Read Scourge: Book Two of the Starcrown Chronicles Page 13
Chapter Eight
“We’re carrying forty of them,” I said as I looked around at the shocked faces of the ship’s department heads.
After leaving Toula and setting course for the rendezvous coordinates, I had called a meeting of my senior people. Once everyone had squeezed into the conference alcove at the back of the bridge I brought up a holographic display of one of the missiles. The image hung suspended above the table giving everyone a clear view of what we were transporting.
“And you’re sure that what we’re carrying are these rapier missiles you told us about?” Doc Jacobs asked, peering at the floating image.
“Absolutely,” Clive Mayweather answered him. Clive was a marine colonel and veteran of numerous military actions. I had recruited him to be the CO of the tactical operations unit. Along with his many other accomplishments he was also a munitions expert. Clive was familiar with every kind of weapon there was. He had confirmed my identification of the missiles the moment he saw them.
Doc sat back and frowned. “We certainly do come up with some ingenious ways to mangle the human body.”
“After a hit with one of these, Doctor,” Clive said, “it’s not so much mangled as it is pulverized.” He curled his fingers around an imaginary ball as he explained. “The missile doesn’t detonate its charge until after it penetrates a ship’s plating, causing the hull to contain the force of the explosion. The shock waves bounce back and forth in the enclosed space and destroy everything inside. Something as soft as a human body is virtually liquefied. Of course, most ship hulls aren’t strong enough to contain such an explosion for more than a fraction of a second. But that’s all it takes to accomplish its purpose. After that, a ship the size of ours would simply be blown to pieces.” He mimed separating his hands and spreading his fingers. “For something larger, say a battle frigate or carrier, the explosion could end up taking out more than a dozen sections at once. Any crew unfortunate enough to be in those sections would end up smeared across the nearest bulkhead.”
Lucky made a disgusted face. “Cancel my breakfast order for scrambled eggs.”
“We’re not actually going to deliver these things, are we, Jason?” Bobby asked. “We can’t let pirates get their hands on something this destructive.”
“You’re right,” I said. “We can’t. But if we don’t make this delivery we’ll lose the only lead we have. Fortunately, I think we’ve found a way to manage both. I asked Mark and Barney to put their heads together and they’ve come up with a solution.”
Excitement shone in Mark’s eyes as he started to speak. “Actually, it’s really pretty simple. The missiles’ guidance system operates on a three dimensional coordinate matrix. All we need to do is modify the targeting algorithm to reflect the X and Y coordinate values across their axes and we can–”
“Whoa!” Lucky interrupted. “Can you try that again in non-geek so us mere mortals can understand?” Mark was literally a genius when it came to computer systems or any sort of electronics, but he sometimes forgot that the rest of us didn’t think in terms of circuit pathways and computer code.
He paused briefly, organized his thoughts, then said, “Uh, I can reprogram the missiles to miss whatever they’re targeted on.”
Reprogramming the ROM chip in a missile was supposed to be impossible. From anyone else this would have been pure bragging, but coming from Mark it was a simple statement of fact.
“Won’t somebody notice that they’ve been tampered with?” Lucky asked.
“There’ll be nothing for them to notice because we won’t be changing anything physically,” Barney said, grinning mischievously. “That’s the beauty of it. They can even run a full diagnostic and get a green light. But whenever they lock one on a target and fire it off, it’ll go off course.”
“The only way anyone could tell that we’ve done anything,” Mark explained, excitement creeping back into his voice, “would be if they went through the guidance program line by line. The changes I plan to make will affect values in only two lines of code. Since there are literally billions of lines of code it’s virtually impossible they’ll ever find it.”
Chris was looking thoughtful. “Eventually somebody’s going to realize that none of the rapiers are able to find their targets. What if they put two and two together and notice that all the missiles that go wrong were transported aboard our ship?”
I shrugged. “We’ll deal with that situation if it comes up. Like Bobby pointed out, we can’t let these weapons be delivered into the hands of some unknown party with God knows what on his agenda.
“But there’s another, more important question no one has asked yet,” I said. I paused, watching the puzzled faces around me for several moments before continuing. “Rapiers are called ‘ship killers’ because that’s what they were designed to do. But why would pirates want a weapon that completely destroys a ship?”
“They wouldn’t!” Chris said. “They only need to disable a ship so they can loot its cargo. Blowing up their target doesn’t make any sense.”
“Then what do they want with these missiles?” Lucky asked.
“That is the million Solar question,” I said. “We’ve been operating under the assumption that we were running this shipment for the pirates. What if we’re actually dealing with someone else?”
That thought silenced everyone for a while.
“But didn’t your Mr. Smith guarantee that we wouldn’t be bothered by pirates on this run?” Chris asked.
“He did. That’s what initially made me think that he was connected to them. Who else would be able to guarantee us safe passage? Now I’m not so sure. What if Smith’s connection with the pirates is simply that his people are paying them off to leave their shipments alone?”
Bobby frowned, shaking his head. “This is getting complicated. So now you think we’re wasting our time with this run?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. As I see it there are two possibilities. Either Smith is connected with the pirates and is using this run to feel us out, or he and his people are black market arms dealers who have an arrangement with the pirates to allow their ships to pass unmolested. Either way we’re committed to seeing this deal through.”
“As if dealing with murderous pirates wasn’t enough,” Lucky quipped.
“Remember,” I said, refocusing the conversation, “we’re on our own out here and anything could happen. Bearing that in mind, I want to start running a series of drills. This ship is crammed full of new systems, many of which we haven’t needed to use yet. I want us to be able to react instantly to any situation we run into without having to search for the right button to push at a critical moment. I’ve given Chris a number of scenarios that he’s going to program into the computer as soon as we’re through here. So, unless there are any more questions, we’ll be starting the drills in ten minutes.”
As the meeting broke up and everyone returned to their stations, I moved to the command chair to spend a few minutes brooding over our upcoming encounter. I wasn’t worried about the pirates. Smith had been too confident that he could keep them away from us and my gut was telling me I could believe him. What I was concerned about were those rapier missiles. I had the uncomfortable suspicion that someone was expecting a major conflict to break out.
Once again I was beginning to feel that familiar sensation that events were being manipulated behind the scenes while I was stumbling around in the dark.