Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (52 page)

Brain activity
increased a moment later, and Minh-Chu injected Jake with stasis
medication. To his relief, it worked, but it was localized; he would
have to inject him in several more places. He did his best, and was
satisfied with reaching everything except for his arms past his
elbows and legs past his knees. Minh-Chu hoped the slow circulation
in Jake’s system would carry the stasis medication the rest of the
way. There was nothing else he could do. “Cover his burns with gel
and get him into an emergency suspension bag,” he said as he
retracted his arm from Jake’s suit. “Let’s fly this thing out
of here.”

The Taking of the Sunny Shifter

Remmy watched it all
happen, Captain Valent ruthlessly leading the charge, executing
crewmembers, and collapsing. It was the beauty of being a
high-functioning multitasker, but he also suffered from the curse
that came with it. When Valent fell and Minh-Chu struggled to keep
him alive, Remmy was deeply distracted, and all other thought came to
an utter halt.

“Sergeant!” Bell
Dul shouted over a private comm channel as she punched his shoulder.
“Are you with us?”

His thoughts returned
to the present, to the corridor leading to the bridge. They’d laid
traps – pressure mines rigged to two airlocks set to flush any
intruders into space – and his second, nicknamed Dotty, was
brandishing a skitter who was about to go on an adventure. “We’re
ready to go, do you want me to tell him to run down the hall?” she
was asking.

Remmy glanced at his
tactical display by reflex, checking on the positioning of his
people. Four of his Ranger squad were guarding Kann Berin, their
pilot, as he controlled most of the ship functions from the
engineering section. The rest were around Remmy, at the neck of the
last corridor leading to the bridge of the large hauler ship. “Set
him loose,” Remmy said. “And lock your boots to the deck.”

Dotty dropped the
skitter. “Sorry, little guy,” she said as they watched the small
bot with a shiny half-shell walk down the hall on six fine legs. It
stopped on the verge of the first pair of pressure mines’ sensor
range for a moment, then flattened out as much as it could, its six
exposed limbs retreating into its shell as much as they could before
moving on.

“Oh, if he makes it
through to the other side without triggering anything, I’m gonna be
pissed,” Dul said.

“You disabled its
higher functions, right Dotty?” Remmy asked.

“Oh, no, I didn’t.
I thought they might be useful if something interesting came up,
little guy might have to improvise.”

The skitter
straightened up after ducking under the first pair of pressure mines’
sensor radius and getting past them successfully. It hesitated a
moment, as though considering the next pair of mines, then sprung
upwards and forward, almost striking the ceiling. “Well, you’re
not wrong, but now that thing is aware of its mortality,” Bell Dul
said. “If there’s a way for him to get through without getting-“

The skitter almost made
it through the second set of pressure mines sensors when they went
off, crushing the little robot. The airlocks just past the
no-man’s-land opened just long enough to draw the atmosphere and
the bot out into space. “Well, the point’s moot now,” Remmy
said.

“Poor thing,” Dotty
said.

“Shoot the mines out
while they’re recharging,” Remmy said, firing at the nearest
mine, melting it after a few shots with his pulse rifle. “Quick, we
don’t have much time. Their shields are already coming up.”

His squad exceeded his
expectations again, moving swiftly but in formation, taking care to
keep their boots affixed to the deck. They shot the four pairs of
pressure mines well before the shields were too charged up to be
vulnerable to their rifles. As soon as they reached the double-wide
hatch to the bridge, Anton Zwarif slapped a transmission plate onto
the hatch, a small audio patch that would vibrate the metal enough
for sound to come through the other side.

“If you surrender the
bridge and the command codes for your ship, you will be loaded into
escape pods and jettisoned,” Remmy said. “If you do not open the
doors in ten seconds, I will superheat the hatch and break the doors
down. Your bridge will survive, but I doubt your suits will protect
you from thirty-four hundred degrees as the door melts.”

To Remmy’s surprise,
his scanners indicated that the locking mechanism on the bridge was
deactivated. “Get to the side,” he ordered, and he was the last
to take a position to the right of the hatchway.

