Corsair Menace (Privateer Tales Book 12) Read online

  “Can you get to that passage?” I asked, hoping it might be a way out of our current predicament.

  “I don’t know. Bish says the door closed behind Sendrei.”

  “Frak! What were they thinking?”

  The ground shook even more violently and I had to push against the Stryker as it leaned heavily on Marny and me. My HUD showed that we’d somehow changed elevation by five meters. Initially, I assumed we’d somehow sunk further into a cavern below, but I suddenly realized that instead, we’d gained elevation.

  “We’re lifting. What the frak?” I said and for a moment our comm channels were filled with similar observation.

  “Quiet, people!” Marny ordered. “They buried a ship. It’s lifting off and we’re on it.”

  “No ship can lift that much dirt,” I said.

  “We’re three meters from the surface,” Marny said.

  “Shite! Strap in, Bish. This baby isn’t designed for non-terrestrial operation,” Tabby said.

  I chuckled. If Bish hadn’t long since strapped in, I’d be surprised.

  I strained against the soil, making small headway as I compressed the loose dirt, but the suit just didn’t have sufficient power to move the amount of weight that was atop us.

  “We’re lifting,” Marny said.

  The power involved in what she was suggesting was mind boggling. First, I’d no idea a Kroerak cruiser could make atmospheric entry, much less bury itself successfully and lie dormant for a hundred fifty standard years. Nick would later explain to me that Kroerak were using gravity fields in a way we still don’t understand to achieve this seemingly impossible feat.

  The ground around us shifted as the massive ship continued its trajectory toward the surface. It had been lifting the entire time we’d felt the tremors in the ground.

  “Liam, what’s going on? The entire hillside is heaving,” Ada’s voice came across the comm.

  “Marny, push with me.” I reasoned that if Ada’s comm signal could make it to us, perhaps enough soil had fallen away that we could free ourselves.

  “Hold on to something!” Tabby said as we all started sliding.

  We tumbled faster and faster. I got my first view of sky as we separated from the tumbling earth. Clawing against the soil in a swimming motion, I tried to pull myself above it. My AI fired arc-jets the moment I was released, pushing me away from the falling mass.

  The Stryker fell, planting itself nose-first in the loose soil on the edge of the massive crater left behind by the climbing cruiser.

  Popeyes aren’t made to maintain flight and I fell back to the ground, all the while searching the sky for Tuuq. “Ada, get out of here!” I yelled, just as I located her.

  To her credit, Ada had already turned Tuuq and was accelerating away. It was too late, however, as the cruiser fired a wave of lances.

  “Ada!” I stepped toward the falling ship.

  Chapter 10

  Not a Bad Day's Work

  "Get Tabby, Cap," Marny ordered, tearing up the ground as she rushed toward the sinking Tuuq.

  I raced to the Stryker, two meters of its nose buried in the disturbed earth. An orange warning light directed me left and without thinking, I dove out from beneath a falling mound of dirt the size of our bungalow. As the cruiser continued its climb, it was canting to the side, ridding itself of its extra burdens. Fortunately, it was neither moving toward Tuuq nor York.

  I jumped up and clung to the wheel of the Stryker while I banged on the rear hatch. "Tabby, are you up?" I asked. "Bish?"

  Bish was first to respond. "Aside from hanging like an onion to be dried, I appear to be unharmed."

  "I’m attempting to restore systems," Tabby said.

  "See if you can get your rear winches powered," I said. "I might be able to get you upright again."

  "Copy. Should be up momentarily," she said.

  I flipped a mechanical lever next to a gear on both spools. The winch design was nearly identical to what we had back home. I tamped down a desire to consider the implications of aliens and humans coming up with the same design. I dropped to the ground, holding the heavy lead hooks and trailing the thin cables. The stumpy trees of Zuri had deep roots due to the cool dry summers and I chose the biggest two I could find.

  "Any luck?" I asked.

  "We have power, so you should be able to activate the spools manually," she said. "We're reinitializing the systems. This design has physical memory cores which were unseated in our fall. It'll take another ten minutes before we're going very far."

