The Pride of the Damned Read online

  Stavros shrugged. “You heard me tell Istrefi that the ship wasn’t one of ours. As far as he’ll know, I’m just the agent who hooked him up with its owner-skipper. If it vanishes while on the journey, that’s not my fault. Accidents happen, after all – or I can blame it on sabotage, and accuse Hawkwood. The Brotherhood will be all too ready to believe that, after what happened to their first delivery from Metaxas!” Both men chuckled knowingly.

  “The ship will have a different name and beacon ID by the time it calls at Constanta, and another after it leaves there. I’ll keep it out of this system for six months or so. By then, it’ll be just another courier ship doing its rounds. Istrefi and his people have never seen it, or met or spoken to any of its crew, so they won’t know them from Adam. Only this Captain Pernaska will have done that, and he won’t be a problem by then.”

  “No, he won’t. I can see you’ve done this before.”

  “A few times. It’s inconvenient, tying up one of our ships for long periods like this, but you pay well, and sometimes – like today – it pays off for both of us. You’ll arrange to have the rest of the money waiting for us at Constanta?”

  “I’ll have a letter ready for you by this afternoon. Tell the skipper to give it to Hawkwood on arrival. How would you like to be paid – in another draft like this, or in gold?”

  “You can do gold? That will save us bank fees, and it’s almost untraceable. If your people give it to the skipper, he’ll deliver it to us. He’s trustworthy.”

  “Gold it is, then.”

  Stavros grinned. “I wonder how long it’ll take the Brotherhood to eventually learn about the impounding of their ships, and that one of their senior officers has gone missing?”

  “Probably several weeks at least; hopefully, a couple of months. By then we’ll have interrogated Captain Pernaska, and used what he tells us to cause them some more problems.”

  2

  Defiance

  CONSTANTA

  Captain Pernaska sat on the hard, narrow bunk in his cell, closed his eyes, and prepared himself for death.

  Remember our Patriarch, he thought forcefully to himself. He dared not speak aloud, because the enemy would overhear him through the microphones they were sure to have hidden in this confined space. Even in his dotage, afflicted with disease, he went on a combat operation, to prove to our people that he would never ask them to risk anything he was not prepared to risk himself. What an example he set! He died in action, and inspired all of us to avenge his loss in the blood of our enemies. Today is my chance to do that. It is not a tragedy – it is an honor! May I prove worthy of it, and may my death be worthy of his!

  He had to act before his captors could transfer him to an interrogation facility. He knew all the Brotherhood’s plans for the next few years, and all about their ships. Most important of all, he knew the coordinates of their secret base, information entrusted only to the Commanding Officers, Executive Officers and navigators of their vessels. Hawkwood absolutely could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to learn that secret… so he had to die. It was as simple as that.

  His kidnappers had been almost unbelievably, even criminally inept in giving him access to the ship’s entertainment library, via the screen on the bulkhead beyond the bars. He was still puzzled by that. Hawkwood had proved to be a formidable opponent in space combat, worthy of the Brotherhood’s steel. Why had they made such an elementary error? Perhaps this ship was the exception that proved the rule of their efficiency and effectiveness, the weakest link in their chain. Please God, let its crew not be alone in being so sloppy! Of course, it might not be a Hawkwood vessel at all: but it had brought him as a prisoner to Hawkwood’s home planet, so that was irrelevant. He would treat its crew as the enemy.

  He had taken advantage of the screen and its voice-activated controls – which his oh-so-stupid captors had obligingly demonstrated to him – to access the courier vessel’s layout, provided as part of the entertainment library so that passengers could find their way around if necessary. He knew where the brig was in relation to the rest of the ship, and where the airtight bulkheads and doors were that would separate the vessel into pressure-tight compartments in an emergency.

  In Galactic Standard English, he called, “Display orbital approach.” The screen obediently flickered, then resolved into a radar-like display of the planet ahead. Several spaceships’ orbits were outlined in yellow, while this ship’s approach to its own assigned trajectory was shown in red. The vessel looked to be no more than a few minutes away from entering orbit. He took a deep breath. It was almost time.

