Poor Man's Fight (28 page)

“Anyone else wanna ask again why
this ship has to stay up above the atmosphere?” Casey grumbled, looking around again at his bridge crew. No one bothered to respond.

“Looks like we got ‘em,” Jerry said.

“Carl?” Casey asked, turning his attention to the man on his left.

The large pirate tracked several screens depicting the city five hundred kilometers below. He
split off a new screen to follow the
Rose
to the ground. Carl shook his head. “Nobody’s walking away from that.”

Casey
grimaced. “Well, if we were gonna lose a ship, I suppose it’s best that it’s the smallest one with the fewest guys on it.”

“
We’re
the ship with the fewest guys, Casey,” Jerry reminded him.

“Well, right now, yeah, but I mean I’d rather lose the smallest ship with the fewest guys on it that
isn’t us
. Let’s just make sure they don’t have any more surprises like that.”

“I’ve got a fix on the barracks and police stations,” Carl said. “Or at least, you know… what we
think
are those.”

“The fuck you waitin’ for?” shrugged the captain. “Light ‘em up.”

***

It was easily the craziest, goddamn dumbest thing Darren had ever been part of in his life. It was dumber than signing on with
Vengeance
; he’d done that when he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. It was dumber than taking that whore to bed; he was drunk and alone and had a half dozen other mitigating factors in his defense there. But he had known the assault on Qal’at Khalil was stupid from the moment it was first suggested, and he was only surer of that as he heard out the “intelligence”—which amounted to the word of three Hashemite expat pirates and some articles found in an out-of-date encyclopedia. It was stupid, he knew it was stupid… and when the time came to vote on it, he didn’t have the balls to vote no.

He was entitled to his vote. Everyone said it was his call. Some of the other pirates had voted no; Darren just didn’t see any of them around him when it came time for the show of hands. He’d been surrounded by drunken fools, and he didn’t have the guts to publicly disagree with them.
The target met with overwhelming approval in the vote, and that was that. There was no turning back. Everyone was in it together, including those who voted no.

And so it was that Darren found himself in a shooting gallery
. He didn’t have the expertise to keep himself aboard
Vengeance
instead of joining the ground crew. He was a machinist by training. He belonged on a ship rather than running through the streets shooting a gun. But he wasn’t as familiar with
Vengeance
as a lot of other pirates were. Instead of serving in main engineering, he crouched under the windowsill of a restaurant as bullets, lasers and who knew what else flew through the air.

Most of the fire came from
Khalil City’s palace, directly across a wide, open plaza. The steps to the palace itself rose up over a hundred meters away across open ground. Only pavement, low bushes and open, empty space lay between the steps and the increasingly shattered buildings sheltering the pirates. Chang called the empty space a “kill zone.”

Chang crouched
beside him, keeping his head down as bullets flew through the thoroughly destroyed windows. Darren stuck to Chang like glue from the moment they all loaded into the
Yaomo
. Chang was an ex-Union Marine, so he knew how to fight. He was also a medic. Darren considered those very important details.

At the moment, though, Chang didn’t seem to know what to do any better than Darren. Nor did the other three pirates in the café. Nor did the previous inhabitants, but then, the dead
rarely offered useful advice. Darren, Chang and the rest had mowed down everyone inside the restaurant as soon as they arrived.

“This is pretty goddamn accurate fire for bush leaguers,” Chang growled.

“Yeah?” Darren huffed, doing his best not to panic. “How accurate is it if we aren’t dead?” He resolved, not for the first or last time that day, to buy the best body armor he could afford the second he was back on Paradise, and fuck anyone who mocked him for it.

“Nah, it’s not like that,”
grunted Chang. “They think we’re in here, but they aren’t sure. Don’t wanna go wasting the whole neighborhood on unconfirmed targets. They’re just trying to goad us into returning fire.”

“What happens then?”

“Well… then they get serious. They’ll use heavier bullets to rip through these walls. Or rockets. I’d go with rockets if I was them.”

Darren blanched. It hadn’t occurred to him that the shooting was somehow less than serious. Clearly that was how Chang saw it. Another burst of fire struck their building. The wall behind Darren shook with the impact of several bullets; other
rounds sailed through the shattered window to punch into the opposite wall.

The plan for dealing with
the palace perimeter had crashed and burned with the
Liberty Rose
. “Well,” asked Darren, “what the hell are we still doing in here then?”

Frowning, Chang pressed a key on his wrist computer and pulled up an overhead image of the neighborhood, shared out after
Guillotine’s
first visit. “Look, this whole area is designed as a kill zone around the palace,” he explained. “Whoever’s in charge of the security forces here probably decides who gets to set up shop closest to the palace. That’s why they’ve got a hundred meters of open streets and plazas and shit all around it. My bet is they know exactly which building is at what range and how much punishment it can take.

“They’ve gotta have at least a couple hundred armed guys in that palace. Probably some powered security or infantry armor with ‘em. We already took out the spaceport, the barracks and the police stations, so the biggest concentration of resistance left in the city is in that palace.
They probably built that place to withstand a revolt or a peasant uprising or whatever sort of bullshit keeps royalty awake at night, so they’ve got no reason to come out and fight us.

“By now they know we’ve only got a few ships. If they’ve got more anti-air, they’re gonna keep it hidden until they’ve
got a sure shot. Chances are they’ve still got at least a little, so we can’t really call in any air support.”

“
Then why the hell are we coming to them?” Darren pressed. He tried to keep from sounding shrill. “If they’re gonna stay there, then fuck ‘em, right? Let ‘em stay. Let’s loot the rest of the city and bail! Or just blow the hell out of it from orbit!”

