“Well, her mother was in a panic. She knew Ayan was somewhere, but we couldn't find her. Then the Commanding Officer just starts laughing. He was a stiff, old man who took exploration missions as a kind of retirement. I can count the number of times I saw that old greyhair smile on one hand. Well, he was belly laughing and doubled over. No one knew why until he pointed to an air vent where we saw a diaper drifting on by, without Ayan in it. That used to happen a lot back then too.
Well, her mother was up there in a second, popped that vent open and had little Ayan in hand before you could blink. We expected her to be cross, but when she had her baby girl safe there was none of that. Jessica Rice was just glad to have her little girl back unharmed. The tyke was squealing and laughing too, since she had no idea she'd done anything wrong and loved swimming in anti-gravity. Needless to say, that meeting was cut a little short. But moments like that made long voyages bearable, enjoyable to some of us.”
“Wait until I tell the engineering staff,” Laura said, wiping a tear away.
“You wouldn't dare,” Ayan retorted, fixing her with a look.
Doc was grinning at his own recollection. “The maintenance crew had a pretty miserable trip for a while though, they were putting security locks on access hatches for days.”
Chapter 14
Arrival At Starfree Port
Preparing to drop out of hyperspace had become routine to the main bridge crew and they were complete well in advance. Everyone was well rested for a change, and the mood was light as they planned what they would be doing with their shore leave.
“Completing the deceleration cycle and emerging from hyperspace in thirty seconds. All departments checked in and ready,” Oz reported.
I watched the countdown at the bottom of the main holographic projection which displayed information about the ship's critical systems as well as Starfree Port's manoeuvring and docking protocols. Other areas in the projection remained blank; they would fill in with navigation and communication data as we emerged from hyperspace.
The display counted down too slowly for my liking. I was looking forward to seeing Starfree Port. A number of the crew had been there before, and a few had enjoyed leave time there on earlier voyages.
We finally emerged from hyperspace, and against the backdrop of a massive blue and purple gas giant, there were thousands of ships of all different shapes and sizes dwarfed by the station proper.
The smooth, dark grey modules of the station were kilometres across, connected by flat segments that looked like ribbons from a distance. The station covered barely one percent of the planet's outer atmosphere, but with regards to manmade structures, it was the largest I had ever seen. As we drew closer it seemed to go on forever. There were two massive dark blue rings further out in orbit, and I recognized them immediately as Lorander Corporation wormhole generators. They must have been recent additions with enough power to send ships to specific unexplored sections of the galaxy. There was a real temptation to order the helm to signal the station to send us out there, where everything was still new.
“There they are. The reasons why this is such a perfect waypoint for Freeground crews. We could be home in less than two days if we wanted,” Oz said, pointing to a segment of the station with an older wormhole generator. “Not that I want to go home just now.”
“I've never been through a long range wormhole.”
“Really smooth travel. You can pretty much turn your inertial dampeners off until you get to the other end.”
“Well, sometime,” I said as I watched an entire carrier group emerge from a wormhole on the holographic tactical display. They were long, ominous looking black ships I didn't recognize, and there were a dozen of them. “I'm thinking that the wormhole generator here has something to do with our orders.”
“Sir, Starfree Port Authority has sent us an all-clear for docking and the trajectory. They've also sent us a ton of advertising. They don't seem to care much about our markings or power readings,” Jason reported, trying to scroll through the advertising as fast as he could to find any kind of real information in the package. “We don't have software made to filter through this much information. It'll take time to get to anything we actually need to know.”
“What class of accommodations are they offering? That's got to be near the surface.”
“Full dry dock services, their most expensive package,” Jason read a little more and cringed visibly. “It's a little pricey.”
“Good thing we're not interested in dry docking here. We just need an umbilical and hard moorings.”
“I'll keep looking for other options sir, it may take a while.”
“They really try to hook you in, don't they?” Oz said as he brought up a copy of the Port Authority's transmission on his own command unit. “Hey, they have Bonto Ball here. I wonder who's playing?” he asked himself.
“Commander?”
“Yes sir?”
“Focus.”
Oz turned the sports advertisement off and looked back at the navigational display. “Right. Helm, move us into a holding pattern before we all get distracted and run straight into a cargo hauler.”
“Yes Sir,” Derek acknowledged, suppressing a grin.
It was another ten minutes before Jason and his junior officer found the actual docking costs and general accommodations chart. We chose to dock at the edge of the eastern ring, closest to the leisure section of the station so the crew could have a good time while they were on leave.
Our pilot had an easy time of navigating along the trajectory that was set by the port Navnet. As we drew nearer to the station the First Light started to feel very small. One of those ribbon-like intersections that looked like they were just there to hold the modules together turned out to be hundreds of meters across, kilometres long, and housed thousands of spaces for apartments, facilities, and -- most noticeably to some of us -- defensive measures.
