Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (44 page)

Anyone with experience
had to go on a boarding team. Everyone who was assigned to protect
the Warlord in the event that it was boarded or there was a security
problem had training for those contingencies, but they weren’t the
most experienced group. Before the shuffle, Alice was third in
command of the counter-incursion team. After the changes, she was the
commander. First Officer Stephanie Vega officially bumped her rank up
to sergeant and gave her the roster. There were twenty-eight people
under her command, all watchmen and watchwomen with the right
training for their assignment. Half of them had other duties, like
loading munitions or damage control, but that was to be expected.

Alice watched at her
station, a seat to the left of the bridge command chair with three
small holographic projectors and a narrow wall of screen space, as
her fourteen dedicated counter-insurgence officers patrolled key
points of the ship, and the rest of them worked at their regular
stations in other areas.

“That’s the last of
the crew quarters, Sarge,” reported Nesh, one of the older members
of her counter-insurgence security team. “They’re all checked and
locked down.”

“Good, just a
precaution,” Alice replied. “Don’t want to give anyone on the
wrong side more room for cover.”

“Yeah, makes sense,
good thinking.”

“Thank you,” Alice
replied. Nesh Samo was an experienced soldier who worked security for
over a decade in Valero, a super-city on Precious, one of the major
core worlds. Nesh was much more experienced and qualified by far, but
she was new to the crew. She fell in step and listened to orders
faster than most under Alice’s new command, which spoke volumes
about the woman’s professionalism.

“How is it going?”
Jake asked quietly as he stopped to stand behind her.

“Good, I’m having
all non-essential compartments closed and secured. No one will be
able to get in until this is over.”

“Good thinking,”
Jake said. “Are we okay?”

“With the medical
thing? Yeah,” Alice said, as convincingly as she could manage.
She’d put much of it out of her immediate thoughts, a task made
easier thanks to her new assignment. “It’s not your fault I’m
made the way I am, it’s just a lot to take in.”

“I’ll take you no
matter what shape you’re in,” Jake said quietly. “You’ll
always be my daughter.”

“Thanks,” Alice
smiled back. It was a small bridge, and she knew at least a third of
the bridge was overhearing their whispered conversation, including
Frost, who was sitting in the command seat, making a point of not
looking at the father and daughter duo to his left. “Am I missing
any tricks from what you can see?” she asked, nodding at her
station.

Jake looked at the
displays for a moment. “I’d tie in with Kadri and have her run a
signal detection program.”

“Yup, already taken
care of. I’m tracking it on my comm unit already,” Alice replied.

“Good,” Jake said.
“Then the only thing I’d do is priority seal the galley so only
the medical staff can open it, and lock all the non-essential storage
compartments down. Should keep your people moving around the ship for
another ten or twenty minutes and leave boarders fewer places to
hide.”

“Why didn’t I think
about that?” Alice said.

“Because you got this
assignment three hours ago,” Jake replied. “All right, I’m
going to check in with Frost and then I’m going to get strapped to
Minh-Chu’s fighter.”

“Good luck,” Alice
said.

“Thanks,” Jake
replied. “You too.” He turned to Frost and didn’t have to say
anything to prompt a report from the lead tactical officer.

“We’ve got all your
expensive surprises loaded up and ready, Captain,” Frost said.
“Cloak is holding, and we’re patrolling around the arrival point
here. No sign of any other ships in the area and the Warlord is ready
for the biggest smash and grab I’ve ever seen.”

“Finn?” Jake asked.

“Our ship is
invisible even with all our weapon and fighter launch bays wide
open,” Finn replied from the engineering station. “We’re
currently using point-four percent of our available power and my
people have nothing to do except help Ashley fine-tune our
manoeuvring systems.”

“Something wrong with
our calibration, Ash?” Jake asked.

Ashley half turned in
her seat at the helm and smiled. “Nope, we’re just looking at it
while we have an extra minute. Keeps us from getting all tense while
we wait. Everyone’s board is green, Captain, you go have fun.”

