THE KOSTROMA SAGA by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 3 – PIRATES ON THE PROWL

09:55 (Universal Time)

Monday, March 8, 2315

Docking Station 5, Kirkland Spaceport

Vesta asteroid, Main Asteroid Belt

Tina was on attendance in the Hangar Deck as the last of the heavy crates full of iridium powder and platinum ingots were stored away in the warehouses on Level 7B. Just those 5,150 metric tons of metals, a puny portion of the cargo mass still carried by the KOSTROMA, were worth a staggering 138 billion credits. Piotr Romanski and Denise Lonsdale stood at her sides, watching as well as Javier Domingo drove his heavy forklift and deposited the heavy crate atop a pile of two other crates. Cargo handling robots then swiftly secured the pile of crates with metallic straps.

‘’I don’t think that I ever eyed a more valuable cargo in my whole life.’’ said Denise Lonsdale, the cargomaster of the KOSTROMA. Piotr nodded his head slowly.

‘’It sure represents a very nice shipping fee for us all.’’

‘’And a complete ship overhaul in a year or two.’’ added Tina. ‘’Then, the KOSTROMA will stay commercially competitive for at least another forty years, maybe more. I sure have some ideas already about what to include in that overhaul.’’

‘’More passenger cabins and facilities?’’ ventured Piotr, making Tina shake her head.

‘’No! Our real business is cargo hauling. Our passenger facilities are already excellent by any standards for a cargo ship. What I am looking at are more powerful gravity sails, along with a higher efficiency fusion drive, to cut our fuel consumption and make us even more competitive. I am also looking at adding a true direct landing capacity for our ship, so that we do not depend anymore on orbital docking stations around moons or asteroids without an atmosphere, like right now.’’

‘’Such a landing capacity would be nice indeed.’’ said Denise Lonsdale, thoughtful. ‘’It would make our ship that much more versatile and may in fact make it unique in terms of cargo delivery abilities. Imagine if we could be able to drop directly on

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the surface of a deserted moon or asteroid complete habitat modules. Contracts would then come to us like iron to a magnet.’’

‘’A most interesting thought indeed.’’ said Piotr approvingly, seeing at once the commercial potential of such a ship capability. ‘’However, let’s not spend already money we have not earned yet.’’

‘’Well said, Piotr!’’ replied Tina. ‘’Well, now that our loading and unloading is completed, I better return on the bridge, so that we could get on our way.’’

Letting the two others go their own way, Tina took an elevator cabin up to the bridge complex, where she sat in her command chair. As she was giving a string of orders to undock her ship from the spaceport, Ingrid Holtz turned her head towards Tina, seated a few paces away from her communications and sensors station.

‘’Tina, I have an incoming call for you from Mister Karl Langemann, the CEO of the Vesta Consortium.’’

‘’Transfer it on my chair’s screen number two, Ingrid.’’ said at once Tina, wondering why such a rich and powerful man would contact her directly. The head and torso of a Caucasian man in his fifties then appeared on one of her three visual screens. Langemann appeared somber.

‘’Captain Forster, I am glad I could contact you before your departure. I wanted to convey to you my best wishes for a safe trip for you and your crew and passengers.’’

‘’I thank you for that, Mister Langemann. We will take good care of your metal and should be able to deliver it to Earth in fifteen days.’’

‘’That would indeed be a speedy delivery, Captain Forster.’’ said the multi-billionaire before becoming most serious. ‘’The other thing I wanted to tell you was that I had discreetly asked the Terran Customs Navy’s regional commander for an escort ship for your trip to Earth. Unfortunately, he turned down my request, citing as a pretext a lack of available ships. I have my doubts about that pretext but didn’t insist, in order not to attract undue attention to your ship and cargo. The only thing that I can tell you now is to be careful during your trip, Captain Forster. Tens of thousands of space miners have worked hard to mine and refine that metal ore.’’

‘’I will exercise the utmost caution during my trip, Mister Langemann. Thank you for your warning.’’

‘’Then, I will not take more of your time and wish you a good trip, Captain Forster.’’

