Payback Is a Given: Pirates of the Badlands Series Book 2 Read online

  “No alarm, sir,” mumbled a downcast Lieutenant Horowitz.

  “Don’t look so down-in-the-mouth, son. There is enough blame to go around for all of us.” He turned back to the window and stared at Predator. “Very impressive indeed. Bastards.”

  Lord Cunningham started toward the hatch, “You say it was a demonstration to pitch a proposal. Well, they got our attention so let’s go hear what they have to say.”

  Lord Cunningham passed through the hatch and headed for the flag briefing room. Sky followed but paused at the hatch and turned back to her commander.

  “Coming, Admiral?” Sky asked, as he had not left the window and continued to view Predator.

  “Give me a couple of moments, Sky. Something has me really stumped,” he said in a quiet voice, “For the life of me, I can’t figure out how two damn pirate ships can stroll right up to this Fleet and while one distracts every bridge and CIC watch on every damn ship with nothing but insulting conversation, the other ship just moseys on in and snuggles up to the flagship.” Barrett smiled a very cold smile. “I am completely baffled as to how that could happen so I thought I would have a quick conference call with every one of my ship captains and squadron commanders and see if they have any insights that would explain it. I’m thinking probably not, but you never know. ”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Sky let the hatch slide shut and departed, very pleased she would not be on the other end of that upcoming conversation. Admiral Barrett was embarrassed and that did not bode well for any officer in a command position within his Fleet. Sky would have bet no ship could do what Predator just did. She was glad she was going to be in the briefing room when Rafe Hawkins pitched his proposal. It must be a very interesting idea to go through this much trouble to make an impression. His asking price will be exorbitant but it will be fun to listen. Sky smiled.

  Chapter 2

  Captain Mallory and two armed Royal Marine guards waited quietly as the hangar bay pressurized after the landing of the shuttle from Predator. The small craft sat subdued in the center of the bay under bright lights after a perfect approach and landing. A klaxon sounded the all clear and the hatch opened to the bay. Captain Mallory and the two Marines stepped forward as the hatch to the shuttle opened. Captain Raferty Hawkins emerged followed by his intel officer, Baby Doll, and his operations officer, Tactical. All three were dressed as formally as pirates get with brightly colored, flowing garments, and an identical dagger strapped within easy reach. Both women wore earrings in the shape of a running cheetah in their ears.

  “Captain Hawkins, Baby Doll, Tactical, welcome aboard Sirocco.” Sky greeted with a smile.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Rafe shook her proffered hand, “You’re looking well.”

  “None the worse for wear,” Sky shrugged, “Good medical attention and a bit of luck and I’m almost as good as new.” They smiled at each other while Baby Doll watched them and Tactical ignored them while scanning the surroundings. There was relief in both Sky and Rafe at the sight of the other in good health and spirits. Both were surprised by the feeling, but not embarrassed nor annoyed. A few seconds passed.

  “We are going somewhere, right?” Tactical remarked in her trademark-flat, bored voice.

  Sky snapped out of it. “This way.” She led the way out of the hangar and toward the elevators. “We’re going to the flag briefing room. The audience for your brief will be the Admiral and Lord Cunningham. There will be a couple of other people there as the Admiral wants you to explain the little parlor trick that got you here.”

  “Not very happy,” mused Rafe, “I get that. But I wanted to show it could be done. The demo was the quickest way to do that and to get everyone’s attention.”

  “You’ve definitely done that. Maybe too much so. Admiral Barrett is really unhappy.”

  “I get that too, but he’s not the target audience. The Defense Lord will decide on my proposal.”

  They entered the elevator and proceeded up several decks.

  “Can we pretend these Marines are an honor guard instead of an armed escort? I like that idea better.” Rafe stated to nobody in particular.

  “Sure. We can say that,” replied Sky.

  “Good. I feel very important now.” He looked over his shoulder at a Royal Marine standing stiffly behind him.

  The Marine stared straight ahead with no acknowledgement of Hawkins at all. Rafe turned to Sky. “Wrapped pretty tight.”

