Spinward Fringe Broadcast 14

by Randolph Lalonde

  Green pips appeared beside every member of his squad, showing that they acknowledged his commands. Jake pulled a pair of electromagnetic pulse grenades that were connected by a thin line, turning them into a bolo, from his hip pocket and drew his sidearm with the other hand. So much for not leading from the front. Jake thought as he rushed from cover into the large open space in front of the bridge.

  The deck rumbled as the tracks of the robots rolled them out from their hiding places, to the right and left of the armoured bridge doors. He fired his sidearm, which was loaded with smaller Knight Killer rounds. "It's him!" someone called out from the hallway behind the three-metre-tall security robot as it began firing pulse weapons that were designed to damage shields and disable electronics. "Make sure there's enough to run a DNA scan on when we get him!" shouted another crewmember who was still out of sight. The lot of them were keeping well back, hiding in the halls to the right and left of the large bridge doors.

  Those words confirmed something Jake and his people already suspected. Even though the Rear Admiral was gone, hundreds of people on the crew still believed that he'd make good on the bounty for Jake. It was ridiculous. A barrage of white bolts caught him across the chest before the robot was struck by dozens of heavy Knight Killer rifle rounds.

  Jake's shields flashed yellow, red, then reported that they were down completely. He'd tried to run in an unpredictable zig-zag, but the machine easily outdid him, tracking his motion, striking with more than half its energized rapid-fire. A pair of fine nets launched from a box on its shoulder. The first didn't catch him, but the second was right on target. His armour reported that the net was emitting stun pulses, something that wouldn't penetrate, but help his shields recharge instead.

  The net consisted of strong material, and threatened to enshroud him like a cocoon, so Jake activated his wrist blade, swinging it in a broad arc across, then up and down. This was his kind of fight - the kind he used to initiate as a bounty hunter - it would be a severe embarrassment if he lost. It seemed like the robot had been instructed to take him alive, and that was a mistake. The second was making its way out from behind the first, so he rushed to the left, putting the one he was already fighting in its way.

  That first machine tracked him with another weapon, a many-barrelled gun mounted where its right-hand ought to be. With the help of the strength augmentation in his suit, Jake pulled his feet free of what remained of the netting and leapt out of the line of fire, a manoeuvre that wouldn't buy him more than a second or two before he found out what that big multi-barrelled weapon could do.

  "Bloody rascal shite!" Frost cursed.

  Jake glanced at him in time to see the electromagnetic pulse grenade Frost threw get batted back at him with a hard puff of air. It went off, and Frost's shields were history. "You all right, old man?" Jake asked.

  "Fine! I'll have this box of bolts apart, you worry about your own grand-standing!" Frost called back.

  Bringing his secondary shield up - a wall of energy that was projected like an old medieval defence from his left gauntlet - Jake turned his full attention back to the robot he was working on. The squad already had its shields down, but it had one more trick to show him before Jake could strike. The multi-barrelled hand fired dozens of barbed bullets at him that stuck to his armour. A stream of electricity flowed down the lines attached to them as Jake was yanked off his feet towards a gripper that popped out of the side of the machine on a separate arm. The surprise of it all made Jake laugh. "I wish I had one of these in the Samson days!" he exclaimed.

  "Stop playing with it!" Frost called back.

  Jake ignored the gripper that caught him as he was yanked to the first security robot, slashing at the thicker launcher arm above the weaponized hand with his wrist blade. The ultra-thin, nanobot saw blade glowed blue as it ate into the armour there, and on a second hurried slash he got lucky. A split in the armour revealed that he'd broken through several wires leading into the main chassis and his scanners notified him that any electromagnetic pulse weapon, especially the pair of grenades that dangled from his shield hand, would damage the internals of the mechanized monstrosity.

