"She's going to be a distraction, I should take her," Larry said as he stepped forward.
Zoe retreated against Ashley, sending her a worried look. "It's okay, he's a friend," Ashley reassured as she tried to lift her out of her lap.
Her protests came as a panicked squeal.
Ashley hushed her, soothing Zoe with shushing sounds and stroking her face. "It's okay. You're just going to have to be really quiet and still, alright?" She soothed, knowing that there was little actual chance that her instructions would stick, regardless of how they were delivered.
"That's it," Larry grumbled, bringing up a sub display on the conference table.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking game history. If she's anything like every kid old I've met, then she has a favourite," he searched Zoe's profile for a few seconds and activated a program that featured rounded, bouncing characters in the shape of letters and numbers. Their hyper, high pitched voices immediately caught Zoe's attention and her grip on Ashley's hair loosened.
"What is it?" Ashley asked as she watched a nine chase a frantic one.
"Bumper Muncher. I've never heard of it, but I think she knows it pretty well."
Zoe looked up at Ashley, her eyes conveying a request for permission.
"You wanna play?" She asked, feigning excitement and surprise.
Zoe nodded emphatically.
"Okay, here we go," Ashley said as she lifted her up and put her on the table across from her.
The little girl made a gesture as though she were picking up the game display and it disappeared, sounds of muffled protests and comical panic seemed to come from her closed hand until she threw it into the air above the floor beside Ashley. The game image appeared there and Zoe got down from the table with Ashley’s help. Within minutes she settled in to play her game, changing the shape of the virtual walls so the characters, each in the form of a different number, so they collided into each other. The black numbers added together to become one larger number when the collided, and were reduced by red numbers. "She's really good with the computer," Ashley commented quietly as she watched the comically frantic numerical characters rush around the changing virtual space.
"It's a Sol System model, completely intuitive. She doesn't know how inconvenient most computers are, so she assumes it works like the rest of the world."
"I've only ever moved something from my comm unit to a display and back, never even tried what she's doing. Then, I s'pose you know all about what Triton can do," Ashley commented as she checked the status of the ship and started figuring out where they were.
"I trained on this model for three years. The hardest part has been pretending I don't know much more than anyone else."
"You're going to have to teach me a few things sometime."
"Only if you show me more about Crewcast. I haven't been able to ask questions since its designer is also the best investigator on the ship. If I used it heavily I know he'd figure me out."
"Really? How?"
"Crewcast builds a behavioural profile of all its users. It's an intelligence man's wet dream. Most of the crew use it so much that it probably already knows who everyone knows, how long they've known them, what kind of relationships people typically have and anything else. Ever notice how the old Freeground crew don’t have complete public profiles? It's a trap. If you have nothing to hide, there's no problem, but if you do, it takes discipline not to reveal anything important."
"Huh. Good thing I don't have anyone to talk to about your secret. Unless someone else knows."
"No one else knows."
"If they did, would you tell me?"
"No."
"God, one more secret, especially a doozy like yours, and I'll explode."
"That's my fault. I shouldn't have let you rest so long."
"Or let a skeevy soldier into my room."
Larry nodded.
They worked in silence for a moment longer, and Ashley tried not to look at her navigator. He'd sat beside her for many shifts on the bridge, they'd spent time together after work, and she wouldn't have guessed at his true purpose on Triton. If she'd known how dangerous he was, things would have been different. She felt uneasy enough with him sitting across the table from her, and hoped that her attempts at casual jibing didn't go too far. A distressing thought fought its way to the fore; that he'd dispose of her after he'd completed some goal, and she did her best to suppress her fear.
Larry brought up a security status display, partially in two dimensions on his side of the table, and partially in three, where two dozen red spots flashed on a holographic representation of the Triton. Ashley finished her calculations and confirmed that they were just outside the planetary nebula, then started an emergency course calculation in the navigational computer before taking a closer look at it. "What are the yellow areas?"
"Parts of the ship that have been recently contested or are between enemy contacts," he said as he focused in on the upper command deck. All the corridors, most of the crew quarters and all the offices were marked in yellow. Ashley caught a glimpse of the concourse outside the main bridge, and a chill ran through her. The enemy soldiers were lining bodies up along the wall, at least a third of them were in Triton uniforms.
Before she could get a really good look Larry deactivated the live feeds, and all but the structural and bare tactical information remained. It was enough. There was a collection of red markers on both levels of the bridge. "We've lost the ship," she whispered, trying to keep calm.
"No, you're sitting there at the pilot's controls. In case you haven't noticed, you're the only one with direct access to the helm. Engineering was cut off a while ago, it was the first thing the soldiers did. Chief Grady suppressed several soldiers from the first boarding party and locked them in a decontamination chamber without their gear after almost crushing them to death with a gravity fluctuation, but he eventually had to weld the emergency bulkheads shut. Communications with him and his people has been spotty ever since."
"But, the bridge."