  “Marines are quiet but deadly.”

  “I believe it.” Rafe turned back to the same Marine and addressed him. “I can always use good pirates. If you ever want a career change, look me up.” Still the Marine stared ahead mutely. Rafe turned back to Sky. “I think he wants to join up, but doesn’t want to accept my offer while in your presence.”

  “I’m sure that’s it.” Sky solemnly agreed.

  Sky smiled to herself. Yes, Hawkins was in good spirits. She had been considering asking about the raids in the Badlands, but decided to let it go to another time or, maybe, never. Hawkins had a hard sale ahead of him and she knew he needed to focus on that.

  The elevator doors opened and Sky stepped across the passageway to a sliding hatch. A small table sat next to the hatch. It had obviously just been put there since it was quite out of place in the stark passageway.

  “There are no weapons allowed in the briefing room, so if you please,” Sky gestured at the table.

  Hawkins pulled his dagger from the top of his left boot, and set it on the table. The blade glistened with the word PREDATOR engraved on it. Two more identical weapons were laid alongside the first. Hawkins fixedly did not move but stood staring at the hatch with his two crewmembers behind him. After a long pause, Tactical reached behind her back and from under her flowing shirt remove a shooter that had been in her waistband. Still Hawkins did not move. Another moment in silence, then another. Finally, Baby Doll reached down the front of her shirt between her breasts, removed a small gun, and placed it on the table.

  “I’m not even going to ask how he knew about that,” thought Sky as Hawkins nodded to her. The two escort Marines took up posts on either side of the hatch as it opened.

  Passing through the hatch, Rafe immediately passed a single Marine standing at attention while on guard just inside the opening. The Marine gave no indication of noticing them as the party continued into the space. After a few paces, Rafe stopped as his inner sense told him something was not quite as it should be. Rafe turned and realized his party was one member short. Baby Doll had stopped in front of the lone rigid Marine and was on her tiptoes gazing up into his face.

  “My, you’re a cute one, aren’t you?” she purred in a seductive voice. The Marine gazed down at her. He was obviously not put off by her current hair color of shocking pink, rouged red cheeks, heavy black eye shadow, and black lip paint.

  Hawkins sighed. “Baby Doll, if they treated us that way, I would be very unhappy. Please extend to them the same courtesy.”

  Baby Doll glanced at Hawkins and then looked back at the handsome Marine. “Yum, yum,” she leered in a throaty whisper then turned and stepped toward Hawkins. Looking over Baby Doll’s head, Hawkins watched the Marine following her departing elfin form with appreciative eyes.

  Hawkins smiled, “She would eat you alive, Corporal.”

  “But I’d die a happy man, sir.” The words were out of the Marine’s mouth before he had time to think, and he immediately reddened in embarrassment as Hawkins laughed aloud and Baby Doll turned and smiled at him.

  “You can guard the hatch from the other side, Corporal,” spoke Sky with a touch of irony in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The Corporal beat a hasty retreat out the hatch, and hit the control button on the other side of the bulkhead repeatedly to make sure the automatic door really did close as quickly as possible.

  Hawkins shook his head in a resigned fashion and led the way into a large, well-furnished room. Plush carpet cushioned their steps, and hidden lighting cast a fine glow over the area. The orn
ate walls were decorated with images of ships, bases, and exotic locations. A portrait of Queen Alexis was on the far bulkhead. Just below this portrait was a long table with five chairs, four currently occupied. Lord Cunningham was in the middle with Admiral Barrett on his left. On his right were two Navy captains, looking very unhappy. Captain Mallory went to the open chair and sat to the Admiral’s left on the end. In front of the table at a distance of two meters, three more chairs faced the table. Hawkins took the middle chair while the two women ignored their chairs and took standing positions behind Hawkins. Without taking his eyes off the table inhabitants, Rafe pointed backward over his right shoulder with his right hand at Tactical, “This is my ops officer, Tactical.” He then raised his left hand over his left shoulder and stated, “This is my intel officer, Baby Doll.”

