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  BY JAMES H. COBB

  SEA FIGHTER

  SEA STRIKE

  CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN

  James H. Cobb

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Publishers Since 1838

  a member of

  Penguin Putnam Inc.

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2002 by James H. Cobb

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  BOOK DESIGN BY RENATO STANISIC

  There ain’t no such thing as a totally original plot or character. Any author who claims to have produced one is fooling either you or himself. The best a writer can ever hope to do is to use some of the threads spun by those storytellers who came before him to weave a different and interesting pattern for his reader.

  Having confessed this, I would like to dedicate this book to the diverse group of authors, artists, and creations that have both given me great pleasure over the years and lent inspiration to the world of Amanda Garrett:

  Ian Fleming and James Bond

  Peter O’Donnel and Modesty Blaise

  James H. Schmitz and Trigger Argee

  Norman Reilly Raine and Tugboat Annie Brennan

  Shoji Kawamori, Haruhiko Mikimoto, and Misa Hayase

  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.

  200 Miles Above the South Atlantic Ocean

  July 8, 2008

  The Earth glowed frost-white and sapphire-blue, its vibrant colors separated from the infinite velvet black of space by the haze line along the planet’s curving horizon. And arcing silently toward that horizon was a great silvery lozenge shape, its winglike solar-cell arrays trimmed to catch the piercing light of the distant sun.

  Six weeks earlier, a Russian-built Proton VI heavy-lift booster fired from the Boeing Aerospace sealaunch platform south of Hawaii had hurled the bus-sized unmanned spacecraft into orbit. Since that time, it had silently and efficiently proceeded about its cybernetic affairs, the seeds of a new mode of existence germinating in its commodious belly.

  Powered by the flow of free energy from the sun, experiment packages clicked and whirred in the payload bays. Robotic microfactories and computer-guided autolabs tinkered tirelessly with the gravity-free environment, seeking to produce new and unique compounds and materials impossible to create at the bottom of the earth’s gravity well.

  Perfect ball bearings were formed out of glass, metal, and nylon. Undistorted by a gee field, they promised to lengthen the service life and improve the energy efficiency of any mechanical device utilizing them. Unwarped by weight, perfect crystalline fibers were grown. Matted properly with the right carbon-based bonding compound and a Fiberglas with ten times the tensile strength of the finest high-grade steel, it loomed on the horizon. Foamed metal castings were made, utilizing one-third the material at one-third of the weight yet losing none of their durability. New alloys were blended, not merely of metal and metal, but of radical combinations of metal and ceramic and glass and plastic. Materials with qualities that engineers and technologists had only dreamed of before.

  With each new creation, a door opened and a thousand possibilities crowded through. On the earth below, the various project teams salivated over the rain of data pouring down from their creation and visualized the day they would perform their orbital experiments hands-on instead of via remote telepresence.

  Given the full potential of the new technologies they were creating, that day might not be far distant. The lNDASAT (Industrial Applications Satellite) project was the most ambitious and far-reaching private space project in history. Created by a consortium of U.S. and Western European corporations. the INDASATs were laying the foundation for the commercial development and industrial utilization of Near Earth Space.

  But for now, however, the dreaming had to stop. The experiment bays were powering down, their stocks of raw materials exhausted and their exotic payloads secured. For INDASAT 06, it was time to go home.

  Slowly, the great solar cell wings reefed back into the vehicle body, thermal-proof doors dosing over them. Thrusters fired. The INDASAT reoriented, its nose-mounted heat shield and retrorocket pack aiming ahead along its flight path. Over the data links, the onboard computers conversed with their ground-based counterparts at INDASAT mission control, an avalanche of systems checks and rechecks taking place.

  All boards read green. The computers staged a final consultation with their human masters and received their clearance to proceed. Above Pretoria, South Africa, retrorockets blazed and INDASAT 06 began its long fall.

