Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (67 page)

The ship emerged from the wormhole and Alice
activated the control script. The Rega Gain Navnet system was down,
and the entire solar system was marked as a war zone. She took the
flight controls and piloted the ship manually, burning the
thrusters hard.

With a thought, she plotted a short-jump
wormhole and activated the generators. In the blink of an eye she
was transported to the inner system, on the edge of Tamber space,
and she was immediately tasked with guiding the ship around several
large wrecks. Looming in the distance was Skydock, the largest
space station in the solar system. Most of its lights were out, but
there was little sign of damage to the main facing of the
structure. As she came around a wrecked Carthan destroyer, the
Vindicta, she started seeing the damage. The station had been
struck from the rear. Entire sections were melted inwards,
indicating intense nuclear blasts at close range.

Combat alerts began popping up on her
console and in her mind as Tamber came into view. There were
hundreds of fighters out there, and they were looking for targets.
Alice shunted more power to shields, set the thrusters to maximum,
and headed for the nearest cover.

Several minor shots were deflected as she
raced between dead starships. She set her scanners to start looking
for the Samson, the Clever Dream, and the Triton. Nothing came up,
but she let them continue searching. There was no point in being
disappointed, she didn’t have time for it.

Her ship emerged from behind a
half-destroyed carrier called the Oslo and was immediately raked
with explosive rounds. Alice watched her shields deplete to seventy
one percent, nowhere near critical, but she was in trouble. There
were five fighters moving to engage her directly. Tamber’s blue and
brown surface was growing in the distance.

“Gotta go, gotta go, it’s right there, I can
almost touch it,” she said under her breath as she worked hard at
the controls, forcing the shuttle into extreme evasive manoeuvres
through the frame of a massive dry dock facility for large
starships. The fighters behind her had no regard for the structure,
and fired regardless of the collateral damage.

She wished she could flip end over end and
fire back, but none of the weapons would allow her to control them
remotely. Alice gritted her teeth as rounds peppered the rear of
the ship, reducing the charge of her shields to twenty one
percent.

The atmosphere of Tamber was so close. Alice
shunted all the reserve power to shields and programmed the
wormhole generator to punch a hole through the outer atmosphere. It
was risky, plotting compression through atmosphere; the shuttle
wasn’t designed for it. At the relative speed she was travelling,
going from the vacuum of space into an atmosphere was like
colliding with a wall.

The transfer circuits between the reserve
power systems and the shields burned out. There would be no more
extra power for the shields, and they weren’t regenerating fast
enough to take fire from her pursuers. Alice spun the shuttle
around so she could slow down. Rounds rained down on her as the
fighters passed by, reducing her shields to twelve percent.

“Oh God, I hope this works, I’m too young to
die,” she said as she engaged the shields on her vacsuit and
activated the wormhole generator. The inertial dampers burned out
the moment she emerged from the wormhole into the atmosphere. The
explosion of her ship breaking the sound barrier as soon as she
exited was so loud it registered on her helmet’s head’s up display
as dangerous sound. She could see the nose of the vessel had
crumpled part way in, destroying most of her sensor suite.

Her scanners detected an active Navnet
called Skyguard. It was based on a standard Freeground signal, and
she cheered as the name of the administration in charge came up:
Triton Forces.

“I’ll just register and ask for an
approach,” she said to herself as she did so. The Navnet system
immediately informed her that she was moving eleven thousand one
hundred thirty eight kilometres per hour over the port limit, and
advised that she slowed down. “No, really?” she replied.

“Hi, this is Alice Valent, a little new and
shiny, but the one you know. I hope someone there knows me, anyway.
I’m on my way down, really fast, trying to slow up, but I think I’m
gonna crash a bit,” she transmitted. “Okay, maybe a lot.”

The roar of the thrusters firing as the ship
screamed across the sky on a path she did her best to guide were
loud enough to be heard inside her suit. Heat warnings began going
off as she slowed down to under four hundred kilometres per hour,
but it was slow enough for her to engage emergency systems. Metal
flaps built into the hull spread out, and the increased air
resistance was enough to shake her in her harness.