  He’d asked for a couple of pairs of utility overalls, to wear instead of his Captain’s uniform. He’d sent that to the ship’s laundry, to be restored to pristine freshness in readiness for this day. Now he took off the overalls, folded them, laid them on his freshly-made bed, and put on his uniform. He tied the old-fashioned laces, critically observing his reflection in the shoes that he’d polished to mirror brightness, just like when he’d been a cadet officer all those years ago. He settled the jacket over his shoulders, and buttoned it. He had no mirror in which to examine his appearance, but knew it would be as close to perfect as possible under the circumstances.

  He heard approaching footsteps, and smothered a savage grin with his hand. He’d been on his best behavior with the spacers who brought him meals twice a day, and escorted him to and from the shower twice a week. He’d tried very hard to give the impression of a man resigned to captivity, wanting no trouble, willing even to grovel before his guards in order to avoid conflict. He knew some of them regarded him with scornful contempt as a result… which was exactly how he had hoped they would react.

  He reached beneath the mattress on the unused top bunk, and withdrew the pen that one of the spacers had indulgently lent him ‘to write a letter to my wife’. When he’d handed over the letter – addressed to a non-existent woman, and filled with meaningless platitudes – it had been to a different spacer, who hadn’t asked for the pen to be returned. He had taken full advantage of that mistake. It had given him a weapon.

  He palmed the pen, with the point up his sleeve, as two spacers entered the brig compartment. Both were armed with pulsers, but only one had his weapon in his hand. The other’s was in the flap holster at his waist, which was unfastened, allowing the butt to peep out from beneath the synthleather cover.

  “All right,” the armed spacer said in Galactic Standard English, using what he presumably intended to be a commanding tone of voice. “Stand back from the door while we unlock it, then we’ll cuff your hands and take you to the docking bay.”

  “Yes, of course,” the captain answered subserviently, stepping back, half-turning away, hunching his shoulders as if to avoid a blow. The two spacers exchanged contemptuous glances, then the second, empty-handed man unlocked the barred door and swung it open.

  “Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” he ordered as he stepped inside.

  The captain made as if to obey, but instead of stopping with his back to the spacer, he continued turning, all the way around, moving suddenly faster. Before the startled man could react, he reached out with his left hand, grabbed his collar, and pulled him powerfully forward as he thrust with the pen in his right hand. Its point speared deep into the spacer’s left eye. He screamed in agony.

  “WHAT TH–” the second spacer began to yell, eyes bulging in surprise – but Pernaska did not stop. His left hand, still grasping the injured man’s collar, twisted him half-around while his now-empty right hand snaked out and grasped the butt of the holstered weapon, drawing it and releasing its safety catch. He violently shoved his writhing victim back toward the entrance as the other spacer raised his pulser, blocking his line of sight, forcing him to step to one side to aim at their erstwhile captive. By the time he’d done so, the captain had acquired a rock-steady two-handed firing grip on his own weapon. He fired first, three rapid rounds, two into the spacer’s chest, the third at the center of his face as he y
elled in pain and shock and began to fold forward over himself. The man dropped his pulser and slumped bonelessly to the deck. Pernaska turned back to the wailing spacer inside his cell and fired one more round into his head, killing him instantly.

  He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear his head of the sudden deafness caused by the hypersonic discharge of the pulser’s electromagnetic mechanism. Faintly, through the ringing in his ears, he heard the sudden whooping of the ship’s alarm, followed by the impact of airtight doors slamming shut, reverberating through the vessel’s structure. He grinned savagely.

  Thank you, you fools! You think you’ve locked me safely away from the bridge. Instead, you’ve locked me in the same section of the hull as all your off-duty watchstanders. They’re my meat now! You may kill me in the end, but not before I make you pay for my life in the blood of your spacers!

