by David Gunner
Both the liner and the FTL drive carried some inherent material value with the liner possessing one, possibly two low power reactors. But only the desperately ingenious would have thought of using them to charge the FTL drive and to use as a weapon to cripple and salvage ships over fantastic distances, with virtually no possibility of detection. Someone was seriously for the chop when someone informed the marauder leader that all their months of hard work and god knows what in resources had been blown because someone chose the wrong ship to pick on. If they’d just let the Bristol slip on by their operation may have remained undetected for years, with the EDP scratching its head in frustration at all the missing ships and no idea where to start looking.
He tapped the arm of his chair as he thought. The liner may be salvageable if the hull were intact, but the FTL drive unit would have to be destroyed to prevent a repeat use. He would use the LAW to see what effect it would have on such a large chunk of copper. If anything, trying to destroy such a large solid target would provide valuable data on the LAW’s effectiveness.
Two green dots separated from the silhouette of the Bristol as the launches departed with one headed toward the main battle area and the other the cruise liner. Hopefully, some survivors would be found, possibly even the governor, who had most certainly been taken for ransom. It served the old fool right for dealing with the barrel scrapings of society. No doubt he would blame the navy for failing to protect him, but let’s see how that held up in a review.
His personal comm unit beeped with a priority message from lieutenant Avery: he needed to speak to him regarding a problem in engineering. The commander composed a response saying he would meet him in engineering in a few minutes and sent it. Denz stood and informed operations of his intentions and left the bridge. He’d speak with Avery and then make a start on his after action report,
Denz sucked his top lip as he considered seeking out Cummings enroute and asking her to help with his report: in his cabin. She could help with the more …personal …entries.
Chapter 9
Two of them had taken her. Two men she saw nothing of except for the faint blue glow from where the light leaked beneath night vision goggles. They never bound her, there was no need. The first back handed slap had struck like a mallet, dislocating her jaw and sending her to the floor. The vice like fingers found her throat, with other hands pulling and ripping. She fought, but they were too strong, too heavy, one of them straddled her writhing legs and fists pummelled the resistance from her.
They took turns. The first: big powerful, her body arching off of the floor with every thrust. Her soul tearing screams from the searing fire of dry entry blocked by a cloth forced between shattered teeth. The second: heavy, sweating, less certain of his actions, struggling to find her as the other encouraged.
They invaded everywhere. Flipping her over, two at once. Her tongue a scrap of meat and her moans stopped, the only sound the knocking of her limp form on cold metal.
She no longer felt the needles but the drugs heightened everything.
They laughed as they experimented and inserted. What entered her was cold, inhuman and felt as if it were splitting her in half. Hands moved over her, finding her head, holding it still as they cut as they chiselled as they chopped, and she knew and she felt and she screamed inside.
Chapter 10
Denz stood in the berthing bay watching the unloading of the launch with a cold light in his eye. He had just come from a meeting with the chief engineer and the news from engineering was not good. The stress placed on the sub-light engines during the battle had essentially boiled away the remaining insulation on three of the engines, with the primary coil of number one now a useless fusion of copper alloy. The ship had been reduced to three engines not one of which could operate over forty percent, and with number four reduced to fifteen.
When asked how the engines of such a modern ship could overheat and fail so readily, the chief engineer wore something of a clueless look and scratched his head as he muttered about the her being an experimental vessel and the quality of materials in her construction. About how he had complained to the costs and appropriation people that what they were installing wasn’t fit for a salvage scow, but no one had listened.
With the near loss of her sub-light engines the Bristol had essentially been stripped of any meaningful low speed manoeuvrability. They still had the chemical engines, but their limited fuel burned quickly, and for battles such as the one they experienced their meagre thrust made them next to useless. All this meant things may not fare so well if they were to encounter further bandit activity.
Denz tried to put the thought of such instances from his mind as it was pointless worrying about them. With any luck it would take the bandits some time and pluck before they returned to investigate their handiwork. By which time there’d be nothing of use left for them and the Bristol would be long gone. Moreover, he had substantial problems of a more local nature. The meeting in engineering had taken so long that he had had no time to make a start on his report to the commanding officer at Trent quarter station. A report that would contain more than performance and damage assessments. A report that would need to mention certain deficits in the crew, four of whom were still missing with biting indictments against several more, including both his first and second officers.
It was with a certain ambivalence that Denz considered his first officer’s failing in loading the rear revolving magazines with the correct compliment of weapons. If he’d discovered the error during a routine inspection of the weapons bay, he could have quietly swept it under the rug with nothing but the official private censoring. But to have it discovered during the heat of battle in front of the bridge crew was ...was. Denz shook his head as a he considered an action that could break a man he so respected, and in whom he held complete and unequivocal faith in duty.
