Darklight Pirates

“He’ll live.”

The muffled words came from the edge of infinity. Cletus moaned and tried to sit up.

“Here, let me help.”

“Let him be. My son’s all right, but nothing else is. This spaceman just tried to kill me.”

“Programmer General, my analysis of your world’s politics did not include assassination as a method of advancement. Give me time to recalculate.”

“Stay with him. He’s coming around now.” Donal clutched the laserifle dropped by the would-be killer and examined the corpse. The crewman had a small hole precisely drilled into his temple where it would do the most damage. An autopsy would show how the laser had beamed through the motor cortex, overloading the axons connected to the spinal column. The single shot had rendered the man incapable of movement in the wink of an eye. Less.

Leanne Chang knelt beside Cletus but did nothing to aid him. The laserifle had cut through his inertial jacket and left angry burns on his chest. From the way his son moaned, Donal knew he needed medical attention, though sending him to the infirmary would possibly put him in the middle of a mutiny. His son was an expert shot and had warned of a plot. Getting him on his feet brought another fighter into the battle on the proper side.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. What Captain Sorrel gained by killing him defied reason. Mutiny of such a scale was hardly unknown, but rather than return to Ballymore a clever mutineer headed for another world. It was too much to believe that Sorrel and McManus were innocent when they had left the bridge only seconds before the armed spaceman had opened the hatch. The officers had to pass the mutineer unless he had, for some unknown reason, allowed them to go unchallenged.

Or were the two officers dead in the passageway just off the bridge?

“Are we in orbit around Ballymore? Or did the captain Lift us somewhere else?”

He spoke aloud, a rhetorical question. It came as a surprise when Leanne stood and fiddled more with her rings. Donal couldn’t take his eyes off the one on her right middle finger that had sent the coherent beam into the spaceman’s head. She had reacted to the attack with the chilling speed of a trained soldier--a trained killer. The array of rings provided her with more than simple decoration. The gems glowed and one pulsed, giving a constant flood of information that only she could decipher.

And one had sent a deadly beam that drilled through the spaceman’s brain.

“We orbit Ballymore.” She spoke quietly, but there was no denying she was positive. Her surveillance equipment was far more advanced than anything Donal had seen before. She had easily tapped into the bridge instrumentation without using a HUD or the captain’s control helmet.

“Then Cletus is wrong about the captain. This attack was nothing more than a crewman going space happy.”

That rang false to him, but what other explanation could there be? They had been in StringSpaceLift for only a handful of minutes, hardly time for it to affect anyone so profoundly. Yet the Lift had felt peculiar as they entered and left higher dimensions different from those normally used. It had wrenched his gut and obviously struck his son like a blow to the belly.

“Not wrong,” Cletus croaked out. He futilely brushed at his chest. Bits of charred fabric fluttered away. “The inertial cloth’s supposed to stop projectiles, not energy.”

“It’s a new design.” Donal had no time to explain how the Burran researchers had developed cloth that turned to a solid, rock-hard barrier when a projectile struck it and then added woven nano strands of fiber optic pipes throughout. A laser striking the cloth dissipated when the beam conducted along the foptic channels. The intensity of the beam destroyed the light pipes but saved the victim.

Donal hefted the fallen laserifle and squared off in front of the hatch. He reached out to open it when Cletus called out to him.

“Father, wait! Don’t tackle him alone. Sorrel is responsible.”

“Stay with Leanne and remain quiet. Don’t tax yourself until we get a medic to examine you. I doubt this was Sorrel’s doing. It was only a single demented crewman.”

“No, no ...” Cletus struggled, but Leanne held him down with a single touch at a nerve juncture. He thrashed about weakly, then collapsed.

“He will not interfere. I will come with you to arrest the captain.”

“This is a lone act. I’ve known Sorrel for years. We’ve had our differences, but I always valued him being able to speak his mind. Other captains swallowed their criticisms and played politics. His honesty won him command of my flagship.”

