“All the forma in that section?” David Penton asked from the bridge.
“Enough for me to be swimming in it,” Alice replied as she turned away from the doorway and started sloshing towards dry deck. Her companion suddenly doubled over laughing. “Not funny,” Alice muttered.
“All right, that’s twenty percent of our food reserve. Are you sure it’s contaminated?”
“Oh yeah, liquefied and contaminated by radiation, whatever was in that room, and whatever was on my suit, the floor outside, you get the picture.” Her description only sent her companion into greater hysterics.
“Okay then,” David said. “Glad we don’t have much of a trip back, we should still be good on normal rations. I see your scans from that compartment, that’s the whole damaged area. Frost wants you back on the bridge.”
“Aye, give me a minute for my suit to shimmy this stuff off,” Alice replied as she stepped free of the forma and the surface of her armour vibrated the thick fluid off. She performed a quick diagnostic check on her rifle and it responded by evacuating both of the side exhaust vents, squirting several ounces of forma onto the deck. “We lead a glamorous life, don’t we?” she said to her comrade, who was trying to catch his breath. “Next time, you go first.”
She left him at the edge of the damaged area to watch that section of the ship just in case, and so he could act as an interior scanning node to make up for the damaged sensors in that area. Alice couldn’t help but chuckle at herself once he was out of range. She had to admit that her sudden forma bath was something she couldn’t wait to tell people about once she made it back to Haven Shore.
The Warlord was almost ready to project the wormhole leading back to the Rega Gain System. They would make no pretence that they were headed anywhere else. Even she knew that part of their mission was to bring the British Alliance into the war officially, and if it took a direct retaliation from Order of Eden forces to do it, so be it.
The bridge staff seemed subdued when she arrived and took her post at her station. “Captain Valent is secure,” came Minh-Chu’s voice over the comm. “He’s safe in stasis and I’m taking control of the helm.”
“Good work, destroyer team,” Frost said as she turned towards Ashley, who seemed near tears. “Stay in your seat, lass,” he told her.
“What happened?” Alice asked.
“Seems the Order Knights can do something to framework folk, like a nano-bomb.”
“That doesn’t make sense, he’d keep his helmet sealed. How would they get in? Did they damage his suit?” Alice asked in a rush.
“He had to take it off to make a point, but he’s all right now. They took care of the nanos and put him in stasis,” Frost said.
“He’s not all right. If I can’t talk to him, if he’s not standing up, he’s not all right!” Alice shouted, her head pounding, her vision blurring. She spun out of her seat and started for the exit.
“Stop her!” Frost shouted after her.
The guards she posted at the main bridge hatch stepped in her way, and Alice leapt at them, elbowing and squirming to get through. She could hear the synthetic muscles in their suits struggling to maintain their grasp on her. Alice almost broke through at first, when they were surprised, but they had her in the end. “I need to get on that ship, Jason told me he’d be in trouble if I left him alone, I should have listened! I should have gone with him!”
Her suit began to fight against her, pulling her arms down to her sides, and she realized that Frost had used his override to turn her armour into a prison. “Calm down, it’s all in hand,” he told her as the guards laid her down on her back. “Get back in your seat, Ash.”
Alice never felt so selfish in her life for leaving her father alone. She shouldn’t have spent all that time away training with the Rangers, or let her father go on with the Warlord without her. “I left him alone,” she said. Frost crossed the bridge to her and knelt down in front of her as the tears came. “This is going to change him,” Alice told him. “I have to be with him, please. Please!”
“We can’t dock with the Barricade,” Frost explained calmly as he deactivated her helmet. “Don’t worry, Minh won’t let anything happen to him. Even if I could, your da would have me shot for letting you near him. You and he are two of a kind, if there are any of those nanos around on that ship, you could be in just as much trouble. We’re almost out of this, we’re projecting a wormhole now. Good as gone, and your da is in good hands.”
“I just need to be with him,” Alice said, no longer bothering to struggle.
Frost took her in his arms and nodded at the guards. “It’ll be all right,” he told her. “That man’s made o’ miracles, he’ll outlive us all.”
CHAPTER 50
Strange Travellers
The hangar bay deep in the base of the Everin Building had been pressed into early service. Uriel and Ramiel fighters were undergoing repairs along with an armed shuttle. More technicians than she realized they had pulled panels free and removed parts too far gone to fix. It was what one of the previous Ayan’s Technical Crafts professors called the “autopsy phase” of repairs, when ships had to be pulled apart before they could be made whole again with new components.
At the centre was the Clever Dream. Lewis knew exactly what kind of damage he’d taken, and how it should be repaired. That was a good start, but the few hits the Clever Dream took while his shields were down had crushed armour panels, destroyed emitters, and left two long gashes that cut all the way through the ship’s outer armour. The good news was that their fabrication shop had access to the necessary materials; the bad news was that they were backlogged. It was true that they had more technicians than Ayan realized, but there still weren’t enough for the kind of repairs the Clever Dream and several other ships needed. More qualified people were being recruited, but clearing and transporting them took time.
