The Jupiter Pirates Read online

  Carina held up her hand for calm.

  “We don’t know what you’ll find,” she said. “Personally, Carlo, I also doubt there are slave camps anymore—that would bring Earth and the Union perilously close to shooting at each other again. But Father’s right—it’s a big solar system. You might find factory owners who aren’t picky about where their workers come from, or pirates who’d rather dump their captives on some rock than arrange ransoms—I keep hearing about an uptick in pirate activity around Saturn and beyond. Or maybe it’s a coincidence, and you won’t find anything.”

  “This is all interesting, but what’s in it for us?” Yana asked. “We’re not a rescue ship.”

  “I asked the same question, though a little more politely,” Carina said. “The ministry is promising us a stipend while we search, a share of anything we recover—”

  “They’ll give us a share of anything we recover?” Yana asked. “How generous!”

  “—and a quick resolution to any problems that might come up with the renewal of our letter of marque,” Carina finished, smiling slightly.

  All the Hashoones went silent. The only sounds were the hum of water pipes and air pumps and the quiet footsteps of Parsons at work in the kitchen.

  “It’s blackmail, in other words,” Carlo said.

  “Blackmail is such an ugly word,” Mavry said with a grin. “Let’s just say the defense minister made a trip into the Cybeles seem like an excellent use of our time.”

  Carlo started to say something else, but Diocletia held up her hand.

  “That’s enough. Whatever the circumstances, we serve the Jovian Union and we’ve agreed to help,” Diocletia said. “I’ve told Grigsby to assemble the crew in Port Town by 0900 hours tomorrow. I want articles signed by all hands by 1100 and engines lit by 1200. Busy day tomorrow—get some sleep.”

  It was strange, thought Tycho. Unless you were very close to a planet, moon, or asteroid, the solar system mostly looked the same—empty space as far as you could see. This far out, the sun was simply a more intense point of light than the other stars, the planets little bright dots slowly following their courses against the backdrop of the galaxy.

  And yet the outer reaches of the Cybeles felt different, Tycho thought. He knew it was crazy, but this area of space felt desolate and abandoned, as if the scattered chunks of rock somehow knew they were slowly tumbling through a portion of the solar system nobody cared about.

  Or at least this area of space was supposed to be deserted. Somewhere out here they might find secret work camps run by slavers. Or pirates’ nests. Or the hulks of abandoned freighters left adrift by their captors for retrieval months or years later.

  But they hadn’t found any of those things yet—not in a week of slow searching among the asteroids, sensors probing for a hint of engine emissions, a fragment of communications, or an unexpected heat source. As far as the crew of the Shadow Comet could tell, they were alone.

  They were all tired of it, but Huff had really had enough.

  He’d been outraged by Countess Tiamat’s insult even before finding out they’d been blackmailed into a rescue mission. He’d taken to standing by the ladderwell with his arms folded, muttering about the foolishness of this trip, when he wasn’t arguing with Vesuvia about unsafe operation of his forearm cannon. The rest of the Hashoones felt relieved whenever Huff’s power indicators turned red and he had to recharge his cybernetic body in his own cabin.

  At the moment, though, Huff’s indicators were green and he was mad.

  “Arr, ain’t nothin’ out here but space dust,” he growled. “This ain’t even lookin’ for a needle in a haystack, because there ain’t no haystack.”

  “Belay that talk,” Diocletia said wearily. “Yana, target that clump of rocks at thirty degrees. Make sure you scan it for chemical signatures, too.”

  “Thirty degrees, aye-aye,” Yana mumbled, hands moving automatically over her instruments. “Vesuvia, run a diagnostic check on the chemical sniffers.”

  “All instruments are functioning normally,” said Vesuvia, the only member of the crew who didn’t sound exhausted, annoyed, or both.

  The engines throbbed momentarily as Carlo tapped the throttle, sending the Comet closer to the asteroids with a little puff of exhaust. Somewhere above them, their long-range fuel tanks were drifting slowly through space. Searching each section of the asteroids without them saved fuel and made the Comet more maneuverable.

  “No chemical signatures detected,” Vesuvia said.

  “Ion emissions?” asked Yana with a sigh.

  “Negative.”