“Do not trust him,” Leanne cautioned. “Listen to your son. His vision in such matters is clear.”

“He and Sorrel have fought constantly about proper use of this dreadnought. Cletus wanted it more heavily armed, but Sorrel saw no reason. When Cletus became Admiral of the Navy and Sorrel’s superior officer, their arguing grew more intense, but that’s because Cletus is half Sorrel’s age.”

“He has twice the captain’s intelligence, but little of the animal cunning.”

Donal looked at the Far Kingdom adviser in surprise.

“You will not talk of my senior officers like that. For all you know, Captain Sorrel fell victim to the spaceman before he threatened us on the bridge.” His tone was sharper than he intended, but the rebuke was necessary. Leanne Chang was an observer from Far Kingdom and nothing more.

Or was she? The devices embedded in her rings included a deadly laser in addition to providing her with constant intel he had never authorized. She might be more dangerous than he thought before. If she hadn’t acted so quickly, the spaceman would have killed Cletus--and probably him, too. She recognized the trouble and how to fix it before he could reach for the small lasepistol in his uniform coat pocket. Even if he had drawn it, Programmer Generals had little need to be a marksman. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone to the range to practice.

“Come on,” Donal said, giving in to the inevitable as Cletus struggled to his feet. “Do you have a weapon?”

Cletus reached behind and fumbled a moment before pulling out a thin-bladed knife. Donal snorted in contempt.

“Never bring a knife to a gunfight,” he said.

“Aboard a starship, such a weapon causes less damage to equipment,” Leanne said.

“Thanks.” Cletus nodded in gratitude to her as he gripped the knife. “I’ll get something more powerful before we find the captain.”

“I refuse to believe Sorrel turned traitor,” Donal said doggedly. He checked the setting on the laserifle and poked his head out into the corridor.

He reacted instinctively. The rifle came to his shoulder, and he touched the trigger, depressed it and saw an almost invisible beam touch another crewman’s face. The man died without a sound. Donal hurried to the corridor junction and chanced a quick look around. He ducked back before the three crewmen stationed outside the command deck saw him. With his boot heel he kicked back the fallen laserifle and heard Cletus scoop it up. The soft whir as it powered up told him his son was ready to join him.

And Leanne? She pressed close and held out her hand, only to pull it back fast. Her thumbnail pressed into a groove on her index finger ring. A small hologram popped up over her hand showing the trio of guards. She turned her hand around to get a different view, then three red Xs appeared, each with a number superimposed.

“Take one,” she said to Donal. “Cletus will remove guard two. Guard three is my responsibility.”

He saw she had given him and his son easier shots, reserving a tricky shot at the far crewman for herself. The crush of time made him agree. To his surprise both Cletus and Leanne were already in motion. He followed a beat after. It took him three blasts to bring down his target. Cletus got his through the left eye with an impressive knife throw. It took a few seconds for him to figure out how Leanne had used a silvered hallway decoration to reflect her first shot. The dissipated beam raked the final guard’s face, causing him to drop his weapon and turn in pain so she had a clear killing shot.

The entire firefight had lasted less than five seconds.

Cletus pushed him aside as he hurried forward, Leanne a step behind. Donal shook his head. He was a Programmer General, not a soldier. The difference between putting in a line of code that might doom a convict to death for a heinous crime was a world away from touching the trigger of a laserifle and searing down a crewman who had been loyal to him.

He caught another laserifle tossed him by his son.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Use it when the other rifle drains,” Cletus said. “Never leave a weapon behind.” True to his word, he yanked the power packs from the other two laserifles and tucked them into his belt.

Donal numbly removed the power pack of the second rifle and dropped it into a coat pocket. He hoped it would never be used, though odds were turning against that. A single crewman going space crazy was a faint possibility, but another trio armed and standing guard over the command deck defied any conclusion other than mutiny.

“We need to think this through,” he said.

“We need to act,” Cletus said. “If we give Sorrel time to consolidate his control, we’ll be dead.”

