Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (45 page)

Alice watched her
station as the guards she sent to different parts of the ship arrived
at their stations. The silence on the bridge extended for so long
that she had to look at Frost, who was staring at the details of the
three shadows. The cloaking systems of the ships were extremely good,
only a slight gravity shadow surrounded the vessels.

“I don’t think so.
We don’t have enough information to figure this out properly,”
Frost said. “Never heard of a cloaking device that could trick
every spectrum, hide energy, and fail at masking gravity. This is
new.”

Before she realized she
was doing anything, Alice was bringing up an encounter database that
most travellers disregarded as a hoax. Keeping one eye on the
security systems, she ran the shadow’s profile against the sketchy
records of Edxian ships and was startled by an immediate positive
result. Half the bridge turned towards her beeping console.

“What do you have
there?” Frost asked.

“The shape of the
shadow matches a group of ships that attacked Dorminy Colony nineteen
years ago,” Alice replied. “The transmissions from the colony are
distorted, but it’s definitely the same type of ship.”

“Edxian,” Frost
said. “You hearing this, Captain?”

“Yes,” Captain
Valent replied. “Monitor the area for them. Alice, does the report
from Dorminy tell us anything about what those ships were capable
of?”

“The colony was
attacked by hundreds. A rescue team that arrived after the action
reported that everyone was captured or killed within an hour. From
what they could determine, the ships attacked as closely coordinated
groups. They used some kind of antimatter cannons, and no one could
figure out what type of faster-than-light travel they used. The
colony shot several down, but the rescue team didn’t find any
wrecks. The Edxi must have taken them with them when the left.”

“All right, our
targets emerge in three minutes,” Captain Valent said. “If these
Edxi ships attack, we’ll hit them with everything we have and
capture whatever’s left. We’ll only change our mission if we have
to.”

“Sergeant,” Nesh
said through the security comm. Alice almost didn’t pay attention,
unaccustomed to her new rank. “Yes?” she acknowledged.

“I’m in position at
the main aft corridor intersection for deck three, but I don’t
think I’ll see anything helpful here. There are a lot of crew who
have to move through this section, our suspect could blend in pretty
easy.”

Alice looked at where
she’d posted her people and realized that moving any of them could
be a mistake. “Yeah, you need another set of eyes further down the
hallway. I’m on my way,” she replied. Alice was half out of her
seat when she stopped and looked at Frost. “Don’t need me on the
bridge, do you?”

“Lead Security
Officer can move however they like around the ship,” Frost replied.
“One of the rights of the post. Just make sure you listen in on the
boarding and command comm channels, in case you have something else
to add to our conversations,”

“Aye, aye,” Alice
said, checking her sidearm and the rest of her security kit. The
warning from Doctor Messana about her and her father’s addictive
personalities came back to her as she connected directly with the
ship’s systems using the comm node in her skull. The stream of data
from the ship’s internal, external, and information collection
systems filled her mind for a moment before she enforced a balance
between it and her own thoughts. It really was a rush, to be
connected to so much at once, and she was thankful that the Warlord’s
internal systems were all locked behind data safeties. She could find
ways to bypass them, or use codes she had to manipulate the systems
directly, but those safeties were there so she wasn’t in immediate
control of the ship’s functions, which was a relief.

She could feel her
father in the machine as well; he was watching, sending messages to
the bridge staff sparingly. They had it under control, and for the
first time since she boarded the Warlord, she could see a pattern in
how her father was communicating with the ship.

He was training an
entirely new crew through experience and example while trying to
learn about Moira McFadden and her methods. For most of their recent
voyage, Alice’s father had been absent, and she hadn’t figured
out what he was spending a large chunk of his time on. The logs
revealed the truth: he’d been with Moira in simulations, learning
about Order of Eden ships, how to capture them, destroy them, and
command them. He spent many hours running through simulations with
her and select crewmembers, most of them boarding team members. While
Jacob Valent was learning about McFadden, she was auditioning senior
crewmembers from a pool of newer recruits.