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‘’Thank you again, Mister Langemann. KOSTROMA out!’’ Closing the video link, Tina then sat back in her command chair and thought hard for a moment. Langemann, while appearing to be only mildly concerned, had in fact seemed to her like he had wanted to convey some very serious misgivings. Her mind went at once to what she knew of the regional commander of the Terran Customs Navy in the Vesta Sector. Rear Admiral Sanjit Parwan was widely said among Spacer merchant captains to have attained his present position through political favors rather than merit. There were even rumors that he was susceptible to bribes, a charge that could in fact be laid against many officers of the Terran Customs Navy. The TCN, while not exactly despised by Spacers, did not attract much respect either, and that for many reasons. Its officers and crews were too often arrogant towards the merchant ship crews they stopped for inspection and were seen to be more interested in levying as much customs fees and taxes as they could instead of doing an honest job of regulating and protecting Space traffic. The level and quality of training of the TCN crews was also often spotty, varying widely according to the competence and energy of individual TCN ship captains. The fact that the TCN recruited its junior ratings and officers strictly from Earth instead of from the Spacers population, in order to ensure their loyalty towards the Terran government, had a lot to do with that. With this in her mind, Tina understood why Langemann was worried: he had to ask for an armed escort ship for such a valuable cargo, but obviously didn’t put much trust in Rear Admiral Parwan’s competence or even honesty. If Parwan decided to sell to criminals the information about the cargo on the KOSTROMA, then her trip to Earth could indeed become quite hazardous.

Tina put those thoughts in the back of her mind for the next hour, time for her ship to maneuver away from Vesta and fire its main drive at low power to start a cautious path to Earth through the Main Asteroid Belt. Once the KOSTROMA was underway on its pre-calculated trajectory, Tina told Frida Skarsgard, Dana Durning and Ingrid Holtz to come with her to the small conference room adjacent to the bridge, then called by intercom Rose Tillman, Denise Lonsdale and Bill Morrison to ask them to join her in the bridge conference room. Last but not least, she spoke with the ship’s main computer, nicknamed ‘Spirit’, a machine with a very high level of artificial intelligence and with access to all the ship’s databanks.

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‘’Spirit, this is the Captain. I am about to start a command staff meeting in the bridge conference room. I want you to listen in on that meeting and be ready to provide data as needed, as well as any suggestions from you.’’

‘’With pleasure, Captain.’’ replied simply the female voice which personified the main computer.

With that done, Tina rose from her command chair and went to join the others in the conference room.

23:47 (Universal Time)

Thursday, March 11, 2315

Bridge of the MSS KOSTROMA

Main Asteroid Belt

Renée D’Argenteuil had taken only minutes ago her post as the night watch duty pilot and bridge officer, along with four other duty crewmembers, when Anwar Duharto, the duty sensors specialist, frowned while staring at one of his display screens.

‘’Renée, we have just been swept by a long range radar pulse. The problem is that there are no known registered space installations or ships in this sector within normal maximum range of a D-band radar.’’

‘’Oh? From where did it come from?’’

‘’From our port bow area, bearing 310, elevation 064. Unfortunately, this type of D-band radar is very common as a long range sensor on many merchant and TCN ship classes.’’

‘’What do our optical and infra-red sensors see on that bearing?’’

‘’Nothing, except for a small asteroid we were due to pass by at a separation distance of approximately 28,000 kilometers.’’

Renée thought over that information for a moment. The KOSTROMA was presently in the space coasting mode, with its main fusion drive lit but on idle. They were moving at a relatively slow pace, in order to safely navigate through the dispersed asteroids in this part of the Main Belt. Any space installation in this sector would have by law to have registered with the TCN, so that its position could be added to the navigation charts published by the Navy and used by all the ships in the Solar System. As well, any ship flying through would have had, like the KOSTROMA, to file a flight plan with the TCN local space traffic control center. Whatever had generated that radar pulse was thus

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technically in violation of space navigation regulations. With the directives received from Tina Forster following the staff meeting of three days ago still in her mind, Renée decided to call the Captain in her cabin. Tina answered on the third buzz in a sleepy voice, having been apparently already asleep in bed.

