Q-Ship Chameleon

by Glynn Stewart

  “Of course we do,” Glass confirmed affably, proceeding to sip his wine rather than explaining further. Realizing more was expected of him, he shrugged. “We made sure that we had fighter munitions, and since those are League manufacture, the Terrans won’t have the data to trace them back to us. They’ll have far too good an idea of where exactly any Commonwealth weapons went missing.”

  “A little more detail would be handy,” Chownyk murmured. “It’s hard for us to plan tactics and strategies in a vacuum.”

  “Even under Alcubierre drive, twenty light-years from anywhere, there is no guarantee that this ship is entirely secure,” the spy said calmly. “A spy could have hidden a Q-Com relay aboard without it being detected.”

  “This crew was double- and triple-checked,” Kyle objected. “You do them a disservice, Mister Glass.”

  “Perhaps,” Glass allowed. “But a secret held by one man cannot be spilled. Every person who knows the details increases the odds.

  “Besides,” he shrugged, “it’s not like your people are doing everything to inspire my confidence, Captain. I’m hearing a lot of complaints from my people on the flight deck.”

  “‘Your people’, Mister Glass?” Kyle said mildly. “I wasn’t aware you had any staff with you.”

  “You know what I mean, Captain Roberts,” Glass said flatly. “The black-ops people are mine, regardless of what you think, and they do not appreciate the way they are being handled.”

  “Mister Glass, who is in command of this ship?”

  “What? You are,” the spy replied.

  “I thought so,” Kyle said. “So, why are you interfering? Regardless of the branch of the personnel under my command, they are under my command. The black-ops squadron on my flight deck was interfering with the proper operation of the deck, and Commander Rokos handled the matter.”

  “We are going to need those people at their best, Captain,” Glass replied. “Harassing them is not going to help.”

  “Wing Commander Rokos has been far more patient with Cavendish and her people than I would have been,” Kyle told him mildly. “I’d have grounded at least one of them by now, assuming I hadn’t thrown any of them in the brig.”

  “They’re black ops, Captain. They’re worth some coddling.”

  “I’ve flown with Commander Rokos,” Kyle replied. “I know what he and his people are worth—Cavendish and her team could be Gods made flesh and they wouldn’t be able to outfly the squadrons we brought over from Avalon.

  “Regardless, when you assigned them to this ship, you placed them under Rokos’s and my command. They will follow our orders and operate under the rules of Rokos’s deck, or they will not fly off that deck.”

  Kyle held up a hand before Glass could say anything more.

  “You told me I commanded this ship,” he reminded the spy. “So I will command her.”

  “Very well,” Glass said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair with his wineglass. “I just hope your command doesn’t cause us more problems than it might solve.”

  #

  Chapter 11

  Deep Space

  19:00 May 20, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  Chameleon

  Chameleon hadn’t been built by the Castle Federation, which meant it lacked many of the amenities a Federation warship would have included by default. The lack that Lieutenant Major Edvard Hansen felt the most keenly, however, was the atrium.

  Every Federation warship had at least a small artificial island of greenery buried somewhere near its heart. While the designers swore the greenery was an essential part of the life support system, the young Marine figured it was about two-thirds tradition and one-third the religious preferences of the crews.

  He wasn’t entirely sure how the Reformation Wiccans aboard—like the Captain and the new XO—were handling the lack of green space. While Christianity was firmly the second-largest religion in the Federation, it kept trading the place of second largest on Castle with the Wiccans, which probably resulted in their desires having a disproportionate impact on the design of Castle warships.

  Edvard himself, though, was a member of the single largest religious grouping in the Federation—the largest in the Alliance of Free Stars and in the top four in the Commonwealth, as he understood—the Stellar Spiritualists.

  A disorganized, “come as ye are, leave as ye will”, half-secular awe at the universe, half-semi-agnostic worships of stars-as-divine path, the Spiritualists nonetheless had been very successful spreading their word over the last five or six hundred years.