Yet maybe this was the problem. Maybe he had placed too much ability, too much perfection as a first officer on a man he knew little of before serving with him. Denz felt a pang of disappointment, but he was unsure if it was for the failings of his first officer, or for his own failings in the ability to judge his crew. Maybe this is what led to this feeling of trust assassination and the surely absurd notion that he needed to do everything himself.
Yet maybe he was over thinking it.
Anyway, it was not his decision to make. If he were purposely outside the rim, light years from the nearest base it would be his problem, but being able to return to a quarter station at will all he had to do was report it and leave final consideration to the duty admiral of Trent station whose name had slipped his mind.
That’s if they were able to make it that far in their current condition. The chief engineer appeared satisfied that the gate engines could get them to Trent, but his own paranoid convictions concerning the ability of the Bristol’s gate drive to operate whilst damaged, had him considering a call to Exeter base on the way to conduct some immediate repairs. Unfortunately, Exeter was little more than a repurposed freighter hull operating as an outpost to fill a gap in the rim area, with a gate wearied commander of equal rank to his own and no real facilities. He just hoped what facilities they did have would suffice to get them to Trent, which was home to the rim-paq squadron and the place where the real facilities where to be found.
Yet, he was distracting himself from his concerns in regards to his officers. Canthouse was not the only man causing him unease at that moment. Even the normally rock steady Avery was acting suspicious. He had known the second officer since before his original commission to the Bristol and Avery was a lowly Leading Hand. They’d kept in touch after his being confined to a desk for ten months, and he had sought Avery out as a possible executive officer on being given the Bristol for a second time. Avery could have easily qualified as his XO, but was pushed to second place when favour saw Canthouse made first officer, something that never appeared to rancour Avery in the least.
Avery appeared to be the cinematic ideal of a stereotypical Engli
sh officer in being cool, calm and collected under even the most trying of circumstances. Something Denz had to agree with as arriving on the bridge with battle klaxons blaring to see Avery stood between the two forward control chairs, his frame stiff, arms clasped behind his back and his steely gaze on the screen as he calmly issued orders, reduced the entire bridge crew’s anxiety no matter the emergency. So it was with grave disappointment that he witnessed the same man acting like a fidgety first year cadet during the visit to the engine room.
The second officer had been distracted; rubbing his neck and interlocking his fingers as he paced nervously, gripping the guard rail and looking about the engineering spaces as if trying to locate someone. Avery had responded to direct questions in the vague shiftless manner of a user awaiting his fix, never once making eye contact with either of them with his responses trailing away so he stood in silence peering into the main engine bay. When questioned about his unfocused behaviour Avery had stated he was concerned in regards to the where abouts of the missing crew members. And though Denz never believed him, he needed his officers were they where, at least until they’d left the area and the current crisis was over.
The final crew members descended from the launch, with one glancing behind him as he reversed down the ramp with the last of six large black canvas bags stretched between him and a crew mate, which they loaded onto a freight dolly. Canthouse was reviewing his tablet when he appeared at the door of the launch that had visited the liner. He looked pale and exhausted as he glanced about the docking bay, and Denz wondered when was the last time his first officer had gotten some decent sleep. Canthouse grimaced, shaking his head in dismal confirmation on making eye contact with his commander: no survivors. That meant both search and rescue crews had drawn a blank.
Denz moved across to the launch. “Status, Malcolm,” he asked in a solemn tone.
“Six recoverable bodies, sir. There were more but after god knows what those bastards did to them, as we’d need a week and a shovel to bring them all back. And the condition of the women …” The first officer’s look became gaunt as he shook his head.
Denz’s imagination strayed to the condition of bodies that that required a shovel to return them and he checked himself, “The governor?”
“That’s him there,” Canthouse indicated the last bag on the trolley. “The last to die with a single shot to the chest.”
Denz followed the pointing finger to where the dolly waited for the freight lift, “I’m surprised they killed him as he was a good bargaining chip to have.”
“I don’t believe they intended to as we found his body by the airlock. I think they were taking him along but he put up a fight at the last moment thinking rescue was near. They didn’t want his making problems at that moment so they shot him.”
“The others?”
“One was Martins, the adjutant. We couldn’t locate all of him. The rest; all civilians. Probably high society types from the liner being held for ransom, and all shot just before they left.”
Canthouse came from an influential family and Denz resisted the urge to ask if he knew any of them, which he’d probably deny even if he did. “What’s the condition of the liner? Is she salvageable?”
“No, she’s completely stripped. Right down to the internal bracings and much of the rear hull plating. They left just enough framing to support the reactors. It’s literally a metal envelope that will collapse with even the slightest attempt at moving her.”
“Well, that’s one less problem,” Denz said rasping his chin. “But we’ll put a few rounds through the reactors just to be sure they can’t be used again.”
