Darklight Pirates

“Sirens! What’s that mean, Mama? Are we under attack?” Bella huddled down in the corner of the prison cell, looking miserable. Kori wanted to slap the girl and give her some backbone.

“It might mean we can get out of here. Weir could never mount a takeover of the government and not have opposition. Someone in the military must be fighting against him, attempting a coup. That fool Riddle was always more ambitious than clever.” She went to the steel door and placed her hands against it to feel the warmth and distant vibrations. Explosions! “We’ll be free soon. There is a huge fight going on nearby.”

She stood on tiptoe and peered through the small grate in the door. Her field of vision was reduced to a narrow cone directly in front of their cell, but she saw movement reflected in a shiny patch of metal on the door across the corridor. She sucked in her breath, held it for a moment, then called out, “Are you in the next cell? Scarlotti? Are you there?”

The dim reflection stirred, as if someone reached through the grate on the adjacent door and waved at her.

“Damn you. Shout! I can’t make out what you’re trying to do waving those fingers around like that.”

“The guards will hear.”

It was Sean Scarlotti in the next cell.

“They’re occupied with an attack. That’s what the sirens mean, you fool.”

“Kori, I got off a microburst before the soldiers captured me. And I got back a reply. Donal’s still alive!”

For a moment she stood frozen to the spot. Hope tried to rise within her but she held it down.

“Are you sure? How?”

“I got a recognition signal back from the Shillelagh. I sent a microburst and got one back with all the proper significators to verify the source.”

“A recognition signal only means the ship wasn’t destroyed.”

“If the dreadnought is still in space, Donal must be, too. And Cletus! That must be them coming for us!”

Bella crowded close and called past her mother, “Are you sure, Sean? Please, don’t lie to give us hope. Please don’t.”

“It’s true. I have a burst transmitter embedded in my hand. It sends the incoming signal directly to my brain where it’s decoded.”

“In his micro-sized brain, decoded? We’re doomed,” Kori said, but in spite of herself, she felt they had a chance now. To Scarlotti, she called, “Can they home in on your signal?”

“I’m sending out a pulse every minute or two. That’s all the power my body generates.”

“Burn out your damned brain for all I care. Get in touch with Donal and be sure he knows we’re here.”

“The alert means something unusual is happening. It’s got to be Donal coming for you.” Scarlotti’s voice cracked with strain.

“Mama, how? Papa can’t land the Shillelagh. It’s too big. It’s not designed for maneuvering in the atmosphere.”

“A dartabout can land,” shouted Scarlotti over the increasing din. “The Shillelagh has several on board, I think.”

Kori tried to remember but couldn’t. For all the times she had been aboard what was the de facto Burran flagship, she had paid scant attention to such things. The time it afforded to be with Donal always had been her goal, not all the toys stuffed into a warship when there wasn’t an enemy worthy of mention from Ballymore to engage the dreadnought. The chances were good, though, that there were adequate shuttle craft aboard since Donal wouldn’t permit a Far Kingdom ship to take him from the Shillelagh to the planet. He would insist on his own craft throughout the trade mission. A carrier, a dartabout or even something larger. That had to be coming for them and causing the tumult outside.

She pressed her face to the grate and tried to see if any of the guards patrolled the cellblock. A flash of green uniform caught her eye as a soldier moved at the far end of the corridor, then all that remained was the incessant shriek of the warning siren. She stepped back and stared hard at the door, as if force of will would cause it to spring open. The first thing she had done when they were locked in had been to examine the door, the walls and floor and ceiling, every detail in the five-meter square cell. If they were to escape someone outside had to open the door. Even with a lasepistol, she saw no way to burn through the carefully protected lock.

The entire building shuddered, causing Bella to stumble into her arms. She tried to hold up her daughter, but a secondary explosion knocked her off her feet. Sitting on the floor, awkwardly holding Bella made her uneasy. She helped the girl stand, then she got to her feet.