“Is a captain still
as much of a captain when the crew can take care of themselves?”
Jake muttered under his breath.

“You’re the man
with the plan, Captain,” Frost replied. “Don’t think we’d try
to bite off half of what you plan to chew today, even if we had twice
the dog. Good hunting, Sir.”

“Thanks, good
hunting, Warlord,” Jake replied before leaving the bridge.

Alice checked on her
team and highlighted the storage areas that didn’t contain parts
for the ship or equipment they’d need for the upcoming battle, and
ordered her staff to seal them off. With her orders sent and security
well in hand, she took a moment to look to the main tactical display
in front of the command seat. They had been patrolling for hours
since the Warlord emerged from the wormhole, and aside from a few
smaller ships passing through the area, a medium cargo hauler that
had since moved on, and a buoy, the space they were in was clear. The
destroyer, two corvettes, and the large cargo hauler they were
waiting for would be emerging from their wormholes in a few minutes.

“Plot an evasive
stealth course and execute when ready,” Frost ordered. Ashley set
her course and took manual control of the Warlord, guiding it into a
manoeuvring pattern that would be difficult to track if anyone caught
a momentary indication of where the ship was.

“Launch probes, one
from each facing,” Frost ordered. “We’re watching for signal
echo and any unnatural light paths. Set their timers to aggressively
scan after thirty seconds then shut down.”

“Still expecting
other cloaked ships out there?” Kadri asked.

“Aye,” Frost
replied. “This is a good spot for a waypoint going into the nebula,
but there has to be a reason for these ships to feel safe while
they’re plotting their path through.”

“Probes away,” Finn
replied.

Everyone waited as the
eight centimetre long probe drones zigged and zagged away in all
directions. Ashley piloted the Warlord so the ship came about and
thrust off on a course that was not exactly inverse to their previous
heading. It would be difficult for a tactical officer on an enemy
ship to guess where they were, but the probes did reveal their
general location, and Alice felt less uneasy as they put more
distance between them and the small projectiles they launched.

The probes activated,
filling the tactical screen with a red bloom of energy that radiated
in all directions away from their location. It only lasted a minute,
but the eight probes were able to fill the area with aggressive
multi-spectrum noise that would reveal everything in the area, even
cloaked ships if their was a chink in their concealing technology.

“If our cloaking
systems have any problems, we’ll be just as visible as anyone
else,” Finn said to no one in particular as he looked at his
combined damage control and tactical systems. David Penton stood
along side him, dedicating his attention only to engineering.

“My goodness, I
didn’t think about that,” Frost muttered in return. “S’pose
I’ll have to tell the captain we’ll be found out and we should
pack it all in, go find a nice out of the way planet and start a
colony. That’s if you don’t think our cloak can hide us in the
middle of this noise.”

“No echoes or shadows
coming back on the Warlord,” Kadri reported from the communications
and scanning station. “Good work, Lieutenant Finn.”

“Thank you,” Finn
replied.

“You’ll have your
first drink on me when we find a moment and a corner to celebrate
in,” Kadri added with a wink.

“That’s a promise
I’d take,” Frost said as he checked the scan data.

“Like I’d make you
the same offer,” Kadri scoffed exaggeratedly. “I don’t date men
my age.”

Alice glanced at Finn
in time to catch him blushing, and she barely stifled a giggle. Her
focus returned to her station, where icons representing her team
moved through the corridors, lighting up secured compartments and
storage areas that were freshly checked.

“I got unregistered
firearms here, locker twenty ninety-nine. The manifest management
screen says this locker isn’t assigned to anyone,” Ensign Andy
Timmermen reported. “No known DNA or other indications of ownership
either, but forensic scans say these weapons were assembled forty
three minute ago.”

The scan results
appeared in front of Alice, a ripper pistol and a motorized
fragmentation grenade. Alice cross referenced the parts list from the
weapons with the manufacturing logs and grimaced. Those weapons were
made of objects that were used ship wide for construction and
repairs, even the pistol grip was just a door handle that had been
bent and curved to its new purpose. “Okay, I’m reporting this.
Assume we have a suspect aboard.”

