The Privateer (15 page)

Cale grinned again. "None that we advertise. But I suspect we can produce something. Mainly, though, I was asking whether you could help me with the ship's weapons. Tess's programming prohibits her from harming a human, and it is an absolute prohibition. We have jury-rigged weapons systems installed, but I can only operate one at a time. I could use some help."

That blinding smile flared again. "I volunteer. How many weapons do we have, and what kind?"

"We have an Alliance-style quickfirer and a destroyer-sized laser. Both are controllable from here or from the control room. Now, the control room is only large enough for one person. If you can handle the quickfirer from there, I think Tess and I can handle the laser from here."

"Is this 'quickfirer' easy to handle? And what about the controls?"

He shrugged. "It's dead easy. You have a joystick and you're watching a viewscreen that illuminates the projectiles' path. It fires a twenty-millimeter rocket that's plated with collapsed metal. It'll punch right through that Epsilon-class."

"What about aiming?"

Cale smiled. "Nothing to it. No gravity field or weather, so the rocket travels dead straight. Just walk it onto your target."

Her smile this time showed an edge of savagery. "Can you set up a sim, so I can get some practice?"

"Of course, Mistress Raum," Tess's voice put in. "The program already exists, and may be run at your pleasure."

Cale walked her down the corridor to the tiny control room, and stood in the passage as he showed her the controls for the quickfirer. "Please don't touch anything else. Tess and I will be very busy, and won't need the kind of distractions that could cause."

She gave him a wintry look. "I may not be a spacer," she replied frostily, "But I know what not to touch!"

Cale started to straighten, and hit his head on the hatch frame. He shook his head to clear it. "I didn't mean . . ." he started, rubbing his head. He paused, and a grin crossed his face. "Well, maybe I did. Have fun. Tess and I will be busy for awhile in my stateroom."

He returned to his stateroom. "All right, Tess. Any suggestions?"

There was almost a smile in her voice. "The 'secret agent' files loaded aboard contain both strategic and tactical planning subroutines. While I did not permit the installation of the main programming," she continued primly, "I have retained those files. I regret that I find nothing immediately applicable to our current situation in them."

Cale suppressed a grin at her ironic tone. "Then we're on our own."

Both were silent for a moment.

Finally, Cale broke the silence. "Tess, how long does it take you to physically reverse your attitude?"

"The question is unclear," came the suddenly mechanical response. "Do you mean how long to reverse course in normal space?"

He waved an irritated negative. "No, no! I mean to swap ends so your nose is pointing where your drives are pointing now. No change of direction, just attitude."

"Using attitude jets, about 30 seconds."

"Attitude jets?"

"Yes. When I was constructed, attitude jets were still in limited use. Essentially, they are small jets that use compressed gas from pressurized tanks to rapidly change attitude. With them, I can literally spin on my long axis in nearly any direction. They have never been used except in trials," she added.

Cale frowned. "Let's see if I understand. These 'attitude jets' are self-contained? They don't use the inertial drives at all? Are they still functional?"

"I would never permit one of my systems to deteriorate beyond usability."

Cale again suppressed a grin at the outrage in her tone. "Then we wouldn't have to wait for your jump engines to spin down and your inertial drives to light off," he said thoughtfully. "Is that correct?"

"They are self-contained units. No external power beyond that for controls is required."

Cale was slightly exasperated that Tess did not seem to see the potential in the antique fittings.

"All right, how about this," he said. "Suppose we exit jump at the recal point, then, while you're getting the inertial drives online, you use these 'attitude jets' to reverse your attitude. The pirate pops out of the jump point, and we're already waiting for him, armed and aimed!"

Tess seemed unimpressed. "We still must cycle down the jump engines and initiate the reaction drives in order to use the shields and weapons."

Cale was getting excited, now. "Of course we do, but
so does he
! Didn't your Admiral Kedron take advantage of the power plant time lag in his war?"

"Indeed. Until Admiral Kedron, there was a long debate about who held the tactical advantage, attacker, or defender. Since shields and weapons are powered by the inertial drives, an attacker has neither until his jump engines spin down and his inertial drives come online. Of course, crews cannot be kept in a battle-ready status at all times, and it takes time to man the weapons and shields. Admiral Kedron was able to use small intrasystem fighters carried aboard his ships to attack the enemy before they had weapons or shields."

