Rita Longknife--Enemy in Sight Read online

  “I’ll shuttle down ammo,” Grace said, “you shuttle up sailors.” She turned to Ed. “You think we ought to get a ship on the other side of that jump to look around?”

  “I don’t know. If Bart’s outrun whoever is chasing him, you want to give them a hint where to go?”

  “Shit,” was all Grace said.

  Ed’s commlink came alive again. “Ben Hornigold is back in system,” he repeated the words of his Number Two for those listening. “He’s also bolting for the exit, but he’s hollering. Yes, they got into a fight. They lost the other two ships. He’s not saying how, but they’re gone, and them that got them are going hell for breakfast after them.”

  Ed paused. “That’s it, folks.”

  “We got a problem,” Calico Jack said.

  “I’ll get ammo down here so you can do a fighting retreat,” Grace said. “We got to get the laser gunners back aboard, Jack. We got to if we’re going to have any chance.”

  “With Billy Maynard and his crews, you think we’ll have any chance?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know, but with half our crews down here,” Ed said, and left the rest of his thought to a shrug.

  “Okay, get me ammo. I’ll get you gunners. And yes, we got to get out of here.”

  Ed, gun at the ready, trotted with Grace through a burnt landscape that had once been a pleasant walk through trees swaying in the wind. Back at the beach, Grace’s shuttle was already warming up reaction mass for a fast take off.

  “Orbit, Gomez, and don’t spare the horses,” she shouted.

  29

  Captain Edmon Lehrer prepared for his first space battle. Hell, except for a few skirmishes along the River of Gold, he’d never been in any battle.

  He’d been a school teacher when the Unity party recruiters came along and offered him a better deal. Not only would there be no more grading students’ papers, but he’d have a chance at all the things he’d ever dreamed of doing or having, but been too afraid to grab for.

  He’d ended up as a political officer on one of the ships that never seemed to leave the pier. That suited him well. But he was curious, and he wasn’t content to just check people’s mail for anti-party words or thoughts. He’d actually started studying how to operate a warship.

  After the war, he’d been quietly taken aside and offered a chance to command an old Daring cruiser for fun and profits, assuming he was willing to pass along a 30% cut to someone and not ask who.

  He’d taken two fat freighters and brought both of them into Savannah where officials looked the other way, and made it easy to sell stuff whose bill of lading came with the ink still wet.

  Ed tried to remember when he’d made up his mind to become a pirate and murder people for a living. He couldn’t point to any one decision.

  He’d started down a slippery slope and, then suddenly he was going full bore for the devil’s ass and there was no turning back.

  Now, he had a god-awful fight coming at him, assuming you could trust the hurried screams from Ben Hornigold.

  Problem was, he didn’t much believe anything Ben said. Not since he turned up shouting about there being gold. He’d been right about there being gold.

  Not so right about how easy it would be to take it.

  That worried Ed. Ben had gotten it all wrong how easy the aliens would be last time.

  Now he was screaming and running for all he was worth from this new bunch of aliens.

  Ed launched himself from the shuttle, caught a handle and pointed himself for the exit of the shuttle bay. In hardly a minute, he shot onto his bridge and, catching a hand-hold, aimed himself for the command chair.

  Number Two vacated it seconds before he hit it.

  “What’s our situation?” he snapped.

  “Five 6-inch lasers up, boss. Three more we’re working on. What with all the crew coming back, maybe we can get two of them up. We got 6 of the 4-inch pop guns working. Two more are being worked on with a chance we can get them worth something in a fight.”

  “Reactors?”

  “As you’d expect, ready to answer bells. She don’t think we’re good for more than two gees though.”

  “Reactors,” Ed said, tapping his commlink, “I may want three gees.”

  “I want a nice guy with hot buns, but I settle for that pussy you got on jump.”