  “Communications bands?” Yana said.

  “Nothing detected,” Vesuvia said.

  Yana groaned.

  “I take it back,” snarled Huff. “Ain’t even space dust out here. Right now a few grams of dust would seem like the Lost Treasure of the Maria Abelia.”

  The bells tolled three times—it was 1730, nearing the end of the first dog watch.

  “Carlo, take us to the next target in this sector—the one at two hundred sixty-five degrees,” Diocletia said, conspicuously ignoring her father. “There are some bigger asteroids in that one, plus that anomalous chemical signature we detected yesterday.”

  “On rescan, that anomaly registered as a miscalibrated sensor,” Vesuvia reminded her.

  “Of course it did,” said Diocletia, rubbing at her tired eyes. “I forgot. Let’s check it out anyway.”

  Mavry took off his headset and stretched, the bones in his shoulders creaking and popping. He looked back at the three kids and grinned.

  “If only our fancy hosts back at Ganymede could witness the romance of privateering,” he said, half yawning.

  Diocletia shot him an annoyed look, and he stifled his yawn.

  “Still, kids, don’t get sloppy,” Mavry said. “Besides, you never know when good fortune will strike. Remember the Panaclops, the prospector that found the Diamond Comet of 2855?”

  “Every Jovian spacer knows that story,” Carlo grumbled.

  “Suddenly you’re every Jovian spacer?” Tycho asked, glaring at his brother. “I wouldn’t mind hearing it again, Dad.”

  “You only want to hear it because I don’t want to,” Carlo said.

  “Would you rather sit around and wait for Vesuvia to tell us nothing’s happening?” Tycho asked.

  “That’s enough, you two,” Mavry said. “The Panaclops was on a thousand-day cruise, one of those brutal tours of duty the old-time prospectors used to pull. Five hundred days out on one parabola, five hundred days back on another. Through Day 495, she’d found nothing. Her crew was near mutiny and demanding the captain scrap the second half of the loop and return to Jupiter straightaway. On Day 496, they found a little whisper of a chemical signature, and a couple of hours later they were on the communicator transmitting the claim for the Diamond Comet.”

  “Day 496, huh?” asked Carlo, smiling in spite of himself. “All right then, let’s see what we find.”

  “Yer forgettin’ summat, though, Mavry, my lad,” said Huff.

  “What’s that?” Mavry asked.

  “The Panaclops’s next cruise,” Huff said. “’Twas another thousand-day tour. She had a new captain and crew—the old swabs had all retired to spend their diamond money. They neared the halfway point of that cruise without finding anything either.”

  Everybody was listening in spite of themselves, Tycho realized. Even Vesuvia was quiet.

  “The new crew knew what had happened last time, so there warn’t much argument,” Huff said. “On Day 471, her throttle control system failed, and she shot off into deep space with her course and speed locked in. She’s halfway through the Oort cloud now, with empty fuel tanks and a crew of mummies.”

  “That’s horrible,” Yana murmured.

  “That it is, missy,” Huff said. “Point is, yeh never know which kind of cruise yer gonna get.”

  Tycho woke with a start. He was supposed to be on watch, but he’d forgotten. Carlo had gone t
o bed without waiting to be relieved, and Vesuvia must have malfunctioned. He hurled himself out of his berth and ran from his cabin to the forward ladderwell, descending to the quarterdeck in shorts and a stained old T-shirt.

  It was too late, he saw at once: the Shadow Comet was surrounded by pirate ships. They were so close he could see down the muzzles of their blaster cannons. Before he could yell or move, they opened fire. The temperature of the quarterdeck shot upward, became unbearably hot, and he opened his mouth to scream—

  —and woke up, for real this time.

  A dream, Tycho thought. You were dreaming. He twisted around in his berth to look at the clock affixed to the bulkhead in his cabin. It was just after 0300, the depths of the middle watch.

  Except he was awake, and the alarms really were screaming.

  “Bridge crew to quarterdeck,” Vesuvia said over the Comet’s internal speakers. “All hands to stations. Repeating. Bridge crew to quarterdeck. All hands to stations.”