"Yes, and we may be able to do the same thing. Okay, Tess, pile on the G's. Pull as far ahead of the pirate as you can. Every second you can gain gives us an extra second's advantage on the other end. With any luck, by the time he emerges, you'll have the inertial drives going, and we'll be waiting for him."

"Boost is max. The pirate is also accelerating, but we are much faster than he is. By the time we reach the jump point, we should be approximately 7.237 minutes ahead. I must mention, sir, that due to the uncertainties of jump physics, this does not mean we will reach the recal system that much ahead of him. It is even possible that he will arrive first. Much is still unknown about the 'supralight', or 'jump' phenomenon. Unless his jump comps are slaved to me, much is unpredictable."

Cale shrugged. "I know. But the pirates have learned over the years that if their entry into a jump point is computed to be exactly the same as that of the target, they can most often emerge in the same recal system and within a few days of the target. They may get there first, but they've learned to wait around a few days to see if the target emerges, and if the target arrives first, the pirates expect a long stern chase. And of course, sometimes the computations aren't accurate enough, and they lose the target. We estimated the chances of success in a chase at about 60/40. It's part of the risk of being a pirate. Of course, if you know your target's destination, you can usually predict their recal points, and get there first and wait in ambush."

"I bow to your superior knowledge. Does that mean we have only a 60% chance of being attacked?"

Cale shrugged again and sighed. "I don't know, Tess. It depends on the accuracy of the comps he's using to track us, and the abilities of his astrogator. If I had to make an estimate, I'd guess our chances of being tailed are in the 50% to 60% range. But I prefer not to count on luck."

"Agreed," Tess replied. "Would you like to run some simulations using the laser? Dee is becoming quite proficient with the quickfirer, at least in simulations."

"Yes, I would, and I’d like to check out those ‘attitude jets’ of yours. I assume you can’t use them in jump." Cale had to get a feel for this ship and Tess's control of it.

“Of course. It is a basic tenet of jump physics that nothing can change the mass of a ship in jump without risking becoming lost in nothingness. That would include the gases used by the attitude jets.”

Cale nodded. “I assumed that. That means we need to evaluate the jets without alerting our pursuer to their presence.”

“That should be no problem,” Tess replied primly. “They are at present more than a minute behind us. Unless we significantly alter our course, any changes of attitude will be undetectable by them.”

Cale hurried to the lounge. “Then let’s not waste any time. I need to know exactly how precise your control can be in aiming our laser. Let’s run a simulation, but with you actually using the attitude jets.”

“Yes, sir. Beginning simulation,” Tess said crisply. A graduated laser-targeting grid appeared, overlaying the usual star view. A bright dot appeared in the center of the grid. “I have programmed the simulation to use the maneuvering capabilities of the standard Epsilon-class freighter, with 20% enhancement. Transferring attitude control to your laser control pad.”

Cale took up his laser control pad just as the target slid toward the left and down. Cale followed it with his finger, and the dot moved smoothly back to the center targeting ring. The target began frantic evasion tactics and even simulated chaff, but Cale had no trouble bringing it back into the targeting ring almost immediately.

Cale was surprised and delighted. Both the laser and the quickfirer were mounted in small bubbles on the hull, and had very limited fields of fire. This meant that Tess had to execute tiny, precision maneuvers in order for Cale and Dee to keep their weapons on target. Tess's deft touch with the attitude jets amazed him, though; he admitted to himself, it probably should not have.
Cheetah
was a ship to the humans aboard, but it was Tess's
body
. Still, her ability to keep him on target during the simulations was incredible. It was as though his weapons were mounted in aimable turrets. His confidence rose considerably.

Finally, Tess notified him that they were only five minutes from the jump point.

“Okay,” he replied reluctantly. “Terminate the simulation. Let’s use these five minutes to monitor our pursuer. Let’s try to see what capabilities he night have.”