“That’s
overreacting, isn’t it?” asked Officer Erin Shin, one of her team
members and a very recent addition to the crew. “Maybe someone just
hasn’t settled in and wanted a personal weapon to feel more
secure.”

Alice didn’t want to
deal with people contradicting her. She’d been given her command
and her every instinct told her to assert her authority when she was
sure she was in the right. “Is it yours?”

“What? No,” Erin
replied.

“Then let me handle
the evidence while you follow orders please,” Alice replied.

“Yes, Ma’am,”

“Andy, take those
weapons to the nearest dangerous materials lockup. Meet up with
Engleman and Richt down the hall so you have cover while you make the
deposit and close it up.”

“Yes, Ma’am, headed
to the nearest DML with cover,” replied Ensign Andy Timmermen.

Alice turned to Frost
and he nodded at her. “Well done, I heard your side and checked the
summary. I’d take two people off damage control and post them near
the recycling processors, where you found that piece o’ work.”

“Good idea, thank
you,” Alice said, adding those orders onto the map. The staffing
was light near the fore of the ship and she shook her head. “We’re
running thin. Not enough people for coverage. I need to activate more
dual purposed staff.”

“Don’t worry about
that,” Stephanie Vega said as icons representing three of her
boarding team members appeared in the fighter launch area of the
ship. “I’m giving you a few of mine to cover the bridge and
forward weapons’ sections of the ship. Leave the last of your dual
duty people with their other departments so they can assist with
combat operations.”

“Your boarding team
is short now,” Alice retorted.

“I didn’t think
there would be a traitor on board, everyone we have is screened, but
it looks like I was wrong. You shouldn’t have to deal with my
mistake, so I’m giving you the people I can afford to do without.”

“So this was supposed
to be a fluff position,” Alice said as she assigned the new
security guards to their positions.

“There are no
nonessential commands,” Jake said. “Would I be strapped to a
Uriel fighter waiting to launch if I didn’t think you could handle
my ship’s security?”

“Good point,” Alice
said. “Speaking of which, I’m linking all the bots on the ship
with my security tracker. I want to know who hid their weapons.”
She started the forensic playback and was surprised to see that the
results were inconclusive. Whoever dumped the pistol had an
obfuscator that blurred security recordings of them. “Wow, okay,
whoever this is, they’re crafty. Also, we should watch for
recording defects in the future.”

“Jake, I’m changing
my team’s strategy, I’ll operate under plan three,” Stephanie
said over the boarding crew channel.

“Good,” Jake
replied over the high priority communications channel. “My team
will continue as planned.”

She had a fairly good
grasp of what Stephanie and her father were talking about. The
initial plan was to board the Barricade, the heavy destroyer, using
quick, brute force. Stephanie’s team was to head aft while Jake’s
would rush the bridge, remaining visible, using an arsenal of
weaponry and shielding technology that even Alice found stunning. If
Stephanie was switching her team to their tertiary tactic, that meant
her group would be using stealth instead, leaving her father’s
boarding team with all the attention. Alice didn’t doubt his
ability to terrify the skeleton crew aboard the Barricade, but she
still worried for him.

“Sir, we have three
shadows on our scans,” Kadri reported to Frost, “stationary
relative to the navigational buoy, marking them on tactical.”

The tactical scanner
noise lighting up the map of the area faded, leaving less than two
dozen minor objects that were scanned in high detail on the hologram
at the front of the bridge. The largest objects were three asteroids
that had emergency supplies and a small unmanned repair depot on
them. There were a number of small drifting inert objects that were
passing though the area, and the faintest readings were those three
shadows. “All right,” Frost said, “Those shadows are all the
same shape.”

“Almost exactly the
same shape, Sir,” Kadri said.

“Do we have enough
data to match them with a class of Order ship?”

“Yes, but our
database is not coming up with a match. They have a gravity footprint
close to a twenty metre short-range customs ship, but the shape is
all wrong.”

“Competition, maybe?
Other pirates?” Ashley asked from the helm.