‘’Yes, Renée?’’

‘’Captain, we have just been swept by a radar from an unregistered ship or space installation. The problem is that there should be nothing but us in this sector right now.’’ Tina took a deep breath to wake up fully, then nodded her head.

‘’I’m on my way to the bridge. Keep a close eye on that radar source in the meantime.’’

‘’Understood, Captain!’’

Three minutes after closing the intercom link, Renée got another report from Anwar, this time in an alarmed tone of voice.

‘’I now have a fusion drive flare signature from the direction of that asteroid.’’ A mere second later, the duty communications specialist, Minh Wa Hien, reported as well to Renée.

‘’I have an incoming call on the short range inter-ship frequency.’’

‘’Switch it to my station, Hien.’’

What Renée got was an audio link with no video picture.

‘’MSS KOSTROMA, this is the Terran Customs Navy frigate TIBERIUS. We intend to rendezvous and board you for a customs inspection. Acknowledge, over.’’ Renée didn’t answer at once, nor did she activate her own video link, instead analyzing the information she had to date. Why would the TCN first pretend that it had no ships available to escort the KOSTROMA, then position a frigate to intercept it in the middle of nowhere for a customs inspection? It didn’t make sense. Tina Forster then walked in briskly on the bridge, her hair still disheveled but her eyes alert.

‘’Report! What do we have here?’’

Renée resumed quickly what had happened up to now, finishing just as a second call came in.

‘’MSS KOSTROMA, this is the Terran Customs Navy frigate TIBERIUS. I say again, heave to and be ready to be boarded for a customs inspection, over.’’ Tina’s face showed immediate skepticism on hearing the call.

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‘’A customs inspection, now and here, after they refused us an escort ship? No way! Mister Duharto, point our main forward optical telescope on that ship: let’s recognize it the old-fashioned way.’’

‘’Yes Captain!’’

Pointing and focusing the powerful optical telescope of the KOSTROMA, an instrument which would have made an astronomical observatory proud, took a few seconds. The ship that then showed on the main viewing screen still appeared small but its silhouette was clearly defined, making Tina swear angrily.

‘’That’s no TCN frigate! It looks more like a medium cargo ship. Spirit, search your databanks and try to identify this ship!’’

Being an advanced Quantum machine using massive parallel data processing, Spirit gave an answer within a fraction of a second.

‘’Approaching ship identified as an ORION-class merchant cargo ship. Further detailed identification pending more detailed view of the ship as it will get closer.’’

‘’Thank you, Spirit.’’ replied Tina. ‘’An ORION-class cargo ship…’’ Thinking furiously for a moment, she then gave a quick series of orders.

‘’Renée, take back the pilot seat and give me the command chair! Hien, sound the ship’s general alarm! Call the crew to emergency stations: Situation Papa! Then tell all the passengers to stay in their cabins or, if out of them, to return to them at once and don their emergency life suits. However, they are not, I say again, not to go to the life pods. Spirit, lock all the life pod access hatches until further order: nobody boards a life pod until I say so.’’

‘’Understood, Captain.’’ replied the main computer’s voice. ‘’All life pod access hatches now locked and under central control.’’

Tina did not have time to give more orders before the intense blue ray of a high-power laser cut across the KOSTROMA’s path and a third call was heard.

‘’MSS KOSTROMA, heave to and be ready to be boarded, now! If you do not answer or try to flee, we will fire again.’’

‘’Let me answer that, Hien.’’ said urgently Tina, now sitting in her command chair. Thinking quickly about her answer, she then adopted a near-panicked tone of voice to reply to the call.

‘’Damn it, TIBERIUS, give us a chance to respond: we were in the middle of a night watch rotation!’’

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‘’Well, next time be more on the ball, KOSTROMA.’’ was the harsh response. ‘’You will keep coasting as you are now doing and will prepare to receive an inspection team via your port passenger boarding airlock.’’

