Intrepid

5

The four-hundred-foot climb up the first forward spine compartment would have been arduous at one gee. In free fall, Kris went hand over hand. Ahead of her, Marines were already fanning out to secure the next compartment, the second of five.

So far no weapons fire. No booby traps. Possibly these pirates had never expected to have to defend their own ship.

The first resistance was in the forward-most compartment. The hatch leading out of it was dogged down and locked from the other side.

''Shall we blow it?'' Gunny asked. With a glance, Jack passed the question to Kris.

She mulled it for a moment. Just coming into the space with the Marine rear guard was Chief Beni. Apparently, rage at the pirates' behavior toward their merchant prisoners had overcome his usual desire to be wherever action was not.

She waved him to her. He looked around to see if there might be anyone else but him that she wanted. She shook her head and waved him forward. He came.

''I want to talk to those thugs on the other side of this bulkhead. Jack me into their net,'' Kris said.

His eyes lit up at the prospect of doing good without any unnecessary risks. A minute later he had spotted a cable conduit, had its cover off, and was rummaging around its innards.

''You're in, Your Highness,'' he chimed through a grin a moment later.

Kris considered for half a second what she wanted to say and chose a simple ''This is Lieutenant Kris Longknife. We have come for you, ladies and gentlemen. You can survive the next few hours or not. It doesn't matter to me and my Marines.''

Around Kris, a few Marines pumped air. ''Ooo-Rah.''

Beni must have put Kris on a hot mike on the other side, or the damage Kris had done made all mikes hot. Her remarks raised a mumble of comments, most of which were obscene and biologically improbable. One was repeated several times. ''Why don't you just go away and leave us alone?''

''I've considered leaving you alone,'' Kris said.

That got a lot of happy noise from the other side.

''But I'd hate to leave this big hulk drifting as a hazard to navigation.'' There was also the matter of prize money for the Wasp's crew, but that didn't sound like something that would move a pirate to repentance.

''I could just blast the bow off the ship, leave it here, and tow the rest of this hulk to a port.''

There was a long silence. Around Kris, Marines followed that option to its obvious conclusion … and grinned.

It took those on the other side a bit longer to think it through. ''Where would that leave us?'' finally came from someone.

''You would be left all alone.''

''Until someone picked us up or we died.''

''Considering how far out you are,'' Kris said, thoughtfully, ''I suspect you'd be long dead before anyone happened by.''

''You're just going to hang us anyway.''

That was what Kris wanted to do, but that wasn't the law in human space. ''Few planets have capital punishment,'' Kris pointed out, generating frowns from her Marines.

''You going to take us to one that don't?''

''I will take you to the nearest planet with a recognized court system. Cuzco, I expect.''

''Do they have capital punishment?''

''I honestly don't know.'' NELLY, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW.

YES, KRIS.

The negotiations went on like that for the next hour. In the end, they all surrendered, and no shots were fired.

''You didn't want any of your Marines hurt,'' Kris pointed out to Jack.

He nodded, then shook his head. ''Would have been nice to send a few of them to meet their maker.''

''We killed the worst of them. The bridge crew was fifteen strong when the fight started.'' Only parts of three bodies had been recovered from the wreckage.

Every ship's officer excepting the engineer had taken the brunt of a twenty-four-inch laser … and come up the worse for it.

Which left a certain young Navy lieutenant with what the brass euphemistically called a few ''leadership challenges.''

She had forty-seven former prisoners that were in pretty bad shape. They needed medical care, and they needed it quickly.

She also had thirty-two new prisoners, all of whom were loudly expounding on their innocence … to the no one who was listening … from the confines of a hastily expanded brig on the Wasp.

And Kris had a very damaged hulk, which turned out to have a very full load of expensive cargo. Leaving her with a lot of questions about how that had come to pass.

Her first two problems said get gone from here. The third left her reluctant to abandon what she'd done. There was also the problem of the Compton Maru being the scene of several crimes that were greatly in need of investigation.

Kris was saved from the first problem. The health of the pirates' prisoners improved as Doc did a couple of miracles. The Wasp's corpsman, widely rumored to have been a board-certified MD before his alcoholism cost him dearly, stayed sober and did good. He racked up bushels of good karma as more and more legs passed from likely candidates for amputation to just in need of careful and tender care. Several of the tough old sailors recovered with amazing speed.

Which led to the next challenge that Kris really should have seen coming.

Onally MarTom slipped a meat cleaver from the mess and tried to use it to part the hair of one of the brig's new denizens.

Fortunately, a Marine interrupted him.

Kris was there only a second behind Jack while the Marine was still struggling with a surprisingly strong and very distressed mariner.

''He killed my captain,'' the man screamed in frustration.

''And he'll pay for it,'' Jack assured him.