As we came across one massive bulbous module on the eastern side we could see the harvesting unit on the planet-facing side, where magnetic fields were projected towards the gas giant to contain and extract some of the raw resources in the atmosphere. It looked like the circular harvester was drinking a thin, dark blue river from the quickly spinning atmosphere below.
“Welcome to Starfree Port!” a cheerful female voice said over our communication systems. “Please come to zero thrust and allow our systems to guide you gently into a docking position.”
Derek released our helm, dropped our engine power to zero and in under a minute we were docked against the eastern side of the station.
Sergeant Everin worked his way through another information package and looked up at me for a moment. The message indicator blinked on my command unit and I was surprised to see that it was from Captain Lucius Walker, of the Triton. It was a lot sooner than expected, and I routed the audio directly to my ear implant. “This is Captain Walker. We've been expecting you. I'm looking forward to a face to face so we can get going on this mission. We'll meet at 0:30 hours. Bring your first mate.”
He wasn't wasting any time. We had two hours to get ready. I looked to Oz. “We have a meeting to go to. Tell the crew they have four hours to secure their stations.”
“Yes sir. I just hope we still have time for leave,” he said as he started sending the message to the staff officers through his arm unit.
“As soon as you're done we'll head out. Looks like we'll be meeting our counterparts early. Don't come heavy, but don't come empty.” I said to him in a whisper.
I walked to the back of the bridge and took the lift down to engineering. Ayan passed control of her station to Laura as she saw me coming down the lift, and came over with a big smile. I knew she was looking forward to leave. I was both nervous and excited about the idea of being with her while the ship was locked down tight and not in constant need of a captain's care. We stepped out into the hallway and I tried to put all my thoughts of spending time with her aside for a few moments. There were crew members going past
us both ways, tending to this or that in preparation for system lockdown, but they all made an extra effort to mind their own business where we were concerned.
“I got the message. Four hours to prep the ship for full lockdown. It should be twice the time we need. I have everything planned so we'll be able to activate all the systems and be running in under five minutes.” She was excited, happy. It was one of those moments that are etched into my memory.
I guided her into one of the quieter adjacent hallways. There were no crew members passing through just then since that corridor led to emergency or ready quarters.
She looked at me more seriously, her smile fading. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing, it just looks like we'll be getting the details of our mission early. The Triton is here. Oz and I are headed out to meet her captain in a few minutes.”
“Just you and Oz?”
“It's only supposed to be the captains and their first mates.”
“You mean first officers.”
“Not by Captain Wheeler's terminology. This is going to be interesting.”
“Be careful,” she said.
I nodded and drew her into my arms. “I'll be back before you know it.” I kissed her without thinking, forgetting where we were and that anyone could walk down the hallway at any moment. We didn't hide our relationship from the crew, but public displays still weren't appropriate while on duty. She reciprocated and gripped the thin weave of my vacsuit, as though she just wanted to hold on to me and not let go. I was trying to ignore the bad feeling I had about all of this, but it was hard when it was so clear that she shared my anxiety. We had been passionate before, but there was a shared need here. An urgency to that moment that left her breathless and my head spinning as the kiss ended and I held her in the darkened hallway.
“Just be careful. If it looks bad, walk away,” she whispered.
I looked down to her upturned face and smiled. “I'll always come back to you.”
“God you're cheesy,” she replied with a chuckle.
“You can't go wrong with the classics,” I said as I let her go.
She cleared her throat and smiled. “Don't take too long, or I'll have to come after you.”
“Now look who's cheesy.”
Oz walked into the corridor as Ayan started back to engineering, and she stopped beside him. “Watch his back,” she said seriously.
He tossed me my long coat and nodded. “Oh, don't worry, we're covered,” he said with a reassuring smile. He was wearing the dark grey long coat he had designed to match the bridge officer uniforms, and I could see his short barrelled custom hand cannon slung up against the inner lining. The crowd pleaser he called it, a reciprocating recoilless shot gun that made the most deafening sound. He had made some modifications so it shot a wide cone of deadly white hot plasma and metal buckshot that could cover a sizeable hallway, or just a foot wide circle.
Oz and I walked into the main hall and towards the forward embarkation passage.
* * *
We followed the directions the station computer provided to guide us to the predetermined meeting place. Freeground Command had sent the details of our meeting, not Captain Wheeler, which helped make me feel a little better about where we were going. The section of the station we were headed through was far from the primary merchant and leisure districts, and there were few people around.
The hallways were lined with a dim strip of lighting on each wall. There was another, much brighter light every two meters, and as we passed under them they came on. After we had passed they went back off. A good power saving measure for certain, but there were too many shadows for my liking. The halls were well maintained, but there were still occasional signs of age. The larger sections of the station were at least a hundred years old, and it wasn't long before Oz and I both quietly made the observation that we were in one of the oldest areas.
“I'll say it,” Oz said quietly. “I don't like this, Jonas. I don't get jitters easy, but this has got me looking over my shoulder.”
