Alpha strike, p.5
Alpha Strike, page 5
Jack sighed. One more problem to deal with. Still, why should he have expected this to be easy?
“We’ll have to deal with the Locusts at New Copenhagen soon enough anyway, so we’ll get those nukes back,” he said. “Is anything else missing?”
“I can’t say anyone has ever done a full inventory, though I looked around a fair bit over the years. The computers are locked down, so I couldn’t get into them to look for a manifest. That said, I didn’t see anything that looked missing other than the nuclear devices.”
Jack nodded. “And the missiles? You refurbished less than a hundred of them. Please tell me there are more.”
“There’s warehouse after warehouse stacked high with the damned things. The ones we grabbed needed a bit of service to make them functional again, but one of the local arms dealers did that for a fee. I don’t imagine you’ll have any trouble getting some of them set to rights. They’re not nearly as effective without an explosive charge, but I believe we’ve proven that they do work.”
“Yes, you did,” Jack acknowledged. “Are you playing guide for us today?”
“I am. If you follow me, I’ll take you to where we keep our vacuum suits, and we’ll head into the unpowered section from there.”
They moved as a group, taking a lift up half a dozen levels before getting off. Connor led them through a maze of corridors to an emergency airlock. Someone had mounted a rack to the wall next to it, and there were dozens of vacuum suits—old-style, of course—hanging on them.
He and his people dressed in the ones they’d brought, while Connor did the same in one of the local suits. They settled on a convenient frequency before the smuggler opened up the emergency airlock. Once the smuggler had pumped the air out of the emergency airlock, he opened the other end, and they made their way into the unpressurized section of the depot.
As they started forward, Connor spoke over the suit comm. “Perhaps you can satisfy my curiosity about something, Navy. I don’t pretend to know much about the quantum drives, but nobody detected your arrival. I’m sure you didn’t pop out right next to the gate, or our defensive forces would’ve seen you. Did you already know we were here?”
“No,” Jack said as he got used to moving with his magnetic boots. “We took some damage right before we jumped, and we popped out quite a ways from the gate. We kept our mouths shut when we figured out you were here because we didn’t know who you were. I wish we’d come out closer to the gate and prevented the Locusts from getting in.”
“It would’ve been better if you had,” Connor said sadly. “Those six ships were our only armed vessels, courtesy of the pirates we killed off to keep the location of this system secret. Still, all’s well that ends well, I suppose.”
“With warehouse after warehouse of missiles, how many do you think are here?” Amanda asked.
The smuggler turned and grinned at her through his transparent faceplate. “Enough to arm all twelve battleships and have plenty of reloads to spare. There must be millions of the damned things. We’re not going to argue about Port Royale keeping some, are we?”
“Not at all,” Jack said as they moved through the dark, airless corridor. “Protecting the depot is critical to the war effort. Once we manage to recover the nukes, we’ll start fitting them into the missiles here as well. I want this station to be invulnerable because its loss would doom us.”
They came to an open lift shaft where they used ropes to guide them as they went up. All the lift doors were open, but everything was pitch black away from the lights on their helmets.
“We’re getting into the supply section now,” Connor said after going up a few dozen decks. “It takes up a lot of space, and I feel confident you could build brand-new battleships if need be. Anything you need, Navy, it’s here.”
“If the pirates didn’t steal a bunch of it,” Jack grumbled.
Connor laughed. “Oh, they stole a good bit, but it barely put a dent in what’s available. It’s not like this ancient equipment was all that profitable to sell.”
“Let’s get out there and take a look. I have no idea what’s here, but I think selecting something randomly will give us a better idea of the scale of what we’re looking at.”
When they came out of the lift, it was into a broad series of corridors that opened into tall bays. Like the supply depot back at Faust, each was filled with shelves stacked high with boxes. Without gravity, everything was loose inside the shelving, but it hadn’t wandered away because each was secured by netting.
Joby went from shelf to shelf looking at things and came back with a grin. “Nothing remarkable, but it’ll all be useful. And look how much of it there is. We’ve been scrounging and fixing things that were long broken, but if this particular warehouse is any indication, we’ll have lots of brand-new parts to install once we finalize the treaty.”
“Is there anyone else in here with us?” Amanda asked once they got back to the shaft. She was looking up.
Jack grabbed the rope before pulling himself into the shaft. Somewhere far above them, there seemed to be a soft light. He ordered everyone to turn off their lights and confirmed it.
“We’re not supposed to have anyone up here, but it wouldn’t shock me if we found somebody pilfering something,” Connor said in an unconcerned tone. “We’re a bit light on abiding by rules if you know what I mean. Don’t worry. I’ll sort it out.”
The group pulled themselves up the lift shaft until they arrived at the level with the lights. The illumination came from a portable light attached to the bulkhead outside one of the warehouses farther down the corridor.
When they made their way to the hatch leading into the warehouse, Jack could see half a dozen people in vacuum suits busy emptying a shelf into a powered sled.