  He swiftly searched both bodies. Neither carried spare ammunition for their pulsers, but that was of minor importance. He’d used four of the twenty rounds in the first weapon, and there were twenty more in the other – more than enough for what he’d need. He tucked the second weapon into a pocket of his jacket, then called up the vessel’s schematic on the screen again. There were eight four-person berthing units for the crew in the forward section of the hull, plus three two-berth units for supervisors and four single cabins for officers. Many of the crew would be at their stations, but according to the duty roster he’d carefully memorized earlier, about a third should be in their berthing units. By now they’d have locked their doors, of course, in the vain hope that would protect them from him. He spat contemptuously. They would soon learn otherwise… the last lesson of their lives.

  He walked out of the brig, moving slowly and carefully, peering around the corner to make sure that no braver-than-usual spacer had decided to wait in ambush for him. The passage was clear. Grinning almost cheerfully, he moved up to the first sliding door on the port side. It was locked, as he expected. He reached for the keypad set in the bulkhead next to it, and entered the standard merchant vessel emergency access code. It was used on all commercial ships, in accordance with United Planets regulations, so that search-and-rescue teams could enter locked compartments if necessary. Sure enough, the keypad beeped, and the door slid back.

  Two spacers inside the compartment screamed in fear as they stared at the black-uniformed figure in the open doorway. Their cries turned to gurgles of agony as he pumped one round into each of their chests. They crumpled to the deck. He walked over, aimed carefully, and put a second round through the head of each man. That’s four, he thought with grim, bitter, vengeful satisfaction.

  A voice began yelling over the ship’s speakers, begging, pleading with him to stop. He ignored it as he turned to the door on the starboard side of the passage, and entered the emergency access code once more.

  “Commodore, arriving!”

  The strident call rang through the small docking bay, and the four armed men and women securing it stiffened to attention. However, they didn’t take their focus away from their areas of responsibility as a tall man in black uniform, sleeves bearing the single thick stripe of his rank, emerged from the gig. He returned the salute of an officer clad in dark battledress.

  “What’s going on, Tom?”

  “Sir, it’s a real mess. The ship’s engineer tells me Henry Martin hired this vessel at New Skyros. A Brotherhood officer, Captain Spartak Pernaska, chartered it to take him to Patos, to report that our scheme with that UP Inspector had worked, and their ships were detained. Unfortunately for him, Henry got in first. He had the ship’s owner tell his crew to knock out the Captain with sleepy gas, lock him in the brig, then bring him here instead. They were going to hand him over to us for interrogation.”

  “Yes, Henry hoped to achieve something like that.” Cochrane followed Commander Argyll out of the docking bay and up the main passageway.

  “Yes, sir, but things went wrong when they got here. Near as I can tell, they decided to get him out of the brig themselves, rather than wait for us to do it. They got slack, and gave him an opening. He jumped the two spacers who opened the brig, stabbed one with some sort of makeshift weapon, took his pulser, and killed both of them. The concussion of the shots sounded the alarm, and the skipper could see what was happening over the ship’s security camera network. He sealed all the airtight hatches between hull compartments, but that meant the prisoner was isolated in the forward section, along with eleven off-duty members of the crew. He went after them, hunted them down one by one, and killed them.”

  “Damn!”

  “That’s putting it mildly, sir. By then the skipper was screaming at us to come and rescue him. We’re lucky he didn’t yell for help on the emergency frequency, otherwise Constanta’s System Patrol Service would have got involved, and there’d be charges of kidnapping involved – certainly against this ship, and perhaps against us, too.”

  “That’s all we need! Quite apart from kidnapping, how the hell would we – or the ship – have explained thirteen dead people?”