She wouldn’t make the settlement marked by
Navnet, but she was passing near it. “Alice?” asked Ayan Rice. “I
hate to sound negative, but you died on the Triton.”

“Yeah, some crazy lady brought me back and
sent me to warn you about this invasion. Didn’t quite make it in
time though. Oops, sorry. It’s really me though, but with a few
differences. I feel younger, I’m missing most of my memories of
being an artificial intelligence, and I’m really looking forward to
kicking some ass. Maybe it’s just the post-rebirth euphoria or
something. Oh, and I seem to talk a lot more.”

“Are you coming from the Sunspire?” she
asked.

Alice forced the ship into a turn so she
would land as close to the Triton settlement as possible, near a
crater well outside their shield. “No, why would you- oh! The
shuttle transponder, you think I’m from the Sunspire because that’s
what this ship was registered to, right. Well, I’d like to explain
more, but I’m landing, one sec.”

She aimed the ship at a gap between two
older ships and cut the engines while engaging the antigravity
hover systems. She was down to twenty three kilometres per hour. It
should have been a good landing, but the antigravity systems didn’t
activate. “Why me?” she asked before striking the spot between the
two ships and careening past the crater she’d intended to land in
front of. The shuttle came to a complete stop and she squealed.
“I’m alive! I love being alive! Okay, you’re fourteen klicks from
my current position, I’ll be happy to hoof it from here. I’ll see
you soon, Ayan.”

Alice hurriedly locked her pack onto her
back and hefted her rifle. “There’s something you need to know,
Alice,” Ayan said as Alice opened the main hatch. “You’re right
between two combat drop pods filled with framework soldiers.”

“And they’re pretty agro, I’m guessing?”
Alice asked as she surveyed the lopsided, damaged ships in front of
her. The sizzle of the ship’s main thrusters filled the air as they
cooled.

“You could say that,” Ayan said. “You should
stay put while we figure out the best way to get you and that ship
out of there.”

Alice was about to open the shuttle’s hatch
when she stopped and looked at the plate armour. “You know, you can
never have too much protection.” She took her pack off, put the
plate armour on in a hurry and reattached her newfound
belongings.

“Did you hear me? We’ll work on a plan,”
Ayan said.

Alice performed a detailed scan of the
surrounding area, found one of the framework soldiers nearby and
did a bio-sweep on him. She smiled to herself, satisfied. “Don’t
worry, these are old models. I’ll cut a path,” she said, charging
her XO-99 rifle. “Look for a marine in powder blue amour.”

She dropped out of the shuttle hatch to the
ground and ordered the ship to seal all hatchways before starting
the trek to the Triton settlement.

“We can’t be that lucky,” Captain Valent
said as he walked around the back of the bridge to the scanning
console.

“It’s right there, the Ferryman, under the
command of Lucius Wheeler out of Pandem,” Minh-Chu replied.

“Yup, right there,” Kadri confirmed. “Less
than half a million kilometres from our wormhole exit point.
Reading the spacial disturbances, I’d say he just came out of a
hell of a wormhole himself, real high powered, like it was made by
a big space station.”

Jake stared at the readout in disbelief.
“Well, look at that,” Frost said.

“How many drop ports are open? Did they get
them all unsealed?” Jake asked.

“We got eighteen out of twenty eight. All
loaded up and ready,” Frost replied.

“Loaded with?”

“C-44Ts, seeker bombs,” Frost said.

“You’re a bad man,” Jake said with a
smile.

“C-44Ts?” Minh-Chu asked. “That’s not on my
fighter’s arms list.”

“They’re mines that burst into forty two
seeking missiles when they see the designated target. Easy to make,
nasty to fight.”

“The ‘T’ stands for thermalitic, doesn’t
it?” Minh asked.

“Aye, burns and burns against a hull,” Frost
said. “After exploding pretty good, that is.”

“Finn,” Jake said. “Get the Big Surprise
ready, make sure the guidance system and thruster is ready,
too.”

“Aye,” Finn said, handing his engineering
station over to Angela McKinn, a former damage control captain from
the Triton.