  The other Hashoones were already on the quarterdeck, except for Huff, who needed a few extra minutes to attach his prosthetic limbs and make sure his systems were operating properly. But to Tycho’s relief, his mother and Carlo were still blinking away sleep and Mavry hadn’t sat down yet. Tycho was late, but by less than a minute.

  “What’s going on?” Tycho asked, waiting irritably for his monitor to power up.

  “Ion emissions,” Yana said. “Still faint, but levels are growing.”

  “What heading?” Carlo asked, studying his own monitors.

  “Coming from deeper in the asteroid belt,” Yana said. “Coming hard, if readings are accurate.”

  “Whose starship?” Tycho asked.

  “Mine,” Yana said instantly. “Carlo, you’re pilot. Tycho, communications. Vesuvia, I need a sensor profile of the incoming craft.”

  “Data still insufficient to assemble a profile,” Vesuvia said.

  “Nothing to do but wait, then,” Mavry said.

  Tense moments ticked by. Yana studied her monitor and frowned.

  “Definitely ion emissions,” she said. “Whatever she is, she’s coming in awfully hot.”

  The main screen lit up, displaying the positions of the Comet and the mysterious ship.

  “Calculating,” Vesuvia said. “Long-range sensors indicate length of seventy to eighty meters.”

  “No freighter that small would be all the way out here,” Tycho said. “And she’s too big to be a prospector.”

  “My starship,” Diocletia said. “Carlo, there are asteroids to starboard. Take us behind them.”

  “Mom!” Yana objected.

  “Not now, Yana,” Diocletia said. “Carlo, behind the asteroids. Take it slow, but do it now. Yana, step up your sensor scans. Tycho, monitor transmissions on all wavelengths. I need eyes and ears open.”

  Carlo pushed the control yoke to the right, and the Comet curved gracefully through space.

  “Mr. Grigsby, we’ve got a bogey, moving fast,” Diocletia said into her microphone. “All guns charged, please, but easy on the triggers.”

  “Aye, captain,” Grigsby replied. “The boys’ll be gentle.”

  They heard the bosun’s pipe whistling out the order below, followed by a crash that announced Huff had arrived on the quarterback from above. His artificial eye gleamed white as he studied the main screen, his mind quickly calculating velocity and position.

  “Preliminary sensor profile complete,” Vesuvia said. “Profile fits Leopard-class frigate, but confidence is limited. Fifty-nine point one percent match.”

  “That can’t be right,” Yana said. “Vesuvia, recalculate—”

  “Belay that,” Diocletia said, peering at her own screen. “She’s a heavily modified Leopard, not a standard template. The modifications are throwing the assessment off.”

  “Arrr, a Leopard,” mused Huff. “I wonder—”

  “Quiet on deck,” Diocletia said. “Vesuvia, is she attached to long-range fuel tanks?”

  “Based on extrapolations from current scans, she is not,” Vesuvia said. “Confidence level ninety-four point two percent.”

  “That there’s a pirate,” growled Huff. “Local one, too. No long-range tanks, burning fuel like a meteor.”

  “A pirate?” Diocletia asked. “Unlikely.”

  “I would have picked up her tanks on a scan,” Yana said.

  “They might still be drifting ahead of us,” Huff said. “Or ditched way above or below the ecliptic, out of sight. ’Tis an old trick, Dio—used to do it meself.”

  “Go to silent running,” Diocletia said. “Carlo, kill the engines. Yana, passive sensor scans only. Tycho, double-check that we’re flying black transponders. Mavry, shut down the air scrubbers.”

  For a moment the only sounds were frantic typing and the flipping of switches. Then the lights dimmed on the quarterdeck, and even the rhythmic shush-shush of the life-support systems stopped. It was eerily quiet, the main screen glowing a dim red.

  “Eight thousand klicks,” Yana said. “She’s slowing.”

  Seven bells sounded, the familiar clanging suddenly harsh and startling. The Hashoones leaned forward, peering at their screens.

  “She knows we’re out here,” Huff warned.

  “She might at that,” Diocletia said. “Tycho, calculate the heading to our long-range tanks and key it in. We might have to leave in a hurry.”

  “Aye-aye,” Tycho said as he typed. “But the calculations will take a few minutes.”