  “You living to get in the sack with that pussy may depend on three gees.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Ed eyed his boards. In the war, he’d been senior political officer on a General class cruiser. They’d never been in a fight, but their boards always showed green. He’d been proud of his ship until a drunk chief explained one night that the board always showed green because they wired it to show green, not because all or even any of the systems were up.

  “You jolly man, it’s all a joke. We pretend to be war ready, and you pretend to win the war.”

  Ed had had the man whipped the next morning. He didn’t tell the captain why, he just had the chief whipped at morning muster.

  Ed had been promoted to the flagship the next month. No one ever asked him why he whipped that old chief, but then, no one ever shared with him again what was the truth behind the war, either.

  Now, the Queen Anne’s Revenge had better do a lot more than pretend to fight for him.

  Eight hours later, the town was burning from end to end. The last shuttles were waiting on beach for the last of the ground party to make a run for them. The Revenge had the top cover job, no accident that.

  “Ed, I need covering fire,” Calico Jack called.

  “We’ll be here for it for the next ten minutes. Start running.”

  “We’re running.”

  “Lasers, burn that town. Burn that jungle. Burn those bastards.”

  The Revenge was already nose down, facing the planet. When the forward laser batteries were expended, Ed would flip ship. He expected to do a lot of flipping ship for the next ten minutes.

  “We got targets,” Guns announced.

  “Fire all forward batteries,” Ed ordered.

  Five seconds later, he had the helm flip ship. That took five seconds.

  “Fire all aft batteries.”

  Five seconds later, the Revenge began to reverse again. In twenty seconds, the forward batteries were reloaded. “Fire.”

  Flip.

  “Fire.”

  Flip.

  For ten long minutes, they fired and flipped and fired again.

  A few times, Ed felt dizzy, but on screen, he was watching Calico Jack’s comm camera as the man fell back with his troops.

  “First line. Fire!” A crash of volley fire.

  “Fall back.”

  “Second line. Fire!” Some just fired a round. Others went full auto.

  “Fall back, damn you, and save your ammo!” came on net.

  “Third line. Fire.”

  “Fall Back. Don’t pick up that man, you idiot. Fall back!”

  Fire. Fall back. Fire. Fall back. It went on and on as the night was lit up by volley fire, exploding alien fire canisters and laser fire from the Revenge above.

  There were other ships leading and trailing the Revenge in orbit. They got off a few rounds here and there, but it was the Revenge that covered for Calico Jack and his troopers’ withdrawal.

  Now they were at the beach. A rank fired, many emptying their magazines on full auto, then raced to board a shuttle. It backed out into the bay, wheeled about and started its takeoff run.

  Then the next rank fired, almost all on full automatic. It hardly took a word from Calico for them to break ranks and scuttle aboard the second to last shuttle pulled up on the beach.

  It was backing out even as people were still clambering aboard. The last guy didn’t make it through the door before they were wheeling around and nosing into their takeoff run.

  The last rank fired, and most of them bolted for the one remaining shuttle.

  But a few of them formed a short, thin line. Was that Calico Jack in the
middle of them? In the night, it was hard to spot the flamboyant colors of his shirt. This solid group held for a long moment, then leveled their guns and went to full auto as they backed up toward the shuttle.

  Rocks and arrows assaulted them. Some of the arrows looked as long as a man. One cut through a gunner and drove him back ten feet into the surf.

  A fire bomb exploded a bit to the right of the shuttle. It began to pull off from the beach. The last of the gunners broke as their weapons bolts came open on an empty magazine.

  Ed stared hard at the screen. Was Calico the last one shooting? The last one backing up, step by step?

  Whoever was last, one of those long arrows took him and he was down.

  “Get the hell out of here,” came on net.

  Either Calico was ordering the shuttle out – or that was him slumped over two meters of wood in the sand?

  The shuttle backed off the beach.

  In a moment, the beach was crawling with big bastards. Some threw rocks that bounced off the shuttle. Others drew back their huge bows and sent two-meter-long arrows arching out at the shuttle.