The doors slid open,
revealing an irate looking crew of seven. Three of them knelt on the
floor, while four had their pistols out, pointed at the back of their
heads. “The ship and her captain are yours,” shouted a short man
with his weapon pointed at the man kneeling in the middle. “We’re
just contractors, we didn’t ask for this.”

“All right, then,”
Remmy said, making sure his shield was fully charged before he
stepped out into the open. He pointed his rifle at the group and was
followed by the rest of his squad. “We’ll take it from here, just
give us the command codes and cooperate while we load you into escape
pods.”

“What?” asked one
of the standing crewmembers. “We can’t get rescued, we mutinied
as soon as you took the main control column for the ship!”

Remmy thought for a
moment.

“Maybe we should
recruit them?” Dotty asked.

“Shh,” Remmy said,
“I’m thinking.” He checked the mission status and saw that the
Warlord was ready to open a high compression wormhole; they were out
of time. “Right, we’re locking all of you up.” He took aim at
the short one in the centre of the group with his rifle, making an
obvious show of it. “You have fifteen seconds to slide your weapons
over here, and to take those company vacuum suits off.”

“Strip? What the-“
objected one of the crewmembers at the back.

Remmy fired several
shots at a seat to the group’s left. It exploded in a puff of
stuffing. He took aim at the remaining crewmembers again. “You
spend this trip naked in the brig, or dead. I’m going to start
counting now.”

The weapons came
sliding through the door and the crew’s clothes came off before
Remmy counted down to three. He walked to the captain, who was
resuming his former position, on his knees, and took a command chip
from around his neck. His glove made a connection with the small gold
coloured data chip and confirmed that it contained all the command
codes for the hauler, ship manifest, and their inventory. “Brand
new ship with old school security,” Remmy said. “Thank you,
Regent Galactic, for setting a low standard for security systems
everywhere.” He turned towards Dotty. “Do a thorough scan of the
bridge and shut down all the systems here. We have to make sure
nothing will interfere with Kann Berin’s system control team in
Engineering. We’ll take this lot to the brig when we’re under
way.”

Iron Head Nebula Departure

The damaged section of
hull was visibly warped and weakened above Alice’s head. A damage
control team was moving in right behind her and the security members
with her, hastily emptying the crew quarters and storage area and
closing off sections behind them.

It was unusual for a
security team to check damaged areas of the ship, but there were
momentary sensor readings that no one could clearly interpret in that
section of the hull, and Alice was getting restless waiting for all
the boarding teams to report in.

“My scanners aren’t
penetrating the hull,” Alice reported over the ship’s interior
comm system. “But there’s nothing unusual inside. There’s only
one cabin left, the forma reserve.”

Alice tried to open the
hatchway but the panel beside the door didn’t respond. “Any word
from the Barricade?” she asked.

“You’ll know as
soon as they finish resolving the situation there,” Kadri replied.

“Okay, fine.” Alice
opened the small hatch covering the emergency door crank and pumped
it several times. The pressure on the manual piston built up, but the
door didn’t budge. She looked to her companion. “I’m reading
good containment in the next section, no atmospheric issues.”

“Uh, there’s a
shadow on my density map,” he replied. “Looks weird.”

“If it looks weird,
then we really have to check it out,” Alice said. “Step back,
cover me just in case.” She pumped the lever several more times.
The door swiftly shuffled to the side, and a wave of viscous
green-grey fluid overwhelmed her. When it stopped flowing only
seconds later, she was chin deep in it. “Bridge? Looks like the
forma in this storage bay was overheated, burst through containment,
and liquefied. Maybe not in that order.”

“All the forma in
that section?” David Penton asked from the bridge.

“Enough for me to be
swimming in it,” Alice replied as she turned away from the doorway
and started sloshing towards dry deck. Her companion suddenly doubled
over laughing. “Not funny,” Alice muttered.

“All right, that’s
twenty percent of our food reserve. Are you sure it’s
contaminated?”

“Oh yeah, liquefied
and contaminated by radiation, whatever was in that room, and
whatever was on my suit, the floor outside, you get the picture.”
Her description only sent her companion into greater hysterics.