  Retracting his wrist blade, Jake took the grenades in that hand and looped them around the robot's arm. They dangled there for three seconds before going off. The whole machine froze, the gripper around Jake's waist was also frozen, which was a huge problem because the second robot was coming around the first, a pair of cutters emerging from small doors in its chest. What it planned to do with those was uncertain, but Jake pulled his rifle from where it was affixed to his back and fired a steady stream of heavy explosive rounds at it. Each shot was charged, so they did electromagnetic and burning damage. The ambient temperature started going up two and three degrees at a time, not nearly enough to worry anyone in a Haven heavy armour suit, but the crewmembers who were in lesser armour would be in trouble after a minute or two. Some who were just in simple uniforms could literally begin to cook if he fired too long.

  The cutters on the robot's chest didn't last more than twenty rounds. "Open fire on my target!" Jake called out, and his half of the squad joined in, blasting holes through armour that couldn't hold up to the barrage that the six of them sent at it. After less than a minute, the bot was inert, most of the armoured panels on the front side broken down, its internal components reduced to a tossed pile of unrecognizable bits. The sound of the environmental systems trying to push cool air into the space, which was cresting sixty-three degrees Celsius, was all around him as Jake sawed the arm holding him up with his wrist blade.

  "Should we let them run?" asked Frost as Jake dropped down, free of the first security robot's grabber.

  "No," Jake replied, looking at the Order crewmembers, who had rushed to the far end of the halls they hid in, trying to flee the area, which was barely habitable by humans. Most of them didn't wear emergency under suits, or anything that could be considered a relative of a vacsuit. The temperature was quickly lowering back down below forty degrees, so he wasn't worried. The crew may have been ill-provided for, but the atmospheric systems were making up for it. "They'll be…" he was about to reassure everyone in his squad, tell them that their enemies would be fine, when one Order of Eden Officer in a green uniform picked up a rifle and fired it at him. It was the weapon of an Order Knight, and the round was explosive, powerful enough to register as a high threat on Jake's shields, and he fired back at the officer without thinking.

  To the horror of everyone but a few members of his squad, Jake's single round exploded against the officer's breastbone, obliterating most of the man's body, leaving a black and red stain behind him that was over three metres wide. "Surrender!" Jake spat bitterly. He should have taken a split second to set his weapon to stun, it would have been effective, but he didn't regret the misstep. The officer was foolish to make any attempt against him or any member of his team. Jake realized he'd made his demand on a channel only his squad and Fleet Command could hear, so he addressed the Ascent One on their ship wide channel. "I'm opening the bridge security doors. This ship is mine. If you don't surrender, I'll leave, sealing the hatches behind me, then I'll annihilate it from a distance using an antimatter torpedo. No more warnings."

  The temperature was already back down to twenty-one Celsius, the human standard for life support, so there was no reason to delay. He opened the bridge doors and strode through them as they parted, watching his scanners for anyone holding a weapon. What he found instead was a group of nine bridge officers, all in the middle of the large space with their hands up high, eyes wide. "We surrender."

  Thirty-Five

  Someone's Gotta Do It

  * * *

  Admiral Jacob Valent felt like he was caught in a storm of information as requests and reports began streaming through this command and control unit interface. They came up one after another, sometimes several at a time, crowding his vision as they were projected from his arm units to his eyes directly. The Ascent One was a huge ship with a long history - fi
rst with the Regent Galactic Corporate Fleet, then the Order of Eden - and the discoveries they could make might be important.

  On his tactical interface he directed hundreds of Haven Fleet personnel who came aboard to secure and investigate the vessel while the ship's staff were all presented with their rights, stripped, wrapped in a basic vacsuit then transported to the War Forge in a shuttle that was just as basic. Their rights were adapted from an old document called; 'The Statement of Democratic Rights in The Automated Age.'