‘’Understood, TIBERIUS. We will be ready.’’

Tina, knowing that she was now playing a very risky game, disconnected the ambient microphone of her command chair and put on quickly an ear microphone while giving orders.

‘’Be sharp, people: we are now more than probably facing an armed pirate ship. We will proceed according to our Plan Alpha. Spirit, start from now on to carefully compute the approach trajectory of this ORION-class ship. Advise me when it will be inside the target zone.’’

‘’Understood, Captain.’’

‘’Excellent!’’ said Tina before looking at the other crewmembers present on the bridge. ‘’PUT ON YOUR SPACESUITS, HALF OF US AT A TIME!’’ Tina stayed in her command chair while Renée D’Argenteuil quickly put on her spacesuit, kept like those of the others in a small locker room adjacent to the bridge. Once Renée was suited up and back at her station, Tina ran herself to the locker room and hurried into her spacesuit. That took her a good four minutes despite her beating her past record time for that task. When she returned to her command chair, she saw that the approaching ship was now much closer. The voice of Spirit came to her earpiece as she was sitting down.

‘’Captain, further identification now possible. There is a 93 percent probability that the ship approaching us is the MSS RISING STAR, slightly modified from its original registry standard.’’

Tina’s face hardened at those words.

‘’The ship of Uncle Peter…’’

She threw a hateful look at the image of the approaching ship: those aboard had most probably murdered her uncle and his whole crew after capturing the RISING STAR. Her resolve to not surrender her ship and its occupants only grew harder. Using the internal communications system, she called her head of security.

‘’Bill, this is Tina. The ship approaching us now is, or rather was, the RISING STAR, the ship of my uncle Peter. It is armed with at least high-power lasers and is trying to pass off as a TCN frigate, the TIBERIUS. Whatever happens, we will not let them take the ship without a fight. If we surrender or let them board, then we can expect

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to be all slaughtered without mercy afterwards. Be ready to use deadly force against any boarder if they try coming by the Promenade Deck port passenger airlock.’’

‘’We will be ready for them, Tina.’’ replied Bill Morrison after a short delay. Tina nodded to herself and continued to observe the approach of the other ship.

On the ex-RISING STAR, the man occupying the command chair made a mean smile as the KOSTROMA grew on the display screens, still coasting in space.

‘’They seem to have bought our lies. Mind you, the crew of that big mother didn’t sound too hot. This should be quite easy.’’

‘’But it is one big mother, boss.’’ replied another man sitting at a converted station nearby which controlled the ship’s armament. ‘’I am not even sure that our lasers could do much damage against the thick skin of that ship.’’

‘’Bah! We still have our electro-magnetic rail guns and our missiles. Besides, they don’t have any weapons. The most we can fear is some small arms fire when we board it, but we have ample firepower on our side to deal with that. They, on the other hand, have to worry about the safety of a couple thousands passengers. Unless their captain is totally nuts, we will not encounter any resistance…until it is too late for all of them.’’

Another pirate manning the navigator’s station looked at his leader with a fake worried look.

‘’Hey, you’re not planning to kill the pretty ones as well, boss?’’ The pirate leader laughed.

‘’Do I look that stupid, Carver?’’

The man at the communications station seemed to concentrate for a moment as he listened to an incoming call, then smiled at his leader.

‘’Boss, someone aboard that big whale finally woke up: they are at last questioning our identity.’’

‘’It took them that long? Man, they are even thicker than I hoped for! Tell them to shut up, lay still and let us board, or we will start carving them out with lasers and missiles. Be ready to jam the long range ship radio frequency, in case they try to call for help.’’

As the communicator obeyed him, the pirate leader eyed the KOSTROMA’s huge bulk, as seen through a viewing screen.

‘’Easy billions… I can already taste a nice, comfortable retirement.’’

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On the KOSTROMA, Tina Forster was watching intensely the approach of the pirate ship, now only a few kilometers away and maneuvering with the help of its gravity sails. The voice of the ship’s main computer came on as the ex-RISING STAR got within 400 meters and was level with the KOSTROMA’s bow section.