There was so much going
on aboard the Warlord, and so many things happening in Jacob Valent’s
virtual world, that it was no wonder she didn’t see her father
much. To Alice’s surprise, Ashley had been in on much of the
boarding and training exercises, training to be a stealthed boarder
and saboteur. In most of the simulations, it was her job to
intentionally stray away from the primary incursion team so they
could get to a control hub aboard the enemy ship, where Ashley would
take control of the helm at the most opportune time. She wasn’t
alone; there were two other shadow pilots in training with her.

“Focus,” Alice told
herself as she realized that she’d barely made it three steps from
her station on the bridge since she connected to the Warlord.

“Are you okay?”
Finn asked her quietly.

“Yeah, just got a
brain full there,” Alice said. “I should either use my neural
datacomm a lot more, or not at all. Takes some adjusting if you leave
it off for too long.”

“So I’ve heard,”
Finn replied.

Alice saw the counter
to the emergence of the enemy ships reach one minute. “All right,
sealing the bridge behind me until this is all over. Happy hunting.”
She took the few steps left between her and the hatch then sent a
mental command for all bridge entrances to seal. Only senior officers
would be able to unlock them.

Prepped

“Release all launch
safeties,” Alice overheard Minh-Chu order. Clamps holding fast to
all seven of the Samurai Squadron fighters to the top of their short
launch rails released, a sound that could be heard across the upper
levels of the ship.

Alice’s mind raced as
she observed major events across the ship, kept track of her security
team, and eliminated suspects from a pool of people who were most
likely the person who built a pistol and a grenade then hid them.
There was something special about the way the Warlord’s computer
shared information with her; it made it more difficult to be aware of
her surroundings in the physical world, but she could sense her
location and observe what she was doing so well from the outside, it
was as though she didn’t need her own senses anymore.

It was obvious that her
father had tweaked every piece of software himself, and she was
starting to understand why he seemed so far away when he wasn’t
talking to someone directly. Why stay in the moment, observing
everything through biological eyes, when the ship’s sensors were so
much keener? The problem was, there was so much information that if
Alice didn’t focus, she knew she would miss things, important
things, that could cost someone their life.

At long last, Alice
arrived at her post, in the perfect position to observe the person
who operated aboard with a secret agenda. With one of the industrial
lifts behind her, two narrow rampways leading to the decks above and
below, and the intersection of four corridors, it was a key point to
catching their suspect. She cloaked and waited, ordering several of
her security team to cloak as well.

The data stream passing
through her mind informed her that the Warlord’s prey were about to
emerge from their wormholes. Hard clanging beneath her feet announced
what she was already aware of – Frost had ordered the release of
their tactical mines, a set of twenty-eight autonomous cloaked mines,
each made for a specific purpose. Some of them featured racks of
miniature seeker missiles, others were hull-breaching antimatter
bombs, and a few carried paired particle accelerator beams.

Loading teams made sure
that the big bore launchers were made ready to fire electromagnetic
pulse mines. These had stealth technology, but didn’t have the same
level of cloaking as the previous load. Technicians observed the
loading procedure, making sure that the new, safer systems were
performing well. After days of drilling and refining, only two
launchers needed extra care. The munitions team leapt into action and
within seconds the self-propelled electromagnetic pulse weapons were
loaded. As soon as the work was finished, one of the technicians left
his post.

Alice realised then
that she wasn’t observing the operations down there by chance the
ship had guided her to focus on the most suspicious crewmember it
recognized. In a flash, she could see that there was something off in
the records regarding one crewmember.

Ensign Donny Porter, an
electrician assigned to maintenance and damage control, reported a
minor injury using his comm unit and left the munitions compartment.
Alice used his suit to scan him and found nothing wrong. She didn’t
modify his injury report, so he could go on with the assumption that
he hadn’t been noticed. “We found our man,” she said over the
security band. “Watch him.”