  Its fuel expended, explosive bolts kicked the retropack free, leaving the thermoceramic heat shield bare and ready to meet the holocaust to come. Like some titanic rifle slug, the huge satellite slammed into the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, pushing an incandescent shock wave of ionized air ahead of it as it continued its deceleration. Far below, off the Seychelle islands, native fishermen looked up in awe and wonderment at the great silvery fireball that illuminated the night sky as it streaked away toward the northeast.

  The thermal flare faded and died as the descending satellite’s speed bled away. At 150,000 feet, the first small drogue chute was streamed, stabilizing the fall.

  At 90,000 feet, a second, larger drogue blossomed, pitching the satellite over into its vertical descent to the recovery target, a set of coordinates in the Arafura Sea north of Australia.

  The four main parachutes deployed at 30,000 feet, a football field’s worth of nylon fabric that lowered the spacecraft on the final leg of its journey to the dark waters below.

  Onboard the INDASAT, the computers conducted a last-minute housecleaning. Blinking marker strobes and radio beacons were switched on for the convenience of the recovery team. The remainder of the thruster fuel was vented overboard for safety’s sake, and flotation bags were inflated in preparation for the water landing. With these final tasks completed, the computers powered down and an inert mass of metal and composites settled into the warm tropical seas.

  Arafura Sea

  97 Miles North-Northwest of Cape Wessel

  2147 Hours, Zone Time: July 8, 2008

  “We have visual! Strobes bearing thirty-seven degrees off the port bow.”

  “Very good, Mr. Carstairs. Helm, come left to three-three-zero. All engines ahead standard.” Captain Phillip Moss, the master of the INDASAT Starcatcher, was ex-Australian navy and, as such, he preferred to maintain the formalities on his bridge. “Have the boat teams stand by to launch, and inform docking-well control that they may commence flood down.”

  Stepping out onto the wheelhouse, the spare, hawk-faced mariner lifted his binoculars to his eyes, focusing in on the pulsing flare of light settling from the night sky. Beneath his feet, the decks of the 270-foot converted cannery ship began to tremble, her blunt bow coming about to bear on the splashdown point.

  The chunky shadow of Dr. Alan Del Rio joined Moss out on the bridge wing. “A very pretty splashdown, Captain,” the INDASAT recovery director commented.

  “So far, so good,” Moss grunted. “Better than the first one, at any rate. We had to chase across two hundred miles of ocean and barely made acquisition before she sank.”

  “It’s all part of the learning curve, Captain,” the recovery director replied philosophically. As an ex-NASA mission controller, Del Rio was a veter
an of numerous battles with sulky space hardware. “Every time out we get better. God willing, this will all be routine before too long.”

  “My policy is, Doctor, that it will never be all that routine.”

  Floating horizontally between its double row of flotation bags, INDASAT 06 rode low in the easy ocean swells. Sea-anchored by its sodden parachutes. the satellite marked its location with streamers of luminescent sea dye and by the pulsing strobes atop extended telescoping masts. Early on in the program, it had been discovered that spotting and recovery were actually easier in darkness than in daylight, and thus, night recoveries had become standard operating procedure.

  The Starcatcher churned up to within fifty meters of the drifting spacecraft before ringing down on her main engines and heaving to. Her arc light banks blazed on, illuminating a square mile of sea. Maneuvering gingerly on her steering thrusters, she pivoted in place and brought her aft end to bear on the satellite.

  During the Starcatcher’s conversion into a recovery vessel, a floodable well deck large enough to accept the industrial satellites had been built into her stern. Now the tailgate of this well deck dropped, releasing a swarm of Zodiac workboats.

  For the next hour, the rubber-sided inflatables nuzzled around the drifting mass of INDASAT 06. Their wetsuit-clad crews worked through the first postmission checkout, inspecting the spacecraft for damage, detaching and retrieving the parachute array for reuse, and connecting the recovery tether.

