by J. F. Holmes
“…What an asshole,” the young lieutenant muttered under his breath once Pratt’s office door hissed closed.
“Could be worse,” Commander Cooper cautioned. “You could be on the Beowulf.”
Rooker nodded. “Aye sir – the hell if I understand what’s gotten into him, it’s above my paygrade.”
***
Pratt’s ready room adjacent to the Hub itself was sparsely furnished. He had no “I-Love-Me” wall, no decorations, no mementos, no family photos, none of the usual detritus that one normally plastered all over a bulkhead to make one feel more at home. The desk was bare – a display and an interface, no more, no less. Anyone entering the office could be forgiven for thinking it was vacant. Pratt rested his palm on the interface and linked with the system. The subdermal link shook hands with his network and created an augmented reality in his implants that allowed him to review the data Rooker’s desk had received. He listened to the panicked woman’s message through his implant as he scanned the accompanying data.
“This is UNESS Beowulf calling anyone! Mayday, mayday! We have been attacked, turret number one is gone, and both drives are offline! Mayday, we are in suits but are losing cabin pressure fast, this is UNESS Beowulf calling anyone…”
The message metadata included which system the Beowulf occupied (the Shiva system, as-yet uncharted), what the scout ship had already learned about this new system (G-class star whose solar output was very similar to Terra, seven planets, extensive Oort cloud, and an asteroid belt), the ship’s system coordinates (nearing the fourth planet), vector (sunward, more or less) and velocity (plenty fast, but past the turnover point and slowing down). A damage report indicated it had sustained some kind of high-velocity impact that had actually holed the hull of the ship. The intrasystem drive damage meant it would take weeks to reach the invisible line in space where the little scout’s fold drive could activate. They had multiple casualties, were almost out of O2, and their drives didn’t appear to have the throughput necessary to stop before a sundive became inevitable.
The data dump had been relayed by ansible, which was both expensive and necessary for little scout ships that could encounter any number of catastrophes as they explored unknown space. Pratt knew the Beowulf and its two sister ships, the Sternenkonig and the Tianlong, he knew their mission, and he knew it would be too late for anyone to rescue the little scout ships. Even if another ship was in Fold range and traveled there now, they would still need to find the ships, plot an intercept, get up to overtake velocity, catch up, match velocities and vectors, and effect repairs. Limitations to inertial compensators meant any in-space ship-to-ship interception was dicey at best.
No matter. The scouts were lost, but their data was secure. Pratt called up a routine on his implant and ordered it to obliterate the SOS dump data on Rooker’s terminal while encrypting it on his own. Something out there kept killing UNES ships, and Higher wanted that intel locked down hard.
Chapter 2
The Straite system, UNOPE Fillion Command Hub, three weeks later
“Fold event, Commander, ninety light-seconds out,” LT (JG) Sinclair announced in his deep, gravelly voice, which reverberated across the Hub. Commander Cooper frowned. He still wasn’t used to his new comms officer’s voice, and besides, they weren’t expecting company.
“Incoming hail, Commander, by ansible,” Sinclair continued. “IFF and data dump incoming.”
“Put it up, Lieu –” Cooper began to say, but Pratt interrupted them.
“Belay that, Sinclair, you’ll do no such thing,” Pratt interrupted loudly.
“I beg your pardon, Citizen?” Cooper replied on behalf of his new comms officer. Cooper knew Pratt was somehow responsible for getting Rooker locked up in the brig. He might be a mouthy little fuck who liked to throw his authority around, but citizens were trained hardasses who didn’t tolerate insubordination, and Cooper realized he may have overstepped. He had no wish to become Rooker’s roomie, so he shut up before he said something else he’d regret. Pratt looked daggers at him but didn’t deign to reply. Instead, he marched across the deck to roughly shove Sinclair away from his workstation. Sinclair glowered at the citizen and could feel the eyes of his fellow officers on him as he stood aside. Pratt was a tyrant in the Command Hub, and Sinclair felt both pity from his colleagues, as none wanted to suffer Pratt’s attention, and relief that this time it was someone else. Pratt accessed the incoming data himself, the AR display visible to his eyes only. A moment passed before he stood again.
