Frontline sf-4

by Randolph Lalonde

  “I tried finding you at your old spot, but they put a table there,” Ashley shrugged as she closed the distance and settled in beside the other woman, leaning on the tall railing. The top of the rail was thinly padded with transparesteel panels beneath.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yup, just thought I'd say hello on my off hours. Not that I really have off hours now. I feel like I'm always attached to the bridge.”

  “That happens when you're the Master of the Helm, especially on a ship this size. How are you finding it?”

  “The other helmspeople always have questions. It keeps me learning about this ship. It's challenging, I like it though. How do you like being acting Captain?”

  “It's different. I envied Jonas' experience on the First Light before, learned a lot from him in a short time. It's surprising how much of it just comes back to you even though it feels like that was a different life. Part of me loves being at the center of things, but sometimes I miss the Clever Dream. There was nothing like being on a fast ship bound for wherever I wanted, not that it was safe, but it felt freeing.”

  “That's how I felt when Captain let me loose on the Samson. I wasn't picking what star to go to or anything, but we didn't see many places more than once. Feels like a lifetime ago.”

  The pair stood in silence, looking down at the Botanical Gallery's East Park. It stretched across the center of the ship, finally grown in with banyan, peach, apple, pear and plum trees. There were so many other plants lining the paths, interrupting the dark green sections of grass, and maturing in multi-levelled hydroponic stands. The majority of the crew was at rest while the remainder were performing maintenance, training, or keeping their watches.

  The garden was as much of a social place as any, especially for crewmembers who had befriended the few civilians aboard. Something Ashley had neglected to do. Crew members who had planetside clothes often wore them in the garden. The old fashioned manual instruments came out too; flutes, guitars, she'd even seen a violin. The last time she'd taken a walk there were three musicians teaching each other to play a song called freedom. One tall woman was a violinist, the instrument seemed like a part of her when they finally played the tune, the melody seemed simple to her and after the first chorus she spun, whirling her floral skirts outward, revealing that underneath she still wore her vacsuit, even though it was reshaped so her shoulders and arms were bare.

  The other two were guitarists, the one teaching was one of the new starfighter pilots, a soft spoken fighter jock from the far outer fringes who had come aboard during her recruiting run. She hadn't noticed him before, when he was just a part of the crowd. He was bald then, and as she watched him quietly show the other two musicians their parts she noticed stubble on the top of his head.

  He had given up the clothing he wore for one of the black vacsuits, which hadn't been marked with a full skull and letters just yet. It took time for fighter pilots to become full crew on Triton, mostly because of the mandatory qualifiers one had to complete and pass before being assigned or paid.

  Ashley's mind was drawn back to the present as Alice broke the relative silence;“It's strange not having him here. We've been working closely together for almost a month now, I got used to having him in the ready quarters.”

  “I miss him too, not as much as you might though.”

  Alice looked at her, a little amused. “Why not? You were with him on the Samson for all that time.”

  “You're right. I'm worried about him.”

  “He'll be fine, it's just a pick up,” Alice reassured her.

  Ashley smiled back and nodded. “I know, it's the Captain, but I always worry when someone I know goes off ship. Or at least I did on the Samson. Guess some things never change. Wish I was more like him sometimes, just setting things in motion and not worrying after.”

  “He was worried about you when you took the Cold Reaver, ” Alice said quietly. “He told me you could take care of yourself more than once, even told me straight out that he was sure you'd do fine on your first recruiting run, but I could tell he was still worried.”

  “Really?”

  “Don't tell him I told you.”

  “I'll keep that one under shirt.”

  “ Under shirt, I've never heard that one.”

  “Something from home, used to say it all the time in the slave quarters. Guess it's because none of us were allowed to wear hats, I dunno.”

  “It must have been hard growing up there.”

  “Lots of work, but I was lucky. There were laws in place protecting us from beatings and stuff. We just weren't allowed to leave the grounds without a pass. The kids on the estate were brutal though, and we couldn't do anything about it. Still, it wasn't the worst way to grow up. Stephanie had it worse on the mining colony.”

  “Do you keep in touch with anyone from home?”

  “Yup. While I was planetside I was able to talk to a few friends. Most of them survived the AI virus somehow. Some are missing because they were still under bond and used the opportunity to escape, but I'm pretty sure they'll pop up.”

  “I guess that's a real problem for some slavers, considering a lot of security systems are run by artificial intelligences.”

  A mischievous, satisfied smile crept up on Ashley's lips as she nodded; “yup. Real big problem. The escaped are probably all safe, they probably weren't standing right beside AI run systems when it all happened. A lot of the business district went up in flames though, and other automation went down, so most of the people who learned how to do things manually because it was their job are pretty valuable right about now.”

  “Like the slaves.”

  “Yup.”

  “Funny how that works,” Alice said. “One minute they're just servants then technology goes crazy and they're the most important people on the planet. Without them everyone else would starve.”

  “That's what happens. I just wish we could do a recruiting run there, I'd love to pick up some old friends.”

  “Maybe sometime.”