“Kori, Bella! Are you all right?”

“We’re here, Sean.” Bella started to cry. “We’re going to die in here.”

“I’m coming for you. Hold on a few more minutes.”

Kori snorted in disgust. Scarlotti had no better chance of getting free than they did, though his admission of having a microburst transceiver surgically embedded in his hand surprised her. She hadn’t thought he was one for such extreme body modification. The medical reports of serious cancers and inflammation deterred most people from the insertion of any such electronic device. She shuddered. What the connections did to the recipient’s brain was even more terrible. That might be why she disliked Scarlotti. He wasn’t quite right because of the neural insertions scrambling his good sense.

Right now, she wished she had a laser-replaced finger or two.

“Stand back. I’m blowing open the door.”

Kori started to speak, then wrapped her arms around tighter her daughter and turned from the door as it exploded inward. Scarlotti stood in the corridor with a smoking laserifle in his hands. His face was streaked with dirt and a wild, crazy look had replaced his usual collected demeanor. For a moment they all stood there frozen, then Bella rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him in spite of the dirt.

As the CIO and Bella hugged and sobbed, Kori plucked the laserifle from his hands. She almost dropped it because of how it burned her hands. Scarlotti had almost exhausted the energy pack to blast down the door. She drew the plastic stock to her shoulder when a green uniform briefly appeared at the far end of the corridor, but the soldier ran away without a glance in their direction. She lowered the weapon and saw how the wall of Scarlotti’s cell had been broken, crushed by an explosion on the roof. A few meters farther and the warhead would have killed the man in his cell. Kori considered finishing the unlikely assault, then knew he would be useful when they found a resistance unit fighting Weir and his allies. Scarlotti was a known quantity. Citizens had seen him and knew he represented Donal, not Weir. That would be useful, and having him as a figurehead allowed her to work behind the scene more effectively.

“Donal,” she said. She nudged Scarlotti with the laserifle muzzle and said, “Can you get a microburst to Donal now?”

“All I get is the ship’s recognition signal, but I’m sending a constant update on what we’re doing. We have to get out of here. The building is under attack and is collapsing around us.”

He pointed at the fallen wall. Through the roof the once gray sky lit up with one exploding bomb and searing laser beam after another. The ground shook, and the air filled with increasingly acrid black smoke. A battle raged that dwarfed anything Kori had ever seen in the tedious war games Donal had insisted she witness. Strategy and tactics of moving representational armed units about on a holoboard over terrain no one in their right mind wanted had bored her. She wished now she had paid more attention so she could direct whoever fought to free her and Bella.

She hardly dared to hope it was Donal coming for her, but who else could be using such potent weapons? If any group opposing Donal while he was Programmer General had controlled such firepower, it would have been used long ago.

“Those laser blasts are from orbit,” Bella said. “See how they slant in at a slight angle and don’t move? No aerial unit can duplicate that.”

“I heard the Air Force had launched several zeppelins with laser platforms,” Scarlotti said. He moved closer to the girl and put his arm around her waist.

To Kori’s disgust, she put her arms around him to hold him closer. When a new portion of the roof caved in, showering them with fiery shards, Bella took the brunt of the slashing debris. All Scarlotti did was hold his right hand up and turn it slightly. He saw her disdain.

“I want to be sure my microburst signal’s getting through. That’s the only way they have of locating us.” Seeing how unmoved she was, he added, “That’s the only way the Programmer General can get to us. Donal has to know we’re still alive.”

“Keep sending,” Kori said. “Be sure Donal gets the message, not Weir and his army.”

She was knocked off her feet as another part of the prison compound blew up. This time, from her sitting position, she saw clearly that a path had been carved through the razor-wire and maze of fences. From the sporadic explosions that dug tiny craters, the wrong turns in that wired maze had been mined and now detonated. Any escaping prisoner without a map to navigate would get blown up. The way cleared, blast after blast, for them by the seismic shocks from heavier detonations.