“You there,” Connor said over the general comm frequency. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
That sparked a reaction from the thieves. They grabbed onto the shelving and turned to face the hatch. Rather than answering the question, they went for their weapons.
Jack yanked Connor away from the hatch just before the first bullets came flying through, ricocheted off the bulkheads, and went flying off in every direction.
His guards pulled their weapons and began sniping into the compartment, ducking back and forth in a rhythm that seemed arbitrary to him but well-practiced. There was some kind of timing to it, but he couldn’t guess how it worked.
“We need to retreat,” Jack said, pulling his pistol.
They’d only just started back toward the lift shaft when a bright light lit them up from that direction. More people in vacuum suits were pouring out, and they opened fire.
Jack felt the tug of something ripping at his sleeve. The shot had missed his flesh, but his air began hissing from the tear in his suit. He needed to patch it or he’d die, but he couldn’t do that while the bastards were shooting at them.
His choices were damned limited, so he opened fire. If they couldn’t take down their attackers now, he’d be dead either way.
6
Connor cursed the bastards ambushing them but didn’t let that slow him from returning fire at the people in the lift shaft as he retreated. He tried to activate his comm to call for assistance, but there was no signal. Power was off here, and the station itself blocked his ability to contact anyone back in the occupied areas.
Maybe he should’ve seen about installing some signal boosters. Well, too late now.
He didn’t get a chance to use his pistol all that often, but he was a pretty good shot. When he’d emptied his magazine at their attackers, two of them were hit through what he was pretty sure were his own efforts. Someone pulled Romanoff back while someone else slapped a patch on his torn suit.
To his credit, Romanoff continued firing. Connor wasn’t sure he’d have expected that of the young lieutenant he’d met fifteen years ago, but Romanoff had grown up. He and the young officers retreated into the area where they’d first been attacked, and he followed. The Marines had taken the people in there out of the fight, so it was as good a place as any.
“Who the hell are these people?” Romanoff demanded as he found a shelving unit to hide behind. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, but it beat being in the open.
Connor parked himself next to the other man, swapped his nearly empty magazine for a fresh one, and aimed his pistol over the supplies on the shelf. They were large boxes strapped together, so they weren’t floating in the microgravity environment.
“I haven’t got the slightest idea, but this is insane. People have been raiding these supplies for years, and it’s not like there’s even a law against it. We just forbid people from being gluttonous about it. If you need a part, you can take it if you can find it. How’s your arm?”
“Fine. I lost a little air, but Amanda got a patch on me in time to keep that to a minimum. I’m not able to reach anybody over my comm. Have you called for backup?”
“I can’t reach anybody either,” Connor said with a grunt. “Without power in these sections, there’s no signal, and we’re quite a ways from the occupied sections of the station. I’m afraid we’ll have to take care of this ourselves.”
In fact, the Marines took care of it. Their merciless barrage of fire drove the attackers off. Tellingly, the intruders went up the lift shaft rather than down. That meant they had a cutter or cargo shuttle docked farther up rather than coming from the occupied section of the station.
Once they were safe, they made sure nobody else’s suit was damaged. The last thing they wanted was somebody to have a catastrophic failure because it had taken enough damage to give out without warning.
Then they began looking at the dead men and women around them. There were half a dozen corpses in the warehouse and almost the same number in the corridor near the lift shaft. That was a significant group, so this was an organized affair.
Without stripping their suits, all he could do was look at faces through their faceplates. He didn’t recognize any of them, but that wasn’t shocking considering how many people lived and worked in and around Port Royale. The governing council estimated they had close to thirty thousand people in the system, so the chances of recognizing anyone were pretty low.
He knew the security services wouldn’t know who they were either. It wasn’t as if they had universal ID. People used aliases and lied about their identities all the time.
Port Royale was pretty much a cash and carry society. If you wanted to go to somebody with a lot of money and take a loan, that person was responsible for vetting borrowers and getting their money back if a loan went bad.
Now, if someone attacked someone else or stole something from them, the security services took that seriously. The penalties for outright theft or attack inside Port Royale were higher than they’d be in the Confederation. Examples had to be made to keep the rough people who lived here aware of the penalties for bad behavior.
Once this calmed down, he’d run their identities past everyone he knew. They’d figure out who they were, but it might take a while.
“It looks like the area is clear,” one of the Marines said. “We need to withdraw because they might come back.”
Connor expected Romanoff to argue, but he didn’t. Instead, they made their way down to the pressurized section of Port Royale on high alert. Once he had a good signal, Connor made sure a large group of trusted people was waiting for them. There’d be no ambush when they went back up to retrieve the bodies.
Once everyone had stripped out of their suits, somebody with a medical background went over them to make sure there were no injuries that might have been missed because of adrenaline. By some miracle, no one had been shot.
Apparently, Jack had called his ship to let them know what happened because half an hour later, a full squad of people in armored vacuum suits arrived, led by Colonel Turner.
