The pair of deadly bolts hit Grace in the forehead before she could finish pulling her trigger. The first weakened the protective layers of her vacsuit, the second penetrated straight through.
Lusts End and Wars Herald
The Captain had called him to his ready quarters, and having found his immediate second and third in command at long last, Shamus Frost left them in charge of their last training shift for the day. As he arrived on the bridge Captain Valance stood up and walked him straight into his ready room.
Jake sat down on the front edge of his desk as the door closed behind them. Shamus leaned against the wall. “Important business Captain?”
“I'm afraid so. You'll hear this soon enough, it's spreading across the ship, so it's best you hear it from me first. Grace is dead.”
Frost turned white. He didn't have much of a chance to form deep feelings for the woman, but she was a pleasure to spend time with, not to mention the first woman in ages to show any genuine interest. “How?” he asked in surprise.
“Security and Intelligence teams tracked a small encrypted transmission from your quarters at a time when one of the senior staff could vouch for your whereabouts. They looked a bit further into it and found footage of her leaving shortly after the transmission was sent. They also managed to find a recording from the room.”
“What did the message say?”
“She was informing Regent Galactic that we'd be taking the Triton to the Enreega system. She also divulged the status of the ship, the number of crew we have aboard, the names of most of our senior staff and everything she'd managed to learn about Alice and myself. When the security team went to the infirmary she was seen holding a scalpel up to an unsuspecting soldier's neck. They fell back and went after her in the hall. Grace killed one soldier, seriously injured another and managed to hold a mechanic hostage before the security team had to use lethal force.”
Shamus crossed his arms and looked down. He was quiet for a long moment before he asked; “who led the team?”
“Stephanie.”
“How long has she known about it?”
“They caught it this morning. She found out shortly after and brought it to me. I authorized it after seeing the evidence. I checked the footage from the shoot, there was nothing else she could do to stop Grace in time.”
“I believe ye.”
“We've known each other a long time Shamus, anything you have to say doesn't leave this office.”
Frost sighed and brought his head up to look at Captain Valance. “Nay, I've got my head on. It's a shame, but I barely knew her. On to better things, aye?”
Jake looked at him for a moment, the other man's expression was blank. “Aye,” he replied flatly. “Speaking of which, I've looked over the information your contact gave you. Normally I'd say there's too much there to falsify, but I have to ask, how reliable is your source?”
“He wouldn't do me wrong. Asides, he had no reason to when he passed it on. His andi had him half in pieces when I nicked it from the reader.”
“Well, there are a few targets that I've already marked out, I'm going to need you to lead one of the scouting teams in a couple of weeks, that is if you're staying.”
“Stayin' sir? The gunnery team roster's finally shaping up. I was just about to request permission to do some live firin' before we set off for Enreega,” he said, looking disappointed.
“Have you checked your account?”
“Not in awhile.”
Captain Valance looked as serious as the grave. “You're good to repay me. I deposited a fair value in your account for the intelligence. If you're going to settle your debt and move on, now would be a good time.”
Frost just looked at him for a moment, appearing only a fraction as surprised as he felt. “Captain, do ye want me aboard?”
“Only if you're here because you want to be. I don't like slaves Shamus, that includes indentured manpower.”
Frost collected his thoughts for a moment before going on. “Grandad said once before I left that I'd get tired of the void, hasn't happened yet. Got tired of chasin' the sweet takes though, didn't know what else I could do till I got aboard Triton. Now that I'm here, well,” he raised his arms and looked towards the aft upper decks of the ship. “Have you seen those guns? I mean, ye look at 'em and what they can do to a ship, they may as well be firin' tombstones! What kind of McFadden would I be if I turned away from 'em. My Grandad an' pa would shed a tear at the sight of so many heavy rail quads. I think I'll be stayin' on Captain,” He said with a final nod. “Losin' Grace is sudden, hard, but I'll be up there with my head on a swivel, nothin' will get past me.”
Captain Valance couldn't help but smile at him. “In that case, glad to have you, Gunnery Chief,” he shook Frost's hand firmly. The older fellow's palm was wider than his own, there was grit to his former First Officer.
“I'd better get up there. Lots of prep ta get to,” he said as he turned to leave.
“One thing.” Captain Valance said.
“Aye?”
“McFadden?”
“Oh, aye, that's my real last name Captain.”
“Ah, I'll keep it to myself.”
“Kind of you sir.”
* * *
Alice was half an hour early for her duty shift on the bridge. Command wasn't easy, but over the last few days the crew were getting used to her. Many of them called her Captain while she was on duty, which was somewhat accurate, but she knew the proper terms were Officer of the Deck, or Officer of the Watch, or First Officer, but she gave up trying to correct them after the first night.
The simulations she commanded the crew through were going increasingly well despite their increasing difficulty. Captain Valance was assigning simulations that would not only test the crew in general, but teach them that on a large close combat vessel there were many ways to find trouble, and death could happen in a seemingly random fashion. Someone in a torpedo room could die because someone in shield control or field mechanics wasn't watching the status of the energy shields in that area during a missile or beam strike.