“The electricity is down. No charged fences,” Scarlotti said. “Let’s get out of here. The building’s not going to remain standing but a few more seconds.”

As if someone had heard, an arm-thick laser beam stabbed down from above and set what remained of the roof on fire. The three of them scrambled over piles of broken wall and into the stockade’s exercise yard. The heavy dust and poisonously thick smoke from the fires and detonating shells made visibility difficult so Kori doubted her eyes at first. She stopped and wiped away the tears to get a better look.

“What the hell is that?”

Scarlotti and Bella were five meters ahead of her, but they stopped to look. Bella backed away from the tower of gleaming metal, then it vanished as a fence of laser beams drove down into the ground between them, vaporizing dirt and turning bedrock to molten slag.

“That’s a warriorobot,” Scarlotti said. “I’ve seen reports of them. How’d one get here, unless--”

“Unless what?” Kori closed the distance between them. She kept a sharp eye out for another glimpse of the man-shaped, four-story high armored fighting machine.

“Unless Donal brought it back from Far Kingdom. I knew only what he wanted me to pass along in news dispatches. Nothing was said about buying Far Kingdom military hardware, but I’ve seen pictures. That’s definitely a warriorobot, and I know Weir hasn’t sneaked anything like that onto the planet.”

“The robot’s destroying Weir’s base, if you missed that. It’s what lasered our way out of the cell before the orbiting cannon started firing at it.”

“That’s even more proof the warbot is here to save us. The Low Force and even the High Force are trying to destroy it.” Bella clung more tightly to Scarlotti’s arm and rested her cheek against his biceps.

“Warbot?” Scarlotti looked confused.

“Another of those damnable bureaucratic contractions.”

“Mama, it’s what the military call them. I don’t think I ever heard Papa or anyone responsible for using the Blarney Stone and prioritizing resource deployment say that. It was certainly never in the predictive sessions Papa had me attend.”

Kori stared at her daughter. How much she had absorbed from her father! She would make a fine replacement as Programmer General. But with Donal coming for them, that day was mercifully far off. All they had to do was stay alive until the warbot Donal had sent saved them.

“If we head straight for it, we’ll risk getting blasted by the orbital platform’s weapons,” Scarlotti said. “Let’s run parallel to the line of beams and find a way through.”

“We can’t go forward, anyway. The ground has turned into the heart of an erupting volcano.” Kori felt the heat of the molten rock blistering her face, and they were still fifty meters away from the deadly picket fence of scintillant coherent light.

Clutching the laserifle at port arms, she doggedly began running. Every bone in her body protested. There wasn’t a muscle that refused to stop hurting. Each step jarred her entire frame and tore at her ligaments until she felt like a living, breathing body prepared for vivisection. As exhausted as she was, she remained alert enough to see a soldier hunkered down in a foxhole, staring up at the display of orbital firepower. Slowing, she drew the laserifle to her shoulder and fired.

The shot missed. The soldier jumped because molten rock spattered on him. He looked up at the continuous laser barrage before realizing the attack came from a different quarter. Flinging himself wildly from the hole, he wiggled like a snake away as Kori got off a second shot.

She cursed at how bad her aim had been. Gasping as she did from the desperate running ruined careful aiming. The laserifle had automatic tracking. All she needed was to sight in once, activate the tracking and swing the laserifle around. Whenever the muzzle crossed the target, it would fire, only she had no idea how to use this feature, but she did understand the trigger and the need for a charging cycle.

“Get him, Kori. If he escapes, he’ll bring an entire squad down on us.” Sean Scarlotti looked frightened, but now he interposed himself between the threat and Bella. Kori took this to be an improvement, but hardly enough. There had been discarded weapons along their path. Scarlotti had ignored them all in favor of running for his life rather than figuring a way to defend it--to defend himself and Bella.