The older man had his helmet tucked into the crook of his arm and scowled at Connor. “What the hell happened?”
He held up his hands. Turner was far more dangerous than even the rough and ready pirates he’d dealt with in the past, so he wanted to defuse things early.
“We chanced across somebody stealing something, and they took offense. We have some pilfering, but this was a much larger scale operation, and they weren’t willing to take no for an answer.”
“We’re retrieving the bodies,” Turner said, his tone brooking no objection. “Then we’re going to find out what they were doing. When I track the bastards down, they’ll wish they’d never been born.”
“Now that’s where you need to hold up,” Connor said, using a somewhat placating tone. “We have security services that will be happy to let you work with them, but this is our territory, not yours. We’ll make sure whoever did this pays a heavy price for it, but you don’t get to carry out a vendetta.”
The grizzled officer glared at Connor. “You just dragged my commanding officer and several of our people right into an ambush. Why should I trust anything you say, smuggler? By your own admission, everybody here is a criminal of some kind or another. I don’t trust your idea of justice.”
“And that’s why we have to make this right, don’t you think?” Connor. “What use is finalizing a treaty if you don’t believe we’ll hold up our end of the bargain? It’s incumbent on us to make the situation right. If we let you carry this out on your own, then it looks like we’re washing our hands of the situation. We have something to prove here.”
He let that hang in the air for a moment before he continued. “I have no idea what they were doing, but I’m sure there’ll be a thread leading back to whoever sent them. Are you going to work with me so we can grow together, or will you fight me and drive us further apart?”
Turner glared at him for a full ten seconds before nodding. “You get one chance to make a first impression. Don’t screw this up.” He turned to the rest of his people. “I want a fireteam to go back to Hunter with the commodore. The rest of you are with me. Be ready for contact with the enemy at any time. You’re cleared to return fire and advance if you’re fired upon. Don’t stop shooting until the threat ceases. Clear?”
“Clear!”
Connor looked at his security people. They didn’t seem nearly as dangerous as Jack’s, so he had security envy. It was too bad he couldn’t do much about it because the ex-military types that ended up at Port Royale were often the kind one didn’t want behind you while armed.
“I’ll go back up with you,” he said. “We’ll take my people along to secure the bodies.”
When they made their way back to the area where they’d been attacked, he saw the situation had changed. Someone had come back, and the bodies were gone, as were the parts they’d been stealing.
“This is where the fighting happened because there’s still blood floating in the corridor,” Turner said. “It looks like they came back for their dead. Where could they have boarded the station at?”
“There are a number of small craft bays that we don’t use. The large hatches are closed, but if someone connected a power cable to one, they could give it enough juice to open. Our flight control people should have tagged them. We pay good money to make sure we know who comes into the station and who leaves. The fact that no one raised the alarm means money changed hands, and someone on my payroll is in a lot of trouble.”
Turner gestured to four of his people. “Go up the lift shaft. Some of those bodies were still leaking, so you can figure out where they got out. Make sure they’re not still here. The rest of you assume guard positions. I don’t want any more ambushes.”
One of the Navy people who’d stayed with Connor was their supply man. He couldn’t remember the fellow’s name, but he’d been inside the warehouse where the intruders had been loading their stolen gear. Connor found him working on a tablet next to the now empty shelf.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
The Navy officer turned toward him and smiled. “I’m a logistics guy, so I’m following the part numbers. Whatever they stole will tell us a lot about them. Obviously, it had to be scarce enough to risk their lives, and they came in great numbers. My bet is there was more than one team. When this group came under attack, they called for help. Their coms worked better than ours, or they were closer together.”
Connor nodded. “And what did they get? I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name.”
“No reason you should. I’m Joby Hutton, and before you get me confused with an upstanding guy, I was a supply officer that got busted down to petty officer and got his hands dirty more than once doing the kind of things that would make us friends.”
That made Connor smile. “A kindred soul, then. I feel like we’re long-lost brothers, Joby. What were they clearing out?”
“Fire control modules,” the supply guy said, his smile vanishing. “This shelf was filled with fire control modules for missile launchers. Admittedly, they didn’t take much of what was here, but if they had folk elsewhere loading up on missiles, they’d be very dangerous going forward.”
Connor grimaced. “We’re going to have to send people to look at the missile supplies, but I’d wager they loaded up on those as well. At least it narrows down where we’ll find them. There’s no need for those parts if you don’t have missile launchers. Since those only exist on Port Royale and the abandoned battleships, they didn’t go far.”
He turned to his people and ordered them to check the missile stockpiles. Once again, there was a tremendous number of missiles aboard Port Royale, and no matter how many the intruders had taken, it wouldn’t have made much of a dent. Still, they needed to look.
Amusingly, the missiles themselves wouldn’t be a danger to Jack’s battleship without nuclear warheads. The same would not be true of regular ships, small craft, or Port Royale itself. The station was armored, but not to the degree that would save it from being punctured by fast-moving missiles.