  "Locate Jonathan and Sendrei," I ordered my AI.

  "The Sendrei and Jonathan are located within vessel previously referred to as Kroerak cruiser," my AI announced.

  "What? Confirm last!"

  My AI showed a sequence of videos recorded from different points of view — mainly our suits and vehicle cams. Jonathan, followed by Sendrei, had jumped from the Stryker and run through a briefly opened door just before everything had gone to shite.

  "Open comm channel with Jonathan and Sendrei."

  My HUD's display of Jonathan's bios drained and disappeared.

  "Unable to establish communication channel."

  "Marny, we have to get Tuuq in the air."

  "Tuuq is down hard," she said. "I'm punching out the cockpit glass. I can see movement, but we’re pretty shaken up."

  "Frak. I think Jonathan and Sendrei are on that cruiser. The Stryker is stuck, but Tabby and Bish are both up," I said.

  "Damn. What could they have been thinking?"

  I jumped as a sonic boom rolled across the valley. Looking up, I saw that the cruiser was almost out of sight, still climbing.

  "Contact Abasi command in Manetra."

  "Honorable Hoffen Captain, how might House Gundi be of service to you today?" A neatly trimmed male Felio appeared on my screen.

  "I'm reporting a Kroerak vessel making way to escape Zuri gravity," I said. "I'm not sure what sort of response House Gundi desires, but Manetra command should be able to resolve a sensor lock on this vessel. I'm prepared to communicate our data-streams of its current vector."

  "Hoffen Captain, this is an official channel. Reporting false information is a serious infraction," he said, scolding me.

  I directed my AI to upload the time-coded sensor data of the ship's assent.

  "Good. Send that data-stream to your supervisor. You have my ident if you need further information. Hoffen out." I closed the comm channel.

  "Send data-streams from 0500 forward to Mshindi Second." If I were more thoughtful, I'd have given her a preamble, but I had more than a few problems to deal with already.

  I jumped on top of the Stryker — which, at that moment, happened to be the back hatch — and leaned over to where the manual controls for the winches sat. There was probably a better way to accomplish the task, but I had no idea what that might be, so I pulled in the lines until they were taut and then loaded up tension.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Even though the vehicle had landed in soft dirt, it was heavy enough to have buried its nose quite solidly. Pulling against the back of the vehicle meant having to push away the dirt in front of the pointy nose. The winches weren't up to the task.

  "Hoffen. Reorient your winch to the side," Bish said, recognizing the problem. "Tip the vehicle over. There's not as much to pull against."

  It would have been ideal to pull the vehicle onto its wheels, but getting it out of the dirt was a better objective.

  "Going to be a crappy ride for you," I said.

  "They say Earthers used to pay for rides like this. Called it a carnival," he said.

  Despite my recent dislike of the man, his dry wit made me laugh. I released the tension on one of the lines and jumped off to find a stump perpendicular to the vehicle to tie off to instead. When I loaded tension into the line, the Stryker almost immediately started moving. I jumped off again and quickly relocated the second line so the vehicle wouldn’t completely turtle and land on its roof. A few minutes later, I had the ve
hicle on its side.

  "Seriously? After all that, we're lying on our side?" Tabby complained.

  "Give me a minute." The mech-suit wasn't quite powerful enough to roll the Stryker over in one push, but by rocking it a few times, I was finally able to right it.

  Once upright, I gave the vehicle a quick inspection. Every surface was scraped and big hunks of dirt clung to the sides, but overall, it was in good shape. When I got to the back, the hatch had been sprung but was only open a few centimeters. A broken actuator whined as it tried to lower the heavily armored ramp. Identifying the problem, I reached in and ripped out the broken actuator, allowing the ramp to fall.

  "You suck," Tabby said, holding the frame of the vehicle as she hobbled out. "And I never want to get in one of those death traps again."

  "Well done, Captain Hoffen," Bish said, smiling as he released the straps that held him in his chair.

  "Stay close, Tabbs, Bish," I said. "There are likely Kroerak in the neighborhood."

  As I spoke, the interior lights of the Stryker turned on and the vid screens flickered to life.

