Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Read Online Free PDF Page B

help.”
     
    “Ensign Walker, bring up the Jump Drive and take us there,” the Captain ordered. I’d been caught by surprise and found myself struggling to plot out the course. The computers are supposed to assist us in working out the wormhole coordinates, but I’d already discovered that their help was strictly limited. “Open the wormhole.”
     
    “Yes, sir,” I said, bracing for the inevitable reprimand. We’d all had a shot at being First Ensign since we’d boarded the starship, as we’d earned reprimands and demerits from the senior crew. I wasn't going to be wearing the silver star again anytime soon. “Wormhole opening…now.”
     
    This time, there was no point in standing down from Jump Alert. “All hands, this is the Captain,” the Captain said, as the wormhole closed behind us. It would be mere seconds before we reached my destination coordinates. I desperately hoped that they were close enough to the pirate ship to bring it to battle. If we were unlucky, they might not even be in the same star system. “All hands to battle stations, I repeat, all hands to battle stations.”
     
    I found myself tensing again as the alarm sounded through the ship. “Wormhole opening now, sir,” I said, as the wormhole loomed open in front of us. I stared at the display, willing the numbers to match up. “Emerging…”
     
    “Bring up the drive field and plot an intercept course,” the Captain said, as if he didn’t have the slightest doubt of my ability to do as he wanted. I watched the display and tried not to sigh too heavily in relief when I realised that the numbers matched up, if not quite perfectly. “All weapons crews to their stations; load missile and torpedo tubes.”
     
    The pirate ship and its prey blinked into existence on my display and I angled the starship’s course towards them. The pirate had clearly been planning on subduing and boarding his prey before its distress call could reach Terra Nova and the starships orbiting the planet. They hadn’t expected us to arrive in the system – from what the Senior Chief had said, that might have been because most starships arrived overdue as a matter of routine – in time to intervene either. It had been sheer luck.
     
    “Steady as you bear,” the Captain ordered, calmly. I half-expected him to order me to give up the helm to the Pilot, who had just arrived on the bridge, but the Captain seemed quite happy with the situation. I hoped his faith in me wasn't misplaced. “Ensign Mohammad, open up a direct communications link, if you please.”
     
    “Link open, standard intership communications frequency,” Muna said. She sounded briskly competent, at least. I felt as if I were a steaming puddle of sweat. “Sir?”
     
    “This is Captain Harriman of the Jacques Delors,” the Captain said. His voice was so firm and intimidating that I would have surrendered on the spot, had I been the pirate. “You are ordered to halt your assault on the Diamond’s Revenge and prepare to be boarded. If you refuse to follow orders, we will engage with deadly force.”
     
    There was no reply. I opened another window on my display and followed the action carefully. The pirate was being careful not to damage his prey too much – it would have destroyed his target – but he didn’t seem to be retreating from the engagement. He could have opened a wormhole and escaped – he had to have a proper starship, or the UN starships in the system would have hunted him down by now – but instead he seemed to hesitate. I pulled open the starship’s database, searching for a match, but only found a handful of details. The starship’s origin was unknown.
     
    Perhaps its an alien ship, I thought, before realising that I was being silly. The UN hadn’t encountered any form of intelligent alien life since mankind’s first steps into space. The Senior Chief had taken a gruesome delight in telling us some of the wilder spacer stories, but none of us believed them.