Free Fleet Box Set 1

by Michael Chatfield

  An alert sounded on my upgraded implants; Min Hae had found the blueprints for more advanced implants. So far, we just had internal communications with the doctors, medics, some of Felix’s development team, and Min Hae’s expanding intelligence department was working out the other implants. I’d quickly gotten myself upgraded and removed the conforming headset.

  “Extractor twelve held in onboard storage has exploded,” a monotone voice said as I swore.

  “Guess I’m not sleeping again.” I grabbed another injector from my pocket.

  Yasu watched me as I dumped the Wake-Up drug into my system. I shook myself as the sleepiness went away and everything became clearer.

  “I just don’t want to see anyone have to go through what we did. I feel responsible for them,” I growled as I reflected on my words. I shook my head. I had other things to do.

  “We’ll talk later,” I said, not catching Yasu’s cynical look as I ran out of the observatory to deal with the latest issue.

  It looked like our trickle of materials was going to be cut drastically again.

  Jeremiah, his wife, and two other teams of my protection detail fell in around me, armed to the teeth and ready for anything.

  ***

  She stood there, still looking out of the observatory, using the massive floor-to-roof view screen to bring up the recordings in the hallway where James had tried to kill her. Slowly, she played the video, watching both his face and hers, looking away for a second as she watched herself freeze and a moment of panic as a sword destined for her kidneys came closer.

  A wave of plasma hit the attacker, forcing them back as they writhed in a burning mass before the plasma heated the pirate’s Mecha enough, killing them.

  By this time, James had killed three more with the weapon and a fourth by throwing the rifle. His blades slashed into the pirates as she watched herself now ready her weapon to plunge into him.

  “Idiot,” she said to herself, balling her hands into fists as she sat down in a chair, hitting her thighs. “He was trying to save you, not kill you, you baka,” she said to herself as she hit her legs again. Her thigh clanged as armor met armor.

  The Sato sisters jumped into the room at the sound. “Mistress?”

  “It’s nothing. You may go back outside,” she said as she hid the emotions playing across her face by continuing to look at the view screen wall. The Sato sisters bowed, walking outside the hatch, and closed it partly behind them.

  She thought of his arrogance, the way he exuded confidence, and how different he’d been in here. Accepting she’d kill him at some time and not caring, just hopeful his work would be completed and someone better than himself would take over. She didn’t know who else could take over.

  There was no one like him. Yet he didn’t care whether he lived or died, she could see; he only cared that the members of Mecha Tail and now the Free Fleet survived. With this decision, he had isolated himself, leaving him completely alone with the burden of thousands of lives resting on him.

  This fact hit her like a train. She needed James Cook to live; the Free Fleet did, the entire human race did, and how many other possible races? He was on a quest to save any species that needed help. Without him, it would come crumbling down. Didn’t he realize this?

  Instead of looking after himself, he was working himself to the nub, using hardly tested drugs to stay functioning and taking the minimum downtime between doses to clear it before the next one. Hell, she’d just seen him take two times the dose after the suggested time of wakefulness.

  She returned to her quarters, not seeing anything as she was lost in her angry thoughts of his own self-loathing. She sat on her bed, looking at the massive luxurious quarters she’d been given. They were the old station commander’s and would befit a king. Yet, was he here with his wife as he should be?

  No. He was hidden in some hole. She’d heard about swinger groups in which the husband and wife stayed so in name but dated and coupled outside of their relationship. The Sato sisters had highlighted the similarities of a normal swinging couple and the way that James acted to her.

  She got out of her Mecha and lay on the bed. Annoyance filled her as she thought of the impudent man who was her husband. The fleet commander, sleeping in a crew woman’s quarters, gallivanting from berth to berth every night. She doubted the drugs were for just staying awake for a week and a half; they made it easier for him to have his way with a crew woman and then move on, making it look as though he was working constantly.

  He had better come to her and soon, explaining himself, or there would be a toll for his indiscretion, she swore. Or her name wasn’t Yasu Masami Ono.

  Final Preparations

  I walked into the stores. A busy woman was working on her data pad as she hurried around, pulling a kit from the racks behind her. Others did the same farther in the racks.

  “Be with you in a minute—we’re quite busy,” she said with a note of irritation.

  “That’s fine, I can wait.”

  I was working on my data pad when she’d finished with her order about an hour later and came up to me.

  “So, what is it that you want?” Annoyance rang through her voice.

  I looked to her with a smile as I watched her eyes go wide with surprise. The scar definitely gets some attention. I leaned on her desk. “Hello. I need a new battle suit.”

  “Yes, Fleet Commander, sir. I didn’t know that was you! I am so sorry! I thought you were just another crewman trying to push your weight around to get new tabs for your uniform.” She realized what she had said all too late as her face flushed. “Ah yes, new battle suit,” she squeaked, rushing back to the safety of the racks.

  I grinned, letting a laugh go for the first time in a while.

  “I’ve just the thing for you.” She reappeared a few minutes later with three heavy-looking battle suits, her face beet-red. “I am so sorry, Commander Salchar!”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I grinned, causing her to smile timidly as I studied the battle suits, which felt different. “This looks a bit different from my regular battle suit.”

