Fragments sf-6

by Randolph Lalonde

  The large double doors beside Major Cumberland opened and he ordered his scanning team, reduced to two soldiers, forward with a squad for cover using hand signals.

  "Whoa, not good!" exclaimed Farrar, his lead scanning officer. She recoiled as though she had been physically struck. "This is a torpedo room, picking up five fusion torpedoes ready to go, set for focused detonation and ready to go on an electrical hair trigger."

  "Confirmed! This whole room is linked to some kind of control node, if I knew more about the ship I'd be able to tell you where it goes, probably the bridge, but there's no telling."

  Major Cumberland looked across the room. The transparent hull was four meters thick in some places. He could see the lights of Battlecruiser 1009, it was directly in the torpedo room's line of fire and moored in place. The well polished floor and pristinely maintained equipment in the space told him things about the crew that didn't make him feel better. Whoever worked in that section was disciplined, skilled, and most likely loyal.

  He was reminded of the crew members they had managed to capture, who told them nothing, worse than nothing. They provided misinformation, like the story of the ship's vault in the centre of the vessel. According to them it was a Botanical Gallery with family apartments, a park, gardens and small businesses. It was unbelievable; the most secure section of the ship couldn't have been occupied by personal quarters and plant life. Teams had been trying to cut into it for hours and had made little progress.

  The maddening fighting skill and tactical execution of their movements were counter to a people who would keep that sort of thing at the heart of their ship. Soldiers travelled on ships made for soldiers, whether they were mercenaries, corporate or operating under the rule of a government. "What are the other tubes for?"

  "Sorry sir?"

  "You said there are four fusion torpedoes loaded, what's in the other two?"

  "They look like tactical plasma drillers," replied Farrar.

  Sgt Cumberland looked through the transparent hull to the battlecruiser and got a sinking feeling. "Cumberland to Command. We have a situation here."

  "This is Command, go ahead."

  "I'm in a port side torpedo room; it's loaded and ready to go with four focused nukes and a couple of driller rounds. Looks like there's a pretty sensitive trip fuse linking them together, I don't want to attempt to disarm."

  "Hold, Major."

  "Yes sir,"

  The wait felt like an eternity as everyone who was privy to the situation watched the seconds pass on their displays. Finally, the Command officer reappeared. "Major, is there any indication that the fuse could be connected to similar torpedo rooms in other parts of the ship?"

  Major Cumberland looked to Farrar, who nodded emphatically. The Junior Scanning officer verified it with a slower, deeper nod of his own. "My people are sure of it, sir. Looks like these people will do anything to keep us from taking possession."

  "Leave it, we'll send someone in behind you to disarm them."

  "Sir, with all due respect, if there is even one more of these rooms set up the same way, and it goes off in your faces, you could lose a battlecruiser. From what I've seen of this ship it's a mirrored design, meaning that-"

  "The port side matches the starboard side, I'm aware, Major. Command has evaluated the risk and is sending you new orders. Command out," finished the Communications Officer.

  Major Cumberland checked his orders and nodded to himself. "Get that shield down, we're headed to the central express lifts. Looks like they finished mopping up the levels below us and we’re not going aft.”

  Chapter 19

  Greydock

  Leaving everyone behind as things were growing worse by the minute was one of the hardest things Ayan had done since waking up on Freedom Tower. There was no doubt about it, leaving everyone behind felt wrong. She couldn’t forget the parting sight of the crew and ships in the middle of that featureless landscape. The rain started to come down harder as they stepped into the customs vessel, and she could tell that hard clay was starting to turn to mud.

  As Ayan, Laura and the pair of Triton soldiers behind them looked through the wide transparesteel porthole they could see Jake and Stephanie moving everyone out from under the ships as the landing struts started to sink into the softening toxic dirt. Lights were coming on within the Jolly Holler. Customs officers would be taking it back to Greydock, or wherever they brought stolen vessels and the Triton refugees would be left with even less shelter. The clouds didn't seem to be thinning either.

  "Are you all right?" Laura asked in a low whisper.

  "We need to turn things around. Even the people who wanted to leave can't, and now we have loyal crew working while the rest stand around complaining about how we screwed up and customs won’t let them go anywhere." She gestured at the slowly milling crowd of deserters, many of them looked like they were shouting at the security people who herded them away from the heavy, mismatched ships. It was as though they didn't realize that they would be crushed if they were beneath them if they broke through the toxic layer of soil. "I've never seen a crew so beaten."

  "We'll find a way," Laura reassured. "Between everyone here we'll figure something out."

  "I think I really burned a bridge with Colonel Davies. Her report isn't going to favour our cause."

  "I don't think anyone could have done any better. She's a little full of herself I think."

  Ayan smiled tightly and nodded. "Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed."

  "I think you restrained yourself very well. The Ayan I knew would have blown everything by putting the woman in her place. You handled yourself more tactfully, with more grace than I expected."

  "Thank you, I think."

  "You're welcome."

  "Good luck out there Ayan. We're going to try and build an extra shelter from plating we're gathering from the ships. Oh, and it looks like we got a lot more than expected from the Jolly Holler. Our people already have everything that wasn't bolted down, even the makeshift bunks," Jake said to her over her private comm.

