"Where are you from? I've never heard your accent before," someone from the circle of people surrounding her asked.
Every time Dame tried to explain where her home galaxy was, how the planet of her birth was situated there, and how far away it was, most people seemed to glaze over by the end. The other answer, the one that invited more questions, was that she came from the Lorander Security Force. It was a shorter response, but it always led to people assuming she was only going to be around temporarily. They always looked disappointed with their own assumption, which was incorrect, but still, that was a longer conversation than she had time for. The simplest way to give the crowd something they'd like, many of whom she was sure were recording, was to come up with something new but true. Dame thought about that as she took a moment to look at the people around her.
They looked tired. Most of them were staring through transparent face plates, wearing safety armour so they could keep reloading fighters when they came in, replacing modules that had been damaged and handling ships that were coming up from the planet. They were the most hard pressed, put upon hangar crew in the fleet, since damaged shuttles and other ships were diverted to the Merciless during emergencies, and there were too many of those. Behind them, far across the hangar, there was a line of broken things arranged against the wall. At a glance she could see they were shot up shuttles, heavily damaged oval compartments from the Everin Building, and a few fighter hulls that were split open so their pilots could be rescued and she became aware that they'd seen as many terrible things as she did, perhaps more. They were living through hours that felt like days.
There were a few other pilots in the circle around her, too. Some of them looked younger than she was. One had a medic helping him as his right arm was being re-crafted by advanced bio-gels and nanobots. He stared at her, expectant, as though he was discovering what a hero looked like in the flesh. He had an ace's insignia on his good arm. It was the new one, like hers, a five-pointed silver star. Maybe they wanted bravado, but all Dame felt was humility.
That question; 'Where are you from?' Stood out in her mind like a wound she needed to staunch with an answer. "I am Edda Paley," she replied almost uncertainly. "I came from another galaxy to find adventure and found heroes. I found you. Now I live in a cockpit so I can earn a home with you. So I can find a good place to land." A ping in her subdermal communicator warned her that her fighter was ready. "I have to go fight, thank you."
After seeing several pilots flying Uriels, the fleet's best fighters die that day, Edda wasn't sure she'd make it back, so she made sure her emotions didn't factor into the decision to get back into the cockpit. To the people around her that was a statement that summarized the fight they were in. Not in orbit around Tamber, but for the whole war. It was the hope of most of them, and when she turned back towards her fighter, she was embraced by several of the people gathered, kissed on the cheek by several. Without realizing it, she'd given them something; a way to tell the whole galaxy why they were fighting. A good place to land, she recalled, wondering if that was something she'd heard before, or if it was a pure expression from her stunned mind.
Dame turned back towards her fighter and sealed her suit. The crowd parted in front of her quietly. Several of them helped her step up into her cockpit. They did so silently, as though they could feel her determination, and suspected that it might be the last time they saw her.
The cockpit closed and Dame felt at home again as she started checking the new system loadout aboard her fighter. The bottom compartment had been changed from a cargo and emergency rescue container to an armoured torpedo launcher, and her missile racks were different, bulkier. A status screen inside her helmet told her that everything on her fighter checked out after a dampener module had been replaced and several armour panels were swapped for new ones.
"Nice speech," Ronin told her over a private channel. "Don't tell the Admiralty, but I like the short ones a lot more."
"Thank you, Sir."
"Call me Ronin in the cockpit and by my first name out of it. If you're always calling me 'Sir,' I might not think we're friends."
"Thank you, Ronin," Dame said, thinking his command style was a little strange. As her senior officer, she didn't think he should have any concern for being her friend, but Haven Fleet wasn't like the Lorander Security Force.
"I'm Easy. It's good to meet you," said a deep, confident voice. His fighter was already loaded in the racks, ready to drop into a punter.
"It's good to meet you," she told him.
"All right. How are your heads?" Ronin asked.
