He returned the gesture and nodded. “Pick your second, make sure they know at least as much about this business as you, and that they won’t be afraid to call you on your shit.” The thick command and control unit on his right wrist buzzed and sent him a sense that there was something urgent for him to attend to.
“Aye, Chief.”
“I have to take this,” Frost said. “Lock it all down and leave the ready crew in place when you’re done, then you take this crew to rest. No celebrating until you’ve finished your exercise tomorrow. If that’s perfect, then you can have your fun, but only if the exercise is perfect, understand?”
“Aye, Chief,” she said, grinning at him. With the team she had and her acumen for running a gunnery team, there was little chance that their next exercise wouldn't be perfect, especially without Goreman.
“Bridge, this is Frost,” he said, watching a display with the lead Communications Officer for the Hawker appear in his helmet heads up system.
“You have a priority one transmission from British Alliance Territory. I’m afraid you’ll have to come to the bridge to see it on a secure terminal.”
“On my way,” he said. He took what he hoped would be a last look at Trainee Chief George’s gunnery crew as they rotated their gunners out, seating new ones and reverting to a standby state. A few of the trainees were replaced by experienced service people, but many of them started a duty shift because they were so low on trained crews. Even in the heart of the Haven System, most able ships were used for patrol if they weren’t tasked with training or specific missions.
Frost walked into the interior airlock and waited for it to cycle. The gunnery decks didn’t have atmospheres while they were in operation. Even aboard older Freeground Fleet ships like the Hawker, they were the least hospitable places aboard. The room finished pressurizing and he retracted his helmet, breathing in the cool recycled air. The old ships were almost completely bare of decoration, and the Hawker was a slim destroyer, built fast, made to be a ship of utility and quick response. He didn’t say it aloud, but Frost liked the old fighting machine. Everywhere he went he was surrounded by polished blue and silver metal, and the crew knew their business. The corridors were slim, reminding him of the naval ships of the twenty first century, and there were old manual hatches everywhere. He was sure they were modernized with emergency motors to get them closed if there was a sudden drop in pressure, but he liked the old handle system.
He took a ladder two decks up and nodded at the guards standing on either side of the main bridge entrance. The old egranian steel bulkhead protecting the rear of the bridge was thicker than he was even in his heavy armour. “Chief,” Captain Paquin said, smiling at him. “I hear the exercise went well.”
“One more live fire exercise should do it. There’s a good Chief Trainee down there, you should make her permanent crew.” He looked around the simple bridge. It was a narrow oval shape with thick transparent metal at the front and a single seat for each critical station. The Captain sat at the centre with four multi-purposed stations behind her.
“I would, but this ship stands down at the end of the week. The order just came in: I’m getting transferred to a new Haven Shore Heavy Corvette of the same name.”
“So they’re keeping the Hawker name alive. What’s happening to this old beauty?” Frost asked.
“They’re recycling the egranian steel for the new star dock. Freeground Alpha is being rebuilt using half the Freeground fleet. I don’t know where all the new Heavy Corvettes are coming from, but Haven Fleet are replacing the old ships at a rate of seven a day now.”
“I hope you don’t mind me askin’, but how do you feel about being put in command of a corvette after running this destroyer for three years?”
“Pretty good. I’m losing a few crewmembers I’ll miss, but they've been due for promotion for a long time. The new corvette will have nine times the firepower, she’ll be more agile, and the survivability is better. It’s the same tech as the ship you’re transferring to.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to serve on the Merciless yet,” Frost said, walking to the communications station, where a young officer with perfectly coifed dark hair awaited him eagerly.
“Captain Valent hasn’t locked you in yet?” Captain Paquin asked.
“I’m thinking of staying back. Doing reserve for the defence force and taking a full-time training job at the Academy. I don’t know how useful I’ll be on the Merciless, everything on that new boat is a far cry from the gear I came up with. I know how to run the new tech, but I don’t know that it’ll ever feel like home.”
“It’s his loss,” the Captain said. “How’s Commander Vega?”