  "Good, be careful. I'll find us a place to set down and hurry back."

  "You’re going to have to find us about a week’s worth of food. Lewis did a scan inventory and we don’t have the supplies or enough materializers to provide for the people we have.”

  “I will. Good thing Lewis checked.”

  “We'll be out of comm range and we don't have relay access, so I'll talk to you soon. Be careful." He raised a hand from where he stood beside the Samson. He was checking the port, aft side, where one of the main landing struts was already sinking into the dirt.

  The customs ship began to lift off and she braced herself against the transparent hull. "I'll get us what we need."

  "I know."

  With a jerk the customs vessel accelerated and put the miserable scene behind them, the signal strength between Ayan and Jake shrank to nothing in a heartbeat, and Ayan turned her attention to the dark terrain rolling under them at an incredible speed.

  "I wonder what the Carthans will think when the Triton arrives?" Laura asked idly.

  "Do you think they'll be able to break free?"

  "Honestly? If I did the math on their chances, I know they wouldn't be good, but Oz and Jason had a plan. I've seen Jason when he doesn't think something will work, or when he knows an operative under him is gone for good, and that's not the Jason I was seeing as we left. That, and most of the slaves who could fight volunteered to stay too, I've never seen so many people jump on the bandwagon at once."

  "So there's hope."

  "There's hope. If we see the Triton again, she'll probably need a lot of work, maybe years worth, but we'll have a home of our own again. A place we can control."

  "If we can hold out here until she gets back. I think we'll have to do something drastic to make that happen."

  "That's what Jacob is for. His people seem to have some experience with desperate."

  Ayan smiled and nodded. "I know. I just wish I could ge
t along with Stephanie. She seems to have walls up. I can't get more than a nod or a grunt from her on good days but she's always assigning a security detail to follow me around."

  "We don't mind, Commander," Offered Victor. "You take care of yourself just fine, so it's more like you're taking us for a walk."

  "Thank you Victor, that's nice of you."

  "Call me Vic. Victor was my grandfather."

  "He's right, you know. You're rarely the one in trouble. It's the causes you pick up along the way that make it feel like you're in a difficult spot. Just like your taste for bad boys. What was it you said a few years ago? 'Always heels up for the bad boy.'"

  Ayan's eyes went wide as she turned bright red. There was a snicker from behind, the female Triton solder they’d brought along. "Laura! That's privvy."

  "I don't get it," Vic said quietly.

  "Oh, it's like the saying; 'head over heels in love' only it implies that she ends up on her back with her heels up high, at the ready," Laura teased.

  Victor snorted, his female counterpart burst into laughter. "Oh, I'm using that one," she breathed as she managed to calm down.

  "Now you've done it. They'll never take me seriously again," Ayan half jested, shaking her head in mock shame.

  "Considering the bad boy you're chasing these days, I don't think anyone will have trouble taking you seriously," Laura replied.

  "I'm not chasing him, he's chasing me," Ayan retorted, mildly offended.

  "Fooled me."

  "Okay, maybe we're chasing each other. Either way, I don't think this is the best time to air out the laundry."

  "And there's another one," Victor quipped from behind.

  "What?" Laura asked.

  "Another expression I've never heard."

  "This one uses 'laundry' in place of 'private business,' like Ayan and the Captain."

  "Oh, you think that's private? Everyone on Triton seems to make it their business to know what's going on with you two. Even if they didn't, nothing stays private for long on a ship. Scuttlebutt is gold."

  "One of the sad facts of my life," Ayan rolled her eyes with a crooked grin. "Grew up on a ship, then trained to build ships, to command ships, and then spent more time on a ship than anywhere else, really."

  "Wouldn't change a thing, would you?" Laura asked.

  "I'm afraid I'm a ship rat for life."

  "Did you ever actually build a ship?" Asked one of the security team. She was a young woman with striking, light brown eyes.

  "Laura and I worked on a few prototypes. We also helped design a new class of small carrier for Freeground. "

  "A carrier? No wonder Chief Grady likes having you in engineering."

  "Speaking of which, I can't believe he stayed behind."

  "The word is that Chief Grady was all up for Oz’s, I mean Commander McPatrick’s plan. I wish I could have been around for that, but I was too busy with the evacuation and making sure the Samson would hold together long enough to get us to the rendezvous."

  The landscape outside started to brighten, the dun soil lightened until it was replaced with ruined farm land surrounded by black and brown stands of trees. The clouds thinned, illuminating the territory beneath them. "It looks like they just left everything to rot," commented one of the security staff behind Ayan.

  "The toxicity of the land around it probably seeped in. I wonder what happened to spoil their terraforming efforts," Ayan wondered aloud.

  The shore came and went in a flash, leaving them with a view of tall blue waves. For several minutes the group watched the open water drift by. "I grew up on Ima, there's no large bodies of water there," whispered the brown eyed girl behind Ayan.

  "I know how you feel. We grew up on a space station," Laura said quietly. "I only learned to swim four years ago."

  "I learned in the Academy," Ayan added.

