Read Scourge: Book Two of the Starcrown Chronicles Page 15

  Chapter Nine

  I had been standing beside Morgana’s bridge station for the past thirty minutes as we tracked the hyperspace wake shadowing us. Even though we couldn’t scan the ship itself, its distortion wake was clearly visible to our new sensor array. We were cruising at a leisurely velocity of light factor 12, or 144 times the speed of light, along a flight path that kept us away from the few inhabited star systems in the area as if we were trying to be inconspicuous. Our newly installed camouflage shroud had been activated, causing the ship’s name and registry number to darken into the black of the hull while a new name and registry number had appeared. Our ID beacon had also been altered. To anyone we encountered we were now the transport ship Finian’s Rainbow.

  Before leaving Haven I had arranged to have a false flight plan filed and a fictitious cargo manifest created for the Finian as well. I hoped that the lure of an old transport ship carrying a valuable cargo through an isolated region of space would be too much of a temptation to resist. It looked like someone had taken the bait.

  We had only been posing as the Finian for a few hours when our sensors detected a faint wake signature in the area. As soon as we picked up the ship shadowing us I ordered everyone below decks into position. We had a number of surprises planned for the pirates when they tried to board us. On the bridge everyone had their whole attention focused on their consoles.

  “There!” Morgana said at the same moment that I saw the change on the screen. A new, smaller wake signature detached itself from the trail of the ship following us and began rapidly closing on our position.

  “I see it,” Mark said. He reached for his board. “I’m raising the dorsal gun into position.” One of the new Gatling guns had been installed on the upper hull just abaft of the command sail. Within seconds the concealed gun doors were retracted and the weapon raised into position.

  “Tracking inbound wake signature,” Mark said. “The targeting system seems to be doing fine even without a hard lock. There shouldn’t be any problem taking it out.”

  Although the ship’s sensors could not detect the torpedo itself, by adjusting the targeting system to focus on the space just ahead of the distortion wake we should be able to intercept the torpedo before it hit the ship. At least, that was the theory.

  I opened the ship wide comm. “Torpedo inbound. All hands brace for shockwave and prepare to engage boarders.”

  “Impact in thirty seconds,” Morgana said as she followed the progress of the weapon screaming toward us.

  A hush fell over the bridge as we waited. For our plan to work we had to let the torpedo get close enough for the pirates to think we had been hit before we stopped it. But we needed to time it just right. If we waited too long, too close a near miss could still cripple us. And without having a solid lock on the torpedo we would be shooting at the place where we thought it was. What we were attempting was very risky when you considered that a torpedo was just over two meters long. There was no margin for error.

  “Impact in fifteen seconds,” Morgana said.

  “Lock in computer control,” I said to Chris. The timing necessary to make this work was beyond human reflexes.

  Chris touched a control on his board. “Computer control engaged.”

  Under the computer’s direction, the Gatling gun quickly spun its six parallel barrels up to its firing speed of 10,000 RPMs as it prepared to unleash its lethal barrage.

  “Stand by,” Morgana called out. “Impact in five seconds ... four ... three ... two ... one–”

  Several things happened at once. The computer fired off a precise 0.1 second burst from the gun, laying down a stream of hardened synthesteel rounds directly in the path of the incoming torpedo. Since the weapon was approaching from almost directly astern, the rounds impacted the nosecone head on, causing it to explode less than one hundred meters away. At the same instant the hyperdrive was shut down, dropping us back to normal space and leaving us adrift. Meanwhile, a series of explosive bolts which held several of the stern hull plates in place were set off. As the plates floated away, they revealed what appeared to be the mangled destruction caused by a torpedo strike. Although the ship looked open to space it was only a shallow depression in its lines while the true, airtight hull was intact below.

  There was a collective exhale from everyone on the bridge.

  “Now all we have to do is let the pirates make their move,” I said.

  Everyone seemed excited but not tense. Bobby was actually grinning as we waited for the pirates to launch their attack while Tom pressed his headphones to his ears as he listened for anything on the comm channels. Mark shut down and retracted the dorsal Gatling gun while Morgana’s entire attention was focused on her sensor console.

  “They’re slowing,” Morganna said a moment later as she adjusted her controls. “I’m losing their wake trail. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  I turned to Tom. “Send out a low power SOS. I want them to keep on feeling like they’re in control right up until the moment we make our move.”