“We can get him in a crossfire, Mama.”

Kori felt a glow of pride. Her daughter recovered a nearby fallen rifle and held it as if she knew how to use it. Cletus might have shown her. Bella and Cletus had always been the closest of the siblings. Poor Ebony had been sandwiched between, neither oldest nor youngest and always struggling to find her place in the family. Kori knew she should have spent more time with her, but Bella had to receive all the training possible to accept her rightful position when Donal stepped down.

“Keep going straight ahead,” she cautioned her daughter. “Get too close to the laser fence and it won’t matter what you do.”

Bella nodded. Kori dashed off at an angle and triggered a shot intended to keep the soldier scrambling rather than spinning around, getting into a proper prone position and firing on them. From all Cletus had said, the garrison at Cork was well trained and often rotated to posts along the Burran-Eire border. Many had been in firefights and had gotten over the utter fright of realizing someone wanted them dead due to deadly, if brief, skirmishes.

Her shot drew the soldier’s attention again. She skidded to a halt, raised her laserifle and took aim the best she could. As she triggered a beam, new explosions shook the ground and ruined her sight picture. The world moved in slow motion then. A grin spread on the soldier’s lips, what she could see from under his face shield. He rose and pointed his weapon in her direction. Small indicators blazed on his rifle; he had activated the auto aiming. She looked at her own weapon. Too many of the indicators were still red. It charged with madding slowness—slowness that would spell her death. The towering figure of the warbot appeared as the laser curtain disappeared, but it was too far away to save her. Whoever piloted it--Donal? It had to be!--turned away because the entire front of the robot’s armor burned with hellish fury. Napalm had been sprayed on it and ignited.

To her surprise, the warbot didn’t slow but kept fighting. From the distant thunder, tanks had been dispatched to stop the mechanism. She looked down at her laserifle. It still recharged. Everything around her moved with curiously slow speed while her mind raced at lightspeed. Faster. She looked up to see the soldier steady his laserifle and a purple nimbus form about the muzzle, the deadly beam ready to leap forth.

She tried to force herself to fall, to dodge, to take cover. A stasis gripped her with steel authority. Then the world filled with an explosion that broke her time-slowed world and flung her backward.

The soldier had blown apart.

She got to her feet, trying to understand. Then a sob reached her through the cacophony of battle and she knew. Bella’s aim had been exact. Her laser had struck the soldier’s power pack and detonated it in his face. Now there was nothing left of his head or shoulders. He had vaporized down to mid chest.

“There are two of them!”

She raised her rifle. It had charged sufficiently for a killing shot. She looked around for the second soldier Scarlotti warned about, then realized that wasn’t what he meant. A second warbot thundered through the compound, rockets firing from shoulders and now and then a larger one from a hip launcher.

“Two warbots,” she said. “Donal and Cletus are coming for us. They both came! Send a distress signal, Scarlotti. Let them know we’re here and safe and ready for pickup!”

Scarlotti held up his right hand and turned it slowly above his head. Then he screamed and fell back. A laser beam had burned off his hand down to his elbow. He stared at it, cursing and shrieking.

“It’s not bleeding,” Kori said. “It’s cauterized. We have to get to Donal and Cletus.”

As she spoke the robot that had been afire with napalm toppled face forward. A tank shell had struck it in the center of its back.

“No, don’t let that be Donal. Not my Donal.” Then she realized that, if it weren’t her husband, it had to be her son.

“There’s no time, Mama. We can’t reach the warbots.”

“Did you get a signal through?” She looked past her daughter to where Scarlotti clutched his stump.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“You can get a hand regrown. First, we have to get away from this base to where my husband can rescue us.”

The blaze of laser fire from orbit once more turned the ground to lava. Through the choking fumes and blinding light she saw the fallen warbot stand, wobble a little, then take a steady step forward toward them. Once more, the armored giant had survived. Hope built again that her husband would find and rescue her. The only trouble was that immediate escape meant into the forest surrounding the base. Every building within sight was ablaze. Clouds of thick, oily smoke made each breath difficult.