Captain Valent checked the emergence timer
on the main display at the front of the small, crowded bridge and
watched it count down from 00:00:2:00 to 1:59. “Less than two
minutes, then we’re in it,” he announced ship-wide. “The first ship
we have to kill is called the Ferryman, and they probably have
backup. We burn and turn to the next fight until we’re home. Time
to earn your pay.”

He put his hand on Minh-Chu’s shoulder and
smiled at him. “Ronin, you have work to do.”

Minh-Chu was up and down the hallway to his
fighter at a run, dodging past other crewmembers along the way.
“How are our chances?” Jake asked Frost.

“Can’t get a read past her hull, but she’s
only got four particle beam turrets, our shields can handle those
for a week. I expect missile banks, maybe even a micro-nuke, but no
antimatter. That’d register even through the pinhole we’re looking
through. I expect surprises from that ship, though, even though it
looks like she’s stock, straight out of the yard.”

“What about the mess past her?” Jake asked,
looking at the incomplete scans millions of kilometres behind the
Ferryman.

“I’m thinking the same as you probably are,
Captain,” Frost said. “Chaos. I see fragmented readings of high
powered beam weapons, what looks like broken hulls, nothing to be
sure of other than something big is happening just on the other
side of the moon.”

“Well, we’re about to find out,” Jake said,
returning to the captain’s chair. “Stephanie, get your boarding
teams ready. I don’t know if we’ll have time, but we might be
boarding that ship.”

“Acknowledged, we’re ready,” Stephanie
replied over the comm.

“Emerging in nineteen seconds,” Ashley
announced, getting a good grip on the controls and double-checking
the mind-link system. “I’m going evasive as soon as we’re
clear.”

“Remember, this isn’t just a wormhole,” Jake
said quickly. “We’re trailing a lot of hyperspace particles behind
us because we combined both FTL techs.”

“Yup,” Ashley said as the Warlord emerged
from the wormhole distortion and she flared all the ship’s
thrusters hard. The hull rattled under the pressure, but her trick
worked: the exotic particles that would make the ship unstable
during a turn were sent away from the ship.

The main display flickered as Ashley spun
the main thrusters so the ship accelerated sideways. Particle beams
and small gauss cannon fire missed the Warlord for long
seconds.

Captain Valent used the time to check the
more accurate scans of the area for friendly craft, more enemy
craft, or other potential complications to the engagement. As a
cannon on the Ferryman was used, panels opened up on her outer
hull. When they began to heat up, the guns stopped firing and the
panels closed. “Gunnery control, have our turrets focus on those
hatches,” Jake said.

They started taking hits and Jake was
satisfied that their shields would give them some time, as long as
there weren’t any larger surprises aboard the Ferryman.

“Captain, only the rear launch doors are
opening,” Ronin reported over the communicator. “The front ones
were never re-cut.”

“We work with what we have, Ronin.
Launch.”

“Punting, or vaulting in this case,” Ronin
replied.

“Something I want you to think about,
Ronin,” Jake said. “This is Wheeler, we’ve finally got a shot at
him, but this is a brute force encounter, not a chess game between
captains. We slag him, leave a smouldering ruin behind, and move
on. You cover us while we do the deed.”

“Yes, Sir,” Ronin said. The navigational
symbols for three extended Uriel fighters appeared on Captain
Valent’s display. Minh was flying with Joyboy and Pisser as his
wingmen.

The Ferryman launched an entire bank of
missiles. Their fighter cover was on top of it, destroying eighteen
of the projectiles, but ten got through, bursting the second before
striking the Warlord’s hull. “What were those?” Frost asked.

“Damage?” Captain Valent asked.

“Critically super-heated panels between
frames eleven and twelve, sections twenty one and thirty,” Angela
replied.

Ashley rotated the ship so a stronger
section of their shields was facing the Ferryman. Jake could see
she was getting ready for another volley from the positioning of
the ship and her engine pods.

“Frost, as soon as their next volley lands,
launch nine pods. I want them to split as soon as they clear the
ship so we have a few hundred micro missiles on the way to the
Ferryman. We need all our gunners concentrating on weakening their
shields around those beam weapons.”

“Aye,” Frost said.