  Tom swiveled back to his board and turned the transmitter gain down.

  “Mayday, Mayday! This is the Finian’s Rainbow! We have suffered a catastrophic failure of our drive system and need immediate assistance! I repeat, this is the interstellar transport Finian’s Rainbow declaring an emergency! Any ship in range of this transmission please respond!”

  We waited for almost a minute before there was an answer to our SOS. Tom put it on the speakers so that we could listen in.

  “Transport ship Finian’s Rainbow this is the, ah, Liberty’s Pride. We have you on our sensors and are responding to your Mayday. How can we be of assistance?”

  I shot a questioning look at Morgana.

  “It’s them,” she said. “They just lowered their stealth system and dropped to sublight at extreme range.”

  “Talk to them, Tom,” I said.

  “Liberty’s Pride, thank God, we thought we were all alone out here!” Tom said, sounding very much like a member of a suddenly stricken transport crew. “Something went wrong with our drive system. We’re not sure what happened but we had some kind of an explosion in the engine room that caused a major hull breach. We’ve lost our engineer and our drive system is off-line. We’re running on emergency power for now, but that could go any time. The captain thinks we should abandon ship. Can you lock on and take our crew aboard your vessel?”

  “I think we can do that,” the pirate said. I could almost hear him grinning from ear to ear. “We’ll rendezvous with you in five minutes.”

  “Thank you, Liberty. The captain will be standing by at the main gangway hatch to meet you. We’re lucky you happened to be in the area.”

  “Oh it’s our pleasure, Finian. Liberty out.”

  As soon as Tom shut down the transmitter I reached for the intercom.

  “Get ready, Lucky” I said. “You’re on in five minutes.”

  “That’s Captain Lucky, if you don’t mind,” Lucky’s voice answered.

  “Okay, Captain Lucky, but you need to hustle yourself over to the gangway hatch to meet our visitors. If no one is there to let them in they might decide to blow the doors. If that happens I’ll let you explain to Ian how his ship got banged up.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I switched channels. “Barney, they’re almost here. They should be grappling onto us shortly.”

  “I’m all set down here, Sir,” he reported.

  “Excellent,” I said. “We’ll be down to join you soon. Stand by.” I switched channels again. “Clive, the pirates will be coming through the gangway hatch in a few minutes. You have a green light as soon as we’ve lured them away from the area.”

  “Roger that,” the tactical team leader answered. “We’ll contact you as soon as we’ve secured the objective.”

  “Acknowledged. Good luck.” I closed the comm circuit.

  “They’re closing with us,”
Morgana said a little while later, her eyes still locked on her board. “It’ll be any time now.” She made an adjustment and glanced down at one of her ancillary readouts. After a moment she looked over at me. “I just ran a check on their engine emissions. Their power plant signature matches one of the recordings we have for the stolen Fleet ships. It’s the Harbinger, a nebula class attack sub that was decommissioned and supposedly scrapped two years ago.”

  Encountering one of our own ships that was being used to spread terror among the shipping lanes rekindled the hatred deep inside me for what the pirates were doing. Ships which were intended to preserve the peace and provide security for my people were being perverted into instruments of murder and terror. If I had anything to say about it, this particular pirate crew had seen the last of their marauding days.

  A moment later a series of hollow clangs echoed throughout our ship as the pirates’ magnetic grapples locked onto our hull. I had to admire the simple efficiency of their operation. The unsuspecting crew of a normal transport ship would be easy prey for these murdering thieves. Unfortunately for the pirates, this was not a normal ship or crew.

  “They’re drawing our ships together,” Morgana said. “They should be docked with us in another minute.”

  I returned to my command chair and switched the main screen to the feed from the camera on B deck that showed the gangway hatch. We could see Lucky waiting by the hatch wearing one of my uniforms. He was a few centimeters taller than me and the sleeves and pant cuffs were a little short for him, but that didn’t seem completely out of place for the captain of a rundown transport. I didn’t like having one of my people in such a vulnerable position but someone had to be on hand to let the pirates aboard if we didn’t want them to blow the hatch in.

  I just hoped they wouldn’t resort to violence against a crew that didn’t offer them any resistance.