A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [73]
“Yes I do, dammit.” Lanyan looked with disgust at all the memos waiting to be signed. He hadn’t faced an important decision in six months. It would be a pleasure to delegate them all to “Stay-at-Home” Stromo. “All right, I’ll take your advice, Fitzpatrick. Arrange for me to lead the next scout wing due to be dispatched.”
“That would be in Grid 3, sir.”
“Good enough. I’ll let Admiral Stromo take care of this crap.” He smiled without humor. “Maybe it’ll be enough of a punishment to snap him out of his funk.”
After two weeks on patrol cruising around the systems of Grid 3, General Lanyan realized that it felt no better to wander around in empty space doing nothing than to sit at a desk on Mars doing nothing.
The ekti shortages had reduced space traffic to the barest trickle, and the scout fleet encountered no Hansa ships or Ildiran vessels. On the bridge of his borrowed Juggernaut, Lanyan let out a long sigh. “Looks like the Spiral Arm has closed down for the season.”
Beside him, Fitzpatrick nodded. “Normal trade is pretty much at a standstill. The colonies are left bare-assed in a cold wind.”
Lanyan had recently heard a proposal to build generation ships again, huge, slow vessels that used conventional fuels, even though they would take a century to fly between colonies. To him, that smacked of a desperation he was not yet willing to admit. Admitting such a thing would mean accepting the fact that this conflict would never be won, that humans—or Ildirans—would never again travel swiftly across the Spiral Arm. The very idea was intolerable, an affront to the spirit of progress and exploration.
No, they needed to fight until they kicked those damned hydrogues back where they belonged.
“General, we’re detecting stardrive emissions. Ship ahead, barely within range. Should we divert course to intercept?”
“One of ours or an Ildiran vessel?” Lanyan said.
“Hard to tell from this range, sir. Doesn’t match any standard configuration.”
He sank his square chin onto his knuckles. Fitzpatrick leaned closer. “We’ve got nothing else to do, General. Maybe that captain can tell us something. We could use the intel.”
It was the rationale the General wanted to hear. “All right. Maybe he’s even one of our deserters. Let’s be sociable.”
The Juggernaut moved to intercept the lone ship in the middle of nowhere. The strange vessel looked like nothing more than a habitation pod and a huge bank of engines mounted atop a framework of girders that enclosed cargo spheres.
“Never seen a ship like that,” Lanyan said.
“It’s a Roacher ship,” Fitzpatrick said. “They steal parts and put the pieces together. I don’t know how they keep those garbage scows running.”
The unknown captain at first attempted to elude them, but after Lanyan launched Remoras to head off and surround the ship, the captain stood down.
The bearded Roamer’s image came on the screen. His patchwork uniform had embroidery so garish that it offended Lanyan’s trained military eye. “My name is Raven Kamarov, piloting a Roamer cargo vessel. Why have you stopped me in free interplanetary space? I’ve got a shipment to deliver.”
Lanyan’s nostrils flared. “Don’t you appreciate our protection, Captain Kamarov? There are hydrogues abroad.”
The other captain scowled. “We’re well aware of the hydrogues. Roamers have lost ten times more people than anybody else.”
“My heart bleeds for him,” Fitzpatrick said under his breath.
“Please state your cargo, Captain,” Lanyan said.
“Delivering much-needed supplies to Roamer outposts and Hansa colonies. You can check your own database, General. My commerce record is clear.”
The Juggernaut’s science officer finished his scans and turned to the General. “He’s hauling ekti, sir. Those cargo tanks are full to the gills.”
“Ekti!” Fitzpatrick said. “How much?”
The science officer rattled off the amount, and Lanyan put it into terms he could grasp. “So…that’s more than we recovered from Yreka—enough to take