Command Decision (11 page)

“Attention. Attention. Attention. Stationmaster, Gretna Station, you are under my guns—” Obsolete language, but the traditional term ought to get their attention. “Your personnel have illegally breached and boarded my ships and injured my crew: you will immediately inform them that they should cease resistance and surrender to lawful authority—”

“What are you talking about?” The stationmaster came onscreen, buttoning his tunic. “You’re crazy—turn that thing off or we’ll—”

“I am protecting my ships and crew,” Ky said. “If you attempt to reinforce your intruders or harm my ships, I will fire on your station. If you do not immediately order your criminals to surrender, they will all be killed.”

“You can’t do that—you’re thieves—they just acted to take back property you’d stolen—”

“Don’t even try that,” Ky said. “Either comply with my orders or take the consequences.”

“You wouldn’t dare fire on the station. On civilians—”

“Use the targeting laser,” Ky told Dannon. “Half power will take some skin off their noses, but not kill them. There might be some innocents on that station.” She hadn’t seen any children, but she hadn’t explored the station. “Next shot, take out their LOS weapon.” It wasn’t even warmed up yet, but it was the one thing on the station that might damage them.

“Just scorch ’em for now. Yes, ma’am.” He touched the controls. On Ky’s scan of the station, a part of the hull in the central disk suddenly showed up as a bright white spot: hot enough to ablate a layer of hull a few millimeters thick.

“Stop!” the stationmaster yelled, eyes bulging. “You can’t—”

“I can. I will. How many people do you want to lose?”

“But we’re—we have weapons—”

“Not mounted,” Ky said. “And you’ve got only lightspeed communication with your defensive platforms; it’ll be hours before you can give them targeting information on us, and I doubt even your best targeting systems can distinguish between us—this close to you—and the station.” She grinned at the man, and he flinched. “You’re screwed,” she said cheerfully. “Do you want to call off your goons, or do you want to hope you can retrieve the parts later?”

“Parts?”

“Parts. I see no reason to be careful with the remains of inshore pirates.”

He was wringing his hands now. “We can’t—we don’t have any way to talk to them.”

“Too bad,” Ky said. “We’ll just have to deal with them ourselves. Dannon—”

“Wait—I can try—”

“You have one minute. In the meantime—” Ky nodded to her weapons officer, who touched the controls; another hot spot appeared on the station’s hull, this time at the mounting of the station’s LOS weapon. It sagged to one side; a fountain of electrical discharge showed that they’d gotten the main power cables. On her scan, its icon went to black.

It was only forty seconds before Captain Pettygrew called from
Bassoon
. “They’re dropping their weapons and begging for mercy,” he said. “Are we feeling merciful?”

“Depends,” Ky said. “I’ll talk to Captain Argelos and get back to you.”

Captain Argelos answered her hail with a cheerful, “Are we done yet, and can I chuck the lot of them out the air lock?”

“Are you sure your ship’s secure? All of them located and neutralized?”

“Well, two more fell out of the overhead about a minute ago, but I think that’s the lot. Scruffy bunch. Apparently they didn’t realize that people who buy thousands of rounds of ammo are likely to know how to use it. We got them all with small arms, except the last two.” He didn’t specify how they’d been taken down.

“Here’s the situation,” Ky said. “I’ve got the station under my beam; they’re trying to claim innocence, not very successfully. I’m not sure how many we had total—do you have a count?”

“Fifty on my ship,” Argelos said. “Thirty-seven are dead; thirteen are alive, but eight won’t make it.”

“How about your people?” Ky asked.

“Two dead, fourteen casualties, from minor to serious. All should recover, though.”

“Pettygrew had it worst,” Ky said. “Ship design as much as anything, from what they said.”
Bassoon
’s design made deep penetration easier; the defensive positions were more exposed, and the smoke screen the attackers used had worked well. “But he’s secured his ship. The question is, what do we do now?”

“I’d like to blow that scumsucking station out of the region,” Pettygrew said. “It’s outrageous, a contravention of every treaty—”

“
Vanguard, Vanguard!
Please answer!” That hail, on conventional com, carried the ID of
Dryas,
the ship from Polson.

“
Vanguard,
Captain Vatta,” Ky said. “Identify yourself, please.”

The image on the screen was blurry, badly focused. “Captain Vatta, I’m Captain Partsin. We’re in distress…we’ve been sitting here for days, they won’t let us dock, because we’re humods. Please—can you do something? Make them let us have supplies, at least?”

“What kind of distress?” Ky asked. That would be an easy claim for a pirate ship to make. “And why didn’t you call on us when we came into the system?”

The image cleared a little, enough to show a gaunt-faced man with staring eyes and obvious humodifications: chem-sensor probes on either side of his nose, now curled into smooth knobs, and one forearm split giving him a three-fingered hand and a socket into which various tools could fit. His uniform hung loosely on him; it was clear he was malnourished.

“Our system was attacked—by pirates, we think—and I got away with a shipload of survivors, but we’re out of supplies. We couldn’t take anything but the people, and we’re…it’s bad, Captain Vatta. We’re almost out of water; we’ve been out of food for days. If we don’t resupply—”

“Those scum!” Ky said. She felt an exhilarating rush of white rage. Aid to disaster survivors was a basic human value; nothing could be worse than refusing to help them because of their appearance. “Captains—” This to Argelos and Pettygrew as well as Partsin. “Gretna Station needs a lesson it won’t forget. Stay tuned; this could be fun.” For a definition of
fun
she didn’t want to think about right then.