‘’Approaching ship now in the target zone, Captain.’’

‘’Very well! Renée, be ready with our main fusion drive, as discussed before. Spirit, you now have ship attitude control for the next few seconds. Fire at will!’’ The KOSTROMA’s huge mass then started rotating around its longitudinal and pitch axis in small but carefully calculated moves. The first life pod launch tube cover then flew open and the eight-ton life pod inside it blew out, accelerating at a rate of 35 meters per second square under the power of its solid rocket booster motor.

On the pirate ship, the launch in rapid succession of at least five life pods drew at first an incredulous look from the man at the weapons control station.

‘’What the… These idiots are abandoning ship!’’

The pirate captain thought the same thing at first but changed his mind when he realized with a pang of panic that all the life pods launched from the KOSTROMA were in fact coming straight at his ship.

‘’SHIT! THEY ARE FIRING THEIR PODS AT US! EVASIVE ACT…’’ The first life pod, an ovoid-shaped armored steel shell with a mass of eight metric tons and built to withstand the tremendous pressures and temperatures of even Venus’ hellish atmosphere, then slammed at a velocity of over a hundred meters per second in the aluminum alloy hull plating of the pirate ship while still under rocket motor boost. The collision, equivalent to the impact of a medium truck slamming at a speed of over 400 kilometers per hour, breached the hull plating, with the mass of the life pod continuing through to buckle and rip open the internal bulkhead, causing a massive explosive decompression. The impact also jarred and shook severely the ship, throwing it out of its previous axis and ruining the aim of the pirates’ weapons. Before any pirate could react, four more life pods slammed at point-blank range in their ship, ripping open to space a number of compartments and causing extensive damage. A second volley of five life pods followed a mere two seconds later, further adding to the damage and mayhem. One of the life pod impacts even took out the pirates’ missile launch box,

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retrofitted two years ago in an improvised spaceyard, while another impact wiped out the forty man-strong pirate boarding party waiting inside the main airlock.

Inside the pirate ship’s bridge, the first impacts threw the pirate leader, who had not buckled his seat harness out of overconfidence, out of his command chair. With a bleeding forehead from banging his head against a nearby control station and with his left ribs hurting like hell, he got laboriously back on his feet while grimacing with pain, then threw an angry look at the KOSTROMA’s image. His angry look changed to one of utter terror when he saw that the big cargo ship’s four forward fusion drive exhaust nozzles, each one with a diameter of twenty meters, were now pointed straight at his ship. The image from his external cameras then filled for a fraction of a second with blinding light before going dark, the cameras having being melted by the million plus degrees centigrade of the fusion plasma jets.

On the bridge of the KOSTROMA, Tina Forster watched with cold satisfaction as the pirate ship was enveloped completely by the plasma exhaust from her ship’s fusion drive, now at full retro thrust power. The KOSTROMA’s forward tractor beam generators were also powered up, immobilizing the pirate ship relative to the cargo ship and preventing it from emerging out of the hot plasma cloud. After about six seconds, large blobs of molten metal and other materials started streaming out, but she kept her engines on for another thirty seconds. When she put back her engines to idle, ready to power them back on if need be, there was only a large, shapeless mass of white hot metal left in space in front of the KOSTROMA.

‘’Justice has been done.’’ she said quietly to herself as her bridge crew cheered wildly around her.

Zara Varanian had been asleep in her cabin when the howl of the ship’s alarm had brutally awakened her. Disoriented at first and unsure what to do, she had taken nearly a minute just to remember where she had put the emergency life suit leased to her with her cabin. Fortunately, putting on that life suit had been child’s play. Conceived as an emergency vacuum suit for passengers who didn’t own their own spacesuits, it resembled once pressurized a big egg from which jutted out two short tubular legs and two gloved arms. Unpressurized, it was not much more than a flat metallic backpack to which was attached a flabby suit made of layered fabrics and polymer, the whole thing

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crowned by a detachable and transparent helmet wide enough to let a person slip into the suit via the opened helmet. The thing was somewhat crude-looking but had the benefit of being able to fit various sizes of persons without being custom-fitted. It was also relatively inexpensive and very simple to use. What Zara thought of it now as she nervously waited, sitting in her lounge with her executive secretary and her dressing lady, both wearing as well emergency life suits, was that she looked utterly ridiculous in that contraption. She also was starting to think that, maybe, she should have put on the adult diaper which came with the emergency suit, instead of dismissing it as being too embarrassing.