  “Aye, maybe if we're ever out there. Not much chance of it though. It's pretty far off. Sometimes I miss the slave quarters, there was always someone around, and in the household I was in it was like we were all family.”

  “I couldn't imagine. For what you'd call my childhood I always had Jonas. He carried me everywhere.”

  It was the first time Ashley had ever heard Alice talk about being an AI with Jonas, and it gave her the opportunity to ask all the questions she normally didn't feel comfortable bringing up. “How long were you with him before you, um-” she found herself suddenly lost trying to find the right word.

  “-grew up?” Alice asked with a raised eyebrow. “About seventeen years, he was thirty four when he let me loose.”

  “Wow. No wonder you guys fit like father and daughter.”

  “Does it look that way to everyone else?”

  “Most people think you're his bio daughter, yup. People who know better don't bother correcting them. If something's close enough to the truth so it doesn't make a difference, well, then why not just leave it be.”

  “I had no idea, I thought it was just the way I felt.”

  “Nope, looks pretty much like you're his. The two of you remind me of a father and son I met who were part of a carnival once. They stayed on the next estate over for a few months while they worked off a debt to the household. His dad was this thin, wiry tall guy and looked mean all the time. Emris, his son, looked all skinny like he hadn't grown into himself yet, but you could tell just by looking at them that they were father and son. They walked the same, did things the same way, and his father was even teaching him his trade so they were both really good at their work. If they were working on something they only needed to say the bare minimum, and when it got technical, whoa, it was like they were talking in a different language.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They were mechanics, which, I know, you and Captain aren't, but it's just the way you two handle
the bridge, even the way you kind of like to just go off on your own and think. Sometimes I wish I could do that, just go somewhere alone and figure things out but I end up hitting the ship stores or a materializer and I walk away with munchies. If I did too much thinking alone I gain two kilos in no time!” Ashley exclaimed exaggeratedly.

  Alice couldn't help but laugh and nod. “That took some getting used to, stopping when I wasn't hungry anymore. I see your point though, I think I was just alone for too long after Bernice got married. Even before then it was always just her and I then everyone else. We didn't really let anyone get between us. Now I'm on a ship with thousands aboard. Doesn't look like I'll be starved for company.”

  “Really? I'm still having trouble sleeping. I turn the lights down to get a few winks and all I can hear is my own breathing. I left a hologram on of Goodbye Wayne the other night real low just so I felt like there were people nearby.”

  “The cowboy movie?”

  “Yahuh, you've seen?”

  “I haven't seen the newer version, just the one from the thirties.”

  “That's the one! I like it when Wayne spits in Lorne's hat, it still gets a laugh.”

  “I have a collection of the classics, even some from the film days on Earth, I'll have to-” Alice's command and control unit blinked and Cynthia came on; “We have incoming, Ma'am. It looks like a group of Eden Fleet ships.”

  “We're on our way,” Alice replied. “Put the ship on high alert, I need everyone at battle stations. I'm bringing up my command interface here.” Alice said as she activated an interface on her command and control unit and started striding towards the nearest express car doors.

  Ashley was just about to start running when Alice stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “On a ship like this it makes more sense to interface with your post remotely. Running will only distract you until you get there and you'll have to adjust to your station while you're out of breath.”

  Ashley nodded, falling in step beside the other woman, bringing up the remote hologram of the helm. It appeared in front of her as though she was actually there and moved along in front while she walked. “This is strange, how are you looking at the bridge?”

  “My cybernetic eye is interfaced with my C and C unit. I can see the bridge as though I were there. If my neural comm were still working I could give orders through the speaker system without talking.”

  Ashley watched what the pilot and navigator were doing, what the Navnet was saying about the incoming ships and shook her head. “Those ships are four times our mass and launching fighter drones just like the ones that came after the Cold Reaver. They must have followed us, I'm sorry.”

  “It's not your fault, it's amazing that you got away at all,” Alice said as they stepped into the lift. It shuttled them up then towards the front of the Command Deck.

  Agameg Price saw the hologram of Alice Valent appear right where he was sitting in the Captain's chair and moved to his tactical station. It immediately started giving orders. “Flight Deck, do we have any fighters on long range recon?”

  David Monroe, the night watch for the Flight Deck didn't look up from the central station beneath the bridge as he replied; “We have a Uriel thirty one minutes out manned by Scrubber and Hardcore. Assigned to medium range recon, still no word from Hitman.”

  “Don't worry about Hitman, he's on long range retrieval. Recall all fighters and secure the hangars for faster than light. Helm, plot a course to intercept Scrubber and Hardcore's next scheduled wormhole exit point. We're going to pick them up before we go on mission.” Alice's hologram turned towards Agameg. “Tactical, how many torpedo stations do you have ready?”

  “Five, the rest of the crews report that they're on their way to stations. What about cloaking?”

  “We have a bare section of hull from the work being done on the main emitters, it'll stick out like a sore thumb. What about our gunnery posts?”

  “Can't find Frost, but his second is already on the gunnery deck and emergency decompression is underway. Readiness estimate stands at forty nine seconds.”

  “What do you mean you can't find Frost?” Alice asked, exasperated.