  “Run away?” demanded Huff. “Avast! Blow her out of space!”

  “Let’s see what she is before we shoot her full of holes,” Diocletia snapped.

  As the mysterious ship continued to approach, moving more slowly now, Vesuvia was building a profile of her from what little information the sensors continued to return. The newcomer was slightly larger than the Comet, with a needle-nosed bow and arms radiating from thick brackets amidships.

  “I know that ship,” muttered Huff, scratching his chin with the muzzle of his blaster cannon. That seemed like a terrible idea, and Tycho watched nervously.

  Diocletia turned to say something to her father, but before she could, the main screen began flashing red.

  “The target has launched several smaller ships,” Vesuvia said. “Velocity consistent with pinnaces, fighters, or gigs.”

  “Yana, distance to target?” Diocletia asked.

  “Holding at six thousand klicks,” Yana said.

  “Arr, I got it,” Huff crowed. “She’s the Hydra, she is.”

  “Impossible,” Diocletia said. “The Hydra was destroyed during the Deimos Raid six years ago.”

  “The target’s transponders are active,” Vesuvia said. “No image transmitted.”

  “Ho, a black transponder,” Huff murmured, his blaster cannon twitching.

  “Incoming transmission,” Tycho said. “Audio and video.”

  “Put it on screen,” Diocletia said. “Receiving only—send no transmissions.”

  Tycho tapped at his keypad and the main screen flickered, revealing a burly man glaring out at them. He was bald, with strings of tears tattooed below the corners of his eyes. His long white mustache had been stiffened with wax until it stuck straight out past his ears. His right ear was studded with alternating diamonds and silver hoops, while his left was a frizzled lump, the center of a web of angry white scars that reached almost to his nose. His left eye was gone, replaced by a black telescoping lens that looked like it had been rammed into his skull.

  Tycho had never seen the man before, but his parents’ expressions turned grim.

  “Thoadbone Mox,” Huff said, sounding oddly pleased. “Traitor, slaver, and the lowest, meanest murderin’ dog ever to plague the solar system.”

  “And black sheep of a good Io family, sad to say,” Mavry muttered. “Rude of him not to stay dead.”

  “Unknown ship,” Mox said in a voice like gravel and broken glass. “I know you’re out there. Show yourself or my hunters will open your hull to space.
”

  Yells of defiance bounced up from belowdecks. Diocletia activated her microphone.

  “Mr. Grigsby,” she snapped. “Control your crewers!”

  The yells were replaced by Grigsby’s voice, roaring about scurvy dogs being put in irons. Then all was quiet again.

  “Respond or I’ll blow you to atoms,” Mox growled. Behind him on the quarterdeck sat several grim-faced men.

  Yana gasped. Tycho looked at her questioningly, but her eyes were fixed on the screen.

  Diocletia began flipping switches. “Carlo, give me a hand signal when you’ve got the route to our tanks from Tycho. I’m activating false transponders. Tycho, open a channel on my command. Audio and visual, but restrict the outgoing visual to Mavry’s station.”

  Tycho started to reply, then realized to his horror that he’d lost track of where he was in the navigational calculations.

  “Tycho?” Diocletia asked.

  “Give me communications,” Yana hissed. “I can handle it.”

  “No, I’ve got it,” Tycho replied.

  “You can’t do two things at once,” Yana said. “And we need that route.”

  She was right, Tycho realized—without a path to safety they might die, and nothing recorded in the Log would matter. He nodded, and Yana’s fingers hammered at her own keys.

  “I’ve got communications, Mom,” Yana said.

  As brother and sister typed frantically, Mavry dug under his chair and emerged wearing a cracked spacer’s cap of stained synthetic leather and oversized goggles that made his eyes look gigantic.

  “Open that channel now, Yana,” Diocletia said.

  Yana nodded and gave her mother a quick thumbs-up. Nobody on the quarterdeck needed to be told to be quiet, not even Huff.

  Mavry leaned closer to the camera set in his workstation.

  “Easy there, sir, we’re receiving transmission,” he said in a high-pitched, wheedling voice, scowling and swiveling his head from side to side. “This is the . . .”

  He shot Diocletia a quick glance. She held up three fingers.