“He’s already captain. Why’d he leave the bridge? We--” Donal saw how his son and Leanne worked together, one on each side of the hatchway. Leanne eschewed any of the bulky energy weapons for the power in her rings. Cletus held a captured laserifle with easy familiarity.

“The ship’s controls are probably locked,” Cletus said. “He left so the spaceman had a clear shot at everyone on the bridge. Sorrel didn’t risk a spray shot taking him and the XO out.”

“But where are they going?” Donal felt lost in the maze of possibilities.

“To rally the other mutineers, to make sure they have weapons, to get their allies ready to kill us, if the spaceman failed.” Cletus rattled off the answer as if reading from a checklist as he readied the laserifle. The safety clicked off.

Cletus fired and Donal stumbled backward as molten metal from the passageway overhead rained down on him. They had blundered into an ambush.

“That’s where Sorrel went,” Cletus said. “Stay back.”

Donal chanced a quick look around a bend in the passageway and saw a half dozen crew advancing, their rifles leveled. He stepped back. His mouth had turned to cotton.

“What do we do? I didn’t see Sorrel.”

“You will not negotiate with him for surrender. He thinks he is in charge,” Leanne said. She tugged on his sleeve and pulled him back down the corridor. “We must secure the bridge. There is no way past the mutineers in our way.”

“They’ll obey me if I order them to stand down,” Donal said. Cletus’ snort of contempt made him mad. He yelled, “Put down your weapons. I order you to surrender. This is the Programmer General--”

Parts of the bulkhead exploded from concentrated fire. The sound of boots against the deck warned that the mutineers charged rather than obeying.

Donal found himself on his feet while both his son and Leanne had dropped to kneeling positions, their weapons aimed and ready the instant the crew rounded the corner. The two fired. Donal fired, also, more from startled reaction than forethought. His eyes went wide when he saw he had sliced off a woman’s arm. Her laserifle clattered as it hit the deck, a hand still clutching the stock.

“Back to the bridge. Now!” Cletus yanked out an exhausted battery and dropped it. A second one from his belt snapped into place before the next attack. “No matter how Sorrel locked the controls, you have to free them, Father.”

“Unlock them.” Donal mumbled. He clutched the laserifle to his chest as if it were a safety line rescuing him from drowning. He turned away from the firefight. Leanne motioned frantically for him to join her. “What should we do?”

She opened the hatchway onto the bridge, grabbed the front of his uniform and bodily lifted him off his feet. With an impressive display of strength and leverage, she tossed him through. He skidded along and came to a sudden halt next to the captain’s chair. She and Cletus crowded through. One of them closed the hatch and the other melted the hatch to the frame. Donal used the captain’s chair for support as he pulled himself to his feet. It seemed important for him to know who had fused the hatch and who had only slammed it.

The question refused to form. He looked from the two around the bridge. The blood rushed from his head. A dreadnought required a bridge staffing of six officers. He counted four bodies. With both the captain and XO outside, the entire crew was accounted for.

Two in mutiny, four dead.

Dizziness hit him and he sat heavily, realizing, how close he, Cletus and Leanne had come to being among those dead. He didn’t even remember the spaceman firing that many times, yet he must have. The cindered bodies proved that his recollection was faulty.

“The control helmet. Put it on.”

Donal saw his son with the spider weblike helmet in his hands. He reached out and brought the neural linking device down, positioning it with the skill of long years of practice so the electrodes pressed into the precise spots on his scalp and temples.

“You were right. He shut down the controls.” Donal closed his eyes and began releasing one segment of the Shillelagh after another. Sorrel’s neural key was quickly trumped by his own, but the complete release would take a few minutes. He slammed back in the chair as he regained control of the HUD and the cameras outside the bridge. “They have a cutting laser and are coming through the bulkhead to one side.”

“Got it.”