  It was required study when Jake attended school as a boy. Well, he didn't actually go to that school, but a murky memory from Jonas' earlier years made him feel like he did. The rights each Order captive were informed of caught many of them by surprise. One of the nine officers that they captured on the bridge - that was a massive coup, since each was looking to defect and share everything they knew - actually grinned when she heard it, seemingly recognizing the phrase one of his squad members recited. "As a captive of Haven Fleet, you are entitled to the same level of safety, nourishment and basic comforts as our lowest enlisted soldiers. You will be protected from physical and mental abuse while you are given access to an artificial intelligence that will assist you with legal representation. The voracity of your defence is entirely up to you."

  "I'm only a follower," the Officer objected quietly, her grin fading as the vacsuit wrapped around her on its own, drawing her wrists together. "I request asylum. I want to be a citizen."

  The squad member, Veras was his name, retracted his helmet and fixed her with a reassuring look. "I'll read you the part we don't have to share with everyone." Then he did just that in a gentler tone. "If it is determined that you are not a threat, then you may apply for citizenship. Your incarceration will continue during the processing time, which is currently estimated at three days. If you are accepted as a citizen, you will be granted the privilege of shelter, food, and other essential provisions along with a right to vote as a citizen and earn luxury credits. You may be enlisted for military service if a state of emergency is called. For more information, please touch the question mark on your wrist and inquire on the interface that appears."

  "Okay," the Officer said, brightening a little. "I have a lot to share."

  "Good, tap there and start telling the system all about it," Veras said, pointing to the question mark on the wrist of her vacsuit. A pair of Haven Fleet regulars in a military vacsuits led her and the rest of the Order officers away, connecting them to each other with a line that affixed to the backs and fronts of their bright green prisoner garb.

  The bridge was filled with security and technical staff an hour later. Jake was still there, watching over the data collection, getting updates from several of the Rear Admirals and staying connected to the rest of the Admiralty. The Merciless was already patrolling the outer solar system while damage control teams worked through the extensive list of problems. They'd managed to weather the storm with no loss of life, just a number of close calls, and the ship was still functional enough. Captain Agameg Price had proven himself.

  Frost and Stephanie were already aboard the War Forge being debriefed. There were questions about their final reports on the occupation of Tamber. Jake made sure that there were nice quarters waiting for them. They'd have some time off, but he would be visiting them before long. Good commanders were hard to find, and he was already scheming, building a proposal for them so they could be in his chain of command again. Frost was easy, Jake knew what would get him back on board. Stephanie was a harder nut to crack and he knew there were other commanders looking at her file. The thing that was foremost in his mind was her miscarriage. Whatever offer he made had to keep them together and there had to be time allotted for them to recover, to rest. He knew Stephanie well, perhaps better than Frost did. If he gave her a mission or made her any offer that would put too much distance between her and Frost, she might not see her way back to him, and Jake knew how happy they made each other, so he wouldn't be the one who showed her a way to restart her life and leave her partner behind. It was something he'd seen her do with boyfriends before.

  As he directed the next team of investigators from the main landing bay to the main engineering section of the Ascent One, a message from Minh-Chu came up. Jake selected it immediately, so quickly that it became a live call. Ronin was in his Uriel fighter, which he'd taken twenty minutes to re-outfit with an Explorer Module, the best sensor and scanning suite that the War Forge could produce for that fighter type. "I'm flying around what's left of that mobile station," he said, gesturing through his cockpit window with a gloved hand. "It's gone. Well, not completely. They cut nineteen tons of outer hull and compartments away to get rid of everything that was marked or tainted then got out of here. I used the new scanning profiles from our Order friends, you know, the ones that see through our cloaking and Citadel's, to look around, and there's no sign of the ship. I'm putting a call out for volunteer pilots who aren't above the fatigue threshold to start scanning the whole solar system using those settings but I don't think we'll find any trace of Citadel."