“Mister Cooper, I’ll take the hail in my office. Sinclair, your station is locked down until further notice.” Pratt turned on his heel and strode back to his office.
Sinclair exchanged a look with his commander and massaged his neck, scalp, and the bridge of his nose before returning to his seat.
“This kinda bullshit rubs me the wrong way, sir,” Sinclair grumbled. “No offense.”
“Stow your opinions, Lieutenant,” Cooper replied sharply. “I’m running short of comms officers just now, and I seem to lose them anytime one of them offers me their opinion.”
“Aye, sir, stowing my opinion of this secret squirrel bullshit as of now, sir.”
Cooper rolled his eyes but couldn’t blame the man. Pratt was a ruthless dickhead – citizens from the UN’s Community Services branch were there to ensure everyone toed the party line and strangled any hint of discontent before it could spread. The irony, of course, was that their efforts had grown so overbearing, it was akin to trying to crush strawberry jam with one’s bare hands – it was messy, and ultimately doomed to failure.
Pratt’s door hissed open again and the citizen returned to the hub.
“Mister Cooper, direct that ship to dock at Nine-Three-Charlie and have a squad of armsmen clear out all personnel in that bay. In fact, depressurize it completely. Once done, they will secure both bay entrances and the cargo doors from the outside and wait for me there. We have more than six hours before our guests arrive, and I expect that bay to be utterly vacant in the next twenty minutes. And when I tell you to do so, I don’t mean send the order down your chain of command – I mean do it yourself.”
“Understood, Citizen.” Cooper nodded and sent the docking notification to the ship. Despite wanting nothing more than to know nothing about what was going on, the commander couldn’t help but notice the IFF ident being broadcast from the mystery ship – the UNES Beowulf.
Chapter 3
Straite system, UNOPE Fillion, Nine-Three-Charlie
The United Nations Orbital Port-of-Entry (pronounced You-Nope) Fillion was essentially a large ring in space, with multiple docks arranged around its perimeter, and a large central habitation hub. It hung in space, orbiting the inner asteroid belt of the Straite system, right in the sweet spot of the habitable zone.
The hub itself was where all the ‘living’ happened and was chopped up into various districts and decks, separated by bulkheads in case of a breach. All told, the Fillion was home to close to fifty thousand spacers. The port had artificial gravity, stale food, and good booze, smelters, welders, fabricators and transients. Primary industry was mining asteroids via solar mirror arrays, and the many sub-services that kept the mirrors functional. Tugs brought in raw material, which was further refined and shipped out on enormous mass-cargo haulers, or refined on site into ‘stuff’. There was a fabrication district that made and sold parts on demand to anyone in need, and there was the Tudyk Dropship Academy, where interface pilots learned how to drop goods, or their ships, down a gravity well. There were two dozen bars, a strip joint, and three-and-a-half packs of indigent thugs, all vying for turf rights to sling chemical entertainment.
The ring itself was where incoming ships either tethered to a gangway or landed within a bay proper, depending on the ship’s displacement. A battalion of longshoremen (“Stevedores”) loaded and unloaded cargo all over the ring. When Pratt had directed the Beowulf to Nine-Three-Charlie dock, that meant it was at nine o’clock relative to Port Filli
on’s theoretical ‘front’, the lowest of three decks, in the Charlie bay in that area.
The Nine-Three chunk of the ring was also practically uninhabited, and Pratt and his office had made sure it had stayed that way. Sometimes you just needed to get some work done away from prying eyes.
The Beowulf was a scout explorer corvette, meaning it was virtually all engine and sensors, with only a single turret with which to defend itself. The crew was tiny, by normal standards – the captain usually doubled as the pilot, and the crew registry further listed one astrogator, two sensor ops, one of whom handled the lone turret, and three engineers.