  Some hit. Most appeared to glance off, but others seemed to hit and pierce through. Could they make orbit with that kind of damage?

  In a moment, it didn’t matter. A fire bomb hit the bow of the shuttle and showered flame all over it. Still, the shuttle pulled through the ring of fire, and picked up speed for take-off.

  But something was wrong. Whether it was an arrow, or the fire, or something else, the shuttle failed to pick up speed. It taxied rather than shot off the water.

  It taxied and taxied, never building up speed. In its wake, more arrows were shot into the water and more fire bombs exploded in its wake.

  Watching from above, Ed spotted the problem. There was a reef off the beach. It was what protected that bay from the full fury of the ocean storms.

  Usually, the shuttles were well airborne before they got close to it.

  This shuttle wasn’t. Behind it, vengeful arrows and fire wreathed the water. Ahead of them was a light color in the water.

  The tide was high. Maybe high enough to let them get over the reef and down the coast to someplace where another shuttle could pick them up. Ed reached to tap his commlink, to warn the shuttle. To arrange something.

  The shuttle hit the light water.

  It began to come apart. Then the containment system on the antimatter storage unit failed catastrophically.

  The explosion sent chunks of shuttle and steaming water shooting into the air.

  Some of it ended back on the beach. Big bastards went down before the power humanity could unleash.

  “Lasers, target the beach, if we still have a shot.”

  “I got three big boys and four of the little kids,” gunner said, reporting on his 6-inch and 4-inch batteries.

  “Turn that beach to glass, and those bastards on it.”

  “Done, boss,” and it was.

  30

  Captain Edmon Lehrer took a few moments to regain his composure, but only a few. He had a battle ahead of him, or one fast flight. He called up his captains on net; most were just getting onto their ships’ bridges and finding their seat.

  Ed polled them. “Folks, we just lost Calico Jack. I don’t think he’d want us to do anything stupid in his memory, so, do we wait for the big fellows to show up here, or do we run?”

  “Run,” came as one word from the surviving nine skippers.

  “Break orbit as soon as you can, we’ll join up on the run to the jump out of here,” Ed said, and then turned the job over to his helm to get them moving out.

  They were an hour out of orbit, with Grace and Annie forming up on his Revenge and the others working their way into a wide wedge when the jump point started spitting out ships.

  They were big and they were round.

  “Sir,” Sensors reported, “I make six of them, so far. Some of them have two reactors. Some three. Two have four.”

  “You have any visuals?”

  “No, sir. The best we have hardly show them as better than dots.”

  “What’s their speed?”

  “Like us, they came through the jump as dead slow, sir. They ain’t dumb. Now, they’re putting on acceleration. I make it as a bit more than one gee.”

  “Can they cut us off from our jump?” Ed asked.

  “Not at one gee they can’t, sir.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Ed,” came in a quaking voice. It was Billy Maynard.

  “I’m here, Billy.”

  “Do you see what I see?”

  “If you mean the, ah,” Ed glanced at Sensors. He held up both hands, showing eight fingers, “the eight strange ships coming at us, yeah, I see them.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We?” Ed couldn’t help but say.

  “We’re all in this together.”

  “Billy, you let four of your captains go wandering off freelancing around on their own treasure hunt and bringing this down around our ears. And I notice that neither of the two survivors are all that interested in talking to us about what they found and how these things followed them back. It might be nice to know what they did so we could figure out how mad these things are at us.”

  Though, considering how things had gone on the Planet of Gold, once these new arrivals talked to their four eyes down there, no doubt, there would be a lot of mad to go around.

  “Ed, you got to help us stop them from doing to Port Elgin what we did to this place.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah, we split the gold. We got to split the defenses.”

  “I was thinking of splitting the defenses by defending LeMonte.”

  “Ed, you know better than that. You were in the war. If we split up, they can defeat me and then defeat you. If we got any chance, we got to do it together. One big fleet.”