Everyone in the fleet seemed to know that his girlfriend was pregnant, and that question came up at least five times a day. “Settling into her new job at the Academy.”
“Oh, right; she’s one of the leads on the Apex Program, I heard about that. We’re going to have some great officers coming up.” Captain Paquin looked to her communications officer and nodded. “I’ll let you get to the message. It was cleared through the British Alliance.”
“Aye, thank you, Ma’am,” he said before turning to the communications officer. “Let’s have it, Lad,” he said.
“Do you want me to put it up on the main display? My screen is just this little thing, can’t make a hologram more than seven inches tall either.”
“If your Captain doesn’t mind, but if it’s a port wife, you hit stop right away, understand?” he said with a wink.
“Uh, how will I know if it’s a port wife?”
“She’ll be angry and prettier than I deserve,” he said, reaching down and activating the message himself. He looked to the main screen. What he saw there startled him and filled him with guilt at the same time.
“Shamus,” Boro said, his familiar blocky head and stocky chest filling the screen. He looked thinner than Frost had ever seen him, unhealthy, and weary. His heart ached at the sight of him. “This is costing me a fortune, but I hope it’s worth it. These Brits say they can get a message through to you in hours, otherwise I wouldn’t bother. Thanks to some luck – both good and bad – I’ve made my way to British Alliance territory. They’re not in any shape to take care of anyone, to protect anyone. You remember we used to joke about what would happen if the authorities or some gangster got their hands on us when we were young dock rats? Well, I bloody well found out for myself, and if I don’t get your help here, it might happen again, only this time my whole crew will get tortured and butchered, most like.”
Frost’s thick fingers dug into the headrest of the communication’s officer’s seat. He was faintly aware that Captain Paquin was watching him as much as the message, but it didn’t change the feeling he had at his core. Boro was family; they both sprang from their mother, who was the matron until she was killed. He and Boro grew up on the docks together, and the old instincts came back fresh. You took care of family, no matter what. It was a commandment he violated once when he left them all behind, and he regretted it ever since.
“Royals are after us, and they don’t give a rat’s ass if they have to chase us through British Alliance territory to take us as slaves and tear us apart for their bloody entertainment. It’s me, your nephew, a woman I would lay down my life for, and a few good friends against those bastards. The British aren’t helping, and their territory is really a loose chain of solar systems with more wild space between than you could account for. Don’t know how long I can last out here without a mad bastard like you on my side. I hear you have powerful friends now, so you get some of them together and make your way here quick, and all’s forgiven. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t deadly serious. One way or another, I’d be an ass if I didn’t spend an extra five hundred plat to say I love you, brother, no matter if you make it here or not. But you better bloody well get your thrusters on and make the trip.”
The message ended with Boro frozen pointing a finger at him, his face frozen in a severe
expression. “Well, fuck,” Frost said under his breath.
“Everyone who saw that is sworn to secrecy,” Captain Paquin said. “This is Chief McFadden’s business and no one else’s.”
“Thanks for the hold on scuttlebutt, Captain,” Frost said.
“I’m guessing this isn’t spam,” she replied quietly.
“No, it’s a brother in more trouble than he’s letting on. How much did it cost him to send that?” Frost asked the communications officer.
“They used one of three available stable quantum communications nodes in the whole of the British Alliance territory to send it and a military Quan Comm to receive, so the cost of that is about ninety thousand platinum.”
“My stars, I don’t want to know what my little brother had to do to get his hands on that,” he said.
“What will you do, if you don’t mind me asking?” Captain Paquin asked.
Frost thought for a moment. He had a pregnant girlfriend whom he ordered an engagement ring for not a week before, and he felt he owed Haven Fleet a great debt. He also had Captain Valent breathing down his neck, trying everything he could to get him to sign up for service aboard the Merciless before the shakedown cruise was over. There was an invasion fleet recovering in more than one nearby system, getting ready to attack their home, the Haven System, and he wanted to be around for the fight.
The tactical screen that replaced the image of Boro caught his attention. A ship emerged from trans-dimensional space a few hundred thousand kilometres away, and he got an idea. “I’m going to have to go pick my little brother up,” Frost said.