  "There we go," Tabby said.

  I jogged back to where I'd tied off the winch cables. One of the cables had buried itself so deeply into the tree trunk that I had to utilize my multipurpose tool to free it.

  "Tuuq's in bad shape," Ada said as she and Nick joined us at the back of the Stryker.

  Our conversation was cut short by the sound of automatic blaster fire. After converging on the location, we found Bish standing over two hatchlings.

  "Damn fine weapon," he said as we approached. "They were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Didn't seem fair not to put 'em down."

  "Nice shooting," I said. "Probably best if you don’t get too far from the group, though. A warrior might give you a run for your money."

  He pointed into the crater left behind by the cruiser. "Gotta be more than a few of buried down there. Be worth digging them up, a warrior is worth twenty-five thousand."

  "You know those warriors are still alive, right?" I said. "And blaster rifles won't penetrate their shell."

  It was as if I'd hit the man with a shock stick. He jumped back, turned and ran for the Stryker. As if to punctuate what I'd said, a warrior’s claws reached out from the rubble.

  "Nice timing." I unstrapped the multipurpose tool, extended it to the sword configuration and leapt into the hole. The ground beneath me boiled. This might have been a terrible decision. A loud thwump announced Marny's arrival and two of us put down seven warriors, as one-by-one they extracted themselves from their dirt graves.

  “That’s probably not the end of them,” Tabby said, once the shooting stopped. She joined us, floating above the crater with the benefit of her grav-suit.

  “We’re going to need to extend our patrols over here for a while and I’ll get Nick to manufacture monitoring equipment. I’d hate to see a warrior or even an adolescent find their way to York,” Marny said.

  “Do you think they’ve overcome selich poisoning?” I asked.

  “Difficult to know,” Nick answered as we climbed out of the crater, dragging dead Kroerak behind us. “There had to be at least one noble to run that cruiser. We’ve seen before that a noble can override a warrior’s survival instinct where it relates to selich.”

  “They seemed intent on taking you guys in the tunnels,” Tabby said. “I didn’t see them holding back.”

  “I’m going to call that a problem for another day,” I said. “I hate to be the capitalist right now, but we need to round up the fallen Kroerak. Nick, how bad is Tuuq? Scrap or repair?”

  “She’ll sail again,” Nick said. “But we’ll wait for Petersburg Station to arrive. We just don’t have the capacity to repair the hull damage.”

  “Frak,” I said. “How are we going after Jonathan and Sendrei?”

  "We'll get a message off to Munay," Nick said. "It's the best we can do for now."

  “This is going to crush Flaer,” I said. “I should never have let him come along.”

  Never one to let me wallow, Marny spoke up. “You’re right, Cap. This will be hard on her, but the decision was Sendrei’s.”

  We worked in silence, stacking dead bugs in a giant pile. It was disgusting work, but the necessity of earning credits for our survival pushed us forward.

  "That's a crap tonne of bugs," Marny said, tossing a final warrior husk onto the pile.

  “By my count, we’re looking at a little over four hundred thousand in bounties,” I said. “I'd like us to pay off our short-term note and buy us time to get our feet under us again.”

  “Do you really think Abasi will pay out that much?” Bish asked.

  “No question. You know as well as I do, the Abasi are an honorable people. By my count, you’re in for six hundred credits. Not a bad day’s work, right?” I said.

  “Today has been terrifying beyond description,” Bish said. “When Tabitha drove into the hole, I thought we were all dead. The slope of the entrance ramp alone should have killed us. How she knew we were too long to flip over, I'll never know. When I realized we’d trapped a gang of warriors, I thought we were dead. And when I realized we were riding on the back of a warship, I thought we were dead. Turns out, you all have a pesky aversion to dying and for that I’m grateful. And no, I don’t want my six hundred in bounty, that’s all yours, you more than earned it.”

  “I’ll take another bowl of chili,” I said, causing the table to erupt in laughter.

  I found it difficult to smile. We were down two crew members and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. According to House Mshindi, the Kroerak cruiser had eluded tracking after moving outside of Zuri’s anemic tracking systems. Even if we had a ship to give chase with, we had no idea where to go.