  “Without Black Bart’s cruiser.”

  “You know I can’t make a captain go against his crew.” Billy was sweating bad now. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Once we get through the next jump, I’ll message the Your Bad Day and ask the crew to toss Bart in the clink and join up with us.”

  Ed knew what that was worth.

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do about talking my crew into standing with you.”

  “Good. If we all stand together, I think we’ll really have a chance.”

  Like they’d done with Calico Jack, Ed thought bitterly. We didn’t know what we were sticking our noses into when we landed back there. How can Billy think he knows how strong we are in a fight with what’s just jumped in here?

  Ed polled his captains. The majority were for forgetting Billy and his bunch and running straight for LeMonte. The minority included Grace O’Malley and Anne Bonney.

  “Those bastards aren’t worth much in a fight,” Grace said, “but they’re better than nothing. We let the big bastards roll them up, then they’ll come looking for us next. I say we make them have to take us all in one bite.”

  Strange how having a pair of gals showing more fight than the guys quickly changed the vote.

  Ed called Billy up. “We’ll fight with you, but Billy, we need one commander. This co-commander shit didn’t work all that well back there.”

  “What do you mean, we all did what Calico Jack said to do.”

  Ed eyed Billy dolefully.

  The other pirate captain flinched. “You want me under your command, huh?”

  “Kind of. Actually, kind of like totally,” Ed said.

  “I’ll talk it over with the boys.”

  “Billy, with Black Bart and Ben Hornigold running, about half of your 6-inchers are gone. If you want us in the fight for Port Elgin, as I see it, it’s not us backing you up, it’s you going into our fighting line.”

  Billy didn’t look like he wanted to do that math, but Ed didn’t let him wiggle off the hook.

  “Okay, you command. We’ll talk this over as much as we can beforehand, but when it comes to the fight, you’r
e in charge.”

  They made it to the jump, with a dozen of the big fellows’ ships on their tail. Three of the ships had ducked down to the planet. Shortly after they made orbit, there was some kind of radio traffic between the ships in orbit and the ships in pursuit.

  No one on Ed’s ships could make anything of the transmission, but suddenly the big fellows’ ships cut down a bit of a gee on their deceleration. That would mean they’d have to brake even harder when the time came to pull up at the jump, but it let them close the distance faster for now.

  “I don’t think they liked what they saw back there,” Ed said.

  “Would you, if that was our people?” Grace said.

  “Maybe we ought to just split and run,” Billy said.

  Ed had noticed Kim, the acting battle captain for the farmers, lurking on his bridge. Now he stepped forward. “Our wives and children are on Port Elgin and LeMonte. We talked about this before as we were running from the Gold planet. If you attempt to run away and leave our people to die like that, we will fight you. We are on most of your ships. You abandon us and you will have to kill every one of us on your ships. Do not make a mistake. We will not die easily.”

  Ed turned in his chair to face Kim. “You will be safe on my ship. We have already decided to fight.”

  “I know you. You were a friend of Calico Jack, and he was good to my people. I trust you. It’s Billy I don’t trust.”

  “Strange that,” Grace said on net, “we don’t much trust him either.”

  “Billy, a word from me to your captains,” Ed said. “Any ship that tries to take off, like Bart and Ben did, will be shot down as it breaks away. This I swear. We fight together, or we figure out a way to all run together, but we won’t leave anyone behind like Calico to die so the rest of us can run away.”

  Ed chose his words hard, knowing that this was a squadron of free men on free ships. If a crew voted to run, the ship would run.

  He wondered if his ship would actually fire on a running ship.

  He doubted he’d have any trouble getting one of his ships to fire on one of Billy’s if it ran. One of their own. It was a coin toss.

  On the other side of the jump, they spotted Bart and Ben running for all the gees their ship could put on. No surprise, no amount of talking would get either one of them to come back.