Ayan leaned against the transparent steel window inside the observation room overlooking the hangar, watching as skitter bots, welder droids, lifters, and intelligent tool chests made their way between technicians. They’d brought a few heavy maintenance suits down from the Triton to assist, and they stalked around like giant humans, carefully lifting here, moving something there, or giving other techs a quick lift to their work sites.
She didn’t know why her father had called her there, but she suspected it had something to do with the sudden shroud of secrecy that fell over his location, and the increase of security that surrounded him. No one could break the codes he put in place surrounding the information on his whereabouts or what he was doing aboard one of the few troop transports the Triton Fleet had.
“Three days,” Lewis said through her personal communications band. “Even my automated repair systems were damaged, and it’ll take this lot three days to have me back in flyable condition, and that’s without fixing all my armour or cloaking systems. I feel naked with all these panels off, and you’re sitting up there watching?”
Ayan couldn’t help but laugh a little at his outrage.
“Hey, one of you hairless apes tripping on your own feet, that’s funny. A damaged and exposed premium fighting ship is not,” Lewis protested.
“I’m sorry, Lewis, but I can’t help but laugh at how you relate to us sometimes. I’ll be down to help with repairs as soon as I find out whatever is going on with my father. Suddenly it’s as though he doesn’t realize he’s out of the Freeground Intelligence Service.”
“I know, I can’t find out anything about him, especially with my sensors offline,” Lewis replied. “It’s interesting, mysterious. Are you sure you couldn’t attend to it while you climb into my innards and affect a few delicate repairs?”
“Soon, Lewis,” Ayan replied.
The observation room ran part of the length of the hallway parallel to the top of the hangar. As of yet it was unfurnished, but Ayan couldn’t help but look behind her at those blank walls and see people using the space the same way the previous Ayan used larger observation areas in the
Freeground Station hangars. She used to love watching the ships come together in the final stages of repair and construction. She saw an uncountable number of launches, and she felt a little of that sensation as she watched the repairs underway below. The itch to get down there and help was growing, Ayan hoped her father would hurry up.
Slick, tall and suave even though he was under as much pressure as she was to get their defence back in place, came through one of the doors behind her. “You’re not going to believe what the Triton just picked up; the British Alliance are pissed that it’s in formation with her.”
“What?” Ayan asked.
“A Journeyman class Lorander ship with some kind of high mass cargo, it’s beautiful.” He projected an image of the ship into the centre of the room. The broad front end looked like the mask of a stern metal man with rectangular glowing blue eyes that ran up half the length of the forward plating. The lower half of the fore section looked like an open mouth with an array of antennae and glowing sections ringing the inner edge like gleaming teeth. It had to be some kind of elaborate sensing and emitter array, Ayan supposed. Between the more prominent features were transparent sections of hull. By a quick count, she guessed there were eleven decks. The rest of the ship extending behind was gently curved along its length so there was a concave cavity beneath where it carried a five hundred metre long black box with no windows. Blue and green arms ran down the top and sides of the main ship for the entire length. They caught the little light around the ship, glinting as though they were made of fine crystal. It was another array of some kind, and from the looks it could spread out in all directions, extending out many times the size of the ship.
Her command and control unit beeped a warning, vibrating against her wrist and she stepped back towards Slick. “Energy reading, big one,” was all she could say before a swirling storm of energy coalesced in front of them. Her father and two women emerged before it disappeared behind them. “I miss those,” Carl Anderson said to the taller woman at his side. “Haven’t been through one since the Lorander-Freeground alliance.”
“They are convenient,” agreed the tall, elegant looking woman.
Ayan looked closer at the other woman with him and immediately realized that she was either an Issyrian or something Ayan had never seen. She was pretty in her own dainty way. Big eyes scanned the room with trepidation, coming to rest on Ayan after a moment. “That was my first crush gate. Is it normal for me to feel like I’ve just been squeezed very hard then re-inflated at the other end?”
Ayan shrugged, only aware that Lorander had the technology for high compression super-wormholes, but never having been through one.
“It’s a sensation that takes some getting used to,” said the other woman. “I should have warned you.”
“It’s all right, it was just,” the Issyrian let a loud sigh whistle through her sculpted lips, “abrupt.”
“So, I’m Wing Commander Nathan Kipp of the Skyguard, but you can call me Slick,” he said, offering his hand to the Issyrian first.
“I’m Commander Ayan –” she thought a moment and decided to use the last name she had been considering since New Years’ Eve, “Anderson.” Her father was visibly pleased by the introduction.
“I am Shozo of House Fallen Star,” the Issyrian replied uncertainly. Her hand felt fine and warm.
“I’m First Minister Amo Tammen, of the Lorander Corporation,” the tall woman told Ayan, her dark, friendly eyes looking unwaveringly into her own. There was something about the woman, a high confidence, Ayan assumed, that made her feel like Amo was exactly where she meant to be, when she meant to be there. “I feel I owe you an apology already, since I have come here so quickly and can’t stay as your guest. I’m afraid we have to get right to business.”
“They contacted me directly,” Carl Anderson said. “Since the Lorander Government knew me from the Freeground alliance. We have an opportunity to make a deal with Lorander and Shozo here. Oz has given you his proxy.”
