Archier put out a call; pursue. All surviving rebels were to be hunted down and destroyed, unless they managed to surrender first. In any case, it would now be necessary to distribute his ships all over Escoria. There was the final stage of putting down rebellion to be dealt with.
Besides which, he had an unfulfilled instruction: to find out about the weapon prophesied by Oracle. Possibly the rebels’ unexpected possession of feetol cannon was what Oracle referred to… but his duty remained to investigate the matter exhaustively.
He sighed. There was much work ahead. And while Gruwert snuffled and squealed in exultation, the humans of the command staff were subdued, as were the captains of other units that were appearing briefly on the new network.
For his Damage Assessment Officer was now collating the losses Ten-Fleet had suffered. And they were heavy. Over a quarter of Archier’s ships were gone, and thirty more reported damage varying from superficial to serious.
The Empire would not long sustain losses like these, he realised. Dolefully he listened to the list of names the officer read out to him. Each of them was like hearing the death of a friend; but one gave him particular pause.
“What was that again?” he queried.
“Lilac Willow, sir, She took a direct hit in the seventh minute. The rebel responsible was subsequently destroyed.”
Archier pursed his lips. He was remembering Volsted Magroom. The little fellow had been appealing, in a way. Archier had liked him.
Well, he would know all about space battles now.
Once more Archier sighed. He wondered if the party would still be in progress when he had finished here. He could certainly use some relaxation.
5
It was with caution that the privateer approached the big, empty bulk of the Imperial warship. In the nose cabin that he used as a control room, Ragshok peered disbelievingly.
“Claire de Lune,” he murmured, reading the name on the ship’s side, among the Imperial blazon, the flags and ensigns painted there. “What the Simplex does that mean, Morgan?”
“I don’t know, chief. It’s some foreign language,” Morgan, a dark-haired, florid man, scratched his head perfunctorily.
“Take us in a bit closer,” Ragshok ordered.
“Yes, chief.”
The vessel loomed. She was not one of the fleet’s biggest ships, not a front-line—o’-war, but she was big enough. If Ragshok knew his ships—and ships was one thing he knew—she was a Planet Class destroyer. She loomed, lights still blazing, drive either idle or defunct… derelict.
Ragshok had watched the battle from a safe distance. He had hoped the rebels would win, naturally, but not overenthusiastically so. He was on the side of political stability because it made the pickings richer, but on the other hand it might lead to merchant ships being better armed and therefore less easy prey. He did not want to be a prospector again, hewing wealth from the natural environment, which was what he had been doing before he realised how wealthy space was with other people’s riches.
The latest news he had was that Ten-Fleet had nearly finished the job of hunting down remnants of the rebel fleet and was beginning to regather. It was easy to understand why Claire de Lune had been abandoned in the first place: she had taken damage, perhaps to her drive, perhaps to her defences or to her offensive weapons, that rendered her a sitting duck. “But why haven’t they come back to her?” he murmured.
“Think she’s just plasma by now, I expect,” Morgan said. “She ought to be, too.”
“Alright, let’s go over and have a look.”
He snapped down his helmet while Morgan went aft to rouse the others. A minute later a force forty strong was floating across the gap, drifting across the bulging, engineered cliff face of the other vessel until they found a port.
Inside, the air was good. Ragshok snapped open his helmet and smelled, with startlement, the sweet perfumes of the ship’s interior environment. Here, close to the hull, the surroundings were more businesslike and he did not see the luxurious furnishings that were later to amaze him.
But it was less than a minute before he realised the effect some of those perfumes were having on him. He gave a strangled cry of incredulity.
“Good grief, Morgan—they were taking drugs during a battle?”
His men spread out through the ship, each one having been briefed on what to find out. Ragshok made his way to the bridge; it was locked, and when he shot the door open, it had the appearance of being disused. Shortly, his ship’s engineer informed him that the ship had apparently been controlled from another place, a sort of command centre. He went there and played with the equipment while reports were brought to him.
The ship was holed, which he had not noticed while approaching, but not, seriously so. The emergency gels had kept her airtight, and it would not cost too much work to draw a new skin over the ruptured parts of the hull. The feetol engines were out of action, which was what caused her to be abandoned. But before leaving, her crew had spiked all the guns.
“Well what about the engines?” Morgan demanded of the engineer while his master, Ragshok, fiddled with a piece of rubbery plastic on the arm of the command throne. He had discovered it gave him weird visual effects.
The engineer was a wiry Salpian. Ragshok had taken him off a passenger liner, had offered to take him home after he had got a junked engine running. But he had preferred to stay with the privateers.
He grinned, “The damage is mostly superficial, except for one thing. They need a new flux unit. Then, with a bit of repair work, she’ll go.”
He paused. “The one we have in the Dare would do the job, at a pinch.”
Ragshok started. “The Dare?” He pulled a face. The Dare was his best and biggest ship…
But look at what he would be getting in exchange, he told himself…
He left off playing with the command throne, and looked about him, musing. He had always dreamed of some great exploit. “Do you remember Varana?” he murmured. “Not a big place. Just a little moon, really, with a littler moon in attendance. But a nice place, and we had it to ourselves for weeks… a million people under our thumbs…”
“Until we scarpered rather than face a proper fight,” Morgan said acidly. “And remember, this tub is just a weaponless hulk now.”
“But what a hulk. You could get thousands in here, armed to the teeth.”
“We don’t have thousands. We only have a couple of hundred.”
“It’s no secret where we could get more, if there’s enticement enough,” Ragshok turned to his Salpian. “How fast could she go if we installed Dare’s flux unit?”
“As fast as she ever went—for a while. You’d have to replace it after a year or so.”
Ragshok leaned back, still thinking. The idea is ludicrous, he admitted dismally to himself. There’s nothing we can do with this thing, except strip it bare of everything valuable.
He knew why he was so reluctant to let the ship go. It was because of his notions of grandeur. To be the outlawed master of a stolen warship of the Empire!