Chapter 11: Attack
With the tension between them out in the open, the three women congratulated themselves on being prepared to do their part of the job.
Lucy found she forgot again about the spent shell casing, which flew out as soon as she opened the breach. Judith returned to the inside of the turret and helped reload.
'OK, Debbi,' Judith said, 'we've reloaded. I'm going to go outside and push the turret round to face the exit to the hyperspace pipe.'
'Well try not to aim it directly at the signage for the Cymbeline holding station,' Debbi said, referring to the illuminated space buoy which marked the place ships were meant to park up before entering or after exiting the hyperspace pipe. It was also the place ships were required to wait while Marshall legitimised the ship ID. Judith preferred not to dwell on the fact that the pirates may want to skip that part of the procedure.
As soon as Judith stepped out of the turret and went to put on her hydraulic suit, Lucy flew into another panic. How was she going to sight the gun? She jumped up onto a small platform at the rear of the gun mount and followed a little railing round to the side. Mounted parallel to the gun was the eyepiece to a sighting scope. The solar-powered buoy indicating the way into and out of the pipe was so brightly lit up that it was impossible to miss with Judith rotating the turret and angling the gun. Heeding Debbi's advice, they aimed the gun at the point where ships invariably paused to acclimatise to normal space after exiting, but offset to the side of the sign. Lucy then felt safe to give Judith the OK and she locked gun in position.
The three women on the moon began the wait for the pirate vessel to appear, Judith contacted Marshall through an encrypted channel.
'Marshall, we're in position and fully loaded.'
'You've done it?'
'As best we can with antique equipment.'
'My equipment is up to the minute,' Debbi broke in.
Judith ignored Debbi's remark and spoke again to Marshall. 'How long have we got?'
'About ten minutes.'
Lucy had another one of her ideas. 'I suppose they really are pirates? I mean we don't want to fire on anyone who isn't a pirate.'
'Oh, I think they're pirates alright,' Marshall said. Anyway, we let them talk first, before doing anything 'irreversible' if you get my meaning.'
'We shan't fire without your order,' Judith confirmed.
Twelve minutes later, the pirates exited the pipe in a ship painted with an alternating black and yellow spiral pattern. The effect was to make it look like an angry hornet.
'Calling Cymbeline. Junker's Moon Depot, this is The Black Medallion. Do you copy?'
Marshall watched through the orbital scope as the pirates manoeuvred into the holding station. It was only then that he hoped Judith wasn't about to blow up his expensive sign buoy. He also decided to let the pirates sweat for a few minutes while wondering if he'd received their hail. Two minutes later, the captain of the strangely decorated ship repeated his message on a different frequency.
'Calling Junker's Moon Depot on Cymbeline, this is The Black Medallion. Do you copy?'
'I copy, Black Medallion,' Marshall returned, keeping to audio only. 'State your business.'
'Oh, why so formal, matey,' the captain of The Black Medallion began in a cajoling tone. 'We just have a little transaction to complete with the captain of a vessel we hear you have in for service.'
'Hold station,' Marshall said sternly. 'Unlike the vessels we have here for routine maintenance, yours appears to have an unregistered tag. On approach the class of your vessel wasn't showing, either.'
The captain of The Black Medallion laughed coldly. 'Must be broken. Maybe you can fix it for us.'
'Nevertheless, before you leave station, I need to know what class of vessel you are.'
There was a pause of several seconds before the pirate captain replied. 'I strongly advise you to give us every assistance in recovering what belongs to us.'
'Or what?' Marshall asked. 'The class of your vessel, if you please.'
Again there was a pause. 'Pirate Class,' came the terse reply.
'Vessel class not recognised,' Marshall called back.
Judith felt herself perspiring inside her suit. 'Why is he pushing it like this?' she thought to herself.
The pirate captain was clearly not used to people who didn't scare easily. 'Is this an automated system? I require the attention of Station Manager Brion.'
'Junker's Moon owner, Marshall Brion speaking. Do you have legitimate business here? If so, state your vessel class.'
The captain's voice was thick with aggression. 'Black Medallion, Pirate Class is all you need to know. We are of course heavily armed. Now do you have a clear landing field, or do I have to put down on your roof?'