  Life had slowed significantly in the weeks since the Kroerak ship launched from Zuri and we’d spent the first week patrolling the area between York and Kuende Run, bagging three warriors, a handful of adolescents and even more hatchlings. Unlike those we’d run into in the hive, these bugs seemed uninterested in direct conflict, especially after we’d seen fit to consume copious amounts of the spicy, natural root.

  The Abasi — specifically House Gundi — had taken over Kuende Run. Two days after our assault on the hive, they’d dropped in a platoon of heavily armed soldiers. Ever since then, the road past Zuri and our compound had been busy with wave after wave of troop and supply transports. There was even talk of a road improvement project all the way from Manetra, twenty-two hundred kilometers away.

  “Patty should pay you a commission on that chili, Hoffen,” Hog said, sitting at the chair we always left open for him while eating at Patty’s restaurant. “With all this talk of bug warriors running loose, she can't make enough of it.”

  I gave him a friendly nod and took a seat next to Sempre. She looked away, still uncomfortable with the perceived difference in station between us.

  "How are you feeling, Sempre?" I asked, hoping to ease her tension. 'You're looking strong." As far as I could tell, the young Felio had recovered from her injuries. Her pointy ears twitched in response to the positive attention and swiveled back as she looked at me, not quite making eye contact. She didn't smile since it was considered bad manners by Felio to show teeth when communicating, but I'd learned to translate many of her other actions. The ear movements, narrowing of eyes and flick of her tail indicated appreciation.

  "She's doing really well," Roby Bishop blurted out from her other side. "Felio have a tremendous healing capacity. I'm not sure how badly she needed the nano-bots. Me, on the other hand, I was toast. Without those bots, I could have died."

  "You were brave, Roby." Sempre lowered her eyes and looked at the table as her tail wrapped around her leg.

  "I'm glad you're both doing better. Any chance you're ready to rejoin the crew?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure, Captain," Roby said. "I thought our last trip was going to be it. Sempre and I aren't sure we want to be in the line of fire anymore."
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  "We have a lot of work ahead to get Intrepid going again," I said. "How about you help us with repairs and then make up your mind about crew."

  "Sure. We could do that," he said.

  "Sempre, is that how you feel too?

  "Yes, Hoffen Captain. Roby is the important one. I am just a cargo handler."

  "Fact is, I plan to have a lot of cargo," I said. "The position remains yours if you want it."

  "You would take me without Roby?" Sempre asked.

  "Oh, dear girl," Ada interjected. "Come sit by me and let me explain how this works."

  Sempre looked nervously to Roby who seemed to be both confused and concerned by the exchange. With all eyes on him, he nodded, as if giving permission. I shook my head knowingly. Roby was in for a rough ride.

  "Big night coming up, right Mom?" I raised my glass of carbonated red fruit juice to her.

  “Are Tuuq and Intrepid really up for the trip out of the atmosphere?” Mom asked.

  Petersburg Station was due to arrive in six hours and the Ophir crew was itching to unpack and get her operational.

  “You have another option?” I asked.

  “We have shuttles that can easily make the trip,” she said.

  “Except they’re on the station and not here.”

  “Katherine would be more than willing to send a shuttle down,” she said.

  "LeGrande is on Petersburg?" I asked. "I thought it was too dangerous to move with personnel aboard?" Katherine LeGrande was an ex-Belirand captain. She had become Mom's business partner after she and her crew had been abandoned in the deep dark.

  "Petersburg Station is being moved through TransLoc," Nick said. "I was just being safe by not allowing anyone to ride on it before. When we moved it from Tipperary to Ophir, I didn't have the backup of Mars Protectorate Engineering Core running the calculations."

  "I'd like to take both Intrepid and Tuuq up," I said. "We've made progress on Intrepid's repairs, but Petersburg's new dry dock would really get us rolling. I don't think we'll need more than forty-eight hours of work on Tuuq, that is, if Petersburg has a decent supply of armor glass and nano-steel."