“One piece of good news, sir. I found this when looking around their control area.” Canthouse passed his tablet to Denz. The screen held the image of something resembling a gas camping light.
Denz flipped the screen on its side only for to chuff in frustration when the picture rotated to its original position. “Now what could they possibly want with that?”
Chapter 11
The splayed hand groped blindly about the tide of crates and loose equipment as the ship shuddered and klaxons blared, the other arm hanging uselessly from the right shoulder. The shaking and braying eventually stopped, but the nightmare of blind naked abandonment continued as her hand swung about the maze of tottered boxes and collapsed shelves. The voices were muffled, distant, as if from another room. Tripping and stumbling she felt her way toward them, her desperate cries choked by a throat ravaged raw as she tried to make them aware, and then it happened. A crack of amber light as a door broke open. A shadow at waist height; a hand on the door handle as someone chatted outside. She staggered forward, her cries coming out in a low zombie moan as bloody fingers reached toward the vertical slit of hope that grew wider as she approached. The door slid open illuminating her naked battered form as the silhouette stood watching her.
Brula dropped to her knees; her hand reaching, pleading as choking screams wracked her body. The person had to duck to enter the room and the door closed softly.
Chapter 12
“It’s an emergency comm unit.” Stavener said, his head cocked to one side as he considered the image on the conference room display. He sat forward in his chair, an elbow on one knee with the fingers scratching through the shadow of a beard as he gazed at the image.
“That much is obvious,” Canthouse said. “Engineering looked them over and found a few anomalies, but as our resident bandit expert we would like you to tell us why they have so many different types with them.”
“They take them from every ship they raid, and use them to sucker other ships with the lame duck routine. Rinse and repeat. You’ll probably find they’ve modified the distress chips to transmit on a narrow beam rather than blanket coverage. They do this so only the ships they select receive the distress call. Where’d you find it?”
“We found three on the Jeremiah. One of which was damaged, another deactivated but with its coder card still inside and the third one, this one, still active.”. Canthouse said.
“Active!” Stavener said with genuine surprise as he swivelled to face Canthouse. “Well done, LC. The border control people have found a bunch of these, but always damaged or deactivated. And certainly never with the coder card still installed. The task force rarely gathers any intelligence of any significance and are always eager to have extra data on bandit activity. This is a genuine find!” Stavener gave Canthouse something of a significant look. “Tell me, where they connected to anything? A computer, a control unit of any sort?”
He first officer glanced at Denz who sat across the room in a high backed swivel chair. Denz merely nodded his consent. “This and the second one were connected to some sort of black box. Possibly a computer or transmitter of some sort.”
“About the size of a suitcase?”
“Yes. Why do you as …“
Stavener’s eyes became glassy as Canthouse spoke and he appeared to stop listening with his mouth slacking open as if astonished. “We need to go back!” Stavener cried jumping from his seat as if stung. His eyes were wide and his body agitated from a sense of nervous urgency as he glanced between the two men. “That black box. We need to recover it. And we need to do it now: before they return.”
“Return!” Denz said in disbelief. “What makes you think they’re going to return? We –“
Stavener turned on Denz, almost spitting as he said, “They’ll return because those boxes are the most important…”
“Control yourself, man!” Canthouse cried in his sergeant-major’s voice.
The operations officer bit his tongue, taking a step back and lowering his head at the first officer’s remonstration. He closed his eyes in an effort to control his immediate emotions, only to find Denz’s bitter steely stare when he recovered.
“Excuse me, Commander; Lieutenant-commander,” Stavener made slight bows of petition with his hands pyramided to his chin in entreaty. “But you have no idea as to the significance of that unit. That black box, t
he one the beacon was hooked up to is more than likely a deep unity transmitter. One of -”
“A what?” Denz said, his head tilted to inquiry. He glanced at Canthouse who looked equally as perplexed.
“A deep unity transmitter,” Stavener glanced between the two men with an expectation of hope in their knowing of what he was talking about, only for it to be replaced by barely concealed despair at their obvious ignorance. “A Norin, type two, tunnelling quantum entanglemen –“
Canthouse interrupted him, “From the beginning, mister, Stavener.”
The operations officer was quick to understand the emphasis on the ‘mister’, and paused to gather his thoughts “The black box is quite possibly a tunnelling quantum device. Essentially a very sophisticated comm unit that that uses quantum spin to communicate with a similar unit over enormous distances. It’s one of only six such devices ever constructed and provides the operator with near instant communication from the rim to the core. The absolute difficulty in locating paired electrons, the EDP have only located three tied pairs, means it’s practically priceless and the bandits will stop at nothing to get it back. And ….” Stavener paused, his face that of a garrulous man who suddenly realised had said too much in the wrong camp.“Oh, God.! What am I doing? They’ll kill me!” The man looked near tears and he covered his face with his hands as he turned away from them.