Thirteen
The War Forge was the most imposing structure that Frost had ever seen. He knew basically what was inside; hundreds of manufacturing lines that could print anything you had materials for and a few mass converters that could turn energy into almost any substance you needed, but that took incredible amounts of power, and was not the preferred method of material generation.
It was incomplete, but the metal skin that would eventually wrap around the entire structure – which would have enough room for a quarter million command staff, crew and facilities that could ensure their survival indefinitely – was starting to appear. The glistening black outer hull reflected the stars and the light of thrusters as ships and construction robots passed. The Tamber Moon and Haven Shore, the first island granted to their founder, Ayan Anderson, was the civilian centre of the Haven System. Shamus didn’t think much of it, even though the city on the island of Haven Shore was growing by the day and there were hundreds of
thousands of lovely, happy people there. To him, they used technology to plant a modern city in a tropical paradise, but when he thought of paradise, it wasn’t tropical.
It was something like the War Forge. It was closing on eighty percent completion, the outer tiers and pylons were only frames, but he could imagine what the thing would look like. A leviathan in space that dwarfed stations and could produce a ship and everything inside it in days, right down to the uniforms the crew wore. Not just that, but two dozen at a time. Ships like he’d never imagined were being finished as his shuttle docked with the Merciless, his former Captain’s new commission. He already knew everything he had to about the vessel’s power, defence and weapon systems. Shamus was a hundred simulated hours away from qualifying as its chief tactical officer, but it didn’t feel like he belonged.
The mooring points latched loudly, the airlock door lights turned green and it opened. “Thanks for the lift,” he said to the petty officer supervising the small go-between shuttle. The thing flew itself, the petty officer was there in case anything went wrong and to make sure the passengers were comfortable.
“My pleasure, Chief,” he said, standing and starting to salute.
“No need for that, lad, I’m just a tourist here today.” To Shamus’ surprise, Admiral Ayan Anderson, Queen to some, Founder to others, and suspected tyrant to a few who expected her to directly assume power any moment, was waiting for him on the other side. Her black, form fitted vacuum suit uniform had the marks of her rank, the Haven Fleet skull on one side of her chest, a crown on her shoulder and a gold stripe down the sides. There were no aides nearby, but she was wearing a Violator Seven sidearm on her thigh that was balanced by a small bulge on the opposite leg that he knew contained survival tools and ammunition. Frost was at a loss of words as she smiled at him. Red ringlets fell around her heart shaped face, and he’d never tell her, but he thought of her more as a young queen than an Admiral, even though she’d proven her engineering and logistical prowess many times over. The War Forge wouldn’t be nearly as far along as it would be if it weren’t for her and her people.
Before he could embarrass himself by greeting her improperly, she stepped forward and shook his hand. “Chief McFadden,” she said warmly. “When I saw you were coming aboard, and that I was closer to the airlock than Jake, I had to take the opportunity to thank you for your service. The first two gunnery crews you trained are transferring to Freeground Station at the end of the week. Not to mention your work on the Samson, the Warlord and the Revenge. A pair of my engineers are using your maxjack designs to improve a few capture systems in the fleet, and we’re working on a module we can add to our gunships that will give them all an improved latching and forced boarding capabilities. You’re becoming a legend in the fleet.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” he replied shaking and releasing her hand. She didn’t like being called Your Majesty, or any acknowledgement that she’d been made a Queen by what remained of the Galactic Courts. He knew most servicemen and women adored her as their Queen first, and an Admiral second, but he respected her for preferring to be known by her work instead of a title she’d earned by accepting a land grant. “Please, call me Frost,” he said. “And if I were to go through your accomplishments and what they’ve meant to my crews, we’d be here all day. This base you’ve made here, though; it’s a masterwork.”