  "So…" Jake thought about his response for a moment before continuing. It would be frustrating to discover that they managed to capture thousands of Order personnel but not one Citadel Officer. Even though he suspected Haven Fleet hadn't faced their best people that day, Jake hoped to capture someone other than the strange frameworks they managed to bag. Then a thought occurred to him. "Do you think there could be Citadel ships hiding in Kambis' atmosphere?" There were still chemical fires on the surface of the planet, but the skies had been blackened by smoke that let just enough light through to turn whole seconds of the world red when viewed from orbit.

  "I'll put a fleet wide request in with the Fleet for nearby ships to scan the planet. Good thinking, Jake," Ronin replied. "I wish I had better news about this mobile base, but our techs are probably going to have a good time studying this hunk of junk they left behind." The view over his shoulder showed that he was turning his fighter, accelerating away from the leftover chunk of station. "I'm off, need to take a few hours to reset and prove that I'm in one piece to Ash."

  "Give her a hug for me, and take as much time off as you can," Jake said.

  "You got it, Admiral. Oh, she's already planning a get together. I'm sure you'll hear about it."

  "I'll be there if I can," Jake replied. It was just like Ashley to do her best to give everyone some time to gather and see each other right after a dangerous, tense time. It might be a doomed idea unless she waited a few days, though.

  The message window closed and Jake was left with a list of topics that covered the left side of his vision. He knew there was even more than that, he only need scroll down to discover more issues awaiting review. He picked one contact request simply entitled: WHEELER STATUS.

  After a moment Examiner Regis Cross appeared in a window that hovered in the left-hand side of Jake's vision. He was overseeing the mental examination of all the Order of Eden captives, but the brief scrolling under his image stated that Regis spent the last hour with Wheeler exclusively. The man's face was round and plain except for overly long black eyelashes and big eyebrows, probably a fashion choice from wherever he originally hailed from. What struck Jake most was how bored the man looked. Maybe he was tired? "Greetings, Admiral. Thank you for taking my contact request in advance of my preliminary report filing."

  "You're welcome. Your request said it was urgent?"

  "Yes. I wanted to personally advise you and everyone who has the clearance level to see Wheeler that it is imperative that you don't visit him in person or communicate with him in any way. By doing so you would be further inflating his overdeveloped sense of self-importance. Furthermore, you'd engage a trait I've found in him that is so prevalent in his personality that it's practically taken over. He truly believes that he is a paragon of justice in the galaxy, that he has an understanding of right and wrong that must be enforced. Couple that with a persecution complex, the perception that he is always the victim in any
situation, and add a deeply rooted sense of paranoia, he is a truly troubled man. Maybe some of this has been put-on, I have only seen him for an hour so far, so it's possible, but I severely doubt it."

  "I know health care professionals don't like to use this term, but…" Jake regarded the passive looking expression of the man, who was a civilian consultant but important to speeding up the placement of their Order captives, then said exactly what was on his mind. "… it sounds like Wheeler is crazy."

  "As a bag of highly caffeinated squirrels fighting over the last peanut," he replied with a sigh. "Oh, and you have me confused with a therapist. I use labels to indicate what level of treatment these people need, and where they should be placed. I love labels. I don't fix anything, I just assess and recommend."

  "Right," Jake said, trying not to snicker at the mental image the examiner drew. "So, what injustice is Wheeler looking to correct?"

  "Oh, Freeground and anyone who is related to the First Light voyage, especially you, Admiral Ayan Anderson and your associates, are apparently going to cause the complete downfall of humanity by spreading a message of passivity. That's in conflict with his belief that you're all violent killers who hate him personally and are out to cause him every kind of harm and misery. He also believes that the leader of the Order is sending him signals that will cause sudden change or destruction using his framework system, which we've confirmed is no longer present. These are all horrible injustices that he has to correct using propaganda of his own making and any other means. I advise you to be careful whenever you or your people come in contact with anything he's designed or had a hand in placing."

  "Thank you, Examiner," Jake said. "I won't visit, and I'll tell my people to watch for his traps as they examine the solar system."