  “His locator isn't coming up. It's like his personal command unit is powered down.”

  “Anything on the bio trackers?”

  “Nothing, but they're only active on sixty three percent of the ship, he could be in one of the dead sections.”

  “Contact Stephanie, have someone from security on it. Until then, tell the torpedo and gunnery teams that anyone not in their seat and ready in the next ninety seconds gets left at the next port. How long until the first drones are in firing range?”

  “They're launching and holding station around their carriers, but if they started moving now they would be on us in under two minutes.” Agameg replied.

  “I have eight fighters ready to launch and six on their way into our gravnet about to be picked up. We could scramble them and try to buy some time,” interjected David.

  “Not going to happen. My tactical screen shows there are over three hundred drones out there, each with a quarter the firepower as one of our fighters and three times the armour. We'd be murdering our own pilots with those numbers. The order to recall stands.”

  “Aye, Ma'am,” replied David passively. He was a cool headed young pilot with more experience than most on the ship, Paula had recommended him as the night shift watch for the Flight Deck, and he accepted it even though he quietly made it known that he'd rather be out in a fighter himself. His call sign was Diver.

  The large, heavily armoured split oval doors leading onto the main bridge parted just enough to allow Alice and Ashley through. They walked straight to their seats. Alice's holographic representation disappeared, while Ashley's holographic representation of the controls hovering in front of her faded the moment she replaced the nafalli night pilot, who took a seat beside the communications station, just in case she was needed later.

  The main holographic display on the bridge appeared in front of everyone and Alice closed her eyes. Everyone had seen it happen in simulations, where she looked at the status of the Triton through that electronic eye and saw more information at once than most could stand. “Laura, how are our shields?”

  She was just arriving on the bridge then, and the main doors closed, the sound of them pressing together and sealing filled the compartment. Laura stopped to stand at field control as the hologram above her wrist faded. “Refractive and energy shielding are up and at full, gravitational shielding will be up in six seconds.”

  “Thank you, Liam, how much power do we have for a wormhole?”

  Liam and Finn appeared at the engineering stations on the bridge, even though they were actually standing at two completely different sections of the ship. “Power isn't the problem, it's the main emitter's capacity that you should worry about,” his hologram relayed from the main engineering control centre.

  “Finn here. As the Chief was saying; some of the fine circuitry we installed to work on the main emitter array is just a quick fix. It's not actually made to take a heavy power load, it's more for testing while we try to rebuild the system. I can't say it'll even work, it's not supposed to,” Finn reported from the emitter control room several decks beneath them.

  “Helm, complete your plotted course with a wormhole set to fifteen point five compression. That should get us to our fighters in about ten minutes.”

  “Nine point two one minutes,” confirmed navigation. “good estimate, Captain.”

  “Ma'am? The drones are coming,” Agameg announced, looking up from his station to the main hologram where on one end the Triton was represented along with the last fighter being drawn into its underbelly by an energy field and on the other end three Eden carriers drifted lazily in space, their hundreds of fighter drones starting to make their way across.

  “All rail cannon batteries, fire explosive flak rounds, switch to solid core rounds once those drones are within one point five kilometres. Torpedo statio
ns, load fusion munition five and fire at will at those carriers.”

  “Each torpedo bay will only have one shot using that ammunition,” Agameg advised.

  “Don't worry, they'll either turn and run or be destroyed after that volley,” Alice replied.

  The Triton came to life, filling the space between it and the enemy carriers with flak rounds that exploded in front of and amidst the hundreds of sleek, silver fighter drones. The lower deck defence guns, beam turrets and torpedoes began launching from armoured tubes lined up along the front and sides of the ship as well.

  The bridge crew that had time to look at the main holographic display saw dozens of drones blown to pieces or shredded by a churning wave of fragmented flack fire, while the majority of the enemy ships pressed on. It took them only seconds to cross the gap between the carriers and as soon as they were in firing range they split up. The broad wave of fighters became a scurrying mass that surrounded the Triton in the blink of an eye.

  “The drones are trying to drain our energy shields with particle weapons. We're down to ninety three percent,” Laura reported. “We need to divert more power.”

  “We're on it,” reported Chief Grady.

  “Chief Vercelli reports hangars are secure, pilots are aboard,” relayed the Flight Deck officer.

  “Charging up our main emitters, we've already lost one power circuit, I was able to re-route, but I won't be able to do it again,” Finn reported. “This is a bad idea. If we shut down the emitters now we could save some of the temporary components and rebuild.”

  “How long until we have a wormhole?” Alice asked, ignoring Finn's objections.

  “Three minutes at fifteen point five compression.”

  “Do better.”

  “I don't want to burn the systems out, we don't have any replacement parts.”

  “Do what you have to, just get us out of here,” Alice ordered.

  “Ma'am, all but two of our munition five torpedoes have been destroyed by beam weapons. The pair that haven't been destroyed are slowing down,” Agameg informed.

  “Slowing down?” Alice asked as she opened her eyes. She used her command console to take control of the main holographic display and zoom in on one of the fusion torpedoes. There were two drones attached to it. “Detonate them!”