Crown of Slaves

com officer, did an excellent imitation of a frightened merchant skipper doing her very best to talk herself out of trouble.

If Gohr had been in command of the pirate, she would either have gone ahead and fired into Gauntlet long since, to show she meant business, or else have broken off entirely on the assumption that only a warship trolling for pirates would deliberately court a missile attack by refusing to comply with instructions. Of course, Gauntlet's EW was undoubtedly better than anything the pirate had ever imagined might exist, which helped to explain how he could be so unwary, but even so…

'All right, Guns,' Captain Oversteegen said finally. 'I believe it's time we convinced this gentleman of the error of his ways.'

'Aye, aye, Sir!' Blumenthal said with considerably more enthusiasm, and Oversteegen smiled thinly. But then the captain shook his head.

'Under the circumstances,' he said, 'I think this might be an appropriate time for our Assistant Tac Officer t' try her hand at pirate swattin'. We've already established your own bona fides in that regard, I believe.'

'As you say, Sir,' Blumenthal allowed only a trace of disappointment to color his tone, and Lieutenant Gohr felt herself sitting suddenly straighter in her own chair as she sensed the captain's eyes on her back.

'All right, Lieutenant,' he said calmly, 'I want this fellow discouraged from harassin' legitimate merchant ships. I intend t' give him an opportunity t' surrender. If he declines, however, I want him discouraged as permanently as possible. How would you recommend we accomplish that?'

'Are we interested in capturing or examining his vessel if he declines, Sir?' she heard herself ask in an equally calm voice.

'I think not,' the captain replied. 'It's unlikely the Admiralty would be interested in buyin' her into service, and it's even less likely that we'd learn anythin' useful from her records.'

'In that case, Sir, I recommend we make it short and sweet. With your permission, I'll set up a double broadside. At this range, and given the crappy hardware he seems to have, that ought to do the trick in a single launch. We may waste a few birds on overkill, but it certainly ought to discourage him as permanently as anyone could ask.'

'Very well, Lieutenant,' Oversteegen said. 'Set it up and prepare t' launch on my command.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.' Gohr's fingers flew as she punched commands into her console. The weight of the captain's eyes urged her to hurry, but she took the time to make sure she did it right. She tapped in the final targeting code, then ran her gaze rapidly over the entire set up. It looked good, she decided, and punched the 'commit' key.

'Firing sequence programmed and locked, Sir,' she reported.

Oversteegen didn't say anything for just a second, and she realized that he was reviewing her commands. There was a brief silence, and then she heard a soft grunt of approval from the captain's chair as he reached the end. It was, she decided, a good thing she had included not only the enablement of Gauntlet's point defense against the possibility that the pirate might actually get a few missiles of his own away, but also had a dozen follow-up salvos programmed to cover the highly improbable chance that the other ship would survive Gauntlet's opening broadsides.

'Very good, Lieutenant,' Oversteegen approved. 'Stand by t' engage as programmed on my command.'

'Standing by, aye, Sir,' she confirmed, and the captain glanced at Lieutenant Cheney.

'Live mike, Com,' he said.

'You're live… now, Sir,' Cheney replied, and Oversteegen smiled unpleasantly.

'Pirate vessel,' he said flatly, 'this is Captain Michael Oversteegen, of Her Majesty's heavy cruiser Gauntlet. Strike your wedge immediately and surrender, or be destroyed!'

At such a short range, the communications lag was negligible, and every eye on Gauntlet's bridge watched the tactical display while they awaited the pirate's response. Then, abruptly, the red icon altered course, clawing frantically away from Gauntlet even as it rolled in a feeble effort to interpose its wedge between it and the cruiser.

'Pirate vessel,' Oversteegen's harsh voice was as unyielding as battle steel, 'strike your wedge now. This is the only warnin' you will receive.'

The pirate's only response was to push his acceleration still higher. He must be riding the very brink of compensator failure, Gohr thought, watching her display with a sort of icy detachment. Another twenty heart beats sped into infinity.

'Lieutenant Gohr,' Captain Oversteegen said formally, 'open fire.'

* * *

'Actually, I think she's working out quite well, Sir,' Commander Watson said. Michael Oversteegen leaned back in his chair in his day cabin aboard Gauntlet, his expression an invitation for his executive officer to continue, and Watson smiled.

'All right, I'll admit it,' the dark-haired exec said, with a chuckle which few of Oversteegen's officers would have been comfortable emitting in his presence. 'When you first came up with the notion of asking for a 'spook' as an ATO, I thought it was… not one of your best ideas. But Lieutenant Gohr doesn't seem to have forgotten which end of the tube the missile comes out of, after all.'

A bit of an understatement, that, she thought. Of course, that poor shmuck was hardly up to our weight, to begin with, but Gohr was certainly right about how many broadsides it would take to blow him out of space.

'I'm pleased you approve,' Oversteegen murmured, and Watson's startlingly light-blue eyes glinted with amusement. The captain was glad to see it. The exec had been critically wounded at Tiberian, and he'd frankly doubted, at first, that Lieutenant Commander Westman, the ship's surgeon, would be able to save her. Even though Westman had managed to pull that off, it had taken even longer for the Manticoran medical establishment to repair Watson than it had for the Navy to repair Gauntlet. They'd managed it in the end, and they'd even been able to save the exec's left leg, but Oversteegen had nursed carefully concealed concerns over how well she would actually come back. Watson had been trapped in the wreckage of Gauntlet's auxiliary command deck for over forty-five minutes before the medical and rescue parties could reach her. Forty-five minutes with no anesthetic while she slowly bled to death.

Oversteegen had expected to see at least some ghosts hiding in her eyes when she returned to duty. God knew an experience like hers would have been more than enough to finish off the combat career of many an officer. But if Linda Watson was haunted by any nightmares or inner terrors, she hid them well. Well enough that not even someone like Oversteegen, who'd known her literally since the Academy, could see them.

'I'm sure you are-pleased, I mean,' she told him now. 'Not that it would have fazed you if I hadn't.'

'Well, of course it wouldn't have,' he agreed. 'On the other hand, keepin' the XO happy is always high on the list of any captain with his wits about him. There are so many little ways she can make her displeasure felt if he doesn't, aren't there?'

'I'm sure I wouldn't know about that,' Watson assured him.

'It's been my observation that Sphinxians, for some reason, aren't very good liars,' Oversteegen told her. 'Not as sophisticated as we native Manticorans, I suppose. Still, it's somethin' you might want t' work on.'

'I'll bear that in mind,' she promised.

'Good.' He gave her the smile which she'd always thought it was a pity he was willing to show to so few people, then tossed his head in the mannerism which indicated a mental change of gears on his part.

'Now that we've disposed of the good lieutenant,' he said, 'and now that you've had time t' digest our mission brief, what do you think?'

'I think that, with all due respect, your esteemed relative's Government must have worked long and hard to gather so many idiots into one place,' she replied, and Oversteegen barely managed to swallow his laughter. None of his other officers would have dared to express themselves quite so frankly about the High Ridge Government's shortcomings, he thought affectionately. Not even Blumenthal.

'Should I assume that you're referrin' t' the composition of the current Government's ministers, rather than t' the quality of the personnel assigned t' Gauntlet?' he asked after a brief pause to be sure the laughter remained swallowed.

'Oh, of course! After all, it was the Admiralty who arranged our peerless crew's roster. The Government never got a real chance to screw that bit up.'