greatly enlarged in the engine room section.”
Cale snapped to attention. “Then there’s no choice. We cannot run; he probably has engines from a delta or Din-class. Tell Dee to fire on the bridge area. I’ll concentrate on the engines.” He punctuated the sentence by mashing the ‘fire’ button on the laser control. At almost exactly the same time he felt, rather than heard, a thrumming vibration through Cheetah ’s hull as Dee opened fire with the quickfirer.
Tess displayed the track of the otherwise invisible laser beam as it impacted the bulging engine room of the pirate. She also displayed the tracks of the quickfirers’ rocket projectiles as Dee walked them across the sensor array marking the ship’s bridge.
The pirate still had no shields; he was apparently still spinning down his jump drives and powering up the inertial drives that would provide power to both shields and weapons. Antennas severed by the stream of collapsium-plated rockets began drifting away from the enemy’s hull.
Cheetah ’s inertial drives were idle, so Tess could route all their power production to the weapons. The laser recharged in less than three seconds, and Cale again slashed the beam across the pirate’s engine room. There was a few seconds’ pause in the thrumming vibration as Tess’s mechs reloaded the quickfirer.
The thrumming resumed, and suddenly the bridge area of the enemy belched instantly freezing atmosphere. Dee’s shots had penetrated both the outer and inner hulls and opened her bridge, and perhaps the whole ship, to vacuum. Cale fired one last slashing beam, and then called, “Cease fire.” The thrumming stopped, but his finger rested on the firing button as he assessed the damage to the pirate.
They had certainly had time to spin up their inertial drives, but they still showed no shields, and seemed to be drifting, not under control. If any of the pirates were still alive, Cale guessed their entire attention would be on survival, not on their former victim.
Cale watched for a few more moments for signs of life aboard the pirate, and then said, “Okay, Tess, adjust your attitude and let’s boost max for the jump point. You can recal on the way.”
Unfortunately, Dee entered the lounge in time to hear his instructions. Her face reddened. “NO!” she shouted. “What are you talking about? There may be injured or dying people aboard that ship! We have to try to help them!”
Cale shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. What we have to do is get away from here before the survivors get drives or weapons operational.”
Dee snorted. “Ridiculous! I insist that you let me go aboard and offer my help!”
Cale again shook his head. “If we stay here, or even worse, go aboard, any survivors will either kill us for our ship, or carry on with their plans for torture or enslavement. These are pirates we’re talking about, not traders. Consciences and gratitude are not part of the package.”
“How can you know that? You can’t know that!”
Cale sighed. “Actually, I can know that, and I do. I’ve dealt with pirates before.” He noted that the star field in the viewscreen was wheeling about as Tess adjusted her attitude, but he knew better than to mention it to Dee.
He was thinking hard, trying to figure out how to explain to Dee without revealing too much. “I know how they think,” he continued. “If their ship is badly damaged, they’ll simply take any other ship available. There are few places a pirate can get a badly damaged ship repaired without many hard questions. Chances are that captain has already slit the throats of any badly injured crewmen, and has all the survivors working on getting engines and especially weapons operational. Piracy is a capital crime on almost any inhabited planet in the universe. The evidence aboard that ship would hang everyone aboard. So, any good Samaritan that stops to help them will regret it.”
“No,” concluded, “We’ll report encountering a derelict when we get to Angeles. They can investigate if they care to. But we’re going to put parsecs between us as quickly as possible!”
Dee opened her mouth to reply, and then the red faded from her face as she forced herself to calmness. “It’s wrong and I still don’t like it,” she replied, “but it’s your ship. How’s your conscience holding up, Captain?” She stormed across the lounge and slammed the door to her stateroom. Since ship bulkheads and doors are made of lightweight alloy, the slam was not particularly impressive.
Cale winced as her parting shot hit home. He stared at the viewscreen, seeing other scenes than the star field. “Not too well, Dee,” he murmured. “Not too well at all.”
Dee remained in her stateroom until they emerged in the Angeles system, refusing to come out for meals or anything else. Tess reported that she responded to conversational attempts with silence or monosyllables for most of the weeklong period. But as their emergence neared, Tess reported that Dee was questioning her about Cale, his background, and how he had ‘dealt with pirates before’. She warned Cale that her questions would be harder to deflect this time.
Cale spent the entire week in misery. He had spent a fortune and countless hours of planning and acting to escape his past. To Emo Arror, there was no problem; just tell Dee whatever she wanted to hear, any story that seemed suitable. But Emo Arror was dead. Cale had killed him off ruthlessly and with malice aforethought. No, it was Cale Rankin and through him, John Smith experiencing the agony; John because of his highly developed moral and ethical sense and his conscience, and Cale for those same reasons but with the added factor that he was afraid he was falling for Dee.
Nothing he could say would make her understand about the Terror. In fact, he didn’t understand it himself. The years since Mina’s death seemed shrouded in a dark haze; as though he had been a dispassionate observer, watching through a dark curtain as Emo Arror was born in fury and became a monster and John Smith faded until he disappeared.
How could he explain to Dee what he didn’t understand himself? How could she understand the overwhelming hatred that had driven his hunger for revenge?
Okay, try a different angle. How would attorney John Smith conduct a defense for defendants John Smith, Emo Arror and even the comparatively innocent Cale Rankin?
Well, attorney John Smith would talk about defendant John Smith’s spotless reputation, his moral and virtuous behavior. Then he might talk about Smith’s discovery of corruption high in the government of Peltir IV, and the injustice of his arrest, his secret trial, and the sentence to slavery in the mines and certain death.
‘Ah’, the prosecution would say. ‘But the defendant had escaped from the mines. They were no longer a threat. No, this virtuous man voluntarily gave up his virtue. Nothing gave him the right to pursue a career of theft, kidnapping, and murder. He created Emo Arror from his own hate and vengeance.’
‘But wait!’ Smith would say. ‘Do not forget the loss of his beloved while pursuing an honest career. The defendant made two sincere attempts to pursue honest gain. The second attempt cost him his beautiful Mina! There must be understanding…’
Cale pulled himself out of his reverie. No, there would not be understanding. Other men had broken the chains of slavery without resorting to piracy. The ever-faithful Yan Carbow
back on Jackson, who offered John Smith half of what his own labors had earned, was exhibit A.
Moreover, other men had lost loves without becoming murderers. True, John Smith and Emo Arror had personally killed only three men, all in fair combat. But every life ended or ruined by The Terror’s pirate thugs could be laid at the feet of John Smith. The blood on his hands was no less real than that on the hands of a Bob Smiley.
Again, Cale forced his thoughts away from his musings. He dropped his head into his hands, and discovered tears coursing down both cheeks. Tears of guilt? Tears of shame? Or perhaps tears of despair, the hopelessness of making Dee understand, the realization that he might never escape Emo Arror? Before he could decide, he drifted into fitful sleep.
On the morning of the last day before their emergence, Cale summoned all his courage and asked Tess to invite Dee into the lounge for a conference.
She came, wearing a plain shipsuit. This one had not been tailored, and was several sizes too large. She wore no makeup, and her hair was in a tight bun.
“You wish to see me, Captain?” she asked coldly. Her face could have been carved from granite.
“Yes, Mistress Raum,” he replied in an equally cold and formal tone. “We need to have a serious discussion before we emerge in Angeles’s system. Please sit down.”
“If you’re planning to try to talk me out of screaming my head off about that ship,” she replied, still standing, “You can forget it. If you don’t report that fight to the authorities as soon as possible, I certainly will.” She stared at
