Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (35 page)

“What?” Clyde
replied. “I came here peacefully!”

“I don’t care,”
Ayan said. “You expected to meet a dictator when you came here, but
overlooked a more likely possibility. That is, that you’d be
meeting a military leader, and that’s what I am. This is a military
complex, representing a larger military organization. I’m marking
you and everyone you came with as a threat, and I’m going to start
sending nano-trackers into Port Rush right now. This is your fault,
Mister Dominic. If I see someone trying to stop people from
approaching our settlement here with force, evidence of
slave-trading, or any other crime within our reach, I’m going to do
my best to stop it.”

“You can’t be the
law down here, even the Carthans can’t be the law down here,”
Clyde replied.

“Watch me,” Ayan
replied.

Clyde started turning
away, towards the elevator doors, and Ayan stopped him. “What I
don’t understand is why you didn’t approach us with the intention
of creating a trade alliance. That tells me a lot about your type of
business.” She pulled a full meal ration bar and tossed it to him.

He caught it after it
bounced off his chest and looked at it. “What’s this?”

“A free meal, thanks
for listening,” she said, and turned towards her father, who was
suppressing a smile. She heard the elevator doors open, boots
stepping into the car and was relieved when she heard the doors
close.

“That went well,”
Carl Anderson said. He tapped the comm unit on his arm a few times
and nodded. “I’m just making sure everyone who Clyde brought with
him is getting a copy of that conversation.”

“What was the real
point of that?” Ayan said, walking to her little cordoned off space
and parting the curtains.

“They’re sizing you
up,” Lacey said. “That’s the only reason I can see. Sure, he
had his points, but they were pretty weak when you think about it.”

“There’s obviously
a criminal element involved here,” Carl Anderson agreed. “Port
Rush has been on its own for a long time, law has come and gone, and
no one is really afraid to do as they like. Just the rate of
rejection here is evidence enough of that. We kicked out twenty eight
percent of people on their first day for theft and assault.”

“I know,” Ayan
said. “So they’re trying to put me up as some monarch, single me
out.”

“It looks like,”
Lacey replied.

“Then I’ll share
leadership. I’ll elevate you as an equal, Lacey, and we’ll find a
few more people who could be good officers under us.”

“What?” Lacey
asked, agog. “I’ve never served as an officer. I’ve never even
applied for the military.”

“Don’t worry,”
Ayan said. “There are a lot of responsibilities I can share with
you that you’re already good at. Not much will change except for
accommodation allowance and your pay.”

“In that case, sign
me up,” Lacey replied. “Just make sure I’m one of those filing
officers, in a non-combat post.”

“A logistical
management position,” Carl said.

“Exactly,” Lacey
affirmed. “That’s the kind of thing I’m good at.”

“I know, that’s why
I love having your around,” Ayan said. “And why you’ll make a
great commander on A Station.”

“Yup, and my first
official duty will be to find a new name for this place. A Station is
so-“

“Military?” Carl
replied.

“Well, yes.”

Ayan brought up the
holodisplay for the manufacturing centre in the upper floors of the
base and checked on one of their only mass fabricators. The next item
in the fabrication queue was body panels for a new hover truck. “All
right, one more thing before I pass out,” she said. “Should I
actually follow through with this nano tracking threat?”

“Yes,” Lacey said
without hesitation.

“No, go bigger,”
her father said.

“See? This is why I’m
only good for logistics,” Lacey said, smiling at Carl.

“Bigger?” Ayan
asked.

“Have our fighter
squadron patrol in low orbit, use scanners to capture everything as
it happens in Port Rush. We’ll task Crewcast to recognize serious
crime. I can take care of enforcement with the Rangers and a few
Triton Regulars if you’ll authorize them.”

“That is simpler then
sending thousands of nanobot watchers out, and cheaper,” Ayan said.
“I must be tired, I should have caught that.”

“Still, your threat
is going to make them pretty paranoid. They’ll have nano-zappers
out by morning,” Carl said. “Now, you should both get some
sleep.”

“Absolutely,” Lacey
said.