  Like Wiccans, they preferred to worship in natural settings under the stars. In the absence of atriums or observation decks, however, they made do. Edvard wasn’t sure who exactly had set up the spare storeroom near the Marine barracks with the wallscreen of the stars and the half-dozen potted plants as an approximation of the usual shrine, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

  His quiet was interrupted, however, when Lieutenant Sandra Riley threw the door open and looked down at him with a sigh of relief.

  “Oh, thank the Stars you’re here,” she told him. “First place I checked, too.”

  “‘Sorry for interrupting, sir,’” he replied dryly. “‘We have an emergency, sir.’ Any chance these sound like they should be familiar?”

  “Sorry for interrupting; we have a fucking emergency,” Riley snapped, and tossed him a weapon.

  He caught it instinctively, only then realizing she’d been carrying two weapons in her off hand. Years of practice had him checking the weapon, instantly identifying it as a military police electron laser stungun.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, suddenly serious and mildly afraid.

  “One of my boys and two of yours have gone missing,” Riley said harshly, gesturing for him to follow her.

  Gunnery Sergeant Jonas Ramirez, Edvard’s strong right hand since before he’d joined Seventh Fleet and then followed Roberts to this sideshow, waited outside. The shadow-skinned wiry man held a third stungun, but he’d also slung an assault shotgun over his back.

  “Who’re we missing, Gunny?” he asked quickly.

  “Rothwell and Carter,” Ramirez replied instantly. “Neither are from our last company. Carter’s young and pretty, naïve as fresh milk too.”

  “Fuck. Yours, Riley?”

  “Ivan Conner,” she said flatly. “Gambler, petty smuggler, the usual source of porn and harmless vice for my team. A perennial problem child, but never caught red-handed and never into real trouble.”

  “Familiar with the type,” Edvard noted. “How missing are we talking?”

  “They left the barracks together an hour ago,” Ramirez explained. “Didn’t say where they were going. Could be a card game, could be a tryst…”

  “But this ship’s systems were set up by paranoids and we didn’t see a reason to change that,” Riley said grimly. “Internal systems ping everyone’s implants every fifteen minutes. One missed ping doesn’t flag anything. Two does.”

  “And why did I not get this alert?”

  “Because Glass wouldn’t trust his own mother to serve him milk and cookies,” Riley said in an exasperated tone. “Of course, I don’t have the authority to jack into the internal security sensors and sweep the cameras for them.”

  “I do,” Edvard said grimly, already halfway through that process.

  He never finished it. He was bringing up the artificial stupid daemon he’d use to run the sweep when a message hit his personal comm code like a ton of bricks.

  “It’s Rothwell. Deck six, sector twelve. Son of a bitch fu—”

  The message cut off in a squeal of jamming, but the recently demoted noncom had told Edvard everything he needed to know.

  Ramirez and Riley were only steps behind him as he took off running.

  #

  Deck six, sector twelve was buried deep in the concealed “warship” components of Chameleon, a storage bay that would, eventually, contain the components that would allow her to manufacture replace
ment missiles, provided a supply of raw rock.

  Since Chameleon didn’t have any of those components, the entire sector was currently empty. Corridors were on minimum lighting and doors were shut. Maintenance bots kept there from being enough dust to track anyone, but Edvard didn’t need to resort to anything quite so traditional.

  The Castle Federation assumed that their Marines would spend most of their battles wrapped in the heavy armor the Federation had built for them—but not all of their battles. Edvard had nowhere near the level of genetic or cybernetic augmentation that, say, Riley had, but he was even less vanilla human than a Navy officer.

  Most usefully right now, he could see thermal signatures without any additional gear—which meant that from this close, he knew exactly where their three lost sheep had ended up. All three appeared to be alive, too, which was better than he’d expected.

  “That way,” he silently sent to the other two over their implants while he gestured to the specific door. “On three.”