"I haven't suffered any injuries," Dame replied. Then, realizing that's not what he meant, she added; "It's clear, Sir. Ronin."
"I'm good to go," Easy said. "I mean, my stomach's a little upside down after that last ration bar, but I'm good to fly."
"Good, we're punting in a minute."
Dame pressed the translucent square button on the right side of her cockpit. With a satisfying click, it turned red, flashing; CHECK then READY. "What is our mission? I don't see a brief."
"There's no time for one. You're my wingmates on this trip. We're going capitol ship hunting," he replied. "There's at least one Citadel ship cloaked behind the Order of Eden blockade."
There was a short list of things added and removed from Dame's fighter. No more belly turret, but there was a rack of five updated hammerhead accumulation torpedoes that would generate their own antimatter in-flight. Added to that were two Rapidfire drones that launched using the same system. There was a quad drive installed and while it wasn't being used to travel faster than light, its high-powered generator was dedicated only to her shields, and her guns were loaded with heavy hull-piercing rounds. The micro-missile racks she had were gone, replaced with heavier, faster missiles. Some were shield killers called Bursters. They were big, slow, but they emitted thirty electromagnetic pulses a second for ten seconds each while they followed the shape of an enemy shield barrier. The rest were powerful smart hull piercers called Drillers. She'd used all of the new munitions in simulations, but those were her favourite. Several of her fellow trainees were run through by them in simulations after she got right behind them and launched. The quality of the munitions wasn't a concern, it was the quantity that could be a problem. A fighter could carry hundreds of micro-missiles, but only a dozen Drillers, nine Bursters, and enough main gun ammunition to fire for three minutes. Yes, her Uriel was set up to be a huge problem for most capitol ships, but there were fighter screens and point defence weapons to worry about. "So, we're looking for another Citadel ship?" she asked. "Are we supposed to destroy it?"
"We mark it and return. On our way back, the Fleet wants us to take out a couple of destroyers. Follow my lead, but if you see an opportunity to take real advantage of all the firepower we're carrying, point it out."
"Real advantage?" she asked. "Like targets of opportunity?"
"Not quite. The enemy fleet is closing in, trying to make sure any nukes or antimatter attacks hurt both sides, so they can out gun us with their numbers alone. If we have a chance to break their line with an attack from an unexpected direction, then that would be worth doing. If you guys see another, juicier target, then that's worth mentioning too."
Any attack they made could reveal their location, so it could be their last. The chances of their mission succeeding weren't bad, but their chances of survival were not high. "I understand, Ronin," she said, glancing at the status of her shields. With their own reactor, there was a chance they could get through whatever the mission demanded. A chance.
"Look for a nice target that will make the Order turn their heads away from our little fleet," Easy said. "Gotcha."
"The rack is ready, you're up," the announcement from Flight Command squawked in her ear as an arm picked her Uriel fighter up then locked it to a rack that took it down where she was loaded into a punter. "Punting in fifteen seconds. There will be fighters to your right and left, watch your trajectory."
"Thank you
, Flight," Dame replied, feeling the connection of her HUD and the fighter controls. It felt cold, like she was wrapped in metal, and she turned its sensitivity up.
The punter hatch door opened, then her fighter was ejected into space. Her shields charged to full in milliseconds, then she engaged her cloaking systems. Ronin plotted their course using Haven Fleet's Navnet Tactical system. She rolled and turned her fighter into place, accelerating. Fighters and capitol ships clashed only a few thousand kilometres away, it was a fight to defend capitol ships by people in single and dual seat vessels that had to combat each other while they hunted torpedoes and drones down. It was the fight she'd just come from.
"I'm only telling you this because you're both new to me," Ronin said. "But this might be the most important mission anyone flies today. Finding this Geist is critical. We think it's here to command Citadel reinforcements once they arrive, and they're the ones who set Kambis on fire."
"I understand," she replied.