“It took thousands of people and as much foreign technology as familiar,” she waved the compliment off, her British accent losing some of its formal edge. “I wasn’t at the centre of the innovation but thank you.” She turned and started walking him into the ship. The corridors were simple in the outer sections of the vessel where they were closer to the defensive measures. The halls were three metres wide, had regenerative plating everywhere and used a type of holographic repeating hardware that was built in to light everything clearly but not too brightly. To Frost it looked like the light was coming from everywhere, but there were no visible sources. The interior armour lining the hallway was made of regenerating smart plating much like the exterior of the ship, only not as thick.
Crewmembers moved around them, slowing and nodding as they passed Ayan, glancing at Frost as well. Ayan had obviously established a short hand with the crew where a nod would do if the crewmember or she was busy and she wasn’t directly addressing them. It was common practice in Haven Fleet, even though some higher ups demanded their salutes. “What brings you to the Merciless? Are you accepting the Captain’s offer? He’s on pins and needles waiting for your decision.”
“I’m afraid I’m being called away on personal business,” Frost said. “That’s unless the Captain won’t have it.”
“If it has anything to do with Stephanie’s new assignment on Freeground Station, then I’m sure he’ll understand. I know it would make a lot of sense for you to take a post as a tactical officer there, considering how familiar the weaponry on the station would be to you.”
“There’s a position open there?” Frost asked.
“If you showed an interest, I’m sure you’d be a preferred option for running the defences on Freeground Alpha. There are no senior commanders who know the defensive systems as well as you do; they were killed during the attacks on the station.”
Frost considered the idea of working on the same station as Stephanie. She was on leave, helping Agameg here and there, but mostly trying to find some way to entertain herself while she came to grip
s with the idea of being pregnant. Frost was still getting used to living with her full time in Haven Shore’s military housing, which was incredible, but not to his taste. He would have rather lived aboard a station or a large ship. He grew up watching ships come and go, adjacent to big ports where he could see something new every day. Stephanie would eventually move to quarters aboard Freeground Station, a huge relic that was being refitted at a break neck pace in orbit around Tamber. He suspected they’d both be happier if they could look through a porthole and see the stars whenever they liked. “The thought of living on Freeground Station with her full time is tempting,” Frost sighed.
Ayan started to look concerned. “Why do I get the feeling that Stephanie is in for some difficult news.”
Captain Valent emerged from a lift door, his muscular frame filling much of the doorway for a moment. “Frost,” he said, smiling. His expression grew more serious as he read the situation, and by the time he was shaking his hand, Jacob Valent asked; “What’s wrong?”
“Relations,” Frost said.
* * *
They moved the conversation down the hall to a cramped conference room. For three people, it was fine, but the slim black and blue table had seats for nine, a number of bodies that Frost was sure would make the room feel like a crowded elevator. “Stephanie’s all right,” Frost said. “At least she will be until she hears what I have to do. My younger half-brother, Boro, is in British Alliance territory in the Core. He’s in trouble. I never thought I’d see him again, considering how I left things, and when the ‘bots went mad, I was sure he was killed.”
“What happened?” Jake asked. He sat down and stood up almost immediately, holding the seat out for Ayan instead.
“When I left him last, he was jailed for stealing the Sadie, a star yacht that had been converted into a smuggling ship. Understand, I was a different kind of bastard then. We were all dock rats. Grew up around the space docks. We stowed away for the first time when I was thirteen, he was eleven. Took us almost a month to find our way back home, but from that point on I was the ship thief, he was the mechanic, and he taught me plenty, that’s where all my machining talent comes from. He’s the real artist. He learned how to track down good ships to steal and marks to scam, picked up a few tricks on defeating security systems too, but for a lot of years, we kept to our specialties. The Sadie was the first one where he ran the scam while I broke through the electronics. He was supposed to keep the widow who inherited the thing distracted while I figured out the custom security on the ship and made the tools I’d need to break it on the spot. Everything went fine until I disabled the ship security too early. Widow Sadie Paloma put the pieces together and had him arrested. I had a choice – turn the ship I just got off the deck around and face the music with him or let him take the fall for both of us – and I headed off into hyperspace.” Jake didn’t look surprised, but Ayan looked disappointed. It made telling the rest of the story more difficult for Frost, but it was weak penance for his past acts.
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