  “This is the battle suit two-point-oh.” Her demeanor changed as she pulled one on to the table between us and laid it out.

  “It’s now armored to take indirect fire and to help blunt the effect of plasmid weapons. It has built-in tourniquets, Hellfire injection system, and it is also rated for vacuum. If the suit senses vacuum, a clear hood will encapsulate your face and internal oxygen reserves and carbon dioxide scrubbers will provide you with breathable air for four days. It will keep you warm with an integrated temperature balancing system, or colder if you’re in a warm environment just like the previous one but this time with more severe temperature ranges. It also connects with your nerve ports and with a miniaturized embedded exoskeleton, allowing you to move even if your Mecha is disabled. It is compatible with your Mecha still, and has added inflatable adjustable padding.” She looked up. Seeing she had my full attention, she continued.

  “It has its own communication relay within it as backup for your Mecha, or for primary use.” She pressed a tab on the neck and a clear covering enveloped the neck of the battle suit.

  “The hood has a minimal HUD in it; it will also darken if, say, you look at the sun while working outside.” She pointed to what looked like small puckers along the back and chest. “There are propulsion jets around the body in case you need to maneuver.” She smiled as she handed over the battle suit.

  The material was now tougher and heavier but still felt comfortable. I could feel the tiny machinery that made up the exoskeleton weaved in, as well as the armored and insulating areas.

  “I’d heard that there was finally a Hellfire-embedded battle suit—I didn’t think it would be this advanced.”

  “We had a few more ideas.” She shrugged as I grinned.

  “Good work,” I said as she nodded, her face tinging red. I took off my old battle suit and put on my new one, no new blush rising on her cheeks. The battle suit
moved over me, adjusting to put everything in the right place. A moment of panic overcame me as the clear hood came up from the collar, sealing over my head. I brought my hands up to rip it off; it formed to my head and then retracted before I could do so.

  Feeling a little embarrassed, I lowered my hands as I moved in the battle suit. There were a few moments of cold and then hot as the suit adjusted to my normal temperature and then settled down, finally.

  The added strength of the exoskeleton wasn’t anything like that in my Mecha but it was still there. I could feel armored plates moving. It wasn’t as clunky as I had expected but wholly fluid.

  “How many of these do you have?”

  “These are the prototypes. We’re still finding out more information from Min Hae and then adapting it as we go. With the restrictions on materials, we’re waiting for clearance to make more.” Her face twisted in annoyance.

  I pulled up my data pad, whisking through a few things before applying my thumb to the surface.

  “You now do. These will save lives immediately. Take a week or so to collect all of your ideas before making another. I’ll test this one out and make notes on it; I’ll send back messages with the FTL buoys we drop so you can make improvements as you go.”

  “Really, sir?” Her eyes lit up. “You’ll test it for us?”

  “Yes, though I want you to make the best damned battle suit you can come up with. Also, do the armorers know about this suit?”

  “We will, sir! We won’t let you down! Yes, they do! They helped with the exoskeleton and we took the injector information from them for the Hellfire,” she said excitedly. She paused and screwed her face up.

  “Good,” I said with a smile. “What is it?”

  “Are you going to take the fleet and leave us here?” Her tone was now guarded as she looked at me with something like apprehension in her eyes.

  “I have to free those we left on Chaleel. They’ve been there for almost three months. I wished we could go sooner, but we weren’t ready. Now we are, and we have a promise to keep to them. Once they’re freed, we can move to re-take Earth and then look to freeing more planets from the Syndicate pirates.”

  “Can’t you do that all from the station, though?”

  “I could, but what would it show—that I’m too scared to leave the safety of the station to risk my life like those under my command? A leader doesn’t lead from the rear but from the front with the grunts, helping to pull everyone forward.”

  “What about Commander Monk, then? Why is he staying? He’s a fighter.”

  “Yes, he is, and one of the best I know. We need somewhere safe for us to come back to and to meet others at. I want to turn Parnmal into a massive station, not used only for the Free Fleet, but also to have trade between planets and be a major hub in the galaxy. For that, I need someone who is firm, yet just, and can also make judgments that could mean life or death. Monk, in my opinion, fits that bill perfectly.” I could see I’d gathered an audience as people in the racks listened to my every word.

  “Monk is a warrior, but he is also fair; he won’t abuse his power. He’ll be dealing with people of every race; he’ll have to be accommodating to them. At the same time, he will have a population of military, civilian, and prisoners. All of which he needs to look over, treat differently and work with. Before all of this, he was actually training to become a monk of Buddha. He has the most patience I have ever seen in a person, and I know he’ll use his patience and his skill with being able to see things from other’s point of view without being judgmental.

  “You’re in good hands with Monk.” I smiled. I grabbed my other battle suit and left the stores, my protection detail clumping behind me.

  It never seemed to be slow in the station. People ran with gravity carts, bringing newly refined materials to the workshops, which cranked out parts to be put on ships. Last-minute supplies raced around; others were yelling unintelligible things that were background noise to me as I walked and looked around appreciatively.