Ayan was intrigued. She knew Oz was busy with repairs on the Triton, but it was unusual for him to count himself out of a major decision. She took it to mean that he was most likely on the fence about the issue. “Why is that name, Fallen Star, familiar?” Ayan asked.
“I am from House Fallen Star,” Shozo explained, “Founded by Clark Patterson, the commander of the Order of Eden Fleets.”
Ayan didn’t realize her hand had lowered to the hilt of her sidearm until her thumb was resting on her holster’s safety clasp. She left her hand where it was.
“I come in peace, with no weapons or hate,” Shozo said, nearly pleading. “We are here because, while my Dominant, my Master, is your enemy, he has great respect for you and your people. He also refuses to pledge House Fallen Star to this war, even though we are a rare Warrior Caste among the Issyrian people. My Dominant suffers under an unusual dichotomy – he must maintain and gain territory for the sake of humanity, but loves his Issyrian House too much to involve them – it is not a state that he can maintain. He did not direct me here specifically, but when I brought our problem to the First Minister, she made a case for approaching you. We prefer not to be a violent people, and wish to dilute the aggression until it rests with the silt. Tamber has fresh water lakes, and thanks to its unique formation in this solar system, direct interstellar bombardment is impossible.”
“Well, improbable, at least,” Slick said quietly. “I mean, you’d have to have the best navigator, gunner, and computers. Your projectile would probably have to correct at faster than light speeds too, and that’s a whole other problem…” He stopped when all eyes in the room turned towards him. “Not the point, right.”
“The First Minister said you are an accommodating people, who welcome beings from across the stars regardless of species or origin. Other Issyrian Houses will not accept us, and unclaimed worlds are unsafe. Even under surveillance here, my people may be safer, and our presence could be the first step towards the end of your war with the Order.”
“That is the point we’re most concerned with, using this opportunity to make in-roads towards peace. Lorander is adding an incentive and a condition to Shozo’s proposition,” the First Minister said. “If you allow them to settle on Tamber, we’ll give you a ship construction and repair facility. We have it with us. We’ll also remain here for a time to advise on anything you’d like while we observe the settlement of House Fallen Star. We want this to work, and are willing to watch you both from a distance.”
Ayan thought a moment and couldn’t get past one impenetrable question. “Why is Lorander involved?”
“We were the first people Shozo approached, you were the backup. I saw a unique opportunity to build a bridge between you and the Beast, the commander of the Order of Eden forces. This could shorten this senseless war by decades. There are larger problems in this galaxy, and they will be ignored if this goes on. This could be the most important step towards peace.”
The thought of being in good standing with the Lorander Corporation, and extending an olive branch to the leadership of the Order of Eden was more than compelling. The potential for espionage and sabotage if she allowed House Fallen Star to settle was just as massive. “I can only agree to this if they are segregated from the rest of Tamber’s population at first, and if all the settler’s communications are blocked.”
“They must mix with your people for this to work,” Amo Tammen retorted without a breath’s hesitation. “Even if they are under guard for a limited time.”
“If they engage in espionage of any kind, we have to have the option to eject them from our space,” Ayan countered.
“On an individual basis. You cannot punish the whole for the deeds of the few.”
“On an individual basis,” Ayan agreed. “Supervision periods last as long as we see fit.”
“Yes, but if you’re going to impose constant surveillance, you have to abandon the idea of segregation,” Amo said, “I won’t negotiate a deal that lands them in camps.”
Ayan was impressed by the woman’s negotiation skills. Everyone in the room was looking from her to Amo Tammen as they took turns. “They all have to wear comm units and be tracked by our system at all times.”
“They will be treated fairly at all times,” Amo Tammen said as she nodded at Ayan’s statement. “What if they were screened just like the rest of your recruits? If they don’t meet the requirements, can they settle in some other area of Tamber?”
“If they enter the recruitment process, they have to work just like everyone else,” Ayan said. “And they’ll still have to wear one of our functioning comm units at all times.”
“Shozo?” Amo Tammen asked, smiling a little. “What do you think?”
“We’d be tracked, but we could live here?” Shozo asked, looking surprised.
“Everyone is tracked here all the time,” Amo replied, “so you would be treated like anyone else. They also have other Issyrians on their crew, most of them are exiles.”
“How long will you stay to watch us if I agree?” Shozo asked Amo.
“I can stay in the system for a month after Fallen Star arrives, just to make sure everything proceeds as agreed. I doubt I’ll have to. From what I’ve seen of the Commander, I get the feeling that she wants this to work. If enough of your people help them, I’m sure everyone here will trust all of you faster.”
“Help them fight?” Shozo asked.
“No, help them build. They are creating a new culture here, a new city. This building isn’t even a year old. I think she’d let you be part of that.”
Ayan let her guard down a little and nodded. With tracking in place, they would know if any of them was doing something nefarious. “I’d like that,” she said. “Haven Shore will be run by our military for the foreseeable future, but we want things to be peaceful down here. We want to reserve this whole region of Tamber for our civilian population, and we need good builders.”
Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades Page 40