  Three fingers folded down in sequence, and then he overrode the door and forced it open.

  Ramirez was through first, cutting in front of both officers before they could object. There was a blur of motion and then the wiry NCO was skidding across the floor with no one knowing quite what had happened.

  “Drop the weapon, Conner,” Edvard barked, charging into the room after his noncom and registering the pistol in the soldier’s hand.

  Years of training allowed him to process the scene in moments. Rothwell was slumped against the wall, maintaining pressure on a gut shot. The wound wouldn’t kill him, not with the nanites running in any Federation citizen’s system, but letting go of it would be a bad idea.

  Private First Class India Carter wasn’t in much better shape. It didn’t look like she’d been shot, but the way she was crumpled on the floor suggested that she’d broken at least one limb. She was looking at both of the men in the room with a death glare that Edvard was perfectly happy not to have directed at him.

  Conner had been in the middle of the room, quite probably threatening both of the Marines with the gun, when the door opened—but had met Ramirez before the Gunny was a full meter inside the door. The black-ops trooper was still turning with the throw that had deflected the first Marine.

  But his gun was turning toward Edvard, and his training kicked into full gear as the threat fully registered. Time stayed in the strangely slowed state of adrenaline-fueled action and he charged into Conner’s arm, throwing his full weight against the cyborg’s single arm.

  From the somewhat-less-redacted briefing Edvard had received on the black-ops troopers assigned to his command, Conner’s arm was as much metal as it was flesh and blood. Ninety kilos of pissed Marine officer was more than even that could resist.

  The gun went flying, but Conner’s other hand flashed around, driving for Edvard’s throat. The cyborg was fast—but so was Edvard.

  He smacked aside the fist and then ducked under the half-wild haymaker the other man used to recover from the original impact. Edvard blocked a second strike and kicked out at Conner’s leg, trying to bring the man down.

  Conner yanked his leg back just enough to avoid the blow, using the momentum to launch a series of strikes that pushed Edvard back. The Lieutenant Major had been fast and strong before the Marine physicians had their way with him—but he couldn’t match the cyborg coming at him.

  “Edvard, down!” Riley snapped.

  He dropped. He saw a moment of realization flash into Conner’s eyes as the black-ops trooper realized just how badly he’d screwed up.

  Then the electron laser of a full-power stungun flashed across the room like the wrath of an angry god. Thousands of volts transferred into the man’s chest and he exploded backward, flesh and circuitry alike flashing to vapor as the overcharged beam tore through him.

  “Dammit, Conner,” Riley said quietly. “You know these things only work on us at lethal.”

  #

  Chapter 12

  Deep Space

  23:00 May 20, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  Chameleon

  “All right, Rothwell. What in Endless Void happened?” Edvard demanded.

  With Carter in the infirmary and Conner in the morgue, the big ex-Sergeant was his only chance of getting an explanation of just why one of Lieutenant Riley’s men was now an electrocuted corpse. To be fair, Rothwell belonged in the infirmary, but he’d been patched up enough for this conversation—and unlike Carter, he could currently walk.

  Ramirez had dragged Rothwell into the office and was standing directly behind the Marine, somehow managing to loom despite being barely two thirds the other man’s height. Riley had taken over the only chair other than Edvard’s in the room.

  “It was supposed to be a poker game,” Rothwell said with a sigh. “Conner was trying to play me, I was trying to play him, I brought Carter along to make him feel comfortable. She’s not a bad poker player, but she was playing honestly and we…weren’t.”

  “And this led to multiple broken limbs, a gut shot and a dead man how?” Edvard said sharply.

  “Didn’t realize until too late that Conner was after more than money out of Carter,” the ex-Sergeant admitted. “I let him run her out of cash to get him confident—I was planning on getting her most of it back in the process of cleaning Conner out—but then he talked her into putting, well, sleeping with him in the pot.”