As she waited with her two employees in her lounge, an emergency message, along with a repeating video showing how to put on an emergency life suit, was displayed on the large flat screen of her entertainment unit. It still said to all passengers to stay in their cabins and to refrain from trying to contact the crew to ask them questions, but Zara grew furiously tempted to call somebody as the minutes passed. The muffled noise and shakes from multiple life pod ejections about twenty minutes after the start of the alert made her sit up nervously in her sofa.

‘’Now, what the hell was that?’’

Her two employees didn’t answer, themselves not understanding what was going on. The answer came however after another two minutes, when the howl of the ship’s alarm stopped and the image of Captain Forster sitting in her command chair replaced the instructions on the screen of the entertainment unit.

‘’May I have your attention, please. This is the Captain speaking. I am sorry for the inconveniences of the last half hour but our ship had to evade a collision with an unexpected space obstacle. The problem has however been resolved and all danger is now gone. You may take off your emergency life suits now and return to sleep or to your previous activities. Again, I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. I will ask you however to repack your emergency life suits and store them back in their lockers, ready for any future use. Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen.’’

‘’A space obstacle? Does she mean an asteroid?’’ asked the executive secretary. Zara nodded slowly her head at that.

‘’Probably that, or a piece of space debris of some kind. I heard that there are millions of uncharted space debris floating around, from garbage containers to broken

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ship hulls. Colliding with one of them would definitely be bad for us. Thank God that our ship’s crew seems to be on the ball. Well, let’s get out of these ugly plastic eggs, girls.’’ Her employees were too happy to comply, having found the experience a bit claustrophobic. On her part, Zara let her dressing lady repack her emergency life suit for her and went back to bed after a quick visit to the bathroom.

With the alarm terminated and her message of reassurance given to her passengers, Tina sat back in her command chair and thought about how to handle this incident with the space authorities. Complicating her decision process was the fact that she was now sure that someone, either from the Vesta Corporation or from the TCN, possibly Rear Admiral Parwan himself, had leaked her flight plan to those pirates. How else could they have been able to ambush her ship so precisely in the vastness of space? That Parwan had refused to provide an armed escort ship for such a valuable cargo load tended to make Tina believe that the leak came from the TCN. However, by law she had to report fully on this incident to the TCN. For one thing, she now had twelve empty life pod launch tubes to refurbish and refill, something she would have to explain in detail anyway. Finally taking a decision, she rose from her chair and went to pat Renée D’Argenteuil on the shoulder.

‘’You have the bridge back, Renée. I am going to my day cabin to start writing my report on this incident. In the meantime, make four copies of all the relevant sensors, communications and video logs, ready to be attached to my report.’’

‘’Four copies, Tina?’’

‘’Yes! One for the ship’s logs, one for Karl Langemann’s eyes only at the Vesta Consortium, one for the Jovian Shipping Lines space operations center and one for the central command of the Terran Customs Navy on Earth. The message will be classified ‘Urgent’, but we will send the copy for the TCN two hours after the other copies. Advise our supply officer as well to secure in advance twelve replacement life pod from Earth, to be installed once we are docked at the Las Americas spaceport.’’

‘’Got it!’’

With a million things on her mind, Tina walked out of the bridge proper by a door connecting it to her day cabin, a small suite that allowed her to rest or work in private while staying close to her bridge’s command chair. Wording her report on what was going to be the first official pirate attack in a hundred plus years was going to prove a delicate job. For one thing, she was not sure how the Terran authorities would react to

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her utter destruction of that ship and the killing of its crew, especially if someone in the TCN had an interest in hiding the existence of these pirates. After all, if there had been one pirate ship, there could well be others still hiding around the Main Asteroid Belt and bribing people into silence. Hell, there could even be a whole pirate base hiding out there! Her report could very well unleash a storm of reactions, both official and unofficial, some possibly hostile towards her. With a cargo of rare metals worth over 140 billion credits, some very powerful people could have had their hands dipping in the jar.