"Yeah, we'll find the little bugger. No way their cloaking systems will hold up with all this scanning energy bouncing around," Easy added.
"Oh, and I've already gotten a message from my sister; she's pissed that she couldn't stay with her restaurant, but already cooking aboard the Merciless. You're invited to dinner once this is all over," Ronin said.
"Both of us?" Easy asked. "I didn't get a chance to visit her place."
"I'll sneak you in, Easy," Ronin replied.
Twenty
Negotiations
* * *
There was a line from a poem Remmy couldn't get out of his head as he, Dotty, two members of his crew and a volunteer made their way down a utility shaft. "What hardened hearts remember," he muttered out loud as he checked on his team's heavy armour. Everyone was sealed up, ready, most of them still had about seventy percent of their ammo too.
"Oh, that's from the old movie we saw the other night," Dotty said. "The Brightest Ones."
"I saw that," said Gorev. "It's 'What hardened hearts recall,' not 'remember.' Good old flick, too bad everyone dies in the end."
"Except for the family they saved in the beginning," Dotty added.
Remmy tested a thick powerline with a low powered narrow scan and was satisfied that the insulation was intact for over a hundred metres. It would be perfect for the rest of their descent and more. "We can slide down this main power line, we're hurrying this along. The Admiral needs people up top to help outflank those Citadel soldiers."
"Aye," Dotty replied.
"If they saved a family, then it makes their deaths an honourable sacrifice," said Ooram, the only Nafalli crewmember he was taking with him. She carried one of the first five barrelled tactical rifles designed by Haven Fleet for larger beings. As a tall tree-tribe descendant, the size was just right for her.
"I'll put it on your watch list, Ooram. Focus up for now," Remmy said. Now I remember why that's stuck in my head, he thought to himself as he wrapped his body around the thick cable and descended. Thrusters would have been simpler, but the small space made it impossible to use thrusters and cloaking at the same time. The poem that came up before the credits was to commemorate the soldiers who died in the story, the true story. They saved a family trapped under a farm house only to get surrounded a day later as they drew the enemy off. They spent every round of ammo trying to get out of the dead end of some factory or something and it came down to a knife fight between three people in the end. Remmy stopped sliding down and jumped to the ledge in front of the sublevel service door, shaking his head. Wish I saw the middle of that movie, but I was awake for the beginning and the end. Would have like to see where that unit went wrong. He stepped aside, affixing to the reinforced wall beside the access panel. "I'll crack this, you watch the passive scanners, Dot," he said, popping the cover of the control box off.
"I'm picking up scan waves from below," Dot said. "Sublevel six. It looks like there are two people searching for something, but it's like they're taking inventory, not scanning individual items."
"What's down there?" Remmy said as he affixed a data cable from his right command and control bracer.
"Lockers and a secure section past it. They haven't cut into that, it's like a vault inside a vault. All reinforced modern ergranian. I think they know better than to try to cut in with rifles. The base inventory says the Fleet is keeping old development prototypes in there. Old tech from completed research projects that they were keeping around in case someone needed to take a look at pre-production units."
"So it's like a collection of research dead-ends our scientists wanted to keep just in case they made a wrong turn somewhere in development," Gorev said. "You'd think they'd just take a scan and drop them into a recycler."
"There are a lot of nuances in a prototype," Masterson said. He was the fifth in their little band. Like Gorev, he was new to Remmy, but a real member of the crew that jumped at the chance to take this challenge on. "Just wondering, Captain, but why are you hacking into a friendly system? You have all the access codes."
"I'm hacking in so the Order of Eden software they're running on top of ours doesn't notice that I'm taking control of the bunker's internal defence systems. They'd notice if I logged in." Remmy watched his tactical interface populate with fresh scan data. The pair of soldiers were frameworks, and they had the markings of Raze Squad, one of the more fanatical groups of Order Knights, but they didn't have their rifles. "Any scan data from the hostages or whoever's keeping them?"