  “Void,” Riley whispered. “That shit…”

  “I may be an asshole, but I’m not one hundred percent a dick. I wasn’t having any of that,” the Marine told them. “So, I…cheated the next hand in Carter’s favor. I don’t even think he caught me, but he was not accepting losing that hand.”

  “If he wanted in her pants that badly, he should have tried flowers,” Edvard said grimly. “I take it things went poorly from there?”

  “Conner pulled a gun, Carter kicked him in the nuts, I tried to separate them and got shot,” Rothwell said calmly. “That’s when I pinged you.”

  “What about the jamming?” Edvard asked.

  “Gambling is against the Articles,” the Marine said calmly. “So, we had a small jammer covering us to keep our implants off the ship’s net. I killed it to ping you, and then he triggered another one I couldn’t see.”

  “All right,” Edvard allowed, glancing at Riley. Her expression suggested there was more she had to say but not in front of Rothwell.

  “You understand that you fucked up royally, right?” he demanded of the Marine.

  “Figured that out about when Conner tried to rape the kid, yeah. I’m an asshole, but that’s too far.”

  “On the other hand, you called it in when you did realize that things had gone too far,” Edvard allowed. “Are you prepared to accept administrative punishment, or do I need to bump this to Captain Roberts?”

  Rothwell straightened to attention, his eyes straight ahead.

  “Administrative punishment, sir,” he said crisply.

  Edvard glanced at Ramirez, who gave him the tiniest of nods—a sign to go at least a little easy.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Ramirez, note for the record that Private First Class Rothwell is restricted to quarters and company exercises for one week,” he said calmly. “Also note that Private Rothwell is docked one month’s pay.

  “No disciplinary note is to be made to Private Rothwell’s file,” he finished. The five ranks he’d slashed the man for attempting assault on an officer would be enough of a black mark on the man’s career.

  “Do you understand your punishment, Private Rothwell?”

  “I do, sir,” the big Marine confirmed. He still looked pissed at Edvard, but at least he seemed to know where the line lay.

  “Gunny Ramirez, escort Private Rothwell back to the infirmary, please.”

  #

  Once the door slid shut on the Gunny and his prisoner, Riley made a loud sound of disgust.

  “One of my men dead, and not even because we have a spy or a traitor,” she
snarled. “Just because the idiot was a throwback who somehow thought he could get away with blackmailing and threatening someone into sex. Endless Star-swallowing Void.”

  “This is going to be a problem,” Edvard told her. “Your platoon is already getting on the nerves of the rest of the company. Once word of this spreads, we’re going to have fights—and your people are immune to stunners?”

  “They are,” she confirmed. “And, since you’d figure it out pretty quickly anyway after Conner’s stunt, we also have internal short-range jammers. Any of my people who want to go dark on the ship’s systems can.”

  “I hope you can understand my lack of enthusiasm for that,” the Lieutenant Major told her. “Your people better be worth the Voids-cursed hassle, Riley. Augments or no augments, they’re no better than mine in battle armor.”

  “Until this war started, they might have been,” Riley replied. “We had a lot more action during the peace than your Marines did. But you’re right; my people’s best use is when we’re out of armor.”

  “Right now, Lieutenant, I’m frankly concerned about their reliability as much as their effectiveness. How much of a problem are they going to be?”

  “Less than they have been,” she said flatly. “Inserting a black-ops platoon into a Marine company was never going to be easy, so I was expecting friction and didn’t step on it. Now, though…”

  “It stops, Lieutenant Riley,” Edvard told her. “I’m not going to presume innocence on the part of Marines, but we cannot have any more of this kind of bullshit. I can’t afford to cut the company strength by a dozen troopers, but by the Stars, I will throw every idiot who gets into a fight in the brig regardless.”

  “You’re in command, sir,” she agreed. “My idiots will follow my orders, and I’ll follow yours. My noncoms and I will crack down on the attitude problem. Regardless of their barracks issues, though, my men will fight and will follow the plan in action,” she concluded. “They’re some of the best we have.”