  A brown and black rocky shore loomed ahead, and after a moment, the water was gone. They were under thick cloud cover again, and from the shore all the way inland a mist clung to the ground. Greydock was located in the middle of a sizable island, and that island told a story. As they passed over the brown, lifeless terrain they caught glimpses of terraforming machines, cleaning and re-nutriating the soil the old fashioned way, by digging it up and seeding it with activated soil. The bacteria within would cleanse and revive the earth over the space of several years.

  The work camps several kilometres back from the shoreline were like a new sea of white and brown tents. All around were tilling pits and reforestation lots. There was a visible division between the contaminated soil and the area ready for replanting drawn by a tall stonework barrier. The camp was on the inside, with long fields of saplings and several large, hangar like buildings.

  “That’s gotta be complicated. All those poor Confederation workers down there need to be moved out of the solar system because the Carthans are taking over. I think I know where our deserters are going to end up if they can’t afford to get off world,” Laura said quietly as she watched the tent city disappear.

  For several minutes they passed over dusty brown, rolling hills of undeveloped soil. It didn’t look poisoned, only featureless, and when a broad winged, graceful black bird appeared on the horizon Ayan couldn’t look away. They were past it after a moment, and she noticed a feature ahead on the horizon, like a broad, lonely tower.

  They closed in on it quickly and slowed down, joining a light stream of traffic headed towards and past the massive structure. It was the first time they’d seen activity in the sky since they broke atmosphere, and as the city grew nearer, a circular pattern of hundreds of ships became visible. The walls of the tower were over twenty kilometres wide at the base, and it had taken on the colour of the dirt. It was like a hundred storey tall fort, and if there was an enemy on the ground that could threaten such a place, Ayan didn’t want to meet them.

  Atop the tower was a modern city made of dark metals, a metropolis to rival most of the cities that Ayan had seen. As broad armoured doors opened in the side of the square tower Ayan realized that that was where they were headed, that was Greydock.

  “Ayan, I think this is Expansion Age construction. This place is over four hundred years old, probably more,” Laura said in awe.

  “Aren’t most Expansion Age structures on the core worlds?” asked Vic.

  “Not all, they had several outer colonies, this must be one of them,” Ayan said quietly. “I never thought I’d see anything like it.”

  The four customs enforcement ships swept down towards the widening bay doors. There were a dozen or so other such ships inside, with room for several more. What Ayan wished she could see was the city above, but it was well out of sight.

  The ship touched down and she could hear the deployment ramps lowering. She couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated at having to deal with a military force that could take a solar system with advanced third era technology. A mental image of her mother emerged in her mind. She could see her, her mother the admiral, and she couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t the mother who wanted to reconcile that she recalled then either, it was the parent she had knock down, drag out arguments with when she was a young teen, before she signed up for the Junior Academy. If she could picture that woman while facing hard nosed military officers and block headed beaurocrats, then she’d be ready for anything.

  The hatch at the end of the corridor opened and she strode for it. Marched like she was on the parade ground and not only did everyone fall in step behind her, but the customs officers got out of her way. When she arrived at the bottom of the main deployment ramp Colonel Davies was there to meet her. She was checking something on a work pad, and only spared a momentary glance at Ayan before telling her; "This officer will lead you to the Office of the Governor. We've found no reason to detain you."

  "Thank you," Ayan said before turning and nodding at the young unarmed officer who waited for them. He was a nervous looking thin man who must have been a clerk. He was in a dark brown uniform that looked crisp and
new.

  "I-if you'd follow me ma'am," he stammered.

  Ayan let the hint of a smile crack her lips and walked several steps behind him.

  "Wow, I forgot that about you. It's like a switch," Laura whispered just loudly enough to compete with the sounds of the Triton soldier's boots behind them.

  "What's that?"

  "You and your mother, all personable one minute then all cold intimidation the next."

  Ayan couldn't remember a time when she'd been that way in front of Laura. Perhaps she was serious minded or bent to a task when they served together on the First Light, but never had she exhibited the sense of presence she felt as they crossed the large landing bay. It was like a comforting weight across her shoulders. "Really?" Was all she managed.

  "Ah, I guess the scan was taken before you grew into that," Laura whispered even more quietly. Ayan barely heard her. "Sorry."

  "It's all right, I've come to terms with the missing years. Was I like that often after the wedding?"

  "More and more, mostly because you wanted to push projects ahead and it helped if people took you seriously. Some people started comparing you with your mother,"

  "You're kidding,"

  "Not at all, they used to call you; 'the smart Rice woman,' and well, that pretty much said it all as far as command was concerned. If it weren't for your persistence we wouldn't have finished work on the Silkstream Four."

  "Thank you Laura. Somehow knowing that I've had that side before helps me with my resolve now. I have no idea what we're in for."

  "Me neither." Laura created an encoded channel and gave rights to the Triton soldiers and Ayan then used it to ask; "Have any of you ever been to a Carthan administration office?"

  "Are you kidding? I still can't believe I've been in three solar systems in as many months," chuckled the young woman behind them.

  "No, but if it's like any other beaurocracy, expect a long line," replied Victor.