He opened the door, glanced through it in a quick, automatic search, then stood aside to allow the Steadholder and her guest through it. He watched them heading for Johannsen's desk to sign off the range sheet, and shook his head mentally.
Father Church says You look after children and fools, he told the Comforter. I hope You're looking after both of them now.
Chapter Four
Captain Thomas Bachfisch, owner and master of the armed merchant ship Pirates' Bane, was a lean, spare man with a thin, lined face. He was more than a little stoop-shouldered, and despite his immaculately tailored blue civilian uniform, he did not cut an impressive figure. Nor, for that matter, did Pirates' Bane. At around five million tons, the freighter was of little more than average size for most regions of space, although she did tend towards the upper end of the tonnage range here in Silesia. But although she was obviously well maintained, she was notdespite her defiantly aggressive namemuch to look at. To an experienced eye, it was apparent that she was at least half a T-century old, and probably a product of the now-defunct Gopfert Yard in the New Berlin System. Gopfert had once been one of the busiest shipyards in the entire Andermani Empire, supplying not only the Empire's great merchant houses but also building warships and auxiliaries for the Imperial Navy. But that had been a long time ago, and nowadays Pirates' Bane's lines were clearly dated, a bit antique. Indeed, her brand spanking new paint made her look like an over-aged dowager after an unsuccessful make-over, and anything less like her warlike name would have been difficult to imagine. Which was just fine with Captain Bachfisch. There were times, especially for a merchant spacer here in the Silesian Confederacy, when being underestimated was the very best thing that could happen.
As his present occupation demonstrated.
He stood in his freighter's boat bay, hands clasped loosely behind him, and watched with grim satisfaction as the latest group of Silesians to underestimate his vessel shuffled toward the waiting shuttle from the Andermani cruiser Todfeind. They were more than merely subdued as they filed between the row of waiting Andermani Marines and the armed crewmen Bachfisch had detailed to deliver them to their new jailers.
"We'll send your handcuffs back across as soon as we get these...people properly brigged, Captain," the Andy oberleutnant der Sterne in charge of the Marine detail promised him.
"I appreciate that, Oberleutnant." Bachfisch's tenor voice was just a bit on the nasal side, and its clipped Manticoran enunciation contrasted sharply with the Andermani officer's harsher accent.
"Believe me, Sir, the pleasure is all ours." The oberleutnant finished his count as the last prisoner marched droopingly past him. "I make that thirty-seven, Kapitn," he announced, and Bachfisch nodded.
The oberleutnant punched an entry into his memo board, then shook his head and gave the blue-coated man beside him a much more admiring look than naval officers were wont to waste on mere merchant captains.
"I hope you'll pardon me for asking, Kapitn," he said with a marked air of diffidence, "but just how did you manage to capture them?" Bachfisch cocked his head at him, and the oberleutnant shook his own head quickly. "That may not have sounded exactly the way I meant it, Sir. It's just that, usually, pirates are more likely to capture merchant crews than the other way around. It's always a pleasant surprise when someone manages to turn the tables on them, instead. And I have to admit that when the Kapitn told me to come across and take them off your hands I did a little research. This isn't the first time you've handed us a batch of pirates."
Bachfisch regarded the youthful officer, the equivalent of an RMN lieutenant (junior grade), thoughtfully for a moment. He'd already transmitted his complete report to Todfeind's captain, and the cruiser's legal officer had taken sworn statements from all of his officers and most of his senior ratings. That was SOP here in the Confederacy, where witnesses to acts of piracy were frequently unable to attend the eventual trials of the pirates in question. But it was obvious from the oberleutnant's earnest expression that his seniors hadn't chosen to share that information with him...and that curiosity was eating him alive.
"I prefer handing any batch of pirates over to you rather than to the Sillies," Bachfisch said after a moment. "At least when I hand them over to the Empire, I can be reasonably certain I won't be seeing them again. They know it, too. They were an unhappy lot when I told them who'd be taking them into custody from us.
"As to how we came to turn the tables on them..." He shrugged. "The Bane may not look it, Oberleutnant, but she's as heavily armed as a lot of heavy cruisers. Most merchies can't afford the tonnage penalty and structural modifications to mount a worthwhile armament, but the Bane isn't like most merchies." He chuckled dryly. "As a matter of fact, she started life as a Vogel class armed collier for your own Navy something like seventy T-years ago. I picked her up cheap when she was finally listed for disposal about ten T-years ago because her inertial compensator was pretty much shot. Aside from that, she was in fairly good shape, though, so it wasn't too hard to get her back on-line. I replaced and updated her original armament at the same time, and I put a good bit of thought into how to camouflage the weapon ports while I was at it." Another shrug. "So most pirates don't have a clue that the 'helpless merchant ship' they're about to close with and board is actually several times as heavily armed as they are.
"Not until we open the ports and blow them to Hell, anyway," he said, and his tenor voice was suddenly harsh and very, very cold. Then he shook himself. "As for the clowns we just handed over to you," he went on in a more conversational tone which never warmed his eyes at all, "they were already in their boarding shuttles on the way across to us when their ship and the rest of their crewmates turned into plasma behind them. So they really didn't have much choice but to leave their weapons behind, come through the personnel lock one at a time, and surrender, exactly the way we told them to. They certainly didn't want to piss off our gunners by trying to do anything else."
The oberleutnant looked at the lined face and those icy eyes and decided not to ask any more of the multitude of questions still hovering in his mind. He felt reasonably confident Bachfisch would have answered them courteously enough, but there was something about the merchant skipper which discouraged too much familiarity.
The young Andermani officer looked around the boat bay gallery. Like everything else about Pirates' Bane, the bay was perfectly maintained. It was also spotless, with freshly painted bulkheads and a deck which looked literally clean enough to eat off of. One look at the freighter's captain would have been sufficient to warn anyone that he ran an extraordinarily taut ship, especially for a trader here in Silesia, but this went beyond mere tautness. Pirates' Bane looked far more like a warship, or the naval auxiliary as which she had begun life, than she looked like any "normal" merchantman the lieutenant had ever boarded.
He returned his eyes to Pirates' Bane's captain and came briefly to attention. He wasn't in the habit of expending military courtesy on mere merchant spacers, but this one was different. And despite the oberleutnant's own awareness of the steadily escalating tension between his own navy and that of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, he recognized that difference.