  With the tasking lists completed, air horns brayed from the Starcatcher’s upper works and the workboats scurried back into the sheltering belly of the mother ship. Winches howled as the recovery tether came taut, and slowly the Starcatcher began to back down onto her cargo.

  Once the INDASAT had been walked into the water-filled well deck, gantries would deploy from the bay sides, locking the satellite in place for transport. With that done, the deck could be pumped dry and the voyage to Port Darwin could begin. There, at the Australian INDASAT service facility, the spacecraft’s payload of precious material and data could be downloaded and the satellite refurbished and reconfigured for its next mission. Within a month, 06 would be ready to fly once more.

  On the Starcatcher’s bridge, Captain Moss and Mission Director Del Rio immersed themselves in the details of the loading operation, overseeing each phase from the bridge wings or via the bank of closed-circuit television monitors on the rear bulkhead of the wheelhouse. The remainder of the bridge watch was deeply involved in the recovery operation as well—so much so that the realization that they were not alone on the sea and in the night came quite late.

  “Captain, we have traffic crossing the bow at three hundred yards. Range closing.”

  Moss looked up sharply at the watch stander’s call. “Identify?”

  “Fishing boats, I’d guess, sir. Looks to be three of them. Speed about six knots. Now bearing off the port bow.”

  Moss crossed swiftly to the port side bridge wing and brought up his night glasses. Yes, there was something out there. Three tall, shadowy shapes running bow to stern and trailing a wisp of wake luminescence behind them.

  “What is it, Captain?” Del Rio inquired from the wheelhouse door.

  “I’m not quite sure,” Moss replied. “Small craft of some kind. They aren’t showing any running lights, but the locals, both ours and Indonesia’s, can get sloppy about that sort of thing.”

  The moon had started to rise, casting a shimmering light path across the surface of the tropical sea. The first of the newcomers now glided through this glow, silhouetting itself, and the breath caught in the throats of both Moss and Del Rio.

  She was an image of beauty from another age. A low and sleek twin masted schooner, gaff-rigged and rakish and outlined in the pearlescent moonlight, her dark hull sweeping up and back from a sharp cutwater to a high-set and angular sterncastle, the latter enhancing the touch of exotic alienness to her design.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Moss murmured appreciatively.

  “What the hell is that, Captain?” Del Rio asked, awed.

  “She’s a pinisi,” Moss replied. “An island trading schooner belonging to one of the Indonesian mariner tribes. The Bugis, the people some folk call the sea gypsies.”

  “Sea gypsies? You’re kidding.” Del Rio said, stepping up to the rail.

  “Not a bit of it. They’re one of the great seafaring cultures of the world. For over a thousand years, they’ve ranged these waters from the Malay coast to the Philippines. I doubt there’s an occupied island in Indonesia that doesn’t have a Bugis colony on it, somewhere.”

  Del Rio chuckled. “The Bugis, huh? You mean the bogeymen really are going to get us?”

  “That wouldn’t have been so funny a few hundred years ago,” Moss grunted. “Where do you think the term came from? Back in the days of the old fast Indies trade, having the Bugis man come over the rail with his kris between his teeth was about the biggest nightmare one could have. Not only were these lads master seamen, but they were also the most notorious, most savage pirates in the Pacific.”

  Del Rio shrugged. “I’ve never even heard of them before. I certainly didn’t expect anyone out here to be using sailing ships at this late date.”

  “Oh, quite so. These craft are a unique Bugis design. The sea gypsies crossbred the schooners of the Dutch and Portuguese colonialists with the Chinese junk and produced a vessel that was handier and more seaworthy than either. They’re still quite common up in the archipelago. You don’t usually see them this far south, though.”

  Moss frowned in the darkness. “And I don’t like to see anybody working in this close while we’re recovering. Mr. Albright”—the captain turned back toward the wheelhouse door—“get on the loud hailer. Warn those schooners off.”

  It was the last order Captain Phillip Moss would ever give. Nor would it ever be carried out.