“We’ll have to trust that Scarlotti got a microburst to them.” She pointed to a stretch of land unscathed by the fierce war raging. The way into the heavily forested area was theirs, if they could run fast enough.

“Swarm!”

She looked up when Scarlotti cried out. Coming through the haze were thousands of the nanodrones. Any one might return a damning signal revealing their whereabouts, but the camera aboard any individual swarm drone was too small for a definitive picture. Linked into a cloud, though, all those thousands of tiny cameras turned into an insect’s compound eye of astounding acuity. The cloud swept toward them, away from the warbots.

“They’ll identify us in a few seconds. We have to get to the trees. The swarm isn’t as effective there.” Kori had no idea if that was true, but it gave renewed determination to both Bella and Scarlotti.

“Maybe Papa or Cletus released them to find us,” Bella said, panting from the strain of running and herding Scarlotti ahead of her.

The man kept slowing to stare at his stump. From the way he had turned pasty white, shock finally set in. Kori wondered if his neuron connections to the microburst transmitter hadn’t overloaded and burned out. He might be brain damaged and showing only the first indication of it.

“Those are our drones. Weir’s, I mean,” Bella cried. “I’ve seen the specs on them when Papa authorized them.”

Kori opened the aperture on her laser and sprayed a continuous beam into the middle of the swarm. Even if she didn’t destroy enough to ruin the clarity of the relayed pictures, she might confuse the swarm controller into believing the warbots attacked and return the drones to the main battlefield.

Her laserifle drained sooner than she expected. She started to toss it away, then knew it would recharge eventually. In the woods, running with the laserifle, she presented a better target, but defending herself counted for more.

“Keep going, keep going,” she shouted. “We’ve got to separate.”

“I won’t leave you, Mama.”

“We have to get them to divide their forces while they’re still fighting Donal and your brother.” The roar of rockets launched from the two warbots came less frequently now. The hiss of lasers without additional explosions told they were running out of munitions.

“Sean and I want to be sure you get away.”

“I’ll meet you in Eastminster. Noon tomorrow in Kerry Square.”

“How?” Bella started back for her, but Scarlotti stopped her. When the girl saw his condition she turned from her mother to aid him in staying on his feet.

“Your father and brother and I will be there. They’ll drive those fighting robots and I’ll be with them. I promise, dear. Now go.”

“I don’t have a weapon,” Scarlotti said, looking around frantically. His eyes were crazy, and he fought to yank himself free from Bella. He ran back toward her. “I should go with you and--”

“Too late,” Kori said, furious that Scarlotti had delayed them so long. She frantically motioned Bella into the trees to take cover. “Soldiers are already on our trail. The swarm controller saw us. There. Behind that fallen log. Get down. Hide. When the last soldier passes, I’ll distract him. You’ll have to jump him, take him by surprise.”

“But I don’t have a gun or knife!” Scarlotti held out his right arm, as if noticing for the first time that his hand was missing. His mouth hung open and drool ran down his chin.

“Use a rock to hit him. I’m counting on you, Sean. I’ll draw his attention, you attack. Do you understand? Do it for me. Do it for Bella!” Kori didn’t give him any time to think. She shoved him in the direction of the downed tree, then found a spot on the opposite side of the trail she had followed this far into the woods.

She saw Scarlotti sink out of sight. Bella was nowhere to be seen. Her laserifle still charged. How long before it functioned again was beyond her knowing. For all Kori knew, it might never power up. She rested the laserifle on the ground and hunted through the leaves until she found a pebble. It had been quite a while since she had occasion to throw anything. The last time had been when Cletus was nine or ten and had insisted on playing catch. His sisters refused, and Donal was working on a knotty allocation problem for the western provinces. She had agreed. Her arm had been sore for days, but she had learned how to pitch and Cletus had been pleased to have someone to play ball with.