“You're not the only one,” I agreed quietly. Admitting it was like putting our fears under a bright light, knowing we were equally vigilant helped. “As long as you're the only thing I'm seeing every time I look over my shoulder, we'll be fine.”
“Can't agree more. I'd still rather have this meet on the First Light, maybe in the middle of the main hangar.”
“I'm sure Captain Wheeler would rather have us on the Triton.” I looked at the section designation engraved on the metal panel next to us and stopped. “This is it.”
The double wide doors slid open with a grinding sound that indicated they had to be realigned. We stepped into a darkened room with no furniture. There were large bay windows across from the doors that were filled by a view of the dark, swirling mass of the gas giant below. It went on as far as the eye could see in all directions; you couldn't see around it to space or the light of the distant star. The dark blue and purple storm looked angry, swirling with occasional shocks of lightning adding depth to the seemingly endless churning mass below.
Two doors further down the wall opened to admit Captain Wheeler and a comely but stern looking woman. The Captain fixed me with a wide grin and crossed the room, offering me his hand. I shook it and took the opportunity to look him in the eye.
He didn't look much older than myself, in fact his dark hair, falling raggedly down to his jawline made him look younger, almost boyish. His eyes were a dim grey, and they looked back into mine openly. “Captain Valent, good to meet another shadow captain.”
“I didn't think I'd ever meet one,” I replied, matching his grin. “This is my first officer, Commander McPatrick,” Oz stepped forward and nodded, but didn't offer his hand.
“This is my first mate, Gloria Parker. Ranks don't mean much past the top five on the Triton.”
“I understand. I don't know that we'd still have them if we were out here as long as you've been.”
“So you've heard of the Triton?”
“Just a bit. There wasn't much information available.”
“Good. We try to keep a low profile. I've already heard about you though. The vids of you taking down that Incinerator Destroyer have leaked. A lot of mercenary captains and other wannabes who are stuck on freighters and stations are talking about it. You're getting popular.”
“That wasn't my intention.”
“I wouldn't worry about that much. You don't want mercenaries thinking they can pick a fight with you if they have the chance. You have a nice ship there though. I watched you dock from an upper mooring tier. I haven't seen many like her.”
“We get that a lot. I hear you run a Sol system ship,” I said, trying to steer the conversation away from my vessel and crew.
“You can barely tell. Only her profile is the same as when we got her. As far as anyone knows, we got her from some scrap pile out here. Her systems don't even register as a proper Sol ship with all the automation and system hacks. I've got her running like she's got a crew of fifteen hundred though.”
There was a moment of thick silence as I just relaxed and observed him and his first mate. They were both dressed in vacsuits, but over top were casual clothes. He had a white shirt and dark pants on with black combat boots. She was dressed similarly but with an old, heavy weather-beaten coat. They both wore sidearms, smaller, and purely energy based unlike the ones Oz and I wore. It looked like we were more heavily armed, but my main focus was on the fact that he was reading me and Oz just as much as I was reading him.
“Look,” he said, breaking the silence. “We're both here for the same reason. Freeground has a big technological objective for us to go after, and I can't open these orders without your bioprint.”
“You wouldn't be here otherwise,” I said flatly.
“Not unless I needed you and your ship,” he added, pulling a small, round data unit from his pocket. “But I've never been assigned to work with another shadow ship before either.”
“So this is something neithe
r the Triton nor First Light couldn't do alone.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, let's check our orders,” I said, retracting one of my vacsuit's gloves.
Captain Wheeler held up a hand and half smiled. “Hang on. I get the feeling someone's told you about the Triton, and something's got you wondering about us. If you heard we're not the nicest mercs out here, you're right. We'll do anything to get ahead, but I've never turned on my own. Anyone born on Freeground doesn't make my hit list.”
“That's good to hear,” I said, not quite convinced.
“You also don't get far out here without a few friends, so before we look at these orders, let's agree that we should at least do something to get our crews together.”
“I hear most of your crew aren't from Freeground,” I said plainly.
Captain Wheeler laughed and looked back to his first mate. “They really did hear a lot about us.”
“Sounds like,” his first officer replied.
He shook his head at me. “Yeah, there are about fifteen Freegrounders left on the Triton's crew. They keep the rest in line. Still, we're only seventy six. What have you got on that big boat of yours? One hundred? A hundred fifty?”
“A little over two hundred now. About half have infantry and boarding training,” Oz answered.
That gave Captain Wheeler pause and he eyed Oz for a moment, who stared back coolly. “Well, I know my ship couldn't host anything for half that many. All the big spaces have been closed out for thirty years or more, it would take a week just to get it all ready.”
“Well, we could, but there's a strict policy aboard the First Light right now. No tours.”
“No tours?” Captain Wheeler repeated. “Makes sense. I hear you have some really expensive machines aboard.”
“So we'll rent an event hall. I'll find out how much it costs,” I smiled.
“Old fashioned, but I'll go in for half of that. We managed to make a good payday on the way here. What do you think Ms Parker?”
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins Page 45