Chang
scowled. “Are you crazy? That’s where all the good cash and loot is gonna be.”

“What’re you talking about?
This city is full of nice houses! There’s good loot all around!”

“Not this good. Prince Khalil or whoever’s in charge has gotta be worth some serious ransom. Place is probably filthy with cash and artwork and all kinds of bullshit to keep him happy while he’s stuck out here in the boonies. Nah, man. We gotta take the palace.”

Chang risked a look up over the edge of the windowsill. “Yeah. They’ve got guys in powered security armor out there. Hundred meters of kill zone. I don’t know how we’re gonna get across that. There’s no cover at all.”

Darren lay almost fully on his back, with just his head and shoulders propped up under the windowsill. He stared at the holographic image of the neighborhood. This wasn’t his place. He wasn’t some army infantry guy. He was a machinist. A technician. He was supposed to fix things. Looking at the holo image, all he could think was that
the city planners had created exactly what they’d wanted.

Then he frowned. “Chang,” he said. “There are still cars and trucks all over this neighborhood.”

“Nothin’ that’s gonna protect us against the kind of fire they’re spitting out,” Chang frowned, shaking his head. “Even in vehicles, we’d be slag before we covered the distance.”

“No. Chang. You said we don’t have any cover out there.” He pointed to the empty space between the palace and its surroundings. “So let’s create some.”

Chang scowled. “Shit,” he said, “you think they haven’t thought of that already?”

“Did
you
?”

For a moment, Chang was at a loss for words. Then he said, “Look, if we can find some people who own cars, I guess we can take their keys, but that’ll take hours—“

“Keys? Twenty-three hundred pirates and I’m the only one who knows how to hotwire a car!?” Darren blurted. “Fuck. Come on.” He rolled over and began to crawl for the back door to the café. “I’ll show you.”

Chang and the other pirates exchanged dubious glances, but followed. Soon they found themselves in the alley outside.

Darren ran down the block to a large abandoned truck. Like many of the vehicles present, it was the sort that rode on wheels rather than a magnetic cushion. Its bubble-shaped driver’s cab had been left tinted too dark to see through by its driver. Darren aimed his plasma carbine at it and blew the top off of the bubble. He waited only a moment for the remains of the frame to cool before climbing in.

Watching Darren work, Chang didn’t even notice the first buzz from
Lauren on his holocom. Finally, he answered. “Yeah. Chang.”

“
My side of the palace is the wrong end of one big target range,” Lauren spat. “No way to get across without exposing everybody. How’s it looking on your end?”

The truck’s engine rumbled to life. Chang watched in surprise as Darren kicked the remnants of the front cab’s door open. Inside, he saw the bottom of the dashboard cut open with wires and machinery exposed. “You can separate out the electronic security from the engine,” Darren explained. “Then you just need to open the original starter circuit and stick something else with a charge in place to fool the engine into startup. Something like a power pack from an energy weapon.”

“Chang?” Lauren asked. “Chang, you there?”

“If it’s that easy,” Chang blinked in awe, “why don’t people steal that way all the time?”

“What?” Lauren asked.

Darren gestured to the vehicle’s dashboard. “It does permanent damage to the whole starter circuit. Can’t really turn it off and on again without major repairs.”

Chang shook himself. “Lauren, I think we got an idea.”

***

“Contact! Bogey dropped out of light—no, two bogeys now, both about 1.5 light seconds out—“

“Helm, come about to face them and close at attack speed!”
Casey demanded, stepping on the rest of the report. Adjustment or clarification would occur by the time Jerry finished speaking, anyway. Transmissions couldn’t come or go faster than light; any data received through passive sensors took time to actually reach the sensor, and another second or two to process. Active probing would require double that time to emit from
Vengeance
, hit the contacts and bounce back.

Casey
chose good, experienced, well-trained people for his bridge crew. He didn’t have to order scans. That would be done as a matter of course. Weapons were already hot and the ship was at battle stations. Immediately closing to attack made for a gamble, as the ships facing him could potentially equal or outmatch
Vengeance
.

“They’re destroyers,
Casey,” Jerry grunted after another moment. The information on the tactical boards and the three-dimensional display automatically revised as Jerry spoke.

“Ops, let the ground party know fire support has pulled off,”
ordered Casey. “Carl, Jerry, the moment we’re in range, you start pouring on the beam weapons fire. Focus fire on the one to port. Helm, as soon as you get within 120k, go mild evasive but be ready to go full evasive on my order.”

“Got it,” replied Li from the helm.

“They’re ordering to stand down, heave to, blah blah blah,” called out Hakim from the ops station. Casey had borrowed Hakim from the
Monkeywrench
in case fluency in Arabic became important
.
The skinny, bearded pirate stood beside the ops station with a headset on, working with a projected holo screen instead of the normal ops hardware. “They’re Hashemite Defense Force ships.
Asad
and
Fahd
, means “lion” and “panther” in—“

“Whatthefuckever,”
Casey grumbled with a dismissive wave. “Just name ‘em on the board. Doesn’t matter if you get it right on which is which. Cannons as soon as we’re in range.” Casey watched the display boards intently, in particular reading the distances between
Vengeance
and the two enemy ships. The newcomers split off, plainly hoping to force Casey to divide his attention and thereby leave a gap in his defenses. He watched the distance between
Vengeance
and
Fahd
tumble down closer to the 120,000 kilometers that marked the outermost effective range of V
engeance
’s heavy laser cannons.