Donal thought Cletus responded, but he wasn’t sure. More and more information flooded into his brain, drowning waves that were both familiar and unusual. He was genetically programmed to use it to the fullest, but he governed a nation’s economy, not a warship. The input sent stars bursting in his field of vision as his brain became used to this computer. He preferred the Blarney Stone that ran everything in Burran, as complex as it was, to this simpler unit. If anything, the Shillelagh’s computer was brutish and ugly. It gave him a sledgehammer when he was used to a scalpel.

“They are almost through the bulkhead!”

Behind him, McManus vaporized the metal wall and yelled for them to surrender as he levelled his sidearm.

Donal swung about and fired, hardly knowing he did so. The HUD image merged with his ordinary vision to show the XO in bold relief. Something inside him turned small and cold when he saw that he had inadvertently set his laserifle beam to continuous beam. He had fired a slashing plane of energy that severed McManus’ head. The spray of blood caused Sorrel to leap back rather than follow his XO onto the bridge. For the briefest instant, Donal came into the HUD’s focus and that Sorrel contacted Burran. He recognized the on-planet controller as a friend of his younger daughter, Bella. The two had worked together to learn the neural net hookups needed to link directly into Burran computers and trained to program the master computer, the Blarney Stone. Donal allowed himself a moment of pride in Bella. He expected her to succeed him as Programmer General.

“Snap out of it.”

A hand gripped his arm with steely fingers.

“What?”

“You need to order them to stop.”

“He’s in shock.”

Donal recognized Leanne. He turned and saw Cletus staring at him. Then both of them swung into action again, their weapons firing. Cletus ejected a power pack from his laserifle and shoved in a new one. The click as it seated raked Donal’s senses and made him cringe.

“Order the captain to stand down.” Leanne’s voice came from afar, forcing him to realize he was drifting mentally.

The act of killing McManus had derailed his mental processes. He blinked to drill down on the display until he found the shipboard PA system. Together with the controller, he raced through other systems until he secured the link.

“Captain Sorrel, surrender immediately. To all who follow Sorrel, he is a traitor. This is the Programmer General speaking, and I have control of the ship. If Captain Sorrel does not surrender to you, take him into custody using whatever force is necessary.” Donal cut off the comlink. He babbled and knew it. Showing weakness now meant more would die.

Cletus fired again, stepped forward and swung the laserifle in a wide arc that slammed into Sorrel’s shoulder, knocking him away from the hole burned in the bulkhead.

“Give up, Captain Sorrel,” Donal said, more in command now of his own frozen mind. “You will receive a fair hearing.”

“You won’t ever rule in Burran.” Sorrel shouted from the corridor. “Go on. Gun me down. That’s the way you rule.”

“You admit you mutinied?”

“Your time is over, Tomlins. Everyone is fed up with your autocratic rule. You’ve turned the Programmer General into a hereditary post. Your father, you, which of your ill-conceived spawn was supposed to take your place?”

“Bella,” he answered before realizing he needed to fight to keep focused. More facets of the Shillelagh unlocked and came under his command. He blinked through the HUD, sent his thoughts racing through th controller, reached to touch a few of the haptic knobs, only to accomplish nothing since he didn’t wear a haptic glove. He settled his thoughts, concentrated and in a few more minutes, everything Sorrel had thought secure was freed aboard the Shillelagh.

“I knew it! It’s as I was warned. Your daughter will never rule my country!”

“You think killing me puts you in charge?”

“Look at him. Your son. He’s green, unproven, but you installed him as Commander in Chief over me. There are a hundred other officers more capable, more experienced.”

“It has nothing to do with being the next in line, Sorrel.” Donal sagged back in the captain’s chair. “It has everything to do with ability. Ability and potential to improve.”

Sorrel’s laugh mocked him.

He stopped talking and devoted his entire attention to opening the last encoded segments of the ship’s control that Sorrel had so ably sealed. He understood the complexities of a dreadnought and maintaining such a huge vessel, but now he probed the innards of the computer and saw how vast the programming was controlling every small detail of life aboard ship. It was easier to give the command, let the HUD interface carry the order to the computer and have it executed than it was programming the computer directly using the controller.