Her ability to command the ship was always stretched, some of the simulations even included boarders attacking the ship from the inside, spies uprising and sabotaging systems. One simulation went terribly the first time, it started with her arriving on the bridge to find Jake and most of the staff there killed. Jacob had designed that one himself, and the mortality rate was over seventy percent by the end. The fact that the ship made it out, was able to escape even though it was brutally damaged, was the kind of thing that bolstered the crew's confidence in her.
As she walked from the main entrance and smiled at the few day shift crew who had come to know her Alice decided to find time to create a simulation of her own. She was sure she could do something different, create a truly unusual situation that would test everyone's skills.
From some of the books she had read and a few of the movies she'd watched having a parity in the crew, such as a night and a day crew could be a very bad thing. The crew could rally behind the second in command and mutiny under the wrong conditions. She didn't take it seriously since there was no chance of mutiny, this was Jacob Valance's ship, there was no doubt in her mind. Other than the Clever Dream there was no other ship she wanted to work on.
Ashley locked the helm controls and turned towards her as she started walking across the bridge. “He's been in there most of the day,” she said quietly, pointing her thumb towards the ready room.
Alice smiled and nodded as she continued on. She waited a moment before the door opened and she stepped inside.
Captain Valance was looking out the window at the orange and yellow nebula in the distance. It was lit from the inside by a cluster of stars. On his desk was a holoprojection of Ayan. It was how Alice remembered her, in her grey engineering vacsuit working the central control panels for the First Light. Her curly red hair was a shocking contrast to the plain uniform she wore. “That's a really good recording of her,” Alice said.
“It was sent along with Lieutenant Everin's transmission. It says it's from the First Light and comes with an advisory that she's been ill for several years.”
Alice sat down, Jake's mood was dark. “Did they send you an image of what she looks like now?” she asked quietly.
“You don't want to see it, she's obviously suffered over the years.”
“I'm so sorry.”
“So am I,” he said simply.
She sat back and let him stare out the transparesteel hull for a minute. “I wish you had known her,” she said quietly.
“I do. I remember her,” he replied as he turned around and looked at the projection on his desk. “Last night I was sitting on the edge of my bunk on the First Light. She told me how she was having difficulty with fine tuning the energy shields. I started telling her all about my day on the bridge and watched her slowly nod off. I touched her face and she opened her eyes, looked at me, smiled and then I woke up.” His hands went up to his head as he sucked in a deep breath of air.
She could see the frustration in him, he was shaking. His hands came down in fists, pounding against the desk. “None of this is mine! They're not my memories, I was never on the First Light but I remember her like she was just here, like she'll be back any minute with two mugs of coffee, one for her, one for me. You know I've never actually tried coffee? I remember what it tasted like though, that I like two sugar two cream. What's more I remember talking to you on my wrist, releasing you as I was captured with my best friends,” he stopped himself and dropped into his chair. “You hear that? My best friends? As much as I wish I had been there with Oz and Minh and Jason and Ayen I wasn't! It's just like Wheeler said. Some lab tech flipped a switch and I was built thanks to the miracle of energy to organic matter conversion.”
Alice stared at him for a moment. She had only known him a short time but was certain this was uncharacteristic. Making the decision to snap him out of it, she took a deep breath before letting him know what she was thinking. “How do you think I feel sometimes? Jonas bought me, programmed me, then broke galactic law to set me loose as a weapon. Then I stole a body and found my way into the galaxy.”
“You don't have to deal with someone else's memories filling in gaps you never knew you had with experiences that don't belong to you.”
“Really? Did you know this body belonged to a woman who killed people? She didn't get that way on her own, either. The first time I was burned I was reminded how her father burned her as a child. One of the first times I got angry I felt the satisfaction of strangling the life out of someone with my bare hands. There were other traumatic things this woman experienced that not even Vindyne could clear out, and it took a long time for me to realize none of it was mine. Fighting off the remaining impulses and accepting that the occupant before was still up here just a little was something I learned to live with. I came to life choking, gagging, fighting to breathe, learning to prop myself up and yell after Jonas as I watched him run by with Ayan and Oz. I didn't realize that there was no way he could recognize me and even though I desperately wanted to stand up and run after him I didn't know how,” she finished flatly.
Jake calmed down and just looked at her, he'd never seen her that serious. “I'm sorry, I had no idea.”
“It's okay, it's really okay. I dealt with it and that's part of who I am,” she replied, lightening up a little. Alice looked at the hologram. “Jonas had some very good friends. Even in the short time I had to share the experience with him, with them they taught him a lot. They experienced good things. If she's the one you remember most, and I know she was very special, very important to him even when they were just meeting, then I could imagine much worse.”
He looked from Alice back to the hologram. Ayan was reading something in front of her, unconsciously tapping her foot. “When I spoke to Liam the other day he said something similar. To accept the memories for what they are, realize they aren't mine but let them enrich my life. Just words at the time. Dealing with the reality is so much harder.”
