“Gaia’s breath, Mina, that’s a cruiser!”
A small one, relatively speaking, but it was still five and a half kilometers long. It looked like some kind of heavy commerce raider, with enough firepower to smash normal escort ships and enough speed to run away from heavier battle fleet elements. A huge relativistic mass driver in a spinal mount gave it the punch to take out smaller battle stations, and the eight heavy grasers mounted in turrets along the top and bottom of the ship would make short work of frigates or destroyers. Hundreds of smaller mass drivers protected against being swarmed by fast attack boats or other small ships, and it must have had thousands of point defense lasers. I didn’t even want to think about how many millions of tons of missiles and attack drones a ship that size could carry.
“Mina, what’s a raiding cruiser doing hanging out at a yakuza colony?”
“They’re pirates,” Lina said.
“The most famous pirates in the sector,” Mina added. “You should really read up on the pirate clans, Alice. It’s important to know these things.”
“There’s no way some pirate got rich enough to buy a ship like that,” I protested. “It’s bigger than all three defense stations and the frigate squadron put together.”
“It’s from the Inner Sphere,” Mina explained. “The original crew are all survivors of some minor nation that got wiped out by the Polytechnic Swarm. Their leader, Captain Kolbe, started out trying to get together some kind of revenge alliance. But that was ten years ago. He had to go pirate to get the resources to keep his ship running, and I guess somewhere along the way he decided to just give up the fight and enjoy life.”
I stared at the display. “Their whole country is gone? That’s terrible. But what kind of target would a ship that big go after? It must cost a fortune to keep it running.”
“They hire themselves out as privateers sometimes, when there’s a major war,” Lina said. “When things are peaceful they find other targets. Tankers carrying bulk feedstock shipments. Minor colonies that annoy them. I hear they do asteroid mining sometimes, too. They’ve got thousands of civilians on board, and I guess they turned some of the hangers into fabricator bays.”
Yeah, a ship that size could house a whole colony. It probably had, what, half a billion cubic meters of hangar space? They wouldn’t want to use mass drone tactics anyway if they were trying to turn a profit, so they could afford to convert some of it. They could easily have tens of thousands of people living and working there.
“Well, I can see why the yakuza wouldn’t try to push them around too much,” I said. “They could wreck this place pretty badly if they wanted to. Take out the stations and defense squadron, and drop a few thousand depth charges with multi-gigaton warheads into the ocean. They’d take damage doing it, and I’m sure there’d be survivors, but it wouldn’t be fun.”
“Too bad we don’t have that kind of firepower on call,” Mina said.
“We’ll just have to keep to ourselves, and trust the captain,” Lina added. “He’s been doing this forever, though. I bet there won’t be any problems.”
“Really? I didn’t think the Square Deal was that old.”
“This isn’t his first ship, Alice. From the stories I’ve heard, I think he’s been a ship captain for more than a century.”
Wow. That was a long time.
“He’s got some amazing stories about the early days of colonization in the Kerak sector,” Mina added. “He was around when the Mormons founded the first Bastion of Faith. One of the original Victoria colonies came out on his ship. So don’t worry. He’ll get us through this.”
“I guess so,” I said. I couldn’t even imagine how many problems someone that old must have weathered. This whole yakuza thing was probably just another routine hassle to him. No wonder he always seemed so patient.
A new appointment appeared on my personal calendar, and I frowned.
“The captain wants me to come to a meeting? Uh, oh. I have a bad feeling about this.”
I arrived at the briefing room to find Captain Sokol, Chief West and Naoko all waiting for me. Great. I nodded to the captain, who was deep in conversation with Chief West, and slid into an empty seat with a grimace.
“So much for hiding on the ship until everything is settled,” I grumbled to Naoko.
“Why, what do you mean, Alice?” She replied.
The captain turned from his discussion. “I’m afraid she’s right, Naoko. This is going to be our away party.”
“What? But Captain, surely you don’t mean to take an innocent young girl into a place like this.”
“I’m afraid I must, Naoko. For several reasons.”
“I was there for the thing with the inugami,” I said. “They might want to hear about it first hand, and it will go over better if the story isn’t coming from an android. If they don’t take it well they might want to punish me for interfering, but if I’m right there they can just get it over with instead of sitting around getting madder while they wait for me to come down from the ship. I’m also hidden backup. If there’s any backstabbing they’ll probably focus on Chief West, and underestimate me.”
“A succinct summary of the situation,” Captain Sokol agreed.
“But Captain, she’s only a girl,” Naoko protested.
“Sadly, the galaxy we live in has little regard for such niceties,” he replied. “Alice, I don’t believe you’ll be in any great danger from the oyabun. You didn’t cause the inugami any harm in your little scuffle, and in any event he has a bit of a soft spot for young girls. But we’re going to be surrounded by some very rough characters, and my influence may not be enough to protect you from everyone. Are you up for this?”
I frowned. “What would you do if I said no, sir? Don’t I need to be there?”
“We could always claim that you jumped ship at Yinpang, Alice. The Square Deal is a large vessel, and it would not be excessively difficult to hide you.”
Yeah, I could imagine. The techs hadn’t actually shown me any secret smuggling holds yet, but Lina had bragged about them.
“Thank you, sir, but you don’t need to do that. I’m ready to pull my weight. If you think it will help for me to go down with you, I’ll do it.”
“I wish you could at least make a backup first,” Naoko fretted. “I feel terribly selfish, leaving a copy of myself on the ship’s computer while you and the captain risk your lives.”