Pratt gathered his team and briefed them on the data the Beowulf had forwarded along.
“Ladies, gentlemen. Twenty-two days ago, we received an SOS from Captain Mikael Dorn of the UNES Beowulf. The Sternenkonig and the Tianlong were destroyed without warning, and the Beowulf sustained what was believed to be critical damage and presumed lost. That presumption proved incorrect when it arrived by Fold Drive twenty minutes ago. It arrived ninety light-seconds out, which means it ought to take six and a half hours to arrive.”
He paused to makes sure everyone understood what he was about to say, then continued, “Your pads have details on the crew – survivors will have to be…debriefed. Work up a plan to leverage each one, because this shit needs to be locked down. You have six hours.”
***
“What have you got?” Pratt demanded.
“Captain is Mikael Dorn,” Citizen Guest began. “Married, divorced, three kids. Divorce was acrimonious, and Dorn came back to an empty house after a run through the Odin system. Mom lives in the South Florida sprawl with the girls. We sent a team around to scoop the kids up, they’re at the Tampa field office now. We’ll facilitate a family chat if Dorn proves intractable,” she concluded.
“First Officer and Astrogator Danielle Crosby,” Citizen Farrell continued, “is the reason Dorn got divorced. Her scores were off the charts; she could calculate closing rates and turnover points in her head. She’s madly in love with her captain, and we can use that. Sucks for Dorn,” Farrell finished with a vicious grin.
Pratt nodded and Citizen Armin picked up where Farrell had left off. “SOS data indicates the junior engineer, Torres, is alive but sedated. The ship suffered serious damage in the attack and they exited the ship to effect repairs. They were successful, but Torres went Dutchman for nine hours – they managed to recover her, which is fucking near miraculous as it is, but she suffered hypoxia, and after nine hours in the black, she was completely round the bend. She couldn’t bring herself to pop her seals, so she just gibbered in the dark as her O2 scrubber had less and less to work with. All they could do on board was sedate her. The second engineer had a faulty suit and didn’t survive depressurization. The last survivor is the senior engineer, one Brooklyn Avery. We’re a bit stymied – he’s young, tough, smart, no ties, no family, no bad habits, no leverage.”
“None?” Pratt was surprised.
“None, Citizen. Father’s unknown, went into state care when his mother died giving birth to what would have been a younger sister. He’s a hardass, determined. You know how much of a slum the western Michigan Lakeshore is. He managed to not only survive, but survive without being convicted of anything –” Pratt’s eyes widened, “– and turned a minor mechanic’s trade school scholarship into advanced orbital drive engineering.”
“Problematic,” Pratt said. “But we can work with that. Expand on ‘never convicted’?”
Armin pulled up the file and did a double-take. He had the good sense to look ashamed when he read off Avery’s criminal record. “Accused of murder, age sixteen, claimed self-defense, acquitted. Accused of manslaughter, age seventeen, found not guilty. Accused aggravated assault, two mistrials led to the charges being dropped.”
“That’s the sort of shit that’s important, Citizen,” Pratt said, and Armin went pale.
“He gonna have an accident?” Farrell asked. Pratt shook his head.
“That’ll be up to him, but I might just offer him a job. You’re all partnered up?”
They were, and Pratt led them to their arms locker. The team was split in half – an interviewer wore normal civilian clothing, nothing to identify them as anything other than a ‘professional’. Slacks, blouses, collared shirts, and clip-on ties. The second half of the team were monitors –someone who watched the interview remotely and fed the interviewer suggestions and tactics. If need be, they could rush in as backup should a witness get violent. The monitors would do the extraction and sequestration – meaning they drew armored vac suits and C7A5 low-recoil flechette throwers, their preferred weapon, which was highly lethal in close quarters but posed no risk of ricochet.