“Tell me about it. I'm glad I had Bernice with me when the memories started.”
“Bernice?”
“She's one of the women who helped me off the Overlord, that carrier Jonas was taken captive on. We broke you out of the Vindyne Research and Development Facility.”
“Where is she now?”
“Married, happy,” Alice smiled. “She deserves it.”
Jake nodded, his attention on the hologram. “I've never been in love,” he said quietly. “I thought I might have in the past, always sort of hoped to find out what happened to me, if I had a wife somewhere who was wondering where I got off to.”
“You know, chronologically you're pretty young. Anything could happen,” Alice smirked.
He couldn't help but smile back at her. She was trying hard to cheer him up, to draw him back out of self pity. It wasn't fair to her or to the crew for him to be so distracted, so focused on what he couldn't change. Jake turned the projection off. “At least I might have a chance to say goodbye to her for Jonas.”
“Is she really that bad off?”
“They tried everything. Her medical file was attached to the transmission. She even has framework technology installed. She's just too genetically flawed and it's caught up with her,” it hurt to say it aloud, there was an ache in his stomach he'd never felt before, not even after losing crew members. “So I'll give her Jonas' message and be there for her. It's all I can do.”
“A lot of people would run away from that kind of pain,” Alice said plainly. “You're a credit to him for enduring it.”
He sighed, a gesture she hadn't seen from him since she'd met him. Jake was changing, reminding her more and more of Jonas. “I've remembered her just in time to say goodbye. I've seen much worse luck,” he smiled faintly and stood. “Are you ready for the night shift?”
“Aye, Captain,” she said with a salute.
“Well, not much other than training has been going on above deck seven. We have two and a half main hangars clear and a working mass materializer generating parts for reactor six. They found another mass materializer in a sub-hangar under hangar one as well. It was packed with trash and it's already clear, generating a Uriel fighter.”
“That was fast. I've never heard of that fighter though, it's named after an angel?”
“It seems most of the fighters in this ships arsenal are named after the Angelic faith. That fighter in particular has a cockpit for two, a small wormhole drive, six engine pods, internal accommodation for a cargo pod, extra ammunition or rescue seating for four. I've never seen anything like it,” he brought up a holographic representation of the ship.
There were two flat engine pods to the upper rear of the main hull, another pair at the lower front, and a pair of main pods attached directly to the left and right of the fuselage. The engine was in the center of thrust chambers pointing forward and back. Details on the image showed that the main engine could fire forwards or backwards and the other pods could do the same, making the powerful ship incredibly manoeuvrable, capable of landing vertically, upside down, on either side or standing straight up. The pair of cockpits were built as part of the main armoured frame, the pilot sitting in front and below while the copilot sat above and behind. The small cargo hold ran beneath the pilot and copilot seats and the hologram animated the removal and exchange of different task modules. One had four cramped seats, another had racks for dispensing ammunition or holding extra power modules, even a pair of small fusion reactors, there was even a special module for future modification. The weapons load out was completely changeable, and with the copilot's help a ship could run with up to eight guns, two miniature turrets and four tons of missiles. Without the copilot to help manage the weapons systems only a quarter the armaments would be available. If an artificial intelligence was installed the copilot wouldn't be needed, but Alice knew it wouldn't be safe to install one until they figured out how to combat the virus that had killed so many. The sensor an
d intelligence suite built in would make any one of those fighters a perfect anchor for an all out offensive, it could even hold a wormhole open for dozens of fighters to escape before it followed them all home. With space for redundant energy shielding and emission recyclers it could be a difficult target to kill or near impossible to find unless someone had good scanners and was pointing them right at their area. The shape and design of the craft, with its tapered front and extra mountings for guns or other components to the side and forward of the pilots canopy gave it a predatory look.
“Now that's a fighter. You could practically use it for anything,” Alice commented, wide eyed. “Have you shown any of the pilots all the specifications?”
“They're featured in a few simulations, a couple I know you've played, but they're not reconfigurable. I'll launch a few other sims that allow the pilots do decide which mission modules and weapons they want after we're finished in Enreega.”
“That'll be popular. I just wish it didn't take three days to make one of these in the mass materializer, and that's while feeding it dense scrap metal to assist. So you're going to try and get a fighter wing together?”
“I wouldn't go that far, but some of our people are scoring very high numbers in optional flight simulations. We might have at least a dozen pilots ready to fly one of these. I'm hoping to get at least a squad or two ready just in case.”
“I'd love to try one of those,” her eye tracked it as it turned slowly.
“After Enreega. Too bad we couldn't keep all the scrap in the hangars to help the materializers along, reconfiguring solid matter is faster. You should see the junk we're leaving behind once we leave the area. Wheeler's crew had two of the hangar decks crammed,” Jake said as he put his coat on. He picked up the white silk scarf after and just looked at it for a moment.
“That was hers?”
“She made it for Jonas out of something she wore.”
“They'd both want you to have it, I'm sure.”
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 3 Page 27