Ayan hugged her father
on his way to the door and was closing the curtain around her cot
before he got to the elevator.

“You still impress
me, Ayan,” Lacey said as she started settling in for the night on
her side of the curtain.

“Thank you,” Ayan
said. “I wouldn’t make you a commander if I didn’t think you
would do well. You’ll be great.”

“Thank you,” Lacey
replied. The pair were quiet as they got undressed and slipped into
their cots. “Ayan, I’m wondering something.”

“What’s that?”
Ayan asked

“Are you really going
to make this your quarters?”

“Absolutely not,”
Ayan said, stifling a yawn. “I’m going to move down to a cabin or
something as soon as there’s room.”

“That might not be
for a while.”

“I’m sure the new
head of Logistics will figure something out,” Ayan replied, smiling
to herself.

“That’s me, isn’t
it?” Lacey asked.

“Yes it is,
Commander.”

Training

“I’m telling you,
we’ve got this!” Remmy shouted into his comm. He was torso deep
in the main lines leading from engineering to the bridge of a
Harbinger Regent Galactic ship. It was a destroyer class, over seven
hundred metres long, and armed to the teeth.

“You’re taking too
long!” Alice replied, helping her team weld another set of blast
doors closed. “There’s another anti-incursion team on the way. We
should just blow the charges around the reactor and take the nearest
airlock, the Warlord is waiting.”

“If I get this, we
can take the ship!” Remmy replied.

“Just give him
another minute, I’ve seen him neutralize the core of an Order of
Eden bunker,” replied one of his Ranger team, a tall blonde
creature named Nanette that was always on Remmy’s side. “This is
easy compared to that.”

Several bone rattling
thuds announced the impacts of explosive rounds against the blast
door Alice was almost finished welding shut. “Back!” she ordered
her team. “Take cover and watch for any sign that they’re trying
to go around.” The Warlord boarding crew that had been placed under
her command, a group of thirteen experienced soldiers, obeyed her
orders and took positions around the broad hallway. Several of them
held up the deck plates they pulled up to access the main trunk line
for portable cover, and formed a half-circle around the hole Remmy
worked in.

“Explosives
detected,” Alice announced as she highlighted the wall beside the
blast door. “Get ready to hit them hard as soon as they come
through.” She glanced at Remmy as she readied a thermal grenade.
Why she was trusting his judgement over her own instincts, she would
never know.

The wall burst through,
sending a wave of heat and shrapnel over the Rangers and her boarding
team. Together they were twenty-eight, the Ranger team under the
command of Remmy, and the Warlord team under her command. Some of
their energy shields were partially depleted thanks to the blast, a
few that were too close had been knocked down, but they came through
it fine. Alice and two others lobbed grenades through the ragged
opening, and just as her tactical sensors counted fifteen
anti-incursion soldiers, the grenades detonated.

The enemy was in
cheaper armour, and didn’t fare well against the heavy grenades,
losing six of their number in the detonation.

“God dammit! I just
had it! I was just connected!” Remmy shouted up from his hole.
“Just keep the deck steady for ten seconds and I’ll have control
of communications, navigations, the whole thing.”

Another incursion team
appeared on her tactical monitor, coming in through an airlock only
thirty metres behind them. “Ganjavi, get a trap ready in this
corridor, we need to blow it as soon as that secondary group comes
through,” she ordered, highlighting the short hallway leading to
the airlock and a number of escape pods.

“Aye!” he replied,
running towards his objective.

The first incursion
team started firing through their improvised door. The Rangers and
the Warlord teams returned fire, immediately pressing the enemy back.
Alice could see there were more soldiers gathering on the other side,
however. “We’re going to be overrun unless you do something now,
Remmy!”

“I got it!” Remmy
shouted back. The lights flickered, and emergency doors slammed shut,
one nearly cutting Hooman Ganjavi in half. “Sonofabitch!” He
shouted, barely stopping in time.

“Do you have the
slave frequency synced up with the Warlord?” Alice asked.

“One sec!” Remmy
said, shutting down the ship’s reactor completely. It would take
half an hour for it to restart, leaving the destroyer defenceless in
the meantime. “The uplink is good, the Warlord has control of the
ship.”