  Prisoner work details, under the careful watch of their warden commandos, put the station back together. They wore no jewelry anymore except for orange battle suits. A few of them looked angry but resigned to their fate; others looked—well, happy.

  There were a few troublemakers, as with any group, but the majority were happy to not worry whether those around them would kill to get a larger share of the prize, or on a whim.

  It was much the same with the humans who were serving terms. The humans usually stuck together, still feeling the ire of their previous captors who they served alongside with. Though, for the most part, they were putting their differences aside as they saw much of the same in one another—they all had work to do and the less problems the better.

  Monk had begun mixed work parties to try to bring around this cooperation and stop the infighting. That didn’t mean that the wardens who were Special Forces Sarenmenti didn’t feel the need to break up the fights with prejudice, which actually helped the cohesion, giving both sides something to despise.

  I walked down to the docking tubes. The four Mecha teams on duty came to attention as I walked past, giving them the accepted two-finger salute as I entered the hangar. On the wall, there was a gold oval with the Resilient’s side profile, the Free Fleet’s symbol, a Mecha with an olive branch beside it.

  I walked through the Resilient’s halls. There was a major lack of skilled personnel; it was by far our greatest weakness. For every skilled person we lost, there was no way of getting them back or replacing them, not unless we wanted to start using the Syndicate crews to fill our ships—which was not an option.

  This lack of highly skilled personnel meant that areas such as engineering, tactical, gunnery, sensor operators, helmsmen, and navigation had people running double or triple shifts. Plus, with the creation of the shipyards and the need to get other ships fixed up, it meant it was pulling our already limited manpower away from the ships that were ready to actually patrol. Well, not really if Eddie was to be believed.

  The Free Fleet personnel had become Renaissance people or jacks of all trades. Commandos were fusion plant engineers; a damage control crewmate might also be trained in navigation. Everyone was trained in multiple areas, as well as all of them being qualified commandos first.

  Kuruvians were happy to do anything engineering, and a large amount of them had found interest in being navigators. They enjoyed the complex mathematics, which only made my head spin. They had also taken a liking to working with sensor arrays as they were used to looking at thousands of lines of data to find an issue.

  The humans and Sarenmenti were spread across the ship in nearly every department. All of them doubled as commandos to swell our numbers, which where woefully low. It was strange: a commando could now be a navigator, but because of the need to have an assaulting force, they were stuck clunking around in armor. If they died, then we would lose a valuable resource worth months of training that we couldn’t get back.

  We had less than a quarter of the necessary bodies per ship and that was with only twenty-seven ships in space.

  Clearing these thoughts and the frown on my face, I walked up to the closed blast doors that led to the bridge. The commandos waiting there snapped to attention as one of them thumbed the opening button. I walked past them, coming to a second blast door. I grinned as the second commando team did the same as those at the first door; my implants linked to the computer could tell me they had already scanned me a few dozen times.

  I walked in as Rick was already waiting, probably having been told by the outer blast door commandos.

  “Free Fleet Commander on deck!” He snapped me a salute as everyone came to attention in their seats.

  We’d come a long way from being Mecha fighters training in a hangar bay, I thought with a smile.

  “At ease.” I returned the salute, moving past my chair, the responsibility that came with it clear in my mind as I didn’t pause. I had made a silent promise to my people and those under the thum
b of the Syndicate; it was time I accepted that.

  “Better get this on with then.” I tapped the chair in passing. The conference room, which had been built in the back of the bridge, opened before me.

  “At ease,” I said before they could salute. I looked at the view screen wall, which held every ship commander, platoon and higher commander, Monk, Min Hae, and Felix, and their leadership teams, as well as my own department heads aboard the Resilient. Including Henry, who’d taken control of my fleet’s commandos, and Yasu, who’d snuck her way in somehow.

  Eddie and Shrift looked nervous as everyone else looked confused.

  “Now, I know you are all wondering why I’ve asked to conference you all. To be honest, I should have held this conference earlier.” I took a breath as I looked at them all.

  “There was a silent partner in our revolt. She is the one who created the solution that allowed the pain implant and internal kill switches be removed.”

  There was no missing Yasu’s withering gaze as I said she.

  “She was instrumental in taking Parnmal, and without her help, I doubt we would have been able to take the station. She was the one who helped me to open our eyes to who the Planetary Defense Force truly is. I ask, for me, that you look at her with open eyes. She is a sworn member of the Free Fleet like you all and she has sworn to serve the codes and regulations of the Free Fleet.” I looked at all of them, as they looked back, somewhat understanding.

  “Resilient.”

  The holographic projector in the room came to life as Resilient appeared beside me.

  There was a moment of confusion, probably more than one person on the screens and in the room with me wondering whether I’d been smelling plasma exhaust.

  “Thank you, Commander Salchar. Hello, commanders, captains, leaders, and chiefs of the Free Fleet. It is good to finally meet you. My name is Resilient and I am the AI of the Imperial Dreadnought Resilient.”