  “I’m Admiral Barrett. How did you get through the defenses undetected?” Admiral Barrett spoke calmly but there was no doubt he was not in the mood to be gracious to guests or drag out this conversation. This suited Rafe as he wanted to get the preliminaries out of the way and get to the point of his visit.

  “We’ve anticipated this and prepared a brief,” Rafe replied in the same to-the-point manner. He again pointed over his shoulder to Baby Doll without taking his eyes off the table.

  Baby Doll opened a pouch on her belt, removed a chip, and stepped forward to place it in a 3-D projector on the long table between the two groups. She then used her thumb to activate it and stepped back to her original position. The chip projected a 3-D image above the table of the small Wanderlust planet with surface built-up areas marked in red, its two moons informally known as Big and Little Drifter, the orbiting docks, and the orbiting fleet. Her recorded voice began, “Wanderlust, its moons, and its facilities are portrayed accurately, and the fleet positions are representative. The coverage fields of the base detection systems are now added.”

  Several large orbs appeared and encompassed the entire display. Various colors represented the several sensor systems on the planet’s surface and the systems on the two moons. The myriad of colors showcased the systems’ redundancy of capabilities and overlapping fields of detection. The display made the Wanderlust facility look impossible to penetrate.

  “Planets generate their own unique electromagnetic emissions. Also, the many sensor systems around this military base generate their own distinctive pulses. When these pulses hit the two moons, they reflect back toward their source and off in other directions. In short, there are many different emissions, natural and manmade, bouncing around a heavily protected planet. We now speed up the display to a certain point.” The display sped up and the two moons danced around Wanderlust in elliptical orbits with continuously changing planes. The detection systems’ fields of coverage also changed with the rotation and their depictive colors dance and whirled on the display. The image stopped with all three bodies on the same plane, the larger moon on the outside, and the smaller moon between the larger moon and the planet. The orbiting docks and fleet were on the opposite side of the planet from the moons. The resulting fields of coverage were also reflected. Baby Doll’s recording continued. “This current alignment is rare but predictable. At this time, one can see the space beyond Big Drifter has no sensor system redundancy, as the larger moon’s body blocks overlapping support from other planetary sensor systems and the fleet is on the opposite side of the planet. In short, this space is covered only by the single sensor and white phone system on Big Drifter for a considerable distance out into space. This situation will last for 3.4 hours before the rotation will again allow for overlapping coverage.”

  A small red light now appeared on the outer edge of the display beyond Big Drifter and another voice took over the briefing. Sky knew it to be Tactical. She had not spoken at this meeting but Sky thought the naval officers at the table would figure it out. “A ship in subspace could penetrate the planet’s detection defense at this time. By travelling at an angle to Wanderlust but always closing on Big Drifter and the planet, a ship could keep Big Drifter’s body between it and the other two bodies so the ship has to defeat only the one defense system on Big Drifter facing outward at this time. This can be done with stealth and matching the harmonics of moving through subspace with the noise generated by Big Drifter itself, her only sensor system facing outward, and the radio emissions from Wanderlust’s magnetic fields.”

