on the display, right ahead of them. “Evasive, now,” Leo snapped. The enemy ship had stolen his trick, and done a better job of it. She was too close for comfort, close enough to hammer him with sprint-mode missiles … close enough to provide direct control for the warheads, rather than risk having their seeker heads do the work. “Tactical, point defence to rapid fire …”

Abigail rammed the starship forward, the ECM drones barely keeping pace as the range closed and then widened again, as she corkscrewed away from the enemy ship. A handful of incoming missiles lost their locks, acquired the drones and expended themselves uselessly, but two detonated too close to the hull for comfort. Waterhen shuddered violently, her hull protesting loudly, as a laser beam scraped her armour, then shuddered again as a hail of plasma pulses pounded her hull. Lieutenant Halloran fired three missiles at point-blank range, aiming two into the enemy ship and detonating a third close enough to blind her sensor nodes, but the enemy had a clear lock now.

“Switch missiles to counterforce, and launch,” Leo snapped. It was going to drain their stockpile, already dangerously low, but … there was no choice. “Helm, widen the range …

“Aye, sir,” Abigail said. The gravity seemed to flicker as she spun away, the point defence switching to automatic as the enemy kept shooting. It was a risk to take humans out of the decision-making loop completely, although no human mind could react fast enough to handle the point defence without computer support – but they had no friends in nearspace. A third shudder ran through the hull. “We’re down a drive node. Perhaps two.”

Leo’s console bleeped. “Sir,” Harris reported. “I have damage control teams on their way to Node Four, but Node Five is a total write-off.”

“Understood.” Leo cursed under his breath. The enemy were smart, pinning him in a position he couldn’t escape without putting his ship in immense danger. His mind raced, searching for options. There were none. They were outgunned and alone. The planet had nothing larger than an orbital patrol boat or two, neither powerful enough to deter a lone cruiser let alone three of them. The damaged cruiser would have no trouble blowing them away. “Get that node back up as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, sir,” Harris said. “It will take at least twenty minutes, if nothing else goes wrong.”

Leo nodded curtly and cut the connection. Engineers had a habit of routinely overestimating how long it would take to make repairs … he hoped to hell Harris was overestimating the time, although there was no way to be sure. The two cruisers were trying to close the range, spending missiles like water … Leo keyed his console, trying to come up with an idea of just how many missiles could be crammed into their hulls, but drew a blank. Counting your enemy’s shots was a tactic that only worked in bad movies, and relied on the counter knowing what weapon the enemy was carrying and precisely how many bullets could be crammed into the clip. His estimates were either too low or disturbingly high. The only thing he could say for sure was that the enemy didn’t seem to be worried abiut shooting themselves dry …

An alarm howled, again. The damaged ship appeared in front of them, thankfully out of place. Abigail altered course without waiting for orders as the enemy vessel opened fire, Lieutenant Halloran launching more drones to soak up her missiles or even suggest Waterhen was heading in the exact opposite direction. Leo didn’t expect the trick to fool the enemy for long, or even at all, and the only reason it worked – even slightly – was that the enemy targeting sensors were still disorientated from the jump. It might have been more effective if the enemy had been low on ammo, but … they appeared to have all the missiles they needed and then some.

We have to get out of here, he thought, numbly. Leo hated the idea of running from the fight and yet they were so badly outgunned that the fight was unwinnable. It was just a matter of time until the enemy crippled his ship, then blew it away. Surrender was unthinkable. The enemy had attacked a Daybreak ship. The bastards would likely murder his crew and fly his ship into the nearest star, just to make sure no evidence survived. They’d have no choice. If we don’t get out of here quickly …

His mind raced. They needed time to calculate a jump and that was the one thing the enemy was intent on keeping from them. A ship jumped forward again, recycling her drives … Leo ran the vectors in his head, and told himself the tactic would work. It had to. They were running out of time.

“Helm, bring us about and point us directly at Target Two,” he snapped. The enemy ship was plunging towards them … the range would close rapidly, even without Waterhen aiming herself right at the enemy ship. “Tactical, flush all reserve power through the phaser array.”

“Captain,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “I …”

“Do it,” Leo snapped. There was no time for a debate. “Now!”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo leaned forward as the range closed with blinding speed. If the enemy sensors were as good as he thought … it would be ironic, part of his mind noted, if the plan failed because the sensors were the one thing the enemy crews hadn’t modified. No, he told himself; if they’d kept the original sensors Waterhen’s missiles might have taken out at least one of the enemy ships, perhaps all three, by themselves. They had to have modern sensors, or they’d be sitting ducks. And that meant …

“Helm, calculate an emergency jump,” Leo ordered. He heard a sharp intake of breath. “And jump on my command.”

“Aye, sir …”

The enemy ship drew closer, her weapons blazing … Leo braced himself, counting down he last few seconds. If it worked …

The enemy ship vanished. Waterhen plunged through the empty space, leaving the other enemy ships behind. They were still firing … too late. They’d have to jump themselves and they didn’t have time … he hoped.

“Jump,” Leo snapped. The calculations might not be complete, but it shouldn’t matter as long as they cleared the system. There were no ships close enough to get a precise set of jump coordinates, unless Lady Luck decided she’d favour the enemy some more. “Now!”

“Aye, sir,” Abigail said. The air seemed to darken, the display blurring as Waterhen jumped. Leo thought he felt something pressing against him, as if he were drowning … the world snapped back to normal, everything falling back into place. “Jump completed.”

“No enemy contacts,” Lieutenant Halloran added. “We’re clear.”

“Recycle the drive and jump again,” Leo ordered, quickly. The enemy might get lucky. “Aim for random coordinates, at least a light-year away.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo nodded, bracing himself for the second jump. They’d waltzed right into an ambush and they’d been very lucky to escape and that meant …

He didn’t want to think about it. But he had no choice.