“I believe his inertial drives to be enhanced,” Tess replied. “His delta-vee rate exceeds the specifications of the standard Epsilon-class ship. That is why I added an arbitrary 20% to his maneuvering ability during the simulation.”

Cale nodded. “The first thing a pirate modifies on a ship is larger inertial drives and a larger fusactor,” he said. “That comes even before adding weapons. There’s no sense having powerful weapons aboard if your prey can simply outrun you.”

They spent the remaining few minutes of the countdown to jump using Tess’s entire sensor suite to try to analyze the capabilities of their pursuer.

The jump went smoothly, and Cale breathed a huge sigh of relief. He had squeezed himself into the closet-like “control room” to monitor Tess’s computations, but found they scrolled up the monitor screen far too fast to permit reading. When the computations were complete, Tess displayed the final jump figures for him, but it had taken hours for him to verify their correctness. In fact, Tess tactfully pointed out two errors in his checking computations. The more Cale interacted with Tess, the more impressed he became. It seemed the advantages of a sentient ship were nearly limitless – as long as one remained on good terms with her/it. He considered himself moderately skilled in astrogation, but he had to admit that it was a huge relief to have a ship that had hundreds of years’ experience in conning itself!

The initial jump was to be relatively short. They would have some 76 hours in the nothingness that was jump before emerging into the uninhabited system for recalibration and possible battle.

Despite the danger hanging over them, time began to drag. Tess’s ever-present spider-bots took care of any chores that needed doing, meals were served in the lounge, and after a few hours, Cale and Dee were confident in their Tess-enhanced skills with the weapons systems.

Surprisingly, though, Cale and Dee were not bored. They were getting to know one another, and discovering a growing attraction. What began as a nervous comparing of simulation scores evolved into an endless discussion about nearly everything. Cale found that he was coming to regret those occasions when Dee interrupted their seemingly endless talk to return to her stateroom for sleep. And Dee was finding it difficult to break away. By the time Tess warned them of the approach of emergence, Cale had on several occasions been forced to remind himself that he was no horny teenager, but an allegedly mature man facing an uncertain future. He found it increasingly difficult to focus on plans for that future, especially plans that did not include Dee. For her part, Dee was becoming determined to solve the mystery of this attractive but enigmatic man who seemed able to endlessly avoid or change the subject whenever she managed to bring up the subject of his background. For her part, Tess was fascinated by watching this mating dance and relating it to the thousands of volumes on human behavior she had consumed and the variety of others she had witnessed over the last four centuries.

Finally, though, Tess began the countdown to emergence, and the two humans reluctantly returned to matters of life and death. When Tess announced E-minus five minutes, Cale and Dee stepped into an unexpected hug. For a moment, Cale was lost in the smell and feel of Dee’s hair, and then was surprised to find himself dipping his head and her raising her lips. For a long moment, time stopped as they shared a long, slow kiss that suddenly broke in a flurry of mutual confusion. With an embarrassed “Oh, dear,” Dee fled to the control room, trying desperately to control her breathing and focus on the quickfirer controls.

A troubled Cale dropped into one of the lounge’s comfortable seats as Tess activated the laser fire control system and the familiar targeting grid appeared on the main viewscreen.

“Time, Tess?”

“E minus four minutes and counting, Captain,” came the crisp reply.

Four minutes! That exciting hug and that incredible kiss had lasted less than a minute? Surely, that was impossible! “Are you sure, Tess?” he blurted before chiding himself. Of
course,
Tess was sure!

“Now three minutes, fifty-one seconds, Captain,” Tess replied in a neutral tone.

Cursing himself silently, Cale forced himself to concentrate on Tess’s countdown. “As soon as we emerge, change your attitude ninety degrees in any direction. Once you have inertial drives, boost max in that direction. If she’s already there, they may not be able to change course and attitude quickly enough to finish us off. If we get there first, you can cut your drives and swap ends as soon as you detect an emergence. They should be expecting us to continue our emergence course while we recal. Maybe we can just run away. But if not, with any luck we’ll get a few shots at her fat belly before she can adjust
her
attitude. Of course, we’ll need a full sensor scan as soon as possible after we emerge.”