“Got sensors back,” he said through tight lips. Donal heard someone shouting. It might have been Sorrel. Then everyone screamed at him. He pulled off the helmet and lost contact with the vastness within the ship. This reduced the shouting to only his son and Leanne.

“Programmer General, we are under attack!” Leanne shook him hard.

He stared dully. Too much happened too fast for him to respond easily. Killing McManus had thrown him, but immersion in the Shillelagh’s electronic brain tore him apart in unexpected ways.

“I know. Sorrel ...”

“He’s been captured. Your son stopped him.”

“Where is he? Cletus?”

“He’s in the corridor mustering the crew who are still loyal.”

“So there’s no attack?” Donal’s head threatened to split open. Leanne should let him rest, recuperate from the shock of all that had happened. Being linked into the ship took its toll, as much as killing McManus. And Sorrel was dead? No, she said captured. Where? He had to take time to digest everything. The Shillelagh was so different from the Blarney Stone on-planet. This computer controlled weapons and air supplies. When he tagged into the Blarney Stone, he worried about supply but of food, regulated traffic, checked balances of population versus need. The planet took care of itself, leaving him to handle the purely artificial.

“Sir, we are under attack by a Burran battle cruiser sent from your orbital base. They must think the mutiny succeeded.”

“They must think it failed!” Cletus cried as he pulled his father from the captain’s chair. Cletus was hardly recognizable with half his uniform burned away and much of his face laser charred. His strength remained unabated as he held Sorrel upright, then heaved the half-dead man into the captain’s chair. “Sorrel, call them off. That cruiser is yours.”

Donal held his hands in his head to keep it from cracking. He staggered a pace away, turned and saw Sorrel feebly working on the manual controls set in the chair arm. As the captain fumbled about, he muttered orders to the com officer to send a coded message.

Donal’s head cleared as if a lightning bolt ripped through it. He reached for the traitorous captain’s throat, only to find strong hands on his wrists holding him back.

“Wait, Father. Let him send the message.” Cletus hesitated a moment, then released his grip. Donal stepped back. Leanne supported him. He yanked free.

“It might be orders to destroy us.”

“Look at his face—what’s left of it. He wants to live. Sorrel’s own mutineers are attacking us.”

From across the command deck, the com officer barked out, “No reply, sir.”

The confirmation wasn’t required. Everyone still alive on the bridge knew it from their own instrumentation. The HUD blazed bright red in warning, and distant klaxons in the heart of the dreadnought warned of attack. Barely had the blare begun than it stopped.

“What--?” Donal began.

The Shillelagh shuddered as an explosion ripped the air from his lungs. He fell to his knees, blood spurting from his nose and ears. Pulled away from the captain’s chair, he twisted around to see a shining drill spinning sluggishly through their thick hull. Their atmosphere oozed out around the drill bit, but what he saw there made him try to shout a warning. The lowered pressure turned his cry into a liquid gurgle.

“Warhead,” came Sorrel’s voice, as if in the far distance. The captain slammed his hand down on the armrest controls, spinning an eye-blurring dozen layers of virtual control panel into the center of the bridge.

Donal tried to watch the captain, but the rotating drill drew him like a magnet. When the diamond drill head bored a large enough hole, he saw the parallel yellow stripes on the warhead attached behind the drill. He counted the stripes. Two. It wasn’t the biggest explosive missile in a cruiser’s arsenal, but it would kill everyone on the bridge.

The Shillelagh shuddered again as the dreadnought begin rotating about its major axis. Donal was flung high toward the bulkhead. He slammed in hard, held flat by the centrifugal force as the massive ship began to spin faster. Sorrel tried to kill them! Then Donal realized the captain was responsible for the rotation, spinning the ship to throw the warhead free of the hull. The Shillelagh was ponderous, massive, but it carried little in the way of armament and nothing that could cut away the warhead drill. Most of their bulk lay in the aft quarters of the ship. The fusion power plants giving life to the vessel whined as their full power was diverted to steering jets responsible for the rotation.