  As the narration continued, the red light closed on Big Drifter at an angle and then passed under it. “The mass of Little Drifter is not large enough to mask Wanderlust planet systems from being able to see all the way to Big Drifter. At this time, there are two systems on the planet, and one on Little Drifter, which can cover this particular gap between Big and Little Drifter. A ship must pass under Big Drifter and immediately rise up to put Big Drifter directly behind it and thus hide in the sensor noise turbulence caused by the sensor emissions reflecting off of Big Drifter. Hiding in this wave chaos, and then matching its harmonics, will defeat these three defense systems. The ship continues at an angle keeping Little Drifter between itself and the planet while continuing to close the range to Little Drifter. Eventually the mass of Little Drifter will mask the ship from the planet. The ship reaches and stops in front of Little Drifter, hidden from Wanderlust, and now adjusts its harmonics for Little Drifter’s signature, and the signals of the sensors from the defense systems on Little Drifter, and the planet itself. The ship has two courses of action available to continue to close on the fleet. It can simply maintain its position in front of the moon on the opposite side from the planet and allow Little Drifter’s orbit to close on the fleet, or it can pass over Little Drifter and continue inbound to the planet. Our ship remained in front of Little Drifter, shielded from the planet’s defenses, as Little Drifter continued in orbit toward the fleet and orbiting docks. Once the moon comes to its closest point of closure with the fleet, the ship passes under Little Drifter and then rises to put the moon behind it as it closes on the fleet. The ship must approach above or below the fleet’s plane of orbit to reduce the chance of collision between our subspace ship and an orbiting ship in real space. Here the fleet’s detection systems become a concern at this close range, so a diversion was set up using Nemesis to distract all crews during the last critical minutes of closure on the fleet. Total ship transit time: 11.3 hours. This concludes the brief.”

  Baby Doll took over the speaking role as the chip shut down. “There is data and numbers on planet rotations, radio emissions, harmonics, way point adjustments, and other aspects of the approach not covered in this brief, but are available on the chip.”

  Lord Cunningham picked up the chip, “May we have this?”

  “Of course,” Rafe responded.

  Cunningham turned to the two captains sitting mutely to his right. “One of you is from Base and one from the Fleet. Now I could go through all the gyrations of issuing orders from the top and having it flow down both of your chains of command until the orders reached you, but we are going to forego all that. Let me be direct. Fix this!” He handed the chip to the nearest captain.

  “I’m leaving in three days. I want a brief in two days. Everyone got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” spoke both captains in unison.

  Cunningham turned back to the pirates, “I have no doubt you know when this same planetary alignment will next occur here at our base, and we will be vulnerable once again.”

  “Yes, 49.2 edays,” Baby Doll responded.

  “At least we got that going for us. I assume we can fix our defenses in that amount of time.” He turned to the two captains, “Thank you for attending this briefing.”

  Both men nodded as they rose and departed. As the hatch hissed closed behind them, Admiral Barrett spoke, “Impressive feat. We’ve had this base for over one hundred years and have continually improved its defenses but nobody saw this coming.”

  Rafe shrugged, “In fairness to you, your Empire has great technology, a couple of thousand outstanding ships, and tens of thousands of brave people so
you never have to do underhanded actions. You don’t do ‘sneaky’ very well because you don’t think in those terms. You should teach ‘sneaky’ at The Academy. We, on the other hand, have limited resources so we excel at ‘sneaky.’”

  Admiral Barrett continued, “I can’t believe you just happened to notice the detection weak spots while you were just passing by. How long have you known about it, and how long did it take you to put this mission together?”

  “We’ve known about the planet alignment weakness for some time but had no reason to utilize it until now. Upon learning of Lord Cunningham’s upcoming visit to Wanderlust two weeks ago, we saw this as an opportunity to pitch a proposal, and it was then that we went into detailed planning while on the way here. These two did all the work over nine days while we were transiting here.”

  Lord Cunningham joined in, “Speaking of which, how did you know of my visit? My travels are supposedly classified.”

  “And so they are, my Lord,” responded Hawkins, “But you have your own ship and its maintenance schedules are not classified. Scheduled intensive preventative maintenance on the home world told us you were about to make a trip. Your maintenance people routinely sent out your ship’s maintenance requirements to various planets on your proposed points of travel. It’s not hard to put it all together.”

  “And how long have you known about my particular visit here?”

  “Awhile,” Hawkins shrugged again. “Sneaky.”

  “Yes, very,” Cunningham muttered but there was a hint of admiration in the comment. “But I understand you didn’t come here just to make life difficult for Home Fleet. Judging from your demo, you plan on taking your ship and executing the same tactic against an OrCon base.”

  “Not quite, my Lord. I plan on using four ships against an OrCon base.”

  Lord Cunningham raised his eyebrows slightly. “When, where, and how much.”