Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

“We were in the system for nearly a day before they set off the distress beacon,” Roman countered, even though he appreciated Janine’s thoughts and suggestions, as she had more practical experience than he did. “We have no idea what the traffic through this system is like in wartime.”

ONI’s intelligence had suggested, quite seriously, that The Hive was being used as a transit point for smugglers and pirates. Roman couldn’t fault the logic, particularly if smugglers were working with the warlords. Even so, they’d have to be careful about operating too blatantly in the system, not when half the planets in the sector would refuse to allow them to dock if they knew that they’d been anywhere near The Hive. It wasn’t particularly logical—not when there was little chance of infection unless they actually landed on the dead homeworld. Yet humans had never been logical creatures. Apart from the Hooded Sect, who tried to embrace lives of logic and reason, somewhere out on a hot desert world no one else wanted.

“True,” Janine agreed. “Still, best to be careful. They may have no idea what they’re trying to trap.”

“No argument,” Roman agreed. “We’ll assume that we’re heading into a trap and prepare to face the enemy when they show themselves.”

The minutes ticked by slowly as Midway inched across the star system towards the squawking distress beacon. Roman had to fight the urge to stand up and pace on his bridge, knowing that it would upset the crew if they thought that the Old Man—which was a joke, given that he was the youngest captain in the Navy—was nervous or fearful. It struck him, not for the first time, just how vast space truly was, even though Asimov Points could take them from star system to star system virtually instantly. It could still take hours to respond to any emergency within a star’s mass limit.

Roman ordered the launch of a stealth drone as soon as they entered range, trusting that the drone—using passive sensors—would pick up enough signs of a waiting ambush to allow the ship to escape before any trap might be sprung.

“I’m picking up residue traces of weapons fire,” the sensor officer said suddenly. “It reads out as fairly standard plasma fire, perhaps from old-style pulse cannons. No trace of nuclear or antimatter warheads.”

Roman looked up at Janine’s face and knew that she shared the same thought. Pirates .

“Take us in,” Roman ordered harshly. Images of his dead parents danced before his eyes. “Set condition-one throughout the ship. Prepare for engagement.”

Alarms howled as Midway went to battle stations, ready for anything.

“Captain, the source of the distress beacon is coming into visual range,” the sensor officer said. “She’s no warship.”

“All stop,” Roman ordered. “Put her on the main display.”

He sucked in his breath as the image appeared in front of him, a long, swan-like starship spinning helplessly in space. The White Swan liners were ships the Federation’s rich and powerful took on holidays, sailing from star system to star system while enjoying the finest in food and hospitality. Roman had grown up hearing stories about how passengers were treated on such liners, stories that hadn’t grown much in the telling. A third-class ticket on the liner would have cost more than he made in a decade. And now one of those liners was in front of his ship, its white hull marred by the dark scars of direct hits where energy beams had burned into the hull. She was dead in space.

“Helm, take us on a slow circuit around the ship,” Roman ordered. If it was a trap—which looked increasingly unlikely—they’d spring it. “Sensors…report.”

“Apart from the distress beacon, the ship appears to have lost all power and atmosphere,” the sensor officer reported slowly. “There may be safe locks within the ship preserving some of the passengers and crew, but we can’t detect them at this distance.”

And they might well have run out of air , Roman thought. What the hell were they doing in this system, for God’s sake ?

“Hold us in position,” he ordered. He keyed his intercom to the Marine channel. “Major Elf, are your men ready to board the stricken ship?”

“Aye, sir,” Elf said. She sounded the same as always, but he knew she must be as hungry for vengeance as he was. Pirates and Marines were natural enemies; the latter were often the first to see what the former had left of their victims. “Request permission to launch.”

“Permission granted,” Roman said. “Good luck.”

It took the Marines two hours to search the liner Harmonious Repose, out of Harmony, but they’d sent back images from their combat suits as soon as they entered the torn and battered hull. It was a sickening sight. Space combat was normally clean and sterile, yet the pirates hadn’t been content to loot the hull and kill the passengers. They’d boarded, stormed the ship, and captured every surviving passenger and crewman. The male crew had been taken down to the ship’s gym and summarily shot; the female crew had been raped, then shot. The liner’s captain had been found, mutilated and castrated. There were no survivors.

For a time, Roman had held out hope that some of the passengers may have found refuge in a safe lock. But Elf reported that the pirates had burned through the armor and taken the passengers.

The mystery deepened when Roman looked up the service record of Harmonious Repose . According to the Federation Shipping Register, the Harmonious Repose had been in the Harmony System a few months before Admiral Justinian had launched his attack on Earth and had never been seen since. ONI’s report had assumed that the liner—like other commercial ships in Admiral Justinian’s territory—had been pressed into service as a supply ship. But the evidence now suggested otherwise.

It made no sense.

Why would Admiral Justinian allow a starship with wealthy passengers—and no military capability—to travel through the badlands of space? And, come to think of it, what was it doing anywhere near The Hive?

As the ship’s computers had been destroyed, ostensibly by the pirates, Elf’s Marines had to do some digging to find the ship’s emergency datacore. Her best computer specialist used Federation Navy codes to break into the system. It wasn’t particularly informative, at least on the surface, but the intelligence team working on the datastream uploaded by the Marines were able to draw some conclusions. The liner had been berthed in Harmony for the first two years of the war, and then she’d been pressed into service—finally sent on a route that would have, eventually, taken them out of Justinian’s territory. The standard shipping logs, which should have held a full explanation, including a reason for their flight, hadn’t been updated in years.

It was almost as if the ship had been retired, and then brought out of retirement for one last mission.

The forensic teams turned up another riddle. The ship’s official crew had, of course, been listed in the Federation Shipping Registry. It didn’t entirely surprise Roman to hear that most of the crewmen located by the Marines—their DNA sampled by remote drones—weren’t on the crew manifest. Even odder, some of them had been Federation Navy personnel in the Harmony System who had—presumably—signed up with Admiral Justinian. Was he looking at the remains of an escape attempt, or something else? The handful of passengers located by the forensic teams—killed in the attack, Roman assumed, as wealthy passengers could be ransomed back to their relatives—were people he assumed would have supported Justinian, those who could be identified at all. And they’d clearly followed communication security protocols. They hadn’t written anything down about their mission, as far as the Marines could tell.