  A cluster of dazzling red points of light blipped into existence on the side of the wheelhouse—the death dots of long-range laser sights. A concentrated barrage from three heavy machine guns and a dozen automatic rifles sleeted through the Starcatcher’s bridge structure an instant later, ripping the life out of every man and woman on watch there.

  The laser-targeted machine guns swung aft then, focusing on the antenna arrays on the main mast and upper works, chewing them away, stifling the recovery ship’s scream for aid before it could be issued.

  Powerful auxiliary engines roared to life. Two of the Bugis schooners darted in toward the Starcatcher’s flanks while the third sailing craft, the gunship, held off and mercilessly raked the recovery vessel’s decks, lifting fire only as its cohorts slid alongside their prey.

  Stripped to the waist and shrieking, brown-skinned men swarmed over the rail, panther-lean and panther-deadly. Some were armed with modern submachine guns and automatic pistols. Others carried only the razor-edged kris daggers and panga cutlasses wielded by their corsair ancestors.

  For the remaining crewmembers of the Starcatcher crew, the exact mode of death would be irrelevant. The decision had been made early on in the planning of this operation. No prisoners. No witnesses. No survivors.

  There was no means of meaningful resistance. There was no place to hide that couldn’t be hunted out. There was no offer of mercy. After only a few minutes the screams and gunfire trailed off.

  The Starcatcher’s work and running lights were extinguished and full darkness returned to the Arafura Sea. Under the cover of that darkness, a meticulously drilled plan of action replaced the blood-sodden chaos of the boarding.

  A Bugis work detail swept the decks of the recovery ship, dragging all bodies into the superstructure. Life-jacket lockers were emptied. Life rafts were dragged out of their storage pods and slashed, and the hulls and the flotation chambers of the ship’s launch and whaleboat were chopped open. Life rings, wooden deckchairs, wetsuits, anything at all that could be found topside that could float, was stricken below and secured.

  A second work party went about another task.
Hoses snaked down into the Starcatcher’s bunkerage tanks and powerful pumps purred to life, drawing the diesel out of the recovery vessel and into the swelling fuel blivets in the holds of the boarding ships.

  Yet a third detail worked within the recovery ship, this one not made up of Bugis alone. A group of outsiders, a small mixed bag of Asian and Caucasian technicians, labored with the pirates. Pale-featured and nauseated at the sight of the sprawled bodies and scarlet-streaked bulkheads, yet decisive in their actions as they selected and removed hard-copy manuals, computer files, and key components from the Starcatcher’s systems bays.

  Astern, the third of the schooners drew alongside of INDASAT 06 itself. Loincloth-clad swimmers went over the rail and set to work around the satellite, deactivating its marker strobes and hacking away the antenna of its radio transponders, working to the diagrams shown to them by their foreign advisers.

  The flotation bladders were carefully vented until the spacecraft floated just awash beneath the waves. Then a camouflage shroud was wrestled up and out of the schooner’s hold and lowered over the side. A huge bag of lightweight parachute-grade nylon, colored in mottled sea tone blues and greens, it slipped smoothly over the INDASAT, concealing its stark white thermal shell.

  The recovery tether to the Starcatcher was cast off and a short towing harness rigged to the stern of the Bugis schooner. The swimmers came back aboard, and diesel engines far more powerful than would be needed for a craft of the schooner’s displacement rumbled to life. The heavy wake streaming back from the hard-driving propellers would wash back over the towed satellite, helping to conceal its shadowy outline from all but the closest arial observation pass.

  All tasks were done. It was time to depart.

  Casting off from the lifeless Starcatcher, the two boarding ships pulled away, following the craft towing the satellite. All deck hatches on the recovery vessel were tightly dogged down. Belowdecks, however, all water tight doors and hatches gaped wide. Sledgehammer blows had smashed open the intakes and outlets of the powerplant cooling system and half a dozen six-inch streams of water geysered into the rapidly filling engine room.