Chapter 4
United Nations Orbital Port-of-Entry Fillion, Docking Bay Nine-Three-Charlie, Thirty-eight minutes later
“Bay is sealed and atmo restored, Citizen,” Guest advised. “Board is green, releasing retch gas now.”
“Monitor team, move in,” Pratt instructed over his implant. Through his screen, he saw the armored extraction team lock their helmets into place and advance on the UNES Beowulf, C7s at the ready. The air shimmered like a heatwave as the heavier-than-air nausea-inducing gas mixed with the normal atmosphere in the bay. Their team lead, Citizen Sutherland, palmed the access hatch and his implant’s software assumed control of the ship. The locks cycled, and Sutherland had access. Pratt and the interviewers watched helmet cam feeds as they boarded the ship.
“Hands! Show me your hands!” Sutherland commanded, and the surviving crew, expecting rescue, threw their hands up in stunned compliance just inside the lock. Sutherland slammed Dorn, the closest of the Beowulf crew, up against the bulkhead and put binders on his wrists, then forced him down onto the deck. The process was repeated for the other two survivors who were still upright. The contact team slid masks over the crews’ faces and one by one, dragged them out of the ship. A fourth team rolled in a gurney and loaded the comatose body of Torres up and extracted her, too. The fifth and final team made their way to the bridge, armed with some very esoteric, mostly illegal tech that would grant them root access to the ship’s systems.
***
“What…what the hell is going on?” Dorn demanded.
“Siddown and shut up,” Guest began. “Captain Mikael Dorn, you and your crew have been arrested for forging military intel, which is two hair short of treason. Do you understand?”
“I, what, wait, do I, uh, no, I don’t understand, what the hell are you talking about?” Dorn complained, pissed off and worried for his few surviving crew members.
Guest studied Dorn’s face as he protested, and she smirked.
“I’m not asking if you understand what you’ve done wrong, I’m asking if you understand the words coming out of my mouth. You’ve been arrested for forging military intel, do you understand?”
“I’ve done no such thing, but I understand what you’re saying,” Dorn acknowledged, cautiously.
“You have the right to speak to a duty counsel lawyer, I believe Williams is on right now. Do you want to consult with counsel before giving your statement?”
“Uh, yes, wait, yes of course I do! Get him down here this instant!” Dorn insisted.
“You can speak via vid-comm in a moment. This will be your sole chance to consult with counsel before your statement, do you understand?”
“Could you repeat that?”
“This will be your sole chance to consult with counsel before your statement, do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Guest set up a vid-comm tablet on the table and dialed a number.
“Good afternoon, Mister Williams, it’s Community Services calling. Captain Dorn here has been arrested for falsification of military intel. Please don’t be long.” Guest got up and stepped outside the room, shutting and dogging the hatch behind him.
“Mister Williams, my name is Mikael Dorn, and I just –”
“I know who yo
u are, Dorn, you’ve just gotten back with your ship. You only have so many minutes on the clock. My time is valuable, after all, and since you have co-accused, you need to share your allotted minutes, so I’m going to be brief. My legal advice is this: you need to decide whether you’re going to play along with their interview, or remain mute. I’d advise you play along, it will make things far simpler for you in the long run. It won’t make sense at first, but they don’t make idiots captains of starships. Best of luck.”
“Wait, Williams, I –”
But the video link cut off and the citizen swept back into the room.
“You spoke to counsel?”
“I…think so, I spoke to the man you called.”
“Good, he’s one of four duty counsel for the station and we deal with him regularly. You understood the advice that was given?”
“Yeee…yes. I understood the advice I was given.”
“Perfect. So, tell me about yourself. How did you become a Scout captain?”
***
Astrogator Danielle Crosby
“So, tell me about yourself. How did you become an astrogator?”
***
Senior Engineer Brooklyn Avery
“So, tell me about yourself. How does an inner-city kid in foster care wind up as an intrasystem drive engineer? That’s pretty damn impressive…”