  “Fourteen, sir. One of my teams was already on the way here to collect the prisoner, and I jumped into another cutter and brought more of my people; but none of us could get here in time to save the trapped spacers. The first team to arrive secured the rest of the ship, then waited for me. I ordered the airtight door to be cracked, and we tossed a few gas grenades inside. As soon as Captain Pernaska smelled them, he yelled something in Albanian, put the muzzle of a pulser in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”

  Cochrane shook his head as they came to the courier ship’s bridge. “He may have been part of one of the nastiest, most thuggish criminal gangs in the settled galaxy, but give the devil his due – he had guts. He was obviously determined not to allow us to interrogate him, so he decided to take as many people with him as he could. He probably assumed this ship and its crew were ours. I doubt they’d have told him different.”

  “It leaves us in a hell of a spot, though, sir. This ship’s just lost over a third of its crew, and the skipper’s a nervous wreck. Look.” Tom gestured as they entered the bridge. The courier ship’s captain was huddled behind the command console. His face was pale, and he was visibly shivering.

  “Good afternoon, captain,” Cochrane said, as soothingly as he could. “I’m sorry you had to endure this.”

  The skipper burst out, “He was a maniac! A madman! How will I ever explain this to Mr. Stavros?”

  “Is he your boss?”

  “Yes! He owns this ship!”

  “I’ll write him a letter, explaining what happened. Do you have enough crew to make your way back to New Skyros?”

  “N-no. We were supposed to go to another planet, not New Skyros, but I need more spacers first.”

  Cochrane sighed. This man was obviously in no shape to continue his voyage, and the rest of his crew were probably no better off. “Very well. I’ll accommodate all of you in one of our facilities planetside. We’ll put your ship in a parking orbit while we wait for Mr. Stavros’ instructions. I’ll send him a message right away, and you can do the same. He’ll probably send a new crew for the ship.”

  “I – I’m not sure I should do that.”

  “I am. You’re not in a fit condition to proceed right now. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure Mr. Stavros knows it was my decision, not yours. We’ve chartered your ship, after all.”

  “I… yes, all right.”

  Cochrane turned to his companion. “Tom, get the crew together. Don’t let them go into their quarters to pack – we don’t want them seeing the remains of their friends. We’ll buy more clothes and personal gear for them planetside. Take them to our training base at the farm outside town. They can stay there for a few days, using one of the barracks buildings. When they’ve caught their breath, they can enjoy the bright lights of the city for a while, but not before then – and make sure they know not to breathe a word about what happened here today. Signal for an anchor watch crew of our people, to look after this ship until
further notice.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Very well. I’ll take a quick look through the forward compartments, then head back planetside. I’ll see you at the staff meeting, tomorrow at nine. Please have a report on this mess ready by then. The others will want to hear it.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Er… what should we do with the bodies, sir?”

  “Clean up everything. Take all the bodies to our depot freighter. Put the crew’s remains in body bags in the freezer until we know what their boss wants done with them. We’ll give the Brotherhood captain a spacer’s funeral, and drop his body into Constanta’s star.”

  3

  What next?

  CONSTANTA

  “According to the ship’s recording, his last words, in Albanian, were: ‘Patriarch! I come! May my death prove worthy of you!’ Then he shot himself.”

  Tom set down the tablet from which he’d been reading. There was a stunned silence around the table. Cochrane watched his staff officers carefully, noting their reactions.

  “Talk about pointless fanaticism!” Warrant Officer Jock Murray, his S7 staff officer for Communications and Technology, said with a wry grimace. “We weren’t going to kill him, were we, sir?”

  “No, we weren’t. We’d have treated him as a prisoner of war, like we did Sub-Lieutenant Alban Sejdiu when we captured him eighteen months ago. We’d have interrogated him, certainly, but not using drugs as we did to the Brotherhood’s assassins. On the other hand, since Agim Nushi, the Brotherhood boss, refused to circulate the news that we captured another officer and treated him in that way, the Captain wouldn’t have known about that.”

  “His actions suggest he expected torture, sir,” Commander Caitlin Ross, his S2 – Intelligence, pointed out. “He probably decided he couldn’t risk us learning all he knew, particularly if it could cause the Brotherhood serious harm.”