“What?” Fre’geel towered over him, green eyes flaring.
“Well—if there are still commandos aboard, they’re not going to want to surrender.”
Fre’geel hissed, looking at the front monitor for a moment. The pirate’s main power appeared to be down. Its sole remaining gunner had ceased firing. But there was no telling what other weapons they had left. Fre’geel turned back. “How many commandos would you expect on a ship that size?”
Legroeder frowned. “Hard to say. They’re usually organized in squads of twelve. Two squads, maybe three.”
Fre’geel spoke into the ship-to-ship com. “How many crew do you have aboard? And how many commandos?”
There was a short pause, before the rigger on the other ship said, “We started with thirty-four ship’s crew, and twenty-four commandos. I don’t know… how many are still alive. But all of the commandos went out. I think you… killed them…”
Fre’geel shot Legroeder a questioning look.
“That’s plausible,” Legroeder said. “Did you get a recording of the attempted boarding? If you knew how many were—” His voice caught, as he thought of the commandos blown off into the Flux. What was it like to die, adrift in the Flux, slowly suffocating if the neutraser didn’t kill you? It was said that a prolonged naked-eye view of the Flux drove men mad.
“Cantha is checking now,” Fre’geel said. “But if you look around, you will see that it was not merely an attempted boarding.”
Chagrined, Legroeder nodded as he looked around the bridge. Bile rose in his throat at the sight of the bodies, and the shambles. He gazed at Ker’sell’s destroyed rigger-station, and the small laser hole that had killed Voco—and he turned away with a shudder.
“Captain Ho’Sung is no longer with us,” Fre’geel said. “We have lost others, as well. I don’t know if you knew that.”
Legroeder shook his head.
Fre’geel gave an almost human nod, then spoke again into the com. “Hear this, raider ship Flechette. Any remaining commandos and all gunners will gather in your main airlock and prepare to exit, without weapons. If any fail to comply, or if any of your crew resist, your ship will be destroyed. Is that understood?”
“Understood,” said the voice from the enemy ship. “I do not think there are any of the boarding team left on our ship. But I am checking now.”
“Very well.” Fre’geel turned to Cantha, who was reviewing the monitor log. “Are you getting a count of boarders?”
“Almost. Yes—Captain, it appears that there were—I count twenty-four suited boarders leaving the raider ship. It is difficult to verify how many were destroyed by our weapons—possibly as many as twenty-two. And we know that two were killed aboard our ship.”
Fre’geel turned back to the com. “Flechette? Have you made your determination yet?”
It was another minute before an answer came.
“I am told there are no commandos left aboard. I have instructed all weapons operators to suit themselves and to prepare to exit the ship, unarmed—as soon as I can assure them of safe passage.”
“Safe passage?” Fre’geel hissed under his breath. “If they do not resist, they will not be harmed—provided that the rest of your crew cooperates, as well. Otherwise, we will burn them down. That is your safe passage.”
A momentary hesitation. “Agreed,” rasped the com.
Fre’geel raised a hand for attention on the bridge. He keyed the shipboard intercom. “H’zzarrelik crew, we are about to take possession of the enemy ship. Commando teams, prepare for boarding.”
Fre’geel turned to Legroeder, his vertical green eyes glinting in his reptilian face. “Rigger Legroeder, good job so far. Now, get back to the net. You and Palagren will bring both ships out to normal-space.”
Chapter 16
Out of the Ashes
For Freem’n Deutsch, the nightmare had come true. He surveyed the remains of the raider Flechette’s once-proud bridge. The captain and most of the bridge crew had died instantly when the massive neutron burst had flooded the nose of the ship, with the failure of the net and the forcefield protection. What had Te’Gunderlach been thinking, firing torpedoes at such close range? Stars knew how many men were dead now. And the ship? Most of her weapons were shot out; and her rigger-net was dead, burned out by flux-torpedo and neutraser fire.
It was their own damned arrogance that had killed them—Te’Gunderlach’s arrogance, assuming that the Narseil commander was going to roll over for them. Well, this time they had met their match. From the moment that torpedo explosion ripped through their net, nearly killing Flechette’s rigger crew, they were crippled; and it was just a question of which damaged ship would recover first. That question had been answered soon enough. The only reason Deutsch himself was alive was that he’d been off the bridge, assisting with an emergency adjustment of the flux-reactor.
Te’Gunderlach and his blood-lust: he was dead now, and there was some justice to that. How ironic that as lead rigger, Deutsch—forced servant of the Republic—was now in command. During the pitch of battle, the augments had kept him burning with an adrenaline fever; but that had faded in the aftermath, leaving him with a cold, weary uncertainty. He’d felt something terribly strange during the battle; for an instant it had felt like a priority command message through his augments. (An order to break off the fight? That seemed unlikely.) Whatever it was, it had been swept away in the heat and chaos of fighting. And then his external-control augments had gone silent, when the central control in the ship’s computer was destroyed.
Acting on his own judgment as ranking officer, he had made the determination to surrender. Ironically, it was what he had long ago abandoned hope for—a chance to give himself up and escape from the Kyber Republic. Now that he faced the prospect, he found it frightening.
“Ganton,” he said, floating on his levitators toward a young smoke-begrimed ensign awaiting orders. “Go to the muster deck and make sure all of the weapons crew are there. I want you to inspect them, and see to it that they’re suited and unarmed.”
“But Rigger Deutsch,” protested the ensign, “they won’t stand still for me inspecting them, will they?”
Deutsch gazed at him grimly. Ganton was a promising young spacer—reasonably intelligent and if anything, excessively loyal. He probably had no idea how despised the Kyber were in the rest of the galaxy; he probably thought the Narseil had attacked them for no reason. He would learn; but there were small lessons to be learned as well as large ones. “Ensign,” Deutsch said, “they will stand still for it, because I have given the order, and I am in command.” He almost added, Because our captain is dead. But there was no need; the captain’s body lay in plain sight. The ensign grimaced, saluted, and hurried away.
Three crewmen arrived on the bridge, and Deutsch waved them over as they looked around in horror. “You three—get this bridge cleaned up. Take the bodies to—” he had to stop and think “—the starboard airlock.” As he pointed to the bodies, caught in various expressions of agony, he suppressed a shudder of his own. The stench of death had nearly overcome him earlier, even with his autonomic nervous system augments.
As the crewmen trudged forward to obey, Deutsch closed his eyes and connected to his inner com. “Narseil ship,” he muttered low in his throat, “we are gathering crew as ordered. Do you have further instructions?”