An ugly-looking missile launcher lifted out from the upper surface of The Black Medallion. It swivelled first towards the orbital telescope and a missile was fired. It had not been intended to strike but the flash of its detonation temporarily blinded the optical sensor for several minutes. A second missile was fired almost at once at the Junker's Moon landing field. Its course was corrected in mid-flight and less than a minute later it exploded amongst the pile of scrap metal on the far side of the collection of buildings and hangers forming the service depot.
'Captain of Black Medallion, I do hope the belongings you seek to recover aren't breakable. Marshall said, adding, 'Judith, now would be a good time.'
Judith and Lucy fired their shell and watched as it glinted like a drop of water in sunlight on its unimpeded flight to The Black Medallion. Lucy wasn't certain the ancient shell would even hit the ship and if it did, it would be most likely be in the back half. She had no idea how much damage an explosive shell would do to a pressurised ship, and The Black Medallion was not one whose design she was familiar with. Squinting through the sighting scope, she braced herself for the expected explosion. Instead she found herself staring open-mouthed when the round passed clear through the rear fin without detonating. Its impact, however caused the ship to begin a slow rotation.
'Oh, no, it's a dud,' Lucy cried. Before waiting to hear Judith's response, she ejected the shell casing and began to drag another shell off the conveyor belt, knowing that she wouldn't be able to lift it unassisted up to the breach.
The unexpected rotation of The Black Medallion gave Debbi the opportunity she needed. Pointing her laser at the ship, she waited the few seconds it took until the rotation had brought the side of the front observation window into her sights. When the rotation and range was just right, she fired a short burst of data through the window into the ship. Within moments the first virus disabled the craft, as indicated by all the lights going out.
Judith stood silently for some moments watching the pirate ship, trying to imagine what was happening inside. Blind panic was her guess. They would be aware that something had hit the rear of their vessel but they wouldn't know what, and in the absence of an explosion, they might well assume that it was a piece of space debris, like a micro-meteorite. The pirates were probably running around trying to assess the damage, at the same time as slamming hatches shut and hopping about trying to get their legs into their spacesuits.
With the addition of a great deal of shouting and cursing, Judith's suppositions were exactly what was happening in most of the ship. The enraged captain ordered the flight deck sealed and cursed his inability to loose off a salvo of missiles.
Lucy, meanwhile, was struggling with the next shell and quivering with a mixture of exertion and terror at the thought that at any moment the pirates might turn their missile launcher towards the moon. She had no idea that Debbi had succeeded in the first stage of disabling The Black Medallion, and after a minute or two Lucy gave up her unrewarding struggle and sat forlorn on the floor of the gun turret. A sob broke from her lips.
'Lucy is that you?' Judith said.
'What?' Lucy whimpered.
'Stop blubbing and come and watch what's happening.'
As Judith kept a cool
eye the ship, she was joined by Lucy, who had to resort to turning her faceplate demister to full. They stood together leaning on the side of the gun turret, and watched The Black Medallion continue to rotate on its axis. The front of the ship was turning away from Cymbeline and was coming around to face the moon.
Debbi uploaded her next sequence of viruses and quickly had the control panel of The Black Medallion's flight deck displayed on her tablet. Tapping the screen, she shut down the main engine, then used positioning jets to move the ship from the holding station to a safe distance from the entrance to the hyperspace pipe. As a last command, she fired a micro-burst from the jets to arrest its rotation.
Marshall, his orbital scope still blinded, had no idea what progress had been made, or even if Judith had managed to fire a shot, although he made a sound guess, after Debbi reactivated the pirate ship's coms.
The captain of The Black Medallion started up a torrent of abuse so extreme, Marshall turned off the audio and amused himself by watching the pirate captain's silent antics through the video channel. Before he had silenced the pirate, Marshall had caught the word 'gold' mentioned several times in connection with a name used by the captain of a ship in the service bay.
By then the orbital telescope had come back on line and he was able to see the damage done to The Black Medallion. Once all had gone quiet, he congratulated his 'stealth team', invited them to return to Cymbeline, and sounded the all-clear across the Junker's Moon depot.
Broadcasting depot-wide and on a channel the team on the moon could read, he said, 'We are all grateful for Judith, Debbi and Lucy's brave actions, which have without doubt saved Junker's Moon from an unprovoked, vicious and malicious attack. They are shortly to return to the base and I am sure you will want to join in celebrating their success.'
Marshall left out any mention of the future fate of the pirates, as he believed he had an idea of what that was going to be. Meanwhile, he also had enquiries to make on the subject of their reason for arriving in the system in the first place.