Honor Among Enemies

'Aye, Sir. Evading now.'

Vaubon's nose pitched 'down' as the cruiser came perpendicular to the system ecliptic, 'diving' frantically, and rolled to starboard. The move snatched her vector away from the missiles and interposed the floor of her impeller wedge against them in the only real evasion maneuver an unarmed ship could execute. Despite the extremely long range, the raider's overtake velocity put Vaubon well within his powered missile envelope, and without any active defenses to intercept incoming fire short of target, all a freighter could realistically hope to do was dodge. Of course, the raider had wanted her to dodge them, and their conventional nuclear warheads detonated at the end of their run without fuss or bother. But their message had been passed.

'We're being hailed, Skipper,' the com officer said. 'They're ordering us to resume our original heading.'

'Are they?' Caslet murmured, and gave his people's commissioner a smile. 'That's convenient. Did they say anything about killing the wedge?'

'No, Citizen Commander. They want us to maintain our original accel while they match velocities.'

'That's even more convenient,' Caslet observed, and checked the plot. Vaubon's 'evasion maneuver' had opened the vertical separation a bit further, not a lot, but a little, and he leaned back and rubbed his jaw for a moment. 'Ted, hail them, audio only; no visual. Inform them that we're the Andermani merchant ship Ying Kreuger and order them to stand clear.'

'Aye, Citizen Commander.' Citizen Lieutenant Dutton turned back to his pickup, and Jourdain gave Caslet a mildly puzzled look.

'Ana just what is this in aid of, Citizen Commander?' he inquired.

'We're inside their missile envelope, Sir,' Caslet replied, 'but no sane pirate wants to blow his prize up, and even with laser heads, missiles aren't precision weapons. They're mostly for show; he needs to get in close with his energy mounts to be able to threaten us with the sort of damage that could stop us without destroying us outright. Merchant skippers know that, and a gutsy captain, or a stupid one, would at least try to talk his way out of it until they managed to bring him into effective range. It wouldn't do to slip out of our role just yet, and more to the point, the more vertical separation I can generate before resuming our original course, the sharper the angle will be when our vectors intercept. They'll have to come in from higher 'above' us, and that should keep our wedge between us and their active systems at least a little longer.'

'I see.' Jourdain shook his head and smiled faintly. 'Remind me not to play poker with you, Citizen Commander.'

'They're repeating their order to resume course and accel,' Dutton announced, and grinned at his captain. 'They sound sort of pissed off, Skip.'

'What a pity. Repeat the message.' Caslet smiled back, then glanced at MacMurtree. 'We'll keep protesting till they close to four million, Allison, then obey like a nice little prize.'

The chase was winding to a close, and the atmosphere on PNS Vaubon's bridge was far tenser than it had been. The raiders demands that 'Ying Kreuger' rendezvous with it had become uglier and more threatening, punctuated by increasingly closer near-misses with nuclear warheads, until Caslet gave in and obeyed. Now the pirate was little more than a quarter million kilometers clear, and Caslet shook his head in wonder. He'd never really expected the idiots to come this close without realizing they'd been had, but the raider skipper seemed sublimely confident. The fact that he had yet to get even a single glimpse of his prize's hull meant little to him, since he 'knew' from her emissions that she was a merchant ship. No one could see through an active impeller wedge from the outside, anyway, since the effect of a meter-wide band in which local gravity went from zero to almost a hundred thousand MPS? twisted photons into pretzels. Someone on the inside, who knew the precise strength of the wedge, could use computer compensation to turn mangled emissions back into something comprehensible, but no one on the outside could manage the same trick. Caslet's maneuvers had kept his wedge between his ship and the raider's sensors for reasons which the pirate saw no cause to question, but the bad guys were well within effective energy weapons range now, and he glanced at Foraker.

'Ready, Shannon?'

'Yes, Sir.' The tac officer was so buried in her console she used the pre-coup formality without even thinking, and Jourdain shook his head with wry resignation.

'All right, people. This is where we nail the bastards. Stand by... and... execute!'

PNS Vaubon stopped being a freighter. Foraker hadn't been able to use any of her active systems without giving the game away, but her passive systems had run a painstaking track on her opponent for almost two hours. She knew exactly where the enemy was, and she also knew that enemy was decelerating towards her at a sharp enough angle to give her an up the kilt shot. Allison MacMurtree rolled Vaubon up on her starboard side with sudden, flashing speed, and as the ship rolled, her port broadside came to bear on the raider and two powerful laser mounts fired as one. Caslet could have fired a broadside three times as heavy, but he wanted that ship to survive... and two clean hits with no sidewall interdiction should be more than enough for his purposes.

Lasers are light-speed weapons, and the raiders first warning was the instant both of Foraker’s shots scored direct hits on the stern of his ship. His chase armament vanished in an explosion of shattered plating, and the beams of coherent light blew forward into his after impeller ring like demons. Massive power surges bled through his internal systems, blowing equipment like popcorn as the entire after third of his hull was smashed into rubble, and his fusion plant went into emergency shutdown. His impellers died, and he was suddenly unable to maneuver, stern-on to his would-be victim, with neither wedge nor sidewall to interdict Vaubon's fire.

'This is Citizen Commander Warner Caslet,' Caslet said coldly into his com. 'You are my prisoners. Any attempt at resistance will result in the destruction of your vessel.'

There was no reply, and he watched his plot narrowly. Despite the raiders massive damage, at least some of his broadside weapons must have survived, including his missile tubes, and those could still fire at least a few shots on reserve power. But his emissions made it clear that single, devastating rake had completely crippled his vessel. If he did choose to fight, it would be one of the shortest engagements in history.

'No reply, Skip,' Dutton said. 'We may have taken out their transmitters.'

Caslet nodded. For that matter, they'd quite possibly taken out the raiders receivers, as well. But whether he'd heard the message or not, whoever was in command over there clearly didn't intend to commit suicide, and Caslet glanced at the small com screen tied into the troop bay of Citizen Captain Branscombe's pinnace.

'All right, Ray. Go get them, but watch your ass. Hold the pinnaces clear and stay out of our line of fire.'

'Aye, Sir,' Branscombe replied, and two pinnaces packed with battle-armored Marines floated clear of Vaubon's boat bay. They circled wide to stay out of the play of the light cruisers broadside weapons, and took up station two kilometers directly astern of the half-wrecked ship. Hatches opened, and individual, armored Marines drifted across the gap to the raiders hull.

Caslet watched on the visual display as the Marines moved forward towards the nearest undamaged personnel hatch. It was possible the pirates would try one final, suicidal gesture of defiance and blow themselves up just to take his Marines with them, but pirates weren't kamikazes... and they didn't know that Caslet already knew about Erewhon. If they had known, and if they'd suspected what he intended to do with them, they might have suicided anyway, but they didn't, and he relaxed as Branscombe’s point men entered the hull and started rounding up the raider crew without resistance.

'Nicely done, Citizen Commander,' Denis Jourdain said quietly. 'Very nicely done. And under the circumstances,' he smiled with an edge of sadness, 'I think this really is something we can feel proud of.'