“It’s going to blow!” Cletus slipped between Leanne and the drill to protect her from the warhead’s blast, as if that mattered. Even a small missile would erase all life on the command deck.

The Shillelagh rotated faster. Donal watched the warhead wobble in its berth, then the drill spun mindlessly but cut through nothing but atmosphere on the bridge--what was left of it. Sorrel performed the last desperate act. A huge gust from the air ducts rushed forth. This added a small pressure that, along with the ship’s radial velocity, sent the warhead hurling back into space.

Through the hole Donal saw the violent detonation in space. Then he gasped for air and relented to the inevitable spin pressing him against the bulkhead.

Sure he was dying, he tried to bring up mental images of his lovely wife Kori and daughters Ebony and Bella. He tried and failed. His neural patterns tried to mimic that of the ship and hid such last-hope visuals behind a veil of circuitry and executing programs.

In anguish, he fell to his knees. It took a few seconds to understand why that was important. The Shillelagh no longer rotated furiously. And air! He sucked in the dry, dull air, and his lungs didn’t explode with vacuum. Wiping blood from his eyes, he saw the chaos on the bridge. Half the officers were down. And Captain Sorrel sprawled across the deck, a huge hole burned in his side. Part of his arm had been severed along with much of his chest, leaving the unburned half his face untouched. His look of surprise told that he understood death had found him but hadn’t been given enough time to fight.

“Part of the drill broke off and caught him,” Leanne said, helping him to his feet. “He saved us, though.”

“Cletus?”

“He is capable of handling the ship in combat.”

“How do you know that?” He looked hard at her. Then he knew. Leanne Chang had studied Cletus and him and the Shillelagh and probably everything about Burran and the planet thoroughly before being sent along by Supreme Leader.

“I know his combat scores from the last exercise,” she said softly. She helped him sit up. Donal knew some part of him didn’t hurt like hell but couldn’t identify it. “The Shillelagh is damaged but repairs proceed already. A wounded dreadnought against a heavy cruiser is an interesting match up. It is reminiscent of the naval encounter where the pocket battleship Graf Spee fought against three lesser vessels in an Earthly seaborne conflict.”

“Interesting, hell. That cruiser came armed for battle! We don’t have missiles. Our own ship and it came to destroy us!”

“The laser batteries will suffice.” She pointed to the fire control HUD floating just to the side of the captain’s chair. Cletus worked on the virtual control panels to bring their guns to bear even as he sought to evade.

“I can use the helmet to get back into the computer and direct repairs. That’s one thing I know how to do.” Donal took a shaky step toward the captain’s chair.

“A good idea.” Leanne led him by the arm as if he were a small child threatening to run from its mother. She picked up the spidery helmet and held it a moment. A few quick words to Cletus gave her the permission to pass along the control helmet.

Donal realized then that his son was in command. He had to get permission and not simply do what he intended. It unsettled him and caused a flurry of extraneous thoughts that had to be dampened before he could work efficiently.

“With com back we should contract the planetary controller and have him call off the cruiser.” Donal fitted the helmet so the electrodes touched his temples, forehead and shaved spots at the back of his head to facilitate electrical conduction.

He gasped when he estimated the extent of destruction done to the Shillelagh. With a single command to the ship’s computer, he dispatched hundreds of Robot Repair Units to the task of fixing the worst damage first, then working down an ordered list. The RRUs operated independently once set on a task, relieving him of the need to supervise everything. All he had to do was prioritize. Evaluation reports threatened to blind him as every section of the ship still functioning filled his head with demands for repair.

“I ... I can’t repair the laser turrets around the ship’s circumference. The cruiser blasted all of them off as we spun to get rid of the warhead. But--”

He never got out the rest of his warning. The explosion aft wiped out all electronics on the bridge. Hooked into the ship’s brain as he was, his brain overloaded along with the computer. The world went dark and silent all around him as he floated away into emptiness.