She called the station. “If you want any of your people back alive,” she said, “and your station whole and functioning, you’re going to agree to resupply that refugee ship at no charge, and you’re going to pay for the damage to my ships.”

“That’s—you’re threatening human lives! For those—those—
obscenities
!”

“So did you threaten human lives,” Ky said. “Ours, if you don’t count theirs, which I do.” After a moment, she went on. “Let me make it very clear. You have broken interstellar law, both commercial and criminal. You have cheated, lied, stolen, and killed. So you can complain all you want, but either you do what I say or I’ll start punching holes in your station, beginning with your command deck. And all your people out here will be dead. Most of them are anyway—”

“Murderers!”

“No. You started this. I’m finishing it. You have sixty seconds.”

In the next hours, as pieces of the station hull spalled off under sporadic hits from Ky’s beam—and a longer burn finished the destruction of the station’s one line-of-sight weapon—the station population finally came around. By then, they had no way to communicate with their remote platforms. Ky monitored their communications with the refugee ship, whose captain first thanked her, then said he was afraid to bring his ship in. Ky sighed; she could understand that, after what she’d seen and heard. Clearly, overwhelming force hadn’t changed the Gretnans’ opinion of outsiders, and the weakened Polsons would be at risk from anyone stronger than a child with an airbat. She called Argelos. “Can you find room for some really big tanks?”

“I suppose. Why?”

“Because I’m a softheaded idiot, just like my family always said,” Ky said. “I can’t just leave that ship out there without enough air, water, and food, and I don’t trust this bunch of wolves not to attack them in dock. I need you to pick up oxygen and replacement cultures for them, water and food, and whatever else they need to make a safe jump somewhere else.”

“Can you afford it?”

“Better than living with the memory of not helping them. I’ve been in their situation, almost. But I’m not paying for it—I’m taking it. The Gretnans are learning to be generous—as long as I have their station hostage, that is. I’m not going in, because I’m the one with the beam weapon. Pettygrew hasn’t the cargo capacity, and his ship has the most damage. I’ll have him stand off with his batteries hot, and I’ll have the beam on them. I know where their munitions are stored, and they know I know.”

“Fine with me,” Argelos said. “I won’t mind a bit dumping their trash and picking up something worthwhile. And if they blow us up—”

“You’ll have an honor guard,” Ky said. “There won’t be a Gretna Station.” She would regret killing the Crown & Spears manager who had been so helpful and the other indentured captives, but if they attacked Argelos, she would.

Three days later, Ky’s group met the refugee ship out near the jump point. While she and Pettygrew kept watch, Argelos arranged the transfer of emergency supplies onto the transport. Oxygen, water, fresh cultures for the environmental chambers, additional tanks and equipment, food, bedding, personal items. Argelos’ crew had ransacked dockside stores for everything from antibacterical soap to children’s toys and stuffed it into station shuttles, which they’d put under tow.

“I can’t thank you enough,”
Dryas
’ captain said. He looked even more gaunt and haggard; Ky suspected he had cut his own rations as well as those of the crew and refugees. Her own belly griped as she remembered the situation she’d faced back at Sabine. “I don’t know how long we can hold out, but now we have a chance. Where are you headed next? Can we tag along?”

Ky had not thought of that. Now that her group had plenty of munitions, should they go on to Ciudad or somewhere else?

“Where did you want to go?” she asked Partsin.

“Somewhere friendly,” he said. “Polson had trade agreements with the Adelaide Group; that’s only two jumps from here, one into an empty system. I’m pretty sure they’d let us in, at least for resupply. You can’t imagine what it’s like for these people. They’ve lost everything—”

“I can, actually,” Ky said. She didn’t explain, though he raised an eyebrow. “Let me check with the charts and my captains; I’ll get back to you within the hour.”

Ky checked the scan of the station again. No communication from them; no sign of more hostile activity. Apparently they were going to behave, though she would not put past them some kind of trickery before her people had left the system. She called a conference with Argelos and Pettygrew.

“
Dryas
wants us to escort them somewhere—their captain suggested the Adelaide Group, two jumps away. I know we had planned to go to Ciudad, but this is the kind of mission that could boost our reputation—and they need the help. They can’t pay us—”

“Tell you the truth,” Pettygrew said, “I was never that eager to get to Ciudad. As you said, all we have to offer them is that one of their own died to save us. It’s not much recommendation when we didn’t even recover the bodies. I’d rather go there when we have something to show them.”

“I agree; let’s help the refugees,” Argelos said.

“And your military adviser?”

Argelos grunted. “I told him times have changed and I don’t give a whatsis if Slotter Key doesn’t approve what I do. We have no communications with them anyway.”

“Good,” Ky said. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“If you’re going to be our supreme commander,” Pettygrew said, “are you always going to ask our opinion?”

“No,” Ky said. “Just sometimes. When I want it. Now I’ll tell their captain.”

Captain Partsin was embarrassingly effusive in his thanks. “I don’t know what we would have done. I didn’t think anyone would take advantage of refugees the way they did—”

“I’m just sorry it happened,” Ky said.

“Who are you people?” he asked.

“SDF,” Ky said. “Space Defense Force: a multisystem force to defend against these pirates.” It seemed like the right time to announce their new beginning.

“I never heard of it,” Partsin said. “When did this start?”