Eight in the squad jogged along the path, alert for any movement. She lay absolutely still. The creatures in the forest had disappeared when the fighting started. Only the distant rumble of battle and the harsh gusts of wind in the treetops disturbed the sylvan silence. Seven soldiers passed Scarlotti’s hiding place. Before the eight drew even, Kori gauged her distance and threw the stone.

It smacked into a tree trunk right above Scarlotti’s hiding place.

Scarlotti surged up, a heavy limb swinging as a weapon. He died before he climbed over the fallen log where he hid. The squad rushed back. Three looked in Kori’s direction, but she had frozen and willed herself to blend into the forest. After examining Scarlotti and finding his missing right hand, an argument ensued with much waving of arms. The words were muffled by their face shields, so much of the dispute had to be over their comlinks. The squad leader made a chopping motion with her hand to silence the debate. A few taps on her helmet allowed her to receive instructions from the platoon commander. Silently, two soldiers hefted Scarlotti’s lifeless body and began dragging him back toward the base. The remaining six returned to the trail.

Kori had given Bella more of a head start. Her daughter was clever and would make it to Eastminster on her own now that the squad had not only been delayed in its pursuit but also reduced by two.

Her laserifle showing an almost complete charge, she slipped deeper into the woods, then crept parallel to the path taken by the two soldiers with Scarlotti’s corpse. Two quick shots would reduce the enemy by another two and possibly cause the recall of the other six going after Bella. She got to the edge of the woods and had a clear shot at the two lugging the body between them. If she missed and hit Scarlotti, it no longer mattered. He had served his purpose.

Resting the laserifle in the crook of a tree, she squeezed off an accurate shot. The soldier on Scarlotti’s left stumbled and fell forward, shot in the middle of his back. His comrade thought it was only clumsiness and turned. Kori shot him through the temple. She started to return to the forest with the intent of sniping at the six still after Bella, then recognized how she needed replacement power packs. She knew where two were.

Dashing out, she got to where she had shot the two. She yanked free first one and then the other battery pack. With the toe of her shoe she nudged Scarlotti in the ribs. There wasn’t any question he was dead. She only did it to prove she had enough self control not to kick him. Before she had a chance to get back on the trail, a new roar sounded. Looking up, she saw both warbots not fifty meters away.

“Here! Over here, Donal! Cletus!”

She waved to no avail. She considered firing her laserifle to draw attention but those behemoths had withstood far more than a weak laser beam from a handheld weapon.

She dropped her rifle and tore off the battle helmet from the first soldier she had killed. The other’s helmet had a hole drilled through the temple and the com gear inside. The green lights showed the comlink still worked. Pulling on the helmet, she shouted until she was hoarse for Donal to come for her.

And it worked. The nearest warbot fell to its knees, then rose and stumbled toward her.

“Yes, yes, my dear, I’m near the wood directly in front of you. Hurry. Come rescue me! Get me out of here!”

The warbot came closer, then the second joined it. Both her husband and son were coming for her!

She waved her arms, sure now they had spotted her. She stood directly in their path. They couldn’t miss seeing her. Then she stopped waving and stared.

The jump jets on one fired, lifting the bulky robot into the air. Seconds later the second magnetically attached to the first one. Together they ripped through the sky and in seconds vanished from sight in the smoke-filled sky. Then even the after image of their jets faded from Kori’s sight.

“You saw me and you left. You deserted me. You left me to die.”

The emptiness inside her knew no limit. Abandoned. They had left her behind after homing in on her. She picked up her laserifle and walked slowly to the woods. A last hard, hateful look into the sky where the warbots had disappeared and she went hunting to take out her wrath on the six who still tracked Bella.

Killing them helped relieve her emotional storm, but not much. Not enough. She had been left to die by her husband and son. Abandoned!