by Terry Mixon
Anders pursed his lips and nodded. “You’re not wrong. I’m not used to sharing command with my senior marine. As you’ve already guessed, I was a lieutenant commander until I accepted this mission. I commanded a destroyer, and all of the crew on this ship are my people. Kyle was my XO then, too, and he’s a damned good man. My people will come through when we need them.
“I expect the same of you and your people. The Empire wants this mission to succeed, and they’d have picked the best people to make that happen. I have zero doubt that we’ll find a way to work together and combine our skills to increase our chances of success.”
She considered that for a moment and nodded. “I’m in command of the combat operations once we begin the assault. I’m supposed to contribute my thoughts and opinions toward target selection and how we get there. I’ll admit that I’m not sure what I have to offer on that front, but I’ll be happy to share what insights I can.
“And from what I can see, it’s your job to get us there safely and extract us once we carry out the attack. I’m sure the raid is going to provoke some type of military response. Our goal is to get in, take care of business, and then scamper back across the border.
“With all of the cross-border attacks and the suspicion on both sides, I can’t imagine they have many systems without military forces between the Singularity and us.”
He nodded. “That’s why my initial plan calls for us circling around the fringes of the Singularity until we’re less likely to arouse suspicion. It’s going to take us longer to get into position, but getting across their border is going to be a lot easier.
“From what my briefing said, except where they run up against the Empire, there’s not a very hard demarcation between what they consider the Singularity and the fringe systems beyond their borders.
“Sure, they have the usual antipiracy and customs patrols through those areas, but the worlds outside the Singularity in that direction are also populated. Trade takes place, and that’s precisely what this freighter has been engaged in for longer than we’ve been alive.
“Its last owners took it back and forth between fringe worlds, with occasional trips back inside the Singularity. That cover is going to come in very handy for us, because that’s exactly what we’re going to do. And a check of their records will show that pattern of behavior, so it will reassure the people doing their inspections.”
She considered that and slowly nodded. “Aren’t they going to expect the original captain to be with us?”
Anders grinned. “Probably. Luckily, he will be. The previous captain was and is an Imperial Intelligence asset. He’s commanded this ship for the last decade while passively gathering information about the Singularity for us.
“He won’t have any authority now, but he’s going to be present and assisting us in getting through any obstacles.”
“Is he an Imperial citizen? A patriot in deep cover?”
Anders shook his head. “No. He was born inside the Singularity and does this for money. Everything he’s passed along has been reliable so far, but we’ll keep a close eye on him. When you have an opportunity to meet him, I look forward to hearing your assessment of the man.”
That news was… unsettling. Grace was willing to trust that Imperial Intelligence had their best interests at heart, but if this person had been born inside the Singularity, he was an unknown factor in the equation.
Could he be a double agent? Would he chicken out and betray them when the full scope of what they intended to do became clear to him?
“Should we really be trusting him even a little bit? If he’s a double agent, he could betray us at a moment’s notice.”
Her words increased the wattage of the man’s smile significantly. “I approve of your paranoia, and I share your concerns. We’re going to have to watch what he does carefully and manage his interactions with the Singularity. I don’t want to take any unnecessary chances.
“He thinks—correctly—that we’ve installed a lot of classified intelligence-gathering equipment that we didn’t want his regular crew to see. That’s true enough, so far as it goes.
“Bright Passage was scheduled for a major overhaul, and the rest of the crew was paid off. That allowed us to get the work done without worrying about them. The work was done in an out-of-the-way Imperial shipyard, and we’ve got all kinds of interesting goodies that I know you’ll approve of.”
“I can’t wait to see them,” she admitted. “Since you’ve picked the area of operations, I’ll need to familiarize myself with it. Do you have something in mind to recommend as a target for the raid?”
“Not specifically, but the area I’m looking at is a relatively major manufacturing hub in its sector. Based on the merchant trade going through the area, our spy has amassed quite a bit of information about the various systems that should allow us to pick something interesting.
“If we can select the right type of installation to destroy, we might be able to cripple operations in the sector for a lot of industries. A cascade effect like that would be sweet.”
Grace didn’t know a lot about manufacturing, but at least she’d have time to discuss potential targets with her leadership team. “I can work with that. I’m going to want to have a tour of the entire ship and get an inventory of what equipment we’ll have available to us.”
“I’ll make that happen as soon as you’re ready.”
“Excellent. It’s going to take us months to get to where we need to go, and by that time, we should have already finalized our target selection. I don’t know about the rewards you’re being offered for success, but the ones my people are getting are pretty good.
“We need to avoid picking a target that’s too heavily protected. We can’t get greedy. Let’s focus on finding something that’ll get us what we need while still retaining a good chance of us making it out alive.”
He stood and extended a hand across the desk to her. “Deal. Now, if you’d like, I’ll take you and your second around to see all the departments on the ship. Fair warning: a ship this size just couldn’t hold a full crew and a platoon of marines, so you’ll be doing double duty. Basically, we’ve got a core crew of ex-Fleet officers and crewmen, but the noncritical tasks are going to fall to the marines. Are your people up to that?”