02:16 (Universal Time)

Friday, March 12, 2315

Residence of Karl Langemann

Kirkland, Vesta asteroid.

‘’Sir! Sir! Wake up, please!’’

‘’Uh?’’ said groggily Karl Langemann, waking up slowly in his bed. Finally able to focus his eyes in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, he saw that his principal aide, Agneta Braun, was bent over his bed. Many forked tongues pretended, in Langemann’s back of course, that the beautiful blonde in her late thirties was in reality his mistress, but in truth she was the one member of his personal staff whom he trusted completely. She was also a highly intelligent and competent woman of strong character, able to take hard decisions quickly when needed. If Agneta had decided that he needed to be awakened in the middle of the night, then it must have been for a truly urgent matter.

‘’What is it, Agneta?’’

‘’We just received an urgent message from the KOSTROMA, sir, eyes only for you.’’

‘’Did you read it?’’

‘’Yes sir! The KOSTROMA is safe, but it just repelled a pirate attack while still inside the Main Belt. The pirates were lying in ambush for the KOSTROMA but Captain Forster was able to destroy the pirate ship in a rather surprising way.’’ The words ‘pirates’ and ‘ambush’ finished waking up fully Karl Langemann, who swung his legs out of bed and sat up.

‘’Damn! Somebody leaked the KOSTROMA’s route and cargo manifest. Alright, where is this message?’’

‘’It is on your personal computer, sir. I already opened the message for you.’’

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‘’Well done, Agneta! Give me a few minutes to read it. I will certainly have directives for you afterwards.’’

‘’Understood, sir. Would you like a cup of coffee while reading that message?’’

‘’It would be most welcomed, Agneta.’’

The industrialist then got up and put on his favorite robe and slippers before walking out of his bedroom and into his private study. Sitting behind his work desk, he started reading at once the message shown on his computer’s screen. Next, he watched the multiple audio-visual recordings attached to Forster’s report, nodding in appreciation at the way she had dealt with the pirate ship: there was a young woman of merit. A maid delivered to him a coffee service as he was halfway through the viewing and he sipped with content on a hot cup that finished waking him fully. Eight minutes later, he sat back in his swivel chair, feeling a mix of relief and anger. Relief that the KOSTROMA and its precious cargo were safe. Anger at the one who had informed the pirates of the cargo ship’s route. His mind went nearly immediately to Rear Admiral Parwan: the man was at best an incompetent idiot, unwilling or unable to do his job properly, or at worst an accomplice to piracy, a crime he was sworn to prevent from happening and which rated the death penalty. Langemann did not however forget that many other actors may be at play here and that he would need to cover all the bases if he wanted to ensure his personal safety and the financial freedom of his consortium. Pushing a button got the ever ready Agneta Braun to step inside his study and walk to his work desk, stopping in a nearly military posture.

‘’Yes, Mister Langemann?’’

‘’We need to find how and by whom the KOSTROMA’s itinerary and schedule were leaked to those pirates. Don’t spare the means or the money to find that out, Agneta. Also, I will need to know if the good Rear Admiral Parwan has any dirty little secret of his own. This affair now has top priority.’’

‘’It will be done, sir.’’

‘’One last thing: have an extra ten million credits wired to Captain Forster and tell her that it is a reward for her and her crew for a job very well done.’’

‘’Understood, sir.’’ replied calmly Braun before turning around and leaving the study. Now alone, Karl Langemann wondered how many other pirates existed in the Main Belt. If piracy ever became a serious and widespread problem, it would have the potential of strangling space commerce, raising dramatically insurance fees for shipping

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and discouraging space tourism. That would definitely be disastrous for all Spacers and not only for himself.