The simulation ended,
and Alice disengaged from the training system. It always took her a
moment to remember where she was after a mind-show like that. They
were in a lounge with an extremely low ceiling, a space that was
really improvised with the redesign of the ship with salvaged seating
and makeshift tables. It was right below the main crew quarters.
Alice could stand up straight in the space, but few others could.
“Fine, you win, good strategy,” Alice told Remmy, looking down at
him where he stretched in his seat.

Only six others shared
the space with them; the rest of the people participating in the
simulation were doing so from their bunks. “It’s not about
winning,” Remmy said. “And if it were, we both would have won.
You held the position long enough for me to finish the uplink.”

“He’s right,
Alice,” Stephanie Vega said, removing the small uplink patch from
her forehead. “You’re getting better at coordinating a team, and
you’re even improving when you’re not the leader, but you have to
accept that this isn’t a competition. That kind of mindset will get
people killed in a real situation.”

“I know,” Alice
said. “I let Remmy finish his plan, right? I get it.”

“You did, and that’s
something, but we’re getting our teams together so we can pursue
more than one course of action when it’s called for,” Stephanie
replied, her tone level and non-confrontational. “It’s not about
letting the other commander do their thing, it’s about
coordinating. For a little while there you had a chance to plant your
explosives around the reactor while Remmy set up in the trunk lines.
If you’d coordinated a little more, you’d have multiple
contingencies in place, ready just in case Remmy’s plan fell
through. If that happened, you’d be all set to leave the ship
immediately, saving the lives of your people, then you could blow the
reactor, disabling the destroyer, too. Instead, you took an
‘either-or’ stance and reduced your chances of successfully
completing the operation.”

Alice couldn’t think
of anything non-argumentative to say, so she quietly pulled her
interface patch off and nodded.

“I’m sorry if it
sounds like I’m brow-beating you,” Stephanie said, laying a hand
on her shoulder. “I just want you to get as much as you can out of
these sessions because I know you could be a really important part of
the team on the Warlord. I hope you still want to be.”

“Honestly? I think
I’d rather be solo again, but someone signed the ownership of my
ship away,” Alice replied without thinking. She was letting her
irritation speak for her. What Stephanie was saying was probably
right, and she did want to be a part of the team, but she felt like
she couldn’t do anything right lately, and being on her own was a
compelling alternative. “Wouldn’t it be better if the Clever
Dream were here? I did fine on my own, even in the battle of Port
Rush. I can captain her no problem, and what good is my ship doing in
Haven Shore, anyway?”

“You were killed on
that battlefield, Alice,” Stephanie said. “You can’t trust that
your cybernetics will save you every time. I want you to come back in
one piece, and working with a team makes that easier. That’s why
the captain put you in my command chain, so you could benefit from my
team’s experience.”

Remmy cleared his
throat. He was smirking; all this must have been pretty entertaining
to him.

“The Rangers are
learning as much as they’re teaching,” Stephanie said. “Your
performance wasn’t perfect in there either, Remmy. We can go over
that later.”

“Sounds good,”
Remmy said, looking a little less pleased with himself.

“You’re constantly
improving, Alice,” Stephanie said. “That’s what matters.”

Despite the
reassurance, Alice didn’t feel like hearing any more, and she was
also tired of Remmy. If there was a combat sim going on, he was
already in there any way he could be, and his weird choice of ancient
entertainment drew crowds in the mess hall during down time. There
was just no getting away from him. “Thank you, Commander Vega,”
Alice said. “All right if I take a walk?”

“Sure, I’ll keep
you company part way, I’m headed to the officer’s mess,”
Stephanie replied.

Alice made for the
door, Stephanie right behind her, irked that they were going in the
same direction. “I didn’t know it was finished.”

“There are a few
chairs and some improvised tables,” Stephanie said. They walked in
silence for a few moments before she broke the silence. “I’m not
kidding when I say you’ve been improving. Your situational
awareness is higher than most of the people I’ve worked with in the
last few years. You keep track of your team, the enemy. and the
details of the mission really well.”