Outnumbered and overpowered, the man broke down in tears, but he still cursed them one and all for standing between him and his captain's murderer.

Gunny arrived to lead him off. ''I'll get him drunk on Doc's ignored supplies. That'll at least start the healing. When he sobers up, he'll be glad he's not a killer. He isn't, you know.''

''He showed a pretty solid commitment to making a go of it if you ask me,'' Kris observed, still trying to parse some of the old sailor's curses. And she thought she'd heard them all.

''I'll double the guard,'' Jack said. ''Keep the ones keeping the bad guys in where they are. But I'll add a full team in the next compartment to keep the sightseers and hackers out.''

Which left Kris wondering if she ought to do something about the pirates sooner rather than later. King Ray had dragooned a retired Wardhaven judge into joining Kris's crew. Being a hobbyist astronomer, she was delighted to be aboard.

Kris had assumed the Wasp might be called on to pass quick and efficient justice on some minor matters. Capital piracy, murder, and slavery went quite a bit beyond Kris's plan.

And there was the requirement that any court chartered in Wardhaven follow the Ordinance of Human Rights that had been the cornerstone of the now-defunct Society of Humanity.

Central to that was the ban on capital punishment.

But not every planet had signed the Ordinance. Kris's father had almost lost his chance to be Wardhaven's prime minister when he'd used every stalling tactic in the politician's handbook to keep Wardhaven's signature off the Ordinance. Not forever, only long enough to hang the kidnappers whose mishandling of Kris's little brother, Eddy, caused his death.

With luck, the nearest planet would also not have signed the Ordinance. Longknifes did not like kidnappers.

So while Doc healed the freed, and Jack kept alive the not yet dead, Kris led a scratch salvage-and-repair team through the wreck of the Compton Maru. Most were borrowed from the Wasp's crew, but the boffins supplied their own techs, and the Marines also provided their electronics and engineering specialists.

And Kris donated most of Nelly's time after the computer demanded a go at the mess Kris had made.

Kris's well-aimed twenty-four-inch lasers had made quite a mess of the Compton's bridge. Even when they patched the holes and glued an airtight bubble over the bridge, they also had to set up a string of lights.

Anything that required electrical power was fried, right down to the smallest lightbulb. ''Oh, can I have the ship's computer?'' Nelly said, as soon as pieces were identified.

''You think you can get something out of this?'' Kris said.

''Everyone else on board has a hobby. Jigsaw puzzles are all the rage among the scientists. Pretty lame from my perspective. But that looks like it might be a challenge.''

''Take all the pieces we find,'' Kris ordered, ''to the electronics lab. Maybe Nelly or one of mFumbo's experts can make something out of it.''

''Maybe a watch that runs slow,'' Chief Beni muttered, but he gathered the scattered shards and boxed them up for transport.

It was when they got their first look inside the shipping containers that matters got serious again.

They were full.

Since all documentation on them was in the now-defunct computer, that left folks to speculate on why a pirate ship had a full cargo.

''Could they have winched the cargo containers off the ships they boarded?'' Sulwan mused.

Jack shook his head. ''In zero gee, with only makeshift gear? It would be a whole lot easier to send the cargo off to wherever you were selling the ships.''

Captain Drago nodded. ''These pirates started off as mutineers. So where are their officers?''

''They were pretty quick to murder the officers of the ships they took,'' Kris pointed out.

''Someone needs to answer us some questions,'' Jack said.

But all questions were met with sullen silence. Even the reactor snipes suddenly took to studying their fingernails.

No one objected when Gunny suggested that, what with them in zero gee, and none of the prisoners able to exercise, maybe they'd all be a lot safer if they were cuffed to their bunks. And when ex-pirates suddenly turned space lawyers demanded their rights, Marines overruled then with a few quick butt strokes.

''We need to get this show moving,'' Kris concluded.

With the Compton's bridge unable to command anything, the techs went looking for a backup. As expected, the first spine compartment forward of amidships had plug-ins for an emergency bridge, but like most merchants, it had no stations. There should have been a few in the spares locker, but, to no one's surprise, there were none. Six were salvaged from the 4.7-inch lasers and reprogrammed as needed. Three more were brought over from the Wasp's spares locker.

In a week, with a mixed crew from the Wasp and former hostages, both ships were ready to get under way.

And the time hadn't been a total waste.

Professor mFumbo's techs hadn't launched their probe given all the excitement over the Compton Maru's arrival. Once things calmed down, they modified it for high acceleration and sent it off at two gees.

It ducked through to the next system and reported back six hours later that there were two old jump points in that system and three fuzzy ones. And two planets in the inhabitable zone.

Kris had to quell a budding mutiny among the scientists. ''We will get back here,'' she assured them.