"Is nothing but a collection of dead terminals." Larry sighed and nodded to himself, as though digging deep for more patience. With a few gestures he zoomed out and shifted the three dimensional display of the Triton so they could get a better look. "It's bad; I won't lie to you when you can see it all for yourself. The enemy has taken the hangars, command levels and half the interior outside of the Botanical Gallery. On the other hand, they can't take this half of medical without cutting for days, and the same goes for the Gallery. There's also a fight going on aboard their own command carrier, and Frost's people have fused the mooring clamps onto their ship, so they're not going anywhere."
"Wait, so you want me to pilot this ship while hauling another one riding piggyback?" Ashley exclaimed.
Zoe looked at her wide eyed, reacting to her tone more than anything.
Ashley turned, smiled and stroked the youngster's back. "S'okay, play your game hon," she soothed.
"Jason has a plan, that's why I like him despite the fact that if anyone is going to catch me eventually, it'll be him. I think I know what it is, too."
"Wouldn't it be helpful if they knew I was here?"
"No, I'm listening to the enemy's communications and it's pretty obvious that whatever our Intelligence Officer has planned hasn't kicked in yet. If we try to use internal comms, we'll probably be discovered. That's why there's no comm traffic right now, and why Agameg has been waging his own war all along."
"Right, so you're saying that I shouldn't worry about all the fighting going on right now and just get ready."
"Exactly."
"Fine, in that case, I have a heck of a lot of nav data to get through and some calculations to make. New weight distributions, mass considerations, shear estimates, not to mention we're down to one operating engine," she said sweetly for Zoe's benefit. Her attention had turned back to her favourite game, where she controlled a running number three that became a six, nine, and twelve as it gobbled up other thre
es.
"I'll give you a hand. Just be ready for anything, I don't know when Jason will be putting the next phase of his plan into motion."
A sinking feeling started to overwhelm Ashley, and she couldn't help but ask; "D'you think they might leave us behind?"
Larry looked up from the conference table display and caught her eye. "No. There's no way they can capture the command carrier, even this relatively small one, even if they could get to engineering or the control centre. That, and Jason wouldn't leave the people in the Botanical Gallery behind. He wouldn't dishonour Oz that way."
"Dishonour Oz?"
"Something Oz told me the other night. He'd die to protect the civilians at the centre of this ship," Larry said almost mournfully.
"Oh," Ashley returned her attention to her work, trying to use the limited data at hand to create a control profile that would allow her to safely pilot the ship.
The pair worked in silence for a time, the sounds of Zoe's game providing background noise that was so cheery that it seemed inappropriate for how Ashley felt.
"There it is, that fighter the Command Centre's been trying to pin down," Larry said, bringing it up on the main holographic display. The signal was coming from the inner edge of the nebula, tracking with the path of one of the smaller meteor clusters within.
“I don’t think that’s a fighter, they would have detected and slagged it already if it was. He must have attached an inactive beacon to a meteor so he could use it as a relay,” Ashley said, looking at the rough shape of the meteor cluster.
“That makes sense. I was wondering why they didn’t destroy it. They must be waiting for it to transmit, see if they can trace it back, or decode their message, see what that pilot has to say.”
“They’re not the only ones.”
Chapter 29
Landfall
It was a carefully managed disaster. Finn watched the structural monitoring systems on the bridge of the Samson and wished he could somehow reach into the small holographic image of the vessel's skeleton and straighten her main beams and other structural imperfections.
Captain Valance had moved the Samson into position at the rear of his fleet. The Clever Dream was at the vanguard. From where he stood at the back of the bridge Finn could see the tactical display and the realization of what they looked like without the Triton hit him. Battle damaged, captured slaver vessels were in the middle, a mismatched bunch bristling with the remains of turreted guns. Surrounding them were dozens of powerful fighters, state of the art and armed to the teeth.
If he was a Carthan Port Master he wouldn't trust such a fleet. He'd have them either locked down or under close supervision. The fact that the Carthans allowed them to move from the Wastes into the middle of a thickly populated area was either a sign of stupidity or over-confidence. He took another look at the status of the Samson and nodded to himself. The stress on the ship was balanced, and it was unlikely that it would change until they tried to land.
Another thought struck him. The Carthans probably had orbital defence systems pointed directly at them as they moved across the ruined landscape. It was a sobering notion, and it explained why they were able to get clearance. Someone, somewhere was at a very dangerous control panel, and they were watching.
That brought him back to a feeling of dread that he'd been suppressing ever since they escaped the Triton. They were exposed, without the generous means their ship provided them, and as much as he had faith in his Captain, he was a wanted man. Most of the Samson crew were on bounty hunting lists. The only reason why his wasn't among them was because he was the most recent addition to the crew. He signed on right before Enreega. Right before the Triton, and through it all, even through his disappointment with Ashley, he was happy to be along. They actually put him in charge of a division in Engineering.