"They're using some kind of jamming technology," Dotty replied. "There's a circle on the third subfloor of static now, it looks like a containment field is limiting its range, but I can't see what's inside."
"The Knights have a new trick," Gorev said.
The system interface for the whole base appeared in a window inside Remmy's helmet. He was using his own copy of control software to interface with everything in the bunker. The Order of Eden programs had no idea. "I have full video," he said as a live feed started playing in a corner of his view. He checked the pair of searchers on the sixth floor. One was pointing her high-powered hand scanner at one section of lockers after another. "There's one of the searchers down there." He located the other one and watched for a moment as the Order soldier walked down a row of equipment cages. "This guy's started looking for something specific. They're both in a big hurry. I bet they're the important part of this hostage situation. They're buying time."
"They could be after a lot of things," Masterson said. "We've got a ton of tech they want their hands on."
It was certainly true. How much of it was actually in the bunker was another question entirely. "Is there anything that could be rare and beautiful to these fanatics down here?" Remmy asked.
"Not even a micro-fusion chain," Dotty said. "Do you see anything in the inventory that would be exciting to these guys, Ooram?"
"There are several seed strains, samples from synthetic ergranian steel development, bio-reconstruction gel in secure stasis and some nanobot research, but other than that, there's nothing I can see. Most of the stuff down here is early stage, the really useable stuff is all aboard the War Forge," Ooram replied. "I'm thinking someone from the Order saw something that looked promising and they're poking around for something better."
"Like that starship class plasma cannon they turned on us up there," Gorev said. "There must be other weapons like that down here."
"That was from a retired project, a technological dead end," Remmy said. "And, yeah, there are a lot of experimental weapons and shields down here, but the fleet passed on all of them. The Order wouldn't get much use out of anything."
"That cannon seemed pretty useful when it took Hamilton out," Gorev said sourly.
"Focus," Remmy told him. "I need your head here, or you may as well go up top." It was the sort of thing he might say in another life. He'd seen too many people who wasted time complaining during a mission die because their thoughts were somewhere else to put up with Gorev licking his wounds on an open channel. He loo
ked to sublevel six and ordered the defensive measures to focus on the pair of Order soldiers down there. With a gesture from him, Dot or Ooram, the systems would turn them to grease. There was enough firepower on that floor to melt every object in the nine thousand square meter space to slag in ten minutes or less, two soldiers were nothing. They weren't wearing the armour the Order Knights were known for, only the emblems of the Razer Knights.
"What's the plan?" Gorev asked.
"Give him a minute, he's doing something in the system, probably setting us up," Dotty replied for Remmy.
"There are video receivers in range of the Knights on the third sublevel," Remmy said. "There are five of them standing around thirty-seven captives. Looks like they're all members of the Haven government or military. They've got Lourdes with them."
"Lourdes?" asked Ooram.
"Shawn Lourdes, the Science Minister," Masterson replied.
Remmy attached a remote node so he could communicate with the control box wirelessly, then closed it, making sure that no one would be able to tell anyone had it open. "We're going in. We're going to have to try to negotiate with them."
"They'll open fire the moment they see us," Masterson said.
"No, they're here for something," Remmy said. "I'll put something on the table."
"What? All we have is our tech, if we start giving it away…" Gorev protested.
"That's it," Remmy said flatly. He wouldn't let himself go into a negotiation frustrated, so he took a second to clear his head. "Gorev; don't question my orders. Follow them. Your brain is defective, so Dot or I will do the thinking for you. Understand?"
"Yes, Sir," Gorev replied.
The moment they were clear of Tamber, or they were off duty, Remmy would have Gorev removed from the Special Operations Combat Unit completely. There wasn't much use for a soldier who questioned orders without thinking things through first at least. It seemed the more nervous he got, the more he doubted his commanders. He needed people who knew better and were less nervous. "Here we go," Remmy said, opening the service door.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 14 Page 16