“What? Him?” asked
Ensign Timmerman. “He’s not qualified to touch munitions, the
computer will howl if he even gets too close.”

Alice checked the
system and discovered that Porter tried to pass the munitions
technician qualifier five times since he boarded the Warlord, the
course that would allow him to get his hands on ship-to-ship weapons.
He failed each time. “Trust me, it’s him. Keep your eyes open for
accomplices.”

“He’s headed aft,”
Nesh Samo said. “What’s back there on that level besides escape
shuttles?”

The thought donned on
Alice the moment Nesh finished speaking. The Order of Eden had no way
to detect them while they were cloaked. All signals were blocked in
by the hull unless they were transmitted using the exterior antennae,
and they were effectively invisible on most scanners. An escape
shuttle could be hotwired for launch, and then their position would
be revealed. Alice bumped into a medical tech, knocking him down as
she broke into a dead run towards the aft of the ship. “He’s
going to launch a shuttle so the Barricade can see us as soon as they
come out of the wormhole,” she announced as she mentally sent
orders to half her security team to meet her near the lower aft
shuttle service compartment.

“That’s a pretty
good plan,” Nesh replied. “How’d we miss it?”

Alice decloaked so
people in the corridors could see her coming and ran as fast as she
could down ramps and hallways, jumping over a startled group of
skitter bots that chirped, blinking red and yellow at her swift
approach warning her that they were there.

Through ship sensors,
Alice saw Officer Erin Shin shout, “Hold it!” as Porter entered
the compartment.

Alice wasn’t quite
there, and continued to observe as best as she could while she was
running. Donny Porter backed out of the room and Alice came around
the corner just as he turned, about to run. Nesh Samo was right
behind her, and they almost had their hands on him, but he whirled
back into the shuttle compartment, free of their grasp.

He looked left, where
Erin Shin had her weapon trained on him, then right, where Alice and
Nesh were coming through the heavy compartment hatch, closing it
behind them. “Nowhere to go, Donny,” Alice said, retracting her
headgear. “Why did you abandon your post? My scans tell me there’s
nothing medically wrong with you.”

“I’m nervous,” he
said, stepping back from them. The shuttle service space was dormant,
with well-organized boxes of parts secured to the floor and walls.
There was one shuttle ready for emergency departure in the room,
small by most standards, but it would fit eight crewmembers in a
pinch. “Who wants to be inside a loading compartment as a ship this
size goes up against a destroyer? I’m a bloody electrician, I can
be useful anywhere, why did they assign me to that death trap? It’s
stupid. You people are insane. I’m getting to an escape shuttle in
advance, so I’m ready when this goes all pear shaped.”

Alice noticed two more
people from the upper deck on their way to the same place. They were
Milford Forthman and Orson Smi, a pair from the damage control teams
on the uppermost deck. Alice marked them on the tactical map and
regarded Donny. “How many others are turning traitor with you?”

“Turning traitor? I’m
just abandoning ship, there’s a difference, I’d think,” Donny
protested.

“No, there isn’t,”
Alice said, drawing her sidearm and taking aim at Donny’s head.
“Traitors get shot. How many others?”

“Two!”

“Only two?”

“Two! I swear!”

As though summoned, the
pair from damage control opened the hatch and started to come in.
They took in the scene ahead and tried to retreat but Nesh Samo
caught them both by the collars. “Nope, inside if you please,”
she said as she dragged both of them through the door.

“We have something,
Sergeant,” reported one of her officers posted near the main waste
processing centre. “Juno Lathi is almost here.”

“You all have thirty
seconds to return to your posts,” Alice told the abandoners. “And
if you don’t impress your commanders, we’ll put you off the ship
before we make port, understand?”

Orson clearly didn’t
understand and looked at Milford who whispered, “they’ll space
us,” and then he looked far more alarmed. “Oh, aye, we’ll get
back to our posts.”