Being back on the Samson was like moving from a mansion to an apartment. A warped, old apartment with holes in the walls, leaky pipes and peeling paint. He didn't want to see the ship come to an end either, but even when they first took the Triton, the Samson was in need of a refit, or at least some serious restorative work. She was old when Captain Valance first got her, and though he had done a fantastic job keeping it together, even made a few improvements, wear and tear was showing when Finn first arrived aboard. After surviving serious combat, barely, she was ready to be decommissioned or rebuilt from the frame up.
With the Triton gone, as he and several of the crew members he'd spoken to the night before suspected, they would have to find a way to rebuild the Samson and repair the rest of the ships. The fabrication centre on the Triton would be sorely missed. He had almost gotten used to getting the parts he needed within minutes or hours of requesting them, instead of having to make his own fittings and fixtures in a small workshop like most ship mechanics. That's what they were back to. Every bent out part would have to be straightened and tested. Damaged components would have to be sourced, purchased or made by hand. He suspected at least one of the ships they'd captured had a workshop, but didn't dare hope that they'd be worth using considering the vessels were crewed by slaves. His older brother, who was a steward in the plant Union on his home world, always said that the condition of the work place was directly related to the treatment of the employees. He couldn't imagine what kind of condition the other ships were in after being in the hands of slaves for who knew how long. He would have to brave the workshop in another vessel, however. The one on the Samson was destroyed weeks before.
There were still parts of the Samson in the green. The bridge, forward hold, and several other compartments aboard ship were still structurally sound. Three of the four main beams were twisted however, and there were several compartments that were barely space worthy. If he didn't want to end up serving on one of those slave ships, he'd have to make sure the Samson was worth saving, even after they landed.
"Hey Finn, ever see a shanty port?" Captain Valance asked as he brought up a two dimensional projection of the sprawling port ahead of them.
They had passed out of the rain, and the sun was setting. From one edge of the horizon to the other ships had landed. Roads wound between the paved slips, tricking his eye into looking at the expanse of transients as he would a city. Shipping containers, hulks, makeshift welded huts and portable structures made many of the spaces homes. The sea of ships and buildings was interrupted occasionally by docking pillars with several platforms each, multi-level hangars and several old brick or scrap built buildings. To the left, just out of sight was an ocean that went on for as far as the eye could see. It looked deep and black in the fading light. "I’ve never seen anything like this, Captain."
"Well, that'll be home for a while. It's the only place we’re cleared to land in the entire solar system."
There were hundreds of ships in the air above the port; the lights of their engines were brilliant. The looming shape of the night side of Kambis, the world Tamber orbited, loomed. The eclipse night was falling over Tamber. The interlocking illuminated rings of a city on the heavy gravity world and other distant lit features showed through the scant clouds, and he couldn't help but wonder what that world was like. He suspected there was a great deal of mining, like any heavy gravity world, but beyond that, he'd never been to a city large enough to be seen from two hundred thousand kilometres away.
At the sight of that two dimensional video he was no longer part of an isolated crew, he was in the middle of civilization. It was a chaotic, cramped, busy place, and it looked like it would be far too easy to become lost. "Some place," he whispered as he looked back to his console.
"You said it," Captain Valance replied.
A large, clear space came into view; it was blocked off by shipping containers and scrap metal walls on all four sides. There was a two level, closed hangar at one end and three cleaner looking shipping containers placed at the other. In a sea of cramped vessels and narrow makeshift buildings it must have taken a herculean effort to reserve.
The Samson was to land first,
and if they weren't careful she'd never take off the ground again. Finn re-checked his calculations and nodded to himself. Time to present his idea to the Captain, they were beginning to reduce altitude. "Sir, I know you haven't had time, but I sent something I've been working on to your console."
"The landing instructions? I saw them, Finn. I don't like the idea, but I think you're right. Landing starboard side first might twist two of our main beams back into shape if I manage it. Are you sure about the angle?"
"Yes sir. One thing though, we'll lose a few mounting points. If we want to rebuild the Samson we'll have to find a way to repair or replace the fittings, considering they're high density fibre frame-"
"We'll be rebuilding her. If we're lucky we might be able to find scrap from a similar model. We'll find another way to rebuild if we don't. Tell the crew we're about to set down."
Finn looked for the ship wide intercom switch and found it after a moment. "We'll be landing in a few seconds, so get away from major frame fixtures and seal your vacsuits. Set for high impact in case something snaps or comes loose."
"Good enough. All right, touching down."
As soon as the Samson touched the ground sections of the ship's frame turned red, indicating critical stress levels. They were touching down without landing gear. Finn couldn't help but be reminded of Ashley as he remembered the term she used for it; 'a belly flop'. Even as he listened to the groaning metal in the ship behind him and watched as the main beams of the lower hull indicated they were stressed to twisting he found himself hoping she was all right.
A loud screech and explosive pops sounded throughout the ship as the port side beam tore free of several frame mounts. It was hanging free of the exterior hull for at least twenty meters. He prayed the starboard side would fare better, and to his surprise, it did. The stress on that beam was extreme but more evenly distributed, resulting in the desired twisting and reshaping. When the Samson came to rest the port side beam read as almost completely straightened.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments Page 28