And they certainly don’t need to know the location of any pirate bases, he thought. Or even worlds that might be willing to buy stuff that fell off the back of a freighter.
“You’ll let me live?” The pirate looked torn between hope and fear. “And you’ll make sure they don’t get me?”
“Yes,” William said. “But you have to tell us everything.”
The pirate hesitated, then spilled his guts. William listened, silently making a mental note to have the conversation replayed time and time again, just to make sure he picked up the important details. The pirates did have a base, and the prisoner knew where it was . . . but it was quite some distance from Asher Dales. William had hoped he’d be able to dispatch a destroyer or two to deal with it. Instead, it was starting to look as though he’d have to whistle for help. The Royal Navy would be very interested in destroying a pirate base.
And the base is very close to Ahura Mazda, he thought. How did it manage to escape detection?
“We’ll have to pass the information up the chain,” he said, when he returned to his cabin after touring the ship. The pirate captain and his crew were already on their way to holding facilities on Asher Dales, while their ship was carefully dissected for evidence. “The Royal Navy will have to deal with them.”
Tanya looked displeased. She’d been trapped on the planet during the brief engagement and had only just managed to return to the ship. “We can’t deal with them?”
“No,” William said. He silently composed the message to Kat Falcone. “We don’t have the mobile firepower. Or the time. And besides, that base is far too close to Ahura Mazda. We might just have stumbled across a link to whoever is supplying the enemy ships.”
Tanya had to smile. “Does that mean we can claim the credit?”
“Some of it, perhaps,” William said. He grinned at her. “But credit isn’t important. The real problem is wiping these bastards out. And if someone else does it . . . well, I’ll raise a glass in their honor.”
He sighed. “And now we have to replace the platforms,” he added, “before someone else comes calling.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
PIRATE BASE
“Admiral, Captain Davis’s compliments and we’ll be dropping out of hyperspace in twenty minutes,” Midshipman Edgeworth said. He held himself so stiffly that it was clear he was terrified. “He wishes to know if you’ll be watching from the bridge.”
Kat concealed her amusement. The midshipman was so young that she couldn’t help thinking that he should be wearing diapers. Had she ever been so young? She didn’t really want to think about the number of mistakes she’d made as a young officer, mistakes that had embarrassed her more than she cared to admit. She’d been young and ignorant—and unaware of the depth of her own ignorance. And now she was the Old Woman.
No, she corrected herself. I’m not the Old Woman. I’m just the tagalong.
“Please inform the captain that I’ll be watching from the CIC,” Kat said. She could have stepped onto the bridge, but unwritten protocol suggested she should stay off the bridge during an engagement. The last thing the superdreadnought’s crew needed was confusion over who was actually in command. “And dismissed.”
The midshipman vanished so quickly that Kat was mildly surprised the hatch opened in time to allow him to escape. She didn’t really blame him. She’d been a duke’s daughter, back when she’d been a midshipwoman, but a word from the wrong person would have been more than enough to ruin her career.
She sat back in her chair and watched the timer slowly tick down to zero. The pirates had been either very brave or very stupid to put their base so close to Ahura Mazda, although she rather suspected they’d had an agreement with the Theocrats. Her investigators had encountered countless Theocrats who’d secretly purchased everything from alcoholic beverages to porn, all smuggled in from the Commonwealth or the Jorlem Sector. The gap between pirates and smugglers was smaller than the latter would like, she suspected. A down on his luck smuggler might just decide to play pirate long enough to put himself back in the black. Who knew? William might just have pointed her at the Theocratic Navy’s hidden base.
Unlikely, she told herself, before she could get too enthusiastic about the prospect of winning the war in a single blow. Too many people know about this base.
“Admiral,” Lieutenant Graves said, “we will be dropping out of hyperspace in two minutes.”
“Very good,” Kat said calmly. She forced herself to sit back in her chair and relax. She’d issued her orders; she’d done everything she could to ensure victory . . . now, all she could do was wait. She had nothing to gain by micromanaging her officers. “Inform me the moment the situation changes.”
Violence shuddered as she opened a vortex and slid back into realspace, followed by the rest of the squadron. Kat leaned forward, watching the display as powerful sensors started to sweep space for targets. It was easy to see why the pirate base had remained undetected for so long. A tiny cluster of asteroids, so far from their primary star that they were practically worthless; hell, the entire system was practically worthless. The only item of interest, save for the asteroids, was a large comet that seemed to be on the verge of breaking free of the star’s gravity and starting to wander through interstellar space. And . . .
She smiled, coldly, as her sensors picked up a handful of starships hastily cutting loose from the asteroids. There were no signs of any superdreadnoughts, nothing larger than a midsized cruiser, but they’d definitely stumbled across a pirate base. One way or another, they’d do some good. The enemy had been caught completely by surprise. If she was lucky, they’d have no time to power up their vortex generators before her fleet was on them.
“Transmit the