She grinned as she shook his hand firmly. “I’m looking forward to finding out. There’s nothing like throwing marines into an unfamiliar task to judge how good they really are. If I had to make a bet—and I am willing to bet—my people will deliver.”
“No bet. I’ve met plenty of marines, and I know they’ll step up. Come on. Let’s go get this started while I order the ship out of orbit. If we never get going, we’ll never get there.
“And before you brief your people, I want you to meet the ship’s former captain. As I said, he’s an intelligence source, but he’s not aware of the scope of this mission. He thinks this is just a run with classified gear, so no discussions of an attack inside the Singularity. Just keep things general.”
Grace nodded. She’d have to meet the man at some point anyway. Might as well come face to face with the enemy in a controlled setting. This would be her first time talking to someone from the Singularity, and it was probably going to be educational.
7
It didn’t take long for the consequences of One Twenty-Four’s upset victory to manifest. Thirty-One came out of the infirmary healed of her injury, but there was something subtly off about her nose. For the first time in the memory of anyone within the crèche, one of the girls looks different than the rest.
To say that went over poorly would have been an enormous understatement. Thirty-One stalked into the dormitory and wasted no time confronting One Twenty-Four, with her clique of followers trailing behind her for support.
“You’ve made a terrible mistake,” the girl hissed when she stopped in front of One Twenty-Four. “I will do everything within my power to show Keeper what you truly are.”
One Twenty-Four set aside the sl
ate that she’d been reading but didn’t rise from her bunk. Even though the girls had surrounded her, she didn’t feel genuinely threatened. Keeper had made it abundantly clear that there would be no fighting without her direct supervision.
Thirty-One could bluster as much as she wanted, but neither she nor her friends could lay a hand on One Twenty-Four in this setting. To do so would spark the wrath of a woman that none of them wanted to cross.
So One Twenty-Four simply smiled. “Keeper knows exactly who I am. You might be right that I’m eventually going to be expelled from the crèche. I certainly hope not, but there’s only so much that I can do to control that.”
She focused her attention more closely on the girl’s face. “I have to admit that I’m somewhat surprised to see you again, Thirty-One. After we got our tattoos, I was under the impression that Keeper wasn’t very accepting of differences in appearance within the crèche. I wonder what she thinks of the fact that you don’t look exactly like the template any longer. Do you think that makes her angry, or simply disgusts her?”
Thirty-One’s eyes widened, and her already angry expression twisted into rage. With barely a moment’s notice, the girl lunged forward, her right hand balling up into a fist and flashing toward One Twenty-Four’s face.
One Twenty-Four rolled backward and landed on the other side of her bunk, making the strike miss by centimeters. The action had been unplanned, but it had worked. She’d remember that going forward.
“Temper, temper,” she said in a falsely amused tone. “Keeper won’t be pleased to hear that you’re disobeying her.”
It looked as if Thirty-One were going to come over the bunk at her, but her friends pulled her back. She strained against their grip, her mouth almost frothing with fury, her eyes bulging.
“I’m going to see you bleed,” she hissed coldly. “Keeper’s not going to have to expel you from the crèche, because I’m going to kill you with my own hands.”
“Do you really think the other girls will allow that to happen?” One Twenty-Four made a show of glancing around. All activity had ceased, and everyone was paying rapt attention to what was happening.
“Do you think that anyone here cares about you?” the other girl asked with a sneer. “You aren’t fit to live, much less rule. No one will defy me. If they do, they’ll have made an enemy that will follow them for the rest of their days, which will be brutally few.”
Thirty-One turned and scanned the room. “Mark my words. If Keeper hears one word of any of this, I will find out who’s responsible. Anyone that interferes in my revenge will pay a steep price in blood and pain.”
With that, Thirty-One spun on her heel and stalked back toward her bunk.
One Twenty-Four picked her slate back up and made a show of resuming her place on her bunk as if nothing had happened, but her pulse was racing. She’d known that things were going to get worse, but she hadn’t anticipated just how bad or how quickly.
Could Thirty-One really do as she’d threatened? Could she carry out a murder right under Keeper’s nose?
One Twenty-Four didn’t think so. Keeper was older and more experienced, wily in the ways of how One Twenty-Four and her crèche mates behaved and thought. She wouldn’t be fooled.
There wasn’t any guarantee that she’d save One Twenty-Four, though. Keeper didn’t like her. She might allow more harm to befall her than any of her crèche mates.
Was Keeper willing to allow Thirty-One to act in contravention to her orders? Would the damage to her authority be severe enough to warrant stopping Thirty-One from killing her?
While she doubted Keeper would allow her to be harmed in defiance to her will, an insidious voice whispered that she shouldn’t take this lightly. The outcome of this confrontation wasn’t set in plascrete.