“Okay then,” David
said. “Glad we don’t have much of a trip back, we should still be
good on normal rations. I see your scans from that compartment,
that’s the whole damaged area. Frost wants you back on the bridge.”

“Aye, give me a
minute for my suit to shimmy this stuff off,” Alice replied as she
stepped free of the forma and the surface of her armour vibrated the
thick fluid off. She performed a quick diagnostic check on her rifle
and it responded by evacuating both of the side exhaust vents,
squirting several ounces of forma onto the deck. “We lead a
glamorous life, don’t we?” she said to her comrade, who was
trying to catch his breath. “Next time, you go first.”

She left him at the
edge of the damaged area to watch that section of the ship just in
case, and so he could act as an interior scanning node to make up for
the damaged sensors in that area. Alice couldn’t help but chuckle
at herself once he was out of range. She had to admit that her sudden
forma bath was something she couldn’t wait to tell people about
once she made it back to Haven Shore.

The Warlord was almost
ready to project the wormhole leading back to the Rega Gain System.
They would make no pretence that they were headed anywhere else. Even
she knew that part of their mission was to bring the British Alliance
into the war officially, and if it took a direct retaliation from
Order of Eden forces to do it, so be it.

The bridge staff seemed
subdued when she arrived and took her post at her station. “Captain
Valent is secure,” came Minh-Chu’s voice over the comm. “He’s
safe in stasis and I’m taking control of the helm.”

“Good work, destroyer
team,” Frost said as she turned towards Ashley, who seemed near
tears. “Stay in your seat, lass,” he told her.

“What happened?”
Alice asked.

“Seems the Order
Knights can do something to framework folk, like a nano-bomb.”

“That doesn’t make
sense, he’d keep his helmet sealed. How would they get in? Did they
damage his suit?” Alice asked in a rush.

“He had to take it
off to make a point, but he’s all right now. They took care of the
nanos and put him in stasis,” Frost said.

“He’s not all
right. If I can’t talk to him, if he’s not standing up, he’s
not all right!” Alice shouted, her head pounding, her vision
blurring. She spun out of her seat and started for the exit.

“Stop her!” Frost
shouted after her.

The guards she posted
at the main bridge hatch stepped in her way, and Alice leapt at them,
elbowing and squirming to get through. She could hear the synthetic
muscles in their suits struggling to maintain their grasp on her.
Alice almost broke through at first, when they were surprised, but
they had her in the end. “I need to get on that ship, Jason told me
he’d be in trouble if I left him alone, I should have listened! I
should have gone with him!”

Her suit began to fight
against her, pulling her arms down to her sides, and she realized
that Frost had used his override to turn her armour into a prison.
“Calm down, it’s all in hand,” he told her as the guards laid
her down on her back. “Get back in your seat, Ash.”

Alice never felt so
selfish in her life for leaving her father alone. She shouldn’t
have spent all that time away training with the Rangers, or let her
father go on with the Warlord without her. “I left him alone,”
she said. Frost crossed the bridge to her and knelt down in front of
her as the tears came. “This is going to change him,” Alice told
him. “I have to be with him, please. Please!”

“We can’t dock with
the Barricade,” Frost explained calmly as he deactivated her
helmet. “Don’t worry, Minh won’t let anything happen to him.
Even if I could, your da would have me shot for letting you near him.
You and he are two of a kind, if there are any of those nanos around
on that ship, you could be in just as much trouble. We’re almost
out of this, we’re projecting a wormhole now. Good as gone, and
your da is in good hands.”

“I just need to be
with him,” Alice said, no longer bothering to struggle.

Frost took her in his
arms and nodded at the guards. “It’ll be all right,” he told
her. “That man’s made o’ miracles, he’ll outlive us all.”

Strange Travellers

The hangar bay deep in
the base of the Everin Building had been pressed into early service.
Uriel and Ramiel fighters were undergoing repairs along with an armed
shuttle. More technicians than she realized they had pulled panels
free and removed parts too far gone to fix. It was what one of the
previous Ayan’s Technical Crafts professors called the “autopsy
phase” of repairs, when ships had to be pulled apart before they
could be made whole again with new components.