Should she tell Keeper? If she did, Keeper would act. The only question was, what would her action be? Members of the crèche were expected to solve their own problems. If One Twenty-Four ran to Keeper expecting protection, it would be another strike against her.
No. If One Twenty-Four was going to survive and raise her standing within the crèche, she was going to have to outwit Thirty-One on her own. That meant devising a scheme to defend herself that fell within the rules of allowable behavior.
Now she just had to figure out what that might entail before the other girl killed her.
Grace’s tour of Bright Passage didn’t take very long. The interior of the ship was just as grungy and worn down as the captain’s office had been, but everything was functional. Anders explained how all of the equipment had been brought up to spec while keeping its original rundown appearance intact.
He’d been right when he’d said that there was very little space inside the crew module. He’d brought along a core group of trained officers and crewmen to manage the ship, but all of the ancillary tasks would have to be performed by her marines. They’d be cargo handlers, engineers’ mates, and do any other job that needed doing.
Even so, the crew quarters were stuffed to the gills. Her people—including her—would be hot bunking, because there was no other way that they could get everyone shoehorned into such a small area.
Hot bunking was a process by which each bunk was shared by multiple people. When one was off duty and sleeping, another person assigned to that bunk would be on duty. Extra precautions would need to be taken to be sure that everything was kept clean, but this wasn’t her first time in this position.
There were other portions of the ship besides those dedicated to the merchant façade, but they were very cleverly concealed. Cargo inside the Empire and the Singularity was transported in containers that attached to a freighter’s spine. Amazingly, cargo pods were the same size and configuration in both polities.
The crew quarters and control center were to the front of the ship while the open spine of the vessel held container after container of cargo that might be destined for many different ports. Engineering brought up the rear, connected to the crew module by a pressurized corridor down the middle of the spine.
As all of the cargo containers were in vacuum, they were assumed by the authorities to be inaccessible to the crew without great effort. They were also sealed by customs agents so that any tampering was supposed to be noticeable.
Each of the containers attached to Bright Passage was still sealed, but they were no longer inaccessible. The Fleet engineers had crafted a pressurized tunnel that led through a number of the cargo containers and was accessed from the crew module. Some of them still had their original contents shoved to the side, and others were empty or held equipment.
Three of the containers held marine boarding pods. They were designed to carry a squad of marines to another ship in a ridiculously short period of time and then penetrate the hull to allow boarding.
With those, her people could get to any station and board it the hard way, if that was what it took. She’d rather be sneakier, but sometimes a hammer really was the right tool for the job.
“Everything was either purchased on the open market or came off the black market,” Anders said. “Nothing can be traced directly back to the Empire without going through someone else’s hands first. The Singularity knows exactly who’s behind these raids, so that’s all for show, of course.”
She nodded. “It’s a fig leaf, but it’ll do. What do we have as far as weapons and armor?”
He nodded as they kept walking. “Everything came from the black market, but it’s serviceable.”
“What about powered armor? I don’t suppose we have any?”
“Afraid not. Powered armor is a little too hefty for pirates. There are limits to what command could afford to do and still maintain the fiction that this wasn’t an official operation. I’m afraid that powered armor crossed the line.
“What we do have is some pretty significant unpowered armor. My understanding is that it was acquired from a company that outfits mercenaries on the fringe. It’s tough and can even stand up to a goodly number of flechette hits. The weapons
come from the same source.”
Not ideal, but they’d make do.
“I assume the empty cargo pods are for anything we capture,” she said. “I’m still not clear on how much we’re supposed to steal versus how much we need to blow up.”
“Most of our pods are empty,” he said cheerfully. “Whatever you can find, we can steal. We have to make this look like an act of piracy. Like your marines, my people will get a share of everything that’s destroyed or captured. We’ll get our pick of booty from what you seize.”
She grinned. “If I can find something juicy for you, I’ll pick it up. I’ll task each of my marines to pair up with your crew and get them something sweet during the run, too. Friends look after friends.
“Thanks for thinking of your poor Fleet counterparts.”
“I’d best get back to my marines and explain what we’re doing,” she said. “My original orders were to not give them any details on what we’re doing, so they still don’t know where we’re going.”
The two of them started back toward the habitation section of the ship. Deep down, Grace was beginning to feel the same way Anders did. This was a dangerous mission, but they’d make it happen.
8
The following day, One Twenty-Four and her crèche mates were taken to the infirmary. Keeper lined the girls up in the hall and then brought them in one at a time before ordering them to lie down on the table.
When One Twenty-Four had her turn, Keeper placed a device on her head, and she went to sleep. After what only felt like moments, she woke. Based on the time it had taken the other girls, she’d been unconscious for perhaps five minutes.
She quickly assessed her body but could detect no aches or pains. The purpose of the procedure wasn’t obvious, and Keeper didn’t speak to her. At Keeper’s gesture, she returned to the hall and stood in line with the other girls.